Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/73

 INSCRTPTIONS Ixix ing to Kirchhoff, Athenischer Staatsschatz, p. 26 ff., show that they were in pecuniary distress. Before they would have submitted to tax themselves they must have ex- hausted their whole treasure. This is the keystone of the argument : ' If there had been anything left they would never have sent out an extraordinary expedition to exact money, or have raised out of their own incomes, for the first time in the war, two hundred talents.' Hence it is inferred that during the first three years of the war the whole of their reserve fund must have been expended. If we add to the. . . . 5,000 talents the annual increment of the sacred treasure, calculated by Kirch- hoff at 200 talents (see however infra, p. Ixxxiv, note '). . 600 „ tribute for three years, at 600 talents a year .... 1,800 „ the whole sum spent in three 3'ears ^s 7,400 „ or annually 2,466! „ Leaving at this point the thread of the argument,to which we will return, we may illustrate the general character of Athenian expenditure by a few easy calculations : — (i) A fleet of 100 vessels, carrying each the ordinary crew of 200 men, or 20,000 in all, could not have been maintained in the early part of the war, when the sailors' wages were high, viz. a drachma a day, at a less cost than 100 talents a month, besides the payments to officers and marines, and the cost of the hull supplied, as well as the pay, by the state. (Thuc, iii. 17, vi. 8. 31. Cp. Thuc. viii. 45, showing that the regular rate of pay after the Sicilian expedition was half this, 3 obols per man.) (2) The heavy-armed soldiers who served in the siege of Potidaea received each man for himself and an atten- dant two drachmae a day (iii. 17). They numbered in the first expedition 3,000 men, in the second 1,600, who re-