Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete

[ Vesp. Aristoph. 795.

270 (return (#x20_x_20_i6))

[ Knight’s Prolegomena to Homer; see also Boeckh (translation), vol. i., p. 25.

271 (return (#x20_x_20_i6))

[ Viz., B. C. 424; Ol. 89.

272 (return (#x20_x_20_i6))

[ Thucyd., iv., 57.

273 (return (#x20_x_20_i6))

[ See Chandler’s Inscript.

274 (return (#x20_x_20_i7))

[ In the time of Alcibiades the tribute was raised to one thousand three hundred talents, and even this must have been most unequally assessed, if it were really the pecuniary hardship the allies insisted upon and complained of. But the resistance made to imposts upon matters of feeling or principle in our own country, as, at this day, in the case of church-rates, may show the real nature of the grievance. It was not the amount paid, but partly the degradation of paying it, and partly, perhaps, resentment in many places at some unfair assessment. Discontent exaggerates every burden, and a feather is as heavy as a mountain when laid on unwilling shoulders. When the new arrangement was made by Alcibiades or the later demagogues, Andocides asserts that some of the allies left their native countries and emigrated to Thurii. But how many Englishmen have emigrated to America from objections to a peculiar law or a peculiar impost, which state policy still vindicates, or state necessity still maintains! The Irish Catholic peasant, in reality, would not, perhaps, be much better off, in a pecuniary point of view, if the tithes were transferred to the rental of the landlord, yet Irish Catholics have emigrated in hundreds from the oppression, real or imaginary, of Protestant tithe-owners. Whether in ancient times or modern, it is not the amount of taxation that makes the grievance. People will pay a pound for what they like, and grudge a farthing for what they hate. I have myself known men quit England because of the stamp duty on newspapers!

275 (return (#x20_x_20_i8))

[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 75; Bloomfield’s translation.

276 (return (#x20_x_20_i9))

[ A sentiment thus implied by the Athenian ambassadors: “We are not the first who began the custom which has ever been an established one, that the weaker should be kept under by the stronger.” The Athenians had, however, an excuse more powerful than that of the ancient Rob Roys. It was the general opinion of the time that the revolt of dependant allies might be fairly punished by one that could punish them—(so the Corinthians take care to observe). And it does not appear that the Athenian empire at this period was more harsh than that of other states to their dependants. The Athenian ambassadors (Thucyd., i., 78) not only quote the far more galling oppressions the Ionians and the isles had undergone from the Mede, but hint that the Spartans had been found much harder masters than the Athenians.

277 (return (#x20_x_20_i14))

[ Only twelve drachma each yearly: the total, therefore, is calculated by the inestimable learning of Boeckh not to have exceeded twenty-one talents.

278 (return (#x20_x_20_i15))

[ Total estimated at thirty-three talents.

279 (return (#x20_x_20_i20))

[ The state itself contributed largely to the plays, and the lessee of the theatre was also bound to provide for several expenses, in consideration of which he received the entrance money.

280 (return (#x20_x_20_i25))

[ On the authority of Pseud. Arist. Oecon., 2-4.

281 (return (#x20_x_20_i25))

[ In the expedition against Sicily the state supplied the vessel and paid the crew. The trierarchs equipped the ship and gave voluntary contributions besides.—Thucyd., vi., 31.

282 (return (#x20_x_20_i27))

[ Liturgies, with most of the Athenian laws that seemed to harass the rich personally, enhanced their station and authority politically. It is clear that wherever wealth is made most obviously available to the state, there it will be most universally respected. Thus is it ever in commercial countries. In Carthage of old, where, according to Aristotle, wealth was considered virtue, and in England at this day, where wealth, if not virtue, is certainly respectability,

283 (return (#x20_x_20_i29))

[ And so well aware of the uncertain and artificial tenure of the Athenian power were the Greek statesmen, that we find it among the arguments with which the Corinthian some time after supported the Peloponnesian war, “that the Athenians, if they lost one sea-fight, would be utterly subdued;”—nor, even without such a mischance, could the flames of a war be kindled, but what the obvious expedient [Footnote Thucyd., lib. i., c. 121. As the Corinthians indeed suggested, Thucyd., lib. i., c. 122: of the enemy would be to excite the Athenian allies to revolt, and the stoppage or diminution of the tribute would be the necessary consequence.

284 (return (#x20_x_20_i29))

[ If the courts of law among the allies were not removed to Athens till after the truce with Peloponnesus, and indeed till after the ostracism of Thucydides, the rival of Pericles, the value of the judicial fees did not, of course, make one of the considerations for peace; but there would then have been the mightier consideration of the design of that transfer which peace only could effect.

285 (return (#x20_x_20_i29))

[ Plut. in vit. Per.

286 (return (#x20_x_20_i30))

[ “As a vain woman decked out with jewels,” was the sarcastic reproach of the allies.—Plut. in vit. Per.

287 (return (#x20_x_20_i30))

[ The Propylaea was built under the direction of Mnesicles. It was begun 437 B. C., in the archonship of Euthymenes, three years after the Samian war, and completed in five years. Harpocrat. in propylaia tauta.

288 (return (#x20_x_20_i30))

[ Plut. in vit. Per.

289 (return (#x20_x_20_i31))

[ See Arnold’s Thucydides, ii., 13, note 12.

290 (return (#x20_x_20_i32))

[ “Their bodies, too, they employ for the state as if they were any one’s else but their own; but with minds completely their own, they are ever ready to render it service.”—Thucyd., i., 70, Bloomfield’s translation.

291 (return (#x20_x_20_i34))

[ With us, Juries as well as judges are paid, and, in ordinary cases, at as low a rate as the Athenian dicasts (the different value of money being considered), viz., common jurymen one shilling for each trial, and, in the sheriffs’ court, fourpence. What was so pernicious in Athens is perfectly harmless in England; it was the large member of the dicasts which made the mischief, and not the system of payment itself, as unreflecting writers have so often asserted.

292 (return (#x20_x_20_i34))

[ See Book IV., Chapter V. VII. of this volume.

293 (return (#x20_x_20_i34))

[ At first the payment of the dicasts was one obolus.—(Aristoph. Nubes, 861.) Afterward, under Cleon, it seems to have been increased to three; it is doubtful whether it was in the interval ever two obols. Constant mistakes are made between the pay, and even the constitution, of the ecclesiasts and the dicasts. But the reader must carefully remember that the former were the popular legislators, the latter, the popular judges or jurors—their functions were a mixture of both.

294 (return (#x20_x_20_i34))