Note 106 — Chapter IV · XENOPHON.

This passage of Heraldus is cited by M. Boeckh in his Public Economy of Athens, B. iv. ch. 21, p. 606, Eng. Trans. In that chapter of M. Boeckh’s work (pp. 600-610) some very instructive pages will be found about the Xenophontic scheme here noticed.

I will however mention one or two points on which my understanding of the scheme differs from his. He says (p. 605):—“The author supposes that the profit upon this speculation would amount to three oboli per day, so that the subscribers would obtain a very high per centage on their shares. Xenophon supposes unequal contributions, according to the different amounts of property, agreeable to the principles of a property-tax, but an equal distribution of the receipts for the purpose of favouring and aiding the poor. What Xenophon is speaking of is an income annually arising upon each share, either equal to or exceeding the interest of the loans on bottomry. Where, however, is the security that the undertaking would produce three oboli a day to each subscriber?”

I concur in most of what is here said; but M. Boeckh states the matter too much as if the three oboli per diem were a real return arising from the scheme, and payable to each shareholder upon each share as he calls it. This is an accident of the case, not the essential feature. The poorest citizens — for whose benefit, more than for any other object, the scheme is contrived — would not be shareholders at all: they would be too poor to contribute anything, yet each of them would receive his triobolon like the rest. Moreover, many citizens, even though able to pay, might hold back, and decline to pay: yet still each would receive as much. And again, the foreigners, kings, satraps, &c., would be contributors, but would receive nothing at all. The distribution of the triobolon would be made to citizens only. Xenophon does indeed state the proportion of receipt to payments in the cases of some rich contributors, as an auxiliary motive to conciliate them. But we ought not to treat this receipt as if it were a real return yielded by the public mining speculation, or as profit actually brought in.

As I conceive the scheme, the daily triobolon, and the respective contributions furnished, have no premeditated ratio, no essential connection with each other. The daily payment of the triobolon to every citizen indiscriminately, is a new and heavy burden which Xenophon imposes upon the city. But this is only one among many other burdens, as we may see by cap. 6. In order to augment the wealth of the city, so as to defray these large expenses, he proposes several new financial measures. Of these the most considerable was the public mining speculation; but it did not stand alone. The financial scheme of Xenophon, both as to receipts and as to expenditure, is more general than M. Boeckh allows for.