Financing the Athenian Fleet: Public Taxation and Social Relations

2. Qualifications by Wealth

T W O Qualifications by Wealth Apart from their relevance in an inquiry into the function of the institution , each of the aspects relating to qualifications for the trierarchy can elucidate some broader issues. The mode of recruitment and the rules about temporary or permanent exemption from the obligation, to mention only some, witness that while it never entirely lost its military character , the trierarchy was primarily viewed and treated as a fiscal entity. Much of what can be established with at least a tolerable degree of certainty about such topics as the wealth entailing liability (its size and nature), the practical means and administrative procedures used for recruiting new members, the conditions under which men, or properly speaking their estates, could leave the trierarchic class, and so forth, enables us to see how a vital object of taxation was subjected to systematic control and how its potential (financial and numerical) was sought to be maintained at a desirable level. Intertwined with these issues is the question of the particularrelationship forged between trierarchs and the state. "The section of citizens who perform liturgies from their properties," wrote Aristotle (Pol. 129^33-34), "we call the rich." The fundamental truth underlying this statement is that the single most powerful criterion qualifying a man for liturgical, and particularly trierarchic, service was his economic position. This being the case, it is not surprising or fortuitous that, when seen against the background of liturgical obligations, the pervasive dichotomy in Athenian society between "rich" (plousioi, eu- poroi) and "poor" (penetes) lends itself readily to a meaningful functional definition.1 The frequency with which a formal and explicit equation is made between the former and the members of the liturgical class, on the one hand, and the repeated stress on the latter's virtual economic inability so as to be distinctly outside that class, on the other hand, is a theme fully explored by Davies (APF xx-xxi; Wealth 9-14) and need not be reviewed here. But while the descriptions "rich" and "poor" often prove valuable for their connotation of opposing economic interests in a political context (e.g., Arist. Pol. I279bi7-i28oa4), they offer no guidance to the amount of wealth constituting the threshold of liturgical liability. Traditionally, the crux of the matter has been to quantify narrowly the liturgical census; this is done by collecting evidence revealing the value of properties that had imposed (or were expected to impose) on their owners the duty to perform liturgies. By way of such quantification, it then becomes possible to locate, on an economic scale, the main segments of Athenian social structure, and in particular the upper class.2 The attempts made so far, however, seem more or less to assume both the existence of means by which the total value of properties could be assessed and the credibility of reports on the size of individual fortunes. Moreover, little weight has been given to a qualitative description of various categories of wealth and forms of ownership with direct bearing on the issue of liability. This is regrettable, for, as I will argue in the sections to follow, estates were not always measurable or thoroughly valued, and so their precise worth often remained unknown; and legally, only "visible" wealth made a man eligible for liturgies. These features, putting severe limits to an effective allocation of liturgical obligations, impelled the state to depend largely on the will of property owners themselves to reveal their wealth and to make that wealth available for fiscal purposes. To counterpoise these shortcomings, furthermore, inheritance of property was made a potent factor. Finally, to ensure the constant presence of a sufficient number of trierarchic properties, the number of which may be responsive to economic fluctuations overall, no permanent official registers of those eligible seem to have been used, nor was there any formal economic limit (however broad or narrow) separating liturgical from nonliturgical properties. It is best to begin with treatment of the final point. Because of the broader issues involved here, I shall consider all liturgies together. Q U A L I F I C A T I O N S F O R T H E T R I E R A R C H Y 44 The Liturgical Census Theory The sources often record individuals whose financial circumstances were either sufficient or insufficient to bear liturgical expenses, but never anything like a clearly defined economic limit. Yet several...