towns were required to pay taxes and obey occasional royal ordinances, but were allowed to administer their own in- ternal affairs and even to control neighbouring territories.
The native peasantry lived in villages that maintained their status and way of life unmindful of dynastic changes. The land they cultivated was mostly the king's or some landowner's and the tenants were bought and sold with it as serfs. In rural districts the Seleucids continued the practice customary in south-western Asia of collecting tithes, one-tenth of the harvest. From sporadic references it would seem that the tax was imposed not on the individual but on the community. A large part of it was paid in kind in the name of the city, people or tribe by the chief or high priest. Royal revenues were also derived from a poll tax and a tax on salt, while mines, quarries, forests and fisheries were probably owned and operated by the crown.
The trade of Syria on both the domestic and foreign levels was of great consequence to the kingdom and to its population. The Seleucid policy seems to have been first to attract to their country Arabian, Indian and Central Asian merchandise for local consumption and for transit, and secondly to promote Syrian commercial relations with the West, especially the Greco-Roman world. In bidding for transit trade Egypt was the rival of Syria. The unceasing military conflicts between Seleucids and Ptolemies, there- fore, had economic as well as political bases.
During the period when southern Syria was a part of the Ptolemaic domain, the Seleucids received their chief supply of Arabian and Indian merchandise by way of the Persian Gulf. This merchandise consisted of myrrh, frankincense and other aromatics, which burned on every altar in the Hellenistic world. Cinnamon was another prized tropical product. These commodities were partly consumed in Syria and partly re-exported westward. Seleucid trade with the West followed land as well as sea routes and contributed no small share to the prosperity of Syria. It consisted of
