Wallinga, 'Financing the Athenian Fleet. Public Taxation and Social Relations', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9506
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9506-wallinga-financing

@@@@95.6.9, Gabrielsen, Financing the Athenian Fleet

Vincent Gabrielsen, <i>Financing the Athenian Fleet. Public
Taxation and Social Relations.</i> Baltimore and London: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Pp. XVII, 306. $45.00. ISBN
0-8018-4692-7.  
     Herman T. Wallinga -- University of Utrecht

     The financing of the Athenian navy and of its operations is
very imperfectly known. Our documentation--reports and remarks of
historians and orators, and the records on stone of the naval
boards (the latter with few exceptions restricted to the period
377-323/22)--never encompasses the whole of the expenses. While
it is clear that an often considerable share was devolved upon
the rich citizens of Athens, who served as commanders
(trierarchoi) of the ships, no case is known where we can
estimate with any confidence what proportion this share was of
the total outlay. Again, it is certain that as long as the Delian
league was a going concern the tribute of the allies covered
naval expenses to a great extent and that the loss of this income
considerably aggravated the laying under contribution of the
trierarchs, but we cannot figure out the shifts involved with any
certainty. Also, it is evident from our information on naval
strength and on the effects of Athenian naval policy that
Athenian naval power in the fourth century was in effect much
reduced, even if the number of ships remained comparable to that
of the golden times of the Empire; it is evident also that this
reduction is mainly to be explained by the lack of imperial
income, but again it is well-nigh impossible to weigh the impact
of all the factors involved. 

     Although many problems implicit in this situation receive
notice in this volume, it must be said that the author
concentrates on one element almost to the exclusion of all
others, namely the financial contributions exacted from wealthy
citizens in connection with the trierarchy, including the history
of this institution itself. After an introductory discussion of
'Concepts and Aims' and 'Sources', a chapter on the establishment
of the institution and on the pre-Themistoklean naval
organization opens the book; then the qualifications for the
trierarchy are examined under the headings 'Qualification by
Wealth', 'Appointment' and 'Exemption'; further the financial
responsibilities of the trierarchs with respect to the crew, the
ship and its equipment; finally the institutional transformations
such as the establishment of the syntrierarchy and Periandros'
and Demosthenes' reforms. Detailed and differentiated evidence is
available only for the period 377 to 323/22: on this period
therefore the attention is fixed, on the whole to the great
enrichment of the scholarly discussion.  

     The general tenor of the argument is that during the period
just mentioned Athenian policy regarding the funding of the navy
did not lead to heavy-handed exploitation of the rich, and that
the state authorities manoeuvred very carefully in order to
maintain sufficient willingness to shoulder the burdens involved.
The demonstration on several accounts that this was so is one of
the most interesting features of the book. No definite money
value, for instance, was attached to the trierarchy. Real costs
were indeed very variable, depending on the trierarch's readiness
to spend and on the upkeep requirements of individual ships. But
the reason to avoid attaching a definite price to the trierarchy
was the undesirability of limiting the number of potential
trierarchs by enabling the unwilling to 'prove' their
non-liability (52). Wealth-concealment is shown to have been a
much-used trick in this context (53ff.), which the authorities
were unable to eradicate. This is why a fiction of voluntariness
was upheld and why acclaim and honour remained vital elements in
the strategies adopted to countervail the adverse effects of such
malpractices (59). Regular exemption for two years instead of one
(conjectured!) after the discharge of a trierarchy is likewise
seen as a concession because of the laboriousness of the task
(86: this explanation though not implausible is in my view
unnecessary: the two-year dispensation may well go back to the
peace-time routine of the pentekontaetia when no more than 60
ships were active most years). Very interesting is the
demonstration (91ff.) that antidosis also functioned in this
context because it ensured that a man's absence from the
trierarchic class--e.g. thanks to wealth-concealment --would not
last long. The author convincingly argues that the antidosis thus
was a sophisticated mechanism for the state to exert (indirect)
control over the trierarchic class. Important is the argument
that there was a steady tendency away from service on the basis
of personal liability via collective liability to pure taxation.
This is demonstrated in several contexts, most interestingly in
the case of compensatory payments for hulls (141ff.). The
delicacy of the relationship between the state authorities and
the trierarchic class is vividly illustrated once again in the
chapter devoted to the recovery of naval debts and the treatment
of debtors (158ff.), where the circumspection of the authorities
and the leniency with which naval debtors were treated are justly
emphasized (162ff.). 

     All this is very excellent and even when not wholly
convincing always stimulating. I would in particular single out
for praise the excellent remarks on the incessant shortages of
equipment (ch.7), which, even if they do not furnish an adequate
explanation of what was clearly a most embarrassing evil, are a
very enlightening summary of our documentation. The study of the
trierarchy as a fiscal institution has been very well served
here.  

     But there is another side to this medal. As an exposition of
the financing of the Athenian navy, as distinct from the funding
of individual triremes, the book has serious defects. As noticed
already, where the financial contribution of the state is
concerned, the evidence is very deficient and a complete picture
therefore an illusion, but G. ought at least to have framed a
rough hypothesis, or model, concerning the totality of naval
finance in the perspective of which the trierarchs' contribution
could meaningfully be assessed. Failure seriously to address this
problem has led to, or in any case not prevented, unguarded
assertions, such as the optimistic claim 'that with the exception
of the three decades following the defeat of 404 the naval
strength <!> of Athens remained remarkably stable' (129), as if
the number of hulls available --which was indeed not much reduced
in the 4th century--was the only factor that mattered. Likewise
the very superficial view is expressed that the funding of the
navy in the fourth century differed from that in the fifth only
in so far as the trierarchs' share became larger (116) and it is
loosely asserted (but in no case really substantiated) that 'some
but not all of my conclusions may safely be extrapolated to apply
to the fifth century' (12). As far as I can see, the implications
of the difference the allied tribute made for the level of
readiness and efficiency of the navy are never squarely faced.  

     Moreover, like many writers on ancient sea-power G. writes
as if the only function of triremes was that of operational units
in active naval warfare and that for this reason oar crews had
invariably to be complete, to me a totally unrealistic view. It
leads him to reject Plutarch's report on Perikles' peace-time
patrols, the only element in the tradition that can
satisfactorily explain why the Persians could not seriously
attempt to re-establish their fleet in the Aegean (111 and n.13:
the note is very misleading). Like its modern counterparts, the
Athenian navy, as long as an equal opponent was lacking, had
primarily the political function of flag-showing and of keeping
the allies in line (not to speak of such tasks as argyrologia),
for which full crews were not essential.  

     The 'peculiar characteristics' of the trireme, i.e. its huge
crews, are indeed adduced as the decisive argument against the
possibility of mastery of the seas, thalassokratia, which is said
to have been impossible to achieve (5).  This notion, just as
unrealistic as its basis, the invariably full crews, is of course
utterly belied by the history of the pentekontaetia: in those
years the Athenian empire did wield thalassokratia in its own
domain. This was so self-evident and imposing a phenomenon that
the theory came up, silly indeed but nevertheless plausible to
(near-)contemporaries, that there had been an unbroken series of
thalassokratores before the Athenian empire (Euseb. <i>Chron</i>.
I 225 Schoene; cf. L.H. Jeffery, Archaic Greece (1976), 252- 54).


     Three minor points: G. has the strange idea that the fleet's
size was frequently <!> maintained or enlarged by the capture of
enemy ships' (131 and n.15), but this is not really confirmed in
the literature quoted and in my view intrinsically improbable, no
ancient source ever stating or clearly implying anything of the
kind. His notion that the sending out without funds of fourth
century commanders is to be explained as a consequence of 'a
general tendency to divert a good deal of the naval expenditure
from the state coffers' (117) neatly stands the matter on its
head. And very shortsighted is his presumption that in operations
where the navy was involved, such as the siege of Samos and the
intervention in Korkyra, the war chest was wholly expended on
naval pay (115).  

     But what is most disappointing is G.'s treatment of the
early history of the Athenian navy. This chapter (19-39) simply
bristles with dubious assumptions and interpretations, leading to
conclusions which flagrantly contradict the vital testimony of
Thukydides and common sense. G.'s central thesis is that the
Athenian navy slowly developed, being still 'comparatively small'
'prior to the final years of the 480s' (19). Thukydides on the
contrary insists that it was insignificant (brachea: I 14.2) up
to the time of Dareios' death in 486, while the Herodotean
evidence can be combined with Thukydides' judgment in the thesis
that Themistokles' navy bill of 483 was a totally unexpected
development, a true revolution. In the face of Thukydides'
verdict, all attempts to make the pre-483 Athenian fleets of 50
ships mentioned in the tradition analogous if smaller to the navy
which fought the battles of Artemision and Salamis must be
considered futile. Around the 490s Athenian sea-power consisted
of a navy of two ships and 50 (before Kleisthenes 48) auxiliary
(merchant) galleys, furnished by shipowners entitled naukraroi in
this context and heading organizations called naukrariai. G.
tries to get rid of the evidence concerning the naukraroi: he
starts from B. Keil's all too facile epigram 'Wo die Flotte,
keine Spur der Naukrarien; wo die Naukrarie, keine Spur der
Flotte' and is clearly unaware of Wilamowitz' less facile
comments, which convincingly determined the make-up of the early
fleets which I just paraphrased (cf. <i>Aristoteles und Athen</i>
(1893), II 165 n.52). He throws suspicion on the testimonies of
the lexicographers, who link the naukraroi with the fleet, and
accuses Pollux of adding 'purely speculative and improbable
accretions to the narrative of <i>Athenaion Politeia</i>' (23),
whereas Pollux is just as likely to have derived good information
from the Atthidographers as 'Aristotle'. The derivation of the
word naukraros from the roots nau ('ship') and kara ('head'),
which is accepted in the etymological dictionaries of Frisk and
Chantrane, is gainsaid on the basis of very flimsy linguistic
arguments (24). But at the same time G. recognizes--not very
clearly--an original organization which consisted of 'the
traditional proprietors of ships' <and their ships> and 'public
vessels', the number of the latter gradually increasing during
the slow development he assumes for the time before 483 (34). In
this perspective his jettisoning of the naukraroi is difficult to
understand. 

     In this connection one very good point is made in the remark
(33-34) that the creation of the institution of the ship liturgy
(which only after 483 became the trierarchy) could be connected
with the purchase by the Athenians of 20 Corinthian ships
(certainly not triremes, as G. thinks). Clearly this drastic,
more than tenfold enlargement of the state navy could not be
organized after the model of the two original public ships. From
that moment on the Athenian state had need of a new institutional
framework for the exploitation of these twenty ships. Here
liturgists may have been called in. 

     The book is splendidly produced. There are very few
misprints: read 431/0 for 331/0 (132), Perdiccas for -dicas
(140), prytaneis for -ies (233 n.6), K.J. Beloch for J.K.B. (239
n.13). The general index is rather meagre. Regarding his main
concern, the Athenian system of ship funding, G. presents a
picture which is very carefully thought out and exemplarily
presented; it will no doubt stimulate debate and further
research.