Such objections, of course, would not be admissible, if there were any positive evidence to prove the point. But in this case they are in harmony with all the positive evidence, and are amply sufficient, in my judgment, to countervail the presumption arising from the old law on which Boeckh relies. All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less than two hundred medimni, or drachms, were placed in the fourth class, and they must have constituted the large majority of the community. They were not liable to any direct taxation, and, perhaps, were not at first even entered upon the taxable schedule, more especially as we do not know that any taxes were actually levied upon this schedule during the Solonian times. It is said that they were all called thêtes, but this appellation is not well sustained, and cannot be admitted: the fourth compartment in the descending scale was indeed termed the thetic census, because it contained all the thêtes, and because most of its members were of that humble description; but it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land yielded to him a clear annual return of one hundred, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and forty, or one hundred and eighty drachms, could ever have been designated by that name.[205] [205] See Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, _ut suprà_. Pollux gives an Inscription describing Anthemion son of Diphilus,—Θητικοῦ ἀντὶ τέλους ἱππάδ᾽ ἀμειψάμενος. The word τελεῖν does not necessarily mean _actual_ payment, but “the being included in a class with a certain aggregate of duties and liabilities,”—equivalent to _censeri_ (Boeckh, p. 36). Plato, in his treatise De Legibus, admits a quadripartite census of citizens, according to more or less of property (Legg. v, p. 744; vi, p. 756). Compare Tittmann, Griechische Staats Verfassungen pp. 648, 653; K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staats Alt. § 108.