Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 1

Yet while recognising all these charms and advantages, Xenophon finds himself compelled to lament great poverty among the citizens; which poverty (he says) is often urged by the leading men as an excuse for unjust proceedings. Accordingly he comes forward with various financial suggestions, by means of which he confidently anticipates that every Athenian citizen may obtain a comfortable maintenance from the public.97

First, he dwells upon the great advantage of encouraging metics, or foreigners resident at Athens, each of whom paid an annual capitation tax to the treasury. There were already many such, not merely Greeks, but Orientals also, Lydians, Phrygians, Syrians, &c.:98 and by judicious encouragement all expatriated men everywhere might be made to prefer the agreeable residence at Athens, thus largely increasing the annual amount of the tax. The metics ought (he says) to be exempted from military service (which the citizens ought to perform and might perform alone), but to be admitted to the honours of the equestrian duty, whenever they were rich enough to afford it: and farther, to be allowed the liberty of purchasing land and building houses in the city. Moreover not merely resident metics, but also foreign merchants who came as visitors, conducting an extensive commerce — ought to be flattered by complimentary votes and occasional hospitalities: while the curators of the harbour, whose function it was to settle disputes among them, should receive prizes if they adjudicated equitably and speedily.99

All this (Xenophon observes) will require only friendly and considerate demonstrations. His farther schemes are more ambitious, not to be effected without a large outlay. He proposes to raise an ample fund for the purposes of the city, by voluntary contributions; which he expects to obtain not merely from private Athenians and metics, rich and in easy circumstances — but also from other cities, and even from foreign despots, kings, satraps, &c. The tempting inducement will be, that the names of all contributors with their respecting contributions will be inscribed on public tablets, and permanently commemorated as benefactors of the city.100 Contributors (he says) are found, for the outfit of a fleet, where they expect no return: much more will they come forward here, where a good return will accrue. The fund so raised will be employed under public authority with the most profitable result, in many different ways. The city will build docks and warehouses for bonding goods — houses near the harbour to be let to merchants — merchant-vessels to be let out on freight. But the largest profit will be obtained by working the silver mines at Laureion in Attica.

The city will purchase a number of foreign slaves, and will employ them under the superintendence of old free citizens who are past the age of labour, partly in working these mines for public account, each of the ten tribes employing one tenth part of the number — partly by letting them out to private mining undertakers, at so much per diem for each slave: the slaves being distinguished by a conspicuous public stamp, and the undertaker binding himself under penalty always to restore the same number of them as he received.101 Such competition between the city and the private mining undertakers will augment the total produce, and will be no loss to either, but wholesome for both. The mines will absorb as many workmen as are put into them: for in the production of silver (Xenophon argues) there can never be any glut, as there is sometimes in corn, wine, or oil. Silver is always in demand, and is not lessened in value by increase of quantity. Every one is anxious to get it, and has as much pleasure in hoarding it under ground as in actively employing it.102 The scheme, thus described, may (if found necessary) be brought into operation by degrees, a certain number of slaves being purchased annually until the full total is made up. From these various financial projects, and especially from the fund thus employed as capital under the management of the Senate, the largest returns are expected.

Amidst the general abundance which will ensue, the religious festivals will be celebrated with increased splendour — the temples will be repaired, the docks and walls will be put in complete order — the priests, the Senate, the magistrates, the horsemen, will receive the full stipends which the old custom of Athens destined for them.103 But besides all these, the object which Xenophon has most at heart will be accomplished: the poor citizens will be rescued from poverty. There will be a regular distribution among all citizens, per head and equally. Three oboli, or half a drachma, will be allotted daily to each, to poor and rich alike. For the poor citizens, this will provide a comfortable subsistence, without any contribution on their part: the poverty now prevailing will thus be alleviated. The rich, like the poor, receive the daily triobolon as a free gift: but if they even compute it as interest for their investments, they will find that the rate of interest is full and satisfactory, like the rate on bottomry. Three oboli per day amount in the year of 360 days to 180 drachmæ: now if a rich man has contributed ten minæ ( = 1000 drachmæ), he will thus receive interest at the rate of 18 per cent. per annum: if another less rich citizen has contributed one mina ( = 100 drachmæ), he will receive interest at the rate of 180 per cent. per annum: more than he could realise in any other investment.104

Half a drachma, or three oboli, per day, was the highest rate of pay ever received (the rate varied at different times) by the citizens as Dikasts and Ekklesiasts, for attending in judicature or in assembly. It is this amount of pay which Xenophon here proposes to ensure to every citizen, without exception, out of the public treasury; which (he calculates) would be enriched by his project so as easily to bear such a disbursement. He relieves the poor citizens from poverty by making them all pensioners on the public treasury, with or without service rendered, or the pretence of service. He strains yet farther the dangerous principle of the Theôrikon, without the same excuse as can be shown for the Theôrikon itself on religious grounds.105 If such a proposition had been made by Kleon, Hyperbolus, Kleophon, Agyrrhius, &c., it would have been dwelt upon by most historians of Greece as an illustration of the cacoethes of democracy — to extract money, somehow or other, from the rich, for the purpose of keeping the poor in comfort. Not one of the democratical leaders, so far as we know, ever ventured to propose so sweeping a measure: we have it here from the pen of the oligarchical Xenophon.

But we must of course discuss Xenophon’s scheme as a whole: the aggregate enlargement of revenue, from his various visionary new ways and means, on one side — against the new mode and increased amount of expenditure, on the other side. He would not have proposed such an expenditure, if he had not thoroughly believed in the correctness of his own anticipations, both as to the profits of the mining scheme, and as to the increase of receipts from other sources: such as the multiplication of tax-paying Metics, the rent paid by them for the new houses to be built by the city, the increase of the harbour dues from expanded foreign trade. But of these anticipations, even the least unpromising are vague and uncertain: while the prospects of the mining scheme appear thoroughly chimerical. Nothing is clear or certain except the disbursement. We scarcely understand how Xenophon could seriously have imagined, either that voluntary contributors could have been found to subscribe the aggregate fund as he proposes — or that, if subscribed, it could have yielded the prodigious return upon which he reckons. We must, however, recollect that he had no familiarity with finance, or with the conditions and liabilities of commerce, or with the raising of money from voluntary contributors for any collective purpose. He would not have indulged in similar fancies if the question had been about getting together supplies for an army.

Practical Athenian financiers would probably say, in criticising his financial project — what Heraldus106 observes upon some views of his opponent Salmasius, about the relations of capital and interest in Attica — “Somnium est hominis harum rerum, etiam cum vigilat, nihil scientis”.107 The financial management of Athens was doubtless defective in many ways: but it would not have been improved in the hands of Xenophon — any more than the administrative and judiciary department of Athens would have become better under the severe regimen of Plato.108 The merits of the Sokratic companions — and great merits they were — lay in the region of instructive theory.

Xenophon accompanies his financial scheme with a strong recommendation to his countrymen that they should abstain from warlike enterprises and maintain peace with every one. He expatiates on the manifest advantages, nay, even on the necessity, of continued peace, under the actual poverty of the city: for the purpose of recruiting the exhausted means of the citizens, as well as of favouring his own new projects for the improvement of finance and commerce. While he especially deprecates any attempt on the part of Athens to regain by force her lost headship over the Greeks, he at the same time holds out hopes that this dignity would be spontaneously tendered to her, if, besides abstaining from all violence, she conducted herself with a liberal and conciliatory spirit towards all: if she did her best to adjust differences among other cities, and to uphold the autonomy of the Delphian temple.109 As far as we can judge, such pacific exhortations were at that time wise and politic. Athens had just then concluded peace (355 B.C.) after the three years of ruinous and unsuccessful war, called the Social War, carried on against her revolted allies Chios, Kos, Rhodes, and Byzantium. To attempt the recovery of empire by force was most mischievous. There was indeed one purpose, for which she was called upon by a wise forecast to put forth her strength — to check the aggrandisement of Philip in Macedonia. But this was a distant purpose: and the necessity, though it became every year more urgent, was not so prominently manifest110 in 355 B.C. as to affect the judgment of Xenophon.

At that early day, Demosthenes himself did not see the danger from Macedonia: his first Philippic was delivered in 351 B.C., and even then his remonstrances, highly creditable to his own forecast, made little impression on others. But when we read the financial oration De Symmoriis we appreciate his sound administrative and practical judgment; compared with the benevolent dreams and ample public largess in which Xenophon here indulges.111

We have seen that Plato died in 347 B.C., having reached the full age of eighty: Xenophon must have attained the same age nearly, and may perhaps have attained it completely — though we do not know the exact year of his death. With both these two illustrious companions of Sokrates, the point of view is considerably modified in their last compositions as compared to their earlier. Xenophon shows the alteration not less clearly than Plato, though in an opposite direction. His discourse on the Athenian revenues differs quite as much from the Anabasis, Cyropædia, and Œkonomikus — as the Leges and Epinomis differ from any of Plato’s earlier works. Whatever we may think of the financial and commercial anticipations of Xenophon, his pamphlet on the Athenian revenues betokens a warm sympathy for his native city — a genuine appreciation of her individual freedom and her many-sided intellectual activity — an earnest interest in her actual career, and even in the extension of her commercial and manufacturing wealth. In these respects it recommends itself to our feelings more than the last Platonic production — Leges and Epinomis — composed nearly at the same time, between 356-347 B.C.

While Xenophon in old age, becoming reconciled to his country, forgets his early passion for the Spartan drill and discipline, perpetual, monotonous, unlettered — we find in the senility of Plato a more cramping limitation of the varieties of human agency — a stricter compression, even of individual thought and speech, under the infallible official orthodoxy — a more extensive use of the pædagogic rod and the censorial muzzle than he had ever proposed before.