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ARTICLE VIII.

THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF THE ATHENIANS.1

BY PROF. ALBERT HARKNESS, BROWN UNIVERSITY.

AMONG the countless publications of our day, few possess enough of real and permanent value to give promise of ever becoming standard works. That is a rare book which reveals any great truth, or even presents a thorough and impartial discussion of any important subject. Accordingly, the appearance of a truly great work, in any leading department of letters or science, is a subject for general congratulation. Scholars throughout the world hail it alike as an invaluable contribution to the treasury of knowledge, and as a vast accession to their facilities for future research. Boeckh's Staatshaushaltung der Athener is a noble specimen of this class of works. Conceived and executed in the very best style of German scholarship, it marks an era in the study of classical antiquity. Its accomplished author brings to his arduous task a mind gifted with the choicest natural endowments, trained to the highest culture, and stored with the richest treasures of learning. He has, moreover, no favorite theory to establish; he is not the paid advocate, striving with special pleadings to save a desperate cause; but the impartial judge, calmly weighing the claims of truth and justice. Steadily he pursues his investigations. Does he discover heroic patriotism or noble magnanimity, the just meed of praise springs spontaneously from his generous heart; does he lay bare the dark immorality of a corrupt and depraved populace? his moral nature rising before us in all its truthfulness pronounces the stern sentence of unqulified condemnation.

1 Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, von August Böckh. Zweite Ausgabe. Berlin: Bei G. Reimer. 1851.

The Public Economy of the Athenians, with Notes and a copious Index, by Augustus Bocekh. Translated from the second German edition, by Anthony Lamb. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. London: Sampson Low, Son and Co. 1857.

This work, as every scholar knows, is the most thorough and complete investigation of the public economy of the ancient Athenians ever attempted. Free from vague generalities, it gives us not empty declamation, but substantial fact; not mere assertion, but reliable proof. It has long been the standard authority on all subjects discussed in its pages; and yet we must not expect to find its pictures of Athenian life complete and full; in many instances indeed, we have only the rude outline, and neither the classic page nor the ancient inscription furnishes us a single hint, by which we may complete the picture. The artist has wisely left his work at the very point where the light of history failed him; he knew but too well that, though the imagination might conceive a beautiful painting, it could not produce a truthful portrait.

The work, though published in 1817, underwent no important revision until 1851, when the present enlarged and improved edition made its appearance. A full generation had already passed away since the work was first offered to the world, a generation more distinguished for profound archæological research than any which had preceded it. The ancient inscriptions had been subjected to the most searching scrutiny, and the information thus elicited on many abstruse and puzzling questions of antiquity, had modified not a few of the received opinions of scholars. But no one better understood these results, or had indeed done more to reach them than the learned author of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum. At his bidding, defaced and mutilated slabs reclaimed from the accumulated rubbish of centuries, had brought forth their precious records, and disclosed the secrets which had so long been buried with them. Accordingly, when Boeckh put his hand a second time to his great work on the Athenian finances, the world of scholars turned to him in expectation of great results. They well knew that all the dross would be purged out by this second refining, and that much pure metal, brought up by the labors of a generation from the exhaustless mines of ancient lore, would be added to its rich stores. These expectations were

abundantly realized. Mr. Lamb, therefore, has judged not wrongly in thinking that a new translation, founded on this greatly improved edition, would be a valuable and an acceptable contribution to American scholarship. The translation of Sir G. C. Lewis, published in London some years since, was of course based on the first edition of the original work, and is thus an entire generation behind the present state of antiquarian research.

In placing this remarkable production of Professor Boeckh, enriched as it now is by the latest efforts of German scholarship, within the reach of all who speak the English tongue, Mr. Lamb has performed an invaluable service alike for the student of antiquity and for the general reader. The work is rich in facts which every American citizen desires to know. A faithful exhibition of the Athenian polity, an unvarnished record portraying the elements alike of strength and weakness in that most famed of ancient commonwealths, can never be to us an object of indifference, so long as our own destinies are identified with the fortunes of a great republic. Our English literature, moreover, is sadly wanting in great works on classical antiquity; we hail, therefore, every honest effort to relieve our poverty by the importation of foreign learning in the form of scholarlike translations, as a noble act of public charity.

The extreme difficulty of making a translation, at once elegant and faithful, of a work like the present, can be fully appreciated only by those who have made the experiment. Prof. Boeckh's investigations on the Athenian finances are so profound and thorough, so replete with nice discriminations, and so compacted with minute details, that it is almost impossible to re-produce them in a foreign tongue. The work is so thoroughly German that it is difficult to force it, without distortion, into the strait proportions of the English garb. Mr. Lamb has displayed both scholarship and skill in surmounting these obstacles, and has performed his task with the most conscientious fidelity. Well may we congratulate him on the success which has attended his efforts. We could scarcely express a higher wish for the cause of VOL. XV. No. 57.

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classical studies in our land than by bespeaking an extensive sale for this work. Let the student of Demosthenes and Homer scan well these garnered treasures, which scholarship has patiently gleaned from the distant shores of antiquity; and let the young American, as he looks with fond and hopeful gaze to his country's future, pause a brief moment, and ponder the lessons of Athenian experience.

Guided by the learned researches of Prof. Boeckh, we purpose briefly to examine the Financial System of the ancient Athenians.

Political economy recognizes no more powerful agency in promoting the material prosperity of nations than the division of labor. This of course involves exchange, and the consequent necessity of some convenient circulating medium. Thus the currency of a people becomes no mean index of their civilization.

The basis of the Athenian currency was silver. This was worked without seigniorage and without alloy, so far at least as the imperfect state of the refiner's art would allow. Athens nobly decreed that her coinage should derive its full nominal value from the metal which it contained, and that the metal, moreover, should be used in the purest possible state. From this generous policy she never intentionally departed in practice, if we except an abortive attempt once made, in imitation of other Grecian States, to introduce a debased coinage for home circulation, an attempt which was visited with such an outburst of popular indignation, that no Athenian citizen ever after dared to propose the unholy project of tampering with that pure currency which had long been the basis both of the public credit and of the commercial greatness of the nation.

Some of the specimens of Athenian coins, which have been tested, are found to contain 99 of pure silver; and the average standard given by Wurm' is, 97, a degree of purity unequalled in the currencies of modern times. Even the English coins are alloyed some eight per cent., the American and the French, ten per cent.

As quoted by Boeckh.

But again, the coins struck at Athens were not only of rare purity, but of full weight. For many centuries they were made to conform, with comparatively slight deviations, to the standard established by Solon. How unlike this has been the history of most national currencies. The as, the basis of the Roman coinage, was originally a pound of copper, but, having been from time to time reduced in weight without change of name, it at last contained only half an ounce, and possessed of course but one twenty-fourth of its original value. The silver coins of England have been changed, according to a recent authority, no less than nineteen times within the last eight centuries, and, with two unimportant exceptions, have in each instance lost in value. The French livre contained in the time of Charlemagne, a pound of silver, while at present it has scarcely one-eightieth of that amount; indeed, such was the depreciation of the French coins in the reign of Philip VI., that an ingenious French writer sees in the disasters of Cressy and Poitiers only the legitimate results of a debased currency. This, he says, had so crippled the once powerful chivalry of France, that it was no longer able to take the field with men and horses properly appointed, and was accordingly obliged to yield before its more fortunate foe.

In view of this almost universal practice of debasing currency, the noble example of the Athenians, in guarding the purity of their national coinage as the exponent of commercial integrity and honor, challenges our admiration.

If now we inquire what relation this currency sustained to the various forms of property, we shall find that, though prices were very much higher at Athens than in other portions of Greece, they yet ranged exceedingly low, in comparison with those now current throughout the civilized world. The reason is obvious. The ancient Greeks possessed but little gold and silver; and no small proportion even of that was locked up in public treasuries, or lay idle as votive offerings in the temples of the gods. The Athenian treasury upon the Acropolis contained in its public coffers no less than $9,700,000 in coined silver, while the colossal statue of

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