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The ‘Kallias decrees’(IG i3 52) and the inventories of Athena's treasure in the Parthenon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Loren J. Samons II
Loren J. Samons II
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

Athenian officials in the fifth century maintained careful records of treasure owned by their gods, and of the expenditures and receipts of sacred moneys and dedications. These records are conventionally divided into two main types: (i) ‘inventories’ or annual lists of the treasure located in a particular repository, and (ii) ‘accounts’ or documents recording the receipts and expenditures (or loans) of sacred treasuries over a given period. A few documents seem to combine both these elements, and have been called ‘accounts-inventories’ In a well-known example, Athena's treasurers maintained records of valuable items located in three cellae of the building moderns call the Parthenon. Moreover, they published their records of these items in three separate series of inscriptions, one each dedicated to the pronaos, the hekatompedos and the parthenon; these records are conventionally referred to as the ‘inventories’ of Athena's treasure and are extant from 434/3.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , May 1996 , pp. 91 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1996

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References

1 References to the following works are made in abbreviated form: Aleshire, S., The Athenian Askkpion (Amsterdam, 1989);Google ScholarBradeen, D. W, ‘The Kallias Decrees Again’ GRBS 12 (1971), 469–83;Google ScholarDevelin, R., ‘From Panathenaia to Panathenaia’ ZPE(1984), 133–8;Google ScholarFerguson, W. S, The Treasurers of Athena (Cambridge, MA, 1932);CrossRefGoogle ScholarFornara, C. W, ‘The Date of the Callias Decrees’ GRBS 11 (1970), 185–96;Google ScholarKallet-Marx, L, ‘The Kallias Decree, Thucydides, and the Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War’ CQ 39 (1989), 94–113;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLinders, T, The Treasurers of the Other Gods in Athens and their Functions, Beitr. zur klass. Phil. 62 (Meisenheim am Glan, 1975);Google ScholarMattingly, H. B, ‘The Financial Decrees of Kallias (IG i2 91/2)’ PACA 7 (1964), 35–55; id.,Google Scholar‘Athenian Finance in the Peloponnesian War’ BCH 92 (1968), 450–85; id., ‘The Mysterious 3000 Talents of the First Kallias Decree’ GRBS 16 (1975), 15–22; id., ‘Some Fifth-Century Attic Epigraphic Hands’ ZPE 83 (1990), 110–22;Google ScholarMeiggs, R and Lewis, D, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1969) [ML];Google ScholarMeiggs, T., The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1972) [AE];Google ScholarMeritt, B. D, Athenian Financial Documents of the Fifth Century (Ann Arbor, 1932) [AFD]; id.,CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘Note on the Decrees of Kallias’ AJP 55 (1934), 263–72;Google ScholarMeritt, B. D, Wade-Gery, H. T and M. F. McGregor, The Athenian Tribute Lists, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA, and Princeton, 1939–53) [ATL];Google ScholarEd., Meyer, Forschungen zur alien Geschichte, vol.ii (Halle, 1899);Google ScholarThompson, W. E, ‘Notes on Athenian Finance’ CM 28 (1967), 216–39; id., ‘Internal Evidence for the Date of the Kallias Decrees’ SO 48 (1973), 24–46;Google ScholarWade-Gery, H. T, ‘The Financial Decrees of Kallias (IG I2, 91–2)’ JHS 51 (1931), 57–85;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWade-Gery, H. T and Meritt, B. D, ‘The Decrees of Kallias’ Hesperia 16 (1947), 279–86;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWest, A. B, ‘The Two Callias Decrees’ AJA 38 (1934), 390–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Or ‘inventories-accounts’ on the terminology see especially Ferguson, pp. 16 n. 1,96ff.; for the distinction between inventories and accounts see also Thompson (1967), 225–6 with n. 42. For a later period cf. Aleshire, p. 364.

2 3 IG i3292–362.

4 See Thompson (1973), 44 n. 70, who states that ‘the manner in which the reverse faces of the various stelai [recording these inventories] were used shows that the series begins in 434/3’ In an earlier paper, ‘Conspectus Traditionum’ CQ 16 (1966), 286–90, Thompson demonstrated, that the reverse sides of the stelai containing the inventories for the years 434/3 and thereafter were systematically used to inscribe the series of inventories beginning in 418/17. This does not prove that publication (much less calculation) of the inventories began in that year; it is equally possible that if the inventories were published before 434/3 an entire stone already had been filled with previous series, or that some other type of inscription had been placed on the reverse of that (or those) stones. Cf. Ferguson, pp. 69–70.

5 For arguments supporting that date see, among others ML, pp. 154–61, Meritt, B. D, ‘Thucydides and the Decrees of Kallias’ Hesperia Suppl. 19 (1982), 112–21, Thompson (1973), 24–46, Meiggs, AE, pp. 519–23, 601, Bradeen, 469–83, Wade-Gery and Meritt (1947), 279–86, West, 390–407, Meyer, pp. 88ff.,CrossRefGoogle Scholarand especially Kolbe, W, Thukydides im Lichte der Urkunden (Stuttgart, 1930), pp. 50–91. Influential restorations of this text which continue to appear in the corpus were suggested by Wade-Gery (1931), 57–85, and B. D. Meritt (1934), 263–72; cf. Meritt, Wade-Gery and McGregor, ATL, D2, i.161, ii.47. The case for a date after 434/3 is made by Mattingly (1964), 35–55, (1975), 15–22, and (1990), 110–22, Fornara, 185–96, and Kallet-Marx, 94–113.Google Scholar

6 See, e.g. Wade-Gery and Meritt (1947), 284–5, ML, p. 158, and Meiggs, AE, pp. 522, and 601, who wrote, ‘the direction to the treasurers of Athena to publish inventories is beyond question and the first inventories date from 433/2’ I leave aside here the question of whether the two decrees were moved or inscribed contemporaneously, on which cf. Bradeen, 469–83, who identified the hands which inscribed the two decrees, and Wade-Gery (1931), 58 with n. 4, who distinguished between the letter-cutters. For a fresh attempt to separate the two decrees (with strong arguments) see Kallet-Marx, 97–100.Google Scholar

7 Wade-Gery (1931), 57–85; cf. id., JHS 53 (1933), 135.

8 The corpus employs the Latin ‘traditiones’for ‘inventories’and ‘rationes’for ‘accounts’ Certain documents from Eleusis (IG i3 384–401) are called ‘traditiones et rationes’ The Latin ‘traditio’obviously is meant to reflect the Greek , a term referring to the act of handing over the treasure to the next board of treasurers, and not apparently used in our documents of the fifth century to refer to the document recording the act. The action is usually described by forms of the verb . Terminology in later periods was sometimes more elaborate; see Aleshire, pp. 103–10 and n. 44 below

9 The tamiai restored in line 27 generally are identified with the tamiai of Athena. They were ‘the tamiai par excellence’(West) in Athens and without any further denning terminology one may safely conclude that Athena ' treasurers are indicated; cf. West, 395, Meritt, AFD, pp. 30ff., and Ferguson, p. 105. It is relevant to note, however, that the subject of the lines immediately previous (and separated from these lines by a blank half-line) is the of both Athena and the other gods

10 The order to publish is usually conceived either to have followed the extant lines on the stone, or to have been implicit in the order to count and weigh. See, e.g. ML, p. 158 (’presumably they are to publish the inventories’), Meiggs, AE, p. 601, Meyer, p. 96; cf. Wade-Gery (1931), 76ff., and Thompson (1973), 34, and 44 n. 72; but see below at n. 32.

11 See IG i3 292–362, and Wade-Gery (1931), 65. Presumably one of the primary functions of these inventories was to demonstrate that the treasure had been passed down intact, and this could only be accomplished if the items were reweighed or counted each year, and the results recorded for comparison. For a somewhat different view of the purpose of inventories see T. Linders, ‘The Purpose of Inventories: a Close Reading of the Delian Inventories of the Independence’ in Comptes et inventaires dans la cité grecque (Geneva, 1988), pp. 37–48; but cf. Aleshire, p. 107 with n. 3.

12 I.e., a logos; see below

13 That what is ordered here is not simply an ‘account’ modelled (say) on those rendered by the tamiai of Athena and the logistai and recording loans or expenditures of the sacred moneys is made clear by the phrase . (lines 25–6). Such ‘accounts’did not contain records of‘moneys on hand’: see IG i3 365–6, 369–71.

14 See esp. Thompson (1973), 44 n. 72, and n. 6 above.

15 E.g. pronaos: IG i3 296, line 6, (also appearing or restored in nos. 297–309); IG i3 309, line 16, (cf. nos. 307–13); hekatompedos: IG i3 317, line 5, (cf. nos. 318–40). The parthenon shows a series of unweighed (but plated) items: e.g. IG i3 349, line 59, But cf. IG i3 353, line 71, The difficulty of weighing these items obviously varied widely, but there can have been little trouble about the kulix or phial.

16 On the four archai in general see Ferguson, pp. 96ff

17 IG i3 317, lines 1–4. This form of heading (from the year 434/3) is repeated in the three series every four years, in the years of Greater Panathenaic celebrations. If the orders in B lines 26–9 mandated a special type of inventory for the first year (434/3), combining the four previous archai with the current board of tamiai, it should be reflected in the reports from this year. It should not be maintained that the four archai ' act of surrendering the treasure to the next board of tamiai, a formal and symbolic action, can be equated with the actual counting and weighing of some previously uncounted or unweighed items ordered in decree B.

18 Most recently Kallet-Marx, 101, who limited the temporal significance of the phrase to decree B.

19 See n. 17 above. Develin, 133–8, discusses the phrase, which he maintains refers consistently to a Panathenaic penteteris, and not to a single Panathenaic year. But in that case the use of the imperfect tense in our inscriptions is difficult to understand. See Rhodes, P. J, The Athenian Boule (Oxford, 1972), pp. 235–7, who concludes that only the particular context can indicate whether the phrase refers to a single year or a quadrennium.Google Scholar

20 For the possible appearance of in the restoration see the Appendix. While a restoration of may be preferable, the earlier indicating that the orders apply to the ‘present’tamiai makes it unnecessary for our argument.

21 Both Wade-Gery (1931), 65, and Kallet-Marx, 102, arrived at similar conclusions, though neither commented on the significance of the tense of .

22 Wade-Gery (1931), 77.

23 See Wade-Gery (1931), 77: ‘The consisted of [A] money, [B] bullion, [C] sacred ornaments and vessels (cf. Thuc. 2.13.3–5).’

24 The nature of these deposits is a matter of great debate. The restorations provided by ML (p. 156), ATL (D2), and IG i3 (proposed by Meritt [1934], 270–72) indicate deposits of moneys ‘owed to all the gods’ and have been explained as a temporary measure: the hellenotamiai were to deposit moneys owed to the other gods with the treasurers of Athena in the Opisthodomos until the newly created treasurers of the other gods were elected and came into office (Meritt [1934], 263ff., West, 395ff.; but cf. Wade-Gery, JHS 53 [1933], 135). For widely divergent views on the restoration and meaning of these lines cf. Mattingly (1968), 460, Thompson (1973), 24ff., and id. (1967), 220–21, West, 395ff., Meritt (1934), 263ff., Ferguson, 154ff., Stevenson, G. H, ‘The Financial Administration of Pericles’ JHS 44 (1924), 6–7, K. J. Beloch, Griech. Gesch. ii.2.349, and Meyer, pp. 113ff. Under the circumstances, it is perhaps best to admit that the only thing one can safely conclude from these lines is that the hellenotamiai are to make some sort of deposits with Athena.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See also Wade-Gery (1931), 76; cf. n. below.

26 IG i3 383, lines 384–88 and IG i3 376, lines 77–80, cf. 56–7. See also Linders, pp. 53–4, and cf. R. Bogaert, Banques et banquiers dans les cités grecques (Leyde, 1968), p. 320. Thus ‘ count and weigh’could even refer to a repository holding only coin, though it necessarily would apply to other types of treasure as well. If the restorations of line 29 of B are correct, this may or may not refer to coins, which might occasionally be plated see Linders, 54 with n. 129, where she cites fifth-century examples taken from W. Campbell, ‘Greek and Roman Plated Coins’ Numismatic Notes and Monographs 57 (1933). If line 29 did not refer to coins or bullion, then the treasury of Athena in the Opisthodomos, like that of the other gods, must have included some non-monetary items.

27 I do not wish to enter into the debate over the precise location of the room known in the fifth century as the Opisthodomos, though it will be obvious from my arguments that I follow Wade-Gery who held that none of the three cellae of the Parthenon for which inventories exist can easily be identified with this room ([1931], 76–7). For the view that the Opisthodomos refers to the rear cella of the old temple of Athena see W. Dinsmoor, ‘The Hekatompedon on the Athenian Acropolis’ AJA 51 (1947), 127–8 [109–51] with nn.

28 Pace Thompson (1973), 44 n. 72, who claimed that Wade-Gery was wrong in his view that Kallias was primarily concerned ‘with the Treasure (mainly money) in the Opisthodomos’ ([1931], 77). Thompson attempted to draw a dichotomy between the orders in A (which he related to coins and bullion), and the orders in B, which he maintained referred to ‘the sacred possessions’in the Parthenon inventories. In fact, the orders in both decrees are virtually equivalent: are to be counted and weighed. The differences between the verbs in A (, line 20) and B (, line 29) most probably suggest that A institutes a yearly procedure in which the treasure is ‘weighed and counted out’to the next board of treasurers, while B (as noted above) refers to a one time event. H. B. Mattingly has suggested to me the possibility of for B, line 29; this would bring the language closer to that in A, and would still, I believe, suggest the difference in procedure posited.

29 Ferguson, pp. 16 n. 1, 97–8, maintained that these records were never published

30 ‘These three lists do not, of course, constitute any large part of Athena ' Treasure,’Wade- Gery (1931), 77. On the use of funds owned by Athena to finance the war and the building program see Samons, , ‘Athenian Finance and the Treasury of Athena’ Historia 42 (1993), 129–38.Google Scholar

31 See n. 4 above.

32 The inscription of these inventories may coincide rather with the distribution of Athena ' ‘loose furniture’ previously housed (and inventoried) elsewhere, in the three cellae of the just recently opened Parthenon: cf. Wade-Gery (1931), 77, and below. Ferguson, p. 93 with n. 1, maintained that ‘there is n o warrant for the opinion that on the opening of this temple [the Parthenon] earlier dedications to Athena were transferred to it’ His view was based on the somewhat meagre nature of the holdings inventoried in 434/3. On the necessity for a specific order to inscribe and publish the records see Ferguson, p. 16 with n. 1, and Sickinger, J. P, ‘Inscriptions and Archives in Classical Athens’ Historia 43 (1994), 286–96, esp. 294–5.Google Scholar

33 Annual: IG i3 365, 366, cf. 371ff.; quadrennial: IG i3 370 (369?, an account of the logistai; see below); special (?): IG i3 363, 364 (Samian and Kerkyraian expeditions). See Ferguson, pp. 16 n. 1, 164–5, and 99 with n. 3, who held that the tamiai ' accounts ‘were prepared for publication annually till 430/29 B.C. and quadrennially thereafter’ while around the time of the Samian War ‘accounts were posted for an episode collectively’

34 See, e.g. IG i3 369, 370.

35 IG i3 369.

36 IG i3 365 (432/1), 366 (431/0); see Ferguson, pp. 99–100.

37 Ferguson, p. 100. Ferguson ' conclusion is also supported by the manner of interest calculation on loans in the logistai ' report (IG i3 369) which is based on the ‘conciliar’year (the year of the boule divided into ten prytanies). Thus the accounts are only loosely conjoined with the Panathenaic year, which ran from one Hekatombaion 28 to the next (cf. lines 1, 54). The interest on these debts, on the other hand, is calculated to the end of the prytany year (Pritchett, W. K, The Choiseul Marble, University of California Publications: Classical Studies, vol. 5 [Berkeley, 1970], p. 99; cf. Wade-Gery [1931], 69). The interest calculated on loans outstanding from 433/2 in lines 98ff. of IG i3 369 only shows that some debts had remained unpaid since that year. The reckoning from this year does not correspond with a Panathenaic quadrennium, which should have begun in 434/3. Almost certainly it reflects the beginning of the large expenditures for Poteidaia and Kerkyra in the years just before the war recorded in the accounts of the state (IG i3 364–6). On the logistai cf. AP 48.3, 54.2,Google Scholar with Rhodes, P. J, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), ad loc. The fact that they audited the accounts of magistrates in general (and not just the treasurers of Athena) makes it probable that they served for the conciliar year; but cf. Wade-Gery (1931), 64 with n. 29.Google Scholar

38 Wade-Gery (1931), 65, also implied that the logoi handed over from Panathenaia to Panathenaia were, in fact, inventories—records of weighing and counting:’All incoming Tamiai have their treasures counted and weighed out to them. The Tamiai of Athena must have been doing this for years past; how else could they have been “giving an account from one Panathenaia to the next” ([B lines], 27–9)?’

39 Cf. Aleshire, pp. 348, 364.1 do not wish to imply that the term logos was not also used for ‘accounts’such as those of the logistai, but simply that the term has a broad scope which could subsume many types of records.

40 In the Parthenon inventories the are duly noted.

41 See n. 29 above.

42 Cf. Ferguson, pp. 96–9, 165, who was led to refer to the ‘inventories’of Athena (her holdings in the Parthenon) and the ‘inventories-accounts’of the other gods

43 Certain definitional problems should now disappear, e.g. Thompson (1967), 225–6 with n. 42, who refers to IG i3 383 as ‘basically an inventory’while noting that this document, like the Eleusinian inventories (e.g. IG i3 386), ‘includes notations of income and expenditures as well as an inventory of the possessions on hand, but all the references to foreign silver are found in the inventory section’ IG i3 383 (like IG i3 386) is a logos, the parameters of which are precisely denned in IG i3 52. A. This is the type of document we should expect the managers of any sacred treasury to submit after their term of office. Cf. B. D. Meritt, AFD, p. 57, who noted that there was a difference between ‘records of money borrowed by the state from Athena ' treasure [the ‘accounts’rendered by the tamiai and logistai] and the records of the treasurers of Athena which covered their transactions during tenure of office [the logoi rendered by the tamiai and four archai] and on which they stood their audit’ and see Ferguson, p. 16 n. 1.

44 Athenian public finance was reorganized in the last decade of the fifth century during the series of crises which culminated in Athens’defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Not only the types of inventories calculated and published but also the role of Athena ' treasury were radically changed in the subsequent period; see Ferguson, esp. pp. 75ff. Thus I have avoided consideration of evidence from the fourth century, which cannot usually be decisive for fifthcentury financial practice and which is irrelevant where sufficient fifth-century evidence exists. But for fourth-century ‘inventories’which also contain ‘accounts’see Ferguson, pp. 128–9. It may be worth noting that there are certain even later documents which use the term logos in the sense of‘inventory’ rather than ‘account’: see Aleshire, pp. 346 (IG ii2 1539, 215/14 B.C.) and 358 (IG ii2 1019, late second century B.C.).

45 As Wade-Gery had assumed (1931), 65.

46 Kallet-Marx, 101–2, dismissed the inventories as support for this date on similar grounds, assuming (rightly, though without argument) that the logoi of B line 27 and the Parthenon inventory headings could be equated with the inventories of Athena ' treasure; see also Develin, 137–8.

47 Wade-Gery (1931), 65; cf. ML, p. 158, ‘The treasurers of Athena are to complete the weighing and counting of Athena's treasure’ and Kallet-Marx, 101–2.

48 See Mattingly (1964), 35–55, (1975), 15–22, and (1990), 110–22.

49 Wade-Gery (1931), 62–3, 83.

50 Cf. ML 58.

51 West, 406.

52 I must express my gratitude to Professors C. W. Fornara, H. B. Mattingly, A. L. Boegehold, J. J. Kennelly, and J. P. Sickinger for useful comments and suggestions for this paper.