Abstract

Between ca. 336 and 324 B.C.E., state revenues to Athens approximated 1,200 talents per annum. As regular income, this was a sum unprecedented in Greek history. Such revenues again allowed for state pay of an imperial scale: for political and judicial service, for work on a building program, and for naval service. But for Athens, a precondition to sustained prosperity was acquiescence to the Macedonian peace. The thesis here is that the demos, long habituated to the practice of state pay, but without much subsidy for most of the fourth century, voted acquiescence. Political leaders, including Lycurgus, to preserve status, yielded to the demos, at the same time overseeing a program of civic renewal that may have helped veil the reality behind the prosperity.