The political system of Athens experienced a rebalancing in the period between 404 and 307, which cannot be adequately captured with the keywords “decline” or “crisis”. The comprehensive analysis of Athens' public finances opens up a new approach to this hinge period between classical and Hellenism and explains the evident change in the political order through the gradual and consensual transformation of the broad-based deliberative democracy into one led from above, but through the attribution of competencies and moral-political trust Consent democracy carried into the ruling elite. Thus an adaptable mechanism had been created, as it was then to prevail in many places in Hellenism and which was constitutive for it.
Author(s): Dorothea Rohde
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan-J.B. Metzler
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 352
City: Berlin
Preface
Contents
1: Introduction
1.1 Public Finance: Ancient and Modern Concepts
1.2 Max Weber’s Honoratioren and Athenian Democracy: Analytical Framework and Approach
1.3 The Source Corpus: Documentation, Literary Reflection, and Material Evidence
1.4 Research Context: Public Finance and the Genesis of Honoratiorenschaft
2: Realized Choices: Public Finances as a Reflection of Athenian Self-Understanding
2.1 The Polis as a Community of Equal Citizens
2.1.1 A Right Is Only Worth as Much as It Can Be Exercised: The misthophoria
2.1.2 The System Is Self-Financing: Fines, Confiscations, Court Fees
2.1.3 Exploiting the “Natural” Resources: Revenues from Trade, Mining, and Metics
2.2 The Polis as a Community of Fate
2.2.1 Disability Pensions, Orphans’ Pensions, theorika: Support for the Needy
2.2.2 A Culture of Dependency: Securing the Grain Supplies
2.3 The Polis as a Cult Community
2.3.1 Not Only a Matter of Faith: The Religous Expenditures
2.3.2 Between demosion and hieron: Revenues from Sacred Property
2.4 The Polis as a Military Community
2.4.1 The Army: Citizen Hoplites, Mercenaries, and a Not-So-Elite Cavalry
2.4.2 Athens’ Pride and Joy: The Fleet
2.4.3 Tapping Foreign Sources: War Is Expensive, Yet Also Profitable
2.4.4 Diplomatic Expenditure
2.5 Results
3: The Counterexample: Sparta
3.1 The Thucydidean Legacy: The Source Situation
3.2 The Complexity of the Revenue and Expenditure Structure
3.3 The All-Dominant Discourse: The Ideology of Equality
3.4 The Invisible Actors: The Role of the Perioeci
3.5 Results
4: The Connection Between Economic and Social Elite
4.1 “My Money for Your Entertainment”: eisphora and leiturgia
4.1.1 From an Extraordinary War Tax of All to a Regular Annual Tax of the Few: The eisphora
4.1.2 The Dependence of the Civic Community on the Liturgists
4.2 The Formation of an Economically and Socially Defined Class
4.2.1 The Civil Strife in Rhodes 391
4.2.2 The Formation of a Liturgical Stratum
4.3 Reciprocity of the leiturgia and eisphora Systems
4.3.1 Liturgies as a Civic Duty
4.3.2 Prestige and the Gratitude of the Polis
4.3.3 Liturgies as Agonal Prosocial Behavior and as an Indicator of Leadership Qualities
4.4 Results
5: The Connection Between Socio-Economic and Political Elite
5.1 Demosthenes’ Second Speech to the Assembly or: How Does an Ambitious Rhetor Distinguish Himself?
5.2 Turning Much into More by Turning Many into Few: The Commissioner of the Theoric Fund
5.3 A Changed Understanding of Offices: The Liturgization of Offices
5.4 A Democracy on an Unprecedented Scale: The Monumentalization of Public Buildings
5.5 The “Glue of Democracy”: The Discussion About the theorika
5.6 Results
6: Conclusion: The Formation of a Competence Elite as an Athenian Variety of Weber’s Honoratioren
Bibliography
