Note 428 — Chapter L · FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR DOWN TO THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMOTIONS AT KORKYRA.

Thucyd. iii, 50; iv, 52. About the Lesbian kleruchs, see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, B. iii, c. 18; Wachsmuth, Hell. Alt. i. 2, p. 36. These kleruchs must originally have gone thither as a garrison, as M. Boeckh remarks; and may probably have come back, either all or a part, when needed for military service at home, and when it was ascertained that the island might be kept without them. Still, however, there is much which is puzzling in this arrangement. It seems remarkable that the Athenians, at a time when their accumulated treasure had been exhausted, and when they were beginning to pay direct contributions from their private property, should sacrifice five thousand four hundred minæ (ninety talents) annual revenue capable of being appropriated by the state, unless that sum were required to maintain the kleruchs as resident garrison for the maintenance of Lesbos. And as it turned out afterwards that their residence was not necessary, we may doubt whether the state did not convert the kleruchic grants into a public tribute, wholly or partially.

We may farther remark, that if the kleruch be supposed a citizen resident at Athens, but receiving rent from his lot of land in some other territory,—the analogy between him and the Roman colonist fails. The Roman colonists, though retaining their privileges as citizens, were sent out to reside on their grants of land, and to constitute a sort of resident garrison over the prior inhabitants, who had been despoiled of a portion of territory to make room for them.

See, on this subject and analogy, the excellent Dissertation of Madwig: De jure et conditione coloniarum Populi Romani quæstio historica,—Madwig, Opuscul. Copenhag. 1834. Diss. viii, p. 246.

M. Boeckh and Dr. Arnold contend justly that at the time of the expedition of Athens against Syracuse and afterwards (Thucyd. vii, 57; viii, 23), there could have been but few, if any, Athenian kleruchs resident in Lesbos. We might even push this argument farther, and apply the same inference to an earlier period, the eighth year of the war (Thucyd. iv, 75), when the Mitylenæan exiles were so active in their aggressions upon Antandrus and the other towns, originally Mitylenæan possessions, on the opposite mainland. There was no force near at hand on the part of Athens to deal with these exiles except the ἀργυρόλογαι νῆες,—had there been kleruchs at Mitylênê, they would probably have been able to defeat the exiles in their first attempts, and would certainly have been among the most important forces to put them down afterwards,—whereas Thucydidês makes no allusion to them.

Farther, the oration of Antipho (De Cæde Herod. c. 13) makes no allusion to Athenian kleruchs, either as resident in the island, or even as absentees receiving the annual rent mentioned by Thucydidês. The Mitylenæan citizen, father of the speaker of that oration, had been one of those implicated—as he says, unwillingly—in the past revolt of the city against Athens: since the deplorable termination of that revolt he had continued possessor of his Lesbian property, and continued also to discharge his obligations as well (choregic obligations—χορηγίας) towards Mitylênê as (his obligations of pecuniary payment—τέλη) towards Athens. If the arrangement mentioned by Thucydidês had been persisted in, this Mitylenæan proprietor would have paid nothing towards the city of Athens, but merely a rent of two minæ to some Athenian kleruch, or citizen; which can hardly be reconciled with the words of the speaker as we find them in Antipho.