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• W39943233 abstract "Ancient historians fiercely debate how the classical Athenians paid for their system of government. Certainly the dēmos (‘people’) spent on it a lot of public funds. This was largely the result of their decision to pay themselves to run the democracy. In the 450s they voted to introduce misthos (‘pay’) for jurors. In the 440s or the 430s they began to pay councillors and magistrates. By the 390s the dēmos were drawing pay to attend assembly-meetings. They also found other ways to subsidise their political participation. Athenian arkhontes (‘magistrates’) were required to keep accounts. Many poor Athenians were not capable of fulfilling this duty because of their restricted schooling. Consequently they were disinclined to serve as magistrates. The dēmos removed this barrier to participation by giving boards of magistrates hupogrammateis or undersecretaries. In addition they gave arkhontes public slaves to assist them to fulfill their other duties and a costly incentives-scheme. In light of this range of subsidisation Pericles claimed with some justification that poverty in classical Athens was no barrier to political participation (Thuc. 2.37.1). Some ancient historians persist with the view which Bockh had on how the Athenians paid for these fixed-operating costs. They argue that the dēmos only met them by using the income from their arkhē (‘empire’). But others argue just as strongly that Athenian democracy never relied on this external income. This chapter settles this public-spending debate by estimating the running cost of Athenian democracy in the fifth century. We do not have reliable documented figures for this public spending as we do for the Great Panathenaea. Therefore each of the democracy’s institutions can only be costed on the basis of its basic parameters. These were the number of days when it operated each year, the number of Athenians who participated in it when it did, and the daily amount which they drew as misthos. Working out the cost of the fourth-century democracy also helps us to adjudicate this debate. Without the arkhē postwar Athenians could only pay for it with their internal income. If the cost of the democracy was the same in both centuries this is significant; for it suggests that their fifth-century forebears could have done the same. This book costs the armed forces of Athens in the 420s and the 370s and gives a cost-estimate of its festivals which is valid for both decades. By costing its democracy in the same two decades it thus enables both a settling of this debate and a comparison of what the Athenians spent on their three major public activities. But in calculating its fixed-operating costs in the 420s and the 370s it often works back from the better documented 330s. Consequently this chapter also costs Athenian democracy in this decade. 3.8 Settling the Bockh–Jones Debate The classical Athenians manifestly spent a lot of public money on subsidising the poor’s participation in politics. Table 3.3 shows how in the 420s this political pay and the democracy’s other recurring costs added up to 157 t. per year. These 4.1 tons of silver were 50 percent more than what they spent on worshipping the state’s gods. Yet it is by no means certain that they relied on imperial tribute to pay for these running costs. In 432/1, when the Peloponnesian War was about to start, Athens’ yearly income was 1000 t. 600 t. of this came from the arkhē and 400 t. from internal sources. The dēmos apparently reserved the imperial income for military spending and the internal income for non-military spending (Thuc. 2.13.3-6). In the 420s there is no reason to believe that this internal income ever declined. In classical Athens the two major areas of non-military spending were the staging of festivals and the running of the democracy. From 430 to 350 a significant proportion of the 100 t. per year which was spent on festivals came out of the pockets of wealthy liturgists. Thus the dēmos of the 420s clearly had most of this 400 t. left over to pay for the democracy’s fixed-operating costs. In this decade yearly military spending ended up far exceeding the annual income of 600 t. from the empire. Importantly the Athenians did not fund this shortfall by cutting what they spent on festivals or politics. Instead they used up their cash-reserves, taxed the wealthy more heavily and trebled the phoros which the empire’s cities paid. There first attempt to pay for military spending by reducing non-military spending was only made much later in the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 8.1.3, 8.4). Fifth-century Athenians clearly did not rely on imperial income to pay for its democracy. Admittedly in the 420s he Athenians did use 40 t. of their imperial income to pay the 700-odd magistrates who helped to run the empire. But this was a choice on their part rather than a necessity. They could have easily covered this wages bill with internal income. Apparently they saw it primarily as a cost of the arkhē and so thought it more appropriate for their imperial subjects to pay for it. Table 3.3 tallies too the democracy’s annual costs in the 370s and the 330s. These totals support this finding about fifth-century Athens’s ability to pay for its democracy without tribute. The arkhe’s loss reduced by half the numbers of magistrates and lawsuits. Consequently the fourth-century democracy always cost less than what it had in the age of Pericles. Yet it still added up to a significant public expense. The 98 t. which the Athens of the 370s spent on it every year matched what was spent on its program of festivals. In the 330s, when the misthos for assemblygoers was considerably higher, it spent even more on politics. Without tribute fourth-century Athenians could only cover the democracy’s fixed-operating costs out of income which they had raised at home. If they were able to do so their fifth-century forebears could no doubt have done the same. In this public-spending debate we must thus follow A. H. M. Jones rather than Bockh." @default.
• W39943233 created "2016-06-24" @default.
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• W39943233 date "2015-03-01" @default.
• W39943233 modified "2023-09-28" @default.
• W39943233 title "The cost of Athenian democracy" @default.
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