THE LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC GROwTH 127
The description of the property can be as brief as one word (‘house’ [οἰκία] or
‘field’ [χωρίον]). In some cases, however, one finds more details such as infor-
mation about roof tiles, towers, doors, viaducts, gardens and enclosures.^72 The
purchase prices indicate that it was not only the wealthy who registered the
sales of their property. The prices range from a low of 60 dr. (#29) to a high
of 8,000 dr. (#40). There are forty amounts preserved out of the forty-seven
sales that were originally on the stone. One out of five are 300 dr. or less. Over
a third fall below 500 dr., and over half fall below 1,000 dr., prices that would
have been affordable by citizens with modest resources (see Appendix III).
There is no registration fee given for each of the sales as there is in the poletai
documents at Athens, but if there was one, it could not have been very high
for it did not discourage those with small amounts of property from register-
ing their sales. The inscription also reveals that property was not circulating
within a small group of neighbors and kin. The tribal affiliations recorded for
the buyer and seller appear to denote geographical regions.^73 In thirty-eight
cases these affiliations are preserved for both parties, and in the overwhelming
majority of cases, thirty-one, the buyer and seller come from different regions.
Once again we find that the existence of written records helps to reduce the
asymmetry of information that would otherwise have discouraged transactions
between parties from different areas (for asymmetry of information in transac-
tions concerning amphoras, see Lawall, Chapter 11 of this volume). Finally, it
has been noted that some of the sales are actually the repayment of loans made
on the security of property.^74 The amounts in these transactions range from a
high of 5,000 dr. (#39) to a low of 100 dr. (#30), which suggests that credit in
the form of secured loans was available to the wealthy and to those of modest
means alike.
Athens and Tenos were not unusual in maintaining records about sales ofproperty. A papyrus dated to the third century BCE collects several laws from
Ptolemaic Alexandria and provides rules about registering sales. The treasurers
are to record the names of sellers and buyers with their patronymics and demes,
the date of the transaction, and the location of the property. As several scholars
have noted, the type of information recorded in these documents is very sim-
ilar to that found in the records of sales from Tenos. The registration fee is not
preserved but appears to have been low, possibly only 5 percent.^75 There is also
evidence for similar types of records in Miletus, Samos, Camarina and possibly
several cities in Northern Greece.^76 The practice was clearly widespread. In
Roman Egypt there was a central register called the bibliotheke kteseon.^77 These
records may have helped officials in levying taxes, but the primary aim of the
edict is to prevent fraud through ignorance (ἵνα οἱ συναλλάσσοντες μὴ κατ‘
ἄγνοιαν ἐνεδρεύωνται) or to reduce ‘asymmetry of information.’ These records
share the same deficiencies as those from the Greek world: they only give the
names of neighbors but do not indicate where the precise boundary lay.