The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [60]
The discovery of all that silver at Laurion meant that the economic weather in the eastern Mediterranean was looking decidedly bright. Particularly for Athens. Because what goes out comes back in again, with interest. Tribute money was used to meet interest rates charged by the goddess Athena herself. When loans were taken from Athena’s treasury on the top of the Acropolis – to fund the building of sacred statues, monuments or military action – the amounts, plus a hefty percentage, were repaid to Athena, now a divine usurer.
The surplus was poured back into the democratic state: jurors could be paid, theatre was subsidised, public buildings were refurbished, and for some councillors free meals were provided. In Socrates’ lifetime more than 800 triremes were launched from Athenian-controlled harbours: the largest manned navy the world had ever known.
As Socrates grew up, tributes steadily accrued; from the Black Sea in the north – as far as Olbia (now in Ukraine); from Abydos in Asia Minor; from the east – way beyond Karia in Anatolia; from Dorus in the shadow of Mount Carmel in Palestine; and from the galaxy of islands throughout the western Aegean.4
Probably from the early 420s,5 Athens required her allies to pay tribute in Athena’s own coinage – the distinctive silver-owl – a measure that gave her dominance in international trade. Now allied city-states were forced to sell their goods directly to Athena (or her trading partners) in order to acquire the correct currency; no coincidence then that the Athenians, who produced their own wine and wool, preferred to drink the best Chian chianti and to wear fine fabrics made from the backs of the sheep of Miletus.6 Resources – land, grain, gold, fish – had long tempted the ancients to roam wide through the eastern Mediterranean, but now Athens needed to satisfy more refined tastes too. Peacocks were imported to the city, lapis from Afghanistan and saffron from the volcanic island of Thera.
There was also coercion. If a territory attempted to secede from Athenian control it was punished, twice over: not only was it not given its liberty, but extra land was taken to be dedicated to ‘Athena, Queen of Athens’. Erythrae in Ionia (on the western coast of modern-day Turkey) was strongarmed into taking on democracy.7 A careful reading of all the texts and epigraphic evidence available does suggest that the population of the eastern Mediterranean was frequently inspired by the idea of coming under Athens’ wing – even as a subject people, better to be a democrat than to live under oligarchs. But the pull of both poles (oligarch and democrat, Spartan and Athenian) was strong; we will never know how many hundreds of thousands had their lives destroyed in the drag between. Socrates’ lifespan witnesses an epoch of class struggle in its truest and purest form.
Thucydides writes about the state of affairs passionately, despairingly:
Practically the whole of the Hellenic World was convulsed, with rival parties in every state – democratic leaders trying to bring in the Athenians, the oligarchs trying to bring in the Spartans … in the various cities these revolutions were the cause of many calamities – as happens and always will happen while human nature is what it is, though there may be different degrees of savagery …8
And still the tributes came rolling in. Athens was able to beautify itself. Walls, monuments and life-sculptures were erected. Aphrodite’s hoary, soot-blackened husband, Hephaestus, was given a new temple overlooking the Agora. In the city’s spanking-new Odeion, citizens enjoyed public cultural performances and contests, male-voice choirs fifty to 1,000 strong competed here; new clothes were bought for performers and for the gods that their music honoured, and Athens’ snaking walls crept four miles further south to Piraeus. Pericles’ building programme was silhouetted on the Athenian skyline: the Propylaia, and perhaps too in his mind the glimmer of a plan for the Erechtheion – a kind of holy-hotel for many gods – famously buttressed by staunch caryatids.9