Among the accusations against Alkibiadês, one is, that after having recommended, in the assembly of the people, that the inhabitants of Melos should be sold as slaves, he had himself purchased a Melian woman among the captives, and had had a son by her: it was criminal, argues the speaker, to beget offspring by a woman whose relations he had contributed to cause to be put to death, and whose city he had contributed to ruin (c. 8).
Upon this argument I do not here touch, any farther than to bring out the point of chronology. The speech, if delivered at all, must have been delivered, at the earliest, nearly a year after the capture of Melos by the Athenians: it may be of later date, but it cannot possibly be earlier.
Now Melos surrendered in the winter immediately preceding the great expedition of the Athenians to Sicily in 415 B.C., which expedition sailed about midsummer (Thucyd. v, 116; vi, 30). Nikias and Alkibiadês both went as commanders of that expedition: the latter was recalled to Athens for trial on the charge of impiety about three months afterwards, but escaped in the way home, was condemned and sentenced to banishment in his absence, and did not return to Athens until 407 B.C., long after the death of Nikias, who continued in command of the Athenian armament in Sicily, enjoying the full esteem of his countrymen, until its complete failure and ruin before Syracuse,—and perished himself afterwards as a Syracusan prisoner.
Taking these circumstances together, it will at once be seen that there never can have been any time, ten months or more after the capture of Melos, when Nikias and Alkibiadês could have been exposed to a vote of ostracism at Athens. The thing is absolutely impossible: and the oration in which such historical and chronological incompatibilities are embodied, must be spurious: furthermore, it must have been composed long after the pretended time of delivery, when the chronological series of events had been forgotten.
I may add that the story of this duplication of the tribute by Alkibiadês is virtually contrary to the statement of Plutarch, probably borrowed from Æschinês, who states that the demagogues gradually increased (κατὰ μικρὸν) the tribute to thirteen hundred talents (Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 24).
[11] Thucyd. ii, 13.
[12] Thucyd. i, 80. The foresight of the Athenian people, in abstaining from immediate use of public money and laying it up for future wants, would be still more conspicuously demonstrated, if the statement of Æschinês, the orator, were true, that they got together seven thousand talents between the peace of Nikias and the Sicilian expedition. M. Boeckh believes this statement, and says: “It is not impossible that one thousand talents might have been laid by every year, as the amount of tribute received was so considerable.” (Public Economy of Athens, ch. xx. p. 446, Eng. Trans.) I do not believe the statement: but M. Boeckh and others, who do admit it, ought in fairness to set it against the many remarks which they pass in condemnation of the democratical prodigality.
[13] Thucyd. i. 122-143; ii, 13. The πεντηκοστὴ, or duty of two per cent. upon imports and exports at the Peiræus, produced to the state a revenue of thirty-six talents in the year in which it was farmed by Andokidês, somewhere about 400 B.C., after the restoration of the democracy at Athens from its defeat and subversion at the close of the Peloponnesian war (Andokidês de Mysteriis, c. 23, p. 65). This was at a period of depression in Athenian affairs, and when trade was doubtless not near so good as it had been during the earlier part of the Peloponnesian war.
It seems probable that this must have been the most considerable permanent source of Athenian revenue next to the tribute; though we do not know what rate of customs-duty was imposed at the Peiræus during the Peloponnesian war. Comparing together the two passages of Xenophon (Republ. Ath. 1, 17, and Aristophan. Vesp. 657), we may suppose that the regular and usual rate of duty was one per cent. or one ἑκατοστὴ,—while in case of need this may have been doubled or tripled.—τὰς πολλὰς ἑκατοστάς, (see Boeckh, b. iii, chs. 1-4, pp. 298-318, Eng. Trans.) The amount of revenue derived even from this source, however, can have borne no comparison to the tribute.
[14] By Periklês, Thucyd. ii, 63. By Kleon, Thucyd. iii, 37. By the envoys at Melos, v, 89. By Euphemus, vi, 85. By the hostile Corinthians, i, 124 as a matter of course.