The Historians' History of the World 03

The total of these distinct tributary cities is said to have amounted to one thousand, according to a verse of Aristophanes, which cannot be under the truth, though it may well be, and probably is, greatly above the truth. The total annual tribute 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 [£120,000 or $600,000]. Of the sums paid by particular states, however, we have little or no information. It was placed under the superintendence of the Hellenotamiæ; 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, from all sources, including this tribute, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War is stated by Xenophon at one thousand talents: customs, harbour, and market-dues, receipt 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, during the ninth year of the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 422, gives the general total of that time as “nearly two thousand talents”: this is in all probability much above the truth, though we may reasonably imagine that the amount of tribute money levied upon the allies had been augmented during the interval. Whatever may have been the actual magnitude of the Athenian budget, however, prior to the Peloponnesian War, we know that during the larger part of the administration of Pericles, the revenue including tribute, was so managed as to leave a large annual surplus; insomuch that a treasure of coined money was accumulated in the Acropolis during the years preceding the Peloponnesian War—which treasure when at its maximum reached the great sum of ninety-seven hundred talents [£1,940,000 or $9,700,000], and was still at six thousand talents, after a serious drain for various purposes, at the moment when that war began. This system of public economy, constantly laying by a considerable sum year after year—in which Athens stood alone, since none of the Peloponnesian states had any public reserve whatever—goes far of itself to vindicate Pericles from the charge of having wasted the public money in mischievous distributions for the purpose of obtaining popularity; and also to exonerate the Athenian demos from that reproach of a greedy appetite for living by the public purse which it is common to advance against them. After the death of Cimon, no further expeditions were undertaken against the Persians, and even for some years before his death, not much appears to have been done. The tribute money thus remained unexpended, and kept in reserve, as the presidential duties of Athens prescribed, against future attack, which might at any time be renewed.

Though we do not know the exact amount of the other sources of Athenian revenue, however, we know that tribute received from allies was the largest item in it. And altogether the exercise of empire abroad became a prominent feature in Athenian life, and a necessity to Athenian sentiment, not less than democracy at home. Athens was no longer, as she had been once, a single city, with Attica for her territory: she was a capital or imperial city—a despot-city, was the expression used by her enemies, and even sometimes by her own citizens—with many dependencies attached to her, and bound to follow her orders. Such was the manner in which not merely Pericles and the other leading statesmen, but even the humblest Athenian citizen, conceived the dignity of Athens; and the sentiment was one which carried with it both personal pride and stimulus to patriotism.