“The Sybarites,” Phylarchus [the 3rd cent. BCE historian] says, “having drifted into luxury wrote a law that women be invited to festivals and that those who make the call to the sacrifice issue their summons a year in advance; thus the women could prepare their dresses and other adornments in a manner befitting that time span before answering the summons. And if some cook or chef invented an extraordinary recipe of his own, no one but the inventor was entitled to use it for a year, in order that during this time the inventor should have the profit and others might labor to excel in such endeavors. Similarly, those who sold eels were not charged taxes, nor those who caught them. In the same manner they made those who worked with sea-purple dye and those who imported it exempt from taxes.”
Source:
Athenaeus. Deipnosophistae (the Scholars at Dinner), XII 521c2-d7.
(Note: as quoted on the back cover of Journal of Political Economy 118, no. 6 (December 2010).)