Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/140

 118 HISTORY OF GREECE. latter class there had also been twelve hundred, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. 1 The liturgies, or burdensome and costly offices, were discharged principally by the Three Hundred, but partly also by the Twelve Hundred. It would seem that the former was a body essentially fluctuating, and that after a man had been in it for some time, discharging the burdens belonging to it, the Strategi or Generals suffered him to be mingled with the Twelve Hundred, and promoted one of the latter body to take his place in the Three Hundred. As between man and man, too, the Attic law always admitted the process called Antidosis, or Ex- change of Property. Any citizen who believed himself to have been overcharged with costly liturgies, and that another citizen, as rich or richer than himself, had not borne his fair share, might, if saddled with a new liturgy, require the other to under- take it in his place ; and in case of refusal, might tender to him an exchange of properties, under an engagement that he would undertake the new charge, if the property of the other were made over to him. It is to be observed, that besides the twelve hundred wealthiest citizens who composed the Symmories, there were a more con- siderable number of less wealthy citizens not included in them, ye/ still liable to the property-tax ; persons who possessed property from the minimum of twenty-five mince, up to some maximum that we do not know, at which point the Symmories began, and who corresponded, speaking loosely, to the third class or Zeugitae of the Solonian census. The two Symmories of each tribe (comprising its one hundred and twenty richest members) superintended the property-register of each tribe, and collected the contributions due from its less wealthy registered members. Oc- casionally, when the state required immediate payment, the thirty richest men in each tribe (making up altogether the three hundred) advanced the whole sum of tax chargeable upon the tribe, having their legal remedy of enforcement against the other members for the recovery of the sum chargeable upon each. The richest citizens were thus both armed with rights and charged with duties, 1 Respecting the Symmories, compare Boeckh, Staats-haushaltung dcr Athener, iv, 9, 10 ; Schomanr, Antiq. Jur. Publ. Grascor. s. 78; ParreidU Oj Symmoriis, p. 18 seq.