Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises (Penguin Classics) (32 page)

1
.
into consideration
: Xenophon’s primary interest here is in raising revenue and extracting other public services from the perhaps 10,000 or more Greek and non-Greek metics (cf. 4.40–1); but in other contexts (see
Cavalry Commander
chapter 9 note 4
) he could take a more generous view of these otherwise under-privileged residents of Athens and Attica (especially Peiraeus).

2
.
resident alien’s tax:
Metics are attested under a variety of titles in over seventy
Greek cities. At Athens adult males were required to pay a
metoikion
(metic poll tax) of one drachma a month, independent women metics half that amount.

3
.
and households
: Most metics were probably below hoplite status, so Xenophon’s proposal to exempt metics from the obligation to serve as hoplites would benefit only a minority. Allowing the wealthiest metics to join the cavalry (see
note 5
below) would measurably enhance the social status of only that privileged few. Most Greek metics at Athens were what we would now call ‘economic migrants’, attracted by Athens’ superior economic opportunities, and therefore technically free to return to their places of birth (and, if Greeks, citizenship) at any time; a few, however, were political refugees. For the non-Greek metics, see next note.

4
.
resident aliens come from
: Among the non-Greek metics, some were traders, like the Egyptians and Phoenicians who were given permission to establish religious sanctuaries to Ammon and Astarte respectively in the Peiraeus; others were ex-slaves, including skilled men such as bankers, liberated privately by their Athenian masters but not normally granted Athenian citizenship (see
chapter 4 note 10
). The latter might be wealthy enough – and sufficiently rooted – to be required to serve as hoplites. Xenophon’s complaint about the non-Athenianness of the Athenian army might have been better addressed to Athens’ increasing reliance on mercenaries.

5
.
to serve in the cavalry
: This had been advocated by Xenophon already in
Cavalry Commander
9.6, without effect.

6
.
live in Athens
: Ownership of real estate at Athens was an exclusive right of citizens. Exceptionally, an individual metic might be granted
enktesis
, that is the privilege of owning land and/or a house. Xenophon’s proposal to extend the privilege more widely was put into effect elsewhere, but the Athenians, jealous of their democratic privileges, resolutely kept the barrier between metic and citizen status high. By ‘Athens’ here Xenophon must mean the city of Athens within the walls (destroyed in 404, rebuilt in the late 390s), which was less densely and less regularly inhabited than Peiraeus (newly laid out in the fifth century to the plan of Hippodamus of Miletus).

7
.
the custodians of orphans: Orphanophylakes
are otherwise unattested: see
Ath. Pol.
, Rhodes,
Commentary
, p. 633. See also
Cavalry Commander
chapter 9 note 3
.

1
.
complete safety
: The allusive plural refers specifically to the harbour, or rather three harbours, of Peiraeus, of which the specially developed commercial harbour of Cantharus is particularly in Xenophon’s mind (see also
note 3
below). Despite its enormous length of coastline, good harbours were in short supply in Aegean Greece, though ancient merchantmen with their shallow draught could be simply beached rather than docked if necessary.

2
.
purchase price
: Ancient coinage was not fiduciary but worth what the metal composing it weighed. All coins were issued by a central validating authority, and Athenian (or Attic) coinage was especially highly valued for its guaranteed purity – so highly indeed that in Egypt in Xenophon’s day Attic coins were both overstruck (and re-used) and imitated. See C. Howgego,
Ancient History from Coins
(Routledge, 1995).

3
.
Peiraeus Emporium… resolution of disputes
: ‘Emporium’ was the technical term for the commercial, as opposed to the military, part of the Peiraeus. Xenophon’s ‘Controllers’ are probably what Demosthenes and other sources call the ‘Overseers’ of the Emporium. Rather than Xenophon’s favourite system of differential competitive reward, the Athenians introduced special courts on an equal basis for all comers so that commercial lawsuits could be settled with particular dispatch.

4
.
prospect of prestige… flock to Athens
: Xenophon emphasizes moral as well as material incentives, appealing to the honour syndrome that dominated the Greek civic value-system.

5
.
considerate legislation:
See
chapter 4 note 19
.

6
.
Hegesileos’ command:
The wealthiest one-fifth to one-third of Athenians qualified for payment of ‘war-tax’ (
eisphora
), a system first introduced in the fifth century, but reorganized at the time of the foundation of the Second Sea-League (see
chapter 1 note 1
). Lysistratus’ command was in 364/3; Hegesileos’ in 363/2.

7
.
recover their money… in part: Eisphorai
(see previous note) might also be raised exceptionally for naval expeditions, but the Athenian navy was ordinarily financed by means of a different system known as ‘liturgies’, or (literally) ‘public works’: a handful of the richest Athenians, numbering perhaps only 400, were required on a rotating basis to make themselves responsible for the outfitting and upkeep of a trireme war-ship (built at state expense, and docked at Peiraeus) for one year; the trierarch (as the trireme liturgist was known) was technically also in command of the ship, but he might and probably usually would delegate the captaincy; technically, too, the state was supposed to pay the crew’s wages, but in practice the trierarch often found himself making up shortfalls. Nevertheless, a generous and successful trierarch did stand to win great kudos and honour. See generally V. Gabrielsen,
Financing the Athenian Fleet
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

8
.
two minas:
There were 60 minas in a talent, and it is estimated that a fortune of 3–4 talents would have put an Athenian into the ‘super-tax’ liturgical
bracket (see previous note). ‘Most Athenian citizens’, however, were poor, unable to afford an outlay of even I mina (ioo drachmas), and only too pleased to receive the daily wage of 3 obols (½ drachma) that was paid for serving as a juror in the People’s Court. Xenophon is therefore addressing here only the seriously wealthy, the sort of people who had sufficient spare capital to make ‘bottomry’ loans, that is lend money (at very high rates of interest) to long-distance sea traders. To them, the potential 5+ mina-payers, he must talk in terms of investment and guaranteed return to make his proposed scheme seem attractive.

9
.
human institutions:
Cf.
Memoirs of Socrates
1.4.16 (Penguin
Conversations of Socrates
); also Isocrates 8 (‘On the Peace’).120 (probably written about the same time as
Ways and Means
).

10
.
share in this bounty
: There was no such ‘register of eternal benefactors’, except in the fertile imagination of Xenophon, who seems to have modelled it on the grant of citizenship to foreigners that was made to the grantee and his legitimate male descendants in perpetuity. In Xenophon’s lifetime such exceptional grants were made to among others Euagoras (a king), Dionysius I (a tyrant) and Orontes (a Persian satrap): see M. Osborne,
Naturalization in Athens
(Royal Belgian Academy, 1981–3).

11
.
in general
: This idea of instituting a merchant marine is out of the same mould as Xenophon’s later suggestion about Athens’ investing publicly in mine-slaves: neither was taken up in practice, partly for technical reasons but mainly because they offended against the Athenians’ entrenched notions of what it was proper for the state to do economically, and what should be left to private enterprise. The state did, on the other hand, lease out immovable, especially sacred, property, and did farm certain taxes: see
4.19
below; and
Ath. Pol
. 47.

1
.
first undertaken
: Archaeological evidence from the Laureium district of south-eastern Attica indicates that mining had occurred there as early as the sixteenth century
BC
, but the period of intense working, which depended on a suitable labour force and sufficient labour supply, did not begin before the sixth century, or even the early fifth. In the final phase ofthe Peloponnesian War (413–404), and for over three decades afterwards, there seems to have been a trough in working the mines, so that Xenophon’s treatise coincided with a rising wave of renewed exploitation (see note 16 below). On this and many other aspects, see R. J. Hopper,
Trade and Industry in Classical Greece
(Thames & Hudson, 1979), pp. 170–89.

2
.
for a while
: Xenophon would seem to be referring to the period down to 413 (see previous note), ‘before the Deceleian affair’ (4.25); see 4.14–15 for examples of intense investment.

3
.
new entrepreneurs
: Xenophon may have in mind Hesiod’s famous passage in
Works and Days
about the good Strife that encourages ‘potter to be angry with potter and carpenter with carpenter’ (line 25) in the interests of economic self-improvement. His point would be that so abundant is mining wealth that economic advantage accrues even without expenditure of anger.

4
.
workers
: Such
ergatai
could in principle be either hired or owned, free or slave, but Xenophon is likely to have had slaves in mind chiefly here; only very occasionally do we hear of a concession being worked purely with free familial labour.

5
.
more people turn to this line of work
: Mining, that is, contradicts the ‘normal’ laws of supply and demand, as illustrated for instance in 4.36. See also 4.25 for the alleged inexhaustibility of the supply.

6
.
burying… to use
: There is a pun in the Greek, in that one both digs the ground in order to extract the silver and then digs the processed silver (in the form of coins) into the ground in order to hoard it. Such seemingly miserly hoarding was actually quite normal, given the general lack of secure investment outlets apart from landownership and farming.

7
.
of silver
: Ph. Gauthier (whose excellent
Commentaire
is presumed throughout),
p. 131
, rightly distinguishes between the generally received idea, which Xenophon shared, that gold varied in value whereas the value of silver remained fixed, and the historical fact that gold on occasion depreciated. So far as the latter goes, it appears that, apart from a few blips caused by the introduction to Greece of Persian gold by mercenaries, the ratio of the price of gold to that of silver at Athens remained pretty constant at 12:1 from the late fifth century down to the time of this treatise.

8
.
same conditions as citizens
: Mining was, legally speaking, a free-for-all, open to all foreigners whether resident or non-resident, as well as to citizens. Contrast land-ownership, where only a handful of specially privileged metic foreigners were granted equality of access with citizens (see
chapter 2 note 6
).

9
.
plain… to see even today
: Similarly, at
The Estate-manager
15.10–11 and elsewhere, Xenophon has Ischomachus claim that even the technical aspects of agriculture are obvious.

10
.
Sosias… Hipponicus
: Sosias was most probably an ex-slave metic; perhaps he had served when a slave as a sort of accountant to a mining entrepreneur like Nicias, or maybe he had even himself worked in the mining area, presumably in the washeries or other ancillary services on the surface rather than in the lethal shafts below ground. Nicias was the famous conservative
politician and failed general, who died in Sicily in 413, and of whom Plutarch wrote a Life (see Penguin Plutarch,
The Rise and Fall of Athens
, pp. 207–43). Hipponicus belonged to a distinguished political family, closely connected with Pericles. Philemonides (15) is not otherwise certainly attested.

11
.
Athenian citizen
: This rather unclear passage is probably to be taken with 3.9–10 and interpreted as part of Xenophon’s grand scheme to raise such a centrally deposited capital sum as eventually to provide every Athenian, rich or poor, with a daily allowance of three obols. The slaves would be as it were the working ingredient of this capital project, ensuring by their labour that the required surplus income of three obols per head was generated.

12
.
exporting them
: Demosthenes accused his great rival and enemy Aeschines of having a father who was a branded slave and worked as public checker (
dokimastes
) in the Athenian mint. The accusation was of course false, but the public
dokimastes
would have been a familiar sight in the Athenian Agora and in Peiraeus (
Ath. Pol
., Rhodes,
Commentary
, pp. 574, 576). Xenophon here proposes to extend the branding system to his new, publicly owned mine-slaves.

13
.
their minds:
Here Xenophon does seem to be indulging in special pleading, verging indeed on the utopian.

14
.
the Deceleian affair will verify:
The Spartans occupied and garrisoned the Athenian deme of Deceleia from 413 to 404 (see especially Thucydides 7.27–8). Any reader old enough to remember slave prices as they were before the affair would have to have been at least 75. Specifically, the fiscal reference could be either to the farmed tax levied on the sale of slaves or to the two per cent payable in the Peiraeus on slaves as merchandise entering or leaving Attica or to both.

15
.
the silver:
The silver was extracted from argentiferous lead by cupellation (see
note 22
below); it no longer exists in its primitive state in workable quantities, and modern mining interest has been concerned primarily with the extraction of cadmium and manganese, although the ancient slagheaps have been to a lesser extent reworked for the lead.

16
.
restarted there:
The extant records of the ten
Poletai
(‘Sellers’), the board of Athenian officials responsible for leasing the mining concessions (the state claimed ownership of all subsoil resources), would seem to confirm that after a long gap mining began again in earnest only in the 360s.

17
.
worry… itself demands:
The implied fear is of servile insurrection, which actually is not known to have occurred at the Laureium mines until the very end of the second century
B C
. On the other hand, many thousands of mine-slaves took advantage of the Spartan occupation of Deceleia (see
note 14
above) to run away (Thucydides 7.27.5). Contrast the known Helot
insurrections (
Agesilaus
chapter 1 note 6
); and for fear of slave violence more generally, see
Hiero
chapter 4 note 1
.

18
.
the recent war
: On the identification of this war (cf. 5.12) hangs the secure dating of the treatise; internal and external evidence conspires, if not quite to prove, at least to make it extremely probable that Xenophon was referring to the Social War (357–355; see Gauthier,
Commentaire
, pp. 4–6, and Introduction).

19
.
market rents
: Here we have the original ‘peace dividend’; see further chapter 5 note 1. On ‘looking after the resident aliens’ see
chapter 2 note 1
.

20
.
the enemy
: Xenophon’s suggestion that the Athenians should deploy the public slaves not only in the fleet but in the land army is remarkable enough; that he should apparently also advocate that they be ‘well-tende’, is even more so, since it was normally – and normatively – the case that slaves were required to ‘tend’ (
therapeuein
; a standard word for slave was
therapon
) their masters. Perhaps his idealized Spartanism has got the better of his judgement here.

21
.
besieged instead
: Chastened by their humiliating experience during the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians of Xenophon’s day put a lot more effort into the land defence, both fixed and mobile, of the territory of Attica: see, with differing emphases and explanations, J. Ober,
Fortress Attica
(Brill, 1985), and M. Munn,
The Defense of Attica
(University of California Press, 1993).

22
.
kilns
: The kilns were used for fusing the ore. There are fewer mentions of them in the extant mining-leases than of the ore-washeries, and only some of them were state property.

23
.
plots… about Athens
: Xenophon’s
choroi
(‘plots’) are to be distinguished from the
oikopeda
(‘property’) of
Memoirs of Socrates
2.6 (Penguin
Conversations of Socrates
). On land in Athens, see
chapter 2 note 6
.

24
.
effective
: Obedience, discipline, military effectiveness: here is Xenophon’s holy trinity – or grail – as a didactic writer.

25
.
maintenance due to each of these tasks
: Xenophon is apparently referring to some kind of ephebic training, though no comprehensive state-run programme is certainly attested before the mid-330s (see
On Hunting
chapter 2 note 1
).