Although Athens ought, according to the modern use of terms, to be called rather an aristocracy than a democracy, it seems to be certain that the men actually and habitually employed in the daily work of government bore numerically a larger proportion to the whole population in ancient Athens than they have done in any other state known to history. The whole population of Attica may have been a quarter of a million or it may have been nearly half-a-million: the citizens numbered about thirty thousand, and it is probable that at least ten thousand of them were habitually employed in the business of government: and these ten thousand may have been a twenty-fifth part and were not less than a fiftieth part of the whole population. In modern England those who are habitually employed in governing would include members of Parliament, of town councils, of county councils, and of school-boards, magistrates, judges, and the staff of all Government offices, except those persons who are mere clerks or servants: I cannot say how many they would muster, all told: but, judging from those parts of England that I know best, I should estimate them at something between a two-hundredth and a five-hundredth part of the inhabitants of the country. 4. _Democracy after the Peloponnesian War_, 404-338 B.C. In the period which followed the Peloponnesian war the poorer citizens who predominated in the assembly passed several votes to promote the pleasure and the pecuniary interests of their class. Pay was provided for every citizen who attended a meeting of the assembly or was a spectator at a religious festival and its dramatic performances. The pay was at first fixed at a low rate: before 392 B.C. it had been raised to three obols, the same sum as was paid to a dicast for a day's attendance[181]. The pay for the law courts, the assemblies, the festivals and the council came to nearly two hundred talents yearly[182]. The whole revenue of the Athenian state in the fourth century is not known: but it can scarcely have exceeded eleven or twelve hundred talents[183]: and thus it seems that about one-sixth part of it was spent in providing citizens with religious spectacles or comfortable employment. [181] The decrees granting pay for attendance at ecclesia are enumerated in Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 41. In the _Ecclesiazusæ_, first acted in 392 B.C., Chremes (at lines 381-2) says he had lost his three obols by being late for the assembly. For the allowance to citizens at religious festivals see Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 28. [182] See Boeckh, _Public Economy of Athens_, book II. ch. 13-14.