erty." Poll taxes were exacted by the Athenian state, but as such taxes were considered ignominious and as implying subjugation, they were only assessed upon slaves or subjugated foreigners; and failure to pay was regarded in the light of a capital offense.
The income of Athens from fines appears to have been considerable, and to have constituted a singular and permanent feature of the fiscal policy of the state. Its method of assessment may be best illustrated by examples. Thus, if duly authorized officials did not hold certain assemblages, according to rule, or properly conduct the appointed business, they had each to pay a thousand drachmas ($200). If an orator conducted himself indecorously in a public assembly, he could be fined fifty drachmas (ten dollars) for each offense, which might be raised to a higher sum at the pleasure of the people. A woman conducting herself improperly in the streets paid a similar penalty. If a woman went to Eleusis in a carriage, she subjected herself to a fine of a talent ($1,180). In the case of wealthy or notable persons, fines for omissions or commissions in respect to conduct were made much greater, and so more productive of revenue; and there were very few notable or wealthy citizens of Athens who under the rule of demagogues, and through specious accusations of offenses against the state or the gods, escaped the payment of heavy fines; the experiences of Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Demosthenes, Pericles, Cleon, and Timotheus being cases in point.[1] Every person who failed to pay a fine owing to the state was reckoned as a public debtor, and was subject to imprisonment and a practical denial of citizenship; Miltiades, the victor at Marathon, for example, having been cast into prison (where he afterward died) through an inability to pay a fine assessed against him of fifty talents.[2]
- ↑ It was probably the contemplation of this state of things that led her great philosopher Aristotle to the conclusion, expressed in his essay on Politics, that "the rule of an irresponsible majority can be just as despotic as that of a single tyrant." He defines this extreme democracy as that "in which the majority, and not the law, is supreme" in other words, "when decrees of the people, and not the law, govern." By "law" is meant a fixed code of statutes, which can not be changed or repealed by the ordinary legislative power. The latter can pass only decrees in conformity to the fixed code, which thus corresponds to our written constitutions. Such absolute power, he says, makes the people a monarch, and finally a despot refusing to be subject to law; and "such a democracy is analogous to tyranny." Both have the same character, for "both exercise a slaveholder's rule over the better citizens." In one we have decrees, in the other edicts; in one demagogues are in authority, in the other flatterers. When a dispute arises, the cry always is, "The people must settle it," and everything is determined by the momentary will of the supreme multitude. From this state of things the wisdom of our fathers has saved us, and the Supreme Court of the United States, as a rule, decides questions of constitutional law with far more wisdom and dignity than its predecessor, the popular court of Athens.
- ↑ Boeckh's Public Economy of Athens.
