“Vetus in familiâ nobilitas, magnæ opes: ipsi medium ingenium, magis extra vitia, quam cum virtutibus. Sed claritas natalium, et metus temporum, obtentui fuit, ut quod segnitia fuit, sapientia vocaretur. Dum vigebat ætas, militari laude apud Germanias floruit: proconsul, Africam moderate; jam senior, citeriorem Hispaniam, pari justitiâ continuit. Major privato visus dum privatus fuit, et omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset.”
[529] Thucyd. i, 122-142; vi, 90.
[530] Thucyd. viii. 4. About the extensive ruin caused by the Lacedæmonians to the olive-grounds in Attica, see Lysias, Or. vii, De Oleâ Sacrâ, sects. 6, 7.
An inscription preserved in M. Boeckh’s Corp. Inscr. (part ii, No. 93, p. 132), gives some hint how landlords and tenants met this inevitable damage from the hands of the invaders. The deme Æxôneis lets a farm to a certain tenant for forty years, at a fixed rent of one hundred and forty drachmæ; but if an invading enemy shall drive him out or injure his farm, the deme is to receive one half of the year’s produce, in place of the year’s rent.
[531] Thucyd. vii, 28, 29.
[532] Thucyd. vii, 27.
[533] Thucyd. vii, 28.
[534] Upon this new assessment on the allies, determined by the Athenians, Mr. Mitford remarks as follows:—
“Thus light, in comparison of what we have laid upon ourselves, was the heaviest tax, as far as we learn from history, at that time known in the world. Yet it caused much discontent among the dependent commonwealths; the arbitrary power by which it was imposed being indeed reasonably execrated, though the burden itself was comparatively a nothing.”
This admission is not easily reconciled with the frequent invectives in which Mr. Mitford indulges against the empire of Athens, as practising a system of extortion and oppression ruinous to the subject-allies.