David M. Pritchard 2015, ‘Public Finance and War in Ancient Greece’, Greece and Rome 62, 48-59. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sparta had long been Greece’s dominant land power, because its hoplites, as full-time professionals, fought much better than its enemies and it could force its allies to provide further hoplites for its wars without the need to pay them. Yet in the Peloponnesian War’s first two phases the enormous army that Sparta could raise proved ineffective against Athens; for whenever it entered Athenian territory, the Athenians simply withdrew within their fortifications, imported food-supplies by sea and waited for their enemies to leave. Now Sparta realised that they could only defeat Athens if it became a major sea power. But to become one it too had to find a way to meet a fleet’s astronomical costs. Sparta found a way in 413/2, after the destruction of the enormous expedition that Athens had sent to Sicily. Persia saw this destruction as the best opportunity in decades to get rid of the Athenian empire. In exchange for re-gaining the right to levy tribute on Anatolia’s Greeks it thus provided Sparta with enough gold to build and to maintain a fleet. In the course of the Ionian War, which is the name of the Peloponnesian War’s last phase, this Spartan fleet came in time to surpass what was left of the Athenian fleet. In 405/4 Sparta easily destroyed the last of the Athenian triremes in the Hellespont and so was able to force the surrender of Athens by a land and sea blockade. With its full control of the Aegean Sea it subjugated the last of the Greek states that supported Athens and so could bring the Athenian empire to an end.
Sparta had long been Greece’s dominant land power, because its hoplites, as full-time professionals, fought much better than its enemies and it could force its allies to provide further hoplites for its wars without the need to pay them. Yet in the Peloponnesian War’s first two phases the enormous army that Sparta could raise proved ineffective against Athens; for whenever it entered Athenian territory, the Athenians simply withdrew within their fortifications, imported food-supplies by sea and waited for their enemies to leave. Now Sparta realised that they could only defeat Athens if it became a major sea power. But to become one it too had to find a way to meet a fleet’s astronomical costs. Sparta found a way in 413/2, after the destruction of the enormous expedition that Athens had sent to Sicily. Persia saw this destruction as the best opportunity in decades to get rid of the Athenian empire. In exchange for re-gaining the right to levy tribute on Anatolia’s Greeks it thus provided Sparta with enough gold to build and to maintain a fleet. In the course of the Ionian War, which is the name of the Peloponnesian War’s last phase, this Spartan fleet came in time to surpass what was left of the Athenian fleet. In 405/4 Sparta easily destroyed the last of the Athenian triremes in the Hellespont and so was able to force the surrender of Athens by a land and sea blockade. With its full control of the Aegean Sea it subjugated the last of the Greek states that supported Athens and so could bring the Athenian empire to an end.
Claude Mossé famously argued that the inability of postwar Athens to manage well the financing of war led to its irreversible decline. Needless to say, we have moved on since the publication of her La Fin de la démocratie athénienne sixty years ago. In recent decades, much research has demonstrated that Athenian public finances recovered quickly in the early fourth century, which ended up being a period of wide-ranging financial reforms. The first thirty years of the century saw Athens fighting more often than previously, sending its infantry and navy on long campaigns across the eastern Mediterranean. Nevertheless, the old idea persists that in order to finance this new surge in warfare Athens relied on Persia’s benevolence, on the heavy taxation of Athenian citizens and their allies, and the violent extracting of money from other states by their generals on campaign. This paper incorporates new findings about the financial reforms of early-fourth-century Athens into the study of its contemporaneous wars. The financial decisions of the Athenian dēmos are thus considered alongside the details of actual military campaigns. The paper’s major finding is that by introducing financial innovations or by reforming others already in place, postwar Athens was able to draw significantly on its own financial resources to pay for wars.
he global cost of Athenian military activity cannot be reliably calculated before the late 430s BC. 1 We may know the siege of Samos (441/0 to 440/39) cost the democracy 1276 talents (Isocrates 15.111; Nepos Timotheus 1; IG I 3 363), but before 433/2 we otherwise lack figures for total military spending in any year or period and even the basic parameters of documented military ventures, which would allow us, at least, to build up an estimate of public spending expedition by expedition. 2 The great interest that the new genre of historiography took in the Peloponnesian War and the larger numbers of literary sources surviving from the later fifth century mean we have consistently detailed information about the expeditions of these three decades and reliable figures for state income at the outbreak of this long war. For its first phase there are also surviving inscriptions recording the yearly tribute which the subject cities of the empire were required to pay Athens and the sacred monies that it borrowed to cover the war effort. The consensus of military historians today may be that Athenian spending on its armed forces
Athenian politics from the victory of Salamis until the dispatch of aid to Inaros
1980
Formation of the Athenian Alliance until the War with Karystos. 135 Chapter Ten. Sparta and the Peloponnese, 478/7-465/4 164 Chapter Eleven. The Athenians, 475-4-471/Q 172 Chapter Twelve. The Kimonian Mra 188 Chapter Thirteen. The End of the Kimonian Er&, (46514-462/1) 194 Chapter Fourteen. From Kimon's Dismissal until the Dispatch of Aid to Inaros 229 Notes to chapter one 252 Notes to chapter two 261 Notes to chapter three 266 Notes to chapter four 271 Notes to chapter five 279 Notes to chapter six Notes to chapter seven. Notes to chapter eight Notes to chapter nine Notes to chapter ten Notes to chapter eleven Notes to chapter twelve Notes to chapter thirteen Notes to chapter fourteen Bibliography
CLASH OF ANCIENT TITANS : SPARTA AND ATHENIAN IMPERIALISM IN THE FIFTH CENTURY B.C.
In this article the socio-political systems of Athens and Sparta are analyzed and compared through some of their institutions and their reforms. In the Spartan case, it focuses mainly on its educational system, and in regards to Athens, on the reforms promoted by Solon at the beginning of the 6th century BC. It will also analyze the use that the Greeks, and especially the Athenians, made of propaganda during the Greco-Persian Wars, as well as during the period immediately after, when Athens emerged as the hegemonic power in the Greek world.
Between ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond)
Polis 41: 176-202, 2024
This article discusses the fortune of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s famous article ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’, and reassesses its basic thesis that the Athenian Empire was popular among the lower classes of the allied cities in the light of recent developments in the field. After surveying the article’s immediate and more recent reception, and discussing its relation with The Origins of the Peloponnesian War and The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, it isolates four key new trends in Greek history that, while going against some of Ste. Croix’s basic convictions, end up reinforcing his overall case. These are: a renewed attention to the mass and elite dichotomy, with recent work interpreting Greek oligarchy as a fundamentally reactive and anti-demotic regime; the recognition of the continued relevance of Persian med- dling in the later fifth-century; a sea-change in Attic epigraphy which has led to the post-dating of several ‘imperial’ decrees; the new recognition of the dynamism of the Greek economy, and of the economic function of the Athenian Empire itself. Finally, the article addresses the paradigm of class struggle and stresses how democracy and economic dynamism, to which the Athenian Empire contributed, fostered the growth of slave markets and worsened the exploitation of ‘marginal’ regions as slave suppliers.
Tribute, the Athenian Empire and Small States and Communities in the Aegean
""It is well known that the Athenian empire had a great impact on the economy,politics, and culture of the Aegean world during the fifth century BCE. Narratives,however, of Greek history concentrate, perhaps inevitably, on the history of Athens. Using the Athenian Tribute Lists and the reassessment decrees as my starting point, I will be looking at communities and small poleis of the Athenian empire. By taking the communities of the island of Rhodes as case study, I will propose that the process of becoming a member of the empire and the practicalities that such membership involved, most particularly the payment of tribute, had an impact on the political organisation of such communities and more importantly perhaps on their economic integration in the wider Aegean networks of production, consumption and redistribution. Finally, a careful examination of the quota lists and assessment decrees reveals that there was such a thing as a ‘hidden’ empire, that is that the impact of the Athenian empire on the communities of the Aegean was perhaps greater than our sources reveal.""
Athenian Geopolitics: trading low phoroi for favorable state relations
2017
This dissertation examines the relationship between Athens and smaller member states of the Delian League. Former studies explained the apparatus of the Delian League by solely focusing on the relationship between Athens and the league’s most powerful subject allies. They have therefore fallen short in recreating a comprehensive picture of the geopolitical realities in the Aegean of the fifth century B.C. Much of the evidence regarding Athenian conduct toward her subject allies can be found in epigraphy. By closely analyzing the tribute lists, it becomes clear that certain smaller states, contributed conspicuously low phoroi into the Delian treasury. This work sets out to discover whether the strategic properties of these poleis led to their deliberate ‘under-assessment’. By carefully looking at the evidence, the study seeks to demonstrate the potential benefits which Athens could count on by deliberately under-assessing certain member states. This dissertation will show that a revision of the workings of the Delian League is necessary and can be achieved by primarily examining poleis that so far have been insufficiently studied. This new approach will give rise to the question whether the longevity of Athenian imperialism was based on a pragmatic and clever policy which up until now has been unexplored.