The Rhetoric of Athenian Public Finance in Demosthenes
type: CreativeWork
description: Athenian public finance underwent significant reform in the wake of the financial crisis that accompanied the Social War (357–5). Scholarly analysis of these changes, and of Athenian financial decisions in general, tends to pay little attention to the process of mass deliberation which produced them. Existing work on financial debate concentrates on the availability and communication of technical information, emphasising the control either of professional elites or the collective citizenry. The evidence of Demosthenes, by far our most important source of actual Athenian financial rhetoric, shows that these models distort the nature of financial deliberation. Moreover, they overlook the key dilemma of financial decision-making in Athens: how to reconcile the conflicting ideological claims of rich and poor, and how to reconcile an ideology of amateurism with an increasing need to concentrate administrative power in financial experts. Far from a sideshow or a hindrance, rhetorical debate was central to successful financial decision-making because it enabled the ideological negotiation of these fundamental conflicts, and so allowed the democracy to adapt to the difficult fiscal conditions of the fourth century. Part 1 examines Demosthenes’ rhetoric of tax reform in the 350s. Demosthenes defends the traditional notion of taxes on the rich, as a reciprocal exchange of benefactions for charis, against aggressive new initiatives that stressed the fiscal entitlement of the majority in times of need. He does so by associating tax-as-benefaction with other, more popularly compelling examples of reciprocal exchange: between family members, citizens, and elite philoi who are philotimos (‘honour-loving’). In his effort to democratise the elite virtue of philotimia, Demosthenes illustrates the first stage in the eventual re-establishment of honorific language and the ideology of benefaction around this concept. Part 2 examines Demosthenes’ construction of his authority as a financ…
abstract: Athenian public finance underwent significant reform in the wake of the financial crisis that accompanied the Social War (357–5). Scholarly analysis of these changes, and of Athenian financial decisions in general, tends to pay little attention to the process of mass deliberation which produced them. Existing work on financial debate concentrates on the availability and communication of technical information, emphasising the control either of professional elites or the collective citizenry. The evidence of Demosthenes, by far our most important source of actual Athenian financial rhetoric, shows that these models distort the nature of financial deliberation. Moreover, they overlook the key dilemma of financial decision-making in Athens: how to reconcile the conflicting ideological claims of rich and poor, and how to reconcile an ideology of amateurism with an increasing need to concentrate administrative power in financial experts. Far from a sideshow or a hindrance, rhetorical debate was central to successful financial decision-making because it enabled the ideological negotiation of these fundamental conflicts, and so allowed the democracy to adapt to the difficult fiscal conditions of the fourth century. Part 1 examines Demosthenes’ rhetoric of tax reform in the 350s. Demosthenes defends the traditional notion of taxes on the rich, as a reciprocal exchange of benefactions for charis, against aggressive new initiatives that stressed the fiscal entitlement of the majority in times of need. He does so by associating tax-as-benefaction with other, more popularly compelling examples of reciprocal exchange: between family members, citizens, and elite philoi who are philotimos (‘honour-loving’). In his effort to democratise the elite virtue of philotimia, Demosthenes illustrates the first stage in the eventual re-establishment of honorific language and the ideology of benefaction around this concept. Part 2 examines Demosthenes’ construction of his authority as a financ…
author: Sing, Robert John
language: eng
keywords: Demosthenes, Rhetoric, Public finance, Athens, Fourth century BC
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/a60b98a3-2a0c-414d-8d1a-3edf2721d5bc/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2016-09-29
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:24Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.101983