Athens' Property Classes and Population

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Demetrius and Draco: Athens' property classes and population inand before 317 BC

Hans Van Wees

The Journal of Hellenic Studies / Volume 131 / November 2011, pp 95 - 114DOI: 10.1017/S0075426911000073, Published online: 25 November 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0075426911000073

How to cite this article:Hans Van Wees (2011). Demetrius and Draco: Athens' property classes and population in and before 317 BC.The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 131, pp 95-114 doi:10.1017/S0075426911000073

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Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011) 95114 doi:10.1017/S0075426911000073

DEMETRIUS AND DRACO:

ATHENS PROPERTY CLASSES AND POPULATION

IN AND BEFORE 317 BC

HANS VAN WEES

University College London*

Abstract: The nature of the census figures produced by Demetrius of Phaleron, crucial evidence for the size of the

Athenian population, has been misunderstood. The census categories were not native Athenians, foreign residents and

slaves, but citizens above the property qualification, residents without political rights and members of households.

The property qualification of 1,000 drachmas associated with Demetrius regime was the requirement for holding the

highest offices; the property requirement for citizenship rights was lower, as it was in the spurious constitution of Draco

described inAthenaion Politeia4, which was probably invented and inserted during Demetrius reign. In the light of

this reinterpretation of the evidence for the structure of the Athenian population under Demetrius, a reconsideration ofthe evidence for the size of the Athenian population in 322 BC suggests that there were ca. 30,000 adult male citizensand far fewer metics than generally assumed, probably ca. 5,000. The distribution of property among the citizen

population was very uneven, with the richest 30% of the population owning about 80% of the wealth. According to

Demetrius census as reinterpreted here, slaves outnumbered free residents by only about 3:1, which still seems an

implausibly high figure, but needs to be taken seriously as a government estimate rather than a rhetorical exaggeration.

* [email protected]. This paper has been much

improved by the incisive and helpful commentsprovided by Riet van Bremen and two anonymousreferees forJHS. I am also grateful to Yoshie Sugino forchecking some of the calculations. None of the above

bear responsibility for any remaining flaws.1

Athen. 272c; Ctesicles FGrH245 F 1; SOD no. 51;cf. Gallo (2002) 34.2 Beloch (1886) 58; (1923) 40406.

I. Introduction: going beyond Beloch

Under Demetrius of Phaleron a review took place of the inhabitants of Attica, and 21,000 Athenians,

10,000 metoikoiand 400,000 oiketaiwere found.

'Aynhsin jetasmn gensyai p Dhmhtrou to Falhrvw tn katoikontvn tn'Attikn ka ereynai 'Ayhnaouw mn dismurouw prw tow xiloiw, metokouw d murouw,oketn d muridaw m.

So Athenaeus, quoting the Chronicles of a certain Ctesicles, who in turn perhaps found thenumbers in The Decade, Demetrius own account of his time as governor of Athens, 317307BC.1 This evidence for the size of the population of Athens has been endlessly discussed sincethe 19th century, yet almost nothing has been said about Demetrius numbers that was not alreadysaid by Karl Julius Beloch in 1886 and 1923. Ever since Beloch, scholars have rejected the400,000 oiketaias an impossibly large number of slaves, accepted the 10,000 metoikoias goodevidence for the number of registered aliens living in Athens and argued over whether the 21,000

Athenians self-evidently included all adult male citizens, as Beloch claimed in Die Bevlkerungder griechisch-rmischen Welt, or included only citizen soldiers and implied a total citizen bodyof ca. 30,000, as Beloch suggested in his Griechische Geschichte.2

Belochs brilliance is beyond question, of course, and is demonstrated by the very fact that ithas proved so hard to make a significant advance on his work. But even he sometimes madeassumptions or jumped to conclusions which are open to challenge, yet surprisingly have not


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been seriously questioned. Recently, however, Raymond Descat has at last moved the debateforward by offering a different interpretation of the oiketai ((2004) 36870), and the present

paper tries to push the discussion still further beyond Beloch by arguing that all three ofDemetrius census categories have been misunderstood. Key to a better understanding of thecensus is a closer look at the political context in which it took place, including the imposition of

a timocratic regime which has also been much misunderstood but is illuminated, I will argue, bythe spurious Constitution of Draco which was inserted in the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia.

A reinterpretation of the evidence throws new light on the origins of Draco, on the nature ofDemetrius regime, on the size and composition of the Athenian population in 317 BC, and byextension also on the population of Athens earlier in the fourth century another subject overwhich Beloch has cast a long shadow as well as the distribution of wealth in Athenian society.

II. The property classes of Demetrius and Draco

Caught up in the power play between Macedonian factions, the Athenians in 317 BC finallydecided that their best hope was to negotiate terms with Cassander. He agreed to withdraw his

garrison and give Athens its independence, on two conditions: the city should have a governor, tobe appointed by him, and citizen rights should be restricted. The state was to be governed on thebasis of property qualifications as far as ten minae (t polteuma dioikesyai p timsevnxri mnn dka, Diod. 18.74.3). Even before Demetrius was appointed as governor, then, the

Athenians had already accepted the terms of a timocratic regime to be imposed upon them.What exactly were these terms? My translation is as literal and neutral as I can make it. The

most recent and precise translation of the text, by Stork, van Ophuijsen and Dorandi, renders it ason the basis of property qualifications up to (a minimum of) ten minae (SOD no. 16a), and theassumption that ten minae was the minimum qualification for citizenship is, so far as I can see,shared by all previous translations and scholarly discussions.3 A property qualification of ten minae,or 1,000 drachmas, sounds like a neat compromise between the qualification of 2,000 drachmasimposed on the Athenians in 322 and the full franchise restored in 318 (Diod. 18.18.4, 65.6).

Yet if this is what Diodorus meant, he had a strange way of putting it, as is indicated by thetranslations strained English: up to a minimum, where one would expect either up to amaximum or down to a minimum. Diodorus spoke, not of a single property qualification asmost scholars seem to think,4but of property qualifications in the plural (timseiw), in contrastto the earlier 2,000-drachma property qualification, which he mentioned three times in thesingular (timhsiw, 18.18.4 bis, 18.18.5). As far as (xri) could therefore indicate either thelowest or the highest of this set of property thresholds: it might mean up to 1,000 or down to1,000. The preposition xri is most often used to mean as far as a certain point in space ortime, which does not help elucidate its meaning here, but when it is used of measure or degree

(LSJ2.3) it always seems to mean up to on a spectrum from the lesser to the greater. Diodorussays, for instance, that Theompompus covered 50 years of Sicilian history in three books from

book 41 to 43 (p ... xri, 16.71.3), and elsewhere we have phrases like we should act infriendship and hatred only up to a point (xri) which does not exceed what is appropriate (Dem.23.122) and if you go only as far as (xri) uttering shouts of disapproval or praise, i.e. as

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3 The Loeb translation by Russel Geer has thegovernment was to be in the hands of those possessingat least ten minae; the Bud translation by PaulGoukowsky reads on tablirait en outre un rgime

censitaire en descendant jusqu dix mines. SimilarlyBeloch (1886) 58; Martini (1901) col. 2827; Jacoby(1930) 813; Plkidis (1962) 29192; Moss (1973)10405; Gehrke (1978) 178; Ruschenbusch (1984) 26,

259; Hansen (1986) 29, 32; Sekunda (1992) 320;Habicht (1997) 58, 66; Williams (1997) 330, n.6;Gottschalk (2000) 36970; Shipley (2000) 128; Gallo(2002) 38; Descat (2004) 368; Hansen (2006) 41; Oliver

(2006) 80; OSullivan (2009) 108

09.4Apart from the translation by SOD, of the scholarscited in the previous note only Habicht ((1997) 66) speaksof censuses in the plural, but he gives no further details.


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opposed to taking action (Dem. 8.77).5 Its synonym mxri is also commonly used in expressionsfor age groups up to a certain age or fines up to a certain level.6 I have not been able to findany example of xribeing used to mean down to a lower measure, degree or extent.7 Also, ifDiodorus meant to say that 1,000 drachmas was the lowest threshold, more natural and lessambiguous prepositions were to hand: he could have spoken of property classes starting from(p) or above (pr) 1,000 drachmas.

I would argue, therefore, that what was introduced in 317 BC was not a single propertythreshold for citizenship, but a set of property qualifications among which 1,000 drachmas wasnot the minimum, but the threshold for the highest grade.

The main reason why this interpretation has not been offered before is no doubt that, asproperty qualifications go, 1,000 drachmas already constitutes quite a low threshold and it seemshard to believe that there were lower qualifications still. Yet there is a close parallel in theConstitution of Draco as described in theAthenaion Politeia:

The state was placed in the hands of those who provided arms and armour. They elected the nine

archons and the treasurers from those who owned unencumbered property of not less than ten minae;the other, lesser, magistracies from those who provided arms and armour; and generals and cavalry

commanders from those who were able to show unencumbered property of not less than 100 minae and

legitimate children by their wedded wives at least ten years of age. (4.2)

Although somewhat unsystematically described, the scheme is clear: political rights,including the right to hold minor offices, are extended to all those who serve as hoplites; for thehighest civilian offices there is an additional property qualification of 1,000 drachmas; for thehighest military office the threshold is higher still. The obvious implication is that many hoplitesowned less than 1,000 drachmas and that there was a de factoproperty qualification below 1,000drachmas which consisted of having enough wealth to own hoplite equipment. A system such as

Diodorus describes for Athens in 317, in which the property qualification for citizenship was verylow and 1,000 drachmas was the requirement for the highest (civilian) offices, was thus entirelyconceivable to whomever invented this spurious Constitution of Draco.

The similarity between the constitutions of Draco and Demetrius is probably no coincidence.The former may have been directly modelled on the latter, and inserted into Athenaion Politeiaafter Demetrius regime was established. It is clear from internal evidence, and generally agreed,that the chapter on Draco in the text as we have it was a later insertion. The only matters of debateare whether the constitution was concocted in the fifth or fourth century, and whether it was a lateinsertion by the author ofAthenaion Politeiahimself, or an addition by some later editor.8 Theoriginal text was evidently completed in the late 330s and revised in the early 320s to take

account of some recent minor changes to Athenian institutions.9

It may seem natural to assumethat the new version of the constitution of Draco was added at the same time along with theother identifiable later insertion in the historical part of the treatise, the story of Themistocles andEphialtes (25.34) in which case it obviously could not have reflected Demetrius regime. Butit is one thing to update minor details of an account of the current constitution and quite another

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5 LSJ s.v. xri 3.3 also offers Xen. Symp. 4.37 (Ican eat up to the point where I am no longer hungry)and Acts 22.4 (Saul persecuting Christians to thedeath); note also, for example, Dem. 5.17 (not up tothe same level); Josephus Ant Jud. 3.196 (from 20

years of age up to 50); Plut. Solon4.2 (the conflict waspursued up to the point of war).6 Up to 40 years: Diod. 18.10.2; Aesch. 2.133; up

to 45 years: Dem. 3.4; the age class from one archon

and eponym up to another:Ath Pol. 53.7; Up to 5,000drachmas:Ath. Pol. 67.2.

7 Although xri can mean down to a point inspace: Pausanias describes features of statuary downto the shoulders, chest, bottom (5.16.3, 6.23.5, 8.41.6).

8

See especially Fuks (1953) 84

101, especially 90;Rhodes (1981) 8687, 112.

9 Rhodes (1981) 5256, pointing out insertions atAth. Pol. 46.1, 51.3 and especially 54.7.


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to make substantial revisions to a historical interpretation of constitutions of the past. Perhapsthe new material on Draco and Ephialtes had coincidentally come to light in the few years

between the first and second editions of the text, but even then it is not obvious why this material,which stands out for its extreme historical implausibility, should have been substituted for theoriginal version. Unlike the routine updating of contemporary details, the historical revisions

need a special explanation and may very well have been made separately. We must reckon withthe possibility thatAthenaion Politeiasaw a third edition.

Many of the principles enshrined in Dracos constitution, and especially the notion ofconfining citizen rights to those who provided hoplite equipment, reflect general patterns ofoligarchic thinking and fit the ideas of Athens late fifth-century oligarchs just as well as

Aristotles late fourth-century theorizing. But the translation of the hoplite franchise intoproperty qualifications is highly distinctive. In 322 BC, the threshold was set at 2,000 drachmasand 9,000 men qualified, from which it follows that the 5,000 hoplites who qualified in 411 andthe 3,000 of 404 BC owned properties of several thousand drachmas at least.10 Yet Dracoextends full citizenship to hoplites who own less than 1,000 drachmas. The striking difference

from other oligarchic constitutions and the equally striking similarity to the system imposed bythe Macedonians in 317 must surely lead one to conclude that it was the establishment ofDemetrius regime which inspired the invention of a Draconian constitution modelled on his.

A reason for doing so is not hard to find: the oligarchic regime of 322318 had claimed torestore government under the laws of Solon (Diod. 18.18.5), so the new regime went one betterand claimed to restore an even older patrios politeia. Demetrius, a notable philosopher, couldeasily have justified such claims by producing an imaginative reconstruction of Dracos consti-tution in one of his five books On Lawgiving in Athensor in his two books On the Constitutionsof Athens, and either he himself or one of his associates may well have produced a new editionofAthenaion Politeiawhich publicized this new discovery about Draco.11

Whether the Constitution of Draco was directly modelled on Demetrius or was, after all,added toAthenaion Politeiaalready in the early 320s and merely reflects very closely a school of

political thought which was also behind the system imposed by the Macedonians in 317, it seemssafe to conclude that Demetrius minimum property qualification, whatever exactly it was, wasmeant to represent a hoplite franchise, like Dracos. The implication that a substantial number ofhoplites owned less than 1,000 drachmas is at first sight surprising but actually offers usimportant evidence for the social and economic structure of Athens and a clue to the motivationfor the revision of property qualifications in 317.

The property qualification of 2,000 drachmas set in 322 BC corresponded to the value of 40plethraof land (3.6 hectares or nine acres), which is widely and rightly regarded as the minimumone needed to be able to make a living as an independent working farmer and to serve as a

hoplite.12 Yet only 9,000 men met this property standard, and Athens in 322 had far more than9,000 hoplites, just as Athens in 411 had had far more than the 5,000 hoplites to whom theoligarchy intended to confine citizen rights. Calculating the number of hoplites is madesomewhat complicated by a major change in hoplite recruitment in 336/335 BC: after this date,young men received hoplite equipment and two years of ephebic training at public expense,whereas previously they had had to pay for their own training and equipment. So the hoplite

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10 411: Thuc. 8.65.3, 97.2; Ath. Pol. 29.5; cf. vanWees (2001) 56; (2004) 81. 322: Diodorus 18.18.44;see further below.

11 For Demetrius works, see Diog. Laertius 5.80

81 (SOD no. 1, especially items 65

66). Demetriusmay also have added the story claiming thatThemistocles was behind the reforms of Ephialtes:although we have no direct evidence that he discussed

it, we do know that he wrote a good deal in praise ofThemistocles rival Aristides, both in a work called

Aristidesand in a book on Socrates (SOD nos 95, 10205), and he may have given a critical account of

Themistocles in his two books On Demagogy (SOD1.67).12 Especially Gallant (1991) 8287; Burford (1993)

6772, 11316; already Beloch (1923) 399.


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numbers which we have for the Athenian army in 323/322 are inflated by the addition of menwho would not have been able to serve in the hoplite militia without state funding. We can,however, estimate the numbers of those who were able to serve as hoplites even without publicfinancial support on the basis of surviving rosters of 19- and 59-year-olds.

A complete roster inscribed in 325/324 BC lists 103 men in their 59th and last year of hoplite

service who were given the task of acting as diaitetai, arbiters, in private disputes. Another suchroster, from 330/329, is incomplete but contained between 100150 names.13 These were menwho reached the age of 18 in 366 and 371 BC, when the system of ephebic training alreadyexisted but was not yet publicly funded.14 On a plausible demographic model,15 a cohort of 10359-year-olds corresponds to a cohort of 378 19-year-olds. Bearing in mind that the other rosteris, if anything, larger, and also that these men were in their 20s and early 30s at a time when

Athens sent out large numbers of colonists to settle in Samos and elsewhere (Cargill (1995) 1730), this figure is surely a minimum. We may compare this with the rosters of 19-year-olds ineach of the ten tribes who, from 334/333 onwards, began to graduate from state-funded ephebictraining: the sole figure from 334/333 is 42, and the average for the four tribal rosters which

survive from 333/332 is 45, pointing to a cohort of 450. The three rosters from later years, bycontrast, have ca. 56, 62 and 65 names, suggesting a cohort of ca. 600 (Hansen (2006) 34). The

pattern seems to be that it took a few years for state-funding to have an impact on recruitment,and that initially hoplite numbers went up only slightly. On this basis, one may suggest that thehoplite class proper, i.e. those who could afford to serve at their own expense, produced anaverage cohort of about 400 new 19-year-old hoplites each year. Assuming that about 10% ofyoung men were physically unfit to train and serve,16 we have a total cohort of ca. 450, which,on the same demographic model, represents a total hoplite class of about 13,500 adult men.17

So, in addition to the 9,000 men who owned at least enough land to live as independentfarmer-hoplites, there were about 4,500 men who owned less property but nevertheless equippedand trained themselves as hoplites at their own expense. These must have been men who earneda substantial income without owning much property, i.e. those who owned little land and mademost of their living from paid labour or from commerce: craftsmen, retailers, traders and a varietyof other specialists. That such men also fought as hoplites is attested in general, and a specificexample is none other than Socrates, who is said to have had a property worth only about 500drachmas, yet enjoyed a sufficiently large income to be able to serve as a hoplite in the siege ofPotidaea and the battles of Delium and Amphipolis.18 There will have been small farmers in this

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13 IGII2 1926 and IG II2 1924 + 2409; two muchearlier rosters, from 371 BC (ZPE54 (1984) 24752)and from the 360s (IG II2 1927), have many more

names, and cannot reflect the same system of appointingarbiters; cf. Sekunda (1992) 34445.14 That it existed is clear from Aesch. 2.167

(referring to late 370s); that it was not yet funded is clearfrom Xen. Poroi4.5152 (in late 350s).

15 The demographic model is that used by Hansen(for example, (1986) 1112): Coale and DemenysModel West, males, mortality level 4 (life expectancy at

birth 25.26 years), growth rate 5.00 (0.5% p.a.). It iswidely accepted that this is an appropriate model, andthat the range of demographic models which are at allappropriate to antiquity is narrow enough to ensure thatthe margins of error are quite small.

16

Hansen (1986) 19: 8

15% of young men are unfitfor military service in modern Europe.

17 A cohort of 400 p.a. corresponds to 6,600hoplites aged 2039 and 10,200 hoplites aged 2059.

This fits well enough with partial mobilizations of6,600 in 394 (Xen. Hell. 4.2.17), 5,500 in 378 (Diod.15.26.2), 6,000 in 362 (Diod. 15.84.2), 5,400 in 352

(Diod. 16.37.3), and with a full mobilization of 10,000in 377 (Polybius 2.62.6), if the latter is a paperstrength; a full mobilization of 12,000 in 369 (Diod.15.63.2) is higher than expected, however, and, ifaccurate, would suggest a rather larger cohort ofephebes; cf. Hansen (1986) 43. For the mobilizationin 323/322, see below, n.19.

18 Socrates property: Xen. Oec. 2.3; his hopliteservice: Plato, Symp. 219e220e; Apol. 28e; Charm.153ac; Laches 181ab; Plut. Alc. 7.23; cf. Anderson(2005) 28286. Craftsmen as hoplites: for example,Plut. Ages. 26.45 = Mor. 214a. The interpretationoffered here seems more likely than the suggestion of

van Wees (2004) 55, n.27, that the hoplites who ownless than 1,000 drachmas in Dracos constitution mightrepresent those who became hoplites thanks to publicfunding via the ephebeia.


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category as well, just as there will have been craftsmen among those who owned more than 2,000drachmas, but assuming that the proportions more or less evened out, about 4,500 of 13,500hoplites, or one-third, were neither leisured land owners nor working farmers but artisans,shopkeepers and market traders.

It was precisely this element of the population which the Greek upper classes held in the

greatest contempt

witness for instance Xenophons scathing remarks about their allegedphysical and psychological unfitness to defend their country (Oec. 4.23, 6.58) and Aristotlesblunt statement that the best kind ofpoliswill not make the artisan (banausos) a citizen (Pol.1278a8), which was based on his view that, while democracies dominated by farmers orshepherds were relatively tolerable,

almost all the other multitudes from which the other kinds of democracy are created are far worse, for

their way of life is inferior and there is no excellence in any of the occupations practised by the mass

of artisans, market folk and hired labourers; what is more, because they are always whizzing about the

market and the city, all persons of this type find it, in a manner of speaking, convenient to attend assem-

blies... (Pol. 1319a2029)

One can easily see, therefore, why the oligarchic constitution of 322 BC made a point ofdisenfranchising several thousand such urban hoplites, on the grounds that they were trouble-makers and warmongers (Diod. 18.18.4).

By the same token, these 4,500 hoplites, reinforced by another 1,500 or so men who wouldnot have been able to serve at their own expense but had been trained and equipped at publicexpense from 336/335 onwards,19 must have been a significant force in the rather bloodyrestoration of democracy in 318, and would no doubt have resisted renewed attempts to deprivethem of their citizenship. Since in 317 Cassander was facing domestic rivals who promised fulldemocracy to Athens, one can see why he might have compromised on a restoration of political

rights to all hoplites.20We have good grounds, then, for assuming that under Demetrius, as under Draco, citizen

rights were granted to those who provided arms and armour, and that this entailed a propertyqualification of less than 1,000 drachmas. Whereas previous oligarchic regimes which claimed togive the franchise to the hoplites had in fact included only certain classes of property-owninghoplite down to the level of independent working farmers in 322 and, I would argue, only as fardown as the level of leisure-class landowners in 411 BC21 the constitutions of Demetrius andDraco included allhoplites. It is possible in theory that there was no formal minimum propertythreshold and that the only criteria for citizenship were the possession of arms and armour, andwillingness to serve. We shall see, however, that the citizen census figure makes best sense if aminimum property value was in fact specified, which seems in any case the more likely scenario.We can only guess what the sum may have been, but one may imagine something in the region of500 drachmas, the value of Socrates property, or even 300 drachmas, the property value belowwhich adunatoi, invalids, became eligible for public financial support (Ath. Pol. 49.4).

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19After the introduction of state-funded training forhoplites, Athens in 323/322 had ca. 7,100 hoplites in the2039 age group (as can be inferred from Diod. 18.10.2,11.3) and 1,000 cavalry in the same age group (Xen.Hipparchikos 9.3 shows that this was still the estab-lishment strength of citizen cavalry, although it was

difficult to raise, contraSpence (1993) 98102; Hansen(1986) 38; (1994) 30810), i.e. a total of 8,100 rather6,600 (see n.17, above). State funding thus added atleast 1,500 men to the hoplite class over the period

334/333324/323, an average increase of 136 p.a.; if thenumbers given for 323/322 are not just paper strengths

but actual troops fielded, the increase must have beengreater still.

20 For these events, see further below.21 For the argument that the 5,000 hoplites enfran-

chised in 411 were the approximate equivalent of thethree highest Solonian property classes, including thezeugitai, and were wealthy enough not to have to worktheir own land, see especially van Wees (2001); (2006).


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If our identification of Demetrius property classes with those of Draco is correct, oneobvious question is what other similarities there may have been between the two constitutions.Is it possible, for instance, that the shrinking of the franchise entailed reducing the size of theCouncil, and that Dracos odd Council of 401 reflects the Council under Demetrius? Did thefines which under Draco were imposed on the three higher property classes for non-attendance

at Council and Assembly meetings

a practice noted as typically oligarchic by Aristotle (Pol.1297a1424) reflect a similar institution under Demetrius? Did Demetrius, too, make a singleexception to the highest property qualification of 1,000 drachmas by requiring generals andcavalry commanders to own at least 10,000 drachmas? These, however, are not questions whichwe can pursue here. Instead, we will consider the implications of our new interpretation of the

property classes for our understanding of Demetrius census figures.

III. Demetrius census and the meaning(s) of metoikoi and oiketai

When Demetrius of Phaleron came to power in 317, among the very first things he would haveneeded to do was to implement the new property-class regime, which, we must remember, was

not of his own devising but imposed on him by the terms negotiated between the Athenians andCassander before he was appointed. Determining who qualified as a citizen under the newregime was made all the more urgent and difficult by the mass migrations which Athens hadexperienced over the previous five years. When the 2,000-drachma qualification was introducedin 322, disenfranchised citizens were offered the opportunity to start a new life in Thrace, andthousands left Athens. Shortly afterwards, the Macedonians restored Samos to its exiled

population, which caused large numbers of Athenians who had lived on confiscated land onSamos to return home. Then, in 318, Cassanders Macedonian rivals sent an army into Attica tohelp overthrow the oligarchic regime and bring home the Athenians who had left in 322.22 Inthese circumstances, even if we had not been told about Demetrius census, we would have hadto infer that he must have reviewed the citizen body immediately upon his appointment, and thathis review could not be simply a matter of counting heads. What was needed was an investigativereview23 which established two things: who met the new property qualification and who, amongall those who had moved back into the city from Samos in 322 and Thrace in 318, as well asamong those who had stayed in Attica but had been deleted from the citizen lists between 322and 318, was a genuine Athenian by descent on both sides.

Such considerations tell strongly against both of the two explanations of the number of 21,000Athenians offered by Beloch. On his earlier view, these include all adult male Atheniansregardless of whether they had citizen rights under the new regime, i.e. the census took accountof their legitimacy by descent but not of their property qualification.24 It is hard to see what

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22

Migration to Thrace: Diod. 18.18.4

5; Plut.Phocion 28.7. Samos returned to Samians: Diod.18.18.6, 9. Restoration of democracy and return ofexiles: Diod. 18.55.24, 65.6, 66.4, 6; Plut. Phocion33.12, 34.2; IGII2 448.

23 Ctesicles/Athenaeus calls it an exetasmos; Hansen((1986) 33, n.106; (1994) 302, n.21; (2006) 4041)argued that exetasmosand exetasisalmost invariablyrefer to a review of military forces, but conceded thatDion. Hal. Isaeus 16 uses exetasisfor the general reviewof citizens in 346/345. For a detailed investigation of theterms, see Gallo (1991) 372 78). The verb exetazeinisused repeatedly to describe the investigative process of

determining whether someone is or is not a citizen: forexample, Dem. 57.24, 27, 29. That the census must have

been taken right at the start of Demetrius reign is rightlyargued by OSullivan (2009) 10911; also, for example,

Jacoby (1930) 813; Moss (1973) 105.24 According to Beloch (1886) 58 and Gehrke(1978) 180, n.163, this is simply selbstverstndlich; cf.Ruschenbusch (1984); Oliver (2006) 80. Sekunda(1992) 320, suggests that those below the propertyqualification (as well as metics and slaves) wereincluded because they were taxed, which is extremelyimprobable since people at this low economic level werenot taxed even when they did have citizen rights (cf.Hansen (1994) 301). Plkidis (1962) 29192 andGallo (2002) 38 suggest that Demetrius counted allcitizens with a view to determining where to set the

property threshold and how many to exclude, which is

impossible because the property qualification hadalready been agreed with Cassander before Demetriuswas even appointed (not to mention the unlikelihood ofsuch provisional figures entering the historical record).


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purpose such a review might have served. If it took place at the start of Demetrius reign, it wouldhave done only half the job that needed doing. If it took place later, it made no administrativesense to include the disenfranchised under Athenians since they no longer had the same fiscaland military obligations as citizens. On Belochs later view, the 21,000 represented only theWaffenfhigen, those who were able to take an active role in war, again regardless of how much

they owned; i.e. the census addressed neither of the two major tasks facing Demetrius at the startof his reign. Here, it is easy to see what the point of such a review would be, and there are plentyof parallels for it, but it would have to have been a second census which took place at some laterstage of Demetrius career, when military manpower rather than citizen rights were the most

pressing issue. And even then such a military review only makes sense if one assumes that thenumbers of metoikoi(probably) and oiketai(certainly), which did not include combatants only,were not counted in Demetrius review at all, but were appended to the citizen figure by Ctesicles,who found them in some other source.25

A far more economical, satisfactory and obvious explanation of the evidence would be that thecensus reported to us by Ctesicles is indeed the one which circumstances forced Demetrius to

undertake at the beginning of his reign, and that its 21,000 Athenians represent only those legit-imate citizens who also met the new property requirement, excluding unspecified thousands of

poorer men.26 The only problem with this interpretation is that one needs to explain where all thedisenfranchised have gone. Beloch found neither this possibility nor the problem worthmentioning, it seems, and all but one of his successors have felt the same way. The honourableexception is Mogens Hansen, who briefly toyed with, but then abruptly abandoned, the suggestionthat those with properties of less than 1,000 drachmas might indeed have been excluded from thecensus group of citizens and have been counted under a separate heading which has not beentransmitted to us ((1986) 14, 3233). Positing a lost census category is a rather desperatemeasure, and Hansen was no doubt right not to want to go down this route, although it strikes meas no worse a hypothesis than either of Belochs theories. But there is, of course, another possibleexplanation, namely that the disenfranchised citizens were counted as metoikoi.

This possibility, too, was countenanced by Hansen, though only insofar as he said that it isimpossible to believe that the Athenians deprived of citizenship were registered as metics((1986) 32). One can see why he was convinced that a registration of ex-citizens as metoikoiwasout of the question, because in Classical Athens the bulk of metics were immigrants or people ofnon-Athenian descent, and it would seem almost as inappropriate to count Athenians by birth asmetics as it would be to register them as slaves.

Yet the situation is not quite so simple because metic in democratic Athens was a broad legalcategory which included all people who were neither citizens nor slaves. Emancipated slaveswere registered as metoikoi, rather than as citizens or in a separate category of their own as

freedmen.27 Even more importantly, illegitimate children of Athenian citizens, i.e. those whohad two native Athenian parents but were born out of wedlock, were also registered as metics.This is evident from the review of the citizen lists undertaken in 346/345 BC, during which bothalleged aliens and illegitimate children were deprived of citizen rights: as the speaker in a legalcase arising from this review says, he would be at risk if I were a bastard (nyow) or a foreigner(jnow) (Dem. 57.53). Both of these two targets of the purge were evidently subject to the same

procedure, which is described to us as follows:

102

25 So Hansen (1986) 3336 (possible dates: 313 or309/308 BC); (1994) 302; (2006) 3843; also Gomme

(1933) 18

19. Beloch himself, however, argued that theslaves were also counted for military purposes (in 313BC) and included adult men only; the number 400,000was a misreading of an original 40,000 ((1886) 95;

(1923) 405, 41418).26 Whitby (1998) 109 refers to this interpretation as

if it were a commonly held scholarly view, yet,amazingly, I have not found a single study which adoptsit.

27 Whitehead (1977) 1617, 11416.


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Among the Athenians a law was passed that there was to be an investigation of all those inscribed in

the lexiarchic registers to determine whether or not they were legitimate citizens, and that the names of

those who were not born of a townsman and townswoman were to be deleted. The demesmen were to

vote on all cases, and those who were disenfranchised and accepted the decision of the demesmen were

to have their names deleted and become metics(ka enai metokouw) (Hypothesis to Demosthenes57).

Our other evidence for the episode is much vaguer and speaks only of a loss of citizen rightswithout spelling out the transfer to metic status.28 Similarly, Athenaion Politeia(42.1) fails togive us the relevant details of the routine procedure for dealing with 18-year-old males whoapplied for admission to citizenship but were rejected. It seems very likely, however, thatdemotion to the status of metic was indeed the normal fate of both alleged non-Athenians andnative Athenians of illegitimate birth.29

So when Demetrius held his review in 317, he had before him the precedent of the generalreview of citizens a generation earlier, and very probably also the standard procedure for dealingwith rejected applicants for citizenship. I suggest that he simply followed this precedent andextended it also to the new category of persons who did not qualify for citizenship: those whofell below the property qualification.

He had few other options. In theory, the disenfranchised could be called atimoi, literallyhonour-less, but this term was applied to those who had been deprived of their citizen rights asa punishment, and such people suffered a lower status and worse legal position than metoikoi.What formal status native residents without political rights occupied in cities under oligarchicrule in general is obscure to us, and was a conceptual problem already in antiquity. We are toldnothing about the legal position of the disenfranchised under the oligarchic regimes which ruled

Athens in 411, 404/403 and 322318, except that the poor were encouraged or even forced toleave the city. In Sparta, those who fell below the property qualification were apparently knownas inferiors, though it is not clear whether that was an informal label or a formal status. 30

Aristotle, who wanted to exclude all artisans, market traders and hired labourers from citizenship,as we have seen, seems stumped by the question of how to classify the disenfranchised. If noneof these people is a citizen, in what category is each of them to be reckoned? For he is neither ametoikosnor a slave (Politics1277b3539). Aristotle did not answer his own question, andconfined himself to recommending simply that artisans and others should be excluded from thecitizen body without explaining what should happen to them instead. In his ideal state, he gotaround the problem by insisting that the working classes should consist entirely of slaves or

barbarian serfs (Pol. 1329a2527).Demetrius did not have the luxury of being able to ignore the problem or imagine his way out

of it, and there is no hint that he tried to expel those who did not meet his property qualification.

He therefore had only two options: either create a new legal and census category for the disen-franchised or include them in the existing category of metoikoi. The latter was not as great aconceptual leap as it may seem, since Aristotle, despite asserting that the native disenfranchisedwere not metics, did concede that he who has no share in political honours is like a metic(sper mtoikow, Pol. 1278a38). The same idea was expressed even more forcefully byIsocrates, who in an oration glorifying Athens stressed how the city always used to opposeoligarchic regimes,

103

28 Purge of 346/345: Dion. Hal. Isaeus 1617

(quoting at length from a relevant speech: Isaeus 12);Dem. 57; Aesch. 1.77, 86, 114.

29 So Ogden (1996) 156 (cf. 43): Athenian bastardsmust by default have belonged to the category of

aliens, i.e. metics.30

Inferiors: Xen. Hell. 3.3.6. Athenians forced toleave in 404/403: Xen. Hell. 2.4.1; Isoc. 7.67; cf. Diod.14.32.4; encouraged to leave in 322: above, n.22.


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regarding it as a terrible thing for the many to be subject to the few, and for those who are rather short

of property but not worse at all in any other respect to be excluded from political office, and for some

to be tyrants and others to be metics[tow d metoiken] in a common fatherland, and for those whoare citizens by birth to be deprived of political rights by law (4.105).

Again, being excluded by a property qualification turns a citizen into metic, and the primaryconnotation of the word here is not immigrant but resident without political rights. Metoikosis in fact a fundamentally ambiguous term which can mean both migrant and fellow-resident,i.e. someone who lives in a community but is not fully part of it.31 In democratic Athens, whereall native inhabitants enjoyed political rights, the two meanings coincided almost completely:apart from a small category of bastard children, every fellow-resident was also a migrant ordescendant of migrants. Dictionaries from antiquity onwards therefore define metoikosin the

Athenian democratic sense of immigrant, but its alternative meaning of fellow-resident couldeasily become the dominant sense under an oligarchic regime.

The only serious legal obstacle to categorizing disenfranchised citizens as metoikoiwas that

metics were not legally entitled to own land or houses, but in practice this is unlikely to have beenmuch of a problem since Demetrius low property qualification meant that very few of the disen-franchised would have owned either land or a house. Any who did possess some tiny plot could

presumably be given an exemption from this legal disability, a privilege regularly granted toimmigrant metics as well.32

A positive indication that Demetrius did indeed reclassify disenfranchised citizens as meticsis the implausibly high number of metoikoirecorded by his census. Our only other evidence forthe number of metics in Athens is Thucydides report that, in 431 BC, the first generalmobilization of Athenian forces in the Peloponnesian War saw 3,000 metics join the field armyas hoplites (2.31.2), when the number of citizens who served in the field army as hoplites andcavalry was 14,000 (2.13.67). Metic hoplites normally served only as part of the home-guard

defending the walls of the city, and the fact that on this occasion they took to the field is a signof Athens determination to do maximum damage by mustering the largest possible number oftroops. It follows that the 3,000 constituted all available metic hoplites in the same age group asthe citizen hoplite field army,33 and that there were almost five times as many citizens as meticsin this age-and-status group.34 One may compare the military forces of Rhodes in which, in 305BC, citizens outnumbered foreign residents and visitors six to one (Diod. 20.84.2).

104

31 The verbs ofikv and ofikzv mean to settle andto be settled, and the prefix meta- means among butacquires connotations of change when used with a

verb of movement: hence a metoikoscan be either onewho is settled among others or one who settlessomewhere else: so Gauthier (1988) 2728; contraWhitehead (1977) 610, 2768 and Lvy (1988) 4753,who argue that in practice the word almost alwaysmeans migrant. For the meaning fellow-resident,see, for example, mtoikow gw, fellow-resident of thisland (rather than migrant of this land) at Aesch. Pers.319; Suppl. 609; cf. Soph. OC 934; the birds are thegods fellow-residents of the sky (Aesch.Ag. 57); theEumenides and Heracles offer protection to the

Athenians as fellow-residents (Aesch. Eum. 1011,1018; Eur. Heracl. 103233).

32

Whitehead (1977) 30, 70

72.33 The alternative suggestion that they were a fixednumber mobilized to compensate for the absence of3,000 hoplites in Potidaea is implausible, and is

motivated simply by the assumption that the number ofmetics must have been higher because Demetriuscensus gives a larger number: Jones (1957) 16465;

Whitehead (1977) 98.34 The discussion of the number of metic hoplitesimplied by Thucydides has been bedevilled by anotherargument of Belochs, namely that the field army musthave included all 2050-year-olds (Beloch (1886) 62,64; Gomme (1933) 5; Hansen (1981) 1924; (1988) 2325) or even 2060-year-olds (Beloch (1923) 405),

because Socrates served at the age of 45 at Delium and47 at Amphipolis. If so, Thucydides hoplite numbersmake no demographic sense, and one is forced to positlarge numbers of metic hoplites (or else light-armedcitizens) in the home-guard to make the sums add up. Ifonly 2039-year-olds normally took the field, by

contrast, Thucydides statement makes perfectgrammatical, military and demographic sense (Jones(1957) 16364; van Wees (2004) 24142). Since in thefifth century formal mobilization by year-class did not


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Similar proportions among the higher-status group of eisphorapayers in Athens are impliedby the custom of demanding from the metics a contribution of one-sixth whenever Athensraised an emergency eisphoratax. We hear that a sixth was levied in 355 and 337/336 BC, andthat it was regarded as a privilege to be allowed to pay eisphora among the Athenians asopposed to among the metics,35 so that the proportion of eisphora-paying metics at this time musthave been well below one-sixth

or else metics would have been paying a disproportionately

small share of the tax, and paying among the citizens would not have been a privilege at all.36

It is not an entirely straightforward matter to extrapolate from the proportions of metics amonghoplites and eisphorapayers to the proportion of metics among the free adult male population atlarge, since we cannot be sure that age and wealth distribution were the same among citizens andmetics. But in order to reconcile a proportion of 5:1 hoplites with a proportion of 2:1 free adultmales one would have to posit that some 8087% of metics fell below hoplite status, comparedwith 5067% of citizens, and that metics formed 4045% of the sub-hoplite population of

Athens.37 These numbers are not impossible but they are very high, and a number of meticssignificantly smaller than 10,000 would be much easier to accept, especially since our sources

hint at declining numbers of metics in the 350s;38 and even if they recovered with the revival inAthenian prosperity after 338, the upheavals of 322 and 318 must have driven many away again.39

The most plausible explanation for the high proportion of metoikoiin Demetrius census, it seemsto me, is that their number was inflated by the transfer of disenfranchised citizens into thiscategory.

One may wonder why such a radical extension of the category of metoikoiin Athens did notleave more of a record in our evidence. The answer is simply that Demetrius innovation lastedonly ten years, until he was overthrown and democracy restored once again, and that for thoseten years our sources are extremely limited. What is more, after Demetrius reign the termmetoikos was abandoned altogether in Athens. The latest literary allusions to metoikoias acontemporary group came in lost comedies by Philemon and Menander which we cannot date

precisely but which need not be later than the reign of Demetrius, while the latest epigraphicalattestation of the term comes in an inscription of 306/305 BC, in which a resident alien is

105

yet exist in Athens, a general mobilization would haverelied on moral pressure only, and I would argue thatthere was an informal expectation that only 2039-year-olds would march out, though older men could jointhem if they were very fit and keen.

35 Dem. 22.61 (355 BC); IG II2 244.20 (337/336BC); Whitehead (1977) 7880.

36 One of the referees forJHSsuggests that metics

might have been taxed less heavily than citizens becauseit would have been more difficult to exact eisphorafromthem, given that they owned no land or houses whichcould be seized. This, however, seems incompatiblewith the evidence that paying eisphora as a citizenrather than metic was seen as a privilege. Whitehead,(1977) 7880, notes the problem but nevertheless insiststhat metics were never ... as little as one sixth of thefree population (78), an assertion based on acceptingthe census figure of 10,000 as unproblematic (97) andarguing that the number must have been higher in thefifth century (98).

37 The percentages depend on whether one estimates

the proportion of hoplites in the citizen-body at one-thirdor one-half. If half of the citizen-body were hoplites, thena 2:1 proportion of citizens to metics implies that citizenhoplites formed 1/2 x 2/3 = 2/6 and citizen sub-hoplites

another 2/6 of the total free adult male population, whilea 5:1 proportion citizen hoplites to metic hoplites impliesthat metic hoplites formed 1/5 x 2/6 = 2/30 of the totalmale population and metic sub-hoplites therefore madeup the remaining 8/30. In other words, metic sub-hopliteswould form 8/10 of all adult male metics and 8/18(44.4%) of all adult male sub-hoplites. If one-third of thecitizen-body were hoplites, the proportions are: citizen

hoplites 1/3 x 2/3 = 2/9, citizen sub-hoplites 2/3 x 2/3 =4/9 and metic hoplites 1/5 x 2/9 = 2/45 of the total freeadult male population; metic sub-hoplites were therefore13/45 of the total population, 13/15 of all adult malemetics (86.7%) and 13/33 of all sub-hoplites (39.4%).

38 Isocrates 8.21; cf. strategies for recruitment ofmetics in Xen. Poroi 2. Presumably Hyperides

proposal in 338/337 to grant citizenship to all metics(and freedom to slaves) willing to serve in the army wasnot carried out: Plut. Mor. 849a; Hyperides fr. 29Kenyon; Lyc. Leoc. 41 (cf. Whitehead (1977) 162).

39 Hansen (1988) 11, reports that the ratio betweensurviving fourth-century citizen and metic funerary

inscriptions is about 3:1, but it is entirely possible thatmetics, forbidden the ownership of land and houses,invested more heavily in funerary monuments thancitizens did.


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honoured for having paid his taxes among the metoikoi whenever required, i.e. in previousyears, during or even before Demetrius rule.40 In other words, Demetrius use of the termmetoikoswas a short-lived phenomenon of the last few years before the word went out of use,and it is not surprising that Hellenistic scholars trying to define the concept ignored thisaberration. Indeed, Demetrius application of the term to disenfranchised citizens may have been

instrumental in its demise in Athens while it continued to be used elsewhere in the Greek world:the word had become tarred with an oligarchic brush and was no longer used under the restoreddemocracy.41

In short, I would argue that Demetrius solution to the problem of what to do with the disen-franchised was to reclassify and count them as metoikoi, because there was a precedent for thisin existing legal procedure, because he had no real alternative and because the conceptual andlegal obstacles to it were not insurmountable. This offers the only plausible explanation for thehuge and sudden increase in the proportion of metics versus citizens, as well as an attractiveexplanation for the non-occurrence of the term metic after his reign. The 21,000 Athenians inDemetrius census therefore include only those citizens by descent who also met the property

qualification; the 10,000 metoikoiincluded thousands of the poorest ex-citizens.This leaves us with the vast census category of oiketai. If all 400,000 were slaves, as is usuallyassumed, then they must have included slave women and children, not only because of their sheernumber (regardless of its accuracy) but also because 20 years earlier the orator Hyperides hadsaid that there were about 150,000 adult male slaves in Attica (fr. 29 Kenyon). And if so, it would

be odd for Demetrius to have counted all slaves but only adult male citizens and metics. But justas metoikoidid not quite mean resident aliens, so oiketaidid not necessarily mean slaves which brings us to the one recent contribution which has significantly advanced the debate on thecensus.

Raymond Descat has reminded us that oiketailiterally means members of the household,and is not infrequently used in the broadest sense to include wives, children and free servants aswell. Athenaeus himself reports as common usage that one who lives in a household is anoiketeseven if he is free (267e).42 A few examples will help illustrate this usage. Herodotusrepeatedly speaks of Greeks evacuating their children and their oiketai as the Persian armyapproaches (8.4, 41), where, of course, the wives are included under oiketai. Conversely, theSpartans at one point promise that for the duration of the war they will look after the Athenianswomen and oiketaiwho are of no use in war (8.142), where surely young children and elderly

parents are foremost among the oiketai. Xenophon gives something close to a definition of theterm when he claims that in Asia soldiers tend to bring their oiketaion campaign since it is theircustom to go to war alongside those with whom they live together ( Cyrop. 4.2.2; cf. 4.3.12).He even uses the term for the household excluding slaves and servants, when he refers to servants

preparing food for their masters and their oiketai (4.2.37). Plato, finally, repeatedly uses oiketaito distinguish free servants from slaves (Laws763s, 777a, 853e). With Descat, I would argue thatin the context of Demetrius census, it is the widest sense of oiketaiwhich is appropriate. AsCtesicles puts it quite clearly, Demetrius held a review of the inhabitants of Attica (jetasmn... tn katoikontvn tn 'Attikn); i.e. not just a count of citizens, let alone soldiers, but afull population census. Rather than slaves alone, he would therefore have counted all women,children and other dependents, slaves included.

106

40 See Whitehead (1977) 16467; (1986) 14852,citing Philemon (fr. 44 KA) and several fragments of

Menander (especiallyfr. 33 KA); IGII2

554.8

12.41 This is a solution to the puzzle faced by Gauthier((1978) 32123; (1988) 3637), who, while concedingthat the term is not attested after 306 in Athens, insisted

against Whitehead (see previous note) that the termmust nevertheless have continued in use in Athens,

since it certainly does continue to be attested elsewherein the Greek world.

42 Descat (2004) 36870; noted by Oliver (2006) 86;supported by OSullivan (2009) 111.


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If modern scholars have not generally drawn this conclusion it is presumably becauseAthenaeus cites the passage from Ctesicles as evidence for slave numbers, and in the rest of hisdiscussion repeatedly uses oiketai, as well as douloi, to mean slaves. It is entirely possible,however, that Athenaeus misinterpreted this ambiguous word in his source or indeed deliberatelyglossed over the ambiguity of the term for the sake of his argument. Ctesicles surely meant that

Demetrius census covered all inhabitants of Attica, including all members of households. Sucha broad interest in the population at large, rather than adult male citizens alone, fits well withDemetrius creation of the gynaikonomoi, supervisors of women, whose task was to monitor the

private life of households in general. Contemporary comedies accordingly cracked jokes aboutmagistrates visiting houses to review the number (jetzein ... tn riymn) of guests atsymposia and about new laws coming in which required the drawing up of lists of all the cookshired for wedding banquets.43

Whether the oiketaiwere counted as carefully as the other groups or were only roughly (over-)estimated will remain a matter of debate (see below), but at least we now understand the meaningof all the numbers and categories in Demetrius census: 21,000 citizens above the minimum

property threshold; 10,000 free adult male residents without political rights; and 400,000 women,children and other dependants.

This finally brings us back to the property classes. On the one hand, judging from theConstitution of Draco, the minimum qualification was meant to represent a hoplite franchise;on the other hand, 21,000 men made the qualification when, we have estimated, only about13,500 could afford to arm as hoplites at their own expense. The discrepancy suggests that therewas a fixed property qualification which was set low enough at, say, 500 or 300 drachmas toinclude all hoplites with little property but a large enough income from selling their skills or

products. The effect would have been to include also a large section of the agricultural populationwhose property, in land, was of the same value but did not provide them with sufficient incometo serve as hoplites. A plot of land worth 500 drachmas would be just over two acres, or less thana hectare, in size and could not begin to feed a family, whereas a pottery workshop worth thesame amount might well produce a respectable living. By setting a low property qualification,the new regime restored the franchise to the 4,500 urban hoplites who had been excluded in 322BC, but also extended it to 7,500 rural citizens who could not afford to arm as hoplites at theirown expense, though they would and did serve in the hoplite forces if and when the state providedequipment and training.44

IV. The population of Athens in 317 and 322 BC

In 317 BC, before the property qualification was imposed, there must have been significantlymore than 21,000 but fewer than 31,000 adult male Athenian citizens. How many fewer depends

on how many foreign metics lived in the city, and in view of the one-sixth metic contribution toemergency taxes, it seems likely that they formed less than one-sixth of the population, so that

Athens had at least 26,000 citizens and at most 5,000 metics on the eve of Demetrius reign. Thetotal of 31,000 adult men implies that among the oiketai were about 77,000 free women andchildren,45 and 323,000 slaves of both sexes and all ages, so that for every free person in Atticathere were three slaves according to Demetrius census, at least.

107

43Athenaeus 245ac, quoting Timoclesfr. 34 KA;Menander fr. 208 KA; Philochorus FGrH 328 F 65,noted by Gallo (1991) 374.

44

During the state-funded ephebeia the annualcohort seems to have grown to ca. 600 (see above),representing the physically fit 90% of an age cohort ofca. 670, which constituted ca. 3.3% of males over 18:

this gives a total number of just over 20,000 men of 18and older, i.e. much the same number as met the

property qualification in 317.45

According to the demographic model, males over18 form 57.5% of all males, so that there are 23,000under-18s; the number of women is 54,000 (23,000 +31,000).


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These conclusions have implications for the number of citizens in 322 BC, given by Plutarchas above 21,000 (Phocion28.7) and by Diodorus as more than 31,000 (18.18.5). Once againthe common modern view is essentially that of Beloch, who argued that Plutarchs source hadsimply derived his figure from Demetrius census and that Diodorus figure came from the samesource but had been incorrectly copied, evidently a slip of the pen. 46 Beloch later changed his

mind and argued that Diodorus figure was right, after all ((1923) 404, 406), and some havefollowed him in this. Hansen takes the cautious view that one cannot tell whether it is Plutarchsor Diodorus figure which is correct.47

The assumption that Diodorus and Plutarch derived their information from the same source isin fact unwarranted. Given how brief their accounts are, they could hardly be more different.Diodorus reports that the Macedonian regent Antipater, after imposing a minimum propertyqualification of 2,000 drachmas,

expelled from the political community all those below the property qualification ... and gave to those

who wanted a territory in Thrace in which to settle. These, numbering more than 22,000, left their

fatherland, but those who met the fixed property qualification, about 9,000 men, were put in charge ofcity and territory and governed according to the laws of Solon (18.18.45).

Plutarch, by contrast, does not specify either the level of the property qualification or thenumber of those who met it, but merely says that,

of the people who were disenfranchised on account of their poverty, above 12,000 in number, those who

stayed were thought to suffer disaster and dishonour, while those who for that reason left the city and

migrated to Thrace since Antipater provided them with land and a city seemed like men conquered

by siege (Phocion28.7).

Despite the brevity of these passages, one can discern in them the outline of two historio-graphical traditions, which are more clearly reflected in the two authors different treatments ofthe restoration of democracy in 318 BC.

Diodorus speaks of the demos in 318 taking decisions and sending embassies (18.65.6, 66.2, 3),and although he has the multitude and the mob shouting down Phocion, he sympatheticallyexplains their reasons: having been expelled from the political community but having achieved areturn against all expectation, they felt bitter against those who had deprived Athens of itsindependence (66.6). A return of the people is reminiscent of the phraseology used by the restoreddemocracy in 403 BC, after the oligarchy of The Thirty.48 Plutarch, by contrast, has the disenfran-chised swamping (pixuyntvn) politics under the leadership of demagogues and sycophants ontheir return (Phocion32.2); he refers to them as exiles who invade the country and are immedi-ately joined by foreigners and atimoi to form a motley, disorderly assembly (33.2); they later alloweven foreigners and slaves to vote (34.3). His outlook here is strongly anti-democratic, as one wouldexpect in a biography of Phocion, a leading figure within the oligarchic regime whom he admires.

108

46 Beloch (1886) 5758 (offenbar einSchreibfehler); cf. Plkidis (1962) 29091;Ruschenbusch (1979) App. 1; Hornblower (1981) 110;Sekunda (1992) 319; Gallo (2002) 39. Gomme (1933)18 and Jacoby (1930) 813 also argued that Plutarchsfigure was derived from Demetrius census but rightlydid not conclude that Diodorus figure was wrong.

47

Hansen (1986) 67 (though on 36 he supportsDiodorus); (1994) 301. Recently, Hansen ((2006) 39),too, has been converted to Belochs earlier view, asamplified by Gallo (2002). Throughout, he has shared

the common view that both authors used the samesource and that the discrepancy is a textual error((1986) 28). For the view that Diodorus was right, seealso Gomme (1933) 18; Rhodes (1980); Whitby (1998)109; OSullivan (2009) 110.

48 See Wolpert (2002) especially 91. Diodorus infact shows sympathy for both sides, since his assessment

of the Macedonians treatment of Athens in both 322and 317 is also favourable (18.18.4, 6, 8, 75.2), asHornblower ((1981) 171) points out.


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A close look at the two authors remarks about the events of 322 reveals similar oligarchicand democratic perspectives. Plutarch, despite his vaguely sympathetic remarks about the fateof the disenfranchised, minimises their number and withholds all information that would reveal

just how exclusive the new regime was. Since he does not specify the level of the property quali-fication or the number who qualified, his reader may well think that only a relatively small

proportion of very poor citizens lost their rights. Plutarch also stresses that only some of thedisenfranchised actually left the country. Diodorus, by contrast, spells out exactly how few andwell-off were those who retained their rights, claims that the number of excluded was enormous,and suggests that every single one of them left the country, to return en massefour years later. Itis worth noting that Diodorus does not unambiguously say that all the excluded left Athens:strictly speaking, these (otoi) left their fatherland refers only to those who wanted toemigrate to Thrace, not necessarily to everyone expelled from the political community. Bysuppressing the possibility that some of the disenfranchised chose to stay in Athens, however,Diodorus gives the strong impression that in fact all the disenfranchised wanted to leave ratherthan suffer disaster and dishonour under an oligarchic regime.

Given these differences it comes as no surprise that scholars who have studied our twoauthors sources in their own right, rather than for the sake of explaining away one or otherdemographic datum, have concluded that they draw on very different material. Diodorus followsthe historical account of Hieronymus of Cardia, while the major source for Plutarchs account ofthe restoration of the democracy, and probably for the earlier events, too, was none other thanDemetrius of Phaleron, who wrote in defence of his friend and fellow-oligarch Phocion both inThe Decade and in his Socrates, the philosopher who, like Phocion, was executed bydemocrats.49

Plutarch thus surely derived his number of disenfranchised not only from Demetrius census,as Beloch rightly suggested, but from the work of Demetrius himself, who arrived at his figureof 12,000 by simply deducting 9,000 from his census figure of 21,000. Aware that these 21,000excluded the poorest men and recent emigrants who had not returned from Thrace, he concludedthat the disenfranchised in 322 had numbered above 12,000.50 The number cited by Diodorus,

by contrast, is not a garbled version of Plutarchs, but an independent figure which Hieronymusof Cardia picked because it suited his version of the story, just as Demetrius picked a lowernumber which better suited his take on events. But where did this number come from? The veryfact that Demetrius derived a figure from his own census suggests that there was no contemporaryrecord of how many Athenians were excluded; only the number of the 9,000 who kept their

political rights was known. I suggest that Hieronymus resorted to precisely the same method asDemetrius but maximized rather than minimized the number which could be extrapolated fromthe census. Aware that Demetrius 10,000 metoikoiincluded large numbers of disenfranchised

citizens, he added all 10,000 to the 21,000 to give the total number of citizens and then deducted9,000 to arrive at more than 22,000 disenfranchised more than because some of those whowent to Thrace in 322 did not return in 318.

It follows that neither Plutarchs nor Diodorus number has any independent value as evidencefor the size of the Athenian population. And if these authors sources could do no better thaninfer their numbers from Demetrius census, it also follows that no other usable figures from thefourth century were available. The Athenians did keep lists of citizens, but only at the local levelof the demes, and although they would in principle have been able to establish the total numberof citizens by collating all 139 deme registers, they do not seem to have done so. The only

109

49

Diodorus, Hieronymus: Hornblower (1981);Plutarch, Demetrius: Tritle (1988) 2933.

50 Alternatively, as OSullivan ((2009) 112)suggests, Demetrius may have boasted that, compared

with the Macedonian regime of 322, he had re-enfran-chised 12,000 men, and Plutarch may have drawn themistaken conclusion that this was the number of allthose disenfranchised in 322 BC.


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records which were kept centrally were the lists of hoplites available for military service. 51

Accordingly, our sources are able to give fairly exact numbers of hoplites and cavalry, but not ofcitizens below hoplite status. On the very rare occasions when they attempt to indicate how manynon-hoplite citizens took part in a general mobilization, they merely suggest that these light-armed men roughly matched, or significantly outnumbered, the hoplites.52 The literary sources

which speak variously of 20,000 or 30,000 citizens in total, or in the assembly or in the theatre,therefore represent at best vague extrapolations from the number of hoplites or else mere guesses,and have no real value either.53

In short, the onlyindependent and reliable total number of Athenian citizens reported in oursources is Demetrius census figure which unfortunately excluded those who fell below anunknown property qualification as well as those who had emigrated in 322 and not returned in318 BC. What this figure tells us is that in 318/317, before the new property qualification cameinto force, there were several thousand citizens more than 21,000 and fewer than 31,000,

perhaps some 26,00028,000, while in 323/322, assuming a net loss of people in the massmigrations of the following year, there had been another several thousand more, perhaps about

28,000

32,000.Our only check on this approximate figure apart from the fact that a citizen body of well

over 20,000 men was needed in order to fill the Council of Five Hundred according to constitu-tional rules54 is our own extrapolation from the number of hoplites.55 Since the survivingrosters of ephebes and diaitetai, as we have seen, point to a total of 13,500 men whose economicstatus enabled them to equip themselves as hoplites at their own expense in the years before 336BC, we may infer a total citizen population of 27,000, if we assume that the non-hoplites matchedthe hoplites; if we assume that the hoplites amounted to only one-third of the population, thenumber of citizens would be just over 40,000.56 This range suggests that Athens before 322 BCdid indeed have much nearer 30,000 than 20,000 adult male citizens. The number of registeredaliens, however, was lower than has been generally assumed, around 5,000. The free populationreached about 120,000 in total. In 317, the total may have been about 10% lower as a result ofmigration, and the citizen to metic balance was changed by turning many poor citizens intometoikoi.

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51 Hansen (1986) 1316; in the (late) fourth century,the central records consisted of the lists of hoplites ineach of the year-groups 1859 (Ath. Pol. 53.45).Previously, there was probably a single central list

(katalogos) of hoplites, although Hansen ((1986) 8389) is right to argue that most of the supposed referencesto this list in fact refer to lists of men mobilized forspecific campaigns.

52 Herodotus gives exact number of hoplites atPlataea (9.28) but can only estimate the number oflight-armed as roughly the same: on the assumptionthat there was one for each man (9.29); Thucydidesgives the actual number of light-armed on the Boeotianside at Delium as more than 10,000, compared to8,000 hoplites and cavalry, but on the Athenian sidesays only that the light-armed were very much morenumerous than the hoplites (4.93.394.1); cf. Thuc.

3.87.3: exact numbers of hoplites and cavalry who diedof the plague; number of the mob ... impossible to findout.

53As rightly stressed by Hansen (1986) 2627, n.82,

listing the sources. I also share his view that publicdistributions were on a first-come-first-served basis andthat Lycurgus distribution of 160 talents of confiscated

property to the citizens at either 50 or 100 drachmas

each (Plut. Mor. 843d) therefore gives a minimumfigure only ((1986) 4547).54 Especially Osborne (1985) 4245; Hansen (1986)

5164; (2006) 2233, an important line of argument,but one which produces only a minimum.

55 It is impossible to extrapolate from numbers ofnaval personnel: we do not know what proportionconsisted of citizens (so, rightly, Hansen (1986) 2124,4345).

56 In 431 BC, hoplites must have constituted about40% of the citizen population of 60,000 (as calculated

by Hansen (1981); (1988) 1428), since Thucydides(2.13.68) implies that citizen hoplites and cavalry

numbered ca. 25,000 (30,000, including metics whowere outnumbered about 5:1 see above). If thepercentage of hoplites was the same in 322 BC, thecitizen population would have been ca. 33,000.


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V. Conclusion: an unequal society

This paper has tried to show, first, that Demetrius system of property classes set the qualificationfor citizenship significantly lower than 1,000 drachmas to include even the poorest non-landowning hoplites as reflected in the spurious Constitution of Draco quite possiblyconcocted by Demetrius himself and, second, that the categories of Demetrius census were not

native Athenians, foreigners and slaves, but citizens above the property qualification, residentswithout political rights and members of households. This reinterpretation of the evidence leadsto the conclusion that the number of native Athenians, including those who had lost their rights,was far above 21,000 in 317 and higher still in 322. The direct literary evidence for citizennumbers in 322, we have seen, has no independent value as evidence. The number of metics wasmuch lower than 10,000 and slaves (allegedly) numbered nearer 300,000 than 400,000.

If we use for the purposes of calculation the middle of our estimated ranges of populationfigures, we find that in 317 BC the 9,000 men who owned 2,000 drachmas or more, i.e. those whoowned at least enough land to make an independent living as a working farmer, constituted 33%of a citizen population of 27,000. The 12,000 who owned less than 2,000 drachmas but more

than the new minimum qualification of, say, 500 drachmas amounted to 45% of the citizenpopulation, and the poorest 6,000 men to 22%. In 322 BC, the top 9,000 amounted to only 30%of a citizen body of 30,000, and if we assume that the subsequent losses to emigration wereequally split between the lower two groups, 13,500 men (45%) owned between 500 and 2,000drachmas. Of these about one-third, 4,500, earned a sufficiently good income from selling their

products or labour to be able to serve as hoplites, bringing the total hoplite class to 45%. Theremaining 7,500 men (25%) owned less than 500 drachmas.

The implications for the distribution of wealth in late fourth-century Athens are set out inTables 1 and 2. At the top of the scale, we know that those who were rich enough to be liable toeisphorataxation collectively owned 6,000 talents and that was only the property which theysaw fit to declare for tax purposes.57 Unfortunately, the number of eisphorapayers and their

property threshold are a matter of debate. It is most commonly assumed that there were 1,500

2,000 tax payers with a minimum property of one talent, and this is the premise adopted in Table1.58 Alternatively, the eisphora-paying lite may have consisted of 1,200 men with a minimum

property of three talents, and this is the assumption made in Table 2.59 The key results are thatthe richest 47% owned between 2743% of all wealth and that the richest 30% owned as muchas 7786%. This is a highly unequal distribution of wealth although still less unequal than, say,in the modern USA, where in 19892001 the share of wealth owned by the richest 5% steadilyrose from 54.4 to 57.7 % and the richer half of the population owned around 97% of all wealth.60

Finally, whether the ca. 320,000 slaves included in Demetrius census of members of house-holds was an accurate figure remains uncertain, because he had less need of a precise count of

slaves than of carefully sorting out the citizens from the metoikoi. It may be that the number was

111

57 Demosthenes 14.19 (354 BC); cf. Polybius 2.62.7(5,750 drachmas in 378 BC).

58 For this view, see Davies (1984) especially 34; cf.Christ (2007) 63 (1,500). On the basis of these figures,Foxhall (1992) and Osborne (1992) in different wayscalculate the minimum proportion of landowned/controlled by the eisphora-paying lite:Foxhalls figure of 45% (15758) is almost identical tothe result of the calculations offered in Table 1.

59 This view on the number of eisphorapayers is

based on the argument of MacDowell (1986) that the1,200 liturgists are identical with the eisphorapayers,and the argument of Gabrielsen ((1995) 4553, 17682)that 1,200 men with properties of ca. three talents are

needed to fill all the liturgies, allowing for exemptions.For the sake of completeness, we should mention theview of Jones ((1957) 2829) that there were 6,000eisphorapayers, with a minimum property of 2,500drachmas. The evidence for this is flimsy, but if correctit would mean that there were 3,000 citizens with

properties between 2,000 and 2,500 drachmas, collec-tively owning 6,750,000 drachmas, and that the totalamount of property owned in Attica was 61,500,000drachmas, of which the richest 9,000 citizens (30%)

owned 69.5%, and the poorest 21,000 (70%) owned30.5%.

60 Kennickell (2003) 9, table 5; cf. Hanson (1995)479, on Foxhall (1992); Osborne (1992).


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arrived at by simply assuming three slaves per free resident. Certainly the proportion seemsunfeasibly high 75% of the population, compared to, for example, 57% in South Carolina in1860, the highest proportion of slaves of any southern American state. But even if it was basedon nothing more than an assumed proportion, the assumption was made by people who wereinvolved in a serious, government-led estimate of the size of their own population, and thereforethe figure is not of the same kind as the propagandistically or fantastically inflated numbers fromancient literature with which it is often lumped together in order to be dismissed.61 Demetriusand his census-takers may well have overestimated the number of slaves in Attica, but it is hardto believe that they got it so far wrong as virtually to invert the actual proportions, whichaccording to most modern guesses were that free residents outnumbered slaves by at least 2:1.Demetrius census figure deserves more serious consideration than most ancient numbers, and weshould take seriously the possibility that in fourth-century Attica the slaves really outnumberedthe free by some margin.62

112

61 A favourite, but misleading, comparandum isHerodotus 1.7 million men in the army of Xerxes:Hansen (1988) 1112; Sallares (1991) 5860. Wecannot even compare Demetrius 400,000 with thesimilar slave figures quoted in Athenaeus 272c for

Aegina (470,000; Aristotle fr. 427 Rose) and Corinth(460,000; Timaeus FGrH566 F 5), because we do notknow what kind of information Aristotle and Timaeushad to go on.

62 Cf. Descat (2004) 36870; Oliver (2006) 8486.Gomme ((1933) 18, 2024) estimates a maximum of ca.100,000 slaves, almost as many as the free population;similarly, Whitby (1998) 11314. A free to slave ratioof 2:1 is suggested by Hansen (1988) 12; (2006) 56,

n.137; Scheidel (1995) 208; cf. Jameson (2002) 171(50,000 slaves minimum). Slave numbers 2030,000:Sallares (1991) 5460; Jones (1957) 7879. Cf. Fisher(1993) 3457.

Number of citizens %Average (and range) of

property valuesTotal property value %

2,000 718,000 dr(> 6,000 dr)

36,000,000 dr 43.5

7,000 23 4,000 dr(2,000 6,000 dr) 28,000,000 dr 34.0

13,500 451,250 dr(500 2,000 dr)

16,875,000 dr 20.4

7,500 25250 dr(< 500 dr)

1,875,000 dr 2.2

Total: 30,000 100 82,750,000 dr 100.1

Table 1. Distribution of wealth, 322 BC (assuming 2,000 eisphorapayers)

Number of citizens %Average (and range) of

property valuesTotal property value %

1,200 430,000 dr(> 18,000 dr)

36,000,000 dr 27.00

7,800 2610,000 dr(2,000 18,000 dr)

78,000,000 dr 59.0

13,500 451,250 dr(500 2,000 dr)

16,875,000 dr 12.7

7,500 25250 dr(< 500 dr)

1,875,000 dr 1.4

Total: 30,000 100 132,750,000 dr 100.1

Table 2. Distribution of wealth, 322 BC (assuming 1,200 eisphorapayers)


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DEMETRIUS AND DRACO 113

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Athens' Property Classes and Population