Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/74

Ixx THUCYDIDES mained for only a part of the two years for which the siege lasted. Therefore under this single head an expenditure must have been incurred, while the whole 4,600 were on the spot, of more than a talent and a half a day, or at the rate of 532 talents in an ordinary year of 355 days. Thucy- dides expressly says that the siege cost 2,000 talents (ii. 70). (3) The building of the Propylaea is said by Heliodorus to have cost 2,012 talents (Harpocration, s. v. p. 159). (4) The six thousand jurymen of the court of Heliaea, if sitting at one time, would have received half a talent a day (the pay of each singly being 3 obols), or, if sitting for a month, 15 talents. Or, as Aristophanes (Wasps, 663) calcu- lates — in 'round,' and perhaps exaggerated, numbers — the expense of 6,000 jurymen for the year, sitting 300 days, — yiyverai r/fuv e/carov S/jirov koI TrevT^Korra rdXavTa . (5) It is possible that the pay for attendance in the iKKX-qn-La was introduced before the end of the war : we only know with certainty that it had been raised from 1 to 2 obols, and again, by its originator Agyrrhius, from 2 to 3 obols before the performance of Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae in 392 (Eccl. 300, [Aristotle] Athen. Polit. 41). Even if .we calculate on the basis of 5,000 as a possible maximum attendance upon ordinary occasions (cp. Thuc. viii. 72^ and suppose 50 sittings in each 3'ear, viz. the four regular meetings in each of the ten prytanies, and (say) ten extraordinary meetings, the yearly cost at i obol a day would not have amounted to 7 talents. (6) The total pay of 500 senators at a drachma a day, sitting 300 days in the year, would amount to 25 talents. Such estimates give a general idea of the scale of Athenian expenditure. They may also remind us that both on the creditor and debtor side of the account should be entered many elements of revenue and expenditure which can no longer be estimated. We may now return to the calculation of Kirchhofif. It ^ Cp. Starkie, Wasps, Excursus vi.