[204] 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.
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