Note 841 — Chapter XCVI · FROM THE LAMIAN WAR TO THE CLOSE OF THE HISTORY OF FREE HELLAS AND HELLENISM.

Ktesikles ap. Athenæum, vi. p. 272. Mr. Fynes Clinton (following Wesseling), supplies the defect in the text of Athenæus, so as to assign the census to the 115th Olympiad. This conjecture may be right, yet the reasons for it are not conclusive. The census may have been either in the 116th, or in the 117th Olympiad; we have no means of determining which. The administration of Phalerean Demetrius covers the ten years between 317 and 307 B. C. (Fast. Hell. Append. p. 388).

Mr. Clinton (ad ann. 317 B. C. Fast. Hell.) observes respecting the census—“The 21,000 Athenians express those who had votes in the public assembly, or all the males above the age of twenty years; the 10,000 μέτοικοι described also the males of full age. When the women and children are computed, the total free population will be about 127,660; and 400,000 slaves, added to this total, will give about 527,660 for the total population of Attica.” See also the Appendix to F. H. p. 390 seq.

This census is a very interesting fact; but our information respecting it is miserably scanty, and Mr. Clinton’s interpretation of the different numbers is open to some remark. He cannot be right, I think, in saying—“The 21,000 Athenians express those who had votes in the assembly, or all the males above the age of twenty years.” For we are expressly told, that under the administration of Demetrius Phalereus, all persons who did not possess 1000 drachmæ were excluded from the political franchise; and therefore a large number of males above the age of twenty years would have no vote in the assembly. Since the two categories are not coincident, then, to which shall we apply the number 21,000? To those who had votes? Or to the total number of free citizens, voting or not voting, above the age of twenty? The public assembly, during the administration of Demetrius Phalereus, appears to have been of little moment or efficacy; so that a distinct record, of the number of persons entitled to vote in it, is not likely to have been sought.

Then again, Mr. Clinton interprets the three numbers given, upon two principles totally distinct. The two first numbers (citizens and metics), he considers to designate only males of full age; the third number, of οἰκέται, he considers to include both sexes and all ages.

This is a conjecture which I think very doubtful, in the absence of farther knowledge. It implies that the enumerators take account of the slave women and children—but that they take no account of the free women and children, wives and families of the citizens and metics. The number of the free women and children are wholly unrecorded, on Mr. Clinton’s supposition. Now if, for the purposes of the census, it was necessary to enumerate the slave women and children—it surely would be not less necessary to enumerate the free women and children.

The word οἰκέται sometimes means, not slaves only, but the inmates of a family generally—free as well as slave. If such be its meaning here (which however there is not evidence enough to affirm), we eliminate the difficulty of supposing the slave women and children to be enumerated—and the free women and children not to be enumerated.

We should be able to reason more confidently, if we knew the purpose for which the census had been taken—whether with a view to military or political measures—to finance and taxation—or to the question of subsistence and importation of foreign corn (see Mr. Clinton’s Fast. H. ad ann. 444 B. C., about another census taken in reference to imported corn).