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The Institution of the Hellenotamiae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. G. Woodhead
A. G. Woodhead
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
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Extract

At the very beginning of the Delian Confederacy, in describing its organisation during the winter of 478–477 B.C., Thucydides records (i 96) that permanent arrangements were made for the collection of contributions in money from those cities which preferred to supply cash rather than ships for the furtherance of the new League's activities. These arrangements included the establishment of officials to receive, disburse, and be generally responsible for the cash funds, but Thucydides' brief account of their appointment has given rise to difficulties. He says, in the barest terms, The last four words are loosely attached to describe the office's function and are explicative of not what concerns us are the seven words before the comma.

Thucydides' phrase, with its emphatic clearly puts out of court the idea of E. M. Walker that the Hellenotamiae began when the tribute-lists began, i.e. in 454–453, when the treasury of the Confederacy was moved from Delos to Athens and Athenian control of it was more firmly secured. Walker's view was adequately refuted both by Gomme and by the authors of The Athenian Tribute Lists; it also runs contrary to the sense of Xenophon's remark (Poroi 5.5) about the acquisition of control of fleet and treasury by Athens. Since the Athenians commanded from 478, as the result of the treasurership must have been Athenian from the same date—or so, unless he be held to ignore all chronological distinctions, Xenophon clearly implies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 79 , November 1959 , pp. 149 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1959

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References

1 Meritt, B. D., Wade-Gery, H. T. and McGregor, M. F., The Athenian Tribute-Lists iii 1950Google Scholar (quoted hereafter as ATL iii) 158, 225–43.

2 Cambridge Ancient History v 41, 46, 94.

3 Commentary on Thucydides i 86, 272–3, 279.

4 ATL iii 230, with note 26.

5 So McGregor, M. F. criticising the view of Gomme noted above, in AJP lxvii (1946) 270.Google Scholar ‘Gomme is firm in his belief that the Hellenotamiae formed an Athenian magistracy from 478–477 B.C. This may be true; but it is not certain, neither is it accurate to write that “Thucydides expressly states that it was instituted, as an Athenian office, at the beginning of the League”. It was instituted by the Athenians, I venture to say, but it may have been an allied board of some sort, despite Gomme's rather casual dismissal of Walker's proposal.’

6 Cf. Walker, ‘Delian magistrates’, CAH v 46.Google Scholar

7 Histoire grecque ii (1948) 116—‘dix hellénotames, Athéniens de naissance’.

8 History of the Greek World, 479–323 B.C. (2nd ed. 1947) 6—‘Athenian too were the financial officers (ἑλληνοταμίαι).’

9 This goes back as far as Grote, (History of Greece v 359)Google Scholar, but in more recent times has been adopted by Beloch, , Griech. Gesch. ii i, 64 f.Google Scholar; Busolt-Swoboda, , Griechische Staatskunde 1132, 1341Google Scholar; Berve, , Griech. Gesch. i 270Google Scholar; Bengtson, , Griech. Gesch. 176Google Scholar; Gomme, , Commentary iGoogle Scholar, loc. cit.; Hignett, , History of the Athenian Constitution 244Google Scholar; Larsen, , Harvard Studies in Classical Philology li (1940) 186, 199Google Scholar; id., Representative Government in Greek and Roman History 60; ATL iii 230.

10 For the same reason the argument of Hammond, N. G. L. (CR n.s. viii (1958) 33)Google Scholar that the Athenians may not have been members of the Confederate synod in the same way that the Spartans were not present at the meetings of members of the Pelopon-nesian League, does not carry conviction. The assignment to Athens of a single vote, on a parity with the smallest and weakest of the participants, bore every appearance of ἰσότης and was an arrangement which would have been hailed, at the inception of the League, as worthy of the fair-mindedness of Aristides, presumably to be regarded as the brain behind the original constitution. But Athens' position, though theoretically weak, in fact proved exceptionally strong (cf. Larsen, J. A. O., Class. Phil. xliv (1949) 176–7Google Scholar), and the establishment in the fourth-century Confederacy of a συνέδριον of which Athens was expressly not a member must be seen in the light of the reaction against the abuses of the earlier League so evident in the provisions of its successor. It was clearly believed that, in the light of experience, the old Peloponnesian arrangements would prove more equitable than those of the first Delian Confederacy had turned out to be.

11 This at least is the tenor of the Mytilenæans' description in Thuc. iii 10–11.

12

Dalmeyda (Budé ed.) translates ‘par la persuasion, quand nous obtînmes que les Hellénotames préposés au Trésor commun fussent des Athéniens’, but this is not quite what Andocides says.

13 ATL iii 250. Potidaea, a possible exception in period 3, paid cash in period 4.

14 ATL iii 249.