manded from each scholar for a full course of instruction the surprising sum of $1700. Plato assures us that some of the great teachers of wisdom lived in a style "splendid to ostentation;" some of them are also said to have amassed immense fortunes; Gorgias erected in the temple of Delphi a statue of himself in solid gold. And, even after teachers had begun to bid for patronage by requiring a smaller honorary, it was a subject of general surprise and derision when Evenus placed his terms of tuition at the paltry sum $170 per pupil. Isocrates the rhetorician, with a school of one hundred pupils, realized $17000 for each full course of lectures. Plato and Aristotle are also known to have found their lectures in the Academy and the Lyceum exceedingly lucrative.

But we pass, in the second place, to examine the treasury department of the Athenian government. By whom was it administered, and by what checks was it guarded?

Athens possessed at all times a distinct and fully organized system of public finance. Few states of antiquity more fully realized the vital importance of this department; few bestowed more care upon it; yet none, perhaps, made more fatal mistakes in its administration.

The people retained in their own hands the sovereign control of the finances; their legislation prescribed the regular course of receipt and disbursement; the council, however, as their responsible agent or sub-committee, was charged with the administration of the department. But acting under this general authority, though often virtually controlling it, stood the treasurer of the public revenue, an officer corresponding in the main to the secretary of the treasury with us, or the minister of finance in most modern states. His position was one of great importance, dignity and trust; it was his duty to have the oversight of all the revenues of the state and to take cognizance of all its expenditures; to keep the people and the council informed on the condition of the treasury, and to recommend to them such measures as his superior wisdom and experience might suggest.

This high office was honored in Athens by two names,

whose lustre even the foul breath of envy and suspicion has failed to tarnish,- Aristides and Lycurgus. Both were upright; both, incorruptible. The administration of each will live in history to the latest time, as a model of fidelity and integrity in the discharge of high fiscal duties. Both were endowed with rare ability, yet Lycurgus was the superior genius; he is indeed the great financier of antiquity. For a period of twelve years he administered his department with such consummate skill, that he raised the revenues, which before had become quite inconsiderable, to the remarkable sum of $1,200,000. He enriched the city with real and substantial wealth; he built her navies and stored her arsenals; he planted her Lyceum with groves and erected a noble gymnasium within its learned bowers; he furnished her citadel with golden vessels for the solemn festivals and with golden ornaments to deck a hundred virgins for the festive trains. Under his vigorous rule, public spirit once more revived; public enterprises were carried steadily forward; and noble edifices, which had long remained in an unfinished state, at length stood before the admiring beholder in all their completeness and beauty.

In the course of his administration, $19,000,000 are said to have passed through his hands; yet there is no evidence that he ever embezzled a farthing of the public money. Though living in a corrupt age, he shared not its spirit; though defaulters as unprincipled as those of our own day were multiplying around him, the infection was powerless upon him. His periodical reports to the auditing boards were full and satisfactory, and the final detailed account of his entire fiscal administration, which was engraved on stone and exposed to public view, is said to have borne ample testimony alike to his integrity and ability.

But besides the minister of finance, there were numerous treasurers of different grades connected with this depart ment. There were ten treasurers of Athene, who, in the presence of the council, annually took into their keeping the costly possessions of the Goddess. There were also ten treasurers of the other gods, treasurers of the sacred triremes,

and treasurers, in fine, connected with all the various departments of the state.

But the most interesting feature of this financial system was the strict accountability of all its officers. Indeed, every one who had been entrusted with the least share in administering the government, with the single exception of the judges, was held to a rigid account before the proper boards. Not even the grave council of five hundred, or the venerable court of Areopagus was exempted. An Athenian citizen, after the expiration of his term of office, labored under the heaviest disabilities, until he had honorably passed the prescribed ordeal. He could neither leave the city, make his will, consecrate a votive offering, nor secure any public reward or honor.

On the day of the examination, the loud voice of the herald was heard pealing through the Agora and public squares, through the streets and lanes of the city, inviting any and all to show cause why the account should not be allowed. The registers of the controllers were carefully searched; and the various items of the account separately verified. If the report was found to be in all respects correct, it was of course accepted, after which it was engraved on stone, and exposed to public inspection. Thus with the ancient Athenians to accept a treasurer's report and place it on file, was a somewhat more imposing and formidable ceremony than with us. Not a few of the marble tablets to which these choice records were committed have been preserved, and, though but mutilated fragments from the public archives of this ancient state, they will ever remain an invaluable legacy to the student of the Athenian finance.

Thus ample and judicious were the provisions made by the Athenian constitution to ensure fidelity and honesty in the management of the public funds, yet they proved utterly powerless to check the unhallowed lust for gold. It is sad indeed to contemplate the revolting spectacles of defaulting and embezzlement, which so disgrace our own age and country; yet the ancient Athenians, with all this complicated system of checks and counter-checks, exhibit a degree of cor

ruption and fraud unparalleled in the history of modern states. Public trusts were unscrupulously violated; public moneys purloined, and even the sacred treasury of the gods perverted to the unholy uses of self and sense. Even the severe sentence which Polybius passes upon Grecian defaulting, has more of truth than of exaggeration. "When in Greece," says he, "the state entrusts her public servants with a single talent, though she may have ten controllers, the same number of seals and twice as many witnesses, she cannot insure fidelity."

Our next inquiry relates to the adjustment of the revenue to the public expenditure, a problem in political science, which the united wisdom of the past and the present has even now but imperfectly solved. Aristotle indeed presents clear and comprehensive views of the duties of a national financier; but Athens unfortunately did not always follow the guidance of her best and greatest minds. The populace, like a pampered child, became indolent and restless, and could be appeased only by indulgence and feasting. It availed little, therefore, that the great principles of a sound national policy were recognized by good and loyal statesmen; so long as they were distasteful to the multitude, they could never be made the basis of action.

The salaries of public officers at Athens were excessively low; a grave senator in the time of Pericles, if dependent upon the compensation which he received for his public services, must have supported his dignity on the daily allowance of seventeen cents. But as the state offered every citizen some place in the public service, the draft upon her coffers, for this single item in the national expenditure, cannot have been light.

All legislative power was vested in the Public Assembly. Every citizen was entitled to a seat and a vote in this body, and to a compensation of eight cents for each day of actual attendance. By this unfortunate arrangement, the people were paid for transacting their own business, paid, indeed, for governing themselves. The pittance thus received accelerated the growing indolence of a corrupt age, and, in

process of time, left the administration of government in the hands of an idle and unprincipled populace.

Prof. Boeckh estimates the average attendance of the public assembly at eight thousand. On the basis of this calculation the annual expense to the state for the fifty regular sessions of the year must have been about $34,000.

The council of Five Hundred, though often called the Senate, was really but a standing committee to prepare the business for the assembly. Its members received each a drachma (17 cents) per day, and, as it was almost daily in session, it must have cost the state some $25,000 per annum. The gross expenditure, therefore, of the Athenian republic or the legislative department, embracing the assembly and the council, was almost $60,000,-a şum quite too large for a state whose entire population, bond and free, would not exceed five hundred thousand. The principle of representative legislation, which in all free governments now so successfully economizes both time and money, was unknown to the ancient Athenian.

But a far heavier item in the public expenditure of this ancient state is found in the cost of maintaining her popular

It is well known that the organization of the Athenian judiciary was peculiar. Six thousand citizens were annually drawn by lot, and organized into ten distinct courts, where they discharged the two-fold office of judge and juror. Athens became the court-town for all countries in alliance with her. Her numerous confederates, whether dwelling in the neighboring islands of the Ægean or on the remote coasts of Thrace and the Hellespont, were all required to enter their suits before her courts. Law became the common profession of her citizens; and her streets were thronged with multitudes of half-bred declaimers, pettifoggers, and knaves. The courts of justice annually cost the state $150,000.

The pay of other officers under government must have been in the aggregate quite considerable; but our limits forbid us to attempt an estimate.

Public festivals formed a heavy charge upon the state. Religious festivity enters largely into every picture of Hel