This question about the Theôric expenditure is rarely presented by modern authors in the real way that it affected the Athenian mind. It has been sometimes treated as a sort of almsgiving to the poor,—and sometimes as an expenditure by the Athenians upon their pleasures. Neither the one nor the other gives a full or correct view of the case; each only brings out a part of the truth.
Doubtless, the Athenian democracy cared much for the pleasures of the citizens. It provided for them the largest amount of refined and imaginative pleasures ever tasted by any community known to history; pleasures essentially social and multitudinous, attaching the citizens to each other, rich and poor, by the strong tie of community of enjoyment.
But pleasure, though an usual accessory, was not the primary idea or predominant purpose of the Theôric expenditure. That expenditure was essentially religious in its character, incurred only for various festivals, and devoted exclusively to the honor of the gods. The ancient religion, not simply at Athens, but throughout Greece and the contemporary world,—very different in this respect from the modern,—included within itself and its manifestations nearly the whole range of social pleasures.[763] Now the Theôric Fund was essentially the Church-Fund at Athens; that upon which were charged all the expenses incurred by the state in the festivals and the worship of the gods. The Diobely, or distribution of two oboli to each present citizen, was one part of this expenditure; given in order to ensure that every citizen should have the opportunity of attending the festival, and doing honor to the god; never given to any one who was out of Attica because, of course, he could not attend;[764] but given to all alike within the country, rich or poor.[765] It was essential to that universal communion which formed a prominent feature of the festival, not less in regard to the god, than in regard to the city;[766] but it was only one portion of the total disbursements covered by the Theôric Fund. To this general religious fund it was provided by law that the surplus of ordinary revenue should be paid over, after all the cost of the peace establishment had been defrayed. There was no appropriation more thoroughly coming home to the common sentiment, more conducive as a binding force to the unity of the city, or more productive of satisfaction to each individual citizen.
We neither know the amount of the Theôric Fund, nor of the distributions connected with it. We cannot, therefore, say what proportion it formed of the whole peace-expenditure,—itself unknown also. But we cannot doubt that it was large. To be sparing of expenditure in manifestations for the honor of the gods, was accounted the reverse of virtue by Greeks generally; and the Athenians especially, whose eyes were every day contemplating the glories of their acropolis, would learn a different lesson,—moreover, magnificent religious display was believed to conciliate the protection and favor of the gods.[767] We may affirm, however, upon the strongest presumptions, that this religious expenditure did not absorb any funds required for the other branches of a peace-establishment. Neither naval, nor military, nor administrative exigencies, were starved in order to augment the Theôric surplus. Eubulus was distinguished for his excellent keeping of the docks and arsenals, and for his care in replacing the decayed triremes by new ones. And after all the wants of a well-mounted peace-establishment were satisfied, no Athenian had scruple in appropriating what remained under the conspiring impulses of piety, pleasure and social brotherhood.
It is true that the Athenians might have laid up that surplus annually in the acropolis, to form an accumulating war-fund. Such provision had been made half a century before, under the full energy and imperial power of Athens, when she had a larger revenue, with numerous tribute-paying allies, and when Perikles presided over her councils. It might have been better if she had done something of the same kind in the age after the Peloponnesian war. Perhaps, if men like Perikles, or even like Demosthenes, had enjoyed marked ascendency, she would have been advised and prevailed on to continue such a precaution. But before we can measure the extent of improvidence with which Athens is here fairly chargeable, we ought to know what was the sum thus expended on the festivals. What amount of money could have been stored up for the contingency of war, even if all the festivals and all the distributions had been suppressed? How far would it have been possible, in any other case than that of obvious present necessity, to carry economy into the festival-expenditure,—truly denominated by Demades the cement of the political system,[768]—without impairing in the bosom of each individual that sentiment of communion, religious, social and patriotic, which made the Athenians a City, and not a simple multiplication of units? These are points on which we ought to have information, before we can fairly graduate our censure upon Athens for not converting her Theôric Fund into an accumulated capital to meet the contingency of war. We ought also to ask, as matter for impartial comparison, how many governments, ancient or modern, have ever thought it requisite to lay up during peace a stock of money available for war?
The Athenian peace-establishment maintained more ships of war, larger docks, and better-stored arsenals, than any city in Greece, besides expending forty talents annually upon the Horsemen of the state, and doubtless something farther (though we know not how much) upon the other descriptions of military force. All this, let it be observed, and the Theôric expenditure besides, was defrayed without direct taxation, which was reserved for the extraordinary cost incident to a state of war, and was held to be sufficient to meet it, without any accumulated war-fund. When the war against Philip became serious, the proprietary classes at Athens, those included in the schedule of assessment, were called upon to defray the expense by a direct tax, from which they had been quite free in time of peace. They tried to evade this burthen by requiring that the festival-fund should be appropriated instead;[769] thus menacing what was dearest to the feelings of the majority of the citizens. The ground which they took was the same in principle, as if the proprietors in France or Belgium claimed to exempt themselves from direct taxation for the cost of a war, by first taking either all or half of the annual sum voted out of the budget for the maintenance of religion.[770] We may judge how strong a feeling would be raised among the Athenian public generally, by the proposal of impoverishing the festival expenditure in order to save a property-tax. Doubtless, after the proprietary class had borne a certain burthen of direct taxation, their complaints would become legitimate. The cost of the festivals could not be kept up undiminished, under severe and continued pressure of war. As a second and subsidiary resource, it would become essential to apply the whole or a part of the fund in alleviation of the burthens of the war. But even if all had been so applied, the fund could not have been large enough to dispense with the necessity of a property-tax besides.
We see this conflict of interests,—between direct taxation on one side, and the festival-fund on the other as a means of paying for war,—running through the Demosthenic orations, and especially marked in the fourth Philippic.[771] Unhappily, the conflict served as an excuse to both parties for throwing the blame on each other, and starving the war; as well as for giving effect to the repugnance, shared by both rich and poor, against personal military service abroad. Demosthenes sides with neither, tries to mediate between them, and calls for patriotic sacrifice from both alike. Having before him an active and living enemy, with the liberties of Greece as well as of Athens at stake,—he urges every species of sacrifice at once—personal service, direct-tax payments, abnegation of the festivals. Sometimes the one demand stands most prominent, sometimes the other; but oftenest of all, comes his appeal for personal service. Under such military necessities, in fact the Theôric expenditure became mischievous, not merely because it absorbed the public money, but also because it chained the citizens to their home and disinclined them to active service abroad. The great charm and body of sentiment connected with the festival, essentially connected as it was with presence in Attica, operated as a bane; at an exigency when one-third or one-fourth of the citizens ought to have been doing hard duty as soldiers on the coasts of Macedonia or Thrace, against an enemy who never slept. Unfortunately for the Athenians, they could not be convinced, by all the patriotic eloquence of Demosthenes, that the festivals which fed their piety and brightened their home-existence during peace, were unmaintainable during such a war, and must be renounced for a time, if the liberty and security of Athens were to be preserved. The same want of energy which made them shrink from the hardship of personal service, also rendered them indisposed to so great a sacrifice as that of their festivals; nor indeed would it have availed them to spare all the cost of their festivals, had their remissness as soldiers still continued. Nothing less could have saved them, than simultaneous compliance with all the three requisitions urged by Demosthenes in 350 B. C.; which compliance ultimately came, but came too late, in 339-338 B. C.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
ON THE ORDER OF THE OLYNTHIAC ORATIONS OF DEMOSTHENES.