David M. Pritchard
Costing Festivals and War: Spending Priorities of the Athenian Democracy
August
Boeckh famously criticised the Athenians for wasting public income on festivals
instead of building up their armed forces. As evidence this pioneer of economic
history cited the claim of Demosthenes that the citizens of fourth-century
Athens had spent more on the City Dionysia and Great Panathenaia than on a
single naval expedition and the suggestion of Plutarch that the Athenians of
the previous century had spent more on the production of tragedies than on the
maintenance of their empire. However, Boeckh never attempted estimates of the
total costs of the festival-program or warfare to back up his view. Interest in
the relative cost of festivals has only been rekindled with the recent shift of
focus towards the social context of Athenian drama. Ancient-theatre experts
have carefully costed the City Dionysia and, in light of their unexpectedly
high estimates, endorsed the evidence which Boeckh cited in support of heavy
festival spending. In so doing they have called into question the consensus of
those working on Athenian war-making. Military historians may have shied away
from estimating the global cost of war but they do believe that this far
exceeded spending on all other public activities. To adjudicate these different
views of Athenian funding priorities this article estimates and compares
systematically the costs of the festival-program and the cityÕs armed forces.
Total expenditure on religious celebrations was indeed surprisingly high and
comparable to the running costs of the democracy. But it was considerably less
than what was spent on the armed forces. In times of war the average level of
military expenditure ranged between five and more than fifteen times what was
spent on state festivals. This spending differential and the bellicosity of classical
Athens confirm that it was not drama or festivals but war which was the
overriding priority of the Athenian people.
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