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CHAP. XXIV.: Athens lays claims to the leadership of Greece. - Aristotle, Constitution of Athens [320 BC]

Edition used:

Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, trans. Thomas J. Dymes (London: Seeley and Co., 1891).

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CHAP. XXIV.

Athens lays claims to the leadership of Greece.

After this, when the city was now in good heart and its treasury overflowing, he advised the people to lay a claim to national supremacy, and to leave the country, and come and live in the city; saying that there would be the means of living for all, for some in military service, for others in keeping guard, and for the rest in public employments, and that in this way they would obtain national supremacy. Yielding to these representations, they assumed the leadership of Greece, and treated the allies in sufficiently lordly fashion, except the Chians and Lesbians and Samians; for these they kept as guards of their empire, leaving them their forms of government, and not interfering with their rule over such subjects as they had. They established for the masses easy means of subsistence, just in the way Aristides had shown them; for from their tributes and their taxes and their allies the maintenance of more than twenty thousand men was provided. There were six thousand jurors, and sixteen hundred archers, and in addition to them twelve hundred cavalry, five hundred of the Council, and guards of the dockyards five hundred, and in the city fifty guards, and home magistrates up to seven hundred men, and men on foreign service up to seven hundred; and besides these, when they afterwards engaged in war, two thousand five hundred hoplites, and twenty guard-ships, and other ships which brought the tributes, manned by two thousand men chosen by lot, and further the Prytaneum, and orphans and guards of prisoners; for all these derived their maintenance from the public funds.