Note 204 — Chapter XI · SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.

The excellent explanation of the Solonian (τίμημα) property-schedule and graduated qualification, first given by Boeckh, in his Staatshaushaltung der Athener (b. iii, c. 5), has elucidated a subject which was, before him, nothing but darkness and mystery. The statement of Pollux (viii, 130), given in very loose language, had been, before Boeckh, erroneously apprehended; ἀνήλισκον εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, does not mean the sums which the pentakosiomedimnus, the hippeus, or the zeugite, actually paid to the state, but the sums for which each was rated, or which each was liable to pay, if called upon: of course, the state does not call for the whole of a man’s rated property, but exacts an equal proportion of it from each.

On one point I cannot concur with Boeckh. He fixes the pecuniary qualification of the third class, or zeugites, at one hundred and fifty drachms, not at two hundred. All the positive testimonies (as he himself allows, p. 31) agree in fixing two hundred, and not one hundred and fifty; and the inference drawn from the old law, quoted in Dêmosthenês (cont. Makartat. p. 1067) is too uncertain to outweigh this concurrence of authorities.

Moreover, the whole Solonian schedule becomes clearer and more symmetrical if we adhere to the statement of two hundred drachms, and not one hundred and fifty, as the lowest scale of zeugite income; for the scheduled capital is then, in all the three scales, a definite and exact multiple of the income returned,—in the richest class it is twelve times,—in the middle class, ten times,—in the poorest, five times the income. But this correspondence ceases, if we adopt the supposition of Boeckh, that the lowest zeugite income was one hundred and fifty drachms; for the sum of one thousand drachms (at which the lowest zeugite was rated in the schedule) is no exact multiple of one hundred and fifty drachms. In order to evade this difficulty, Boeckh supposes that the adjustment of income to scheduled capital was effected in a way both roundabout and including nice fractions: he thinks that the income of each was converted into capital by multiplying by twelve, and that, in the case of the richest class, or pentakosiomedimni, the whole sum so obtained was entered in the schedule,—in the case of the second class, or hippeis, five-sixths of the sum,—and in the case of the third class, or zeugites, five-ninths of the sum. Now this process seems to me rather complicated, and the employment of a fraction such as five-ninths (both difficult and not much above the simple fraction of one-half) very improbable: moreover, Boeckh’s own table, p. 41, gives fractional sums in the third class, when none appear in the first or second.

Such objections, of course, would not be admissible, if there were any positive evidence to prove the point. But in this case they are in harmony with all the positive evidence, and are amply sufficient, in my judgment, to countervail the presumption arising from the old law on which Boeckh relies.