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"Finance Greece Athens."
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Poroi : revenue-sources
\"This volume showcases for the first time in the Clarendon Ancient History Series one of the best-known prose authors of classical Athens: Xenophon. Poroi (or, Revenue-Sources) was the final work of his large and varied output, written in the mid-350s BCE at a time when Athens had failed to prevent the collapse of her second Aegean 'empire', and was impoverished and demoralized in consequence. Back in Athens after a lifetime abroad, the elderly Xenophon took an optimistic view of the plight of his fellow-citizens: though their days as a free-spending imperial power may have been over, they could fall back on the city's own, unique assets - both human (the large community of resident and visiting foreigners) and material (the natural resources of Attica itself, notably the silver-mines) - strategically exploiting them in order to set the city on the road to peace and prosperity. Xenophon fleshed out this general position with many specific proposals, in doing so situating Poroi not only in a tradition of early economic thought, but also in the realm of practical politics. Framed by a General Introduction and the first-ever full Commentary on the work in English, this new and unprecedentedly accurate translation offers an authoritative yet accessible overview of the text, its context, and its historical, socio-political, and economic implications that will be invaluable to both students new to the work and to more experienced scholars. Challenging the view that there is a significant overlap between Xenophon's ideas and the policies associated (in the 350s and 340s) with Euboulos, it argues, rather, that Poroi was ahead of its time and in fact anticipated the programme of Athens' leading statesman of the 330s and 320s: Lykourgos\"--Dust jacket.
BOOK
Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens
In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and \"the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians.\" This view of the Athenians' misplaced priorities became orthodoxy with the publication of August Böckh's 1817 book Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener [The Public Economy of Athens], which criticized the classical Athenian dēmos for spending more on festivals than on wars and for levying unjust taxes to pay for their bloated government. But were the Athenians' priorities really as misplaced as ancient and modern historians believed?Drawing on lines of evidence not available in Böckh's time, Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens calculates the real costs of religion, politics, and war to settle the long-standing debate about what the ancient Athenians valued most highly. David M. Pritchard explains that, in Athenian democracy, voters had full control over public spending. When they voted for a bill, they always knew its cost and how much they normally spent on such bills. Therefore, the sums they chose to spend on festivals, politics, and the armed forces reflected the order of the priorities that they had set for their state. By calculating these sums, Pritchard convincingly demonstrates that it was not religion or politics but war that was the overriding priority of the Athenian people.
eBook
Financing the Athenian fleet : public taxation and social relations
To meet the enormous expenses of maintaining its powerful navy, democratic Athens gave wealthy citizens responsibility for financing and commanding the fleet. Known as trierarchs —literally, ship commanders—they bore the expenses of maintaining and repairing the ships, as well as recruiting and provisioning their crews. The trierarchy grew into a powerful social institution that was indispensable to Athens and primarily responsible for the city's naval prowess in the classical period.
Financing the Athenian Fleet is the first full-length study of the financial, logistical, and social organization of the Athenian navy. Using a rich variety of sources, particularly the enormous body of inscriptions that served as naval records, Vincent Gabrielsen examines the development and function of the Athenian trierarchy and revises our understanding of the social, political, and ideological mechanisms of which that institution was a part. Exploring the workings, ships, and gear of Athens' navy, Gabrielsen explains how a huge, costly, and highly effective operation was run thanks to the voluntary service and contributions of the wealthy trierarchs. He concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of the relationship between Athens' democracy and its wealthiest citizens.
eBook
Hallowed stewards : Solon and the sacred treasurers of ancient Athens
\"Students of ancient Athenian politics, governance, and religion have long stumbled over the rich evidence of inscriptions and literary texts that document the Athenians' stewardship of the wealth of the gods. Likewise, Athens was well known for devoting public energy and funds to all matters of ritual, ranging from the building of temples to major religious sacrifices. Yet, lacking any adequate account of how the Athenians organized that commitment, much less how it arose and developed, ancient historians and philologists alike have labored with only a paltry understanding of what was a central concern to the Athenians themselves. That deficit of knowledge, in turn, has constrained and diminished our grasp of other essential questions surrounding Athenian society and its history, such as the nature of political life in archaic Athens, and the forces underlying Athens' imperial finances. Hallowed Stewards closely examines those magistracies that were central to Athenian religious efforts, and which are best described as \"sacred treasurers.\" Given the extensive but nevertheless fragmentary evidence now available to us, no catalog-like approach to these offices could properly encompass their details much less their wider historical significance. Inscriptions and oratory provide the bulk of the evidence for this project, along with the so-called Constitution of Athens attributed to Aristotle. Hallowed Stewards not only provides a wealth of detail concerning these hitherto badly understood offices, but also the larger diachronic framework within which they operated\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens
Intro -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Tables -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- 1. Public-Spending Debates -- Festivals and Wars -- Democracy -- The Period of Eighty Years for Comparing Costs -- The Democratic Control of Public Spending -- The Synopsis of the Book -- 2. The Cost of Festivals -- The Cost of the Great Panathenaea -- The Relative Scale of the Rest of the Festival Program -- The Full Cost of Festivals -- 3. The Cost of Democracy -- Jurors -- Councilors -- Assemblygoers -- Magistrates -- Undersecretaries -- Public Slaves -- Gold Crowns -- Settling the Böckh-Jones Debate -- 4. The Cost of War -- Public Spending on the Armed Forces in the 420s -- Military Spending in the Rest of the Peloponnesian War -- The Full Cost of the Armed Forces in the 370s -- Military Spending in the 360s -- Conclusion. Public-Spending Priorities -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index of Sources -- General Index.
Book
Athenian Economy and Society
In this ground-breaking analysis of the world's first private banks, Edward Cohen convincingly demonstrates the existence and functioning of a market economy in ancient Athens while revising our understanding of the society itself. Challenging the \"primitivistic\" view, in which bankers are merely pawnbrokers and money-changers, Cohen reveals that fourth-century Athenian bankers pursued sophisticated transactions. These dealings--although technologically far removed from modern procedures--were in financial essence identical with the lending and deposit-taking that separate true \"banks\" from other businesses. He further explores how the Athenian banks facilitated tax and creditor avoidance among the wealthy, and how women and slaves played important roles in these family businesses--thereby gaining legal rights entirely unexpected in a society supposedly dominated by an elite of male citizens.
Special emphasis is placed on the reflection of Athenian cognitive patterns in financial practices. Cohen shows how transactions were affected by the complementary opposites embedded in the very structure of Athenian language and thought. In turn, his analysis offers great insight into daily Athenian reality and cultural organization.
eBook
The power of money : coinage and politics in the Athenian Empire
Was Athens an imperialistic state, deserving all the reputation for exploitation that adjective can imply, or was the Athenian alliance, even at its most unequal, still characterized by a convergence of interests?
The Power of Money explores monetary and metrological policy at Athens as a way of discerning the character of Athenian hegemony in midfifth-century Greece. It begins with the Athenian Coinage Decree, which, after decades of scholarly attention, still presents unresolved questions for Greek historians about content, intent, date, and effect. Was the Decree an act of commercial imperialism or simply the codification of what was already current practice?
Figueira interprets the Decree as one in a series concerned with financial matters affecting the Athenian city-state and emerging from the way the collection of tribute functioned in the alliance that we call the Athenian empire. He contends that the Decree served primarily to legislate the status quo ante.
eBook
Metro service disruptions: how do people choose to travel?
While metro disruptions can have a significant impact to the travel patterns and behavior of users, research on that topic has been limited. Using Athens, Greece, as a study case, this paper combines information on traveler experiences and perceptions and attempts to model mode choice during a long-run metro service disruption. A Nested Logit (NL) approach for jointly analyzing RP/SP data is applied and compared to individual RP and SP based MNL models. Findings suggest that the propensity to shift to buses or cars in such cases depends—to a large extent—on the travelers’ available income. Also, the possibility of a flexible work schedule is negatively correlated with the choice of using a car during metro closures. Finally, the overall performance of the joint RP/SP Nested Logit model has been found to be superior to that of the joint RP/SP MNL model.
Journal Article
The political economy of the original “Thucydides’ Trap”: a conflict economics perspective on the Peloponnesian war
The Peloponnesian War, 431–404, between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta was a long, destructive war ending with the total surrender of Athens. Scholars of Thucydides, the ancient historian of the conflict, have dwelt on two different explanations of the causes of the War. First, the “Thucydides’ Trap”, which argues that Sparta’s fear of the growing power of Athens rendered peace arrangements non-credible and made war inevitable. Second, the unwise leadership, which blames key political leaders for their erroneous judgments in the affairs of the state. Using the perspective of the economics of conflict the present study questions both views. It argues that the non-credibility of peace is at best an incomplete explanation of the conflict, and the unwise leadership hypothesis requires a systematic account of the factors affecting leaders to choose war. Noting that the clash between Sparta and Athens had started earlier, in 460, the study shows that its causes related to calculations of material and non-material benefits from victory, perceptions of the probability of military success, problems of domestic political accountability, and the valuation of the future. Importantly, it also shows that the role of these factors differed significantly at the different phases of the extended conflict.
Journal Article