The position of the Aegean island rendered it, at this time, a convenient station for the Romans in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rome granted to Delos the privilege of exemption from taxes on imports and exports. The result was to give Delos a decisive advantage over her commercial competitor, Rhodes[1]. The trade of Rhodes was, in fact, ruined. The prosperity of Delos, on the other hand, is sufficiently attested by inscriptions. Dedications belonging to the years 200–80 B.C. constantly speak of "the Romans,—Italians and Greeks,—who are trading in the island[2]." Many Orientals were settled in Delos or Rheneia; the Tyrian trading-guild has already been noticed. The Delians had some local industries. They manufactured a species of bronze much used for the legs of tables and like purposes; they prepared a certain unguent which was in request; they sold fish, and the honey of the Cyclades; they fattened fowls; and they maintained
- ↑ In his word on the Chronological Sequence of the Coins of Ephesus (1880), Mr Barclay V. Head has proved a fact which is of interest for the commercial history of Rhodes. He has shown that the pan-Asiatic coinage of the cistophori was introduced by Eumenes II. of Pergamus, with the consent of the Romans, about 167 B.C., when Rhodes shared in the reverses of Macedonia. Hitherto the Rhodian coinage had been the general medium of commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean: the new cistophori were designed to supplant it.
- ↑ Bulletin de C. h. vol. iii. p. 371. Ῥωμαίων οἱ ἀργαζόμενοι—Ῥωμαίων Ἰταλικοὶ καὶ Ἕλληνες οἱ κα...(?)—"Italicei et Graecei qui negotiantur." We may complete the lacuna after κα with the letters πηλεύοντες: unless it was κατοικοῦντες.
