Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/49

 INSCRIPTIONS xlv peace of Nicias. The increase in the tribute would also account for the abundance of money which Athens is recorded by Thuc3^dides to have possessed immediately before the Syracusan expedition. And, although the authority of the Orators is in general not great, it may be argued that Andocides was contemporary with the change, and that there is no reason for questioning his testimony to a fact which must have been notorious at the time. (But are we certain that the oration De Pace is genuine ?) Many writers have spoken of this question as hitherto doubtful, but now finally determined by the evidence of the monuments. In the note on v. i8, in the first edition of this work, it was assumed, on their authority, that the rafts upov furnished a convincing proof of a great increase of the tribute in the year to which it relates ; an independent examination of the rafts and a comparison of the quota lists show that the additional evidence has been greatly overstated, and that the fact still remains, as far as the testimony of inscriptions goes, unproven. The reader may be once more reminded, (i) that the rafts (jiopov is an estimate of the whole tribute to be received in the single year f ff ; and that it contains in anything like a complete form only the vT^o-twriKos </)o/3os, or tribute of the Islands : it also gives us the tribute of eight Carian, one Ionian, and as many as nineteen Thracian cities ; and one short fragment of uncertain value, supplemented by another short fragment, -relating to the Hellespontian tribute ; (2) that the quota lists (though with several lacunae) extend over more than thirty years. Five small fragments (C. I. A. i. 251, 262, 263; C. I. A. Suppl. iii. 272, d./.) are assigned to the same date as the rafts (})6pov, or to a date somewhat later, on the ground of the extensive variations which they present when compared with the earlier quota lists. A few other fragments are extant of later date, but they throw no light on the present question. (One of these, 258, is supposed to belong to the