Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/78

 Ixxiv THUCYDIDES years or TrevTer-qp-s from the treasury of Athene Poh!as — the amount borrowed from the other treasuries, though not great, is uncertain — to about 747 talents 4, 1 78 drachmae, in ail 5,477 talents 803 drachmae 2 obols. Interest is charged on the whole of this sum ; calculated, during the last four years, of which alone the accounts are preserved in detail, according to Boeckh, at the 300th part of a drachma for a mina per day, or at li per cent, for the year : a merely nominal rate, especially when we remember that ID or 12 per cent, was considered a low rate of interest (in the third century at least), and that 18 per cent, was an ordinary rate It ma}^ be observed (i) that this inscription affords an important evidence of the existence of a sacred fund which was also public (see infra). (2) If the 3,000 talents repaid to Athene and the 200 to be repaid to the other deities, mentioned in the last inscription (C. I. A. 32), were repaid in the year 418, as supposed by Boeckh, it is probable that they were a repay- ment to the temple treasures of a part of the sums here set down as borrowed. Otherwise there is no indication that the interest was ever paid or the principal returned. (3) The inscription proves that the Athenian war expen- diture was very far from being paid out of the income of the year ; and that the sums borrowed were much larger, probably because there was a larger fund from which to borrow, during the first seven years than during the four subsequent years of the period to which the inscrip- tion refers. The argument of Kirchhoflf supposes that the treasury was exhausted in the year 428. But the inscrip- tion tends to show, though the fragmentary state of part of it makes any inference difficult, that the treasury held out at any rate until the middle of 426. And it should be observed that the 4,729 talents form the expenditure, not i at Dclos at lo per cent. (iri5e[«aT0(s To/fO(s].
 * C. I. A. 283 seems to mention a loan from the treasures of the temple