is in all probability much above the truth, though we may well imagine that the amount of tribute-money levied upon the allies may have been augmented during the interval: I think that the alleged duplication of the tribute by Alkibiadês, which Thucydidês nowhere notices, is not borne out by any good evidence, nor can I believe that it ever reached the sum of twelve hundred talents.[1] Whatever may have been the actual magnitude of the
- ↑ Very excellent writers on Athenian antiquity (Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, c. 15,19, b. iii; Schömann, Antiq. J. P. Att. sect. lxxiv; K. F. Hermann, Gr. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 157: compare, however, a passage in Boeckh, ch. 17, p. 421, Eng. transl., where he seems to be of an opposite opinion) accept this statement, that the tribute levied by Athenians upon her allies was doubled some years after the commencement of the Peloponnesian war,—at which time it was six hundred talents,—and that it came to amount to twelve hundred talents. Nevertheless, I cannot follow them, upon the simple authority of Æschinês, and the Pseudo-Andokidês (Æschin. De Fals. Legat. c. 54, p. 301; Andokidês, De Pace, c. 1, and the same orator cont. Alkibiad. c. 4). For we may state pretty confidently, that neither of the two orations here ascribed to Andokidês is genuine: the oration against Alkibiadês most decidedly not genuine. There remains, therefore, as an original evidence, only the passage of Æschinês, which has, apparently, been copied by the author of the Oration De Pace, ascribed to Andokidês. Now the chapter of Æschinês, which professes to furnish a general but brief sketch of Athenian history for the century succeeding the Persian invasion, is so full of historical and chronological inaccuracies, that we can hardly accept it, when standing alone, as authority for any matter of fact. In a note on the chapter immediately preceding, I have already touched upon its extraordinary looseness of statement,—pointed out by various commentators, among them particularly by Sir. Fynes Clinton: see above, chap, xlv, note2, pp. 409–411, in the preceding volume.
The assertion, therefore, that the tribute from the Athenian allies was raised to the sum of twelve hundred talents annually, comes to us only from the orator Æschinês as an original witness: and in him it forms part of a tissue of statements alike confused and incorrect. But against it we have a powerful negative argument,—the perfect silence of Thucydidês. Is it possible that that historian would have omitted all notice of a step so very important in its effects, if Athens had really adopted it? He mentions to us the commutation by Athens of the tribute from her allies into a duty of five per cent, payable by them on their exports and imports (vii, 28) this was in the nineteenth year of the war, 413 B.C. But anything like the duplication of the tribute all at once, would have altered much more materially the relations between Athens and her allies and
