dred in the Attic seas, from Euboea to Salamis, a hundred around Peloponnesus, and fifty at Potidea and in other places, we may allow twenty-five for the blockade of Potidæa, which was then the principal foreign expedition. As the historian further remarks', that all the ships' companies were paid at the same rate as the land forces, we may calculate the pay of the seamen at a drachma per diem 2, and the complement of the Athenian ships being generally fifty seamen and a hundred and fifty rowers, conclude that the monthly expense of each trireme was about one talent *. we may The expense, therefore, of the permanent naval force before Potidea was probably Twenty-five triremes, at a talent a month, for twenty-seven months Talents. 675 A few smaller vessels, the expense of which may have been equivalent to that of three triremes 81 736 1 Ibid. 2 Thucydides gives us to understand that the pay of the sailors at Potidea was uncommonly high. In like manner, the Peloponnesian seaman was considered as highly paid when he received a drachma a-day from Tissaphernes in the twentieth year of the war (Thucyd. 8, 29. 45). The usual daily pay of the Athenian seamen was three oboli (Thucyd. 8, 45. Xenophon. Hellen. 1, 5, §7). Those of the celebrated trireme Paralus received four oboli (Harpocrat. in IIapaλoç). But in addition to this was the allowance for corn, which, in the time of Demosthenes, when the medimnus cost five drachmæ (c. Phorm. p. 918, Reiske) was reckoned at ten drachmæ a month, or two oboli for soldier as well as seaman (Demosth. Philip. 1, p. 48, Reiske, c. Polycl. p. 1209. 1214). When the same orator estimates the pay of the sailor at thirty drachmæ a month (de coron. trierarch. p. 1231) we may suppose that he includes the σιτηρέσιον. 3 See Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, xxxviii. p. 559. This was the sum which Lysander endeavoured to prevail upon Cyrus to allow for each of the Lacedæmonian triremes; but Cyrus would only consent to raise the daily pay of each man from the usual sum of three oboli to four (Xenoph. Hellen. 1, 5, § 5. Plutarch. Lysand. 4.); that is to say, the pay in money (ὅσον ἕκαστος ἔλαβεν ἀργύριον), and exclusive of the oirηpέolov. See Demosth. c. Polycl. p. 1209. To this must be added the charge for the ships attached to the corps of Phormio; for it is evident, from the words of Thucydides, that there were ships so employed'. Reckoning their expense in the same proportion to the expense of the corps itself, which that of the permanent naval force bore to that of the three thousand hoplita, we shall have for the cost of the naval department of the corps of Phormio about 90 for the charges of two expeditions against Potidea. The former of these was in the summer preceding the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when the battle of Potidea was fought, when the wall was built across the isthmus, and when three thousand hoplita and seventy ships were employed'. The latter was in the second summer of the war, when Agnon, with four thousand hoplita, lay before Potidæa for forty days, and besieged it with machines. If we allow the same proportion of ships in the latter expedition as in the former (and it was about the average proportion of triremes to soldiers in the floating expeditions of the Athenians), we may suppose Agnon to have been accompanied 2 Thucyd. 1, 61, et seq. 1 Thucyd. 1, 64. 3 Thucyd. 2, 58. No great accuracy can be expected upon this head; the proportion of the naval to the land forces depending in great measure upon the circumstances of each expedition. In that of the Corinthians against the Corcyrai, four years before the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, two thousand hoplita were embarked in seventy-five ships (Thucyd. 1, 29). In the expedition against the coasts of Peloponnesus, commanded by Pericles in the second year of the war, four thousand hoplita were embarked in a hundred ships (Thucyd. 2, 56). In an expedition commanded by Nicias, in the seventh year, two thousand hoplita were embarked in eighty ships (Thucyd. 4, 42). by about ninety ships. It does not seem probable from the narrative of Thucydides that the operations against Potidæa, in the year preceding the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, were much longer or shorter than those under Agnon in the second year of the war. The two hundred and fortyeight talents, therefore, which defrayed them both, may be divided between the two in the proportion of their land forces, or in the ratio of three to four: Giving to the former expedition an expense of Talents. . 106 142. It is observable, that this sum of a hundred and forty-two talents would have been nearly sufficient to defray the expense of the expedition of Agnon, upon the supposition that it consisted of ninety ships and four thousand hoplita, and calculating the cost of the former at a talent per month, and the pay of the latter on shore at a drachma per diem for the expense of ninety ships during forty days, would have been one hundred and twenty talents, and that of four thousand hoplita for the same time, twenty-six talents. According to the preceding calculation, the expenses of the siege of Potidæa, during the seven months previous to the opening of the war, and the speech of Pericles upon the Athenian finances, were composed of, 1. The expense of the expedition previous to the formation of the blockade Talents. 106 186 2. The expense of the corps of Phormio 96+90 or 455 Having deducted this sum from three thousand seven hundred talents, we have two thousand nine hundred and fifty talents for the cost of the buildings of Pericles. It would be desirable to ascertain, if possible, what proportion of this sum was applied to the most admirable of them, the Parthenon; but there are no means of arriving at any accuracy on this point. It is difficult to conceive, however, that less than two-thirds of the whole sum could have sufficed for the Odeium and Propylæa and for the temple of Eleusis, and Erechtheium, as far as the two latter were built when Pericles made his financial statement to the Athenians; one thousand talents, therefore, seem as much as we can allow in round numbers for the Parthenon. The temple of Delphi, which was built of the stone called Tρos, with the exception of the front which was of Parian marble, with sculptured metopes, cost between three and four hundred talents'; but the difference between this sum and one thousand talents is considerably reduced by the diminution, which occurred in the value of silver in the sixty years which elapsed between the building of the Delphic and that of the Athenian temple: the remaining difference is sufficiently accounted for by the superior magnificence of the Parthenon. The exact power of one thousand talents, in commanding labour and skill at the present day, it may not be possible to ascertain, but some approximation may be made to it by adverting, I. to the quantity of silver contained in the talent, and, II. to the price of some of the necessaries of life at Athens in the time of Pericles. 1. The rich mines of Laurium having rendered silver the most important of all the productions of Attica, the Athenians made their coinage an object of especial care; during the four centuries in which the mines were principally worked, it was multiplied to an immense extent; and it obtained a reputation in the commercial world, to which it was well entitled by its purity and the unvarying correctness of its standard. The element was the drachma, but the obolus or sixth part of the drachma also served as unity; and from the bisections, or binal multiples of these two, twelve different denominations of coins were formed, of 1 Herodot. 2, 180. 5, 62. Euripid. Ion 190. which seven were of the drachma and five of the obolus ; the smallest having been the quarter obolus, weighing less than three grains Troy, and the largest the octodrachm, which weighed near 540 grains'. Of these the didrachm and octodrachm are the most rare, and the tetradrachm the most common. The mina contained one hundred drachmæ, and the talent sixty minæ, but these were nominal measures of money. There are three modes of arriving at the correct weight of the drachma: 1. By weighing a great number of Attic drachmæ and tetradrachms, selecting those in the best preservation, and excluding most of the broad tetradrachms, of which the far greater number are subsequent to the age of Alexander; for these tetradrachms, with a very few remarkable exceptions of overweight, are generally light', when compared with the older coinage, partly perhaps in consequence of the greater wear of the larger surface. 2. By weighing the best preserved Macedonian coins, particularly the staters or didrachmæ of Philip and Alexander in gold, the Macedonian standard having been the same as the Athenian. 3. By means of the proportion which the Attic drachma bore to the Roman pound. Mr. Burgon, in whose rich collection are many Philips and Alexanders, of gold and silver, as well as Athenian drachmæ and tetradrachms in the best preservation, has from these, and the weights of similar coins in the Hunter collection and in the British Museum, deduced an average of from 66 to 66 grains Troy to the drachma, without any allowance for wear. But although the wear 1 One or two examples of the Decadrachm are said to have been discovered this would make the number of Athenian silver coins amount to thirteen. In gold there were the stater or didrachma and one or two small weights. 2 It was by admitting a great number of these into his calculation of the average of the drachma, that Mr. Payne Knight deduced its weight to have been sixty-five grains troy. Prolegomena in Homerum, § 56; Boeckh's Economy of Athens, p. 25. 3 Of seven didrachmæ of Philip and Alexander, in my own collection, the lightest is 131 grains, the heaviest 133}. |