same sex or for a brother, yet strong enough to produce physical reactions such as faintness, lies beyond the experience of most of us, as it lay beyond the experience of the decadent Greeks and Romans. That is why so many have assumed that some of Sappho's verses imply an impure and sensual relationship. But I count that a happy person who cares, and cares hard, in the common and normal experiences of life. For one who loves a friend as passionately, and who suffers at the loss of such a friend as intensely, as Sappho did, knows, by virtue of that same capacity to feel keenly, more of happiness and of the joy of living than many of us. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY THE COST TO ATHENS OF HER SECOND EMPIRE1 BY FRANK EGLESTON ROBBINS In the following pages an attempt will be made to restore some of the more important items in the balance sheet of the Athenian military and naval establishments during the years 378-369 B.C. The writer does not begin this undertaking without foreknowledge of the difficulties that attend upon an investigation of this sort, where each question that arises requires that all the factors involved be first discovered, then correlated and interpreted. Such inquiries would be doubly hazardous were it not for the numerous researches that in late years have been made upon special problems of Greek history and finance, which both furnish new instruments to the student of ancient life and show him the method which he must adopt in his own work; to the men that have made them he must be profoundly grateful. The present essay uses the results of these studies at every step and has for its objects both to cast some light upon the subject of state expenditures and to discover a new way of approach to the vexed questions of the amounts of the tribute, of the state revenues, and of the surplus, in the second Athenian empire. One of the peculiar embarrassments of the investigator of this period is that none of these points is clearly and definitely decided by the sources, in spite of the rich material afforded by Demosthenes, Xenophon, Diodorus, and the inscriptions. It is in order to take = = 1 The following abbreviations are used in citing the works most frequently referred to: Busolt G. Busolt, "Der zweite athenische Bund," J.f.kl.Ph., Suppl. 7, 643 ff.; Beloch Beloch, Griechische Geschichte; Beloch, A. P. -Beloch, Die attische Politik seit Perikles; Meyer E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, Bd. 5; Gilbert G. Gilbert, The Constitutional Antiquities of Sparta and Athens, translated by E. J. Brooks and T. Nicklin (London, 1895); Boeckh=A. Boeckh, Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, 3d ed., revised by M. Fränkel (Berlin, 1886); Boeckh, S. =Boeckh, Urkunden über das Seewesen des attischen Staates, Bd. 3 of the Staatshaushaltung, edition of Berlin, 1840; A.A. B. Keil, Anonymus Argentinensis (Strassburg, 1902); Marshall = F. H. Marshall, The Second Athenian Confederacy (Cambridge, 1905). Citations of Xenophon refer to the Hellenica unless otherwise specified. The writer wishes to acknowledge gratefully the criticism of Professor William Scott Ferguson, of Harvard University. [CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY XIII, October, 1918] 361 advantage of one bit of exact information amid this uncertainty, that is, the amount of the war taxes voted during the first ten years of the Second League, that the scope of this paper is limited to the years 378-369. It must be added, by way of preface, that in the present essay far more attention has been paid to the expenditures of Athens than to her receipts, and that in fact the aim of the paper is to furnish a basis for further investigation of Athenian revenues. This attitude has been adopted because the amounts expended can usually be conjectured with some degree of certainty,' while there are fewer principles whereby to govern estimates of the receipts. Yet even in the question of expense there enter many elements that cannot be reduced to figures. Dishonesty, for example, would tend to increase cost, but though we know that the Greeks were only too prone to laxity in this regard and can cite instances from the history of the Second League,2 we could never estimate the effect of such delinquency upon finance. Inefficiency also spoils rule-of-thumb reckonings. Generals who wasted effort and failed in their mission must certainly have spent more than the normal amount, and if sometimes we find old campaigners, like Timotheus, unable to cope with difficult situations, much greater must have been the ineffectiveness of the amateur generals of Athens. Again, not all the military and naval operations are reported by the historians; the greater ones are described satisfactorily enough, but minor expeditions, the maintenance of garrisons and posts, and the use of ships for convoy service, all inconspicuous but still expensive features of warfare, are usually neglected. It is also hard to calculate the cost of fortifications, shipyards, and munitions, and incidental expenses incurred by commanders over and above the pay of their troops; while on the other hand booty and forage secured by the forces reduced expenses in a measure that is seldom precisely known. For all these reasons we can expect to arrive at only an approximation of the truth. 3 1 Cf. Boeckh's remark (I, 357) and below, p. 386. 2 E.g., the instance reported by Aeschin. i. 56 (Hegesander, treasurer of the general Timomachus, profits to the amount of 80 minas from the "simplicity" of the general). 3 The system of trierarchies left many loopholes for dishonesty or malingering. The items of expense to be considered may be enumerated as follows:1 I. Maintenance of the navy. 1. Cost of re-establishing the navy in 378. 2. Cost of replacement and increase in the navy, 377-369. 3. Extraordinary repairs to war ships. 4. Cost of new shiphouses; stores and munitions; maintenance of the Piraeus. II. Operating expenses of army and navy. 1. Regularly maintained armaments. b) Garrisons outside of Attica. d) The cavalry. 2. Occasional armaments, military and naval expeditions. To meet these charges there were the following sources of revenue:2 (1) the war tax (eiσpopá) of the Athenians; (2) the tribute (ovvrÁŽEIS) of the allies; (3) the surplus of the ordinary revenues of Athens; (4) money and supplies obtained by generals in the field; (5) gifts of citizens, foreigners, and foreign states. These topics will be followed in the remainder of the essay. 1. Cost of re-establishing the navy in 378.-In order to form any opinion on this matter, it is necessary to know approximately what it cost to build a new trireme and to rebuild and refit an old one. We are better informed about the value of merchant ships than about the trireme, which at this time was the standard unit of the Athenian navy. Upon one merchant ship a loan of 3,000 drachmas was made, 1 Here should properly be included the cost of fortifications, but it is hopeless to determine either the extent or the cost of whatever work of this sort was carried out. It is equally impossible to determine what was spent for garrisons, and the item is included merely for the sake of completeness. 2 The fourth item, a very important one in estimating the cost of ancient warfare, will be considered in connection with the various campaigns; the fifth unfortunately cannot be determined at all; but it is the least important of the five. Cf. p. 386. though its value was probably more, and another was sold for 40 minas. Boeckh attempted to determine the average cost of the trireme from the inscriptions, but with not entirely satisfactory results. There are, however, two pieces of evidence upon the matter that agree fairly well; it may be inferred from Polyaenus i. 30. 6 that a trireme could be built for a talent, and it has been very plausibly conjectured that by the payment of 5,000 drachmas in the case of a trireme and 5,500 drachmas in that of a horse transport a trierarch could fulfil his obligation to turn over to the state a new hull in place of one rendered useless during his term of office. At the same time he turned in the old hull, the value of which must be added to the cash payment before we can arrive at the price set by the Athenians on a new hull. One talent then cannot be too high an estimate for the cost of a hull, and to this must be added the cost of the rigging, which Boeckh shows was more than a talent in the case of a tetrareme, and cannot have been much lower for a trireme. Two talents may confidently be assumed, for the present purpose, as a moderate estimate of the cost of both hull and rigging of a trireme. 5 As the normal cost of repairs to a ship after a year of service, 1,200 drachmas is a very probable estimate, since at a certain period the trierarch seems to have been able by the payment of this sum to acquit himself of his legal obligation to repair his ship at the end of his term. This would certainly be a very moderate allowance to make for the average cost of refitting old ships for the new navy of 378, especially since those available had been laid up for several 6 1 (Dem.) lvi. 3, xxxiii. 12. 2 I, 140-41. * Polyaen. i. 30. 6: Θεμιστοκλῆς ἐν τῷ πρὸς Αιγινήτας πολέμῳ μελλόντων ̓Αθηναίων τὴν ἐκ τῶν ἀργυρείων πρόσοδον, ἑκατὸν τάλαντα, διανέμεσθαι, κωλύσας ἔπεισεν ἑκατὸν ἄνδρασι τοῖς πλουσιωτάτοις ἑκάστῳ δοῦναι τάλαντον . . . . οἱ δὲ ἑκατὸν ἄνδρες ἕκαστος μίαν τριήρη κατέστησαν σπουδῇ χρησάμενοι κάλλους καὶ τάχους. This probably refers only to the hulls. For the conjecture about the payments of 5,000 or 5,500 drachmas, cf. Boeckh, loc. cit.; Diodorus xiv. 39 (cf. Justin vi. 1) says that Pharnabazus in 398-397 obtained 500 talents at the Persian court to equip Conon's fleet of 100 vessels, but this sum would be used for more than the mere building of the ships. Xen. iii. 4. 1. less reliably gives the size of this fleet as 300 ships. 4 Köhler, A.M., IV, 81. 5 Boeckh, loc. cit. The amounts paid for various kinds of rigging vary so much that it is difficult to determine standard prices for masts, sails, cordage, oars, etc. 6 Boeckh, I, 141; S., p. 199. |