Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/27

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ATHENS BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

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collected at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, and probably also for the years preceding it, is given by Thucydides at about six hundred talents ; of the sums paid by particular states, however, we have little or no information.^[1] It was placed under the superintendence of the Hellenotamioe ; originally officers of the confederacy, but now removed from Delos to Athens, and acting altogether as an Athenian treasury-board. The sum total of the Athenian revenue, 2 from all sources, including this tiibute, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, is stated by Xenophon at one thousand talents : customs, harbor, and market dues, receipts from the silver-mines at Laurium, rents of public property, fines from judicial sentences, a tax per head upon slaves, the annual payment made by each metic, etc., may have made up a larger sum than four hundred talents ; which sum, added to the six hundred talents from tribute', would make the total named by Xenophon. But a verse of Aristophanes, 3 during the ninth year of the Peloponnesian war, B.C. 422, gives the general total of that time as " nearly two thousand talents :" this

Xenophon, Anab. vii, 1, 27. ov fielov %ikiuv rahuvTuv: compare

Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, b. iii, ch. 7, 15, 19.

y Axistophan. Vcsp. 660. rd/lavr' eyytJf dia^iXta.

↑ The island of Kythera was conquered by the Athenians from Sparta in 425 B.C., and the annual tribute then imposed upon it was four talents (Thucyd. iv, 57). In the Inscription No. 143, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Inscr., we find some names enumerated of tributary towns, with the amount of tribute opposite to each, but the stone is too much damaged to give us much information. Tyrodiza, in Thrace, paid one thousand drachms : some other towns, or junctions of towns, not clearly discernible, are rated at one thousand, two thousand, three thousand drachms, one talent, and even ten talents. This inscription must be anterior to 415 B.C., when the tribute was converted into a five per cent, duty upon imports and exports : see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, and his Notes upon the above-mentioned Inscription. It was the practice of Athens not always to rate each tributary city separately, but sometimes to join several in one collective rating ; probably each responsible for the rest. This seems to have provoked occasional remonstrances from the allies, in some of which the rhetor, Antipho, was employed to furnish the speech which the complainants pronounced before the dikastery : see Antipho ap. Harpokration, v, 'ATrora^f 2wreAf. It is greatly to be lamented that the orations composed by Antipho, for the Samothrakians and Lindians, the latter inhabiting one of the three separate towns in the island of Rhodes, have not been preserved.

[1] The island of Kythera was conquered by the Athenians from Sparta in 425 B.C., and the annual tribute then imposed upon it was four talents (Thucyd. iv, 57). In the Inscription No. 143, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Inscr., we find some names enumerated of tributary towns, with the amount of tribute opposite to each, but the stone is too much damaged to give us much information. Tyrodiza, in Thrace, paid one thousand drachms : some other towns, or junctions of towns, not clearly discernible, are rated at one thousand, two thousand, three thousand drachms, one talent, and even ten talents. This inscription must be anterior to 415 B.C., when the tribute was converted into a five per cent, duty upon imports and exports : see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, and his Notes upon the above-mentioned Inscription. It was the practice of Athens not always to rate each tributary city separately, but sometimes to join several in one collective rating ; probably each responsible for the rest. This seems to have provoked occasional remonstrances from the allies, in some of which the rhetor, Antipho, was employed to furnish the speech which the complainants pronounced before the dikastery : see Antipho ap. Harpokration, v, 'ATrora^f 2wreAf. It is greatly to be lamented that the orations composed by Antipho, for the Samothrakians and Lindians, the latter inhabiting one of the three separate towns in the island of Rhodes, have not been preserved.

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