ANCIENTS NEW DEPRESSION

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 73, 28 March 1933, Page 9

ANCIENTS NEW DEPRESSION

Moie than twenty-one centuries ago the people of Chios sent a. delegation to the city of Miletus to seek remission of debt because of the "economic depression." Miletus' Teplied that unfortunately their own credits were frozen, but that it would allow a respite if the Chios people behaved themselves and kept the peace.' A stone tablet, dated 22S 8.C., recording this episode is among eighty-six specimens of Greek aud Roman inscriptions ( ranging from 550 B.C. to 550 A.D. exhibited for the first time in the P?-ramum Museum in Berlin. This collection forms part of more than 1000 stone records excavated by German explorers on the sites of the ancient cities of Pergamum, Miletus, Magnesia, and Priene. There are numerous letters, agreements, and decrees perpetuated on tablets, one of which, prescribes proper attire and deportment at funerals. Another records a loan raised by Miletus' on Cnidus, 252 8.C., in order to pay tribute to. King Lysimachus. The loan was for three years. A tablet of the third century B.C. bears a treaty between Miletus and three Cretan cities for the mutual exchange of prisoners made by pirates, to' prevent them from being sold into slavery. An-inscription of a gravestone reads: "In perpetual meriovy to Gains Erucius, if cemetery robbers will kindly leave this tomb alone."