The assertion, therefore, that the tribute from the Athenian allies was raised to the sum of twelve hundred talents annually, comes to us only from the orator Æschinês as an original witness: and in him it forms part of a tissue of statements alike confused and incorrect. But against it we have a powerful negative argument,—the perfect silence of Thucydidês. Is it possible that that historian would have omitted all notice of a step so very important in its effects, if Athens had really adopted it? He mentions to us the commutation by Athens of the tribute from her allies into a duty of five per cent. payable by them on their exports and imports (vii, 28)—this was in the nineteenth year of the war, 413 B.C. But anything like the duplication of the tribute all at once, would have altered much more materially the relations between Athens and her allies and would have constituted in the minds of the latter a substantive grievance, such as to aggravate the motive for revolt in a manner which Thucydidês could hardly fail to notice. The orator Æschinês refers the augmentation of the tribute, up to twelve hundred talents, to the time succeeding the peace of Nikias: M. Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. iii, ch. 15-19, pp. 400-434) supposes it to have taken place earlier than the representation of the Vespæ of Aristophanês, that is, about three years before that peace, or 423 B.C. But this would have been just before the time of the expedition of Brasidas into Thrace, and his success in exciting revolt among the dependencies of Athens: if Athens had doubled her tribute upon all the allies, just before that expedition, Thucydidês could not have omitted to mention it, as increasing the chances of success to Brasidas, and helping to determine the resolutions of the Akanthians and others, which were by no means adopted unanimously or without hesitation, to revolt. In reference to the oration called that of Andokidês against Alkibiadês, I made some remarks in the fourth volume of this History (vol. iv, ch. xxxi, p. 151), tending to show it to be spurious and of a time considerably later than that to which it purports to belong. I will here add one other remark, which appears to me decisive, tending to the same conclusion. The oration professes to be delivered in a contest of ostracism between Nikias, Alkibiadês, and the speaker: one of the three, he says, must necessarily be ostracized, and the question is, to determine which of the three: accordingly, the speaker dwells upon many topics calculated to raise a bad impression of Alkibiadês, and a favorable impression of himself.