The diôbelia: on the political economy of an Athenian state fund, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 193 (2015) 87-102 (original) (raw)

The διωβελία was a πόλις fund in Athens providing, as the name signals, a payment of two obols; it was instituted possibly in 410 and abolished perhaps around 404. 1 The primary questions about the διωβελία are what this fund was for and, in consequence of this, what light the διωβελία may shed on the institutions of the πόλις. Scholarship on the purpose of this fund tends to be divided into two competing views: either it was a fund with a social character, a dole for the poor and widows in the war years, or it was a fund to pay for ἀρχαί after the fi rst oligarchic episode, so rather with a democratic-political character. 2 Beside the διωβελία, a fund providing one obol appears in the records of the same years, of which the purpose and possible connection to the διωβελία are equally opaque. The fragmentary nature of our evidence makes it impossible to arrive at fi rm conclusions on many aspects of these funds, but newly published evidence and fresh views on related topics now encourage a new interpretation. My aim in this article is clarifying, in so far the evidence allows, the purpose of the διωβελία and the obol-fund, to gain a better insight into the social and political institutions of Athens in the classical era.