[5] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 11.
[6] Aristophan. Vesp. 707.
[7] The island of Kythêra was conquered by the Athenians from Sparta in 425 B.C., and the annual tribute then imposed upon it was four talents (Thucyd. iv, 57). In the Inscription No. 143, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Inscr., we find some names enumerated of tributary towns, with the amount of tribute opposite to each, but the stone is too much damaged to give us much information. Tyrodiza, in Thrace, paid one thousand drachms: some other towns, or junctions of towns, not clearly discernible, are rated at one thousand, two thousand, three thousand drachms, one talent, and even ten talents. This inscription must be anterior to 415 B.C., when the tribute was converted into a five per cent. duty upon imports and exports: see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, and his Notes upon the above-mentioned Inscription.
It was the practice of Athens not always to rate each tributary city separately, but sometimes to join several in one collective rating; probably each responsible for the rest. This seems to have provoked occasional remonstrances from the allies, in some of which the rhetor, Antipho, was employed to furnish the speech which the complainants pronounced before the dikastery: see Antipho ap. Harpokration, v. Ἀπόταξις—Συντελεῖς. It is greatly to be lamented that the orations composed by Antipho, for the Samothrakians and Lindians,—the latter inhabiting one of the three separate towns in the island of Rhodes,—have not been preserved.
[8] Xenophon, Anab. vii, 1, 27. οὐ μεῖον χιλίων ταλάντων: compare Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, b. iii, ch. 7, 15, 19.
[9] Aristophan. Vesp. 660. τάλαντ᾽ ἐγγὺς δισχίλια.
[10] 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 Mr. Fynes Clinton: see above, chap. xlv, note 2, 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 would have constituted in the minds of the latter a substantive grievance, such as to aggravate the motive for revolt in a manner which Thucydidês could hardly fail to notice. The orator Æschinês refers the augmentation of the tribute, up to twelve hundred talents, to the time succeeding the peace of Nikias: M. Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. iii, ch. 15-19, pp. 400-434) supposes it to have taken place earlier than the representation of the Vespæ of Aristophanês, that is, about three years before that peace, or 423 B.C. But this would have been just before the time of the expedition of Brasidas into Thrace, and his success in exciting revolt among the dependencies of Athens: if Athens had doubled her tribute upon all the allies, just before that expedition, Thucydidês could not have omitted to mention it, as increasing the chances of success to Brasidas, and helping to determine the resolutions of the Akanthians and others, which were by no means adopted unanimously or without hesitation, to revolt.
In reference to the oration called that of Andokidês against Alkibiadês, I made some remarks in the fourth volume of this History (vol. iv, ch. xxxi, p. 151), tending to show it to be spurious and of a time considerably later than that to which it purports to belong. I will here add one other remark, which appears to me decisive, tending to the same conclusion.
The oration professes to be delivered in a contest of ostracism between Nikias, Alkibiadês, and the speaker: one of the three, he says, must necessarily be ostracized, and the question is, to determine which of the three: accordingly, the speaker dwells upon many topics calculated to raise a bad impression of Alkibiadês, and a favorable impression of himself.