Hans Van Wees

Ships and Silver, Taxes and Tribute

A Fiscal History of Archaic Athens

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Historians since Herodotus and Thucydides have claimed that the year 483 BCE marked a turning point in the history of Athens. For it was then that Themistocles mobilized the revenues from the city's highly productive silver mines to build an enormous war fleet. This income stream is thought to have become the basis of Athenian imperial power, the driving force behind its democracy and the centre of its system of public finance. But in his groundbreaking new book, Hans van Wees argues otherwise. He shows that Themistocles did not transform Athens, but merely expanded a navy-centred system of public finance that had already existed at least a generation before the general's own time, and had important precursors at least a century earlier. The author reconstructs the scattered evidence for all aspects of public finance, in archaic Greece at large and early Athens in particular, to reveal that a complex machinery of public funding and spending was in place as early as the reforms of Solon in 594 BCE. Public finance was in fact a key factor in the rise of the early Athenian state - long before Themistocles, the empire and democracy.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. November 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 218mm x 136mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 246g
• ISBN-13: 9781784534325
• ISBN-10: 1784534323
• Artikelnr.: 42834194

Autorenporträt

Hans van Wees is Reader in Ancient History at University College London. He is the author of Status Warriors: War, Violence, and Society in Homer and History, editor of War and Violence in Ancient Greece and joint editor of the Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare.

Inhaltsangabe

contents 1. A FISCAL HISTORY OF ATHENS: WHY AND HOW? Public finance and the
legend of Themistocles Public finance and the Athenian state Public finance
and the Athenian economy 2. ATHENS IN CONTEXT: Public finance in archaic
Greece Before Solon: heroic precedents Beyond Athens: late archaic
inscriptions and oral traditions Outside Greece: the impact of Persian
expansion 3. HAM-COLLECTORS AND OTHER financial institutions Treasurers,
Ham-Collectors, Sellers and Receivers Naukraroi and naukrariai: the
evidence Captains and Captaincies: an interpretation 4. SHIPS, SOLDIERS AND
SACRIFICES: Public spending Ships Ships' crews and soldiers Cult,
hospitality and other expenses 5. TAXES, TOLLS AND TRIBUTE: Public revenue
The 'contribution' (eisphora) under Solon and the tyrants The eisphora
after Cleisthenes Hippias' levies and liturgies Other revenues: trade,
silver mines and tribute 6. From oxen to silver to coins: Media of public
finance Measures of weight and volume before Solon Measures of value before
Solon Pheidon, Solon and after: archaic reforms of measures Wappen, Gorgons
and Owls: coinage in archaic Athens Coinage, public spending and economic
development 7. Conclusion: Public finance and the state in archaic Athens
APPENDIX: Persian naval expansion and the Ionian cities Bibliography Index