The Historians' History of the World 03

Mantitheus in Demosthenes asserts that he could have been maintained and educated upon the interest of his mother’s dowry, which amounted to a talent; consequently, according to the usual rate of interest, upon 720 drachmæ (£25 or $125), annually. For the maintenance of the young Demosthenes himself, his sister still younger, and his mother, seven minæ (£24 or $120) were annually paid, without reckoning anything for their habitation, since they dwelt in their own house. The cost of the education of Demosthenes was not included in this sum. For that the guardians remained in debt. Lysias refers, in one of his speeches, to the knavish account of the guardian of the children of Diodotus. He had, for example, charged for clothing, shoes, and hair-cutting over a talent for a period of less than eight years, and for sacrifices and festivals more than four thousand drachmæ, and he ultimately would pay a balance of only two minæ of silver, and thirty Cyzicene staters, whereby his wards had become impoverished. Lysias remarks, that if he had charged more than any one in the city had ever done before for two boys, and their sister, a pedagogue, and a female servant, his account could not have amounted to more than a thousand drachmæ (£35 or $175) annually. This would be not much less than three drachmæ daily, and must certainly appear to have been too much in the time of that orator for three children and two attendants.

In the time of Solon one must certainly have been able to travel quite a distance with an obolus, since that lawgiver forbid that a woman should take with her upon a march, or a journey, a larger quantity of meat and drink than could be purchased for that sum, and a basket of larger dimensions than an ell in length. On the contrary, when the citizens of Trœzen, according to Plutarch, resolved to give to each of the old men, women, and children who fled from Athens upon the approach of Xerxes, two oboli daily, it appears to be a large sum for the purpose. In the most flourishing period of the state, however, even a single person could maintain himself but indifferently on two or three oboli a day. Notwithstanding all this, the cheapness and facility of living still remained very great. In accordance with the noble reverence of the Greeks for the dead, the death of a man, his interment, and monument, often occasioned more expense than many years of his life, since private persons appropriated three, ten, fifty, and even 120 minæ, to that purpose.

The value of the property of the Athenian people, excluding the property of the state, and the mines, was according to a probable computation, at thirty thousand to forty thousand talents. Of these if only twenty thousand talents be considered productive property, every one of the twenty thousand citizens would have had, if the property had been equally divided, the interest of a talent, or, according to the common rate of interest, 720 drachmæ as an annual income. On this, with the addition of the profit from their labour, they might all have lived in a respectable manner. They would in that case have realised what the ancient sages and statesmen considered the highest prosperity of a state. But a considerable number of the citizens were poor. Others possessed a large amount of property, on which they could fare luxuriously on account of the cheapness of living, and the high rate of interest, and yet at the same time could increase their means, because property augmented exceedingly fast.

This inequality corrupted the state, and the manners of the people. Its most natural consequence was the submissiveness of the poor towards the rich, although they believed that their rights were equal. The rich followed the practice, afterwards so notorious and decried at Rome, of suing for the favour of the people, sometimes in a nobler, sometimes in a baser manner.