320 DAVID M. LEWIS
What did Gordium’s consumers of Greek goods offer in return? The most
likely answer is that slaves will have ranked highly among Phrygian exports
to the Aegean: the fame of slaves from this region is clear from as early as the
beginning of the sixth century, as far afield as Tyre in the Levant.^15 This picture
of commercial contacts is strengthened if we consider our second source, an
inscription dating to the late sixth century BCE from Cyzicus, an important
Greek port perched on the edge of Hellespontine Phrygia (SIG³ 4). The main
text runs as follows:In the magistracy of Maiandrios: The city gave the son of Medikes and
the children and descendants of Aisepos ateleia and prytaneion. To be
granted except for the nauton and the tax on the use of public scales and
the tax on horse sales and the 25% tax and the tax on the sale of slaves: all
other things are exempt from tax. And regarding these things the people
sacrificed in attestation of an oath. The city gave this stele to Manes son
of Medikes.One early editor of the inscription, F. Hiller von Gaertringen, thought that
Manes must have been a Cyzicene citizen who received this honorific grant
on account of the heroic actions of his father.^16 But a close analysis of the
text throws up major problems with this interpretation. The first clue lies in
the name Manes, which is a non-Greek Anatolian name, suggesting (perhaps)
Phrygian origins. But let us suppose for the sake of argument that Manes really
was a Cyzicene Greek with a foreign name; even were this so, problems remain.
The most glaring is the list of exceptions to Manes’ ateleia. The grant makes
him immune from taxes except for several specifics: the nauton, the tax on the
use of public scales, the taxes on the sale of horses and slaves, and a 25 percent
tax. If this decree was merely a straightforward honorific grant to the son of a
dead patriot, it was concocted in an extremely unusual fashion – why not sim-
ply grant prytaneion? Why stipulate so carefully the aforementioned exceptions
to the ateleia? Surely a more convincing suggestion can be advanced. I suggest
drawing three plausible inferences from this document. First, we should jetti-
son the idea that the honour was granted for a military act. It is far more likely
that it is economically oriented; after all, ateleia is a grant frequently bestowed
on foreign merchants or dynasts with mercantile interests.^17 This leads to the
second inference: that the exceptions to the ateleia are connected to the busi-
ness activities of Manes, particularly the import of horses and slaves. These
were commodities that the interior of the satrapy produced in abundance.^18 It
seems probable that they are ring-fenced as lying outside the ateleia because,
whoever he was, Manes was responsible for bringing in a sufficient number of
slaves and horses to the Cyzicene market so that the state, making a tidy sum
from taxing his sales, did not want to lose this income when honouring their
benefactor.^19 My third inference is that Manes was probably not Cyzicene at