Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/373

355 FINANCIAL EMBARRASSMENTS. 35.1 served as horsemen, shared in the general hardship ; being culled on for daily duty in order to restrain at least, since they could not entirely prevent, the excursions of the garrison of Dekeleia. their efficiency was, however, soon impaired by the laming of their horses on the hard and stony soil. 1 Besides the personal efforts of the citizens, such exigencies pressed heavily on the financial resources of the state. Already the immense expense incurred in fitting out the two large arma- ments for Sicily, had exhausted all the accumulations laid by in the treasury during the interval since the Peace of Nikias ; so that the attacks from Dekeleia, not only imposing heavy addi- tional cost, but at the same time cutting up the means of paying, brought the finances of Athens into positive embarrassment. With the view of increasing her revenues, she altered the prin ciple on which her subject-allies had hitherto been assessed: instead of a fixed sum of annual tribute, she now required from them payment of a duty of five per cent, on all imports and exports by sea. 2 How this new principle of assessment worked, we have unfortunately no information. To collect the duty and take precautions against evasion, an Athenian custom-house officer must have been required in each allied city. Yet it is difficult to understand how Athens could have enforced a system at once novel, extensive, vexatious, and more burdensome to the payers, when we come to see how much her hold over those payers, as well as her naval force, became enfeebled, before the close even of the actual year. 3 1 Tkucyd. vii, 27. * Thucyd. vii, 28. 3 Upon this new assessment on the allies, determined by the Athenians, Mr. Mitford remarks as follows : " Thus light, in comparison of what we have laid upon ourselves, was the heaviest tax, as far as we learn from history, at that time known in the world. Yet it caused much discontent among the dependent common- wcalilis ; the arbitrary power by which it was imposed being indeed reason- ably execrated, though the burden itself was comparatively a nothing." This admission is not easily reconciled with the frequent invectives in which Mr. Mitford indulges against the empire of Athens, as practising a system of extortion and oppression ruinous to the subject-allies. I do not know, however, on what authority he affirms that this was (i the heaviest tax then known in the world ; " and that " it caused much discon- tent among the subject commonwealths." The latter assertion