English
- Miriam Valdés Guia Universidad Complutense de Madrid https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2910-0617
Abstract
In this paper, the intention is to discuss the socio-economic status of the third census class, the zeugitai (small and middling peasants vs. farmers belonging to the leisure class), in the light of the organisation of the Solonian fiscal system. Particularly useful for this purpose is the analysis of an anecdotal passage concerning Peisistratus and a taxpaying Attic peasant of modest means. This is followed by some brief reflections on the subsequent fifth-century eisphora in both the Athenian cleruchies/colonies and Athens itself as of 428, during and after the Peloponnesian War.
Downloads
References
Akrigg, Ben. (2019): Population and Economy in Classical Athens, Cambridge.
Andreyev, Vladislav N. (1974): “Some Aspects of Agrarian Conditions in Attica in the Fifth to Third Centuries B.C.”, Eirene 12, 5-46.
Baccarin, Alessandro (1990): “Olivicoltura in Attica fra trasformazione e crisi”, Dialoghi di Archeologia 8, 29-33.
Beloch, Julius (1884): Die attische Politik seit Perikles, Leipzig.
Berve, Helmut (1967): Die Tyrannis bei den Griechen, Munich.
Biles, Zachary P. – Olson, S. Douglas (eds.) (2015): Aristophanes: Wasps, Oxford.
Blamire, Alec (2001): “Athenian Finance, 454-404 BC”, Hesperia 70, 99-126 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2668488).
Blok, Josine – Lardinois, André (eds.) (2006): Solon of Athens. New Historical and Philological Approaches, Leiden.
Böckh, August (1967 [1886]): Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener. Herausgegeben und mit anmerkungen begleitet von Max Fränkel, vol. I, Berlin.
Brun, Patrice (1983): Eisphora-Syntaxis-Stratiotika. Recherches sur les finances militaires d’Athènes au IVe siècle av. J.-C. Besançon-Paris.
Bullock, Charles J. (1939): Politics, Finance, and Consequences, Cambridge, Mass.
Burford, Alison
(1977-1978): “The Family Farm in Ancient Greece”, The Classical Journal 73, 162-175.
(1993): Land and Labor in the Greek World, Baltimore.
Carawan, Edwin M. (2013): The Athenian Amnesty and Reconstructing the Law, Oxford.
Cargill, Jack (1995): Athenian Settlements of the Fourth Century, Leiden.
Cataudella, Michele R. (2021): Ritorno alla Flat Tax. Un itinerario di Atene antica fra VII e IV secolo?, Turnhout.
Connor, William R. (1988): “Early Greek Land Warfare as Symbolic Expression”, La Parola del Passato 119, 3-29 (https://doi.org/10.1093/past/119.1.3).
Christ, Matthew R.
(2001): “Conscription of Hoplites in Classical Athens”, Classical Quarterly 51, 398-422 (https://doi.org/10.1093/cq/51.2.398).
(2007): “The Evolution of the Eisphora in Classical Athens”, Classical Quarterly 57, 53-69 (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838807000043).
Davies, John K.
(1971): Athenian Propertied Families, Oxford.
(1981): Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens, New York.
Davis, Gil (2012): “Dating the drachmas in Solon’s Laws”, Historia 61/2, 127-158 (https://doi.org/10.25162/historia-2012-0008).
Descat, Raymond (1990): “De l’économie tributaire à l’économie civique : le rôle de Solon”, [in] Marie-Madeleine Mactoux – Evelyne Geny (eds.), Mélanges P. Lévêque, vol. 5, Paris, 85-100.
Faraguna, Michele (1998): “Un nuovo studio sulle ‘Rationes Centesimarum’”, Dike 1, 171-180.
Fawcet, Peter
(2006): Athenian Taxation from the Pisistratids to Lycurgus 550 325, PhD dissertation, University of Durham.
(2016): “When I Squeeze You with Eisphorai: Taxes and Tax Policy in Classical Athens”, Hesperia 85/1, 153-199 (https://doi.org/10.2972/hesperia.85.1.0153).
Fernández Prieto, Aida (2022): Realidades e imágenes de la pobreza en la Atenas clásica. Una aproximación al fenómeno en la época de la democracia, Berlin.
Figueira, Thomas J.
(1986): “Xanthippos, Father of Perikles, and the Prytaneis of the Naukrarioi”, Historia 35, 257-279.
(1991): Athens and Aigina in the Age of Imperial Colonization. Baltimore, MD.
(2008): “Colonisation in the Classical Period”, [in] Gocha R. Tsetskhladze (ed.), Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, vol. 2 (=Mnemosyne, Supplementa 193), Leiden-Boston, 427-523.
Finley, Moses I. (1985 [1973]): Democracy Ancient and Modern, London.
Flament, Christopher (2018): “IG I3 52 A ET B: un ou deux décrets de Kallias pour éclairer les finances athéniennes au Ve siècle av. n. ère? ”, Les Études Classiques 86, 153-175.
Forbes, Hamish A. (2000): “The Agrarian Economy of the Ermionidha around 1700. An Ethnohistorical Reconstruction”, [in] Susan Buck Sutton (ed.), Contingent Countryside, Settlement, Economy and Land Use in the Sourthern Argolid since 1700, Stanford, 41-70.
Foxhall, Lin
(1997): “A view from the top: Evaluating the Solonian property classes”, [in] Mitchell –Rhodes (eds.) 1997, 113-136.
(2002): “Access to resources in classical Greece: the egalitarianism of the polis in practice”, [in] Paul Cartledge – David Cohen – Lin Foxhall (eds.), Money, labour and land. Approaches to the economies of ancient Greece, London-New York, 209-220.
Gabrielsen, Vincent (1994): Financing the Athenian Fleet: Public Taxation and Social Relations, Baltimore.
Gallego, Julián
(2005): Campesinos en la ciudad. Bases agrarias de la polis griega y la infantería hoplita, Buenos Aires.
(2016): “El campesinado y la distribución del a tierra en la Atenas del s. IV a.C.”, Gerión 34, 43-75 (https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_GERI.2016.v34.53735).
(2022): “La cleruquía ateniense en Lesbos: Distribución de la tierra y explotación de los nativos”, Nova Tellus 40/1, 1-36 (https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.nt.2022.40.1.432573).
(2024): “Land for the Athenian Poor: The Politics of Redistribution Outside Attica During the Fifth Century BCE”, Pnyx 3, 1-23 (https://doi.org/10.55760/pnyx.2024.35260).
(Forthcoming): “La Atenas democrática y la sumisión de Lesbos y Melos: mecanismos de dominación y explotación imperialista”, [in] Brais J. Curras – Inés Sastre, As faces do império: mecanismos de controlo e estratégias de resistência (=XLI Colóquio Internacional do GIREA, Coimbra), Besançon.
Gallo, Luigi (1987): “Salari e inflazione: Atene tra V e IV sec. A. C.”, Annali della Scuola normale superiore di Pisa (3rd ser.) 17/1, 19-63.
Gomme, Arnold. W. (1956): A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, vol. II. Books II-III, Oxford.
Halstead, Paul (2014): Two Oxen Ahead: Pre-Mechanized Farming in the Mediterranean, Malden, MA-Oxford-Chichester.
Hansen, Mogens H.
(1988): Three Studies in Athenian Demography (=Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser 56), Copenhagen.
(1991): The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes, Oxford.
(2010): “The Concepts of Demos, Ekklesia, and Dikasterion in Classical Athens”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 50, 499-536.
Hanson, Victor D. (1999 [1995]): The Other Greeks. The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London.
Hodkinson, Stephen (1988): “Animal Husbandry in the Greek Polis”, [in] C. R. Whittaker (ed.), Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, 35-74.
Iriarte, Unai (2018): “La moneda de Atenas durante la tiranía de los Pisistrátidas”, Antesteria 7, 103-120.
Jacoby, Felix (1954): Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker (FGrH), b suppl., Nos 323a-334, vol. 1 y 2, Leiden.
Jameson, Michael H. (1994): “Class in the Ancient Greek Countryside”, [in] Panagiotes Doukellis – Lina Mendoni (eds.), Structures rurales et sociétés antiques, Paris, 55-63.
Jones, Arnold H.M. (1957): Athenian Democracy, Baltimore, Maryland.
Jordan, Ben
(1970): “Herodotus 5.71.2 and the Naukraroi of Athens”, California Studies in Classical Antiquity 3, 153-175.
(1979): Servants of the Cods. A Study in the Religion, History and Literature of Fifth Century Athens, Göttingen.
Kallet-Marx, Lisa
(1989): “Did Tribute Fund the Parthenon?”, California Studies in Classical Antiquity 20, 252-266 (https://doi.org/10.2307/25010908).
(2007): “The Athenian Economy”, [in] Loren J. Samons II (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles, Cambridge, 70-95.
Kraay, Colin M. – Hirmer, Max (1966): Greek Coins, London.
Kroll, John H.
(1998): “Silver in Solon’s Laws” [in] Richard Ashton – Silvia Hurter (eds.), Studies in Greek Numismatics in Memory of Martin Jessop Price, London, 225-232.
(2008): “The Monetary Use of Weighed Bullion in Archaic Greece”, [in] William H. Harris (ed.), The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans, Oxford, 12-37.
Kroll, John H. – Waggoner, Nancy M. (1984): “Dating the Earliest Coins of Athens, Corinth and Aegina”, American Journal of Archaeology 88, 326-332 (https://doi.org/10.2307/504555).
Kron, Geoffrey (2011): “The distribution of wealth at Athens in comparative perspective” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 179, 129-138.
Leão, Delfim F. – Rhodes, Peter J. (2016): The Laws of Solon. A New Edition with Introduction, Translation and Commentary, London.
Lambert, Stephen D. (1997): Rationes Centesimarum: sales of public land in Lykourgan Athens, Amsterdam.
Loomis, William T. (1998): Wages, welfare costs and inflation in classical Athens, Michigan.
MacDowell, Douglas M. (1986): “The law of Periandros about Symmories”, Classical Quarterly 36, 438-449 (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838800012179).
Mattingly, Harold B. (1968): “Athenian Finance in the Peloponnesian War”, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 92, 450-485.
Mavrogordatos, George T. (2011): “Two Puzzles Involving Socrates”, Classical World 105/1, 3-23 (https://doi.org/10.2307/4351567).
Meiggs, Russel (1972): The Athenian Empire, Oxford.
Meritt, Benjamin D. (1982): “Thucydides and the Decrees of Kallias”, [in] Studies in Attic Epigraphy, History and Topography. Presented to Eugene Vanderpool (=Hesperia Supplements 19), Princeton, NY, 112-121.
Mitchell, Lynette G. – Rhodes, Peter J. (eds.) (1997): The development of the polis in archaic Greece, New York.
Moreno, Alfonso (2007): Feeding the Democracy. The Athenian Grain Supply in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC, Oxford.
Morris, Ian (2005): The Athenian Empire (478-404), Princeton, NJ.
Mossé, Claude (1979): “Les symmories athéniennes”, [in] Henri van Effenterre (ed.) Points de vue sur la fiscalité antique, Paris, 31-42.
Nagle, D. Brendan (2006): The Household as the Foundation of Aristotle’s Polis, Cambridge.
Osborne, Robin (1988): “Social and Economic Implications of the Leasing of Land and Pro-perty in Classical and Hellenistic Greece”, Chiron 18, 279-323.
Ostwald, Martin (1995): “Public expense: whose obligation? Athens 600-454 BCE”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 139/4, 368-379.
Paiaro, Diego (2008): “Terratenientes, campesinos y arriendo de tierras en la Atenas del siglo V a. C.”, Circe 12, 207-223.
Pébarthe, Christophe (2009): “Émigrer d’Athènes. Clérouques et colons aux temps de la domination athénienne sur l’Égée au Ve siècle a.C.”, [in] Claudia Moatti – Wolfgang Kaiser – Christophe Pébarthe (eds.), Le monde de l’itinérance en Méditerranée de l’antiquité à l’époque moderne. Procédures de contrôle et d’identification, Bordeaux, 367-390.
Poddighe, Elisabetta (2002): Nel segno di Antipatro. L’eclissi Della democracia ateniese dal 323/2 al 319/8 a.C., Roma.
Raaflaub, Kurt. A.
(2006a): “Athenian and Spartan eunomia, or: what to do with Solon's timocracy”, [in] Blok –Lardinois (eds.) 2006, 390-428.
(2006b): “Thucydides on Democracy and Oligarchy”, [in] Antonia Tsakmakis – Antonios Rengakos (eds.) Brill’s Companion to Thucydides, Leiden-Boston, 189-222.
Rhodes, Peter J.
(1981): A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, Oxford.
(1982): “Problems in Athenian Eisphora and Liturgies”, American Journal of Ancient History 7, 1-19.
(1985): The Athenian Empire, Oxford.
(1991): “The Athenian Code of Laws, 410-399 B.C.”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 111, 87-100.
(1997): “Introduction”, [in] Mitchell – Rhodes (eds.) 1997, 1-8
(2006): “The Reforms and Laws of Solon: An Optimistic View”, [in] Blok – Lardinois (eds.) 2006, 248-260.
Rhodes, Peter J. – Osborne, Robin (2003): Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404-423 BC, Oxford.
Rosivach, Vincent J.
(2002a): “Zeugitai and Hoplites”, The Ancient History Bulletin 16, 33-43.
(2002b): “The Requirements for the Solonic Classes in Aristotle, AP 7.4”, Hermes 130, 36-47.
Ruschenbusch, Eberhard (1978): “Die athenischen symmorien des 4. Jh. V. Chr.”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 31, 275-284.
Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Heleen (1993): “Solon’s hektemoroi and Pisistratid dekatemoroi”, [in] Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg et alii (eds.), De Agricultura. In memoriam P.W. de Neeve Amsterdam, 13-30.
Schmitz, Winfried (1995): “Reiche und Gleiche: Timokratische Gliederung und demokratische Gleichheit der athenischen Bürger im 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr.”, [in] Walter Eder (ed.), Die athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr., Stuttgart, 573-597.
Shear Julia L. (2011): Polis and Revolution: Responding to Oligarchy in Classical Athens, Cambridge.
Simonton, Matthew (2017): “Stability and Violence in Classical Greek Democracies and Oligarchies”, Classical Antiquity 36/1, 52-103 (https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2017.36.1.52).
Sommerstein, Alan H. (1983): The Comedies of Aristophanes, vol. 4: Wasps, Warminster.
Ste Croix, Geoffrey E. M. de
(1953): “Demosthenes Timema and the Athenian Eisphora in the Fourth Century BC”, Classica & Mediaevalia 14, 30-70.
(1954): “The Character or the Athenian Empire”, Historia 3, 1-41.
(2004): Athenian Democratic Origins and Other Essays, Oxford (ed. D. Harvey and R. Parker).
Stroud, Ronald S. (1971): “Inscriptions from the North Slope of the Acropolis I”, Hesperia 40, 46-204 (https://doi.org/10.2307/147631).
Todd, Stephen C. (1996): “Lysias Against Nikomachos: The Fate of the Expert in Athenian Law”, [in] Lin Foxhall – Andrew D.E. Lewis (eds.), Greek Law in its Political Setting, Oxford, 101-131.
Thomsen, Rudi (1964): Eisphora: A Study of Direct Taxation in Ancient Athens (=Humanitas 3), Copenhagen.
Valdés, Miriam
(2002): Política y religión en Atenas arcaica. La reorganización de la polis en época de Solón. Una revisión de la documentación arqueológica, literaria y religiosa, Oxford.
(2012): La formación de Atenas. Gestación, nacimiento y desarrollo de una polis (1200/1100-600 a. C.), Zaragoza.
(2018): “Reformas en las cargas fiscales y sociedad ateniense en la primera mitad del s. IV: entre los problemas financieros y la renovación imperialista”, [in] José Pascual – Borja Antela-Bernárdez – Daniel Gómez Castro (eds.), El mundo griego en el siglo IV a.C. Pervivencias, cambios y transformaciones (=Monografía ICCA), Madrid, 89-107.
(2022): “Zeugitai in Fifth-Century Athens: Social and Economic Qualification from Cleisthenes to the End of the Peloponnesian War”, Pnyx 1, 45-78 (https://doi.org/10.55760/pnyx.2022.4).
(2023): “Who were the Five Thousand?”, Classica & Mediaevalia 72, 215-253 (https://doi.org/10.7146/classicaetmediaevalia.v72i.142656).
Valdés, Miriam – Gallego, Julián (2010): “Athenian Zeugitai and the Solonian Census Classes: New reflections and Perspectives”, Historia 59/3, 257-281 (https://doi.org/10.25162/historia-2010-0016).
Valente, Marcello (2020): “Archaic Athens and Tyranny. The Origins of the Athenian Public Finance”, [in] Constanze Graml – Annarita Doronzio – Vinzenzo Capozzoli (eds.), Rethinking Athens Before the Persian Wars, München, 265-276.
Van Wees, Hans
(2002): “Tyrants, oligarchs and citizen militias”, [in] Angelos Chaniotis – Pierre Ducrey (eds.), Army and Power in the Ancient World, Stuttgart, 61-82.
(2004): Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, London.
(2006): “Mass and Elite in Solon’s Athens: The Property Classes Revisited”, [in] Blok –Lardinois (eds.) 2006, 360-367.
(2013): Ships and Silver: A Fiscal History of Archaic Athens, London.
(2024): “The Athenian Working Class: Scale, Nature, and Development”, [in] Samuel D. Gartland – David W. Tandy, Voiceless, Invisible, and Countless in Ancient Greece: The Experience of subordinates, 700-300 BCE, Oxford, 127-154 (https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191995514.003.0006).
Vélissaropoulos, J. (1980): Les Nauclères grecs, Paris.
Volonaki, Eleni (2001): “The Re-Publication of the Athenian Laws in the Last Decade of the Fifth Century B.C.”, Dike 4, 137-167.
Wallinga, Herman T. (2000): “The Athenian Naukraroi”, [in] Heleen Sancisi Weerdenburg (ed.), Peisistratos and the tyranny: a reappraisal of the evidence, Amsterdam, 131-146.
Whitehead, David (1981): “The Archaic Athenian Zeugitai”, Classical Quarterly 75, 282-286.
Zatta, Claudia (2010): “Making History Mythical: The Golden Age of Peisistratus”, Arethusa 43/1, 21-62.
Article download
License
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Gerión. Revista de Historia Antigua is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.






