Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens

by: Pritchard, D.M.

In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and “the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians.” This view of the Athenians? misplaced priorities became orthodoxy with the publication of August Böckh?s 1817 book Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener [The Public Economy of Athens], which criticized the classical Athenian dēmos for spending more on festivals than on wars and for levying unjust taxes to pay for their bloated government. But were the Athenians? priorities really as misplaced as ancient and modern historians believed?

Drawing on lines of evidence not available in Böckh?s time, Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens calculates the real costs of religion, politics, and war to settle the long-standing debate about what the ancient Athenians valued most highly. David M. Pritchard explains that, in Athenian democracy, voters had full control over public spending. When they voted for a bill, they always knew its cost and how much they normally spent on such bills. Therefore, the sums they chose to spend on festivals, politics, and the armed forces reflected the order of the priorities that they had set for their state. By calculating these sums, Pritchard convincingly demonstrates that it was not religion or politics but war that was the overriding priority of the Athenian people.

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Preface
1. Public-Spending Debates
Festivals and Wars
Democracy
The Period of Eighty Years for Comparing Costs
The Democratic Control of Public Spending
The Synopsis of the Book
2. The Cost of Festivals
The Cost of the Great Panathenaea
The Relative Scale of the Rest of the Festival Program
The Full Cost of Festivals
3. The Cost of Democracy
Jurors
Councilors
Assemblygoers
Magistrates
Undersecretaries
Public Slaves
Gold Crowns
Settling the Böckh-Jones Debate
4. The Cost of War
Public Spending on the Armed Forces in the 420s
Military Spending in the Rest of the Peloponnesian War
The Full Cost of the Armed Forces in the 370s
Military Spending in the 460s
5. Conclusion: Public-Spending Priorities
Notes
Works Cited
Index of Sources
General Index

Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens

by: Pritchard, D.M.

• ISBN-13: 9781477311349 / 978-1-4773-1134-9
• ISBN-03: 1477311343 / 1-4773-1134-3
• University of Texas Press, Austin, 2016