Investing in Democracy:

The Practice and Politics of Jury Pay in Classical Athens

By Robert Sing, B.A. (Hons.)

This thesis is presented for the degree of Master of Arts of The University of Western Australia

School of Humanities, Classics and Ancient History

2010

i

Abstract

From the mid-fifth century the Athenian democracy paid every citizen who volunteered as a juror for

each day of service. This system of civic pay had the effect of reducing the loss in earnings ordinary

citizens incurred by participating in government. Since the popular courts were a powerful institution

of the democracy, civic pay strengthened the power of the demos and helped ensure that Athens

remained a democracy, of the direct Athenian kind, in fact and not just in name. Compared with other

disbursements made by the Athenian state, comparatively little is known about jury pay and the aim of

this study is to provide an over-due reassessment of this important political and financial phenomenon.

There is no clear-cut evidence for when jury pay began, but the introduction is conventionally dated to

shortly after the Ephialtic reforms of 462/1. This date is not, however, problem free, and the possibility

of a later dating and a connection with the citizenship law of Perikles (451/0) should be acknowledged.

The implications of juror remuneration extend beyond adjusting the makeup of juries. The provision of

public money was an investment in popular sovereignty and, at a time when the courts were being

incorporated into the administration of the Athenian empire, an investment in the empire itself. The

radicality of the dikastikon resides in the way it not only transcended but also synthesised traditional,

private benefaction with the distributions of surplus revenue the state had long made to its citizens as

shareholders in the polis. Analysis of the likely purchasing power of jury pay during the Peloponnesian

War suggests it provided most citizens with only partial compensation for lost earnings. That ordinary

Athenians appear to dominate juries nevertheless, is an additional reason not to dismiss outright as

comic distortion the Aristophanic characterisation of jurors as lower-class elderly men. The members

of this group, after all, were less likely to lose regular incomes by serving. The comedies of

Aristophanes, especially Knights and Wasps, focus intensely on the roll of jury pay in Athenian

politics. Once a distinction is made between the poet’s criticism of the abuse of jury pay and jury pay

itself, it appears that Aristophanes does not transgress the convention of not directly criticising the

institutions of the democracy. His criticisms of Kleon, who increased the rate of jury pay in 425/4, are

indeed scathing, but Aristophanes never questions the legitimacy of pay for jury service. The plays

serve to suggest that there was ample room for criticism within the public discourse on pay. The period

of Ionian War, particularly the temporary abolition of jury pay under the oligarchies of 411/10 and

404/3, nevertheless illustrates the tenacious commitment of the demos to jury pay and helps to explain

Aristophanes self-restraint. The most striking feature of jury pay in the fourth century is its failure to

keep pace with assembly pay and general wage inflation. When viewed in relation to the complex

procedures introduced in the fourth century to render the courts resistant to bribery, and the greater

allocation of responsibility to the courts, it is argued that a decision was made to maintain the

dikastikon at a fixed rate in light of its vulnerability, and that of the courts, to political manipulation in

the late fifth century.

ii

iii

Acknowledgements

I am fortunate to have had in Dr. Lara O’Sullivan a supervisor of tremendous dedication and

knowledge who has contributed so much to the pleasure of research. Her unending encouragement will

always be greatly appreciated. Dr. Neil O’Sullivan also cast his discerning eye over the final

manuscript and made several helpful suggestions. Any errors that remain are of course my own. What

direct use I have been able to make of German scholarship is due to the generosity of Mrs. Gabby

Meiner in providing me with excellent translations. This thesis is dedicated to my parents.

iv

Contents

Abstract i

Acknowledgements iii

Note on the Text and Abbreviations vi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Periclean Athens

The Growth of Athenian Power and the Ephialtic Reforms 7

The ‘Rivalry Tradition’ 11

The Early and Late Datings 17

Accounting for Jury Pay: Participation 21

Accounting for Jury Pay: Benefaction 27

Conclusion 31

Chapter 2: Imperial Athens at War (431-15)

Measuring the Cost and Effect of Jury Pay in the

Fifth Century 33

The Increase of 425/4 42

The Politics of Pay and Aristophanes 45

Conclusion 65

Chapter 3: Revolution and Opposition (415-403)

Sicily and the Desire for Pay 67

The First Abolition (411/10) 70

The Restoration and Second Abolition (410/09-404/3) 76

Anti-Democratic Thought and Jury Pay 82

Conclusions 89

v

Chapter 4: The Fourth Century (403-323)

The Restoration of Democracy 91

The Stability of Jury Pay and the

Composition of Juries 92

Jury Pay and the Democracy 98

Conclusion 100

Conclusions 101

Appendices

A. Cimon’s Ostracism 103

B. The Cost of Jury Pay 105

C. How much could 3 obols buy? 109

D. Payments for the Diobelia (410/09, 407/6-406/5) 111

E. The Ekklesiastikon 113

F. The Date of the Theorikon 121

G. Jury Pay after 322/1 123

Bibliography 125

vi

Note on Text and Abbreviations

For consistency and comprehension, Latinised spellings of Greek names and places have been

preferred except when transliterating individual words or phrases i.e. ‘dikastikon’. The original Greek

is provided where the original wording is of special interest. Translations of the Aristotelian Athenian

Constitution are from the Penguin edition by P. J. Rhodes. All other translations are taken from the

Loeb editions. Athenian monetary denominations, with abbreviations, are as follows: 6 obols (ob) = 1

drachma (dr), 6000 drachma = 1 talent. The abbreviations of ancient authors and works are those of the

Oxford Classical Dictionary (rev. 3rd

edition, 2003) and the following are used for modern

publications:

AC L’Antiquité Classique

AJA American Journal of Archaeology

AJAH American Journal of Ancient History

AJPh American Journal of Philology

AncSoc Ancient Society

APF J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300 B.C. (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1971)

Ath.Pol. Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution

ATL Benjamin Dean Meritt, H. T. Wade-Gery, and Malcolm Francis

McGregor (eds.), The Athenian Tribute Lists iii (Princeton:

American School at Athens, 1950)

C&M Classica et Mediaevalia

CA Classical Antiquity

CJ Classical Journal

ClAnt Classical Antiquity

vii

CPh Classical Philology

CQ Classical Quarterly

CR Classical Review

CW Classical World

Fornara Charles Fornara, Archaic times to the end of the Peloponnesian

War (2nd edn., Cambridge: CUP, 1983)

G&R Greece & Rome

GHI P. J. Rhodes and Robin Osborne (eds.), Greek Historical

Inscriptions 404-323 BC (Oxford: OUP, 2003)

GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies

HCT A. W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, K. J. Dover, A Historical

Commentary on Thucydides, i-v (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945-

81)

Hignett, AC C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1952)

Hornblower, CT Simon Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, i-iii (Oxford:

Clarendon Press and OUP, 1991-2008)

HSPh Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

Jacoby, FGrH Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, i-iii

(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1923-1954)

JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies

KA R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, i-viii (Berlin:

Walter de Gruyter, 1983-2001)

L.S. Immanuel Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, i: Lexia Segueriana (Berlin:

G. C. Nauck, 1814)

viii

LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly

Loomis, WWCI William T. Loomis, Wages, Welfare Costs and Inflation in

Classical Athens (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998)

LSJ H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (9th edn.,

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

Meiggs, AE Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1975)

ML Russell Meiggs and D. M. Lewis (eds.), A Selection of Greek

Historical Inscriptions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)

RE Paulys Realencyclopadie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft

RhM Rheinisches Museum

Rhodes, CAAP P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia

(Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1981)

TAPhA Transactions of the American Philological Association

YClS Yale Classical Studies

ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

http://catalogue.library.uwa.edu.au/search~S1?/X(pauly's)&searchscope=1&SORT=D/X(pauly's)&searchscope=1&SORT=D&SUBKEY=(pauly's)/1%2C3%2C3%2CB/frameset&FF=X(pauly's)&searchscope=1&SORT=D&1%2C1%2C

1

Introduction

The Athenian experiment in popular government was breathtaking in scale. The great civic

performances that showcased the power of the citizenry, the demos,1 are familiar enough: the

presentation of tribute at the Dionysia, the mass juries which were as emblematic of the city as

Athena’s owl (Ar. Nub.197-200, Av.40, 108; Lucian, Ikaromenippos 16), and the assembly meetings

where issues of state were decided by citizens raising their hands and voices. By the middle of the fifth

century, a no less profound demonstration of the power of the demos took place upon the close of

business in the courts. In the fading light, every citizen who had volunteered his time that day to help

conduct the business of the polis came forward to collect his pay.

The monetary payment made to citizens who served in the popular jury courts (dikasteria) was one

of a number of regular payments made by the state known generally as misthos or trophe.2 The

dikastikon is distinct from the stipends paid to officials, such as members of the Council of Five

Hundred (boule), in that it was provided to otherwise private citizens who volunteered on a daily basis

as jurors (dikasts) and who were not subject to the official scrutiny (euthyna) or term limits that were

imposed on magistrates. The dikastikon shares these characteristics with the ekklesiastikon, the wage

paid during the fourth century to every citizen who attended the assembly (ekklesia), the chief decision

making body of the democracy. Both jury pay and assembly pay represent a distinct class of payments

and will collectively be referred to as ‘civic pay’. The ekklesiastikon was established some 50 years

after the dikastikon, around the start of the fourth century, and while less evidence is available for

assembly pay, relative to jury pay it has received fuller study. Discussion of jury pay will inevitably

touch on assembly pay, but detailed discussion of the ekklesiastikon is provided in appendix E.

Spanning the mid-fifth to late fourth centuries, jury pay affords the opportunity to study the

development of the classical democracy through one of its most important, and idiosyncratic, features.

Athens was the first, and for most of its history, the only Greek city-state that rejected the more

usual practice of penalising citizens for non-participation (cf. Pl. Leg.764a; Arist. Pols.1294a38-40;

Ath.Pol.4.3), and instead chose to remunerate those prepared to devote some of their time to civic

service.3 It is no accident that jury pay was instituted at a time when Athens had grown to be

prodigiously wealthy thanks to its imperial revenues. What made Athens unusual, even more than its

wealth, was the constitution that had taken shape at the same time as the city’s rise to power and was

therefore inexorably bound up with it. Jury pay was, moreover, regarded as the most avowedly

democratic of all Athens’ institutions. Aristotle includes it among the typical features of democratic

states, together with the use of the lot to select office-holders, a ban on the reiteration of office, and the

1 That is, all Athenian citizens as opposed to the alternative use of demos to mean the non-elite

majority. 2 Or simply as lemata (distributions). For the sometimes opaque distinctions between misthos, trophe,

and sitos (rations), see Gabrielsen (1981) 67-81, 151-5 who notes that misthos and trophe can be used

synonymously but also specifically – misthos can denote a monetary payment, trophe/sitos payments in

kind, and trophe/sitos a component of gross pay (misthos); Loomis, WWCI 32-6 esp. n. 9 while

affirming that misthos can equal trophe, points out that misthos never equals sitos. This explains why

jury pay and assembly pay are never described as sitos despite the relatively small value of the

payments involved. The money was always in excess of what an individual adult required to buy food

for a day (see appendix C). Kallet (2001) 295-308 notes, like Gabrielsen, that trophe can refer to a

smaller amount than misthos. 3 See de Ste Croix (1975).

2

virtual absence of property qualifications for officials (Pols.1317b16-38). However, in setting forth his

taxonomy of democracy, with the history of the fifth and most of the fourth century before him,

Aristotle selects civic pay as fundamental for the most extreme form of democracy of which Athens

was the most obvious example in Greece:

and a fourth kind of democracy is the one that has been the last in point of time to come into

existence in the states. Because the states have become much greater than the original ones and

possess large supplies of revenue, while all the citizens have a share in the government because of

the superiority of the multitude, all actually take part in it and exercise their citizenship because

even the aporoi4 are enabled to be at leisure by receiving pay…owing to this the multitude of the

aporoi becomes sovereign over the government, instead of the laws. (Pols.1293a1-11, cf. 1299b38-

1300a4, 1317b31-4)

The importance of jury pay has not escaped modernity.5 The significance of jury pay, and of civic pay

in general, lay in its effect on political participation. By providing some compensation for loss of

earnings, those with little wealth and education would incur less economic loss if they chose to join

richer citizens and exercise their democratic rights as part of the sovereign demos. This was of

particular significance for the courts, in which mass juries of citizens over 30 years old (Ath.Pol.63.3)

presided over private and public suits, including those arising form the scrutinies of magistrates, and

chose between the punishments suggested by the defendant and prosecutor when the law did not

prescribe a penalty. The presiding magistrate was powerless to give direction and the jurors decided all

questions of fact and law for themselves, without being bound by precedent. No appeal was possible

against the decision of a jury court. Pay made it easier for numerically superior non-elites to exert a

decisive influence over this powerful judicial system and establish it as the most powerful institution of

the democracy after the assembly. Aristotle noted how the courts, in conjunction with pay, had indeed

been fundamental to the rise of popular power in Athens:

For as the law-court grew strong, men courted favour with the people as with a tyrant, and so

brought the constitution to the present democracy; and Ephialtes and Pericles docked the power of

the Council of the Areopagus, while Pericles instituted payment for serving in the law-courts, and

in this manner finally the successive leaders of the people led them on by growing stages to the

present democracy. (Pols.1274a1-20)

The author of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution summed up the reality: ‘when the people are

masters of the vote they are masters of the state’ (Ath.Pol.9.1). The dikastikon thus helped to ensure that

demokratia was not an empty slogan but a robust reality.6

Much research has been devoted to related areas of Athenian finance and politics, including the

evolution of the theoric fund set up to subsidise theatre-goers, pay for office holders, and the tribute

4 aporos and penes are usually translated to mean ‘a poor man’, but a more accurate translation would

be ‘one who must work for a living’, or in other words an ordinary Athenian, see p. 24. 5 Walker (1953a) 101: ‘possibly the most far-reaching of all the reforms of this period’; Finley (1973b)

19: ‘a lynch pin of the system’; Fornara (1991) 67: a ‘truly epochal’ development. 6 cf. Aristotle’s definition of democracy as the rule of the poor, not the majority (Pols.1279b17-

1280a4).

3

lists of the Athenian empire, but in the absence of an epigraphic legacy, the dikastikon has received

little attention in its own right.7 The discussion of civic pay in the most frequently cited modern work,

James Buchanan’s Theorika (1962), is not only dated but devotes a mere 7 pages to the dikastikon. The

late 1980s and early 1990s saw a resurgence in interest in civic pay, assisted by Hansen’s investigations

into the meetings of the courts and assembly, and by Rhodes’ commentary on Pseudo-Aristotle’s

Athenian Constitution (1981). Sinclair’s Democracy and Participation in Athens (1988) discusses jury

pay in the wider context of participation in the democracy, and in the same year Markle made the first

attempt to quantify the purchasing power of jury pay. Todd (1990) reassessed the evidence of oratory

for the social composition of fourth century juries. In the intervening years, a number of important

studies have appeared that promise to further advance our understanding of jury pay. Sitta von Reden’s

Exchange in Ancient Greece (1995) considers the role of cultural and political practices in organising

exchange. The catalogue of wages compiled by William T. Loomis in Wages, Welfare Costs and

Inflation in Classical Athens (1998) allows for a better understanding of the economics of civic pay by

helping to fix its place on the contemporary wage scale.8 Lisa Kallet has developed understandings of

the linkages between money and political power in imperial Athens, and her article ‘Money Talks’ in

Ritual, Finance, Politics (1994) demonstrates the possibilities of this line of research for jury pay.

Aristophanic scholarship, particularly the detailed articles of David Rosenbloom, continues to shed new

light on the relationship between comedy and contemporary politics, but the old disagreement persists

as to whether Aristophanes is as hostile to civic pay as he is to the demagogic politicians who

manipulate it. The work of Rosenbloom, as well as that of Ober (1989, 1998), show that despite the

longevity and stability of its democracy, Athens was not devoid of tension and dispute on the nature of

the democracy. By enabling more ordinary Athenians to share in government and by transforming a

formally altruistic civic service into paid employment, jury pay proved to be a lightning rod for many

political debates. The dikastikon is still conspicuous for being mentioned and, usually, briefly discussed

in nearly all studies of Athenian politics while still lacking an in-depth study of its own. Todd saw the

need over a decade ago: ‘a full treatment of jury-pay would need to cover a large number of aspects: the

rate of pay; the age of the jurors; their occupation; the extent to which work done by slaves or women

created additional leisure for the would-be juror; the distance which the potential juror had to travel; the

status of jurors; and the ideology of jury service’.9 It is beyond the limits of the present study to offer a

definitive treatment of these and other questions, but understanding may yet be advanced by satisfying

the present need for a continuous history of jury pay in the classical era.

The imbalance in this study in favour of the fifth century is a reflection of the unevenness of the

evidence. The prosaic questions of chronology, cost, and efficacy for the dikastikon will be approached

afresh and serve as the foundation for two ongoing questions: what role did this fiscal-political

phenomenon play in the functioning of Athenian democracy by affecting its socio-economic basis, and

second, what competing discourses on jury pay existed as part of Athenian political culture?

This study is fortunate in dealing with the comparatively well-attested, and hence well-trodden,

area of fifth and fourth century Athenian politics. A phenomenon such as jury pay, not unexpectedly,

has failed to make an impression of its own upon the archaeological record. The methodological

considerations will therefore be those of interpreting the available written evidence. Whether in

7 Ostwald (1986) 183.

8 cf. Osborne (2000).

9 Todd (1990) 167, cf. Gauthier (1993) 232.

4

recognition of its importance, contentiousness, or out of curiosity, civic pay is touched on in many

works of ancient literature. Among the wide range of relevant texts, a handful require individual

attention in view of the quality and quantity of their material. Thucydides is, as always, the

indispensable source for the rise of the Athenian empire and the history of the Peloponnesian War. He

never mentions the dikastikon, but in the sense that all Athenian political and financial information in

this period – of which he provides a great deal – is pertinent to the dikastikon, he is the most generous

of sources. Care must be taken, however, to recognise the selectiveness and partiality that can lurk

behind his façade of detached omniscience. Of the eleven extant comedies of Aristophanes, 3 in

particular – Knights (staged 424), Wasps (422), and Assemblywomen (393-1) – engage at length with

civic pay as a political issue and are unrivalled as sources for the attitudes of mainstream audiences

towards pay and its role in contemporary politics. To those who are compelled to analyse these plays as

historical sources, the comic genre lays down the challenge of deciding to what degree reality is being

distorted and whether or not a given distortion is intended to raise inconsequential laughter or to pass

serious comment. Beginning in the late fifth century, there survives a large corpus of forensic and

deliberative oratory. Like comedy, these speeches were written to prevail in competitive performances

between speakers in the assembly or courtroom, and so will inevitably refer to events of recent history

not included by historians. They might also suggest something of the attitudes and backgrounds of the

jurors to whom many were delivered. The concomitant danger of the competitive imperative is that,

like comedy, it gives the courtroom speaker cause to distort reality. Other texts illustrate the pitfalls of

dealing with later, derivative sources. The Athenian Constitution, containing an invaluable history of

the democracy and an analysis of its structure and procedures during the 330s, was probably written by

a student of Aristotle (both author and work will be referred to throughout as ‘Ath.Pol.’) who has

unfortunately deprived the researcher of the full benefit of what was a large body of material by

misunderstanding, clipping, and rearranging it.10

The resulting necessity of trying to identify his sources

is made more difficult by the entirely normal absence of source citations. The inaccuracies in Plutarch’s

Lives are of a different origin. While Plutarch is quite prepared to suggest the breadth of his research

with citations, and though he preserves precious information from lost contemporary texts or other later

authorities, his biographies utilise historical material in the service of moral instruction with little

regard for chronology (cf. Plut. Alex.1.1). Time and time again, material is interpreted in light of

Plutarch’s own, Roman world. 11

Other significant sources of information include the Constitution of

the Athenians by Pseudo-Xenophon (‘The Old Oligarch’), which explains how the Athenians manage

their misguided constitution so well, Xenophon’s Hellenica (covering events down to 362), and the

later history of Diodorus (down to 302). For the years 411-386, via Ephorus, Diodorus preserves the

fragmentary work of the seemingly well-informed Oxyrhynchus historian.12

Athens provides the

dramatic backdrop and intellectual environment for Plato’s treatises and for Aristotle’s Politics (esp.

Book 6, 1316b30 f.), the latter owing much to contemporary Athens in its discussions of democracy,13

and other fragmentary historians like Theopompus and Philochorus.14

Epigraphic evidence for Athenian

10

See the introduction of Rhodes, CAAP 1-63, 56 for the date of Ath.Pol. 11

See HCT.i 54-84 for Plutarch’s evidence in the fifth century Lives. 12

Bruce (1967) 4. 13

On the general reliability of the Politics as a source for Athenian democracy, see Raaflaub (1996)

140-2. 14

For the fragments of Theopompus relating to fifth century Athens, see Connor (1968); Harding

(2007) provides a translation and commentary.

5

finances, in particular the tribute lists and accounts of loans made to the state by the Treasurers of

Athena for 410/9 and 407/6, provide quantitative data with which to compare literary sources and set

spending on jury pay in its proper financial context – particularly in the years of greatest financial stress

after 415.15

The soundness of any reconstruction or interpretation will depend on the judicious

integration of all the primary evidence and scholarship.

Chapter 1 will consider the development of jury pay in Athens with reference to the growth of

Athenian naval power. The introduction of the dikastikon is typically dated to the start of the period

allowed by the principle source tradition (c462/1-451/0), though the end of the period merits

consideration. The tradition itself highlights the wider implications of jury pay for mid-fifth century

politics and the future role of wealth in democratic politics. Chapter 2 begins by considering the cost

and practical impact of jury pay on participation in the fifth century. The nature of jury service made it

more attractive to certain groups of Athenians and lends credence to the impression of literary sources

that fifth century juries were not broad cross-sections of the citizenry. That it was Cleon who moved the

only pay rise jurors ever received, and that he did so after his victory at Pylos, are sure signs of personal

aggrandisement at work, but a consideration of the broader political and economic reasons rule out a

purely personal motivation. Aristophanic comedy has Cleon subsequently politicise pay to keep the

demos subservient and loyal in a time of war, and it is partly to determine the truth behind this claim

that the rest of the chapter will consist of a comprehensive analysis of the role of jury pay in the plays.

Of primary importance is whether Aristophanes’ attacks against the contemporary role of jury pay in

Athenian politics constitute an infringement of the conventional prohibition against attacking

democratic institutions, and what the implications of this problem are for popular attitudes towards the

dikastikon. Chapter 3 will trace the history of pay in the tumultuous years 415-403. Despite intense

financial pressure, the likelihood that the democracy never existed independently of the dikastikon

throughout this period, and that jury pay retained its distinctive character separate from the diobelia, is

taken as evidence of jury pay’s ideological and economic importance. The ideological background to

the attacks on jury pay will be explored by analysing the evidence for anti-democratic thought on civic

pay. Political and economic explanations will be considered in Chapter 4 for the conspicuous difference

between the rising rate of assembly pay in the fourth century and the static rate of pay for jurors. What

was the impact of this phenomenon on the composition of juries, and is it at all significant for our

understanding of the fourth century democracy that dikasts, unlike ekklesiasts, never received a pay

rise?

The provision of pay to a citizen who had given the polis a day’s service was one of countless

transactions that might occur every day in Athens, but it was also a transaction of uncommon

significance. Civic pay was a site not just of monetary exchange, but of political and cultural

negotiation. As such, the system of civic pay is an illustration of the larger reality that the economy of

classical Athens was ‘embedded’ in social and political structures to a greater extent than our own.16

If

a clearer picture can be achieved of the way Athenians acted and meditated on the idea that democracy

was important enough to receive substantial and ongoing public investment, it follows that our

understanding of the relationships involved in the transactions of jury pay – those between rich and

15

For a concordance of inscriptions (IG i2, ii

3, ML, ATL, Fornara) see Samons (2000) 343-5.

16 Finley's (1973a) is the classic treatment of Athens as an ‘embedded’ economy (the so-called

‘primitivist’ model). For brief overviews of the market vs. embedded paradigms, see von Reden (1995)

1-9; Loomis, WWCI 251-4.

6

poor, democrats and anti-democrats, money and power, and that between the demos and its leaders –

may also be improved.

7

Chapter 1. Periclean Athens

The Growth of Athenian Power and the Ephialtic Reforms

The interdependent surge in the wealth and naval power of Athens in the first half of the fifth century

established the two necessary preconditions for civic pay: surplus revenues and the political impetus for

democratic reform. While many of the key features of the classical democracy were in place by the start

of the fifth century, Athens was initially like other early classical poleis in having little capital

remaining after meeting its regular expenses and having its politics dominated by aristocratic elites.1

Soldiers were expected to provide their own weapons and source their own rations,2 and the state only

paid citizens for temporary work.3 The far-sighted construction of a fleet with which Athens won at

Salamis in 480/79 marked the beginning of a new era in the city‟s political and economic history. To

safeguard against future Persian aggression Athens invested in naval power, and the vast expense of

sustained naval campaigning consequently meant that a plentiful supply of money would be the future

guarantor of Athenian independence and democracy (cf. Ar. Ach.162-3; Hdt.7.144.1; Plut. Them.4.4).4

At the head of the Delian League formed against Persia in 478/7, Athens realised the long-term

financial strength it sought as a result of access to the financial contributions of its allies (Hdt.9.106.2-3;

Thuc.1.96.2 cf. 3.10.3; Diod.11.47.1), the burgeoning commerce of a peaceful Aegean, and increased

exploitation of the Laurium silver mines. As the monetary economy grew, so too did the importance of

coinage to the point that it became a fixture of daily life (cf. Ar. Ach.34-6). It is not otiose to point out

that Athens required a secure supply of silver to produce civic pay and pay itself would have been of

limited value if Athenians were not already accustomed to using coinage on a regular basis.

The suppression of armed revolts by Athens and the extension of Athenian administrative

interference transformed the Delian League into an Athenian empire by the 440s (cf. Thuc.1.98-117). It

is evidence of the substantial revenue from non-tributary sources that despite having the largest

population and fleet of any League member, and the right to appoint the Hellenotamiai in charge of

League funds,5 Athens does not seem to have made significant withdrawals from the common treasury

on Delos prior to the treasury‟s transfer to Athens c.454/3.6 The collective contributions to the Delian

treasury amounted to 350-400 talents a year.7 It is probably Athens‟ unwillingness to become militarily

dependent on the prompt payment of these contributions (phoros), which explains how the League‟s

1 Andreades (1933) 161-2. For the treasuries prior to 431, see Samons (2000) 28-83.

2 Disabled veterans were however, given a dole by the state (Plut. Sol.31.3-4). Aristotle (Pols.1268a10-

12) says that Athens was following accepted practice by also supporting its war orphans, although it is

unlikely the state would have taken on this additional burden as early as Solon (cf. schol.

Aeschin.1.103; Diog. Laert.1.55) – though on this point Stroud (1971) 288 is not as sceptical. 3 The use of slave labour by the state for maintenance and administration would also have reduced the

need for pay. Some early payments are, however, recorded: under Solon citizens were paid 5 dr for

bringing in a wolf, 2 dr for a cub (Plut. Sol.23.3). The closest the archaic state got to encouraging

political involvement was Solon‟s laws making non-involvement in stasis a crime (Ath.Pol.8.5; Plut.

Sol.20.1), and allowing one citizen to seek redress in the courts on behalf of another (Ath.Pol.9.1; Plut.

Sol.18.5). 4 See Kallet-Marx (1994) 243-6.

5 Meiggs, AE 44-5.

6 Rhodes (1992a) 38.

7 Meiggs, AE 253. It is a well-known problem that the initial assessment of 460 talents (Thuc.1.96) is

higher than what was later collected from a great number of tribute payers, see ATL.iii 235-43; HCT.i

273-80; Meiggs, AE 50-67; Hornblower, CT.i 145-6; Kallet-Marx (1993) 49-53.

8

dedicated war chest had accumulated thousands of talents by mid-century.8 Such a stockpile would

have been impossible to amass if the treasury were the primary war chest of Athens: the cost of

Athenian campaigning in the 470s and 460s far outstripped the 1400 talents spent on the Samian War

alone (440-39).9 The sheer number of surviving coin dies from the 460s confirms the picture of an

Athens awash with cash.10

New long-term expenditures like the dikastikon, which would have appeared

excessive before the League‟s inception, though not necessarily financially impossible, could now seem

more feasible.

The economic relationship between citizens and state had already begun to change prior to the

dikastikon as Athenians found it necessary to spend unprecedented public resources on pay. In the case

of the civilian population, the state became an important generator of employment thanks to large

construction projects and the manufacture of matériel (cf. Ar. Pax 1210-64). By the time of the

Peloponnesian War (cf. [Xen.] Ath.pol.1.13; Ath.Pol.27.2) Athens had begun paying its hoplites and

sailors for the purchase of rations.11

The evidence offers no clear indication of how long before the war

military pay was introduced. Ulpian (hyp. to Dem.13.11) states that military pay was the first form of

state pay and that Pericles was responsible for it (cf. Plut. Per.11.4, 12.5).12

Set against this are

indications in Plutarch (Cim.9.4, 11.2) that pay for Athenian sailors pre-dates the political prominence

of Pericles. Philocleon in Wasps (1188-89) might be referring to military pay when he recalls how he

was paid for taking part in a state delegation to Paros in his younger days, which at the time of

production in 422 would be in the 460s or 450s.13

The need to attract citizen volunteers14

would have

been greatest before hostilities with Persia wound down after 450 and some kind of pay for servicemen

(probably Athenian) is found stipulated in a decree passed for Miletus in 450/49 (IG i2 22=IG i

3

8 It is difficult to decide just how much the Delian treasury contained at the time of the transfer and by

what process the Acropolis came to hold 6000 talents in 431 (Thuc.2.13.3). Strasbourg Papyrus Graeca

84 (Anonymous Argentinensis), a commentary on Dem.22, has been reconstructed to show that 5000

talents (7-8) was removed to the Acropolis prior to the construction of the Parthenon (see Meiggs, AE

515-8; Fornara 94a-c). 8000 talents are stated to have been in the Delian treasury when it was

transferred (Isoc.8.126; Diod.12.38.2). There is agreement that at one point 10,000 talents were on the

Acropolis (Thuc.2.13.3; Dem.3.24; Isoc.8.69, 15.234), which Diodorus confuses with the total contents

of the Delian treasury (12.40.1-2; 12.54.3, 13.21.3). To complicate matters further there is the first

Decree of Callias (IG i2 91.3-4=IG i

3 52a.3-4=ML 58a=Fornara 119a). For attempts to establish the

precise relationship between these figures, see ATL.iii, 118-32, 281, 327-8, 338; Gomme, HCT.ii 31-2;

Kallet-Marx (1993) 101-3; Samons (2000) 92 f.; Blamire (2001) 99-105. 9 IG I i

3 363 (ML 55=Fornara 113), see Fornara and Lewis (1979) 9-12.

10 Starr (1970) 40-2. The spoils Athens gained from the victory against Persia at the Eurymedon in the

first half of the 460s were especially rich (Diod.11.62.1, 12.40.2). The exceptional issue of silver

decadrachms has been associated with the battle, see Starr (1970) 38-42; Fischer-Bossert (2008) 18-32. 11

See below, pp.34-5 on the rate of pay. There is a tradition that the Areopagus paid the Athenians 8 dr

each to fight at Salamis in 480/79 and that as a result it was credited with saving Athens from the

Persians (Ath.Pol.23.1; Plut. Them.10.4, cf. Isoc.7.50-2; Arist. Pols.1304a20-22). The story is probably

an anachronistic attempt to credit Salamis to the Areopagus rather than Themistocles. At any rate, all

sources agree that it was an extraordinary, once-off measure. See Wallace (1989) 77-8; McInerney

(1994). 12

Plutarch (Per.11.4) claims Pericles organised 60 triremes to provide citizens with nautical skills and

pay for 8 months of the year. Such expeditions may have occurred, but the cost of pay alone would

have been 480 talents at the rate of 1 dr per man p.d.. The emendation of S. K. Eddy, GRBS 9 (1968)

141-56 of the 60 ships to 16 is not helpful. 13

MacDowell (1971) 285 thinks the reference is to military pay, as does the schol. on Wasps 1189d.

The alternative is that Philocleon was paid as an ambassador, favoured by Loomis, WWCI 17-8, 207.

See also Pritchett (1971) 18-19. 14

Though slaves and metics were also used as rowers, the Athenian fleet was overwhelmingly manned

by citizens prior to the Peloponnesian War, see Raaflaub (1998) 64 n. 18, on their voluntary status in

particular see Jordan (1975) 101-3; Rosivach (1985) 53-4.

9

21.13=ATL.ii 29-35=Fornara 92).15

It is very likely that pay for sailors if not hoplites began as early as

the 460s and therefore pre-dated the dikastikon. The dikastikon would have been hard to justify if the

state were not already paying citizens something in return for risking their lives in war. This overall

expansion of the population on the state‟s payrolls would, in conceptual terms, have helped normalise

the large-scale provision of regular pay as a function of the state. It seems likely that military pay did

precede jury pay, and so established the additional precedent for jury pay that services traditionally

deemed to be the duty of a citizen could entail remuneration.16

It was through military service that those Athenians who would benefit most from civic pay were

acquiring a new significance in their polis. The campaigns conducted against Persia and rebellious

allies in the decades after 480/79 were predominately naval in character, and thus relied more on the

efforts of the largest and poorest group of citizens in the Solonic census, the thetes, who made up most

of the crews (Plut. Sol.18.1-2).17

In all Greek poleis, political power was traditionally the prerogative of

wealthy citizens or at least citizens who owned land. Service in the navy mandated neither wealth nor

even citizen status. The replacement of the hoplite by the thes rower as the backbone of Athenian

military power, compounded by the concentration of thetes in Athens, had long-lasting political

consequences for the balance of power not just in the Aegean but in Athens itself. It is a literary

commonplace that the naval mob (nautikos ochlos) became emboldened through campaigning and, by

agitating for a greater share in power back home, brought forth the „radical‟ democracy.18

It is unwise

to treat the thetes as a totally passive force,19

but it is also more likely that the initiative for democratic

reforms came from democratically-minded elites rather than the thetes themselves. While there was no

ground-swell of democratic sentiment that precipitated a „revolution‟ in 462/1, the greater social

prestige and self-confidence won by thousands of ordinary Athenians from serving and sacrificing in

the fleet as citizen equals created a vital additional impetus for change without which civic pay would

never have eventuated.20

462/1 saw an all-important overhaul of the Athenian justice system. The reforms attributed to

Ephialtes extended popular control to all areas of government by depriving the last major institutional

expression of unaccountable elite power, the Areopagus, of the powers it had used to exercise a

„guardianship‟ over the state.21

Chief among these were probably the judicial powers (kriseis) over the

15

Meiggs, AE 213-4, 222; Loomis, WWCI 37. 16

Jones (1952) 26 n. 3; Strauss (1996) 313-26; cf. Pritchett (1971) 12-3. 17

These distinctions were originally assessed in terms of the quantity of wet and dry produce

(Ath.Pol.7.4), but by the Peloponnesian War were probably being determined in terms of capital. On the

census classes, see Rhodes, CAAP 145-6. 18

Isoc.8.64, 74-5, 95, 126; Pl. Leg.707a-d; Ath.Pol.27.1, Arist. Pols.1274a12-5, 1304a22-5, 1321a14-5.

Pols.1327b4-15 suggests that radical democracy can be avoided if non-citizens only are used as rowers,

cf. Plut. Them.4.3, 19.4, Arist.22.1. 19

Ober (1998) 76-7. 20

On the transformation of Athens after the Persian Wars, see Raaflaub (1998) 44-62 together with

Ober‟s response and Raaflaub‟s rebuttal, and Strauss (1996) 313-25. Raaflaub (1996) notes that the

recognition of thetic military service probably contributed to 462/1 and suggests (155-9) that the

inferior social and economic status thetes occupied in relation to hoplites created a latent anxiety among

the former that their political participation was conditional on continued military success, cf. Hanson

(1996) 299-307. 21

The key sources are Ath.Pol.25-26.1; Arist. Pol.1274a8-12; Diod.11.77.6; Plut. Cim.15.1-2, Per.9.3-

4. The reforms would have fundamentally been driven by a twin desire to strengthen popular control at

a time when „democracy‟ as a recognisable term first appears (cf. Aesch. Supp.604, 699), though see

Fornara (1991) 48-56, and to separate the operation of the law from personal authority. The acquittal of

Cimon and his pro-Sparta policy (see Ostwald (1986) 28-83, 179-80), the behaviour of individual

10

incoming (dokimasiai) and outgoing (euthynai) scrutinies of public officials.22

It seems moreover, that

all cases involving the death penalty or fines in excess of 500 dr were heard by juries after 462/1. It is

impossible to quantify just how much additional legal business the demos eventually had to deal with as

a result, but its workload would have been greater than what the assembly had dealt with in its only

previous judicial capacity as Athens‟ final court of appeal (the heliaia, Ath.Pol.9.1; Plut. Sol.18). It is

possible that the reforms were, in part, a response to the increasing frequency with which magistrates

and the Areopagus had already been referring cases to the demos for trial. The structural response to the

reforms was the creation of the jury courts.23

These workhorses of the classical judicial system came to

handle not just all public suits but the vast majority of private suits outside of the Areopagus‟ narrowed

jurisdiction over murder and certain religious offences. Juries were open to all citizens over 30,

including thetes, and could be conceived as embodying the judicial power of the demos

(Ath.Pol.63.3).24

The absence of a property qualification meant that these popular courts were the

means by which the adjudication and enforcement of laws, like their creation, were made the

responsibility of all Athenians. With time, the jury courts came to be seen as the vanguards of the

democracy for, as noted earlier, „when the people are the masters of the vote, they are masters of the

state‟ (Ath.Pol.9.1; cf. Arist. Pols.1274a3-5). By 462/1 the requisite conditions for civic pay had been

established; Athens now found itself the wealthiest polis in Greece with a newly democratised justice

system. The eventual introduction of the dikastikon, was however, as much a product of these factors as

contemporary personality and politics.

Areopagites and (possibly) the over-bearing use of extra-legal powers, would each have provided

further political ammunition. For the role of the Areopagus and the reforms, see Hignett, AC 193-213;

Forrest (1966) 209-20; Rhodes, CAAP 309-22, (1992b) 72-80; Wallace (1989) 77-93; Rihill (1995). 22

Ath.Pol.27.1 states that just prior to the reforms of 462/1 Pericles prosecuted Cimon at the latter‟s

euthyna. The terminology of Plutarch, if accurate, suggests the demos had a role in euthynai trials prior

to Ephialtes; he refers to Cimon defending himself before „jurors‟ (δηθαζηαί)(Cim.14.4) and to Pericles being one of the committee of prosecution „appointed by the people‟ (ὑπὸ ηνῦ δήκνπ

πξνβεβιεκέλνο)(Per. 10.5). Sealey (1964) 18-20 suggests a separate eisangelia trial (for crimes against the state) brought by enemies after Cimon passed his euthyna, but Ostwald (1986) 41-2, 63-6 suggests

that when capital charges arose from euthynai in the Areopagus, the matter was referred to the heliaia

for final judgment. This would explain the success of Ephialtes in prosecuting Areopagites. For

eisangeliai trials already being conducted by the demos prior to 462/1, see Hansen (1975) 15-20;

Ostwald (1986) 28-40, contra Wallace (1989) 74-6. 23

On the view of Hansen (1978) that the jury courts date long before 462/1 and go back, in fact, to

Solon who constituted them out of a heliaia which was an assembly of jurors entirely separate to the

assembly, see Ostwald (1986) 10 n. 29. 24

The forms of address used of jurors can reflect this fiction: ηὸ ὑκέηεξνλ πιῆζνο, ηὸ ὑκέηεξνλ θνηλόλ (cf. Pl. Ap.31c6; Lys.12.42.87) or simply ὦ ἄλδξεο Ἀζελαῖνη. The term heliaia ceased to be used after

462/1 when „heliast‟ became interchangeable with „dikast‟ as a term for a jurors in the dikasteria

(Dem.24.148-51) even though the assembly could still sit in a judicial capacity after 462/1, see Brock

(1988) 137-8. An ongoing controversy is whether the dikasteria were distinct from the demos (Hansen),

or were seen as equivalent to the demos itself according to the orthodox view, cf. Sinclair (1988) 70-1.

It is obvious that because jurors had to be over 30, juries were not exactly equivalent to the demos in

composition. For a review of this debate, see Blanshard (2004) who shows that there is a „structured

ambiguity‟ where a jury could be depicted both as separate from and equivalent to the demos,

sometimes in the same text, depending on the motivation at hand. This context-based variation is

comparable with the ambiguous position of jurors as quasi-officials (see below, p.75 n. 33).

11

The „Rivalry Tradition‟

The Athenian Constitution (24.1-3) preserves a tradition claiming that Aristides, not Pericles, conceived

the idea of civic pay.25

It claims that at some point soon after the inaugural assessment and collection of

tribute from the allies (478/7), Aristides proposed that Athenian citizens should be paid for a variety of

civic and military services and that the necessary funds should be sourced from the tribute of the allies:

…Now that the city was confident and a large amount of money had been collected, Aristides

advised the Athenians to assert their leadership, and to leave the fields and live in the city: there

would be maintenance for all, some on campaign, some on guard duty, others attending to public

affairs; and by living in this way they would secure their leadership. The Athenians were

persuaded. They took control of the empire, and became more domineering in their treatment of the

allies…In accordance with Aristides‟ proposal they provided ample maintenance for the common

people, so that more than twenty thousand men were supported from the tribute, the taxes and the

allies (Ath.Pol.24.1-3)

Ath.Pol. concludes that „this is how maintenance for the people came into being‟ (25.1), but the chapter

states that the Athenians followed Aristides‟ advice without explicitly saying when they decided to do

so. That time did pass between the proposal and its implementation is suggested by the intervening

description of the Athenians first asserting their authority over the League. If the proposal is then

tentatively dated prior to Athens‟ first overt act of imperialism with the suppression of Naxos in the

460s (Thuc.1.98.4), by which time Aristides was probably dead,26

many of its details do not appear to

be authentic to the first decade or so after 480/79. The payment of Athenian civilians out of tribute was

contrary to the terms of the League that Athens was not yet in the habit of ignoring. Aristides was not

adverse to political expediency, but his advocacy of blatant exploitation is surprising when his initial

assessment of the allied contributions was praised for its fairness.27

The possibility cannot be excluded

that the idea of state pay may have emerged in the 460s and that Aristides implemented a less grandiose

pay scheme – perhaps that for servicemen – but there is no other evidence that pay for civic service

existed as early as the lifetime of Aristides.28

The earliest hard evidence for state pay is for members of

the Athena Promachus board (IG i3 435.81-2, SEG x 243) beginning in the late 460s or early 450s.

29 All

sources agree, even Ath.Pol (24.3), that jury pay was instituted after the death of Aristides by Pericles.30

The passage appears to project back the notion, current in the second half of the fifth century, that

Athenians had the right to dispose of the wealth of their subject allies as they saw fit.31

The Aristidean

tradition for the origin of pay should then be dismissed as a garbled mistake or a later invention

25

For references to the dikastikon see Loomis, WWCI 9-10, 12-3, 15-8, 26. 26

Nepos Arist.3.3 puts the death of Aristides four years after the expulsion of Themistocles i.e. no later

than 464. 27

Ath.Pol.23.5; Plut. Arist.24; Diod.11.47.2 cf. Thuc.5.18.5. 28

Buchanan (1962) 11 n. 2, should be as suspicious of anachronism in Ath.Pol.24.1-3 as he is towards

the claim that Aristides moved a decree opening citizenship to all (Plut. Arist.22.1). 29

See Loomis, WWCI 10, 97-8. 30

Pl. Grg.515e; Arist. Pols.1274a1-20; Ath.Pol. 27.3-4; Plut. Per. 9, Cim.10.1-8; Ulpian on Dem.13.11. 31

See commentary of Rhodes, CAAP 296-309 at 301-2 for the passage as an anachronistic compendium

of material. The ultimate source for the list may go back to the 440s, cf. [Xen.] Ath.pol.3.4; Ar.

Vesp.707-11.

12

designed to associate the system of pay with a figure chiefly remembered for his uprightness and

conservatism.32

The other source for the origin of dikastikon is a tradition preserved by both Ath.Pol. and Plutarch.

Both versions claim that jury pay came about from a political contest between Pericles and Cimon for

popularity, and for this reason it will be referred to here as the „rivalry tradition‟:

Moreover, Pericles was the first man to provide payment for jury service, as a political measure to

counter the generosity of Cimon. Cimon was as rich as a tyrant: he performed the public liturgies

lavishly; and he maintained many of his fellow-demesmen, for any man of Laciadae who wished

could go to him each day and obtain his basic needs, and all his land was unfenced, so that anyone

who wished could enjoy the fruit. Pericles‟ property was insufficient for this kind of service. He

was therefore advised by Damonides of Oe (who seems to have been the originator of most of

Pericles‟ measures, and for that reason was subsequently ostracised) that since he was less well

supplied with private property he should give the people their own property; and so he devised

payment for the jurors. (Ath.Pol. 27.3-4)

In the beginning, as has been said, pitted as he was against the reputation of Cimon, he tried to

ingratiate himself with the people. And since he was the inferior in wealth and property, by means

of which Cimon would win over the poor – furnishing a dinner every day to any Athenian who

wanted it, bestowing raiment on the elderly men, and removing the fences from his estates that

whosoever wished might pluck the fruit – Pericles, outdone in popular arts of this sort, had

recourse to the distribution of the people‟s own wealth. This was on the advice of Damonides, son

of the deme Oe, as Aristotle has stated. And soon, what with festival-grants and jurors‟ wages and

other fees and largesses, he bribed the multitude wholesale, and used them in opposition to the

council of the Areopagus.

(Plut. Per.9.2-3)33

In the Cimon (10.1-3) Plutarch offers another, more colourful, description of Cimon as a Wenceslas-

like figure who shares his wealth not just with his fellow demesmen but all Athenians:

And since he was already wealthy, Cimon lavished the revenues from his campaign, which he was

thought to have won with honour from the enemy, to his still greater honour, on his fellow-citizens.

He took away the fences from his fields, so that strangers and the needy citizens might have it in

their power to take fearlessly of the fruits of the land; and every day he gave a dinner at his house –

simple, it is true, but sufficient for many, to which any poor man who wished came in, and so

received a maintenance which cost him no effort and left him free to devote himself solely to

public affairs. But Aristotle says that it was not all Athenians, but only for his own demesmen, the

Laciadae, that he provided a free dinner. He was constantly attended by young comrades in fine

attire, each one of whom, whenever an elderly citizen in needy array came up, was ready to

exchange raiment with him. The practice made a deep impression. These same followers also

32

On the posthumous reputation of Aristides, see below p. 16 n. 55. 33

For Plutarch‟s sources and methodology in the Pericles see Podlecki (1987) 5-25; Stadter (1989)

xxxviii-liii, lviii-lxxxv.

13

carried with them a generous sum of money, and going up to poor men of finer quality in the

market-place, they would quietly thrust small change into their hands.

The two references Plutarch makes to Ath.Pol. (Per.9.3, Cim.10.2) confirm Plutarch knew of the

version in Ath.Pol. and in essence his version of events is the same, but it also clear from the Cimon that

Plutarch had at hand another source that gave a fuller and grander account of Cimon‟s munificence.

Based on their close parallels, it is generally agreed that this source was Aristotle‟s near-contemporary,

Theopompus,34

though it is unclear if Theopompus‟ text also went on to supply a version of the rivalry

tradition that has not survived in the fragments.35

The attribution of jury pay to a political feud is one-dimensional but is not, for this reason,

implausible. Cimon and Pericles diverged over relations with Sparta, Pericles was one of 10 prosecutors

at Cimon‟s euthyna trial in 463,36

and the two men stood on opposite sides of the divide over the

reforms of 462/1. Cimon‟s generosity was proverbial and it is first referred to not long after his death by

Cratinus (KA1=Plut. Cim.10.4). Pericles need not, however, have been quite so inferior to Cimon in

„wealth and property‟ as the rivalry tradition suggests. Pericles was also of liturgical standing and

Cimon‟s financial advantage may simply have come down to income from war spoils (Plut. Per.9.4,

Cim.10.1, 13.6-8) and his willingness to spend more (cf. Plut. Per.15.5-16.3-5; Isoc.8.126).37

Moreover, from the point of view of a popular democratic politician like Pericles, jury was an

inspired political manoeuvre. It probably mattered little that Pericles had not offered a personal

benefaction and so was not paying jurors out of his own pocket. Not only did this pseudo-benefaction

cost Pericles nothing, but no rival would be able to devise a measure of similar impact or one that

would continue to generate good will year after year. It would, moreover, be difficult to conceive of any

other politician introducing so unorthodox a measure as the dikastikon.38

In the dikastikon, Pericles

permanently altered the very operation of the democracy in a way that was personally beneficial to him,

34

This conclusion is based on two fragments of Theopompus from a digression on fifth century politics,

On the Demagogues in Book 10 of his Philippika (FGrH 115 F89, cf. Nepos. Cim.4.1-4; FGrH 115

F88), for which see Connor (1968) 30-7. 35

Wade-Gery (1938) 133-4 believes he did. He suggests, based on the order of Plutarch‟s narrative, that

fragment 88 of Theopompus (FGrH 115) (Cimon‟s recall from ostracism), actually came after fragment

89 (Cimon‟s generosity, see previous note) in the original text. Furthermore, he argues the two

fragments were connected by a (now lost) discussion of the dikastikon and the Ephialtic reforms. This

reconstruction is quite plausible, contra Podes (1994) 103-5. If Theopompus did supply his own version

of the rivalry tradition, it is sufficient to say that he differed from Ath.Pol in giving the story a more

precise chronological setting (i.e. c.462/1). The one hint that Theopompus might have actually

contradicted Aristotle on the details of the rivalry tradition itself is Plutarch‟s citation of Ath.Pol for the

detail that „Damonides‟ invented pay as if to correct the naming of „Damon‟ by Theopompus. On

Damon, see p. 17 n. 57. But Connor (1968) 153 n. 37 points out that Plutarch could also have inserted

this as an addition to Theopompus‟ account. Connor also shows, 108-10, that any hypothetical

similarity between the Aristotelian and Theopompan rivalry traditions need not be because Aristotle

drew on Theopompus (whose digression probably appeared before Ath.Pol.); Aristotle differs from

Theopompus F89 in restricting Cimon‟s largesse to his deme. Both writers could have used a common

source for the rivalry tradition. 36

Though for whatever reason, Pericles does not seem to have been especially aggressive (Plut.

Cim.14.7, Per.10.5). 37

See Davies, APF 459 (Pericles) and 311-2 (Cimon). There are some indications of Pericles‟ own

largesse (IG i3 49=Fornara 117; schol. Ar. Ach.548).

38 There is a resemblance, albeit passing, between his use of pay to best Cimon and the appeal of his

great-uncle Cleisthenes to the demos to overcome Isagoras in 510/09 (Hdt.5.66; Ath.Pol.20.1). The

Alcmaeonidae had been willing to pursue power by breaking with fellow aristocrats and championing

democratic change. It was this legacy that Pericles inherited (cf. Thuc. 1.126-7) and which must have

had some bearing on his political thinking.

14

and in a system where the power of a politician depended on his ability to command the confidence of

the demos (cf. Thuc.2.65.8-10), jury pay was a monument to his democratic credentials. Alarm over

popular measures like the dikastikon, and not just the Acropolis building programme, motivated the

attempt of Thucydides son of Melesias to organise conservative elites against Pericles (Plut. Per.12,

14). The gratitude (charis) Pericles won with these same measures partly explains Thucydides‟

ostracism in 444/3. To be sure, the charis of the demos was not unconditional. By the late 430s,

Pericles‟ political opponents seem to have been challenging him using the paid jury system itself,

though unlike his associate Phidias, Pericles was acquitted by a jury of 1500 (Plut. Per.32.2, cf. Diod.

12.39.1-2).39

Similarly, Pericles recovered from a popular backlash at the start of the war to be re-

elected general and have the fine imposed on him cancelled (Plut. Per.35.4-5). Pericles was probably

not immune to the juries he was responsible for paying, but it is not going too far to imagine that the

dikastikon assisted him in his rivalries with Cimon and Thucydides and thus to suggest that it

contributed to the unrivalled influence Pericles enjoyed until his death.

The connection of the dikastikon with a period of intense competition between two famous figures

is a promising basis for a dating of jury pay, since it allows the politics of this milestone to be explored

more fully. After providing his more detailed version of the rivalry tradition, Plutarch advances a

precise date for the dikastikon. He explains that as a result of the dikastikon and other new payments he

masterminded, Pericles was able to bribe the demos into supporting his attack on the Areopagus (9.2).

Wade-Gery argued that Plutarch‟s dating of the dikastikon to shortly before the reforms of 462/1 should

be trusted because it derives from Theopompus.40

Moreover, the prosecution of Cimon by Pericles in

462/1, as part of the former‟s euthyna, seems to provide a plausible context for the rivalry tradition

(Ath.Pol.27.1). There are nevertheless problems with dating pay to the late 460s. At this time it was also

not Pericles but Ephialtes who was the chief opponent of Cimon (cf. Ath.Pol.28.2; Plut. Cim.10.5) and

the belief that Pericles was behind and not just a supporter of the anti-Areopagite reforms seems to

bring forward Pericles‟ later political dominance at the expense, though not to the total displacement, of

their real but more obscure author.41

Plutarch accepts this inverted power arrangement in the Pericles,

though not in the Cimon (15.2), because it suits his purposes; an éminence grise Pericles allows him to

highlight the part played by his subject and explain how Pericles was able to be both popular and aloof

(9.1) by claiming that he left day-to-day politics to surrogates like Ephialtes (cf. Plut.

Prae.ger.reip.812c-d).42

Furthermore, if Plutarch did not just take the rivalry tradition from

Theopompus but also adopted his dating for the dikastikon to before 462/1,43

Wade-Gery‟s claim that

Theopompus painted Pericles as a „villain‟ must cast doubt on the accuracy of Theopompus‟

chronology. The way Plutarch also attributes the fourth century theorikon44

and unspecified „other fees

and largesses‟ (ἄιιαηο κηζζνθνξαῖο θαὶ ρνξεγίαηο) to Pericles alone is a questionable claim and should

39

For Phidias, see Philoch. FGrH 328 F121; Diod.12.39; Plut. Per.31. Frost (1964) closely associates

the two trials. On the Periclean trials in general, particularly the vexed issues of dating, see Ostwald

(1986) 191-8; Podlecki (1987) 105-8; Stadter (1989) 284-325. 40

Wade-Gery (1938) 32-4; Badian (1987) 8-9 also date pay just before the reforms as a means to help

Ephialtes secure the preliminary convictions of Areopagites (Ath.Pol.25.1-3; Plut. Per.10.7). 41

Fornara (1991) 24-8. 42

Podlecki (1987) 22, 37-8. In a similar fashion, Plutarch tries to reconcile competing views of Pericles

by establishing an artificial division between Pericles the demagogue and Pericles the statesman marked

by the ostracism of Thucydides son of Meleias (Per.15.2). 43

See previous page, n. 35. 44

See appendix F for the date of the theorikon.

15

give the reader pause. Suspicions are firmly aroused with the next claim that Pericles opposed the

Areopagus partly out of resentment at not being a member (9.3-4). The attribution of such a base

motivation is characteristic of Theopompus.45

It is best to reject a chronology, whether it comes from

Plutarch or Theopompus, which defies historical probability and allows the dikastikon to be maligned

as a bribe which vanquished both Cimon and the Areopagus.

In Ath.Pol. the rivalry tradition is not integrated into the narrative but is instead attached, like an

explanatory note, to a brief description of wartime Athens in which it is noted how the citizens were

sustained and politically emboldened by the receipt of pay (27.3). Despite the eccentric handling of

chronology in the post-Persian War chapters (23-8),46

it is still surprising that Aristotle does not give an

archon date for the dikastikon when he does for the reforms of Ephialtes (462/1), the institution of deme

justices (453/2) and the citizenship law of Pericles (451/0) (Ath.Pol.26.2-4). Written evidence for the

dikastikon must have existed at one time; Pericles did not unilaterally authorise pay for jurors but

proposed a new expenditure that the assembly then approved (cf. Plut. Per.14.1-2).47

The probability is

not that the author of the Athenian Constitution, who shows little evidence of independent research,48

was unable to find evidence for the date of the dikastikon but that the date was absent from the source

he used. The likeliest source is the year-by-year account of an Atthis.49

If the Atthidographer in question

was Androtion, we might allege a special bias against the dikastikon which caused it to be glossed over.

It would appear that subsequent writers had no idea, beyond the general time indicated by the

rivalry tradition, of when jurors were first paid in Athens. The historical setting described in the

tradition may yet be defined more precisely. The close connection of the jury courts with the Ephialtic

reforms in 462/1 establishes that year as an approximate terminus post quem for the dikastikon.

Notwithstanding the involvement of an otherwise unknown Archestratus in the Ephialtic reforms

(Ath.Pol.35.2), the way in which the dikastikon is exclusively attributed to Pericles and the reforms of

462/1 to others allows the inference that the dikastikon was introduced at another time. Depictions of

Pericles as the „partner‟ (Plut. Per.10.7) or even superior (Ath.Pol.27.1; Plut. Per.9.3-4) of Ephialtes

owe to Pericles‟ later greatness. Pericles was no more than 35 in 462/1. Ephialtes‟ earlier prosecution of

the Areopagites (Ath.Pol.25.1-3; Plut. Per.10.7), his vocal opposition to Cimon over the issue of

sending military assistance to Sparta (Plut. Cim.16.8), and principal authorship of the changes of 462/1

and subsequent assassination,50

all strongly indicate that at the time of the reforms it was Ephialtes, and

not Pericles, who led the more strident democrats in opposition to the conservative supporters of Cimon

(Ath.Pol.25.1).51

45

On the reliability of Theopompus see Connor (1968) 13-5, 121-4; Flower (1994) 169-83, 184-213. 46

Rhodes, CAAP 283-6. 47

The introduction is referred to in non-technical language; Pericles „gave‟ ἔδωθε (Ulpian on Dem.13.11), „prepared, furnished‟ θαηεζθεύαζε (Ath.Pol.27.3-4), or „set down, established‟ θαηέζηεζε

jury pay (Pl. Grg.515e; Arist. Pols.1274a10; Aristid. Or.3.98). 48

Rhodes, CAAP 27-8. In his disinclination for archival research the author of Ath.Pol. was not alone,

see Thomas (1989) 89-91. On the Atthidographers, see Jacoby (1949) 204 f. 49

Hignett, AC 342; Rhodes, CAAP 20-1, 29, 15-30 on Ath.Pol‟s sources in general. 50

Philoch. FGrH 328 F64; Ath.Pol.25.1-2; Diod.11.77.6; Plut. Cim.15.2, Per.9.4. 51

Athens lacked the distinct, ideologically motivated and highly disciplined parties of modern politics.

When considering political behaviour in the assembly, courts, or boule, it is better to speak of

followings or tendencies held together by a complex combination of friendship, interest, ideas, and the

personalities of individual elite leaders. Since all politicians in the public arena were „democrats‟ in the

sense of publicly supporting the existing system, on constitutional questions it is better to distinguish

between those who favoured the continued expansion of popular power, like Pericles, and conservatives

who did not, like Cimon. On political groups in Athens, see Strauss (1986) 15-31.

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16

The impression given by the rivalry tradition, that Pericles and Cimon are competing as equals for

political ascendancy, would suggest a period after Ephialtes when Pericles had become the most

important democratic leader. In the absence of the rivalry tradition the latest date for jury pay is the

death of Pericles in 429. With the rivalry tradition, this date can be brought down to c.451/0, the likely

year of Cimon‟s death in Cyprus.52

If the tradition is pressed even further to require a time when both

Cimon and Pericles were in Athens, the chronology becomes more complicated (and more tendentious)

due to Cimon‟s ostracism. Cimon was ostracised in 462/1 or the following year and was therefore

absent from Athens for a portion of the 450s. This would provide two possible datings for the

dikastikon: an early dating between the Ephialtic reforms and Cimon‟s ostracism, and a later dating

between Cimon‟s return to Athens and his departure for Cyprus.

The impossibility of knowing with any confidence when Cimon was in Athens makes him a very

unstable peg for any dating of the dikastikon. 53

Closer inspection of the tradition suggests that it would

in fact be unwise to rely on him. Its author is surely right to present Pericles as benefiting politically

from the dikastikon but the idea that self-interest was Pericles‟ only concern cannot be excused as the

analysis of an unsophisticated historian. The account portrays Pericles as an ambitious politician so

hungry for dominance that he literally „bribed the multitude‟ (ζπλδεθάζαο ηὸ πιῆζνο). The tradition

avoids conceding that Cimon‟s own benefactions could easily be labeled as bribery, especially since

bribery properly refers to corruption using private wealth. It is clear from Plutarch (Cim.10.7) that some

writers did in fact claim that Cimon engaged in „flattery of the rabble‟ (θνιαθεία ὄρινπ) with his gifts,54

and Plutarch does connect Cimon‟s popularity with his benefactions by saying he „out-demagogued‟

Pericles (Per.9.2). Nevertheless, the rivalry tradition seems to have built on the tradition found in earlier

writers from whom Plutarch excerpts, like Cratinus (Plut. Cim.10.4, 1) and Gorgias (DK

82b20=Cim.10.5), that celebrated Cimon‟s famous largesse as pure public-spirited philanthropy: „he

restored to human experience the fabled conditions of the age of Cronos‟ (Cim.10.6-7, cf. Arist.

Eth.Nic.1122b19-23a33). Plutarch himself is another defender of Cimon‟s virtue and espouses the

notion that Cimon sought only generalised reciprocity. Plutarch‟s additional comment that a citizen

lucky enough to experience Cimon‟s charity first hand was „free to devote all his attention to public

affairs‟ (Cim.10.2), overlooks the reality that anyone who experienced Cimon‟s generosity first hand

was hardly likely to hold it against him when spending some of that newly found free time in the

assembly. The basic plot of the rivalry tradition is also worryingly familiar. It was a topos of fourth

century literature to compose lists of leaders and assign years of hegemony to each. The list in Ath.Pol

(28.2-3) even pairs off democratic and conservative leaders against each other so that pair succeeds pair

in smooth succession (cf. Isoc.15.230-6; Pl. Grg.503c1-3, 515c4-d1). The pitting of a populist against a

sincere patriot is one illustration of the way Pericles and Cimon are type-cast as the heirs to an earlier,

and artificial, rivalry between Themistocles the cunning democrat and the patrician, upstanding

Aristides.55

The parallel with the Themistocles-Aristides dichotomy extends to the way the final part of

52

Meiggs, AE 124-6, 456-7; Rhodes, CAAP 29, 339-40. 53

See appendix A. 54

cf. Theopompus‟ description of Cimon as a thief and profit-maker (FGrH 115 F90) and his apparent

unworthiness at Ath.Pol.26.1. 55

cf. i.e. Plut. Them.3, Arist.2, 3.2-3, 4.2-3, 7.1-2, 24.4, Cim.5.4, Nepos Arist.1.1-2. The evidence

available for the enigmatic Aristides suggests he is just as likely to have worked with Themistocles as

against him after 480 (Them.12.6-7, Arist.8.1-9.4, 25.7; cf. Ath.Pol.23.2-24, 41.2). An alternative

tradition of Aristides as a crafty manipulator is suggested by the witticism that he was „fox by deme and

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17

the rivalry tradition cheats Pericles of the credit for the original idea of jury pay.56

Just as the role of

Themistocles is downplayed by the story that his winning strategy at Salamis was suggested to him by

Mnesiphilus (Hdt.8.57-8; Plut. Her.Mal.869d-f), so Pericles was told how to defeat Cimon by

„Damonides of Oe‟ (Ath.Pol.27.4; Plut. Per.9.2) who Aristotle says devised most of Pericles‟ measures

and was ostracised for this reason.57

The apology Plutarch offers for Pericles by suggesting he

introduced the dikastikon out of political necessity and contrary to his own aristocratic instincts (Per.9.2

cf. 7.1-3), as elsewhere in the life, signals the presence of a long-standing hostile tradition to which the

rivalry tradition seems to belong. Plutarch notes the way „many others‟, one of whom must have been

Plato (cf. Grg.515e, 517b-518e), assailed the dikastikon and other supposedly Periclean payments like

the theorikon for corrupting the demos (Per.9.1). The original author of the rivalry tradition is therefore

likely to be a critic of civic pay who grafted the story onto that of Cimon‟s generosity and produced an

excellent contrast between the two – what Cimon cultivated through generosity, Pericles induced

through pay. Possibilities include Critias, one of the Thirty Tyrants and a known admirer of Cimon (cf.

Plut. Cim.10.5, 16.8). Hignett prefers a lost oligarchic pamphleteer.58

It is untenable to date the dikastikon to within a year or two based on such untrustworthy evidence.

We need not seriously doubt that jurors were remunerated in Cimon‟s lifetime – it was in the interests

of the rivalry tradition‟s author, however biased he was, to have a credible historical setting for his

story. If the dikastikon was a political tactic meant to undermine Cimon, it is easier to believe that

Pericles deployed it while Cimon was absent from Athens and thus while he was unable to respond.

The most the tradition can be called upon to show is that jury pay was probably in place before 451/0.

The Early and Late Datings

An alternative route to a date for the dikastikon is to associate it with one of two major constitutional

reforms affecting participation in government and which, coincidentally, correspond with Cimon‟s

residency in Athens at either end of the decade 462/1-451/0 – the already familiar reforms of Ephialtes,

and Pericles‟ citizenship law. The majority of scholars prefer to date jury pay to within a few years of

the Ephialtic reforms and will state this as a fact or near-certainty.59

There is indeed a strong cause-and-

effect link between the establishment of the system of mass juries and jury pay. E. M. Walker was the

fox by nature‟ ([Them.] Ep. iv, Hercher 743). Note too, how the transition between Themistocles-

Aristides and Pericles-Cimon is smoothed by an inter-generational opposition between Themistocles

and Cimon (Plut. Them.5.3, 24.4, 30.2, Cim.5.4, 10.7-8, 16.2). There is the even less credible idea that

that Cimon was Aristides‟ ally and successor against Themistocles (Arist.23.1, Cim.5.4, 6.3, 10.8). 56

Podes (1994) 98 suggests instead that it saves him from the blame, but the overall presentation of

Pericles is too negative in the rivalry tradition for this to be likely. 57

cf. Mnesiphilus as a teacher of political wisdom in Plut. Them.2.4. It is a long-debated question, but

one of marginal importance, whether this Damonides was the same man as Pericles‟ teacher Damon.

The weight of the evidence and Occam‟s razor suggests he was, see Davies, APF 383, 369; Rhodes,

CAAP 341-2; Stadter (1989) 69-70; Podes (1994) 108-10. 58

Wade-Gery (1938) 133; Hignett, AC 342. It is possible oral tradition preserved it for its etiological

value in connection with the legend of Cimon‟s generosity (cf. the eclipse anecdote, Plut. Per.35.2) and

Stadter suggests other possible instances of oral tradition being used in the Pericles: 16.3-9 on Pericles‟

personal finances, 37.2-5 on his illegitimate son, and the famous quotations at 8.4-6 and 33.4. 59

Beloch (1912) 155; Busolt (1897) 263 cf. 255; Gomme, HCT.i 327; Hignett, AC 254, 343; Forrest

(1966) 217; Meiggs, AE 94 n.4; Pritchett (1971) 12 n.31; Rhodes, CAAP 339-40 only goes as far as

saying that jury pay came after 462/1 but later his preference is with the „the early 450s‟ (691), cf.

Rhodes (1992b) 76; Podes (1994) 105; Raaflaub (1998) 49.

18

first to dissent from what remains the orthodoxy by advocating a later date, around 451/0.60

The

evidence at present does not permit a definitive date for the dikastikon, but the merits of the later dating,

and the problems involved in the earlier one, have not been sufficiently appreciated.

The key assumption of an early dating for the dikastikon is that the dikasteria, the sine qua non of

jury pay, were either set up in 462/1 or shortly thereafter. The earliest contemporary reference to a jury

court is in Pseudo-Xenophon at least a decade after the reforms (Ath.pol.13, 16-8).61

Aristotle states that

Ephialtes transferred the powers of the Areopagus „to the Council of Five Hundred and some to the

people and some to the law courts‟ (Ath.Pol.25.2, cf. Plut. Cim.15.2) but this may well be a highly

abbreviated account of a process that was almost certainly more complex and drawn-out than the

meager evidence suggests.62

Pay need not have been planned long in advance and, even after the

institution of the dikasteria, initial enrollments may have been strong enough to allow the system to

function well.63

Initially, there would certainly have been some thetes and zeugitai who were ready and

willing to devote more of their time to civic service than the occasional assembly meeting. Some

citizens who attended the assembly only infrequently may have found jury service a more attractive

prospect. A man sitting among a few hundred jurors would naturally feel his vote was of more weight

there than in an assembly of thousands, and on a jury he could enjoy the same anonymity, opportunity

for vocal participation, and lack of accountability he enjoyed in the assembly – with the added

entertainments of an adversarial contest and practiced oratory (cf. Ar. Vesp.548-630). 64

The two pieces of evidence that may favour an early date for pay are extremely weak. Plato

(Grg.515e) states that jury pay was the first type of state pay to be introduced. Meiggs was right to raise

this connection cautiously; Plato may only reflect the extent to which jury pay came to overshadow

earlier and less controversial forms of pay, or his own desire to criticise Pericles as the first to „corrupt

the Athenians‟ with pay.65

There is also a reference in the Eumenides of Aeschylus, first performed in

458. Podlecki points to Athena‟s declaration (704) that the newly established Areopagus would be a

court „untainted by money‟ (θεξδῶλ ἄζηθηνλ) as indicating that jury pay had been recently introduced.66

If Aeschylus is objecting to pay as an existing institution his criticism seems a little pointless and would

only have force if pay were being proposed but had not yet been introduced. A hostile reference to civic

pay is, moreover, out of place in a play which expresses support for the existing system constituted out

of the reforms of 462/1 by referring obliquely to the failings of the pre-reform Areopagus. Sommerstein

60

Walker (1953a) 101-3; Jacoby, FGrH iiib Supp. 1 319 thought 449/8, due to „general considerations

about economic conditions in Athens‟ (iiib Supp. 2, 229 n.7) – presumably by which he means the

transfer of the League treasury and the cessation of hostilities with Persia; Buchanan (1962) 15-6;

Sinclair (1988) 20 „at some time in the 450s, probably late in the decade‟ without further explanation.

The two arguments of Bonner (1938) 228-30 in favour of 451 have been dealt with by Wade-Gery

(1938) 132 n. 6. 61

The most likely dating for Pseudo-Xenophon‟s pamphlet is the early 420s, see Gomme (1962) 38-69.

A date early in the Peloponnesian War finds strong support in the indication at 2.14-16 that Attica is

currently being ravaged by the Peloponnesians. The possibility of Sparta sending forces outside its

territory for long periods is not envisaged, suggesting perhaps Brasidas had not yet gone to Thrace. 62

Ostwald (1986) 49 points to an interim stage between 462/1 and the dikasteria by noting that the use

of κὲ�