BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Three
is, for not providing a sufficient financial return to the city. In part, this anxiety stemmed
from Athens’ economic reality in the early fourth century. With the loss of empire, she
had lost a tremendous source of revenue in the allied tribute, and she consequently had to
rely heavily on the war-time tax, or eisphora, levied exclusively on her richest citizens.
During and after the Corinthian War in the 390’s and 380’s, the eisphora was levied with
considerably greater frequency than it had been during the Peloponnesian War, and this
increased burden supposedly led many elites to skip out on their duties to the polis. 41
Yet after the Thirty the Athenians were acutely aware, as well, that elites might
make them poorer, just as the Thirty had done. Athenians readily assumed, therefore, that
the wealthy as a whole really did have more money than they claimed. Tax and
liturgical evasion were thought to be rampant at this time, as elites were suspected of
‘hiding’ their wealth, usually by converting it into credit at banks or by refusing to rent
out property which they had not publicly declared. 42 The more elites refused to make
their property ‘visible’—that is, ‘publicly recognized’—the greater the city’s difficulty in
collecting the eisphora and finding trierarchs. As Xenophon attests, such a refusal to
give back to the community, especially in its state of need, was punished as if one had
actively stolen from the public purse (Xen. Oec. 2.6-7).
41 On the eisphora, see generally de Ste. Croix (1953), Ruschenbusch (1978a), Mossé (1979b), Rhodes
(1982), Brun (1983: 3-73). During the Peloponnesian War, the eisphora was levied in 428 (Thuc. 3.19.1)
and perhaps only two more times between 410 and 404 (Lys. 21.3; Diod. 13.47.7, 52.5, 64.4). During the
ten years of the Corinthian War, by contrast, it was levied at least four times, as Brun (1983: 27) notes,
including twice during the period 395-2 (Isoc. 17.41), once in 388 (Xen. Hell. 5.1.5), and once more in
387/6 (cf. Is. 10.20). Burden of the eisphora: Lys. 28.3-4, 29.5, cf. Ar. Ec. 197-8; Christ (2006: 161-2,
165).
42 Given the central financial importance of the liturgical system in the democracy—on which, see Davies
(1971), Lauffer (1974)—the alleged explosion of liturgy evasion was an especially problematic
development. Cohen (1992: 201-7) is foundational for how the rise of banking in the early fourth century
correlated with elites’ purportedly ever greater efforts to avoid liturgical duties. The elites employed
various methods to ‘hide’ their wealth or make it ‘unseen’ (aphanēs): Andreyev (1974: 20), Gabrielsen
(1986: 105), Christ (1990: 158-60), and, for the distinction between ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ wealth,
Gabrielsen (1986).
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