Chapter 1
The sanctuary’s stewardship records accounting methods and administrative practices of the hieropoioi
p. 7-65
Texte intégral
1Excavations on Delos have yielded close to five hundred financial inscriptions making up the accounts of the sanctuary of Delian Apollo from the classical period (55 administrative acts of the classical period dated between 434/3 and 333/2 BC) to the end of Delian Independence (364 accounts and inventories of the hieropoioi between 314 and 167 BC) and then in the period of the free port (80 acts of the Athenian administrators between 167 and the 140s BC). The least well represented periods in this corpus are the final third of the third century BC, for which we have only very fragmentary inscriptions, and the second half of the second century and the beginning of the first century BC, during which the inscription and public display of the accounts was clearly interrupted although the book-keeping and stewardship of sacred property must have continued.
2Decrees and dedications aside, then, Delian epigraphy is made up of a mass of accounts and inventories that were, in the main, the work of Delian magistrates, the hieropoioi, who had their accounts in the service of sacred property quite literally carved in stone from year to year. Each annual administrative act comprised two parts – the financial statement of the year’s board of magistrates and the inventory of the sacred property – that formed a whole in the way the Delians thought of the god’s fortune.
3In order to gain an understanding of how the island society of the Hellenistic period conceived of its economic and financial relations with the sanctuary of Apollo, we need to delve into the complex records of the accounts and inventories of the hieropoioi, scrutinizing their methods and familiarizing ourselves with their practices.
4The Delians, who had been allowed a hand in the management of the sacred property by the Athenians during the classical period, found themselves in 314 BC having to shoulder considerable responsibility in the name of the city-state of Delos alone. The magistrates tasked with administering the sacred property retained the title of hieropoioi they had held in classical times. The magistracy operated on an annual and collegiate basis.1 But during the period of Independence, from the third to second centuries BC, the tasks of the hieropoioi became quite diverse and more complex: because the god’s fortune had increased; because they also had to record the assets of the state treasury of Delos; and above all because the world they lived in had changed. One of the reasons for this complexity was certainly the multiplication of monetary standards and the diversification of currencies the hieropoioi had to handle when taking proceeds in and making payments out.2
5Their accounting practices therefore developed over the years to cope with this complexity, but that development was not linear. The lay‑out of the accounts varied from one stele to the next, meaning there was no one single model of these records. This diversity can be explained in part by the annual rotation of boards of magistrates that left none of them the time to establish permanent practices. But it can also be put down to the Delians’ hesitancy in the face of the complexity of administration of the sanctuary, which grew from the third to second centuries BC, leading to much trial‑and-error on the part of the administrators and civic authorities.
6The system introduced in the course of Independence and inherited from Athenian administrative traditions was a product, all at once, of the workings of the city-state’s institutions, of the deployment of accounting skills, and of a material organization that could physically accommodate funds made up of coined silver and of offerings that were in the main made of precious metals.
The establishment of a Delian administration
The Origins
The Athenian organization
7The sanctuary acquired its fortune from the time of Athenian Domination in the fifth century BC. The leasing of sacred estates and houses together with the growth in its land and property holdings, the creation of taxes on the use of resources and on the use of infrastructures of the sacred port all provided the wherewithal to maintain the sanctuary. However, the splendid festivals instigated by Athens in the sanctuary of Apollo, which had become a prestigious showcase for Athenian policy, and the building work undertaken between the fifth and fourth centuries BC, required greater income. The Athenians benefitted from the aparche (first fruits offerings) that was at one time made over to Apollo, between the founding of the Delian League and the transfer of its treasury to Athens, to amass productive capital. This capital brought in enough, from interest on loans to city-states, for the administrators to have the means for a lavish policy materialized by building works and the organization of religious festivals.3
8At the beginning of the period of Independence, the Delians therefore inherited substantial capital, but also management methods first introduced by the Athenians which they gradually made their own.
The Independence of Delos
9It is not known under what circumstances the Athenians departed from the island and the last records of the Athenian administration discovered on the spot date to the 330s.4 Yet the shifting power relations between Athens and its adversaries were bound to affect the Delian sanctuary too. A passage by Diodorus of Sicily (XVIII, 4, 2‑5) relates that Craterus, in 326/5 BC, had received instructions from Alexander the Great in the form of a memorandum, which the Macedonians decided not to enforce after the conqueror’s death because the plan was excessively expensive. It provided for the building, among other constructions, of six temples, each at a cost of 1,500 talents, in the major sanctuaries of Greece (Delos, Delphi and Dodona) and Macedon (Dion, Amphipolis and Kyrnos). The island of Apollo, in this project, was no longer the reserved domain of the Athenians that it had been since 478 BC. Diodorus’ testimony also confirms that Delos was long part of a network of major sanctuaries the conqueror did not disown.
10Yet Alexander’s presence is barely visible in the sanctuary. A dedication by the Delians to Alexander son of Philip (IG XI 4, 1072) shows that they were not found wanting when it came to adding their voice to the honours granted to the conqueror by the city-states with varying degrees of enthusiasm; but it is not known whether this was done immediately after the proclamation of Susa or at some later date, in the context of the Antigonid intervention and the Nesiotic League. In support of this dedication, the architectural study of a great marble base located on the western side of the terrace of the temenos has made it possible to restore – in front of the Pythion and blocking off the Temple of Apollo constructed at the instigation of the Athenians in the fourth century BC – a distyle monument with ovoid columns some 10 metres high. The parallel with the columns of the propylon of the Palace of Vergina makes it possible to liken it to a Macedonian monument, which might have housed statues of Alexander and Philip.5 The head of a colossal statue discovered in the Dodekatheon might be that of Alexander the Great,6 but F. Coarelli has recently argued in favour of an Antigonid monumental ensemble, making the Dodekatheon a dynastic sanctuary of Antigonos Monophthalmos and Demetrios Poliorcetes, and takes this head to be that of Demetrios.7 In point of fact, the question of the architectural and iconographic imprint of the Antigonids on the sanctuary would be worth re‑examining in full.
11After the partition of Triparadisus and in the context of the initial struggles among the Diadochi, the proclamations of freedom of the Greek cities, first by Antigonos in the manifesto of Tyre and then by Ptolemy “desiring that the Greeks should know he was no less solicitous of their autonomy than Antigonos” (Diodorus XIX, 62, 1‑2) were liable to interest the Delians who, at least for some of them, had already attempted in the course of the fourth century BC to cast off Athenian tutelage.8 Athens, under the domination of Cassander, was in difficulty. In 317 BC it had concluded a treaty (Diodorus XVIII, 74, 3) granting that it should maintain its territorial possessions in the alliance of Cassander, with a pro-Macedonian poll‑tax regime directed by Demetrios of Phaleron. Was the Delian sanctuary covered by the treaty? It is likely that it was, inasmuch as it was administered as an actual extension of Attic territory and that this domination had many a time been validated, most recently by a court hearing in 343.9 It is hardly likely, then, that, even by pledging allegiance to Alexander the Great, the Delians could have recovered any independence in the years 324‑323. Relying on the unrest in the islands against Athenian tutelage, Antigonos encouraged the formation of the Island League in 315 and became its patron.10 He sent an expedition under the command of his nephew Dioskourides, admiral of a part of the fleet, to ensure the security of the allies and win support from those islands that had not yet joined the alliance (Diodorus of Sicily, XIX, 62, 9).11 It was therefore probably in the course of Dioskourides’ expedition that Delos regained its independence. Throughout the fourth century BC, the Delians had struggled constantly to recover control of their sanctuary, while at the same time participating in financial operations made possible by numerous ties with the Athenians.12 At the time of their liberation, probably, the Delians passed a decree in honour of Antigonos.
12It can be understood from the few scraps of this highly mutilated decree that they named Antigonos archegetes of the people because he had restored their freedom and their ancestral democratic constitution to the Delians (IG XI 4, 566, l. 12‑15):
— —c.10— —πας πολιτευ[— — — — — — — π]ολιτείαι δηµοκρατου[µέ]-
[νηι µετὰ] πάσ[η]ς π․․․ειας καὶ — — ἐλευθέρα [τ]ῆι πόλει ὁµ[ο]ν[οο]ῦντε[ς]
[κα]ὶ τὸ συµφέρον τῶι τε βασιλεῖ — — — — — — — — — ποιούµ̣ε[νοι]
[αὐτὸ]ν? ἀρχηγέτην τοῦ δήµου — — — — — — — — — τὸν βασιλέ[α]
13The expression concerning the restitution of the ancestral democratic constitution is interesting. It fits plainly with a series of decrees from other poleis that expressed in this form the benefits of the liberation by the Antigonids and corresponds closely to the expressions used by Diodorus. In this way, the Milesians inaugurated a new era as of 313 BC, specifying that “the polis became free and autonomous thanks to Antigonos and democracy was restored to it”.13 But what were the constitutional changes that freed Delos from Athenian tutelage? In Asia Minor, the frequent overthrow of oligarchic factions justified the insistence on the return of democracy. The freedom of the Delians was that of territorial integrity in that Athens no longer controlled the administration of the sanctuary. But as C. Vial emphasizes, the democratic nature of the Delian regime did not change between the middle and late fourth century BC.14 Conversely, the departure of the Athenian administration did enable the Delians to return to ways of running their institutions that had prevailed before Athenian authority had hardened in the course of the fifth century. This was in particular the case for the Delian calendar. It can be observed that as from the 410s BC, the Athenian and Delian archonships were synchronized in the administrative acts, meaning that Athens forced the city-state of Delos to shift its calendar by half a year. Normally, the year on Delos began at the winter solstice, whereas it began at the summer solstice in Athens. At the end of the fifth century BC and then again as from 377 BC, the Delian archon entered office at the same time as the Athenian archon.15 The abolition of this imposed calendar, that violated Delian traditions, could well have been considered, in 314 BC, as marking the return to the ancestral democratic constitution. As shall be seen, other events, such as a likely period of refuge on Tenos with the sacred treasury, must have marked the Delians in these troubled times.16
14We also know that during those years the Athenians continued to defend their possessions. Other operations took place in the Aegean Sea and the Cyclades opposing Athenian and Macedonian interests to the Antigonid plans for liberation. In the course of the year 315/4 BC an Athenian fleet commanded by Thymochares of Sphettos was operating in the Cyclades and took Cythnos, which was under the sway of the pirate Glauketes. A later Athenian honorific decree for his son Phaidros related his great feats (IG II2 682, l. 9‑13). Another expedition backed by Cassander was organized against the island of Lemnos, which had become an Antigonid possession in 318 BC, but it was thwarted by the action of Dioskourides (Diodorus, XIX, 68, 3‑4).17
15It is difficult to determine the chronology of the various operations. R.M. Errington dates Dioskourides’ expedition to the year 313 BC,18 but the Delian sources, as J. Tréheux has shown,19 point to the autumn of 314. No literary source speaks of the liberation of Delos and the attitude of Athens, but the accounts of the hieropoioi serve to refine this dating.
16Under the Athenian Domination, the administrative acts were invariably dated by a dual archonship – the Athenian archon and the Delian archon – clear evidence of the existence of the city-state of Delos and the Delians’ participation as subordinate administrators in managing the god’s property. During part of the fourth century BC, this dual system of dating forced the Delians to alter their calendar and appoint their archon at the same time as the Athenian archon, that is, at the summer rather than the winter solstice as in their own tradition.20 As soon as the Athenians left, the Delians reinstated the old calendar and returned to appointing the archon at the winter solstice. So the Delian archon whose name has been partially preserved (‑eres) appointed in the summer of 314 BC, while still under Athenian tutelage, only remained in office for six months. In winter 313, the first Delian archon of the period of Independence must have taken up office.
17A fragment of an account from the very beginning of the period of Independence, in which mention is made of the Delian archon of 315 (IG XI 2, 138, BV, l. 3‑4: [ἐ]πὶ Φίλωνος ἄρ̣χ̣ο̣ν̣τος) records the three-month postponement in adjudication of taxes (l. 16: εἰς τὴ[ν] τρίµηνο[ν]). It is plausible that this inscription refers specifically to the transition between the Athenian and Delian regimes at the time Independence was proclaimed, as J. Tréheux has shown: the tax farming contracts concluded at the end of the year 315/4 under the previous archon, Philon, still under the Athenian regime, had lapsed with the island’s liberation and were re‑adjudicated for the three months left to run to the beginning of the Delian year under the traditional calendar, that is, until the winter solstice of 313. In this way, Dioskourides’ liberation of Delos can be placed in Bouphonion 314 by the Delian calendar (or Boedromion by the Athenian calendar), that is, sometime in late September.
18The Athenian stele that would in principle have recorded the accounts for the first months of 314/3 BC has not been preserved, but the account IG XI 2, 138 must have been an additional stele, carved at Delian instigation and covering the management of the final three months of the year 314.
19The first account of the period of Independence (IG XI 2, 135: fig. 11) corresponds therefore to the financial year that began in winter 313 BC (table 1).
Table 1 — Chronology of events at the end of Athenian Domination and beginning of Delian Independence.
Year | Solstice | Month | Month | Regime | Delian archon | |
315/4 | summer | 1 | 1 | Athenian administration | Philon | |
2 | 2 | |||||
3 | 3 | |||||
4 | 4 | |||||
5 | 5 | |||||
6 | 6 | |||||
314 | winter | 7 | 7 | |||
8 | 8 | |||||
9 | 9 | |||||
10 | 10 | |||||
11 | 11 | |||||
12 | 12 | |||||
314/3 | summer | 1 | 1 | Athenian administration | -eres | |
2 | 2 | |||||
3 | 3 | |||||
4 | 4 | Delos liberated; Farm rents re-adjudicated for | ||||
5 | 5 | |||||
6 | 6 | |||||
313 | winter | 1 | First year of | Archepolis | ||
2 | ||||||
3 | ||||||
4 | ||||||
5 | ||||||
6 | ||||||
313/2 | summer | 7 | ||||
8 | ||||||
9 | ||||||
10 | ||||||
11 | ||||||
12 | ||||||
312 | winter | 1 | Second year of the | Diaitos |
20The liberation by the Antigonids was maintained for the Delians, even after the triumphal entry of Antigonos and Demetrios into Athens in 307 BC. Diodorus (XX, 46, 4) relates that with the restoration of the democratic regime in Athens, Antigonos returned their island possessions of Imbros to the Athenians. An account of the treasurers of Athena and the Other Gods (IG II2 1492, B, l. 133) shows that the Athenians at that time recovered the territories of Imbros and Lemnos.22 The decision, which illustrated Athens’ capacity to assert its ancestral rights, must have worried the Delians who could well have met with the same fate. Unlike Delos, these ancient Athenian cleruchies were occupied by Antigonid garrisons and, for Athens, they were related to the trade route for wheat and its procurement. Even so, the independence of Delos was not called into question in 307 BC and Delian diplomacy may have had something to do with that, with the start of construction of the Dodekatheon, which encroached on the temenos of Leto, a sign of the necessary compromises with the Antigonid authorities.23 The decree of 314 BC (IG XI 4, 566, l. 9‑10) already announced the erecting of bronze statues that might have been housed there.
The Transmission of the Sacred Fortune
The recovery of capital
21The hieropoioi began their financial year with 7 talents from their predecessors in office under the archonship of the Delian – eres.24 The balance for the year 313 BC (IG XI 2, 135, l. 28‑30) passed on to the next year’s office holders stood at 9.6 talents.
22This amount of 7 talents clearly corresponded to the holdings left by the Athenians. In the second century BC, the jar inventories, with the particulars describing the amounts they contained, provided a slightly clearer understanding of the composition of the sacred fortune. It was made up of an earlier fund, 7 talents of which bore the enigmatic description “brought back from Tenos”, probably attesting, as shall be seen, to events that ruffled the Delian community anxious to protect Apollo’s treasure amid the upheavals of the end of the Athenian Domination, the Lamian War and the liberation of the islands by the Antigonids. Delos, a sacred island, had neither rampart nor army and its inhabitants might legitimately have feared the risks of pillage as the armies of conquerors of the late fourth century BC criss‑crossed the Aegean, to the extent of seeking refuge on the neighbouring islands. The Delians of the fifth century BC had taken refuge on Tenos ahead of the advancing Persian fleet, as attested by Herodotus (VI, 97). Similarly their descendants might very well have sought shelter on Tenos and to safeguard Apollo’s treasure there until the Antigonid decision clarified what was for the least a confused situation. This would better explain the emphasis of the Delian decree in honour of Antigonos, archegetes of the people (IG XI 4 566), if the Delians had been resettled on their island and restored to their role as stewards of the god’s fortune.25
23But these 7 talents mentioned in the account of 313 BC were not, in actual fact, the full extent of the sacred fortune. Capital for a minimum of 12.5 talents was permanently in circulation in the form of loans to ensure the celebration of the Delia of the classical period.26 The sacred fortune in circulation in the form of loans in 410/9 BC had stood at 46.3 talents. Towards the middle of the fourth century, the island poleis had borrowings that came to at least 33.3 talents. The accounts of the Athenian administrators of the fourth century show that the total monies available for loans, probably made up by the reserves of the aparche, should not have exceeded 50 talents.27 In the fourth century, the Athenians probably used a part of the reserves amassed through their sound management to construct buildings – the Pythion and then possibly the Neorion – intended to help secure their domination in the Aegean at the very time the wind was beginning to change. Shortly before, in 341/0 BC, the cash holdings stood at about 20 talents while at least a further 12 talents were used as loans to city-states. Therefore funds were still available, which the Athenians chose to use in prestigious construction works from the second half of the fourth century.28 In the second half of the fourth century, loans continued to circulate and a large share of Apollo’s capital must have remained mobilized in the form of borrowings first granted mostly in the late fifth century or the first half of the fourth century BC. Unfortunately no accounts of the Athenian administration have come down to us for the years before Delos was liberated.
24The organization of this credit system was one of the major innovations of the Athenians on Delos and brilliantly illustrated the power of productive capital through the organization of sumptuous festivals and public works. But after Athenian Domination ended, the Delians probably had difficulties recouping the funds still circulating as loans, as they did not have the same authority as the Athenians with regard to the indebted states. Although the amounts loaned probably continued to earn interest, as may be suggested by the Athenian administrative acts of the fourth century, the Delian project was soon to be refocused on the needs of the civic community and did not seek to pursue as before the Athenian policy of loans to the island city-states.
25It is against this background and at the time when Lagid domination was extending across the Aegean around 280 BC, some 25 years after the end of the Athenian Domination, that we are to understand the aid afforded to the Delians by Philokles, king of Sidon, as attested to by an honorific decree from the polis of Delos (IG XI 4, 559).
26The procedure concerned the repayment of loans owed to the Delians (τῆς ἀποδόσεως ∆ηλίοις, l. 9). It was carried out by order of king Ptolemy ([καθάπερ ὁ βασιλεὺς Π]τολεµαῖος συνέταξεν, l. 7‑8) further to an embassy from the Delians to Philokles. It also implicated the Lagid nesiarch Bacchon, whose name is mentioned in an incomplete passage of the decree (l. 8). The Delian decree thanks Philokles with a gold crown worth 1,000 drachmas, for services rendered in recovering amounts owed by the islanders to the Delians (καὶ νῦν πρεσβε[ίας ἀ]ποσταλείσης πρὸς αὐτὸν περὶ τῶν χρηµάτων ὧν [ὤφει] λον οἱ νησιῶται ∆ηλίοις πᾶσαν ἐπιµέλειαν ἐποήσατο ὅπως ∆ήλιοι κοµίσωνται τὰ δάνεια l. 4‑7, “and now an embassy has been sent to him about the amounts the islanders owe to the Delians, he has taken every care that the Delians recover the claims”). In the inventory of the Delian temples of 279 BC, three gold crowns consecrated by Philokles are mentioned (IG XI 2, 161, B, l. 56, 60, 86) suggesting that he was honoured other times on Delos or on the islands. He was also behind an endowment with capital of 6,000 drachmas in the sanctuary of Apollo.
Recent debts or claims from Athenian times?
27The nature of these debts and the identity of the owner of the capital have prompted much discussion.29 It is generally thought that the amounts owed by the Islanders must have been loans from the Delian treasury to pay the contributions of the Nesiotic League in Antigonid times. Contributions named eisphorai in the decree of the Islanders concerning the festivals of the Antigoneia and Demetrieia (IG XI 4, 1036, l. 44) seem to have burdened the Islanders as from 307 BC, either to finance these festivals despite the endowments presented for the purpose by the two Antigonids in the Delian sanctuary, or to meet the financial levies of Demetrios.30 A few years later, the decree of Nikouria (IG XII 7, 506, l. 7 = Syll3 390) praised the action of Ptolemy I who had cut these contributions by taking control of the Cyclades and freeing them from the Antigonids.
28The Cyclades, admittedly, had to continue contracting debts with various creditors between the late fourth and early third centuries BC, as suggested by several loan agreements taken out by the city-states of Amorgos.31 But while it is certain that the Islanders paid contributions under the Antigonid domination, there are no grounds for asserting that the Delian sanctuary had continued the policy of making loans to the poleis as developed when under Athenian control in the classical period. Even assuming that sacred capital was loaned by the Delians between the beginning of Independence and the expulsion of the Antigonids from the Cyclades in the 280s BC, those amounts could not have been taken from the Athenian cash holdings, but necessarily from what could only have been a separate reserve fund not recorded by the hieropoioi, because no outgoing of the kind can be read in the records which, judging from the initial accounts of the hieropoioi, continued seamlessly at the beginning of Independence. It is therefore hardly a plausible hypothesis, as shall be seen from the organization of the sanctuary’s accounts.32
29The book-keeping records regularly report borrowing by the city-state of Delos from the sanctuary but there are only traces of two loans to foreign states – Peparethos and Hermione – in the early third century BC. Peparethos’ debt is mentioned once only, in 284 BC, probably upon it being repaid (IG XI 2, 156, A, l. 20).33 Hermione paid interest to the sanctuary at regular intervals until 278 BC (IG XI 2, 144, A, l. 18; IG XI 2, 162, l. 27). The 3,000 drachmas paid by Hermione in 278 were termed annual interest (τόκον ἐνιαυτοῦ), which gives us to suppose a loan of 5 talents at a perhaps earlier date. There is no reason not to think this loan was granted in the fourth century among the loans to island city-states when the sanctuary was under Athenian control. There are no documents to attest to its repayment but, in the Athenian inventories of the mid-second century, a loan agreement tablet between Hermione and Delos features among the collections of offerings in the Temple of Apollo (ID 1449, Aab col. II, l. 29‑31; ID 1450, l. 104‑105) and might well refer to the same matter. Its presence is not necessarily a sign that the debt was still outstanding, because such a document would have been preserved in the records instead had the capital never been repaid.34 It must therefore be rather a consecration at the time of repayment, at some unknown date after 278 BC.
The role of the private fortune of the Delians
30Another interpretation has been suggested for the involvement of ∆ήλιοι in the debts of the Islanders based on the decree in honour of Philokles. For J.A.O. Larsen, the indication of Delians as creditors purportedly shows that the loans to the island city-states were not discontinued with the departure of the Athenians and were extended via wealthy citizens, who could borrow capital from the sanctuary and invest it among the Islanders.35
31The loans made from the god’s treasury to the public treasuries of the city-states were short-term loans and made for specific purposes, as clearly emphasized by R. Bogaert in refuting J.A.O. Larsen’s argument.36 Yet the question is rendered complex by the existence of a decree from an unknown city-state, possibly Karystos of Euboea, exhibited on Delos, and that should probably be tied in with the records of the Delian loans.37
32The decree honours the Delian Mnesalkos who helped the sitonai of the city-state to recover a cargo of wheat they had come to get from Delos and that had been seized by their Delian creditors (IG XI 4, 1049):
[Θεό]δωρος Θεοφάντου εἶπεν· ἐπειδὴ Μν[ή]-
[σα]λκος Τελεσαρχίδου ∆ήλιος, προξενί-
[ας αὐ]τῶι ὑπαρχούσης µετὰ τῶν ἀ-
[δελφῶν π]ατρικῆς, πολλὰς καὶ µεγά-
5 [λ]ας χρεία[ς π]αρέσχηται τῶι δήµωι
ἐµ παντὶ καιρῶι, ἔν [τε] τῆι σπανισιτίαι σῖτογ κα-
ταχθέντα ὑπὸ ∆ηλίω[ν] δὶς οἷς ὤφειλεν ἡ πόλις,
[πα]ραιτησάµενος τοὺς ἐν[ε]χυράσαντας, ἀπέσ-
[τει]λεν τῶι δήµωι, ἀργύριόν [τε] πολλάκις τῆι πό-
10 [λει] παρέσχηκεν εἰς ἀναγκαίας [χρ]είας καὶ τοῦτο
[ἐκο]µίζετο εἰς ὃ ἦν ὁ δῆµος δυνατὸ[ς] ἀποδοῦναι,
[τ]οῖς τε παραγινοµένοις τῶµ πολιτῶ[ν ε]ἰς ∆ῆλον
[βοη]θῶγ κατὰ τὸ δίκαιογ καὶ χρείας παρε[χόµ]ενο[ς]
[δι]ετέλει ἐφ’ ὅ τι ἄν τις αὐτὸµ παρακαλέσηι· δεδόχθαι
15 τῶι δήµωι· τὴµ µὲν προξενίαν ὑπάρχει[ν Μνη]-
[σ]άλκωι καὶ αὐτῶι καὶ τοῖς υἱοῖς καὶ τ[οῖς]
ἐκγόνοις καὶ εἶναι αὐτοῖς ἀτ[έλειαν τῶν εἰσα]-
[γ]οµένων καὶ ἐξαγοµέ[νων — — — — καὶ]
[εἴσπ]λουγ καὶ ἔκ[πλουν — — — καὶ ἐν πολέ]-
20 µωι καὶ ἐ[ν εἰρήνηι — — — — — — — — — —].
Theodoros (?) son of Theophantos made the proposal: whereas Mnesalkos son of Telesarchides, a Delian, who holds the proxeny with his brothers by inheritance, has rendered many eminent services to our people in all circumstances; whereas, at the time of the grain shortage, while our grain had twice been seized by Delians to whom our city owed a debt, he interceded with those who had taken the guarantees and was able to have it shipped to our people; whereas often he has advanced money to our city in pressing circumstances and recouped it at the rate at which the city was in a position to repay; whereas he has continually provided aid to those of our fellow citizens who went to Delos in compliance with what is fair, doing favours for what each of them might have to ask of him. May it please the people that the proxeny be granted to Mnesalkos, for himself, his sons and descendants, and that he be exempted from taxes on the commodities they import and export, (…) that they have the right to enter and exit by sea (…) in time of war and in time of peace.38
33The seizure was the second of its kind, so the city-state’s debts must have been sizeable or repeated. This seizure, clearly made at the time of departure of the already laden vessel, therefore probably at the time of making the outbound customs declaration, had been possible regardless of any conventions between Delos and the debtor city-state.39 It was the seizure of collateral intended to put pressure on the debtor polis: “The action of enekhurazein, the enekhurasia, is a seizing of property that is not permanent appropriation but by which one aims to secure, from whoever’s property is seized, a service one is entitled to demand from them and that they do not wish to provide. It does not bring about the right one has to obtain a specified service but serves to bring it about.”40
34Mnesalkos himself had lent money on several occasions to the city-state (l. 9‑11) and it may be that, to put at his disposal the wheat seized by the creditors on Delos, he entered into a financial operation that made him the intermediary of the creditors, by granting a sort of bridging loan to the city-state so as to release it from its initial debt.41 Operations of the kind are known from other honorific decrees. This is for example what enabled Boulagoras of Samos to become the only financial intermediary of his polis in a matter of a grain purchase, ousting another benefactor citizen and grain commissioner, who had initially agreed to an advance out of his own funds.42
35Now, this Mensalkos son of Telesarchides was precisely the man who proposed the decree in honour of Philokles of Sidon. Besides he belonged to a great family of Delian politicians and exercised among other offices that of city-state treasurer in 278 BC and prodaneistes of the city-state for a loan from the sacred fund in 269.43 It being the same person as much as the similarity between the two forms of wording (IG XI 4, 559, l. 4‑5: περὶ τῶν χρηµάτων ὧν [ὤφει]λον οἱ νησιῶται ∆ηλίοις ; IG XI 4, 1049, l. 7: ὑπὸ ∆ηλίω[ν] … οἷς ὤφειλεν ἡ πόλις) are an invitation to compare the two documents.
36Through the role played by Mnesalkos, decree IG XI 4, 1049 certainly attests to the wealth of a few citizens of Delos who were capable of financing credit operations on a regional scale from the beginning of the third century BC. The fact remains that the identity of the ∆ήλιοι towards whom the city-state in question was indebted remains problematic and they have generally been viewed as a group of creditors who were less flexible than Mnesalkos, involved either in their own names, or as intermediaries (prodaneistai) for loans for which the initial monies actually came from the god’s treasury.44
37Contrary to what has been claimed by several commentators, the wording used in the proxeny decree honouring Mnesalkos highlights the collective dimension of the Delian city-state. Had it been a question of certain Delian creditors in particular, a determinant and partitive would have specified so in the wording of the recitals. On the contrary, in using the word ∆ήλιοι, it was indeed of the city-state of the Delians, acting collectively and for the joint interests of the sanctuary and the civic community that the authors of the proxeny decree were thinking. True, the accounts of the hieropoioi do contain, concerning individual debtors of the sanctuary, the expression οἵδε ὀφείλουσιν τῶι θεῶι, ‘here are those who owe the god” (for example IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 196) and not οἵδε ὀφείλουσιν ∆ήλιοις, “here are those who owe the Delians”, but the accounting logic of the texts could not authorize any other expression in this type document presenting the detailed state of the sacred fortune. Conversely, the drafting of the loan contracts, as the case of Hermione already mentioned shows, does indeed indicate that the transaction on the sacred funds was designed between the debtor polis and the Delians, since as from the time of Independence only the city-state of Delos was authorized to take decisions about the god’s property. The tablet, registered in the inventory of the Temple of Apollo in the mid-second century, explicitly mentions τὸ δάνεισµα τὸ ∆ηλίων ὃ ἔφασαν δανεῖσαι Ἑρµιονεῦσιν, “the loan that the Delians say they accorded to the Hermionians” (ID 1449, Ab col. II, l. 29‑31). By underscoring the ties that bound them to their sanctuary, the Delians successfully forged this congruence between their city-state and the sanctuary in their official expressions. In this way, they were not afraid to take credit for financing their civic life: in the late third century BC, the dedication of the theatre, carved on the architrave of the proskenion, made the Delians the dedicants of the monument, built entirely at the expense of the sacred fund (IG XI 4, 1070 [∆]ή̣λιοι τὸ θέ̣[ατρον καὶ — — — — — —]ν κατεσκεύ̣[ασαν — —]). The dedication of the Hypostyle Hall, re‑carved subsequently by the Athenians, used the same technique (IG XI 4, 1071).45
38A Greek sanctuary was not a separate entity from the polity on whose territory it stood and it is this quite usual form of relationship between the city-state and its sanctuary that is found here.46
39It is therefore most likely that, in the Delian decree for Philokles as in the proxeny decree for Mensalkos, the ∆ήλιοι represented the city-state of Delos in charge of administering the sacred property of Apollo.47
The financial policy of the city‑state of Delos
40Might not the amounts in question, both in the decree in honour of Philokles and in the proxeny decree for Mnesalkos correspond instead to capital loaned at the time of Athenian Domination in the classical period and not paid back by the island poleis? It can be seen with the identification of the proxeny decree as a document from Karystos of Euboea that these loans seem to have remained within a Cycladic or Aegean geographical sphere. The two loans to the cities of Hermione and Peparethos still outstanding in the early third century BC also seem to have been the continuation of Athenian practices. It should be considered in this case that repayment, which was plainly the case of Peparethos, was made at the beginning of Independence. This solution seems the most likely and it accounts for the Delians’ eagerness to reorganize the administration of the sanctuary’s affairs in the early decades of their Independence.
41Other similar matters may have dragged on for too long because the difficulties encountered by the Delians in collecting the god’s money were probably multiplied. The jar inventories of the early second century indicate amounts recouped previously and coming from Minoa of Amorgos, according to the interpretation I have proposed for the itemization of these jars.48 This money was brought back to Delos at an unknown date and the terms used suggest it was pursuant to some sort of legal or financial proceedings.
42Admittedly the study of the changes in holdings during the period of Independence does not reveal any major and sudden influxes of capital that might correspond to the return of monies loaned by the Athenians. I had first surmised that the money that could have come back to the sanctuary through the action of Philokles of Sidon had not been accounted for in the sacred cash holdings.49 The operation would be logical in terms of accountancy inasmuch as this capital loaned out initially belonged to a specific fund probably formed by the aparche paid to Apollo when his temple housed the treasure of the Delian League in the early fifth century BC. But the operation is unlikely in the financial practices of the Delians, who took over the full control of the god’s property for the benefit of their polis. In point of fact, these amounts were not necessarily recovered en bloc but may have been recouped at various dates and gradually included in the sacred chest, without giving rise to any notable difference with the initial cash holdings, given the gaps in the records and the tapping of funds through regular borrowing by the city-state of Delos.50
43In any event, the 7 talents received by the hieropoioi in the holdings in 313 BC were not the sum total of what the god had owned in earlier decades and there was still loan capital out there at that date.
44Before entering into relations with Philokles, the Delians may already have sought support from the Lagids to become fully masters of Apollo’s assets by entering into contact with the dignitaries of the Ptolemaic administration, much as they had done previously with the Antigonids. Other Lagid magistrates were honoured in the Cyclades during the years before Philokles’ involvement. Thrasykles, oikonomos of the islands, in an inscription of Ios from the Island League (IG XII Suppl., 169) and in an inscription of Delos from the same Confederation (IG XI 4, 1043); Zeno, subordinate of Bacchon, in another inscription of Ios (IG XII 5, 1004) dated 186/5 BC;51 Apollodoros son of Apollonios of Cyzica, who was probably nesiarchos52 before 286 BC, in an inscription of Delos (IG XI 4, 562). Philokles himself intervened several times for financial matters in the Cyclades53 and may have counterbalanced his intervention in favour of repayment of the Delian claims by other aids in favour of the island city-states.
45The Delian Mnesalkos, perhaps in imitation of him, also acted on both sides. While asking for Lagid support to help the city-state of Delos recover its claims, he served as a highly influential, well-meaning middleman, as a private financer, by allowing an island city-state to purchase its wheat through a bridging loan. This was a situation of interwoven interests that was to be found time and again in Delian economic and financial life. The Delians seem to have used all kinds of pressure to secure the return of capital lent out in the fourth century BC with Lagid support being one means and seizure being another.
46The introduction of accounts inscribed each year enabled them to display to all how they intended to manage the property of the sanctuary with which they shared the territory. Like the dedications of the monuments, these stelae of accounts and inventories were in their own way a form of discourse about the claims of the Delian polis.
The Authority of the Delian City‑State over the Sacred Treasury
A question of aptitude?
47While aligning their accounting practices with the methods of control implemented by the Athenians, the Delian administrators of Apollo’s sacred fortune considerably reduced the circulation of capital. Ultimately, during Independence, the treasury of the sanctuary of Apollo was primarily a local bank and a major construction company with the council and assembly as its board of directors. The building business had already been very much in evidence under the Athenian administration. The banking business had begun then, too, but the Delians narrowed it down to their city-state, thereby radically altering the logic behind the circulation of resources. Loans were granted exclusively to the city-state of Delos and to individual Delians, with rare exceptions.54 The supply of credit was therefore particularly favourable to the population and the economic activities of the island as a whole. At the same time, these claims provided the sacred treasury with income in the form of interest payments that ran to 10% per annum on the capital borrowed.55
48Concurrently this extremely favourable position for the Delians raised many questions about their use of the god’s property. Were they meticulous stewards or mere profiteers of a fortune built up over the centuries? Did the Delians have sufficient authority to administer Apollo’s fortune where previously the Athenians had benefitted from the backing of their military might?
49The lists of individual debtors recorded in the accounts of the hieropoioi reveal a good number of defaults on loans that sometimes ran for several generations. These lists, together with the endless borrowing by the city-state of Delos from the sacred fund, have accredited the interpretation that the Delian administrators were far more negligent than their Athenian counterparts.56 The fact is that, in the classical period, the acts of the amphictyons reveal that the Athenian administration did not baulk at ordering attachments when a debtor was unable to make a repayment.57
50The credit dossier for Delos has been studied several times, especially by R. Bogaert, C. Vial and L. Migeotte who have collated its data.58 Here therefore I only take up certain points of interpretation.
Public borrowing
51The Delian assembly was sovereign in matters of financial policy. It was its responsibility to decide both on loans to and on repayments by the city-state in the context of the diataxis and on loans made out of the sacred fund for the benefit of that same city-state, by ordering the hieropoioi, by way of decree, to make the payments. The council was the executor of the assembly’s decisions. It was present, in the persons of the prytaneis, when monies were taken from the sacred chest. The loans from the sacred treasury to the public treasury were therefore cash advances that, like all other loans, were not exempt from interest payments should they exceed one year. But reimbursements were made at a rapid pace, often from one year to the next. Consequently the system did not provide the benefit of regular interest payments to the sacred fund.59
52The changes made to the Delian sanctuary’s banking policy at the beginning of Independence – by contrast with the system instigated by the Athenians, who, through interest payments, associated lending to island poleis with the financing of festivals – were therefore for the benefit of the Delian civic community alone. I concur with L. Migeotte’s conclusion: “Instead of turning to account a part of the sacred money, the Delians’ intention was simply, so it appears, to make available to the city-state a convenient source of credit without harm to the god’s fortune.”60
53The loans were the subject of an agreement filed with an individual, a Delian citizen, whose specific function is unknown (e.g. ID 290, l. 131: συγγραφὴ παρὰ Πιστεῖ Ξένωνος). Several institutions were involved in the agreement as attested by the wording of the loans recorded in the accounts of the hieropoioi: prodaneistai were associated with the city-state, and their number manifestly increased with the amount the city-state borrowed, plus guarantors. The guarantors (ἐγγυηταί) were named ἀνάδοχοι as from 269 BC (IG XI 2, 203, A, l. 73‑74). From 250 BC (IG IX 2, 287, A, l. 122‑125), the prodaneistai were members of the council, with the treasurers (as from 246: ID 290, l. 129‑131) and the secretary of the city-state (as from 218: ID 354, l. 10‑12). But this situation did not completely erase the role of the prodaneistai acting individually, as shown by certain evidence after the year 250.61 Conversely, mention of the anadochoi vanished from agreements after 250, probably because the inclusion of the bouleutai and in particular the prytaneis in the arrangement was enough to guarantee the loans.
54The role of the prodaneistai has been fiercely debated. The verb prodaneizein was used in many inscriptions and literary sources outside Delos to mean awarding an advance payment, which amounted to assuming responsibility in place and stead of the debtor, mostly because the debtor was a civic entity or a divinity.62
55In a study of the role of the prodaneistai, V. Gabrielsen notes that the term προδανειστής should, however, mean “who lends in advance”, “who advances the loan” and not, as the commentators of Delian inscriptions suggest, “who borrows in the name of the city-state”.63 He inferred by relating this observation to the existence of loans granted by the Delians to other poleis (especially through the evidence of the decree IG XI 4, 1049)64 that the prodaneistai were one of the links in a chain of credit that ran “sanctuary of Apollo – prodaneistai – city-state of Delos – foreign cities”: the prodaneistai supposedly received money from the sanctuary to lend to other city-states through the intermediary of the city-state of Delos, and then took it upon themselves to make repayments from their own assets in the course of the year, pending receipt from the debtor cities of repayment of the full amount. The Delian prodaneistai therefore took on responsibility for converting short-term loans into long-term loans by shouldering the financial risks. In this way, through their intercession, foreign city-states were supposedly able to continue to enjoy a supply of credit equivalent to what had been available in classical times.65
56V. Gabrielsen’s interpretation is correct as to the fact that the Delian prodaneistai took on the financial risk with their own assets, to the point that the presence of guarantors no longer always seemed necessary in loans made to the public treasury. The word should indeed be construed in the lexical sense; the προδανειστής can be “who loans instead of” and if involved as an intermediary in the loan operation, it was to take the god’s place and not the city-state’s. He served as a lynchpin or interface. Where need be, the προδανειστής would refund the sanctuary from his own assets, thereby becoming the creditor of the city-state in place of the god Apollo. If it was indeed a chain of credit it was because the existence of a legal entity responsible on its own assets was required in the loan contract. The wording of the loans explicitly stated that the sums were lent “to the city-state and to the council and to the treasurer such‑and-such acting in his capacity of prodaneistai” (e.g. ID 290, l. 129‑131; ἐδα[νείσαµεν] [δὲ τῆι] πόλε[ι κ]αὶ προδανεισταῖς βο<υ>λῆι καὶ ταµίαι Τιµοκλεῖ), which at the same time defines their legal obligation to repay the loan. It fell to the city-state as a collective body to arrange the material means for these repayments through its authorities: payment by the treasurers from the city-state’s own resources or repayment by way of an advance made by the bouleutai-prodaneistai.
57However, there is nothing to suggest it was anything more than a guarantee against the financial risk. There is no call to make a protective measure meant to apply in the event of some mishap into a generalized system of credit extended to island city-states.66 The accounts explicitly specify that a good many of the loans taken out by the city-state with the sacred fund were repaid from civic revenues, which means that the prodaneistai were not involved in these cases. R. Bogaert is right to point out the limited risk run by the prodaneistai: it was more a matter of time than resources.67 Above all, the wording is explicit about the use of the public loans and gives no indication as to a system of credit extended to city-states other than Delos.
Loans to private individuals
58At a 10% interest rate as always, the polis authorized the lending of capital from the sacred fund to private individuals whether Delians or resident aliens.68 We know of this loan business through four types of list in the registers of the hieropoioi: the lists of interest paid under the section on revenues of the sacred treasury; the lists of arrears of interest, recording the debtors in default; the lists of loans granted, under the heading of outgoings; and the lists of loans repaid, under entries. In all instances, these lists invariably distinguish between the money of the sanctuary and the money of the endowment funds.
59Loans were made for substantially longer durations than under the Athenian administration in the classical period. While loans to individuals were limited to five years under the Athenian administration, the Delian hieropoioi let borrowing run over several generations, and so it looks as if the loan agreements did not set any time limits. By the time some repayments of capital were made, arrears of interest had sometimes built up. For example, one Callimos son of Aristodemos paid back a loan of 100 drachmas in 250 BC that probably dated back to his father before 262 (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 16; 223, A, l. 62) and was compounded by 101 drachmas and 4 obols for the interest outstanding.69
60Special attention was given, however, to the provision of guarantees and sureties, as for the payment of farm rents and property rents; borrowers had to provide a mortgage, whether on their own assets or those of a close acquaintance, and secure the backing of two guarantors. Foreclosures were recorded explicitly in the accounts of the hieropoioi. For 274 BC, a highly mutilated item of the account that is part of the final information added on the right hand edge of the stele reads: ἐν[ηνο]χ̣ό̣των δὲ ἡ[µῶν] τὸν λόγον πρὸς τὴ[ν βουλ]ὴν παρεγένετο [αὐτὸς] πρὸ̣ τῆς ἀγωγ[ῆς τοῦ ἐγγύ]ου µη․․․, “whereas we had taken the account to the council, so‑and‑so came forward before the guarantor was foreclosed” (IG XI 2, 199, D, l. 52‑56). There is nothing to say that the matter referred exclusively to a loan: it may have been about the payment of a farm or property rent for which a tenant and his guarantor in default narrowly escaped foreclosure.
61So the Delian administration gave precedence to interest payments, leaving loans to run for many years. By calculating the probable amount not repaid by private individuals, R. Bogaert estimates that the god’s treasury lost on average 20% of such loans: “If we establish the annual means of the number of loans and repayments, we get the quotients of 6.66 and 6.78, which would on the face of it mean that eventually all the loans were recovered. But a closer look shows nothing of the kind because the average amount loaned was 320 drachmas per agreement, while the repayment was only 255 drachmas per payment. Therefore many payments were only part payments and the losses for the sanctuary came to 65 drachmas per loan or 20%.”70
62This conclusion must be set against the calculation of the amounts obtained from the payment of interest over the very long term. These interest payments were often made in part by the debtors themselves and in part by their guarantors or heirs, even belatedly, making good the capital in the long run. Above all, late payments do not seem to have been an obstacle for investments in construction work, nor for borrowing for the sitonia of the city-state. The fund management policy depended largely on the city-state’s needs and these were met out of the god’s fortune.71
63Accordingly the difficulties the Delians encountered, amid the geopolitical upheavals of the late fourth century BC, in recovering both authority over their territory and possession of the property of their god are a stark reflection of the contrast between the military might of classical Athens and the intrinsic weakness of the “sacred” community of Delians. But the definition of procedures, whether for borrowing or for the adjudication of construction work, attests to the Delian administration’s stringent view of its responsibilities in managing the sanctuary’s property.
The management of space in the organization of Apollo’s treasury
64The Delian hieropoioi in office each year gave over much of their time, with the help of their secretary, to implementing the annual accounting records as prepared by the monthly balance sheets. The handling of the public and sacred funds also involved questions of physical space. Offerings were stored in the various temples and oikoi of the sanctuary and their accrual meant they had to be moved and rearranged from time to time over the centuries.72 The fortune held in coinage, kept in jars, also required specific facilities as it grew. On several occasions in the first half of the third century the hieropoioi purchased “jars for silver”, στάµνοι ὥστε τῶι ἀργυρίωι.73 The complex accounting operations the hieropoioi conducted also required accounting instruments such as the abacus, which they must have had.74 Lastly validation of their accounts by the city-state’s authorities entitled them to close the financial period by engraving and erecting a stele of accounts in the sanctuary.
The Places Where Money Was Kept
65The deposit function provided by the sanctuaries of the Greek world is well known and largely attests to the perceived and actual security that the temene and their enclosed temples were able to offer for all types of funds and valuable reserves, whether the property of individuals or treasures belonging to the gods, or the public funds of city-states that entrusted them to their tutelary divinity for safekeeping.75
66The Delian sanctuary does not seem to have accommodated deposits belonging to private individuals although it may be that epigraphic records on this subject are missing.76 It did, however, house both the sacred chest and the public chest. Safeguarding them required storage arrangements and imposing facilities and it is worth looking at their complexity and bulk.
The Artemision and the Temple of Apollo
67The place where the money of the sacred fund was stored as indicated in the third-century inscriptions was invariably the archaic Artemision. It was in the Artemision (ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι) that, as the headings of the accounts state, the monies passed on by the boards of the hieropoioi to their successors at the end of every financial period were kept. But a change came about between 206 and 179 BC and it was the Temple of Apollo that housed both the sacred chest and the public chest. The heading of the account for the year 179 attests to this (ID 442, A, l. 2: τόδε παρελάβοµεν ἀργύριον ἐν τῶι ναῶι τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐν τεῖ κιβωτῶι τεῖ ἱερᾶι / l. 75: ἐν τῆι δηµοσίαι κιβωτῶι) while in the account for 206 BC, it is still the Artemision that is named (ID 368, l. 22: παρέδοµεν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι).77 The chests were therefore moved between these two dates. But that was not the only time in the course of its history that Apollo’s treasury changed places.
68The choice of the Artemision to house the sacred treasury was not without its significance for the Delians. It probably dated from the beginning of Independence since the first certain evidence in the accounts of the sacred treasury being in the Artemision is for 297 BC (IG XI 2, 150, A, l. 12 [ἐξεί]λοµεν ἐκ τοῦ Ἀρτεµισίου).
69During classical times, on the contrary, the Artemision was the main temple for storing offerings (the inventory ID 104 shows, for example, that the main collection was found in the Temple of Artemis). The Artemision was used at the same time by the Delians for storing the city-state records. A fragmentary decree of the city-state of Delos, dating from the fourth century, authorizes the display of a stele from Ephesus in the sanctuary of Artemis and asks that a copy be deposited in the Temple of Artemis (ID 73: δοῦναι αὐτοῖς στῆσαι τὴν στήλην ἐν τῶι Ἀρτεµισίωι καὶ ἀντίγραφα ἐς τὸν νεὼν τῆς Ἀρτέµιδος). The Delians’ involvement in certain aspects of running the sanctuary probably meant they also kept monies in the Artemision, but it is doubtful that the entire sacred fortune was placed there. The act of the amphictyons ID 93 (= ADC 5), dated 410/9 BC, states in the acceptance protocol that the money was received ἐν τ[ῶι ἱερ]ῶι καὶ τῶι Ἀρτεµισίωι and that it was passed on both by the amphictyons of the previous year’s board and by the Delian neokoroi.78 The sacred money, for which the Athenian administrators were responsible, was probably kept primarily in the Temple of Apollo which, at that time, might have been the Porinos Naos (GD 1) – more conveniently than the Temple of the Athenians (GD 12) where the layout of the cella for the seven statutes lent itself less readily to the purpose – since the Great Temple (GD 13) was not yet completed and was roofless.
70The Delians’ participation in sacred administration during the classical period, in a subordinate position to the amphictyons, mainly concerned the stewardship of offerings, sheltered in the Artemision for the most part, with responsibility for certain expenses decided on by the Athenian administration, while the Athenians retained oversight of the sanctuary’s finances.79 The Artemision features in the acts of the classical period as the domain of the Delians, both for civic administration and for their subordinate responsibilities in sacred administration.
71During Independence the new Temple of Apollo housed numerous offerings. The work to finish the walls and roofs – which, at the beginning of Independence, had completed the work first undertaken in the early years of the Delian League – had probably ended in the early third century BC.80 It was able to receive offerings at least from the 280s BC (IG XI 2, 161, l. 66‑102). The Temple of Artemis still accommodated a collection of valuable offerings of which the hieropoioi continued to keep an inventory, listed after the collection of the Temple of Apollo (see for example in 178 BC, ID 443, B, l. 104).
72The Artemision, which the Delians used during the classical period for their own archives and where they also took stock of the collections of the god, won their preference for storing the sacred monies when their independence was proclaimed, probably primarily because work was being carried out to complete the Temple of Apollo, but also because the Porinos Naos and the Temple of the Athenians symbolized the earlier domination. The domain of Artemis was a familiar space for the Delian city-state, more so than that of Apollo.81
73As for the public chest of the city-state of Delos, since it does not really appear in the epigraphic documentation until the hieropoioi took charge of the inventory as from 192 BC, we do not know whether it too had been housed in the Artemision. The income of the city-state of Delos was already existent in the classical period and, given that the Temple of Apollo was incomplete (GD 13) in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the Artemision alone was probably in a position to ensure the requisite security for the city-state fund.82 However, examination of the movements of monies between the sacred and public chests shows, as shall be seen, that, until the final third of the third century BC at least, the city-state of Delos paid much of its surplus income into the sacred treasury. It was only in the 230s BC that the first references to the public treasury began to appear in the accounts of the hieropoioi.83 The remainder of the civic revenues, if not used for current expenditure, also finished in the sacred treasury as loan repayments. It is possible, then, that the services of banks long proved sufficient to ensure most movements of funds for the city-state’s annual revenues and expenditure. The question of storage of money was much less of a question for the public treasury than for the sacred treasury.
Moving the funds
74The Artemision that harboured the jars of coined silver in the third century BC was at that time the old temple whose origins might have dated back to the seventh century.84 The L‑shaped stoa bordering the Artemision on the north and east was only constructed in the second half of the second century BC, under the Second Athenian Domination. The archaic Artemision or Artemision E85 had a single large cella (8.60 × 9.60 m). The temple had no opisthodomos and so the jars must have been stored in the cella.
75In the early second century BC, the Delians set about building a new temple (Artemision D) at the expense of the sacred treasury to replace the old one. An amount taken from a jar εἰς τὴν κατασκευὴν τοῦ ναοῦ τῆς Ἀρτέµιδος in 179 BC attests to the financing of the work (ID 442, A, l. 65‑68). These works explain why the jars containing the public treasure and the sacred treasure were moved to the Temple of Apollo at a date that must be situated between 206 and 179 BC.
76Architectural observation casts light on the way the Delians went about organizing the work of building the new Temple of Artemis: “during the first phase of work on the new building, the prodomos of the archaic temple was destroyed, but the cella with its offerings was left intact (…). The purpose was to protect an object or construction that could not be moved.”86
77But none of the objects in the inventory by the Athenian or Delian administrators was akin to a relic that might have required the cella to be preserved during the work, as envisaged by J.‑C. Moretti.87 Conversely accommodating the public and sacred chests in addition to the precious offerings and city-state archives must have involved substantial rearrangement to organize the layout of the jars in the chests and to make them secure.
78Because no flooring is conserved in any of the Delian temples, there are unfortunately no clues as to the possible arrangements for housing the jars in what the accounts name the kibôtos. Were these coffers, one public and the other sacred, set on the floor or buried? Should one imagine a set‑up similar to that revealed by the Asclepieion of Cos?88 In any case, it must have been a massive and cumbersome contrivance that was to be found in the temple to accommodate the jars. It was no easy matter, then, to move the treasure of the city-state and the treasure of Apollo to another building that did not initially have suitable provision. It can be ascertained from the full account for the year 179 BC (ID 442, A) that the treasure numbered 44 jars in the sacred chest and 37 jars in the public chest, making 81 jars in all. The full list of jars, that can be established from the accounts, contained nearly 200 items, but some had been emptied in the last ten years of Independence and replaced by new ones. The fragmentary character of the final accounts of Independence mean it is difficult to evaluate the exact number of jars making up the two treasures, but the stock must have increased in the space of ten years, therefore there must have been a good hundred or so jars. In the Inventories of the second Athenian Domination, the administrators counted at least 80 jars in the Temple of Apollo. The list is incomplete because all of these inventories are fragmentary and the lists of jars of the Athenian administrators did not include the Attic currency that must have been kept apart. It is not known either what became of the jars of the public chest but it is likely that the inventory of the Athenian administrators included both the sacred and the public coffers.89
79It was a stock that certainly required special arrangements in the temple for storage while ensuring accessibility. Apart from the challenges in terms of security while changing locations, operations for handling the jars were complicated. It is not known whether all the jars were the same size and whether they had been calibrated when made, but they would not all have weighed the same, because some held only a few tens or hundreds of drachmas while others contained one talent or even more than two talents in silver coinage. Their weights were therefore extremely variable but reached 30 kg for a jar of 6,000 drachmas which must have been difficult to move around without breakage and risk for the integrity of the fortune.
80The Delians may therefore have opted to keep the structures of the cella for as long as possible so as not to have to alter the organization of the chests. After completing the work on the Artemision, the space in the cella was rearranged, the removal of the treasure having freed up a good deal of space. The inventories of the Athenian administrators after 167 BC show that, with the completion of the work, other collections such as the offerings of the Sarapieion and those of the sanctuary of Eileithyeia had been moved to the Artemision (ID 1403, Ba I and Bb II, l. 40‑97; ID 1421 Bb II, l. 23).
81Accordingly we must probably revise the chronology of the beginning of the work, that is usually situated in 179 BC because of a reference to a levy from a jar for the Artemision works, and instead put their commencement at an earlier date. The expenditure of 179 (ID 442, A, l. 68), the sole mention of the work, which is no longer cited in the accounts thereafter, might in fact have been one of the last instances of spending for the work, that may well have started much earlier, at least at the beginning of the second century BC.
82This moving of the chests was concomitant with a far-reaching transformation in the way the accounts of the hieropoioi were organized. In the early second century, the accounts began to set out both the inventory of the sacred treasury and that of the public treasury in the form of a list of the jars that extended the protocol for receiving the cash holdings. We have the earliest evidence of this in the account for the year 192 BC (ID 399, A). Each of the jars was numbered and its contents, which were usually inventoried and certified beforehand by banks through which the monies passed, described. It may therefore be thought that the transfer of the jars of the sacred treasury from the Artemision to the Temple of Apollo was an opportunity to conduct a full stock-taking of the jars because of the complexity of the operation. The Delians might have taken the opportunity to introduce new principles for inscribing the accounts whereby the full inventory of the jars had to be repeated each year, as was already the case for offerings.
83If, then, it appears logical to relate this new practice to the need to draw up an inventory when physically moving the funds, the housing of the sacred and public chests in the Temple of Apollo might date from 192 BC. The account statement of that year does not unfortunately provide any indication as to the location of either of the chests. But it was during this financial year that the hieropoioi reported the absence of the prytaneis at one point in the hand-over, with the result that they were unable to deposit certain jars in the chests and were forced to hand them over “outside” (ID 399, A, l. 30‑32: ἄλλοι στάµνοι οὐκ ἐτέθησ[αν εἰς] τὴν κιβωτὸν διὰ τὸ µὴ παραγενέσθαι τοὺς πρυτάνεις µήτε ἀνοῖξαι τὴν [κι]βωτὸν ἐπανγειλάντων [ἡµῶν, vac. [οὓς] καὶ παρεδώκαµεν ἔξω). This unusual and one‑off incident might be explained by the particular circumstances of the moving of the jars and their inventory, which would have disrupted the usual calendar for the hand-over.
84In that same account for the year 192 BC, the hieropoioi reported making a readjustment. They took an amount from a fund in the public treasury containing 4,751 drachmas to put it in another jar, “the money that was missing in total of all the public and sacred money alike” (ID 399 A, l. 40‑41: τὸ δι[α]φώνησαν ἀργύριον ἀπὸ παντὸς τοῦ ἀργυρίου τοῦ τ[ε] ἱεροῦ καὶ τοῦ δηµοσίου). Over several decades, the inventory of specie making up the cash holdings might have led to results that were slightly out because of monetary conversions, resulting in a discrepancy between the actual total in the holdings and the total as accounted for in the records. An operation of the kind presupposes a full balance of the contents of the jars, which the move to the Temple of Apollo may have made essential. That is further evidence for ascribing the transfer to the year 192.
The question of monetary effigies
85The importance of the Artemision in the Delians’ financial and administrative organization, both for the sacred treasury and for the city-state’s business, largely reflected the sanctuary’s political situation from the archaic period onwards. Whereas the god Apollo was the subject of all the attentions of the surrounding powers and thalassocracies, the city-state of Delos found in Artemis a focus for its civic challenges. And yet, the Delians in this way maintained an unusual position in the Greek world. The Temple of the tutelary divinity, whose effigy was to be found on the city-state’s coinage, was generally the place where the treasure was housed.
86However, depositing the sacred treasure in the Artemision did not prevent the Delians from overlooking Artemis on the effigies on their coins. The earliest issues of coinage by the city-state of Delos bear only the emblem of Apollo and it was only in the second century BC, when the treasure had been moved to the Temple of Apollo, that the goddess finally appeared on some small bronze coins that bore the head of Apollo on the obverse and that of Artemis on the reverse, and on the series of palm-tree coins.
87This practice, which was uncommon in the Greek world, can be explained in terms of financial institutions. Apollo’s estate had come to include all of the island’s sanctuaries in financial terms. Apollo’s treasury centralized the monetary resources of the “other gods” and then redistributed them when work was required on the buildings, in a practice that probably originated in reflections in fifth-century Athens, at the time of the decrees of Callias, on the treasury of the “other gods” of Attica.90 Displaying the effigy of Apollo on the coinage of Delos merely expressed this state of affairs. Artemis, who housed the god’s treasure, was a secondary divinity in this group. Moreover, although the completion of the construction of the Temple of Apollo by the Delians did indeed go along with the plan to take the chests back to the building consecrated to the god, it seems that for the Delians, its depositing in the Artemision, although it was continued for a century, had only been thought of as provisional. With their earliest monetary issue bearing the effigy of Apollo, the Delians had reasserted both their reappropriation of everything that concerned the god and the continuity of the sacred property, even if Apollo’s treasure was not in his temple at the time.
Forms of Storage
88We know very little about the material storage of monetary deposits and offerings in the Greek world. The vocabulary of the inscriptions of Delos, which is always precise, provides clues as to the physical conservation of objects in the temples and the treasuries: placement on shelving, in chests, hanging of certain items on the walls, maintenance or re‑casting of damaged objects.91 The position of monetary reserves has come in for far less study.92 Here again, the Delian accounts and inventories provide clarifications about the physical conservation of the sacred money and it can be thought likely that the situation of deposits was identical in many Greek sanctuaries.
89Coins were all kept in jars (στάµνοι) that bore a description inscribed on the container indicating the amount contained and the source of the funds. In the first half of the third century BC, the hieropoioi made regular purchases of “jars for silver” (στάµνοι ὥστε τῶι ἀργυρίωι).93 Subsequently they probably recycled old jars that had been emptied of their monetary contents to hold new cash deposits.
90These jars, a good hundred or so in number at the end of Independence, were in turn placed in chests because the inventories of the coinage made by the Athenian administrators after 167 BC mentioned them: καὶ ἀργυρίου τοῦ ὑπάρχοντος ἐν ταῖς κ[ι]βωτοῖς· (ID 1429, B, col. II, l. 33 and ID 1449, Ba, col. I, l. 24). There is nothing to say what differentiated the sacred treasury from the public treasury. But it can be inferred from the inventories of the Delians, and then the Athenians, that the jars were stacked with the oldest at the bottom and the more recent ones above, where they were more accessible. The order in which the Athenian administrators drew up their inventory shows this, beginning with the most recent that were most easily accessible, whereas the hieropoioi made out a chronological catalogue of the jars each year, noting the oldest ones first. It is besides likely that for the funds that did not move, they worked by copying the previous inventories from year to year as they did for precious offerings.94
91The weight of each jar varied with the amount it held.95 We do not know whether they were calibrated by size for the needs of storage. Within the jars, coins might be grouped in series in leather bags. One of the deposits mentions an amount “in the leather bag” (ἐν τῶι κυνούχωι).96
92These forms of storage suggest the containers were already in the strongboxes, but that a part of the money circulated between magistrates and bankers in charge of accounting operations in bags and not directly in the jars. In the inventories of the jars kept by the hieropoioi, for each amount deposited there was always some indication to identify it. For the ancient funds, made up of jars whose money no longer circulated, it was an inscription on the jar itself (e.g. ID 442, A, l. 5: ἄλλον στάµνον ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα· τὸ ἀπελθὸν ἐκ Τήνου 𐅆Χ, “another jar, bearing the inscription: amount brought back from Tenos, 6,000 drachmas”).97 For the deposits in circulation, the hieropoioi wrote a longer itemization because they always indicated on the jar the name of the bank from which the deposit came (e.g. ID 442, A, l. 18‑19: ἄλλον στάµνον ἐπιγραφ[ὴ]ν ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς Νυµφοδώρου καὶ Ἡρακλείδου, ἐπὶ Ἀπατουρίου Ποσιδεῶνος, ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ Πραξιµένης κα[ὶ] Τε[λ]εσαρχίδης, ἐν ὧι λοιπὸν Η∆𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅦𐅀//, “another jar bearing the inscription: from the bank of Nymphodoros and Herakleides, under the archonship of Apatourios in the month of Posideon, deposit of the hieropoioi Praximenes and Telesarchides, in which there remain 114 dr. 5 ob. 1/2 ob. 2 ch.”).
93These sometimes lengthy inscriptions were made by the hieropoioi at the time they placed a new jar into the chest. The amount it contained was then spent as and when required, as indicated by the withdrawals made by the hieropoioi on order of the city-state’s authorities. For example, in the account of 179 BC (ID 442, l. 59‑63):
Μηνὸς Γαλαξιῶνος εἰκάδι προείλοµεν ἀπὸ στάµνου οὗ ἐπιγραφή· ἀπὸ τῆς Νυµφοδώρου καὶ Ἡρακλείδου, ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως Ἀρησιῶνος, ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ οἱ ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος Ἀπατουρίου Πραξιµένης καὶ Τελεσαρχίδης οὗ ἀναφέρετ<αι> ἐν τῇ στήλῃ τὸ περιὸν 𐅂ΧΧΧΧΗΗΗ∆∆∆∆
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· ἀπὸ τούτ[ο]υ ἀφείλοµεν εἰς τὸν στέφανον τῶι βασιλεῖ Φιλίππωι ΧΗΗΗ𐅄· λοιπὸν ἔνεστιν 𐅂ΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄∆∆∆∆
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· ἀπὸ τούτου µηνὸς Θαργηλιῶνος πέµπτῃ ἱσταµένου προείλοµεν εἰς τὰ ἔργα 𐅂ΧΧ· λοιπὸν ἔνεστιν 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄∆∆∆∆
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ. µηνὸς Βουφονιῶνος τρίτῃ ἀπιόντος τοῦτο ἐξείλοµεν τὸ περιὸν ἐν τῶι στάµνωι εἰς τὰ ἔργα τὰς 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄∆∆∆∆
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
In the month of Galaxion, on the 20th, we removed from a jar containing the inscription: “from the bank of Nymphodoros and Heralkeides, in the archonship of Phokaieus, month of Aresion, deposit of the hieropoioi Praximenes and Telesarchides of the archonship of Apatourios, the period which is mentioned on the stele 4,349 drachmas, 2 obols”. From this amount we withdrew for the crown presented to king Philip 1,350 drachmas. Remainder in the jar: 2,999 drachmas 2 obols. From this amount, in the month of Thargelion, the 5th, we withdrew for the building works: 2,000 drachmas. Remainder in the jar: 999 drachmas, 2 obols. In the month of Bouphonion, the 3rd, we withdrew the 999 drachmas, 2 obols remaining in the jar for the building works.
94In this way the jar remained identified by the wording of its initial deposit and in particular the name of the bank the amount came from, since that indication meant it could be traced to the bankers’ register.98 The jars emptied of their contents must have been used again by the hieropoioi and their description erased for taking in new cash holdings.
95In the inventories of the Second Athenian Domination, the same jars were taken stock of, but the Athenians did not take up the wording of the hieropoioi. They simply numbered all the jars from A to ZZZZ (A‑Ω, AA‑ΩΩ, AAA‑ΩΩΩ and AAAA‑ZZZZ), that is, from 1 to 78 now filled with coins removed from circulation and that featured in the inventory of the act by the same token as the offerings and no longer in its accounting section.99 However, the Athenians’ inventories mention a lost vase in the Temple of Apollo around 140 BC that had not been placed with the stamnoi but nonetheless related to the Delian stewardship or to the transition between the Delian and Athenian administrations in 167. It was a small vase, a prochoidion, containing the payment of interest and bearing an inscription describing the various lots that made up its contents (ID 1428, col. II, l. 22‑26 to be supplemented by ID 1450, A, l. 191‑192).100 The sacred chest may have contained vases of various sizes in the time of the hieropoioi.
96We know from the accounting inscriptions that on the Acropolis in Athens there were bronze boxes with several compartments (θέκες),101 strongboxes (ἐν κιβωτίωι),102 and sealed leather bags (ἐν τῶι φασκωλίωι).103 A fifth-century Athenian inscription, one of the two decrees of Callias, mentions the locks on the doors of the Opisthodomos and their sealed keys, entrusted to the keeping of the temple treasurers (IG I3 52, l. 15‑18). The low relief of a decree relating to the Athenian tribute (IG I3 68 inv. EM 6595) shows bags and hydriai filled with silver coins.
97These forms of storage were commonplace and identical practices have been examined in Afghanistan for the treasury of Ai‑Khanoum in the Hellenistic period.104 Other sanctuaries had strongboxes embedded in the floor of the cella, like the thesauros of the Asklepieion of Cos, evidenced by a paved pit in the south-west corner of the cella, nearly 1 m deep, 2.15 m long and 1.53 m wide (fig. 1). It was covered by a heavy marble slab that could only be lifted with pulleys or a hoist.105 Perhaps this is the kind of device that should be imagined for the Delian Artemision.
Fig. 1 — Le dispositif du thésauros de l’Asklépieion de Cos.

Reproduction de Herzog 1932, p. 36, fig. 25 and 26.
98These forms of closure and protection of the treasures explain why, on Delos as elsewhere, the sacred chest could not be opened at all times by the hieropoioi. The same applied to the treasurers in charge of the public chest. The keys were in the keeping of the prytaneis and chest was only opened in the presence of the city-state representatives.106 The hieropoioi used the services of banks in the course of the year, and the funds handled in the year transited through their branches before going into the sanctuary’s coffers.107
99The accounts of the hieropoioi also mention offertory boxes (θησαυροί) in which the faithful deposited their offerings,108 and strongboxes (ταµιεῖα) where the priests and priestesses of the “other gods” of Delos could store the offerings and precious items that, at least temporarily, had been deposited in the temples.109 The accounts tell us of the tamieion of the Thesmophorion (IG XI 2, 144, A, 43) and the tamieion of the priestess of Artemis (IG XI 2, 147, A, 7).
The Place of the Accounts
100While the god’s coined treasure and offerings to him took up the space of the treasuries and temples, the accounting work by the boards of hieropoioi year after year occupied a non-negligible share of the space in the sanctuary because each stele of the annual accounts was carved and exhibited once the operations for the financial period had been validated.
101The stelae of the accounts and inventories that have been conserved intact or almost intact are very large:
IG XI 2, 161: 1.61 m × 0.77 m × 0.10 m
IG XI 2, 287: 2.18 m × 1.12 m × 0.13 m
ID 442: 1.94 m × 1.025 m × 0.105 m
102But the architectural reconstructions have paid hardly any attention to these monuments that were certainly very cumbersome in the sacred space, and probably lined at the very least the sides of the temples and treasuries. A passageway between the Temple of the Athenians and the Temple of Apollo indicates the location of some of these stelae (fig. 2).110 It is edged by marble and granite bases (fig. 3) into which two different formats of stele can be slotted side by side, an arrangement that might well correspond to the combination of the main stele and the supplementary stele that can be observed in the acts of the hieropoioi from the second century BC and that shows this was intended as the place for exhibiting accounts and inventories.
Fig. 2 — View of the passageway between the Great Temple and the Temple of the Athenians.

Photo: EFA/C. Gaston.
Fig. 3 — Bases into which the account stelae were slotted.

Photo: author.
103However, this passageway was not large enough to accommodate the 150 or so stelae that must have been produced in the course of Delian Independence. Several account stelae have been found re‑used in the sanctuary and a survey of the findspots reveals a majority of stones at the back of administrative monuments, to the east, near the peribolos wall and the wall of Triarius, the construction of which obviously drew on whatever stones were available. Is it to be imagined that the stelae were recycled in the course of Independence, with the oldest ones being discarded? When account stelae were re‑used for carving another text, it is possible to calculate approximately how long they remained valid. The Lex Gabina-Calpurnia (ID 1511) dating from the year 58 BC was engraved on the back of an account stele of the hieropoioi that dated from the early second century (ID 380) and had therefore become obsolete by the second quarter of the first century BC, that is, a century after it was first inscribed.111 In another case, a commemorative inscription dated between AD 112/3 and 120/1 (ID 2535) was carved on the back of the account of the hieropoioi of 313 BC (IG XI 2, 155), that is, four centuries later. Does this mean that the account for the year 313 remained on display until it was re‑used? It cannot but be observed that the material management of inscribed stones is worth closer study.
104In order to display the stele of the accounts and inventory of Apollo’s property each year, the sanctuary’s administrators burdened the sacred treasury with a major expense: the accounts themselves give the details (table 2).112 The accounts grew longer during the period of Independence, to the point of taking up an additional stele in the second century BC. But it can be taken that the average spending on inscribing the stele came to about 200 drachmas a year, plus a hundred or so drachmas for supplying the stone, transporting it and sealing it with lead. If we take an average expenditure of 300 drachmas per annum, it has to be thought that the sanctuary, for the 147 years of Independence, spent at least 44,100 drachmas, that is, more than 7 talents, on engraving the accounts of the hieropoioi. It is little compared with what the festival of the Delia cost in the Athenian period for which the treasury paid out 5 or 6 talents every four years.113 But it is an imposing figure compared with the price of architectural construction,114 particularly as that was just for the period of Independence, while the two Athenian periods also produced a large number of such accounting monuments.
Table 2 — Expenditure on engraving according to the accounts of the hieropoioi.
a. 279 (161, A, l. 118-119) | Deinomenes cut the account stele at the rate of 300 letters for 1 dr. and received 100 dr.115 |
a. 274 (199, C, l. 71-77) | The cutter of the account stele received 1 dr. for 300 letters cut. In total he cut 38,000 letters and received 126 dr. and 4 ob. |
a. 250 (287, A, l. 197) | Neugenes/Neogenes cut the stele for 120 dr. |
a. 200 (372, A, l. 114-115) | He who cut the account, the handovers of sacred offerings and the rents of the sanctuary’s estates received 250 dr. |
a. 179 (442, A, l. 203) | He who cut the stelae received 200 dr. |
a. 174 (440 + 456, B, l. 60-61) | He who cut 2 stelae received 260 dr. |
a. 172 or 170 (459, l. 60) | 370 dr. (?) |
Changes in spending: |
a. 250: | ca. 250: | a. 200: | a. 174: |
crafting stele and | -crafting stele: 35 dr. | -crafting two stelae: | -crafting two stelae: |
TOTAL: 163 dr. | TOTAL: 250 dr. | TOTAL: 419 dr. | TOTAL: 444 dr. |
105The outlay was therefore substantial and especially because the text to be engraved grew longer from year to year. The hieropoioi were probably aware of this and had tried to keep spending down by capping payments for engravers with the result that they reduced the line spacing so as to close up the text.117
106The cost of accounting and the prominence given to it in the public space suggest that, beyond the monumental and votive character of the object, was a book-keeping aspect of which the administrators were very mindful.
The accounting methods of the hieropoioi
107The tasks of the hieropoioi over the course of the year were numerous because, apart from book-keeping, they took care of the organization of the festivals by purchasing the necessary equipment, they monitored the construction and maintenance work on the buildings, from the adjudication of contracts, through the supply of materials to the worksite, and up to the final payment, they rented out land and buildings belonging to the sanctuary and made interest-bearing loans, and they also had to take stock of the precious offerings and see to their upkeep.118 Overall they had to give an account of the annual state of the sacred fortune, which was part land and part property, in part hoarded metal and in part coined metal.
108By contemplating the way the hieropoioi organized the drafting of their accounts, by considering the vocabulary they used and the technical relevance of the terms they adopted to describe the flow of funds and by trying to ascertain the rationale behind their accounting organization, a clearer picture can be formed of how their tasks and competences evolved.119 I shall focus essentially on the analysis of most complete documents and try to see how the accounting methods of the hieropoioi changed over the period of Independence as a whole.
The Hierarchy of Records
109The account stele corresponds to the annual balance sheet of the college of hieropoioi, as validated by the city-state’s authorities of financial control.120 But it was drafted on the basis of a series of documents and registers that we know of only from reference to the writing material purchased by the hieropoioi and recorded as such in the list of annual expenditure.
110The materials mentioned in the accounts were generally thought to be merely the trace of stages preceding the final statement of the account. In discussing record-keeping practices and their development in Greek societies, researchers often suggest a distinction should be made between the provisional and finalized texts, the latter being understood to be an abridgement of several documents.121 The study of the terms used by the hieropoioi reveals, though, a complex hierarchy among these various media, that also leads to the question of the organization of their records.
The deltos, a copy of the stele
111Among the expenses relating to the manufacture of the account stele, it can be observed that the hieropoioi not only had the account and inventory stele engraved and then erected in the sanctuary but they had it copied on a board (δέλτος) specially made for the purpose. Certain accounts specify that the board was made of cypress wood.122 The expression used by the hieropoioi leaves no doubt as to the order of operations, because this purchase invariably figured a few lines below the spending for the account stele. The δέλτος was not a rough draft but a fair copy made from the text as it was inscribed on the stele. The hieropoioi explicitly stated that they had the information from the stele carved on the δέλτος (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 197: τῶι εἰς τὴν δέλτον γράψαντι τὰ ἐκ τῆς στήλης 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂) before having the stele erected in the sanctuary. The copying plus the purchase of the wooden board came at a high cost of between 10 and 15 drachmas.
112In the copying operation ordered by the hieropoioi of Delos, it is interesting to note that it was the account stele, that is, the text of the annual account already carved in stone, that was the authoritative text for making the copy on the wooden board (δέλτος). In the period of Athenian Domination on Delos in the fourth century BC, a fragment of an account of the secretary of the naopoi shows that the account stele was a legal document that served as a reference in a legal context. The argument developed before the judges by the secretary of the naopoi was based on what was written on the stele.123 Like the Roman codex accepti et expensi of the paterfamilias and the codex rationum of bankers,124 it was the account that could therefore be produced in the courts of law. Other procedures in the period of Independence attribute this reference value to the engraved stele: the debts paid were cited by reference to the stele on which the payer had been previously inscribed as debtor (ID 290, l. 11‑12; 316, l. 19; 356 bis, A, l. 34; 371 A, l. 37); the balance of the annual account, subsequently handed over by the hieropoioi of the previous year, was designated with reference to the stele on which it was mentioned (ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ οἱ ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος Ἀπατουρίου Πραξιµένης καὶ Τελεσαρχίδης οὗ ἀναφέρεται ἐν τῇ στήλῃ τὸ περιὸν, ID 442, A, l. 60). In the terminology of the hieropoioi, “the stele” sometimes meant simply the account itself inasmuch as it had been validated and exhibited for all to read (τὸ λοιπὸν τοῦ περιόντος ἐκ τῆς στήλης, ID 442, A, l. 35).125
113The copy of the accounting text on the deltos was made for archival purposes, on good quality material, and it can be surmised that it was deposited in an official location where it could readily be consulted, possibly the public records office, for which the council was responsible.126
The leukomata for the monthly accounts
114In addition to the δέλτος copied from the account stele, the acts of the hieropoioi mentioned other materials. It is well known that they drew up monthly accounts displayed in the agora on blanched tablets. In 279 BC they purchased “a whitened tablet (leukoma) for displaying the monthly accounts on the agora” (IG XI 2, 161 A, 89: τοῖς κατὰ µῆνα λόγοις ἐκτιθεµένοις εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν λεύκωµα). This indication in the accounts has often been brought up in discussions about the archives of Greek cities to support the claim that the inscribed stele was the outcome of a selection process. Yet, if these whitened tablets did serve the hieropoioi in drawing up the annual account stele, their book-keeping was not simply the addition of the ten or eleven months of the financial year. The term κατὰ µῆνα used for the monthly accounts refers to a specific chapter of their book-keeping, which is that of current expenditure. In drafting their administrative acts, the hieropoioi regularly differentiated between monthly expenditure (τάδε ἀνήλωται εἰς τὰ κατὰ µῆνα), which consisted in regular purchases of provisions from suppliers on the market, and other spending for which payment was subject to the assembly’s decision (τάδε ἀνήλωται κατὰ νόµους καὶ ψηφίσµατα).127 In the account for 246 BC, which regularly includes subtotals, they indicated the total of this monthly expenditure (l. 105: κεφαλὴ τοῦ κατὰ µῆνα 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄∆∆∆𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ‧ καὶ τάδε ἄ[λ]λα ἀνάλωτα[ι·), thereby attesting that it was a section of the accounts that stood alone.
115Unlike spending on building work, made further to adjudication and contracts, that had to be approved by the assembly, the monthly spending was made out of the working capital for which the hieropoioi were responsible.128 It can therefore be surmised that this working capital, and it alone, was controlled over the course of the year, probably by the logistai, and gave rise to the posting of monthly accounts.
116The other spending gave rise to adjudication contracts which the hieropoioi were bound to refer to the assembly. For this expenditure, control was therefore already effective. This assumption is confirmed by the existence of other material for accounts, separate from the λευκώµατα, for spending by adjudication and contracts, the πέτευρα.
The peteura for contractual operations
117The term πέτευρον refers to a plank,129 probably made of less noble wood than cypress that is designated by the term δέλτος. It was blanched, as attested by a payment to a craftsman (IG XI 2, 205, bc, l. 22). Πέτευρα and δέλτος both figure in the purchases of the hieropoioi in the second century BC: the one does not replace the other. Conversely, πέτευρον was used more frequently than λεύκωµα in the second century, while both materials seem to be similar in kind. In their specifics, the hieropoioi often wrote down the purpose of the πέτευρα or λευκώµατα: for the account (τῶι λόγωι), for sureties (ταῖς διεγγυήσεσιν or εἰς διεγγυήσεις), for contracts (ταῖς συγγραφαῖς), for the handing over of offerings (τεῖ παραδόσει).130 They therefore drew up lists corresponding to the partners in the god’s financial affairs: the guarantors in loan and leasing operations, contractors for building work and supplies of material.
118We are therefore assured that πέτευρα were something other than rough drafts of accounts. They were indeed registers on which lists were kept and which, furthermore, contained information that was used in drawing up the annual accounts.131
119The accounts of the hieropoioi themselves indicate that individual contracts were kept with third parties, all of them Delian citizens and depositories of agreements such as magistrates, witnesses, guarantors or mere private individuals.132 An inventory by the Athenian administrators of the sanctuary, in the mid-second century BC, recorded in the Temple of Apollo “a small double tablet, blanched, on which there is the loan from the Delians that they granted, so they say, to the people of Hermione and their contract with the people of Hermione” for an operation that may have extended back to a loan in the fourth century.133 In addition to these individual documents, the keeping of which was plainly dealt with on a case by case basis, the administrators of the sanctuary kept registers of names by categories (collateral, contracts) on the peteura. These various media (leukomata, peteura) have therefore wrongly been taken to be intermediate items in the drawing up of the account or rough drafts. They were self-standing registers and maintained separately as such.
Papyrus sheets: the rough draft of the accounts
120The accounts show that the hieropoioi also made regular purchases of papyrus sheets (χάρτη). This may have been the material they used to make intermediate drafts of information subsequently carved on the stele, or the rough account, since it was invariably bought at the end of the financial year.134 The accounts of the hieropoioi attest on many occasions that the successive colleges regularly practised the four arithmetic operations, but the use of the acrophonic system in the book-keeping made it necessary to use other devices (abacus and counters) since it was impossible with the acrophonic system to set down directly on the papyrus a written calculation as we do with Indo-Arabic numbers.135 They therefore had to carry over the various results obtained onto a work sheet before drawing up the balance. This is probably what explains the use of papyrus, a perishable material that, on Delos, could not be kept for the same length of time as the archived wooden tablets.
The account stele: a synthesis from several archival registers
121When developing the final text of the stele as part of their filing of accounts, the hieropoioi made a synthesis of these various registers (fig. 4): monthly accounts on the leukomata, registers of loans, contracts, and transmission of offerings on the peteura. Contrary to what has often been claimed, the registers did not serve solely as preparatory documents for the accounts. They recorded categories of information that went into the process of managing the god’s property and constituted archives. But, as such, they also made it possible to draw up and cross-reference accounting information leading to the carved annual account. The register of monthly accounts (τοῖς κατὰ µῆνα λόγοις ἐκτιθεµένοις εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν λεύκωµα) attested to the use of the working capital for all spending the administrators were authorized to make without the intervention of the council and assembly. The register of collateral (πέτευρα ταῖς διεγγυήσεσιν) was used to keep the inventory of the amounts owed in loans, leases and adjudications. The register of contracts (πέτευρα ταῖς συγγραφαῖς) accounted for spending decided by decree and by intervention of the assembly. The register of transmission of offerings (πέτευρα τεῖ παραδόσει) also went into the assessment of the god’s fortune. Although a part of the offerings was made up of varied objects, most of the collection of metal objects was valued by weight of silver and constituted a precious metal hoard of gold and silver. The hieropoioi added to it accounts of stocks of building materials (tiles, timber) at times when building work was being done on the island.
Fig. 4 — Organization of the various registers and documents contributing to the creation of the annual account stele.

122The administrators also had recourse to outside registers. The accounts of the second century BC, including the inventory of jars of coins contained in the sacred chest, making up the whole of the god’s fortune in coinage, tell us that most of the amounts in circulation transited through banks. This was the case, too, of the public treasury, for which the hieropoioi drew up the jar inventory in the second century. The city-state’s money and Apollo’s money merely transited through the banks but the place of permanent storage was the temple of the divinity. Nevertheless, as on Cos where an inscription attests to the existence of a bank account opened in the name of the goddess Aphrodite,136 the god Apollo and the city-state of Delos both had accounts with the various banks that worked with the sanctuary.137 The banks acted as intermediaries for a number of payments and transfers of funds as well as for accounting operations involving conversions to the Attic standard, the only accounting standard of the hieropoioi, using currencies from diverse sources that made up the sanctuary’s cash holdings and that the hieropoioi used for making payments.138 Each of these jars bore a description, systematically taken up by the hieropoioi in their inventories of the jars, as a means of identification and to ensure “traceability” of each batch of money. The description also contained information that had to figure on the bank register: the name of the bank by which the batch of money had transited, the date cashed (year and month), the name of the annual board that had deposited the amount in the sacred fund, the nature of the amount cashed, and the amount in the Attic standard. The hieropoioi made withdrawals from the jars, probably making their choice according to the varied currency they contained and that had to match the payment they were to make.139 The text of the hieropoioi on the stele provided information for monitoring each of the jars by indicating the amount of their withdrawals and any remainder in the jar, after transiting through the bank.
123Thus, for example, in the account ID 442 (A, l. 68‑71):
Μηνὸς Ποσιδεῶνος ἐξείλοµεν ἀπὸ στάµνου οὗ ἐπιγραφή· ἀπὸ τῆς Νυµφοδώρου καὶ Ἡρακλείδου, ἐπὶ ∆ηµάρου Ποσιδεῶνος, ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ οἱ ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος Τελεσαρχίδου Εὐβοεὺς καὶ Παρµενίων τὸ πραχθὲν ἐνηροσίων, ἐνοικίων, τελῶν, τόκων 𐅂𐅆Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀//· ἀπὸ τούτου ἀφείλοµεν µηνὸς Ποσιδεῶνος ἱεροποιοὶ Πολύξενος, Ἀµφοτερός, Φίλιππος, Σίληνος εἰς τὰ ἔργα 𐅂ΧΗΔΔ[ΙΙΙΙ]· λοιπὸν ἔνεστιν 𐅆𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁𐅀//.
In the month of Posideon, we withdrew from the jar bearing the inscription “from the bank of Nymphodoros and Herakleides under Demares, month of Poisideon, the hieropoioi of the archonship of Telesarchides Euboeus and Parmenion deposited the proceeds of farm rents, property rents, taxes and interest 6,998 drachmas, 4 obols, 1/2 obol, 1/4 obol, 2 chalkoi”. From that, we, the hieropoioi Polyxenos, Amphoteros, Philippos, Silenos have withdrawn, in the month of Posideon, for building works, 1,120 drachmas, 4 obols. Remainder: 5,878 drachmas, 1/2 obol, 1/4 obol, 2 chalkoi.
124In this sense, the accounts of the hieropoioi can be thought of as a book-keeper’s “grand ledger” that is based on a set of records for which it provides complete all‑round information. The accountancy of the hieropoioi used various well-determined categories of documents, whose use in producing the final accounts was hierarchized. We can perceive this just through the material of different qualities that featured in their purchases.
125The account was not therefore the outcome of a straightforward narrative logic140 like the household liber rationum. Some scholars have characterized it as “a selective excerpt from the collation certificates”, thereby emphasizing that it did not mention all the archived documents that the drafters had taken into consideration.141 But this interpretation, as can be seen, fails to quite do justice to the actual accounting practices of the hieropoioi. More exactly, the account stele was an exhaustive synthesis of the movements of funds and of amounts handled by the administrators, in the form of a grand ledger collating the information contained in the various series of records. This is an important observation because it enables us to ascertain how the accounting logic was constructed from the welter of tiny lettering and cramped figures.
126This observation about the material that was used to produce the accounting records of Delos also made it possible to make headway with a question raised in other contexts for accounts of the ancient world. In his study of Greek bankers, R. Bogaert observes that no source provides grounds for asserting the existence of registers arranged account by account, in addition to the register of daily operations that the bankers kept, but even so presupposed there was such a “grand ledger of accounts”.142 Other studies, that of J. Andreau on Roman financiers and more recently G. Minaud on accounting practices in the Roman world, have shown the existence of hierarchized levels of documents within the private accounting records.143 In the Egyptian Fayum in Roman times, the archives of the estate of Appianus, studied by D. Rathbone, reveal the existence of hierarchized accounting documents: monthly accounts kept by fractions of estates, accounts for each farmhand in each fraction of the estate, secondary accounts the administrators kept for their own needs and kept about their person, and accounts passed on to the central administration.144 The Delians, as can be seen, fitted in with a long tradition of accounting practices which, in part, dated back to the Athenian influence of classical times.
127However, the accounting situation attested to by the documents produced by the hieropoioi in the early second century BC was not the same as at the beginning of Independence. Only progressively did the terminology of the hieropoioi become specialized, acquire technical coherence and reflect proficiency in accounting notions. Accordingly this corpus should not be thought of as an unchanging block but, on the contrary, it should be used to analyse the methodological development that led the Delians to develop an effective system of accounting, through the benefit of past experience.
From Cashiers’ Practices to Accountants’ Rationales
128Having begun with simple and cumulative collection techniques, the hieropoioi progressed little by little to accounting methods using a logic that sought to totalize assets so as to better plan resource management. The earliest accounts attest to a narrative logic in the description of the operations performed by the sacred fund and it was only gradually that the terminology and practices became more technical and more rigorous.
The formulation of account balances
129One of the important features in accounting techniques was the balancing of accounts. In principle, the account balance involved the total income (funds received in the chests at the time of hand-over plus the year’s takings), then the total outgoings (year’s spending plus the remainder handed down to the next year’s board) that should have been equal so as to ensure proper transmission of the funds to the successors. The account balance was inseparable from the indication of the year-end profits, made up by the surplus of income over expenditure. As such, the account balance was designed firstly to show that no amount had left the circuit of transmission of the sacred funds in the handover from one annual board to the next. It could also have been used to highlight any profits or at least to show there had been no deficit.
130In the early years of Delian Independence most accounts were drafted in the same way as had been done by the Athenian amphictyons and they were organized under the headings:
- total of amounts brought down and amounts collected in the course of the financial period (IG XI 2, l35, l. 28‑30: κεφάλαιον οὗ παρελάβοµεν σὺν ὧι αὐτοὶ εἰσεπράξαµεν);
- total expenditure for the financial period (IG XI 2, 148, l. 72: σύµπαν κεφάλαιον ἀναλώµατος or IG XI 2, 155, b, l. 6: κεφάλαιον ἐξόδου);
- remainder carried down (IG XI 2, 148, l. 76: τὸ λοιπὸν ἀργύριον παρέδοµεν).
131The earliest accounts therefore did not include any balance to control that the entries matched the outgoings but simply reported the operations one after another and calculated the difference between amounts received and the amounts spent. The hand-over to the next board consisted essentially in indicating the remainder in the Artemision, the loipon or balance outstanding, understood as meaning the quantity of funds available in the temple. Prepared in this way, the statement could not be used for analysing the annual profits of the financial year.
132The technical term exodos, that was later to refer to the outgoings in the preparation of the account balance, was used loosely. It appeared in 287 BC (IG XI 2, 155, b, l. 6) and again in 246 (ID 290, l. 141) but simply meant spending or total expenditure. The κεφάλαιον ἐξόδου was the exact equivalent of the σύµπαν κεφάλαιον ἀναλώµατος or “grand total of expenditure” frequently used (e.g. in the account for 279; IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 122‑127) and not the total of amounts that exited for the financial year (spending for the year plus the passing-on of the remainder) as should have been the case in an account balance proper.
133But the hieropoioi were plainly aware of the ambiguity engendered in their balance sheet by the fluctuations in cash holdings, when loans made to the city-state suddenly reduced the assets recorded before reappearing a year or two later. Accordingly they sometimes specified, as in 281 BC (IG XI 2, 159, A, l. 68‑69) that the total spending was to be understood as including the amounts lent to the city-state: σύµπαγ κεφάλαιον ἀναλώµατος σὺν ὧι ἡ πόλις ὀφείλει. The wording was clumsy because the term analoma was unsuitable for all of the outgoings that included not just spending but also transfers of funds in the form of loans. But here it designated the total amounts that left the sacred chest in the course of the financial year, in place and stead of the term exodos that only later came to have this meaning.
134The first account to include a true balance between entries and outgoings was that for the year 250 BC (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 199‑200) in which the balance was given by the expression κεφαλὴ εἰσόδου σὺν ὧι παρελάβοµεν (…) κεφαλὴ ἐξόδου σὺν ὧι παρέδοµεν, “total of entries, with what we have received (i.e. the holdings plus the year’s profits); total of outgoings with what we have passed on (i.e. spending plus the profit passed on to the successors)”. There is in this a real methodological change because, in this case, the account balance does not seek to record just the passing‑on of the amounts to the next board but the movements in the funds during the course of the financial year. It expresses the equilibrium in the annual stewardship since total entries equal total outgoings. The profit for the year was then indicated separately.
135But more often than not, in the third century BC, only the collection protocol noted the income with an expression such as [κεφάλα]ιον [σύµ]παν οὗ ἐ[λάβ]οµεν παρὰ τῶν ἱεροποιῶν καὶ τοῦ ἐφ’ ἡµῶν εἰσελθόντος, “total of what we received from the (previous) hieropoioi and of what we collected” (as in IG XI 2, 155, b, l. 4‑5; and similarly IG XI 2, 161 A, l. 123‑127; IG XI 2, 199, l. 19), whereas the balance of outgoings was not calculated. All that mattered was the figure for what was passed on to the successors. Because of the late intake of some amounts in the fund, the holdings ended up being conflated with the inventory of entries or revenues for the year, with the result that a general balance of entries proved necessary. Accordingly in 250 BC (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 1‑17), the holdings were received over 10 months between Lenaion and Apatourion, whereas the year’s revenues also included entries made up of amounts from previous years.
136The hieropoioi sometimes deemed it necessary to express a distinction between the amounts “received in the Artemision” (IG XI 2, 203, A, l. 5; ID 316, l. 2: τάδε παρελάβοµεν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι) – that is, passed on by their predecessors in the hoarded cash holdings that were in the jars deposited in the temple – and the amounts in circulation that were made over to them by the city-state treasurers as loan repayments or by the hieropoioi of the previous boards, often from banks. As C. Vial shows, the passing‑on of funds from one board to the next was made complex by the lag in transmission and two forms should be distinguished:145
- passing‑on of the jars locked in the temple that contained the hoarded amounts. This operation followed a protocol that provided for the presence of the council and the prytaneis, the archon, the city-state secretary and the secretary of the hieropoioi;
- transmissions before the assembly of the people for amounts collected by the hieropoioi or received from banks after the end of their financial year. Because of the lag in payments, such hand-overs might occur more than two years after they had left office.
137Accordingly, in the account for the year 250 BC, the hieropoioi separated the funds that were handed down to them by their immediate predecessors and the cash holdings received in the course of the year by way of transmission (IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 1‑7). At the time of transmission (l. 134‑135) they likewise made a distinction between transmissions made directly to their successors and transmissions made via banks (διὰ τραπέζης).
138While the account for the year 250 does display some scope for the drawing‑up of a balance sheet, including ultimately a true account balance, its protocol for entries mixes cash holdings and annual revenues, because the recording logic is not thematic but chronological.
139In later accounts, a more synthetic form appears but to the detriment of a true account balance. The indication of λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι was again to be found in the account for 231 BC (ID 316, l. 9). It designated the amounts deposited in the temple. This expression was more synthetic because it appeared in the first lines of the account and constituted, after the indications of the total holdings and the total withdrawals for expenditure, a sort of intermediate balance sheet:
- l. 1‑4: τάδε π[αρελάβοµεν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι], “this is what we have received in the Artemision”;
- l. 4‑6: καὶ ἐπὶ τῆ̣ς̣ [ἡµετέρας ἀρχῆς? κατέθεσαν], “and these are the amounts deposited during our term of office”;
- l. 6‑8: ἐκ δὲ τούτου ἐξείλοµεν, “from that we have taken away”;
- l. 8: λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι … [τ]οῦτ[ο π]αρέδοµεν [ἐν] Ἀρτεµισίωι, “remainder in the Artemision” … “we have passed that on in the Artemision”.
140The hieropoioi of the year 231 BC, here, set about a synthesis in the first lines of the account, indicating the surplus from the outset. But the surplus was only partial because current spending was not included in provisional balance. It was therefore drawn up at the time when, shortly before the beginning of their financial year, the hieropoioi became cognizant of the sums that were to be withdrawn for building works by decision of the assembly. The expression employed did not allow the closing off of the annual account as such: this notion only truly arose with the idea of total entries being equal to total outgoings. It was only in the final years of the third century BC (ID 365, dating from the year 208) that the annual account came to be finally closed by balancing‑off.
141So from the earliest accounts it can be seen that the administrators hesitated between a purely narrative and linear accounting logic and a more orderly, more synthetic outlook. The terminology itself took time to become specialized. The hieropoioi worked according to a cashier logic, recording the movements of the monies of the sacred treasury as a chronological string of operations and then drawing up the totals.
142This narrative logic was plainly a hindrance to complex accounting. It seems that difficulties in stewardship gradually brought the hieropoioi to see the point in defining budget items within the sacred treasury, or at least dividing up the god’s assets into separate funds. The main difficulty stemmed from borrowing by the public treasury from the sacred treasury, while at the same time the building work in the sanctuary meant they had to dig deep into the sacred fund. Loans to the city-state of Delos were very short lived and often paid back in the same year, because there was then no interest to pay. We therefore see the hieropoioi began to distinguish, in their book-keeping, between the funds received and deposited in the Artemision, which made up the god’s monetary treasure and served for loans and major spending, and the current funds they used in the course of the financial year. This change in their thinking became apparent in the way they dealt with the balance outstanding for the financial period.
Management of the accounting balance for the financial period
143As early as 279 BC (IG XI 2, 161, A), the account highlighted distinctions made by the hieropoioi among different categories of spending:
- spending for building work consisting in adjudication contracts for which the funds were committed by a decision of the assembly of the people (l. 44‑45); τάδε ἔργα ἐξεδώκαµεγ κ̣ατὰ ψηφίσµατα τοῦ δήµου µετὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος καὶ τῶν ἐπιµελητῶν οὓς εἵλετο ὁ δῆµος καὶ κατὰ συγγραφάς, “here are the works we have commissioned by decrees of the people with the architect and those in charge designated by the people and according to the contracts”;
- the spending for building work the hieropoioi could undertake in their own name (l. 77‑78): καὶ τάδε τῶµ πρὸ ἡµῶν ἔργων ἐγδεδοµένων ἐδώκαµεν ἀρχιτέκτονος καὶ ἐπιµελητῶγ κελευόντων·, “and here are the works we commissioned in our name on recommendation from the architect and the epimeletes”;
- current spending, consisting in wages for the sanctuary employees and miscellaneous supplies, that they had the power to pay (l. 82); καὶ τάδε ἄλλα ἐδώκαµεν·, “and here is what we have paid out”.
144The organizing principle here is the responsibility of the hieropoioi in committing to the spending: further to decisions made by the assembly; in their own name on recommendation from specialists but without the need for validation by the people; and by direct payment. But in the subsequent accounts, spending was organized rather by the funds used.
145In 250 BC, (IG XI 2, 287, A), the hieropoioi drew a distinction on the basis of an apportionment of the sections on spending that was to continue permanently thereafter:
- monthly spending, that also included spending on supplies that were mentioned in the current spending in 279 (l. 41),
- wages of the sanctuary employees (l. 85),
- spending on building work, this time without distinguishing between spending by order of the assembly and spending at their own instigation (l. 89).
146From the 230s BC onwards, these three categories of spending were consistently separated but the accounts presented them differently. The account for the year 231 included, immediately after the balance of cash holdings, the withdrawals for the flute players’ wages and for building works (ID 316, l. 6‑8). In 218 the account was constructed in line with the same principles: after enumerating the cash holdings received in the Artemision (ID 354, l. 1‑6), the hieropoioi indicated the total withdrawals they had made in the presence of the city-state instances for the flute players’ wages, for loans to the city-state and for building work. From that point, they were able to calculate the balance remaining in the Artemision (l. 16: λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι). They formed the habit, then, of constructing the balance sheet for the financial year by distinguishing a first intermediate statement.
147These distinctions corresponded to the way the various amounts committed were handled. The fact is that the chests were not permanently accessible to the hieropoioi: the prytaneis kept the key and the chests could only be opened in the presence of the city-state authorities. Payments and deposits therefore had to be made at certain times of year only, whereas the hieropoioi used the services of banks in the course of the year for depositing the income they received and for making what payments they needed.146 Because building contracts were adjudicated in the assembly of the people,147 the hieropoioi in office knew what amount was to be assigned for the purpose and could therefore establish the total withdrawals quite early in the year. The same applied to loans to the public treasury, which it was for the city-state to decide on. In the main, these were known quite early in the year, at the time of decisions on the distribution of revenues, with the exception of a few of them, carved on the edge of the stelae, that must have been decided on belatedly.
148Other spending that concerned the sanctuary’s operating expenses came from another source: it was the income for the year that was used to pay for it. The sanctuary’s taxes, adjudicated at the end of the previous year, probably had to be paid by the tax farmer at the beginning of the financial year of the hieropoioi. Tax farming not only facilitated the organization of tax collection but it ensured an immediate intake of money. The taxes themselves could be paid at various times of year depending on whether the land was used for cereals, winegrowing or livestock.148 As J. Tréheux noted, this income collected in the course of the year provided working capital augmented by the profits of previous financial years.149
149It was precisely this working capital, or more specifically what remained of it once the annual spending had been settled, that the hieropoioi named the perion of the financial year, also termed “perion of the stele” (e.g. ID 444, A, l. 54: τὸ̣ δ̣ὲ περιὸν ἀργύριον […] τοῦ ἐκ τῆς στήλης) and of which the inventories of the jars supplied many an example.150 The perion was therefore the surplus of the working capital. It actually provided an indication as to the annual profits once the current expenditure had been deducted. As such, it could then be included in the composition of the account balance, of which it was the third term, to designate the proceeds of the financial year.
150It is interesting to observe that with great consistency from year to year, the hieropoioi never conflated perion and loipon.151 Loipon was plainly an arithmetical term for a remainder. Perion was an accounting and institutional term for the proceeds of the annual accounts. There may therefore have been a loipon of the perion in the jars, that is, a remainder of the proceeds of the financial year after use. The expression was besides used as such in a fragmentary passage of a second-century account (ID 458, l. 5: περιόν, ἐν ὧι λοιπ[ὸν]) and it can be found in detailed form in the account of 200 BC (ID 372, A, l. 191‑192) when the hieropoioi indicated in the balance sheet: [καὶ τόδ]ε λοιπὸν παρέδοµεν ἱεροποιοῖς […] ἐνηροσίων, ἐνοικίων, [ἐγκυκλίω]ν ὃ ἐπράξαµεν, “and here is the remainder that we have passed on to the hieropoioi from the farm rents, property rents and taxes collected by us”. This was the remainder of the sanctuary’s periodic income (farm rents, property rents and taxes) and the fact that the hieropoioi recorded only a remainder of that income clearly shows it was used in the course of the year.
151When the hieropoioi, from the second century BC onwards, had the inventories of the jars engraved, their method had not changed from this standpoint since the 230s: they indicated at the end of the inventory the remainder (loipon) in the chest after the withdrawals made in the presence of the city-state authorities for the planned spending for the year, then they listed the new jars added in the course of the financial year, from repayments from the city-state, subsidies or delayed transfers. It was only after taking stock of the sacred fund and public fund that they had the current account of regular income and monthly spending of the financial year carved, ending with the profit for the year (perion).
152Some items of expenditure sometimes meant the hieropoioi had to supplement the withdrawals they had made from the sacred treasury with income collected in the course of the year. When building work required them to extend the budget, a new levy could admittedly have been made from the sacred chest but the hieropoioi sometimes had to have the leeway to make payment for a service out of the year’s profits.152 In the account for 208 BC (ID 365, l. 54‑55), the hieropoioi indicated they paid for spending on building work from two sources: from a deposit in the Artemision passed on to them by their predecessors (ἐξ Ἀρτεµισίου ἐξείλοµεν παρούσης βουλῆς καὶ γραµµατέων ὃ παρέ δοσαν Πόλυβος καὶ Ἑβδοµίσκος) and from the λοιπὸν ἀπὸ τῆς προσόδου, that is, from the remainder of the financial year.
153It is clear, here again, that the cash holdings and the current account formed two clearly separate items for the hieropoioi.
The major change in the years 230‑220 BC
154It was therefore in the years 230‑220 that a real change in accounting methods occurred. The difference in drafting apparent in the second century with the emergence of the inventories of the jars did not a change in terms of accounting methods since at that date, even if the jar inventories were added, the accounts still followed the same principles as those implemented from the years 230‑220.
155As L. Migeotte plainly saw, this shift in the years 230‑220 BC genuinely was a major change in the accounting methods of the hieropoioi and marked an important step in their financial organization.153 One can go further and wonder why this distinction only emerged in the final quarter of the third century. The practice of separating cash holdings and regular income became established in the regular management, but did it not contradict certain principles the Delians had laid down at the beginning of Independence? One of those texts has been partially preserved (ID 503) and forms a framework-law about the leasing procedures of the god Apollo’s estates. Referred to as the hiera syngraphe, it was passed in 301 or 300 BC.154
156Now, a clause in the hiera syngraphe, explained by C. Vial, righting a misinterpretation of it by A. Wilhelm,155 provides for a situation that was the reverse of what was observed in the accounts of the hieropoioi as from the 230s. This clause (ID 503, l. 29‑30) stipulates that the entire proceeds from rentals should be paid into the sacred chest:
εἰσφέρειν δὲ τοὺς ἱεροποιοὺς [τὰς λοι]π[ὰς] πάντων τὰς τοῦ µηνὸς ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς τεµένεσιν εἰς [τὴ]ν κ[ιβω]τὸν [τὸ µίσ]θωµα ἅπαν τὸ γινόµενον τῶι θεῶι κατὰ τὴν συγγραφήν.
that the hieropoioi pay into the chest the monthly proceeds from the sanctuary’s estates, namely the totality of the rent owed to the god pursuant to the contract.
157The sentence construction is obscure because the initial deciphering (which F. Durrbach points out in the 1929 edition of the corpus could not be improved on from this fragmentary and badly damaged stele) fails to provide a satisfactory meaning for [τὰς λοι]π[ὰς] πάντων τὰς τοῦ µηνὸς and the restoration seems doubtful.156 The clause, which comes after the description of the various farming categories to which calendars for payment of farm rents are related,157 plainly concerns the means of payment of farm rents by the hieropoioi into the sacred chest. They were instructed to deposit the whole of the income, probably so as to maintain a reserve supplied by a regular resource, as was the case in many financial clauses of Greek decrees. But the instruction was indeed to pay the money εἰς [τὴ]ν κ[ιβω]τὸν, into the chest, and not simply to attribute it to a certain fund. By a strict accounting interpretation, this was therefore not what the hieropoioi did as from the years 230‑220 because they used the periodic income for current spending, paying in only the remainder, not the totality, at the end of the financial period.
158Perhaps this departure from administrative rules should be seen as the illustration of the slow and gradual adaptation by the Delians to the great demands made on them by the management of the sacred fund. Over the years, they probably had to adapt certain regulations adopted at the beginning of Independence that little by little proved ill‑suited to actual accounting practices. The Hiera Syngraphe, which J. Tréheux shows dated back to an earlier model of the classical Athenian period,158 largely preceded those developments and perhaps it had been necessary to alter that clause of the law, although no trace of such has been preserved, to enable the hieropoioi to manage the sacred fortune in accordance with the new principle that can be seen to have been in force in the final quarter of the third century BC.
159It can also be seen that the idea of “sacred chest”, understood initially, at the onset of Independence and in the line of Athenian practice of the classical period, as the place where all of the coined fortune of the god was kept, gradually tended to be limited to the hoarded assets, while another accounting notion was added, the idea of “financial period” constructed on working capital or current account that the hieropoioi expressed through the idea of “perion of the stele” and handled with the help of banks. Other than the inscriptions of Cos that suggest it, too, few documents show so starkly the impact of the development of banking in the face of the tradition of hoarding in temples.159 The accounts of the hieropoioi reveal that it was in the years 230‑220 BC that this development began to have an impact of the forms of stewardship.
160The separating of the cash holdings and the current funds did not prevent the hieropoioi from maintaining a synthetic vision of the whole. This provides a yardstick for the progress made in their conceptions of accountancy.
161The account for 231 BC (ID 316) was still constructed according to a narrative logic: the λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι was viewed as an intermediate balance sheet consisting in a partial handing-down, after the withdrawals for spending planned for the year but without yet making allowance for monthly expenditure and periodic income over the course of the year. This was not to be the case for the account for 218 BC and the following years. The fact is that if we redo the calculations following the logic the hieropoioi applied, it can be seen that, unlike the account for 231, the account for 218 (ID 354) is no longer set out at all in accordance with a narrative logic. When the hieropoioi indicated (l. 16) the amount of the λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι, after making withdrawals for loans, building work and the flute players’ wages, they had already included in the cash holdings that they said they passed on to their successors the amount of the περιόν, that is, the proceeds of the current account once the monthly spending and periodical receipts had been dealt with. The operation can be set out in account ID 354:
- total cash holdings (l. 1‑8): 85,719 drachmas
- total withdrawals (l. 9‑16): 65,445 drachmas
- surplus that can be calculated (not shown by the hieropoioi): 20,274 drachmas
- surplus carried forward (l. 16: λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι ·Μ̣Μ̣ΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗ∆∆∆
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁𐅀//. τοῦτο παρέδοµεν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι): 23,739 drachmas.
162In this total of 23,739 drachmas, it appears, logically, that the hieropoioi included the perion for their financial year, that came to 3,465 drachmas, that is, the difference between the surplus calculated above between the cash holdings and withdrawals and the surplus the hieropoioi stated they passed on. The figure is plausible: in 200 BC (ID 372, A, l. 190), the περιόν indicated by the hieropoioi stood at 3,895 drachmas.
163The logical extension of this conception of transmission was the formulation of an account balance. It is not surprising, then, that the account for 209 BC (ID 362), which likewise includes the perion in the λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτεµισίωι, that is, the profit from the current account in the total carried forward, ultimately contained the expression of a true account balance.
164In 179 BC (ID 442) the same process can be seen to continue, at a time when the hieropoioi were fully conversant with the idea of an account balance. The total balance that can be calculated from the figures shown, for both funds, came to 177,723 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol, and 2 chalkoi.
165Now, the figure for this balance is conserved in part on l. 255 of the account:
[κεφαλὴ πάσης εἰσόδου — — — — 𐅆ΧΗΗΗΗ∆
𐅦𐅁//. κεφαλὴ πάσης ἐξόδου — — —]𐅆ΧΗΗΗΗ∆
𐅦𐅁//. vac.
166It ends with 𐅆ΧΗΗΗΗ∆𐅦𐅁//, that is, 6,415 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol, 2 chalkoi. The balance must have exceeded the 177,723 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol, and 2 chalkoi total of the entries and outgoings of each of the two treasuries: therefore the aggregate balance can be restored at l. 255, as 186,415 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol, 2 chalkoi. Now, to get from 177,723 drachmas (amount calculated) to 186,415 drachmas (amount reconstructed), the hieropoioi must have added the amount of the perion, which came to 8,692 drachmas.
167Thus, the hieropoioi added the amount of the perion to the aggregate balance, without taking up the detail of the current account in their total of entries and outgoings. There was a reason for this method: it saved them double counting entries and outgoings which, at least for the account section on loans and building work, could appear both in the current account and the inventory of movements of monies of the sacred chest. Accordingly, the section on payments out for building work (ID 442, B, l. 217‑253) matched the withdrawals mentioned in the jar inventory (A, l. 55‑73). Under loans to private individuals, a stamnos deposited in the month of Aresion (l. 39‑40) was withdrawn for a new loan (l. 74) itself mentioned in the current account (l. 213). So long as only the profit of the current account featured in the column of entries for the drawing up of the account balance, the total remained accurate.
168Through this sound management technique, the administrators were able to cope with the increase in spending from the sacred fund in the course of the second century BC: increased borrowing by the city-state from the sacred fund, continuing building work, rises in spending on services because of the hiring of staff and growing bureaucracy.160
169These accounting practices culminated in the final accounts of Independence that contained jar inventories (as from 192 BC, ID 399). From that time onwards, the hieropoioi were also responsible for the public treasury, which was processed in their accounts, although it remained under the responsibility of the city-state treasurers for day‑to‑day management. The accounts of the hieropoioi were then set out as the jar inventories of the sacred fund and of the public fund, followed by an account of the year’s operations. These jars contained currency whose content had been certified by banks. The banks had probably performed the conversion to the Attic standard which was required when payments were made in various currencies.161
170The hieropoioi thus distinguished between the funds blocked in the Artemision, that is, the jars they did not touch,162 the jars from which they drew amounts voted on for specific expenditure, and the working capital that enabled them to keep abreast of current spending.
Sacred Fund and Public Fund: From Separation to Accounting summary
A genuine synthesis between the two funds
171The accounting logic prevailing over the drawing up of these accounts and characterized by an attempted synthesis of operations was in place as from the years 230‑220 BC. A new transformation appeared in the drafting of the accounts in 192 BC with two major changes in the form of the text: one was the introduction of an inventory of jars of the sacred fund, the other the appearance of the public fund with the inventory of its jars also carved by the hieropoioi in their account after that of the sacred fund.
172The first account kept that contains a jar inventory was that for 192 BC (ID 399) but the hieropoioi practised this form of conservation in the jars well before. They also practised this form of recording of cash holdings: the sums came into the sacred chest in “spates” as and when the accounts were carried forward. The logic behind this categorization of Apollo’s money in the form of jars therefore certainly did not date from the drafting of the inventories in the second century BC. As seen, the inclusion of the jar inventories in the inscribing of account stelae could correspond to a first inventory that must have been carried out when the funds were moved from the Artemision to the Temple of Apollo in the early second century. But these jars were in existence well before as facilities for organizing the treasury and had gradually enabled the hieropoioi, with the help of bankers, to separate various categories of money to facilitate their payments.163
173From the point of view of accounting practices, the real change that appeared in 192 BC did not concern so much the emergence of inventories of jars as the emergence of the account for the public fund with the spending made by the city-state. This is the only example of such a practice in the Greek world. It is worth taking a fresh look at this change in the way the accounts were drawn up.
174The fact that the Delians chose to inscribe the full inventory of the public and sacred holdings each year from the second century BC onwards corresponds in part to the material situation of the treasuries: between 206 and 179 the sacred fund and the public fund, both kept in series of jars, were moved from the Artemision to the Temple of Apollo because building work was undertaken on the Artemision in this period.164 This, though, was not the only explanation. But it is difficult to examine the accounts for the last third of the third century because we have only very fragmentary stelae, whereas large stelae have been preserved intact for the first half of the third century and the first half of the second century.
175Even so, certain indications show that the change of 192 BC was not really new and the two funds began to coexist in the 230s.
176In point of fact, a reference to the public fund can be found as early as 231 in the cash holding in the account ID 316, l. 4‑5:
καὶ ἐπὶ τῆ̣ς̣ [ἡµετέρας ἀρχῆς? κατέθεσαν — treasurer — ἐπ’ ἄρ]χοντος Φιλοξένου καὶ οἱ κλ[η]ρονόµοι τοῦ ταµίου Λυσοῦ εἰς τὴν [δη]µοσίαν [κιβω]τ[ὸν ·ΜΧΧΧ?]ΗΗΗ∆̣∆𐅃̣ΙΙΙ[/· -]
And under our mandate, so‑and‑so (treasurer) and the heirs of the treasurer Lyses deposited in the public fund 13,325 drachmas, 3 obols, 1 chalkos.
177Taking the view that the public fund could not appear in the text of the cash holdings before the inventory of jars of 192 BC, C. Vial proposes restoring εἰς τὴν [ἀπόδοσιν τῶι θεῶι], an expression for which many parallels do indeed occur in the accounts.165 However, F. Durrbach’s reading of the letters ΜΟΣΙΑΝ is sure and confirms his restoration, εἰς τὴν [δη] µοσίαν [κιβω]τ[ὸν].
178Now, in this passage, the hieropoioi added the total of the cash holdings received in the Artemision (l. 4: 72,397 drachmas, 4 obols, 1 tetartemorion) and the amount deposited for the public fund (l. 5: 13,325 drachmas, 3 obols, 1 chalkos) and another amount (l. 6: 460 drachmas, 1 obol, 1 chalkos). The total they indicated (l. 6: κεφαλή) came to 86,183 drachmas, 2 obols, 1 tetartemorion and 2 chalkoi. Not only is the figure correct, but the final subdivisions (2 obols, 1 tetartemorion, 2 chalkoi) are also accurate, which is indeed proof that the sacred fund and the deposit of the public fund were added. From this total amount, the hieropoioi then withdrew (ἐκ δὲ τούτου ἐξείλοµεν, l. 6‑8) the flute players’ wages and the amounts assigned to building work (table 3).
Table 3 — Balance sheet for 231 BC (ID 316).
Cash holding received in Artemision (l. 4): | 72 397 dr., 4 ob., 1 t. | |
Amount deposited in public fund (l. 5): | 13 325 dr., 3 ob., 1 ch. | |
Other amount (l. 6): | 460 dr., 1 ob., 1 ch. | |
Total (l. 6) | 86 183 dr., 2 ob., 1 t., 2 ch. | |
Withdrawals (l. 6-8): | Flute players’ wages | 3 470 dr. |
Building work | 3 160+ dr. | |
Total withdrawals for financial period (l. 8) | [6 630+ dr.] | |
Balance in Artemision (l. 9) | 79 500+ dr. … 3 ob. ½ ob. |
179In the account for the following year, in 230 (ID 317), an intriguing figure appears on l. 35. It is an M capped by a ∆, as are to be found in the balances of the final accounts of Independence that total the amount of the public fund and the amount of the sacred fund.166 This combination of acrophonic signs could be used to write the number 100,000 (figs 17 and 20).
180F. Durrbach read on the stone (ID 317, l. 35):
∆
‑ΜΜΜ 1/2 ‑
181It was a substantial amount: 120,000 drachmas or 20 talents. It could not be the total of the sacred fund, the changes in which can be reconstructed thanks to the accounts, year after year, and which could not have amounted to more than 73,000 drachmas of cash holdings at that date.167 So it was very likely the addition of the sacred fund and the public fund to form an account balance similar to that the hieropoioi wrote in the second century BC.
182It is very likely, then, that as from the 230s the hieropoioi associated the two funds in accounting terms in the balance sheets and account balances. This same association of the two funds recurred in the second century through the account balances. Once again it was the years 230‑220 that formed the period of the changeover in accounting methods.
183The accounts for the period from 230 to 200 have come down to us in a highly fragmentary form, precluding us from comparing the book-keeping of that period with that of the great stelae of the years 279, 250 or 179. Yet it can be seen that from the 230s, true the sums deposited for the public fund were clearly identified by the hieropoioi as different from the sacred funds, but the hieropoioi associated them in accounting terms in the balance sheets and account balances. They were only a step away from drawing up the inventory of the jars of both funds, which they had had inscribed as of the year 192.
184In principle, the balance records the total entries and then the total outgoings, which should be equal to it, to ensure the funds are properly carried forward to the successors. The balance cannot be dissociated from the indication of the year’s profits, the amount of which is formed by the surplus between revenues and expenditure. Now, a careful examination of these account balances of the second century, stele after stele, when conserved, reveals that the hieropoioi added the sacred fund and the public fund in the balance of each account. While remaining separate property and physically separated, as per the rule in the Greek world, the two funds, public and sacred, were indeed managed together. Mathematically and in book-keeping terms, they formed a single whole. The operation was accurate, to the nearest chalkos, confirming the two funds were indeed added together: the account for the year 179 (ID 442), which is almost complete, lends itself to this demonstration (table 4).
Table 4 — Account balance for 179 BC (ID 442).
Calculation of sacred fund assets based on account totals | |
Cash in hand (l. 37) | 60 929 dr. 4 ob. ½ ¼ 1 ch. |
Entries for the year (l. 53) | 14 623 dr. 1 ob. ¼ |
Total revenue (l. 54-55) | 75 553 dr. 1 ch. + 3 733 dr. 2 ob. |
Withdrawals for the year (l. 74) | 11 553 dr. 1 ob. [+1] |
Surplus carried forward (l. 74) | 63 999 dr. 4 ob. 1 ch. + 3 733 dr. 2 ob. |
Calculation of public fund assets based on account totals | |
Cash holdings (l. 99) | 28 371 dr. 3 ob. ¼ |
Total entries for year (l. 121) | 70 066 dr. ¼ 1 ch. |
Total in public fund (l. 122) | 98 437 dr. 3 ob. ½ 1 ch. |
Withdrawals for year (l. 139) | 59 150 dr. ½ ob. |
Surplus carried forward (l. 140) | 39 287 dr. 3 ob. 1 ch. |
Balance of the two funds | |
177 723 drachmas, 5 obols, ½ obol, 2 chalkoi |
185The total balance of both funds, if we add the amounts kept for the sacred fund (A, l. 37‑74) and for the public fund (A, l. 99‑140) comes in principle to 177,723 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol and 2 chalkoi. Now the number of this balance is partly conserved on l. 255 of the account: it ended with 𐅆ΧΗΗΗΗ∆𐅦𐅁//, that is 6,415 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol and 2 chalkoi.
186The point that the small denominations match perfectly in the addition is already significant evidence that the two funds were associated. To end by 6,514 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol and 2 chalkoi, the total balance had to exceed the 177,723 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol and 2 chalkoi totalled by the balances of the two funds: so we can at the very least restore as the overall balance, on l. 255, the number of 186,415 drachmas, 5 obols, 1/2 obol and 2 chalkoi. The difference of 8,692 drachmas must correspond to the perion of the current account, that the hieropoioi included in the balance.168 This figure of 8,692 drachmas lies within the order of magnitude of the sum obtained by calculating, on the basis of the data conserved in the account, the difference between revenues and expenditure (8,542 drachmas). Given that some numbers have disappeared in the gaps in the additional text inscribed on the edge (face C of the stele), a discrepancy of 150 drachmas appears plausible in our computation.
187A passage from the account for 192 BC provides further evidence the two funds were associated: the hieropoioi reported they withdrew from the public fund assigned to the grammateion, and put it in another jar, the money missing from the total of the two funds, public and sacred, because this difference was creating inaccuracies in the account:
188ID 399 A, l. 40‑41:
ἀπὸ τούτου ἀφείλοµεν εἰς ἄλλο σταµνίον τὸ δι[α]φώνησαν ἀργύριον ἀπὸ παντὸς τοῦ ἀργυρίου τοῦ τ[ε] ἱεροῦ καὶ τοῦ δηµοσίου
from this fund, we withdrew, to put it into another small jar, the money that was missing from the total of all the money both public and sacred.
189This financial “diaphonia” was nothing other than what public accountants name a book reconciliation. It was therefore a technical accounting term indicating the amounts that were physically missing compared with the total that the hieropoioi obtained when calculating the movements of monies concerning the two funds.169 This kind of variance between the counting of the money holdings and the accounting calculations was not surprising: the hieropoioi made their calculations using the Attic standard based on figures that the bankers wrote on jars after making conversions, but in point of fact they dealt in various standards. A full accounting of the two funds could therefore reveal slight variances between the actual cash holdings and the calculations in the registers. Since they said they established compensation for all of the money handled, both for the sacred fund and for the public fund (ἀπὸ παντὸς τοῦ ἀργυρίου τοῦ τ[ε] ἱεροῦ καὶ τοῦ δηµοσίου), their book-keeping was indeed designed comprehensively for both funds.170
A necessary advancement in accounting methods
190The hieropoioi were plainly aware of the difficulties engendered by the growing complexity in the handling of funds and the computational errors that might ensue in the evaluation of amounts. The problems of overlap between funds were recurrent and the movements of monies between the public chest and the sacred chest were many. Loans from the sacred fund to the public fund were the primary cause of this. Certain monies of the public fund were simply assigned to the sacred fund by way of repayment of borrowings and subsidies. Other public monies merely transited through the sacred fund, such as the flute players’ wages, deposited at the end of the year and passed on by the hieropoioi in the course of the following year. Yet other amounts were remainders that ended up in the sacred fund because the city-state considered Apollo’s treasure as a reserve and place for hoarding wealth.171
191The way in which the hieropoioi viewed the sum set aside for the flute players’ wages is characteristic. It came from the public treasury and merely transited via the sacred fund. In 217 BC (ID 355, l. 6) the hieropoioi indicated the balance of the monies in the Artemision after withdrawals and clearly identified this amount, which did not statutorily belong to the sacred fund: [λοιπὸν ἐν Ἀρτ]εµισίωι σὺν τῶι τῶν αὐλητῶν [µισθῶι], “remainder in the Artemision including the flute players’ wages”. They did likewise in 208 with another deposit from the public fund intended for the sitonia, characterizing the deposit, thesis (ἀπὸ τῆς θ̣έσεως, ID 365, l. 13): while aware it was a deposit, the hieropoioi processed these monies, like those for the flute players’ wages, in the total of the Artemision and in the account balance of the sacred fund.
192This overlap between sacred monies and public monies was therefore clearly perceived by the Delians, who must have come to the conclusion that it would be more efficient to combine them into a single book-keeping system.
193But making the comprehensive inventory of the jars of the sacred fund and the public fund raised another accounting problem that the hieropoioi had clearly resolved in developing their book-keeping. Since many movements of funds occurred in the course of the year between the god’s treasury and the public treasury, it was easy for the hieropoioi to record the operations in both the sacred fund and the public fund. But there was a danger of them adding identical income and expenditure twice over in the account balance as they might occur both in the current account and in the inventory of movements of monies from the jars. This was particularly the case for loans and building work. Accordingly, in the account for 179 BC, the section on payments for works (ID 442, B, l. 217‑253) corresponds to the withdrawals mentioned in the jar inventory (A, l. 55‑73). In the section on personal loans, a stamnos deposited in the month of Aresion (A, l. 39‑40) was withdrawn for a new loan (l. 74) which was itself mentioned in the current account (l. 213).
194As seen, to avoid skewing the account balances, as of the 230s the hieropoioi not only separated the current account from the jar inventory but they also included in the account balance only the surplus of the current account, which was recurrently referred to as the περιόν.172 Provided that only the surplus of the current account featured in the entries column for establishing the account balance, the total remained accurate.
195They dealt likewise with the endowment funds, that were not part of the funds of which they took stock, although the interest they earned also came in for special treatment. Since the proceeds of interest led to the manufacture of a phiale, or recapitalization as the case might be, it was right not to include them in the account balance so as not count this income twice, once in the form of money and a second time as an offering. This was already what was shown by the account for 250 BC (IG XI 2, 287) in which the interest from the endowment fund was not counted in the balance.
196The account stele thus synthesized the situation of several accounts: the current account of the sacred chest but also, feeding into it, the statement of assets of the sacred chest. The hieropoioi added to this accounts of stocks: precious metal offerings, but also building materials (tiles, timber) at periods when work was being done on the island’s buildings. They also took stock of the assets of the public fund segregating from it the account of the sitonia which, in the second century BC, made up a fund for public purchases that came in and went out three times a year.173
The invention of an accounting system
197The two funds, the public fund and the sacred fund, were designed as a mathematical whole in the accounts of the hieropoioi. This situation, the end result of the merging of interests between the city-state and its sanctuary, was ultimately just the logical outcome of the many movements of monies that went on between the two funds from the beginning of Independence. The city-state regularly took out loans from the sacred fund, which it paid back within the year, using the sacred fund for advances.174 In return, certain monies from the public fund were regularly assigned to the sacred fund by way of repayment for the borrowing by the city-state. This was the case of the port and commercial taxes throughout the period under consideration, of the monies known as the prytanikon and the income of the assemblies and of the euthynai in the first half of the third century, and of the agora rents in the second century. The city-state also granted several subsidies to the sacred fund for festivals: for the Apollonia, the Dionysia and the Thesmophories, close to 4,000 drachmas were assigned to the sacred fund each year. The Delians also accumulated remainders and monies of various kinds in the god’s coffer by voting for this allocation in the assembly. This was the case of the choregikon and of the monies named ὅρων and τραπεζῶν, that were often paid into the sacred fund. Other public monies merely transited through the sacred fund, such as the flute players’ wages, deposited at the year end and passed on by the hieropoioi in the course of the following year. Yet other sums were remainders that ended up in the god’s coffer because the city-state considered Apollo’s treasure as a reserve and a place for hoarding wealth. This was the case of the “remainder of the technites” (τὸ περιγενόµενον ἀπὸ τῶν τεχνιτῶν) regularly deposited in the sacred chest by the city-state treasurers. Conversely, the sacred fund financed work on buildings that did not concern the temenos: the theatre, the pentekostologion, the L‑shaped stoa of the agora, and the Ekklesiasterion. The often fragmentary state of the accounts precludes any precise assessment of the ratio between the regular payments from the public fund for the festivals and the contribution from the sacred fund for public buildings, but the interweaving in financing in all aspects of Delian life was indeed real.175
198This complex tangle was the outcome of decisions by the city-state authorities that had built up layer on layer since the beginning of Independence to produce this financial edifice. That the two funds should be thought of as a mathematical whole, in the new accounting practice of the hieropoioi as from the years 230‑220 BC was but the logical consequence of the city-state’s habit of regularly borrowing cash advances from the sacred fund that were more often than not paid back within the same year out of public revenues. To move the monies from one fund to the other required prytaneis who opened the coffers, bankers who checked and converted the sums into the Attic standard where necessary, but above all it required an authority capable of forming an overview of the assets of both funds and making a synthesis.
199The synthesis between the assets of the sacred fund and the assets of the public fund lent coherence to the whole of the system and rationalized their accounting. The amounts for the flute players’ wages or the monies of the sitonia no longer needed to be recorded as being deposited in the god’s account but could be set down directly in the city-state’s account.
200Did the hieropoioi take stock of all of the monies in the public fund? Given that periodic revenues transited via the banks and served to pay the current year’s spending, it is hard to see what other public resources would not have been mentioned by the hieropoioi. Contrary to what they did for the sacred fund, for which they genuinely played the part of treasurers, they did not draw up the full public accounts. Management of the current account still fell to the city-state treasurers, who recorded the periodic collection of revenues (city-state taxes, rents from the agora) and their attribution, further to the assembly’s decisions, for the different outlays for the year (working capital of the assemblies, monies ascribed to the various city-state magistrates). The city-state treasurers had their work cut out since the years 230‑220 saw the advent of the second treasurer to help out the first who initially officiated alone.176 But even without giving details, the hieropoioi certainly inventoried all of the monies in the public fund: the cash holdings on the one side and the profit of the current account on the other at the time when it became part of the cash holdings.
201From the time when they took stock of the deposit of the public fund alongside that of the sacred fund, the hieropoioi were the only Delian magistrates to have a comprehensive view of the public and sacred assets. They made this synthesis available to the assembly and council for the budgetary decisions that fell to these bodies. While this change did not entail any new distribution of roles institutionally between the hieropoioi and the city-state treasurers, from an accounting perspective, the hieropoioi became the true treasurers of Delos from that date.177
202It was probably not in the early second century but in the years 230‑220 BC that this change came about, as attested by the many indications I have compiled.
The change in attributions
203The functions of the hieropoioi evolved considerably, then, over the course of Independence, as is also reflected by the material change in the presentation of their accounts over a century and a half. In conjunction with their tasks as organizers of the management of the sacred property, they gradually progressed from keeping cashiers’ registers recording the accumulation of assets to performing acts of management dictated by accounting practices and requiring record-keeping abilities.
204The methods of bankers, very much present on Delos and in the sanctuary’s business from at least the mid third century BC, most certainly contributed to the professionalization of management by the hieropoioi. These transfers of skills between the spheres of private financiers and of public affairs can besides be observed in other contexts.178 The presence of Italian bankers and negotiatores on Delos must have made for more intense exchanges of accounting practices and methods within the circles of professional financiers. From this point of view, the major change in accounting of the years 230‑220 can be even better understood with, at that time, the first Italian financiers on Delos. The synthetic accounting work achieved by the hieropoioi of the second century was similar in form to the codex accepti et expensi kept by every paterfamilias and which G. Minaud has shown was neither a cash book nor an accounts book, but a synthetic record of accounts of legal value.179 Nor was it totally unlike the codex rationum kept by bankers in the Roman world, although the date at which this type of register emerged among professional bankers subject to the editio rationum in the courts of law remains controversial.180
205But the Delian hieropoioi who succeeded each other on boards tasked with administering the god’s property also benefitted from the experience gained from their work on the city-state council: the turnover of office-holding in the small community of Delians meant some citizens on the council were future hieropoioi and others were former magistrates more experienced in handling accounts. As bouleutai, they exercised financial functions: throughout the period of Independence, the council attended the passing‑on of the god’s holdings from one set of hieropoioi to the next. The presence of prytaneis was mandatory for inventories and for making deposits and withdrawals from the sacred fund and the public fund. The council also oversaw the collection of revenues, for the public fund and in a lesser degree for the sacred fund.181 There cannot but have been scope for some form of collective administrative memory but certainly also some form of reflection as to accounting methods.
“Double‑Entry Book‑Keeping”?
206The inclusion of the public fund in the accounting practices of the hieropoioi attested to a far-reaching innovation in the conception of the way the public and sacred finances were managed. The loans granted to the city-state from the god’s monies were very different from other loans the hieropoioi extended to private individuals, for example from the endowments: in the latter case, the income from interest was essential to making the system profitable. By contrast, loans to the public treasury meant the sacred fund was a credit item for the city-state’s budget.182 The synthesis between the two funds that was then effected in the accounting of the hieropoioi made it possible to properly integrate the ideas of credit and debit into the book-keeping. Formally, the city-state became indebted to the sanctuary in mortgaging the year’s income, but in book-keeping terms, these flows of monies formed a whole. The association of the two funds showed not only that the Delians wanted to facilitate the management of the hieropoioi but also and above all that these administrators were perfectly capable of engaging in complex reasoning about accountancy that the profuse character of their records does not suggest at first sight.
Awareness of the challenges of “double entries”
207Insofar as the hieropoioi were able to juxtapose the inventory of the sacred fund and the inventory of the public fund, they were capable of recording the movements of monies between the two treasuries, debiting the one and crediting the other. However, the accounts fail to provide an entirely clear view of this process since the revenues for the year transited via the banks. Accordingly a repayment from the city-state to the god’s fund, paid by the treasurers for the year, might be made out of revenues kept in a bank and so not appear as a debit in the inventory of the public treasury’s jars. Yet the hieropoioi had to reconcile the two inventories since the account balance totalled the movements of monies of both. This is probably what was indicated by the duplication of the total sum in the public fund in the account of 192 BC (ID 399, l. 68‑69).
208The account was set out in this way183 (table 5):
Table 5 — Balance sheet for 192 BC (ID 399).
Sacred Fund | Public Fund | |||
Total cash holdings | unknown | l. 54 | 40 368 dr. 3 ob. ½ ob. | |
Withdrawals | l. 9-15 | 8 567 dr. + | l. 55-57 | 1 790 dr. |
Total after withdrawals | l. 16 | 39 005 dr. 3 ob. ½ ob. ¼ ob. 2 ch. | l. 58 | 38 578 dr. 3 ob. ½ ob. |
Entries for year | l. 35 | 43 389 dr. 4 ob. ½ ob. ¼ ob. 1 ch (including reimbursements: at least 28 975 dr.) | l. 68 | 17 670 dr. |
Total in chest | l. 35 | 82 383 dr. 2 ob. ½ ob. ¼ ob.183 | l. 68 | 56 248 dr. 3 ob. ½ ob. |
l. 69 | 28 643 dr. 3 ob. ¼ ob. 1 ch. | |||
l. 73 (sitonikon) | 8 236 dr. 4 ob. ¼ ob. 2 ch. |
209The hieropoioi indicated an initial total for the public fund (κεφαλὴ τοῦ δηµοσίου, l. 68) of 56,248 drachmas, 3 obols and 1/2 obol which does indeed correspond to the addition of the total of cash holdings after withdrawals and the total income for the year. Then, after two crossed‑out lines, they indicated a second total (κεφαλὴ τοῦ ἀργ[υρ]ίου τοῦ δ[ηµοσίου], l. 69) of 28,643 drachmas, 3 obols, 1/4 obol and 1 chalkos. F. Durrbach’s restitution, τοῦ δ[ηµοσίου], arose from the conviction that this entire line referred to the sitonikon. But as we have seen the sitonikon account was separate from that of the public fund, even though the monies were part of the city-state fund. Yet, the wording κεφαλὴ τοῦ ἀργ[υρ]ίου τοῦ δ- does invite the restoration δ[ηµοσίου] because it is only found in the accounts for a fund total. Why did the hieropoioi record a second total for the public fund that was 27,605 drachmas less than the first? They doubtless saw that operations they had recorded in the sacred fund, then in the public fund, would be duplicates and of a nature to skew the evaluation of the total and the calculation of the account balance.
210And the fact is that the entries in the sacred fund for that year contained many repayments of debts by the city-state. Now, the only withdrawal mentioned by the hieropoioi from the public fund concerned the flute players’ wages (l. 54‑57). Of the 38,578 drachmas, 3 obols and 1/2 obol received in the cash holding of the public fund or of the 17,670 drachmas received in the course of the year, there had to be amounts for the repayment of borrowing from the sacred treasure. The figures just about match because the entries into the sacred fund came to at least 28,975 drachmas in loan repayments, while the difference between the first and second totals of the public fund was 27,605 drachmas. Those 27,605 drachmas must therefore have been the total taken from the public fund, of which the hieropoioi had just recorded the inventory, after repayments to the sacred fund. Now, if certain repayments were made to the hieropoioi by the treasurers from monies taken directly from banks, they could not have been recorded in the inventory of the public fund by the hieropoioi. Therefore they appear only under the heading of loan repayments to the sacred fund. That explains the difference between the total repayments and the total actually withdrawn from the public fund.
211The origins of the jars also corroborate this hypothesis. In the inventory of the repayments to the sacred fund, the jar descriptions mention two banks: that of Timon and that of Hellen and Mantineus. These same two banks appear in the descriptions of the jars in the inventory of the public fund. But the wording on the jars, describing what they were allocated for, must have changed between the depositing in the public fund and the repayment to the sacred treasury. This was precisely the work of the treasurers and bankers. These modifications prevent us, most of the time, from accurately tracking the path of the jars from one fund to another. However, the hieropoioi were aware of the risk of duplication from one fund to the other and their accounts were accurate. Accordingly jars 128 and 129 of the public fund, from Timon’s bank and containing respectively 6,000 drachmas allocated to the grammateion and 6,000 drachmas allocated to the successors of Sosimachos, bear wording corresponding to their initial allocation. If the treasurers, on the assembly’s instructions, paid them to the sacred fund by handing them over to the hieropoioi, they might constitute jar 21 of the sacred fund, it too coming from Timon’s bank, with the wording on the label indicating, as a new allocation, the repayment of loans the god had granted to the city-state.184 The bank probably no longer needed to be involved in the hand-over, but the indication that the sums came from Timon’s bank recorded that the initial amount, along with any conversion operations, had been validated by the bank.
212The account for 179 BC (ID 442) also shows that the account balance took into consideration movements of monies like the sitonikon which, in an amount of 18,560 drachmas, came back within the public fund three times in the year. In the public fund account, the hieropoioi recorded debits and credits for each time the monies moved. But the balance of the account and the balance carried forward, which ultimately included the monies of the sitonia accumulated at the end of the year from sales, were accurate and, as appropriate, did not add together the rotations of monies.185
Multiple actors
213The hieropoioi were not the only actors in this accounting system, even if they were the ones who ultimately wrote up the synthesis.
214This accounting system had ramifications that went beyond what can be read from the account stele. It was made up of several separate but interrelated components:
- the bank accounts that the sanctuary and the city-state held in various outside establishments (the “accounts in banks”);
- the deposit accounts of the public fund and the sacred fund in the temple (the “accounts in temple”);
- the customer accounts (contractors for building work, wheat merchants, suppliers of material), with whom the city-state and sanctuary had “merchandise accounts” and who may also have had, for themselves, accounts with local bankers, at least to take advantage of foreign exchange opportunities.
215When the public fund paid a loan back into the sacred fund, a bank debited the city-state’s account with the revenues received and credited its “account in temple” by the requisite amount (which the hieropoioi recorded under the heading of entries of the public fund received from the treasurers from the banks), then the treasurers debited the city-state’s “account in temple” by the requisite amount (which the hieropoioi noted by subtracting the amount from the total of assets of the public fund) and the hieropoioi credited it to the god’s “account in temple” (which the hieropoioi recorded under the heading of the year’s entries into the sacred fund). When the sanctuary lent money to the city-state for the sitonia in the third century BC, the hieropoioi debited the god’s “account in temple” and the treasurers credited the public fund’s “account in temple”. They then debited the city-state’s “merchandise account” for the benefit of the merchant and then credited the city-state’s “account in bank” when they deposited the amount of money corresponding to the grain sold. The city-state’s “account in bank” was then debited to credit the god’s “account in bank” and then “account in temple” by way of repayment (table 6).
Table 6 — Organization of movements of monies between the treasuries.
City | Sanctuary | |||||
Bank account | Temple account | Merchandise account | Bank account | Temple account | Merchandise account | |
Reimbursement | ‒ | + | ||||
‒ | + | |||||
Sitonia | + | ‒ | ||||
‒ | ||||||
+ | ||||||
‒ | + | + |
216This orderly and coherent system, that uses rational accounting methods, has many affinities with the principles of double-entry book-keeping theorized by the Franciscan mathematician Luca Pacioli in the fifteenth century AD in that it synthesizes the various movements of monies.186 The name refers both to the need to use two registers (a book of incoming and outgoing amounts constituting the cash ledger and a book of creditors and debtors recording the undertaking’s correspondents) and the fact that every movement involves two records, one for credit and the other for the corresponding debit.187 The consequences of an operation can then be perceived at all levels and recorded, making it possible to check the accounts and also to measure the change in assets and the consequences of financial choices.
217This method became fully meaningful in the case of firms that associated different activities while needing to account for the total movements of monies of the various actors involved. The purpose was to achieve an overview of the financial system with which the undertaking operated, by showing how and in what proportions the money left the funds to enter the market for transactions.
218The differences between the Delian system and the system of the Florentine and Genoese merchants lay in the role of the banks: on Delos, assets merely transited via banks whereas the true place of deposit of the money, for both the sanctuary and the city-state, was the temple. At no time, in the records of the hieropoioi, was the money scriptural. It was invariably hard cash duly evaluated and counted on the abacus.
219These conclusions concur with those of G. Minaud who, in a study of Roman accounting, shows that there was no ground to take the view that book-keeping reasoning only appeared in the Renaissance with the work of Luca Pacioli and the practices of Florentine and Genoese merchants.188 The tools implemented by the Delians, like those that some Romans had set up, made it possible to establish the standing of an estate precisely. The wealth created was thus converted into units of account and its reflection in book-keeping allowed its stewardship to be analysed at the same time. Even if the Delians did not inscribe, in addition to their annual accounts, any real profit and loss accounts (that is, an accounting analysis of the various steps in the production of wealth from exploitation), the light cast on their accounts made it feasible: they could evaluate the output for the financial year and compare it with the use of stocks; they could determine the share of cash flow and that of subsidies and relate them to charges; or again they could evaluate an outlay by an analysis of average costs and knowledge of production costs. Accordingly the organization of the book-keeping material by the hieropoioi met a form of economic rationality, with its requirements defined in a given time and place.
Conclusion: The Purposes of the Accounts of the Hieropoioi
220The discovery of the complexity of the accounting procedures that were gradually developed and mastered by the Delians is an invitation to question the interpretations of the account stelae that all too exclusively emphasize the symbolic nature of the inscription. The material appearance of the accounts and inventories has prompted many commentators to an interpretation that emphasizes the symbolic character of the inscription more than the value of the information it presents. The engraved stele is the manifestation in a public place of the probity of the administrators of the sacred property.189
221The material appearance of the accounts should not, for sure, be dissociated from the analysis of its content. All the faces of the stele were exploited for cutting the text, including the edge, which, very often, was also carved, for lack of sufficient space on the main two faces. In the course of the second century BC, the lengthening of the text of the accounts even led to the production of additional stelae. The inscription, in small closely spaced letters, that took up the entire surface of the stone, made for very difficult reading. In the part relating to the account as in that relating to the inventory, repetition from one text to the next is obvious, since the list of all the monetary assets and the collections of offerings was taken up each year, and augmented by the new offerings and new profits. It sometimes happened that some information was not recorded on the stone, whether a number or a name for which the stone cutter left a blank, prompting some Delian epigraphists to believe that no‑one had read through the stelae prior to the editors of the corpus. Moreover, these stelae took up considerable room, they were genuine epigraphic monuments that raised questions as to the reasons behind such exhibition of blocks of letters and numbers, whose poor aesthetic value seemed to contradict the quest for splendour attested by the alignment of the temples and treasuries.
222This symbolic dimension, which was admittedly not absent from the action that consisted in erecting such carved monuments between the temples and treasuries, was not, though, at the crux of the process, as is shown by close scrutiny of the procedure that led to the manufacture and then erecting of the stele of the annual accounts.
223Did these inscribed stelae have some other immediate use for the Delian community? It has to be observed that the hieropoioi imposed on the engravers a specific layout for the passages they wanted to highlight. On the account fragment Γ766γ, the account balance is carved in a larger size than the rest of the lettering, making the information about the amount of the god’s fortune and its increase visible to all (fig. 20). It cannot be ruled out that the figures were picked out in vermillion, as revealed in Attica by the financial inscription of the deme of Rhamnonte (IG I3 248): F. Durrbach reported red emphasis for the numerical signs in the account of 179 BC, still visible on face B.190 The many rasurae found on the carved stelae often concern figures and names, that the hieropoioi were careful to have corrected after the initial carving.
224Alongside the stele, the deltos which took up the same data could be used for information purposes. Despite the rotation of the office-holders, the hieropoioi had a record of the prices paid by their predecessors. Characteristically they sometimes omitted to state in the accounts the total amount paid for such‑and-such a purchase (this was for example frequently the case for purchases of pitch), but they generally set down the unit price. Lines 67‑68 of the account for 279 BC (IG XI 2, 161, A) are emblematic of this practice, here in the case of a purchase of nails. The total paid is not mentioned but the indication of the unit price of the mina of nails features in a rasura, as if that indication had been judged important enough to replace the indication of the total paid on the stele: ἥλων πα[ρὰ] Δεξίου εἰς τὰς πυλίδας µναῖ πέντε· ἡ µνᾶ 𐅂Ι𐅁·.
225The hieropoioi did likewise for the contracts for the supply of various materials, indicating retail prices whereas it would have been sufficient, from a book-keeping perspective, to indicate the total cost imputed to the sacred fund.191 In the early second century BC, the form in which the monthly accounts were kept was reorganized so as to bring out more clearly the monthly prices of recurring purchases such as oil, firewood, pitch and piglets for sacrifices.192 The civic authorities, through the accounts of the hieropoioi, therefore had knowledge of the prices and rates, at the same time as the suppliers, enabling them to be authoritative in transactions. Without actually operating like market price lists, the accounts of the hieropoioi had something of the same effect.193 The information collated there could be used for the purposes of “governance” to use a very contemporary term or at least it could be used by the hieropoioi and the council members when they had to take a financial decision. It enabled the administrators to manage the two funds like a budget drawn up from the changes in separate accounts and not just as cash flows; and it provided indications, from one year’s board to the next, in the short and medium term about changes in costs and suppliers of material for which there was a recurrent need on the island.
226The accounting mechanism the Delians came up with also reflected a legal and institutional situation that seems, at first sight, unaccustomed in the Greek world. The association of the public fund and the sacred fund went against the three-way divide usually recognized in ancient societies between public, private and sacred. The analysis of the composition of the sacred fund and the public fund, in the next chapter, will further illustrate this.
Notes de bas de page
1 Vial 1984, pp. 216‑232.
2 Chankowski 1997b.
3 Chankowski 2008a.
4 A dedication from Athenian garnishers to Demetrios of Phaleron (IG II2 2971), first dated slightly before 315 BC and mentioning his victory in the chariot race at the Delia, was revised and dated to the 250s based on palaeographic criteria: Tracy 1995a and Tracy 1995b, pp. 41‑46. Habicht 2006, pp. 171‑173 (the 2006 French version is used in this book rather than the 1995 German version, because the 2006 edition contains the most recent updates). The character’s chronology is discussed in Oetjen 2000. The Delia mentioned in the dedication must be those of Boeotia: Brélaz, Andreiomenou and Ducrey 2007, n. 138. Chankowski 2008a, pp. 220‑221 and Bruneau 1970, p. 81 are therefore in need of correction on this point.
5 Herbin 2014.
6 A hypothesis developed by F. Queyrel in Marcadé 1996, p. 84 and Queyrel 2016, pp. 148‑150.
7 Coarelli 2016, pp. 177‑202 and the account by Chankowski 2018c.
8 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 249‑257.
9 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 256‑257.
10 On the League, which is known from only a few inscriptions, see in particular Merker 1970 and Constantakopoulou 2017, pp. 31‑56. The inscription that attests to Antigonid control over the Nesiotic League is the decree of the Islanders establishing the Demetrieia to alternate with the existing Antigoneia (IG XI 4, 1036), dated shortly after 306.
11 Merker 1970, pp. 141‑142 n. 2; Buraselis 1982, pp. 41‑44, 60‑67; Billows 1990, pp. 220‑225.
12 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 249‑258 and pp. 370‑376, on the complexity of the ties the Delians maintained with the Athenians.
13 Milet I, 3, 123, l. 2‑4; ἡ πόλις ἐλευθέρα καὶ αὐτόνοµος ἐγένετο ὑπὸ Ἀντιγόνου καὶ ἡ δηµοκρατία ἀπεδόθη. See also Didyma 358, l. 5‑6.
14 Vial 1984, pp. 91‑92.
15 Chankowski 2008a, p. 151 and p. 188.
16 See p. 13 below and Chapter 3 below, p. 140.
17 Habicht 2006, p. 81.
18 Errington 1977, p. 496; Tréheux 1948, p. 1031; Habicht 2006, p. 81 and n. 75.
19 Tréheux 1948, pp. 1029‑1031 and Tréheux 1976, p. 88 n. 20.
20 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 198, 220 and 235‑257.
21 On this archon and his date, see the demonstration by Tréheux 1959, pp. 103‑110 and 199‑205. Archepolis might have been the archon of 313 BC and Prostates that of 311 or vice‑versa (Vial 2008, s.v.). The continued chronology of archons is provided by the lists and inscriptions: see on this subject the explanation given in Nouveau Choix, pp. 16‑18.
22 Habicht 2006, p. 87 n. 9.
23 See p. 9 and n. 7 above (Coarelli 2016 and Chankowski 2018c).
24 See the record of the account IG XI 2, 135 in Appendix 1.
25 See Chapter 3, pp. 139‑140 below for the detailed argument.
26 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 311‑314 and 352‑377. These 12.5 talents represent the minimum capital the sanctuary had to put into circulation as loans to ensure, from the income provided by the interest, the financing of the penteteric Delia.
27 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 319‑320.
28 Chankowski 2008a, p. 312.
29 Migeotte 1984, pp. 161‑166, with the bibliography given in the notes and the discussion of the meaning of Delioi (esp. p. 164); Reger 1994a, pp. 37‑39; Gabrielsen 2005, pp. 152‑156; Migeotte 2014, pp. 622‑623.
30 On the fiscal requirements of Demetrios, see Wehrli 1968, p. 100. J. Delamarre (Delamarre 1904) ascribes all the Islanders’ debts of this period to Demetrios’ tribute but L. Migeotte (Migeotte 1984, p. 165) is more nuanced in his opinion.
31 Migeotte 1984, pp. 166‑194.
32 See Chapter 2 below.
33 Migeotte 1984, pp. 147‑148 and 156‑157.
34 For L. Migeotte (Migeotte 1984, p. 157) there were several separate loans and not a single one because loan agreements were supposedly not made out for the fourth century. Yet the records do not support any such assertion: see the objections in Vial 1988, p. 58.
35 Larsen 1938, pp. 337‑343; Gabrielsen 2005, p. 154.
36 Bogaert 1968, pp. 137‑138.
37 The text is commented by Migeotte 1984 no. 117, pp. 345‑347, citing the earlier bibliography. On the identification of Karystos of Euboea, see Bresson 2008, pp. 186‑188.
38 Our translation from Bresson 2008, p. 186, slightly modified.
39 Bravo 1980, p. 818; Vélissaropoulos 1980, p. 152, about the expression κατάγειν: “place an embargo on a vessel, either to force it to dock or to prevent it from leaving”.
40 Bravo 1980, p. 695.
41 Gabrielsen 2005, p. 154.
42 IG XII 6, 1, 11, l. 40‑49.
43 Vial 1984, pp. 132‑137 and stemma XVI; Vial 2008, s.v. Mnesalkos was also the proposer of an honorary decree for an Athenian (IG XI 4, 558) and of another fragmentary honorific decree (IG XI 4, 560).
44 Gabrielsen 2005, p. 154. See below on the question of the prodaneistai.
45 See also the hypothesis about the restitution of the dedication of the Hellenistic Artemision in Moretti 2012, pp. 435‑436.
46 On the meaning of sacred property and the legal form of tutelage exercised by the cities, see also Rousset 2013, esp. pp. 125‑130. With the same meaning as on Delos, for example, an inscription of Thespiae gives as the heading of an inventory ηιερὰ χρέµατα Θεσσπιέων, “the sacred property of the Thespians” (P. Roesch, Inscriptions de Thespies 38, l. 2‑3, online: URL: http://www.hisoma.mom.fr/production-scientifique/les-inscriptions-de-thespies).
47 Despite Migeotte 1984, p. 347, n. 6: “∆ήλιοι could refer to the sanctuary […], but this interpretation is unlikely, first because it would be unusual to see the Delian authorities operate seizures, and then because the sanctuary put an end to its foreign lending as from 314.”
48 Chankowski 2002; Chapter 3 below, pp. 140‑142.
49 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 328‑329 and p. 337. This is also the interpretation adopted by Migeotte 2014, p. 623.
50 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 140‑142 about the money from the Minoe Fountain.
51 This inscription (= OGIS 773) is considered to be the earliest evidence of Ptolemaic control in the Cyclades and over the Island League with the evicting of Demetrios Poliorcetes.
52 See Bagnall 1976, pp. 137‑138 on this figure. A debtor of the Delian sanctuary, he was named nesiarchos in an inscription of Cyzica recalling that the Parians had offered him an honorific statue (Froehner 1865, no 97; Michel 1900, no 534). Durrbach 1921‑1922, pp. 29‑30 (followed by Merker 1970, pp. 152‑153) take him to be an Antigonid officer but without taking account of the attestation then alleged by Bagnall.
53 Bogaert 1968, p. 138, n. 58.
54 On the loans for Hermione and Peparethos, that date rather from the classical period, see p. 15 above. Only two foreigners appear among the individuals indebted to Apollo in the course of the third century. They were probably resident on Delos because their guarantors were Delians: Apollodoros of Cyzica (Bogaert 1968, p. 145) and Xeno of Hermione (Lacroix 1932, pp. 521‑522).
55 On this 10% figure see Migeotte 1984, p. 153, n. 22 and pp. 386‑387.
56 See especially the judgement of Bogaert 1968, p. 141.
57 Chankowski 2008a, p. 283.
58 Bogaert 1968, pp. 126‑168; Vial 1984, pp. 357‑384 and Nouveau Choix, pp. 258‑262; Migeotte 1984, pp. 141‑165, 345‑346; Migeotte 2013; Migeotte 2014, pp. 615‑633. See also the very helpful cross-reference tables of debts drawn up by Schulhof 1908, p. 460.
59 Vial 1984, pp. 100‑101 and 144‑146; on the responsibility of the prytaneis, see the nuances in Vial 1997, pp. 337‑343.
60 Migeotte 2013, p. 320.
61 Bogaert 1968, pp. 234‑136; Vial 1984, p. 110 and p. 120 (on the role of the secretary of the city-state, who was not a clerk, contrary to the secretary of the hieropoioi, and played an important financial role).
62 See the repertory of uses compiled in Migeotte 1980a.
63 Bogaert 1968, pp. 134‑135: “The προδανεισταί were citizens who signed the contract and gave a commitment as if they were borrowing themselves. They were therefore answerable to the sanctuary for the city”; Vial 1984, pp. 110‑113.
64 See pp. 16‑18 above.
65 Gabrielsen 2005, pp. 151‑156.
66 See Chapter 5 below on the economy and credit opportunities on Delos.
67 Bogaert 1968, p. 136. But on interest payments, see the remarks by C. Vial in Nouveau Choix, pp. 258‑262.
68 Only two foreigners appear among the individual debtors of Apollo in the third century: Apollodoros of Cyzica (Bogaert 1968, p. 145) and Xeno of Hermione (Lacroix 1932, pp. 521‑522).
69 Bogaert 1968, p. 145.
70 Bogaert 1968, p. 144.
71 See Chapter 5 below, pp. 238‑239.
72 These arrangements were one of the major subjects of the PhD thesis of J. Tréheux (Tréheux 1959).
73 IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 89; IG XI 2, 224, A, l. 26; IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 43 and l. 76.
74 Schärlig 2001; Faraguna 2008.
75 Bogaert 1968, pp. 281‑288. See also the representations of priests and priestesses with the key to the sacred treasury as their attribute: von den Hoff 2008; Conelly 2007.
76 Attic oratorical sources attest to cases where individuals kept part of their fortune with them: Lysias, Against Diogeiton, 5 and Against Eratosthenes, 11.
77 Vial 1984, p. 225.
78 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 154‑162.
79 Chankowski 2008a, p. 162.
80 See GD 13, p. 185; Vallois 1944, p. 26; Courby 1931, p. 230.
81 See on this subject Moretti 2012, p. 437.
82 The role of the Prytaneus as a place for storage of certain monetary funds, especially foundation capital, has been contemplated because of the name of a fund grouping several foundation capitals under the name of histiatikon or hestiatikon. F. Durrbach, commentary to ID 320 p. 93, thinks the name was synonymous with the prytankion fund; but see Bogaert 1968, p. 157, who takes the view that the endowment funds were in circulation: “it was hardly appropriate to call them after a building where they had not or had only very briefly been kept.” On the Prytaneus, see Etienne 1997: room E, which may have been the archeion, lent itself to housing the archives but no arrangements can be seen for money. It is true that the building was rearranged many times over. See Chapter 3 below, pp. 116‑117 on the prytanikon fund and pp. 132‑133 on the endowment funds and the name histiatikon or hestiatikon which is unrelated to the Prytaneus.
83 See Chapter 3 below, p. 158.
84 See the latest report on this monument by J.‑C. Moretti (Moretti 2012).
85 See GD 46, pp. 207‑209; Vallois 1966, pp. 47‑49.
86 Moretti 2012, p. 430 and p. 434.
87 Moretti 2012, pp. 430‑434.
88 See p. 32 below.
89 On the Athenian jar inventories, see Chapter 2 below, pp. 99‑101 and Chapter 4 below, pp. 182‑184.
90 See Chapter 2 below, p. 106.
91 Prêtre 1999.
92 See the study by Kaminski 1991 that examines mostly offertory boxes that were very different from coffers.
93 IG XI 2, 161, A, l. 89; IG XI 2, 224, A, l. 26; IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 43 and l. 76.
94 See Chapter 4 below, p. 183.
95 See Appendix 2 for the detailed inventory of the jars of the sacred and public funds.
96 It was common practice to carry money in bags but the term κυνοῦχος is scarce and only used in a papyrus of Zeno, on the reverse side of a monetary account speaking of an exchange between gold and silver (ἔµβληµα ἐκ τοῦ κινούχου, P.Cair.Zen I, 59022). On means of transporting money, see Callataÿ 2006b, who, however, omits citing this term. See Chapter 3 below, p. 138.
97 On the ancient fund, see Chapter 3 below and table 29, p. 137.
98 See pp. 59‑63 below.
99 See Chapter 4 below, p. 182 on the composition of the treasure in currency and the Athenians’ inventories of the jars.
100 On this hand-over, see Chapter 2 below, pp. 99‑101.
101 IG I3 387, l. 16.
102 IG II2 1388, l. 73‑75.
103 IG II2 1445, l. 22.
104 Rapin 1983, pp. 351‑359.
105 Herzog 1932, p. 36.
106 Vial 1984, p. 145, pp. 210‑211, p. 225 and Vial 1997 on the role of the prytaneis.
107 On banks, see Chapter 4 below, pp. 227‑233.
108 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 107‑108.
109 On the centralizing role of the fund of Apollo, see Chapter 2 below, p. 106.
110 Courby 1931 briefly mentions this passageway between the temples, p. 1: “The Great Temple, located a little away from the other two, was separated from the neighbouring temple by a passageway, that used to measure 5 metres before it was whittled away on both edges by two rows of stelae, some of the supports for which can still be seen.” Also p. 107 and pl. II.
111 The stone was found re‑used in a Myconian monastery. Cf. the lemma of F. Durrbach and P. Roussel at ID 380 and ID 1511.
112 Chankowski 2013, pp. 923‑925. The engraving activity is recorded in the catalogue of craftsmen drawn up by Feyel 2006, pp. 377‑379 with tables 9 and 10. The amounts given here are only those for which the hieropoioi specified as concerning the account stele.
113 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 119‑120.
114 From the Epidaurus building accounts, A. Burford estimates the cost of the Propylaea of the sanctuary of Asklepios at 10 Aeginetan talents (The Greek Temple Builders at Epidauros, Liverpool [1969], pp. 81‑83).
115 Abbreviations: dr. (drachma); ob. (obol); ch. (chalkos).
116 See Chankowski 1998 for this join.
117 Feyel 2006, pp. 378‑379.
118 Vial 1984, pp. 216‑231 on the tasks of the hieropoioi.
119 This study takes up and supplements Chankowski 2008b and Chankowski 2013.
120 We know little about the ways the accounts were controlled and submitted on Delos. See Vial 1984, p. 102 and pp. 158‑161 on the tasks of the logistai; Fröhlich 2004, p. 80 and pp. 270‑271 on the posting of monthly accounts attesting to there being a periodic control and on the question of whether the council, rather than the logistai, controlled the magistrates’ accounts in the course of the year. Both consider that the monthly posting concerned the whole of the accounts. See also Migeotte 2008a, pp. 62‑63.
121 Migeotte 2008a, p. 62: “The hieropoioi posted every month in the agora the statement of the sacred funds on tablets or placards called peteura, deltoi or leukomata”; p. 73: “this step may have been an opportunity to arrange the information for the final summary”; Davies 2003; Faraguna 2013b, p. 167; Epstein 2013, p. 132. For a summary of the debates on ancient record keeping, see Boffo 1995 and Sickinger 1999, pp. 64‑72. An initial analysis of writing material can be found in Wilhelm 1909, pp. 239‑257, taking up for Delos the description given by Homolle 1887, p. 13. Posner 1972 takes up the analysis of writing media.
122 δέλτου κυπαρισσίνης: ID 372, A, l. 116; ID 440, A, l. 47.
123 L. 48: [γ]ράφουσιν ἔχοντας εἰς τὴν στ[ήλην]: Chankowski 2001 (SEG LI, 1001). The text should have been mentioned by Harris 2013 about the archiving of legal documents.
124 Andreau 1996.
125 On this practice, which was commonplace in the Athenian administration of the classical period, see Kahrstedt 1938.
126 Vial 1984, p. 111. It remains difficult, though, to determine where they were deposited: cf. Vial 1984, pp. 102‑103 and n. 38 on the mistaken interpretation by J.H. Kent and E. Ziebarth, who consider they were deposited in the sacred chest, in line with an interpretation by A. Wilhelm (Wilhelm 1935). According to a text of the Hiera Syngraphe of Delos, a passage restored by A. Wilhelm (from a passage of an Attic decree of the deme of Halai, from the fourth century [IG II2 1174, l. 4‑7], published and restored by Wilhelm himself) supposedly mentioned, that scholar claimed, the obligation of the hieropoioi to deposit the monthly accounts in a coffer reserved for documents and kept by the council (ID 503, l. 29‑30). But C. Vial shows that it was a question of silver and not archives in that passage: see p. 48 below. On other references to the depositing of monthly accounts in a strongbox, see Fröhlich 2004, pp. 269‑270. On Delos, several epigraphic sources report copies deposited in a temple (ID 73; a text from Ephesus was exhibited in the sanctuary of Apollo with a copy deposited in the Temple of Artemis; IG IX 4, 1029: end of a decree providing for the exhibiting of a law in the sanctuary of Apollo and the keeping of its copy in the Temple of Aphrodite; ID 365, l. 23‑24: keeping of copies of contracts and collateral in the sanctuary).
127 IG XI 2, 269, ab, l. 14; 290, l. 105; ID 442, A, l. 180; 456, B, l. 4; 459, l. 43; SEG XXXV, 882, A, l.2.
128 Vial 1984, pp. 144‑145. See p. 45 below about the working capital.
129 When it refers to a medium for writing, the word is essentially used in the inscriptions of Delos. Only two other instances of this meaning are found, in Erythrae and Oropos; IErythrai 10, l. 11; IG VII 235, l. 42 (V. Petrakos, Oropos, 277).
130 For example IG XI 2, 287, A, l. 42 and l. 71; ID 316, l. 70; ID 338, A, l. 19 and l. 54; ID 372, A, l. 75, 103 and 116; ID 442, A, l. 200 and l. 204.
131 The place these registers or copies of them were stored is referred to as “the sanctuary” in an account for construction expenditure for the Hypostyle Hall in 208 (ID 365, l. 23‑24: τάδε ἀνήλωται, τοῦ δήµου ψηφισαµένου καὶ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος Γόργου [ἀ]πο[δ]εξα[µέν]ου τὰ ἔργα καὶ κελεύοντος, κατὰ [τὰ]ς συγγραφὰς καὶ τὰς διεγγυήσεις, ὧν τὰ ἀντίγραφά ἐστιν ἐν ἱερῶι).
132 Vial 1988.
133 ID 1449, Aab, II, l. 29‑31 (= ID 1450, A, l. 104‑105): γραµµατείδιον δίπτυχον λελευκωµένον ἐν ὧι ἔστιν τὸ [δάνεισµα] τὸ ∆ηλίων ὃ ἔφασαν δανεῖσαι Ἑρµιονεῦσιν καὶ ἡ συγγραφὴ ἡ κατὰ Ἑρµιονέων [γεγραµ]µένη· On this loan, see Migeotte 1984, p. 157, who takes the view that fourth-century loans were not subject to written contract, and the objections by Vial 1988, p. 58.
134 The study by Glotz 1929 collates the references drawn from the accounts of the hieropoioi.
135 On this subject see Schärlig 2001 and Chankowski and Minaud 2014.
136 Parker and Obbink 2000, no 1, l. 16‑24.
137 Bogaert 1968, pp. 170‑175.
138 Chankowski 2014a and Chapter 3 below, p. 227 on monetary practices.
139 Chankowski 2011a, pp. 382‑384.
140 De Sainte-Croix 1956.
141 Tréheux 1959, pp. 126‑127, 239, 274‑275; Vial 1988, p. 60; Migeotte 2008a, pp. 59‑76.
142 Bogaert, 1968, pp. 378‑380.
143 Andreau 1996 set out a useful synthesis of knowledge and mentions the divergences in interpretation; see also Andreau 1994; Minaud 2005.
144 Rathbone 1991.
145 Vial 1984, pp. 225‑226.
146 Vial 1984, p. 145; Bogaert 1968, pp. 172‑174.
147 Vial 1984, p. 144.
148 Tréheux 1944‑1945, pp. 284‑289.
149 Tréheux 1991, p. 350.
150 Appendix 2: table of jars of the sacred fund.
151 Accordingly it is suggested that περιὸν rather than λοιπὸν be restored in ID 461, Ab, l. 55.
152 See for example the case of the contract of Ophelion: ID 290, A, l. 240‑244; Chankowski 2018b.
153 Migeotte 2008a, pp. 69‑70 and Migeotte 2014, pp. 593‑594. But his conclusion is inaccurate as concerns the balance sheet given by the hieropoioi because it includes ex post the balance of the current funds. The two parts were therefore not entirely separate: see p. 50 below.
154 Tréheux 1944‑1945, pp. 284‑295.
155 Vial 1984, pp. 102‑103.
156 Pernin 2014, no. 64, pp. 179‑182, gives a more fragmentary reading of the text: εἰσφέρειν δὲ τοὺς ἱεροποιοὺς […….]Π[..] πάντων τὰς τοῦ µηνὸς ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς τεµένεσιν εἰς [..]ΝΚ[…]ΤOΝ [τὸ µίσ]θωµα ἅπαν τὸ γινόµενον τῶι θεῶι κατὰ τὴν συγγραφήν·, “that the hieropoioi pay back … from all the (?) of the month, in the estates” and connects the second member of the sentence to what follows (“as for the rent that is due in full to the god pursuant to the syngraphe, if the tenants fail to pay it in within the set time”), which is dubious given the position of the particle δὲ in l. 30.
157 Tréheux 1991b.
158 Tréheux 1944‑1945, pp. 293‑295.
159 See Chapter 4 below, p. 227 on the role of banks.
160 Chankowski 1998, pp. 234‑236.
161 Bogaert 1968, p. 175. On the unit of account in the accounting of the hieropoioi, Tréheux 1992b. See Chapter 4 below on monetary usages and Chanknowski 2014a.
162 On this point, Chankowski 2002 and Chapter 3 below, pp. 133‑147.
163 See p. 29 above on how money was kept.
164 Moretti 2012 and pp. 24‑33 above on how money was kept.
165 Vial 1984, p. 171.
166 Chankowski 2008a, p. 334, about ID 444, A l. 56.
167 See Chapter 2 below, p. 71.
168 See p. 47 above.
169 Chankowski 2008b, pp. 85‑87; Chankowski 2014a, p. 543.
170 Migeotte 2014, p. 656, continues to dismiss the idea the two funds were added, although the text of the accounts explicitly proves they were.
171 See Chapter 3 below, p. 174.
172 See p. 47‑48 above.
173 Fantasia 1989, esp. pp. 50‑52. See Chapter 3 below for details of spending from the public fund.
174 Bogaert 1968, pp. 131‑153. Migeotte 1984, p. 156.
175 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 173‑178 for details about how the various funds were organized.
176 Vial 1984, p. 210 and p. 278. The development of policies for the public purchase of grain was probably not alien to this change. See Chapter 3 below, pp. 162‑168.
177 L. Migeotte has objected on several occasions to this idea of the sacred fund and city fund being united (see most recently Migeotte 2014, p. 595 and n. 23). But there is no denying that the Delian accounting records confirm this interpretation, which I maintain here. Cf. Chankowski 2008b, p. 86.
178 The case of Silenos, a banker and hieropoios on Delos, is one example: Chankowski 2008b, pp. 88‑89. Such overlap seems to have been far lesser in the Roman world between the domain of public finance and the business of financiers, despite there being business relations between the financiers of various categories: Andreau 2001, pp. 112‑124.
179 Minaud 2005, pp. 119‑150.
180 Under the Republic, according to Petrucci 1991, pp. 21‑14 and p. 87; in the course of the second century BC according to Andreau 1987, pp. 615‑631; Andreau 1994, p. 5 and n. 12.
181 Vial 1984, pp. 105‑110, emphasizes the importance of the council’s financial functions and its active role in managing the business of the city and of the god: “True, Delos had no armed forces to maintain, nor expeditions to organize, nor countless magistrates to keep a rein on, but it did have funds to manage, wheat, marble and timber to purchase, capital to invest, land and houses to turn to account, buildings to erect and repair, precious tableware to safeguard. It performed this burdensome and complex task thanks to a small number of magistrates and a council that oversaw them, while itself carrying out a part of the work” (p. 127).
182 On the few scruples the Delians had about using the sanctuary’s fortune to their city’s advantage, see Bogaert 1968, pp. 292‑293; Vial 1984, pp. 373‑383.
183 The exact total is 82,395 drachmas, 2 obols, 1/2 obol and 3 chalkoi = 1/4 obol.
184 See the table in Appendix 2 for the numbering of the jars.
185 Fantasia 1989.
186 On “double-entry book-keeping” see de Roover 1956, pp. 118‑123; Minaud 2005, pp. 32‑44.
187 L. Pacioli, Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni e Proportionlita, Venice, 1494, IX, ll, 36: “Tutte le partite che se mettono al libro hanno a essere doppie, cioè se tu fai uno criditore al si far uno debitore”.
188 Minaud 2005; Rathbone 1991 on the archives of the domain of Appianus and the commentary by Andreau and Maucourant 1999, as well as the dossier on economic reasoning in Topoi 12‑13 (2005) with the papers by A. Tchernia, D. Rathbone, G. Minaud, J.‑M. Carrié, J. Andreau and J. Lautman.
189 This was one of the arguments defended by De Sainte-Croix 1956 and often taken up since. See most recently, on the financial accounts of the Parthenon and Eleusis, this same interpretation in Epstein 2013 (“The Parthenon inscriptions as we have them are hardly a convenient tool for democratic accountability”, p. 132) and Faraguna 2013b (“it was conceived as an anathèma, a dedication to Athena”, pp. 166‑167). The idea of a symbolic dimension of the carving on Delos appears above all over the inventories of offerings: Linders 1988; Vial 1984, p. 222, citing Tréheux 1959, pp. 268‑275, about the carving of inventories of offerings: “In his view, the erection of the stele and the publication of the inventory were primarily of symbolic value and were a manifestation of the piety of the hieropoioi and the city in whose name they acted”. See also Tréheux 1988.
190 F. Durrbach, ad ID 442, p. 129.
191 See for example the list drawn up by Feyel 2006, pp. 487‑489. He takes the view that these indications attest to reductions granted by craftsmen, which seems unlikely, because in contradiction with the objective pursued by the hieropoioi in mentioning the unit price. Conversely it is the selling process that probably explains the thinking of the hieropoioi. Most products were purchased by auction sale and the hieropoioi had to give themselves the means in this way to negotiate between the retail and wholesale prices by indicating the equivalent of the unit price obtained in a sale (Chankowski 2012, pp. 31‑52).
192 Chankowski 2008b, p. 91. See also Chapter 5 below, p. 260.
193 Grenier 1987 on the subject of market price lists and their use in organizing demand.
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