Financing the Athenian Fleet: Public Taxation and Social Relations

4. Exemption

F O U R Exemption The Athenians viewed the trierarchy as a duty or tax (telos); exemption from it was termed ateleia and the person exempt was ateles. In this chapter , I discuss the various ways in which an individual might try to obtain a respite: regular exemption or the antidosis. These discussions are followed by treatment of a topic that, although not directly related to exemption proper, reveals how a man could avoid personal service as a trierarch: by the hiring out of trierarchies. Regular Exemption Exemption from the choregy, states Athenaion Politeia 56.3, could be claimed on three counts: having previously performed the same liturgy, having just performed any liturgy, or not fulfilling the age criterion, exemplified by the rule (from circa 345)that a choregos for boys' choruses must be over forty years old (cf. Aesch. i.n). In all three cases, exemption was not granted automatically,but only after a petitioner had his grounds tried and approved at a legal hearing (skepsis or diadikasia). The first rule cannot be valid for the trierarchy. If applied at all, it might relate only to the choregy or perhaps to all other liturgies.1 Still it is strange that, while many persons boasted of having discharged liturgies continually, no one claimed to have performed the same liturgy twice. Considerably more is known about the rule that after any liturgy men were entitled to temporary exemption. It was fully acknowledged that liturgists deserved a rest after an often demanding personal involvement and expenditure. With this arrangement the state was also able to promote a practical interest: to maintain the economic ability and enthusiasm of liturgists. The rule was applied to the trierarchy and all other liturgies alike. But while following all other liturgies there was a one-year exemption (Dem. 20.8), after a trierarchy the exemption was for two years. The difference surely testifies to the position of the trierarchy as the most onerous liturgy. Yet definite indications are lacking about when trierarchs attained, and for how long they enjoyed, this special privilege. Thrasyllos Leukonoieus, it is said at Isaeus 7.38, had served as trierarch "not taking two years off but continuously." The statement need not mean that the two years' respite existed at that time (i.e., before Thrasyllos 's death while trierarch in the Sicilian expedition [415-413, (5)]). Nor does the context reveal whether it existed when the speech was delivered (354). Still, this source does not go counter to the supposition that the rule was effective both before 413 and in 354.It is plausible that the period of exemption originally was only one year. If so, extension to two years must have been motivated by an increasing disproportion between the aggregate demands for economic outlay and personal engagement, on the one hand, and the ability or willingness of individuals to meet them in full, on the other. There are good reasons to endorse Rhodes's view ([1982] 3) that the longer exemption with the trierarchy was "a concession made as the burden became too heavy for many men to bear." Provided there is a kernel of truth in the lamentations of an oligarchic pamphleteer to the effect that this burden was indeed felt by some to be particularly heavy around 430 (Ps.-Xen. Ath. Pol. 1.13), the period of the initial years of the Peloponnesian War is a likely candidate for such a concession. Other sources allude to the same rule. In Lysias 19 (of 388 or 387), three years' continuous trierarchic service (possibly in the period 392/1390 /89) is presented as something virtuous (29). Similarly, after having paraded his impressive liturgical record in the period 411/0-404/3, which included seven years' continuous service as trierarch, the speaker of Lysias 21 reminded his listeners that he would not have spent a quarter of the amount he did spend if he had confined his services to what was required by law (1-5). Finally, in Isaeus 5 (of circa 389), Menexenos points out that "our forefathers, who acquired and bequeathed this property, . . . dis86 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 charged tnerarernes without any interval (41); the liturgical record ot this family stretches back to the fifth century (APF 145-49). Certainly, then, the...