Complaining about high taxes is nothing new. An archaeologist in Turkey has found evidence that people in the ancient Roman city of Rhodiapolis took their complaints to the emperor 1,700 years ago.
Professor İsa Kizgut of the archaeology department at Turkey’s Akdeniz University, said the team uncovered many historical artefacts, including a tablet referring to a complaint about high taxes:
The most interesting among these relics was a tablet written by a messenger describing that the public was complaining of high taxes, that he was sent to the emperor to request a discount and that he was promised that taxes would be lowered. We have an inscription written on a stone and erected as a stele in the agora. When we consider that people wanted sales tax and income tax rates to be lowered, we can infer that toward the A.D. third century the people of Rhodiapolis could not pay their taxes.
Kizgut said the emperor Septimus Severus (r. 193-211 A.D.) responded positively to the Rhodapolonites’ request, according to
Today's Zaman. Kizgut added:
The emperor gave the green light and promised the messenger that taxes would be lowered. Upon his return to Rhodiapolis, the messenger informed the leader with great joy, and in honour of the messenger, an inscribed stele was erected in the Agora.
Rhodiapolis was one of the key cities in the Roman
Lycia province, which corresponds roughly to the modern Antalya province of Turkey.
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