Note 7 — Chapter XLVII · FROM THE THIRTY YEARS’ TRUCE, FOURTEEN YEARS BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, DOWN TO THE BLOCKADE OF POTIDÆA, IN THE YEAR BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

The island of Kythêra was conquered by the Athenians from Sparta in 425 B.C., and the annual tribute then imposed upon it was four talents (Thucyd. iv, 57). In the Inscription No. 143, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Inscr., we find some names enumerated of tributary towns, with the amount of tribute opposite to each, but the stone is too much damaged to give us much information. Tyrodiza, in Thrace, paid one thousand drachms: some other towns, or junctions of towns, not clearly discernible, are rated at one thousand, two thousand, three thousand drachms, one talent, and even ten talents. This inscription must be anterior to 415 B.C., when the tribute was converted into a five per cent. duty upon imports and exports: see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, and his Notes upon the above-mentioned Inscription.

It was the practice of Athens not always to rate each tributary city separately, but sometimes to join several in one collective rating; probably each responsible for the rest. This seems to have provoked occasional remonstrances from the allies, in some of which the rhetor, Antipho, was employed to furnish the speech which the complainants pronounced before the dikastery: see Antipho ap. Harpokration, v. Ἀπόταξις—Συντελεῖς. It is greatly to be lamented that the orations composed by Antipho, for the Samothrakians and Lindians,—the latter inhabiting one of the three separate towns in the island of Rhodes,—have not been preserved.