Along with this new schedule of taxable capital, a new distribution
of the citizens now took place into certain bodies called Symmories.
As far as we can make out, on a very obscure subject, it seems that
these Symmories were twenty in number, two to each tribe; that each
contained sixty citizens, thus making one thousand two hundred in
all; that these one thousand two hundred were the wealthiest citizens
of the schedule,—containing, perhaps, the two first out of the four
classes enrolled. Among these one thousand two hundred, however, the
three hundred wealthiest stood out as a separate body; thirty from
each tribe. These three hundred were the wealthiest men in the city,
and were called “the leaders or chiefs of the Symmories.” The three
hundred and the twelve hundred corresponded, speaking roughly, to
the old Solonian classes of Pentakosiomedimni and Hippeis; of which
latter class there had also been twelve hundred, at the beginning of
the Peloponnesian war.[241] The liturgies, or burdensome and costly
offices, were discharged principally by the Three Hundred, but partly
also by the Twelve Hundred. It would seem that the former was a body
essentially fluctuating, and that after a man had been in it for
some time, discharging the burdens belonging to it, the Stratêgi
or Generals suffered him to be mingled with the Twelve Hundred,
and promoted one of the latter body to take his place in the Three
Hundred. As between man and man, too, the Attic law always admitted
the process called Antidosis, or Exchange of Property. Any citizen
who believed himself to have been overcharged with costly liturgies,
and that another citizen, as rich or richer than himself, had not
borne his fair share,—might, if saddled with a new liturgy, require
the other to undertake it in his place; and in case of refusal, might
tender to him an exchange of properties, under an engagement that he
would undertake the new charge, if the property of the other were
made over to him.
[241] Respecting the Symmories, compare Boeckh,
Staats-haushaltung der Athener, iv, 9, 10; Schömann, Antiq. Jur.
Publ. Græcor. s. 78; Parreidt, De Symmoriis, p. 18 _seq._
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