Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/182

 172 FINANCE precipitated the thirty years war of the 5th century B.C., and which produced results as disastrous to the progress of mankind as a war of the same duration twenty centuries later did on the rapidly growing civilization of central Europe. So desperate and so penniless were the military rivals of Athens, overwhelming as their land forces were, that they even thought of appropriating the sacred treasures of Delphi, a proposal, in the 5th century before Christ, which was as shocking as it would have been in the 12th century after Christ to have suggested that the sacred vessels and shrines of the great churches and monasteries should be coined in order to pay the soldiers of the crusade. The finance of antiquity derived a revenue from customs. These customs were, at least in Athens, an ad valorem duty of two per cent, as a war measure. Twelve years before the conclusion of the great thirty years struggle, the Athenians levied a five per cent, ad valorem duty on their subject cities, though this was in substitution for the old contribution on account of the police of the seas. A poll tax was levied on foreign residents, perhaps on slaves; and it appears that, possibly as a measure of police, another poll tax was imposed on the inmates of disreputable houses. The revenue, therefore, of that Greek state whose his tory is best known to us was derived from the rent of pub lic lands, especially the mines, from a composition paid by the allies in lieu of naval service, from very moderate customs duties, and from a few personal taxes. It must not, however, be imagined that the finance of antiquity was successful in the eyes of those who saw how inelastic it was. There is still extant a treatise by a very practical man. Xenophon, in the oldest work on finance, discusses the means by which the Athenian home revenue might be conveniently increased, and, like many other speculative thinkers, suggests projects which would have created far more mischief than they would have remedied. It will be obvious also that by far the most important item in Athenian finance, the contributions from the allies in lieu of personal service, was necessarily precarious, and that when the Athenian empire was finally broken up, the revenue of the state was gone, while the necessity of find ing ways and means for the public defence was as urgent as ever. This brings us to another aspect of Athenian finance, viz., the extraordinary taxes on property which the Government levied, and which the contributors paid apparently with the greatest readiness. These were the Aeiroupyicu, exceptional imposts with a view to defraying certain kinds of public expenditure ; and property taxes assessed on a valuation, and graduated according to the means of the contributor. The principal liturgies, as they are called from the Greek word quoted above (the word is suggestive of the process by which it was finally appropriated in the ecclesiastical vocabulary), were three in number, two religious and one secular. The tendency of a religion, like that of Greece, in which so much nature worship was contained, was to associate many of the acts of life with religious ceremonies, and, as culture progressed, with art. Thus the drama of antiquity arose from the worship of the wine god and the vintage, and the arts of sculpture and painting had originally a similar religious origin. The dramatist who succeeded in securing a representation of his composition had assigned to him a citizen whose wealth was sufficient to defray some of the charges of representation, as the instruction, maintenance, and dresses of the actors. A second and similarly religious service was the public games. Here again a considerable portion of the expenses incurred in the performance were imposed on wealthy persons. The third was the trierarchy, the equipment and command of a ship of war. The state supplied the ship, the trierarch its stores and tackling, and in some cases provisions and pay. In return the trierarch was captain of the ship. This arrangement is closely analogous to that financial arrangement in England by which, after the Revolution, local regiments were raised, clothed, and officered by wealthy men, who had in return the colonelcy of the regiment, and the right of appointing its subordinate officers. The liability to these charges, distributed, as it seems, at the discretion of the Government, was a serious charge on the wealthy. Hence, when the state fell on evil days, and reverses had impoverished the Athenian people, persons were allowed to club together in order to supply these public functions. To abandon them would have been to incur the wrath of the gods, or imperil the safety of the state. The modern critics of Greek sentiment are amazed at the fact that only on the very eve of the great crisis in which the fate of Greece was finally determined, the battle of Chieronea, Athens reluctantly devoted the taxes which had hitherto been employed for ecclesiastical purposes to the pressing necessities of the public defence. The theoric fund was that portion of the revenues of the state which was assigned to those sacred purposes. It was distributed nominally among the spectators as the price of tickets for admission. It actually was paid over to the managers of those public buildings in which the ceremony w-as performed. If the person on whom the duty of supplementing the charges of the state was imposed conceived that he was unfairly selected, or asserted that his means were inade quate for the purpose, he was allowed to name another citizen to whom he could proffer au exchange of property. In this offer the other was bound to acquiesce, unless he con sented to allow himself to be substituted for the individual on whom the duty was originally set. In short, the pos session of property involved serious liabilities in Athens, though it seems that men of substance gloried in the satis faction of these public charges, and completely conformed themselves to public opinion. For it will be found to be a fundamental law in successful finance that those imposts are always found to be most productive which are most in accord with public opinion, and that in the selection of a system of taxation it is not always possible to adopt that which is most expedient or even most just, but that which can be most readily enforced and is most willingly accorded. But the most remarkable illustration of Athenian opinion in matters of finance is the regular property tax. In the costly services which have been sketched above, some compensation was afforded to the contributor by the position he occupied. The choragus was the chief official in rank at those religious ceremonies in which the drama was the highest act of worship ; the chief of the gymnasts exercised authority over his staff of competitors in the public games, and was even empowered to compel parents to allow their children to take part in the contest. The man of substance on whom the state imposed the duty of equipping, manning, and provisioning a hull was captain of the vessel, and though he was liable to a due perform ance of his service, and subject to an audit on the ter mination of his year of office, he exercised full authority during his command, and might be, indeed was, rewarded for exceptional diligence and smartness during the period of his office. The property tax was a contribution which did not make the tax payer conspicuous, and did not confer on him any distinction. The impost dates from the earliest records of the Athenian constitution. It was graduated, being a heavier percentage in the case of the richer citizens than in that of the middle classes. It passed through several notable changes, always, however, in the same direction, the particulars of which are well given in Boeckh s Public