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  • The sacred fortune: the Assets Statement...
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    Plan

    Plan détaillé Texte intégral The growth of the sanctuary’s cash fortune The precious offerings Apollo’s fortune as financial power? Conclusion: The destiny of the Delian treasure under the second Athenian domination Notes de bas de page

    Parasites of the God

    Ce livre est recensé par

    Précédent Suivant
    Table des matières

    Chapter 2

    The sacred fortune: the Assets Statement

    p. 67-101

    Texte intégral The growth of the sanctuary’s cash fortune The Steady Increase in Funds The amounts mobilized in the way of loans The contribution of regular revenues Building work The Question of the Swelling of Cash Holdings at the End of Independence The year 192 BC The year 179 BC The year 177 BC The year 168 BC The Assets Statement The precious offerings The Classical Treasure The Treasure at the End of Independence Variations in the Collection The treasure at the beginning of Independence The treasure in the mid‑third century BC Apollo’s fortune as financial power? The Apportionment of Assets Delian Apollo and the Other Gods Hoarding and Circulation Conclusion: The destiny of the Delian treasure under the second Athenian domination Notes de bas de page

    Texte intégral

    1Mythological accounts highlighted the striking contrast between an island with no natural resources and the wealth it enjoyed (Homeric Hymn to Apollo, v. 51‑61; Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, v. 260‑263). This wealth was quite relative compared with the other “great fortunes” of the classical period and the Hellenistic period, but the mythical accounts thereby consecrated what must have been a reaction shared by many pilgrims and observers of Delian life: the paradox of a tiny island that had become exceptionally wealthy. The Delians lived a life of ease in view of their scant natural resources and that wealth was attributed to the sanctuary of Apollo. In the pejorative register, Crito the comic poet’s description of the Delians as “parasites of the god” expressed the other side of the same reality.1

    The growth of the sanctuary’s cash fortune

    2The Delians continued the expansion of the god’s fortune from the monies left in the coffers by the Athenian administrators. I have already had the opportunity to address this issue in my study of Athens and Delos in the classical period with respect to the problem of the aparche, that led me to look into the continuity of the fund, in search of any reappearance of the capital from the aparche after the Athenians had departed.2 Here I shall take up again the question of the cash holdings of the sacred treasury from another perspective, that of the Delians’ stewardship of the sanctuary’s assets and, leading on from that, the treasury’s capacity for financing.3

    3To gain the fullest possible picture of the sanctuary’s assets, it is best not to take into consideration the cash holdings at the beginning of the financial period, which might vary randomly with the size of the loans granted to the city‑state at any particular time,4 but to reconstruct the account balances. These enable us to see the aggregate volume of movements of monies in the sacred fund and, as the case may be, to restore one of the missing terms to achieve a more precise view of the make‑up of the account. As shall be seen, substantial sums taken out as loans complicate the overall evaluation of Apollo’s fortune from year to year. By adding the cash holdings carried down and the entries for the year, or by deducing this figure from the second part of the balance concerning outgoings, we can obtain a more accurate picture from the change in the fund than by comparing the cash holdings alone: the account balance, whether expressed as such by the hieropoioi or reconstructed by us from existing figures, can be used to compare the money supplies handled by the administrators more accurately. This is the case, in any event, for the records of the third century BC, before the principles of stock-taking of the sacred fund and the public fund by the hieropoioi complicated the process as of the early second century.

    4The transcription of the account balance was unevenly observed as a practice by the hieropoioi, as we had the opportunity to study in the previous chapter on accounting practices. Balances are reconstructed systematically here in keeping with a single principle based on the indications available in the accounts: the balances must total, on one side all of the entries (cash holdings + the year’s receipts) and on the other side all of the outgoings (spending for the year + balance passed on to the next year’s board).

    5The study that follows is based on the epigraphic records shown in the appendix, which set out the accounts as they were drawn up by the hieropoioi, and on the summary tables that show the change in funds handled by the hieropoioi by reconstructing the movements of monies and to which we shall refer (Appendix 1 and tables 7‑10 in this chapter). To obtain a result as close as possible to what the Delian assets must have been, and because of the many gaps in the documentation, it is necessary to work both on the numbers given by the fragmentary accounts (transcribed in the appendix in the epigraphic records) and on reconstructions (presented in the tables) based on recurring data from which extrapolations can be made when numbers are missing.

    The Steady Increase in Funds

    6Apollo’s fortune grew steadily in the course of Independence from the 9.9 talents found in the coffers in 313 BC (fig. 5 and table 7). It reached 12.5 talents in the year 250 BC, then 14.8 talents in 218 and 15.5 talents in 179.5 This increase came from the profits on revenues, that the building activity did not entirely consume.

    Fig. 5 — Changes in the account balance.

    Image

    7It is easy to observe the continuity in the funds between 313 and 217. On three occasions when there are consecutive accounts, between the years 279 and 278, 269 and 268, and 218 and 217, the amount passed on – corresponding to the real balance of the financial period after deduction of spending – appeared in the cash holdings for the next financial period: the profits made were duly and directly passed on in full to the hieropoioi in charge of the sacred fund. Some monies transited through banks, but the banks merely performed accounting operations.6 However, the cash holdings might be received in several instalments because the hieropoioi still received monies once the financial period had been closed. The collection procedures of the previous board might be protracted and extend over one or more years.7

    8Table 7 takes up the data laid out and explained in the epigraphic records (Appendix 1). Several numbers have been inferred from analysis of each of the accounts: readers should therefore refer to the explanations in the appendix. The amounts are in drachmas. To facilitate estimations, subdivisions of the drachma have been omitted from the totals but the data presented in the appendix include them. When the amount of the balance is explicitly maintained in the account, it is shown in bold print. The equivalent values in talents are given in brackets in the balance column to make it easier to grasp the amounts and to make comparisons, but the talent was no longer mentioned as a monetary unit of account in the accounts of the hieropoioi as from the third century BC.

    Table 7 — Estimated changes in assets in the sacred fund.

    DateReference (IG XI 2)Cash holdingsRevenuesSpendingProfitBalance
    313135[42 358]17 513
    (interest, farm rents, tax on purple, kopros)
    1 67858 18359 861
    (9.9 T)
    Shortly
    before 301
    14455 07421 685 (+)
    (including farm rents and other revenues)
    [76 759 +]
    (12.7 T)
    29814846 900[30 100]21 270
    (including loans: 17 000)
    55 730[77 000]
    (12.8 T)
    28715557 72412 36145 36057 722
    (9.6 T)
    28215870 291[12 148]82 204
    (including loans: 24 975)
    [82 439]
    (13.7 T)
    281159?
    (including loan repayment: 18 879)
    81 287,5
    (including loans)
    5 220[86 507, 5]
    (14.4 T)
    27916119 348[34 814]
    including loan repayment:
    18 278
    12 72041 442
    (including reserve: 24 630)
    54 162
    (9 T)
    [+ ex-fund: loans]
    27816241 442
    (including reserve:
    24 630)
    37 275[78 717]
    (13.1 T)
    27616383 835
    (including reserve:
    35 000)
    26920313 34644 000 (+)
    (including credits)
    [30 152][27 194][57 346]
    (9.5 T)
    26820427 194
    259224831 310
    25028748 984[26 023]
    (including repayments:
    10 545)
    22 736
    (including loans:
    6 750)
    [52 170.8]74 907.59
    (12.5 T)
    DateReference (ID)Cash holdingsRevenuesSpendingProfitBalance
    24629017 631
    +[44 590]
    16 401 +16 40460 993[77 397]
    (12.8 T)
    23131672 397[13 783]6 630 (i.e. building work 3 160 +
    subsidy for flute players 3 470)
    79 55086 18010
    (14.3 T)
    23031772 600 +
    (12.1 T)
    21835474 679[12 505]
    (including loan repayment: 7 331)
    65 445
    (including loans to city-state 61 634.5)
    23 739[89 184]
    (14.8 T)
    21735523 739
    209362 + 36410 313 +11[2 350 +]?
    Including sitonia: 13 014
    27 488[40 502 +]
    (6.7 T +)
    208365[27 488][19 512][36 680]10 32047 000
    (7.8 T)
    20636827 500 +
    200372Including loipon 4 89544 989.3
    (7.4 T)
    vers
    200
    37648 992
    (8.1 T)
    19239939 005 after withdrawals54 277 (including loan repayments by city‑state: 28 975 at least)[93 282 +]12
    (15.5 T +)
    17944260 92932 186.6 (including loan repayments: 2 350 and χαλκοῦ: 3 733)18 681.6 (including loans: 3 200)74 434.6[93 116.2]
    (15.5 T)
    1774446 19063 962
    173455
    + Γ 766γ
    70 000 +

    The amounts mobilized in the way of loans

    9Part of the monies belonging to the god were regularly mobilized in the form of loans, both to the city‑state of Delos and to private individuals, whether Delians or residents on Delos. Most of the loans to the city-state were paid back within the year and so were simply cash advances.13 Accordingly several jars that entered in the course of 179 and that were listed in the inventory of account ID 442 A recorded deposits made by the treasurers for the year, sometimes also by those of the previous year, pursuant to the diataxis voted for by the assembly assigning public revenues to loan repayments. Such loans to the city‑state therefore appear regularly in the book-keeping of the hieropoioi.

    10Other loans granted to private individuals prove more difficult to evaluate because they were made unlimitedly and could run over several generations.14 The figures for the cash holdings are therefore on the low side in the records of the god’s assets since some of the monies loaned out do not feature in the annual account.

    11One would need to calculate the amount of capital circulating outside of the sacred chest from the amounts of interest recorded and of unpaid arrears listed by the hieropoioi. R. Bogaert calculates from the interest payments (638 drachmas) and arrears (326 drachmas) that at least 9,647 drachmas were on loan to private individuals.15 This was compounded by a loan of 5 talents to the city of Hermione, interest on which was still being paid in 278 BC. In 282 BC the sanctuary had granted a loan of 24,975 drachmas to the city‑state, which had reimbursed 18,879 drachmas of it in 281 (IG XI 2, 158, B, l. 32‑45). So at least 50,743 drachmas (i.e. 7.6 talents) were out of the fund and did not appear in the balance of the account in 279.16 In 218 BC, 1,548 drachmas were paid in interest on loans to private individuals, indicating that at least 2.5 talents were lent out, while further amounts in interest were set down in 219 under the heading of unpaid loans.17

    12It is difficult, however, to compute these amounts regularly over the period, given the gaps in the records. We do not always have a trace of the time when the loans were repaid and it is also impossible to evaluate with any accuracy from the interest payments what amounts were loaned to private individuals since the repayments were not made regularly.18

    13These amounts loaned out were sufficient in any event to account for the sizeable variations in the cash holdings as and when repayments were made and new loans taken out. As just seen, whereas the balance for the year 279 stood at 9 talents judging from the account, the total assets must therefore be increased by at least the 9,647 drachmas borrowed by private individuals and the 6,096 drachmas in outstanding loans to the city‑state of Delos. So the sacred fund would therefore have totalled at least 11.6 talents. With the loan to the city-state of Hermione, still extant, it reached 17.4 talents. Moreover, in 281, while the Delian city-state had repaid part of the debt taken out in 282, other loans must have been made to it because the accounts record a total expenditure including loans (IG XI 2, 159, A, l. 68‑69: σύµπαγ κεφάλαιον ἀναλώµατος σὺν ὧι ἡ πόλις ὀφείλ[ει]) that came to 81,287 drachmas, 3 obols, ¾ obol, 1 chalkos. This expression was only used when the loan was made in the course of the year and had to feature in the total outgoings.19

    14A full account, like that of the year 279 (IG XI 2, 161) can be used to establish orders of magnitude more easily. Taking as a basis the figure of spending for construction work and running costs for the year 279, that came to less than 13,000 drachmas, it can be surmised that withdrawals for loans could again have been very sizeable, with the result that the remainder passed on was just 5,220 drachmas in 281 (l. 69‑70).20 Other borrowing from the sacred fund went on subsequently and produced similar effects. For example, in 218, the city‑state of Delos borrowed 10.2 talents from the sacred fund which it gradually paid back over the following years (for example, we know that at least 6.7 talents were repaid in 192). Accordingly, in 192 and 179, the balance still stood at more than 15 talents. These major loans alone explain the period of a fall in assets between 218 and 192 that can be clearly seen from the graph below. The return of these amounts to the sacred fund, around 192, explains the recovery in the level of assets.21 It can be seen, then, that these were cash advances for the city‑state of Delos that did not fundamentally affect the state of the god’s fortune over the long term.

    The contribution of regular revenues

    15The sanctuary’s regular revenues yielded enough income to cover current expenditure. The second-century accounts show that, once current spending was deducted, there was still at the time an annual profit of around 4,000 drachmas that swelled the cash holdings year upon year. Over 30 years, between 200 and 169, the total gain might have been of 20 talents, enabling the sanctuary to achieve a satisfactorily balanced budget, despite the long-term loans and substantial investment in building work (table 8). The surpluses from certain productive capital sources were also paid into the sacred fund augmenting the initial capital.22

    Table 8 — Account remainders.

    The amounts below indicate the sums kept under the wording perion of the stele in the jar inventories. The remainder for the year was handed down in several instalments so the figures here should be considered as minimum amounts, unless the account indicates a total. Accordingly for 179 BC, account ID 442 can be used to calculate the perion that comes to 8,692 dr. while a jar containing just 571 dr. is recorded in a subsequent inventory (461 Aa 10‑11). When it is explicitly inscribed on the stele as the perion, the figure is shown in bold below.

    250 (287)
    218 (354)23
    200 (372, A, l. 190‑193)
    194 (399, A, l. 28‑29)
    181 (442, A, l. 31‑32; 49‑50 ; 461, Aa, l. 39)
    182 (442, A, l. 34‑37)
    180 (442, A, l. 41; 461, Aa, l. 18)
    179 (442, A; 461, Aa, l. 10‑11)
    177 (444, A, l. 54)
    176 or 175 (455, Ab, l. 14)
    174 (455, Aa, l. 15; Ab, l. 15)
    173 (461, Aa, l. 45-46; 68)
    172 (461, Aa, l. 47; 56; 75)
    169 (461, Ab, l. 55)
    Mean of all amounts conserved:
    Mean of all amounts:

    [3 187]
    [3 465.5]
    3 895 dr.
    726 dr.
    1 741 dr. (70 + 1 600 + 71)
    5 561 dr. (449 + 763 + 4 349)
    1 807 dr. (240 + 1 567)
    [8 692 dr.]
    6 190 dr.
    6 200 dr.
    4 850 dr. (1 800 + 3 050)
    2 888 dr. (2 168 + 720)
    4 482 dr. (300 + 582 + 3 600)
    5 376 dr.
    3 974.18 dr.
    4 218.60 dr.

    Building work

    16The sheer scale of building work meant it was a budget item that might eat into the god’s reserves. It is often impossible to calculate the total cost of a monument despite the wealth of the Delian records.24 The construction of the theatre was financed from the sacred fund by decision of the Delian assembly. The hieropoioi therefore recorded adjudications for construction work that stretched over nearly 70 years between the late fourth and mid‑third centuries BC, reaching a total amount as conserved of 13,300 drachmas or 2.2 talents. This figure is certainly below the actual amounts because of the gaps in the records.25 J.‑C. Moretti and P. Fraisse rightly note that it seems impossible to estimate the true cost of the theatre.26 A. Burford, for her part, evaluates the costs of the theatre at Epidaurus at 10 talents.27

    17C. Feyel traces the changes in the amounts spent by the sanctuary on building works between 304 and 246.28 It seems that from the 280s, the hieropoioi regularly made over amounts of 2 or 3 talents per year for building work. Until the mid‑third century they spent between 11 and 12 talents at least on construction and maintenance work. This figure being based on the amounts conserved in the records, it probably needs to be revised upwards. Between the years 230 and the end of Independence, the hieropoioi may have spent as much as 2 talents per year, but often less (table 9).

    Table 9 — Spending on building work.

    (in the accounts where this section is comparatively well completed)       

    304 (IG XI 2, 144)
    302 (IG XI 2,145)
    296 (IG XI 2, 154)
    282 (IG XI 2,158)
    279 (IG XI 2, 161)
    276 (IG XI 2,163)
    274 (IG XI 2,199)
    269 (IG XI 2, 203)
    250 (IG XI 2, 287)
    246 (IG XI 2, 290)
    231 (ID 316)
    218 (ID 354)
    208 (ID 365)
    207 (ID 366)
    200 (ID 372)
    ca. 200 (ID 402)
    179 (ID 442)
    169 (ID 461)
    TOTAL
    or 21.33 talents for 18 years
    i.e. on average 1.18 talents per year            

    5 586 dr.
    2 337 dr.
    517 dr.
    2 164 dr.
    11 730 dr.
    4 978 dr.
    17 070 dr.
    9 505 dr.
    13 289 dr.
    12 690 dr.
    3 160 dr.
    341 dr.
    8 830 dr.
    12 095 dr.
    824 dr.
    495 dr.
    9 703 dr.
    12 688 dr.
    128 002 dr.

    18If we accept an average outlay of 1.18 talents per year, corresponding to the mean of the sums in the records of spending on building work throughout the period of Independence, the sanctuary could have spent a total of 130 talents (i.e. 780,000 drachmas) on maintenance and building work between the 280s and 170s. But building activity was not constant throughout the period. The major construction work of the Asklepieion, the Kynthion, the Temple of Apollo and the theatre belonged to the first half of the third century. The accounts for the second half of the third century are far more mutilated but do not seem to include building work of the same scale. It was at the end of the third century, as from the year 208, that large‑scale work resumed with the building of the Hypostyle Hall and also the Artemision where construction work for temple D is attested for 179, probably at the stage of completion.29 In seeking to make an evaluation of the spending by the sanctuary, we can therefore with more likelihood count some 80 years of major building works over the entire period. Staying with an average outlay of 1.18 talents per year, the sanctuary seems to have spent some 94.4 talents (or 566,400 drachmas) on construction work over the course of 80 years.

    19Now, even if the hieropoioi regularly drew on the sanctuary’s reserves to finance this work, the spending could have been gradually offset by the profits from receipts. I have calculated that between 200 and 169, for when these profits are attested, they could have brought a score or so of talents into the sanctuary. If we extrapolate this computation to the full 145 years of the period, we get a total profit of 96.6 talents (or 580,000 drachmas), which covers the investment in building work.

    20These figures are derived from calculations based on averages and probabilities. The sole purpose behind them is, of course, to provide an order of magnitude and they should not be viewed as the actual budget. However, they are not absurd given the architectural activity that went on over the course of Independence and with allowance for the possibilities of growth in the sacred fortune from the proceeds of profits.

    21I shall not, however, subscribe to C. Feyel’s conclusion that the sanctuary’s construction activity was limited by the city‑state’s borrowing from the sacred fund which supposedly prevented the sanctuary from investing more in building activity.30 The true picture that arises from the study of the accounts is different: the sanctuary exploited the production capacity of craftsmen on and around Delos to the full;31 so much so that it was, instead, because so much money was required annually for building work, that the city‑state’s possibilities of borrowing from the sacred fund might have been curbed.

    22Above all, the logic of the funds introduced by the Athenians seems to have prevailed as the method of financial administration among the Delians of the period of Independence, to the extent that the sanctuary’s annual revenues served as monies for building work.32 That also explains how, in the second century, large enough revenues enabled the sacred fund to cover work on public buildings, certainly simply because cash was available.33

    23All told, the sanctuary’s reserves cannot have been seriously eroded by the construction work, which could have been financed from the turnover of profits. Understandably, then, the account balances throughout the period under consideration displayed the relative stability of the god’s assets at around 13 or 14 talents.

    The Question of the Swelling of Cash Holdings at the End of Independence

    24The evolution of the funds between the classical period and the end of the third century BC can be readily understood by the sanctuary’s increased profits and the changes in the city‑state’s financial needs (table 10).

    25The situation was more complex in the second century BC because the accounts of the hieropoioi, as from 192, recorded both the monies in the sacred fund and the monies in the public fund.34 Seemingly going hand in hand with this new practice, the cash holdings for the final years of Independence appear considerably higher in the sacred fund than they were in the third century. R. Etienne suggests seeing the swelling of the cash holdings of the end of Independence as the reappearance of a part of the treasure of the classical period that had supposedly been kept in the banks since the departure of the Athenians and might even have been lent out, through the banks, to foreign city-states other than just Peparethos and Hermione that appear in the records: “in point of fact much of the god’s fortune escapes us and we know only incidentally the true volume of capital managed by the Delians. In this way, J. Tréheux was able to show that in 173 B.C. the balance of entries and outgoings swelled suddenly to reach 348,304 drachmas 5 obols, whereas in 192 the cash holding stood at 120,961 drachmas 5 obols and in 179 at 107,020 drachmas. It is close on 46 talents that the annually inscribed records fail to account for […] Whatever the application of that capital, it is clear that most of the monies at the sanctuary’s disposal were not the subject of an account carved in stone: what was carved in stone was an excerpt from the records and the nature of that excerpt might vary over time.”35

    26Yet, this hypothesis rested on a computation error by J. Tréheux, who himself had taken up the figures given by A. Giovannini from an overhasty reading of the accounts. In actual fact, the accounts of the hieropoioi do show the full scale of the sacred fortune; the god’s assets increase perfectly steadily and there is no ground to assume any sudden influx of additional amounts.36

    27Therefore we have to review, one after the other, the relatively complete accounts of this period to analyse the assets kept in the sanctuary. As from the point the hieropoioi had both the accounts of the sacred fund and of the public fund engraved, their account balances combined the totals of each of the two funds. This process complied fully with their accounting logic since they had to handle monies from both treasuries. The phenomenon is particularly apparent in the account for the year 179 BC, the only one that is complete for this period. The account balance is incompletely conserved but the end of the amount can be read from the stone and the subdivisions of the drachma indicated by the hieropoioi enable us to understand which amounts were added together. Those subdivisions can only be reached by adding the figure for the balance of the sacred fund and the figure for the balance of the public fund.37

    The year 192 BC

    28In 192 (ID 399, A) the assets of the sacred fund came to 82,395 drachmas with the remainder and the entries. This amount does not correspond to the total entries in the balance because we do not know how much capital made up the initial cash holdings. If allowance is also made, as in the analytical table of the account (Appendix 1), for the approximate total of periodical receipts, which are incompletely conserved on the stele, we come to a total input (cash holdings + entries for the year) of more than 93,280 drachmas.

    29The total assets of the public fund, with the demosion and sitonikon, stood at 36,880 drachmas at the end of the year 192. The balance of the account of the public fund can be calculated from the entries (cash holdings + entries for the year + total of sitonikon): it came to 113,275 drachmas.

    30The monies for grain purchases, the sitonikon (l. 69), that first appeared in 209, were added to the public monies, which for then were separated from the public fund referred to as the demosion by the hieropoioi but were to be included in it in 179.38

    31At the end of 192, the hieropoioi therefore handed down to their successors the 82,395 drachmas of the sacred fund and the 36,880 drachmas of the public fund, for a total of 119,275 drachmas. But this was not the total balance. Other information has been lost because the account has not been preserved in full and the part we have gives an interim remainder for the sacred fund, as was the wont of the hieropoioi, indicating the withdrawals of money they made immediately from the amounts paid in, in line with the spending decided on by the laws or decrees. The continuation of the account further had to state the monthly spending, made in part with the gains from the current year. So first the annual profits of the current account, referred to by the term perion by the hieropoioi, should be added to the total, that is, 4,000 drachmas on average.39 Finally, one should include the amount of the sacred fund when the hieropoioi came into office, which has vanished, and not, as we have had to do by default, the remainder. This could be a significant amount. It is known that, in 179, the hieropoioi received as the opening cash holdings in the hand-over a total of 60,930 drachmas (A, l. 37).

    32The account balance of the sacred fund for the year 192, including as entries the cash holdings and the monies received in the year, and as outgoings the amounts spent and the monies passed on, could therefore exceed 100,000 drachmas, meaning that the overall balance of the two funds exceeded 200,000 drachmas.

    The year 179 BC

    33In 179 (ID 442), the total balance for the two funds therefore stood at:

    • sacred fund: 79,286 drachmas, 2 obols, 1 chalkos.
    • public fund: 98,437 drachmas, 3 obols, 1/2 obol, 1 chalkos.
    • making a total of: 177,723 drachmas, 5 obols, ½ obol, 2 chalkoi.

    34Now, the figure for this balance is partially conserved on l. 255 of the account. It ended in ImageΧΗΗΗΗ∆ImageImageImage//, or 6,415 drachmas, 5 obols, ½ obol, 2 chalkoi. This incomplete figure provides several pointers. First of all, it seems clear that the hieropoioi added in this balance the amount of 3,733 drachmas and 2 obols in bronze handed over by the treasurers to the sacred fund, as evidenced by the small denominations that tally perfectly, in the figure in l. 255, with the total that is obtained by adding the balance of the public fund to that of the sacred fund including the amount in bronze.

    35For it to end in … 6,415 drachmas, 5 obols, ½ obol, 2 chalkoi, the balance must have exceeded 177,723 drachmas, 5 obols, ½ obol and 2 chalkoi, which was the total of the two funds: at its lowest, we can restore as the amount of the overall balance, on l. 255, the figure of 186,415 drachmas, 5 obols, ½ obol and 2 chalkoi. The difference of 8,692 drachmas must therefore correspond to the perion of the account. This figure of 8,692 drachmas is within the order of magnitude of the amount obtained by calculating, on the basis of the data conserved in the account, the difference between receipts and expenditure (8,542 drachmas). Given that some figures have vanished in the gaps on the edge of the stele (C), a discrepancy of 150 drachmas seems plausible.

    36The hieropoioi, at least at the end of Independence, added the amount of the perion to the overall balance, without taking up the detail of the current account. This was all the easier to do because the sanctuary’s periodical revenues served as working capital for making a number of current expenditure payments. But above all there was an accounting purpose for this method: it meant they did not count entries and outgoings twice over, which, at least for the section on loans, could appear both in the current account and in the inventory of movements of monies in the sacred fund.40

    37The total of monies handled in the sacred fund was even greater, since by adding revenues and spending, and not just the profit from the annual income, we come to a balance of 93,116 drachmas for the sacred fund, making a total balance for the two funds that can stand at 191,553 drachmas.

    38The remaining variation with the balance of the year 192 can be explained by the movements of monies. Loan repayments and investments in the sitonia fund also wrought changes in cash holdings. The public fund included a fund that could expand and contract: the sitonikon. It was topped up at regular intervals. As U. Fantasia has shown, the sitonia account in 179 points to the existence of a fund of 18,560 drachmas which, three times, left the public fund for grain purchases by the sitonai and then came back in when it was made up again from the proceeds from the sale of grain.41 However, in accounting, the total of the entries and outgoings of these funds necessarily leads to a debit and credit of 55,680 drachmas. Ultimately, it is the amount of 18,560 drachmas that has to figure in the remainder. The point that the same monies may be recorded in succession as a debit and then a credit also has serious repercussions for our understanding of the accounting methods of the hieropoioi, since it is indeed proof that they were moving towards the principle of double-entry book-keeping.42

    The year 177 BC

    39Beginning with a balance of some 200,000 drachmas in 192, the accounts for the year 168 (ID 465, Ac l. 21‑22) record a balance of 350,000 drachmas. It is more difficult to track the development of the god’s fortune and the public fund over the final years of Independence because after 179 BC we have conserved only fragments of the inventories of the temple jars.

    40The accumulation of profits was necessarily reflected in the final balance. On the basis of the figures that have been conserved, I have evaluated that the annual profit of the sacred fund was at least 4,000 drachmas on average (the figures conserved for the end of Independence being generally higher). This yields for the god’s treasury, for the 25 years between 192 and 167, an influx of at least 100,000 drachmas. The account balance of the sacred fund and the public fund, at the end of Independence, might therefore have approached 300,000 drachmas. But it is more difficult to determine any profits of the public fund for want of detailed sources.

    41This overall estimation is confirmed by a passage of inscription ID 444, which includes the balance of the year 177. This balance, as edited by F. Durrbach, is intriguing. The editor sets it out in this form (ID 444, A l. 56):

    [κεφαλὴ πάσης εἰσόδου ΜΜΜΜΜ]ΜΧΧΧImageΗΗΗΗ∆∆∆ImageImageImageΙ. κεφαλὴ πάσης ἐξόδου ΜΜΜΜΜΜΧΧΧImageΗΗΗΗ∆∆∆ImageImageImageΙ.

    42One fails to understand why the hieropoioi would have written the sign M six times for 60,000 whereas elsewhere they use the single sign, Image, for 50,000. In point of fact, the stone clearly shows that the first two Ms are capped by a ∆. This combination is also to be found on fragment Γ766γ published by J. Tréheux, to express the sum of 100,000.43 Elsewhere (ID 465, Ac l. 21‑22), the sum is written out in full: µυριάδες. Therefore the balance of the year 177 (ID 444, A l. 56) must be corrected and written as:

                                           ∆ ∆
    [κεφαλὴ πάσης εἰσόδου ΜΜΜΜΜ]ΜΧΧΧImageΗΗΗΗ∆∆∆ImageImageImageΙ. κεφαλὴ πάσης
                ∆ ∆
    ἐξόδου ΜΜΜΜΜΜΧΧΧImageΗΗΗΗ∆∆∆ImageImageImageΙ.

    43The balance of the year 177 therefore stood at 243,933 drachmas, 1 obol and not 63,933.1 drachmas as the editing of the corpus gave us to understand. This is proof that the fund increased regularly as from the year 192.

    The year 168 BC

    44The increase in the accounting balance between 177 and 173 is more surprising because the amounts rose by more than 104,000 drachmas within the space of four years. At the same time, as seen, the accounting balance of the sacred fund and public fund, at the end of Independence, could easily have verged on 300,000 drachmas through accumulated profits.

    45In Athènes et Délos classique, I explained the transition to a balance of 350,000 drachmas by the influx to the sacred fund before 169 of more than 50,000 drachmas from striking money. I interpreted that contribution at the time as an aparche paid into the sacred fund.44

    46Indeed, among the jars in the sacred chest received on coming into office, the hieropoioi of 169 mentioned one jar containing a sum from the bank of Philon, deposited by the commissioners “elected to take care of the striking of coinage”.45

    47ID 461, Aa l. 75‑76:

    ἄλλον, ἐν ὧι ἐνεῖσαν {Χ̣Χ̣?} ImageImageΗΗΗΗImage∆∆ImageImageImageImage, ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος —
    [— — — — — — δηµό?]σι̣ο̣ν [ἄν]δρες ο[ἱ] αἱρεθέντες ἐπὶ τὴν κοπὴν τοῦ νοµίσµατος.

    48The sum was read by F. Durrbach {Χ̣Χ̣?} ImageImageΗΗΗΗImage∆∆ImageImageImageImage and the editor suggested deleting the first two letters which, so read, were indeed incompatible with the other figures. But the stone, chipped at this location, shows no trace of any rasura as is the case when mistakes were made in carving figures. In actual fact, one can plainly see on the stone not two Χ signs but the remains of a Π preceding the sign Image, a probable trace of the combination Image for 50,000. Logically, the sum should therefore be read ImageImageImageΗΗΗΗImage∆∆ImageImageImageImage, that is, 55,978 drachmas or 9.3 talents of silver.46

    49However, this amount entails a technical problem because, generally, the jars do not seem to have had the capacity to hold more than one talent of coined silver. The weight of such a jar, relative to those already holding one talent of silver and already weighing 26 kg, would have been a further difficulty.

    50But the city-state of Delos did indeed strike coinage in the years before 169 and deposited that money in the sacred fund. That monetary issue was that of what are called “palm tree” coins, the last of them. Drachmas and hemidrachmas display on the one side Apollo’s head and on the reverse side a palm tree topped by a swan, which the Athenian administrators, after 166, named phoinikophores.47

    51The event occurred between 179 and 169 since the jar in question was already in the Artemision on the arrival of the hieropoioi in 169 and the comprehensive inventory of 179 fails to mention it. The jar is the last‑but‑one on the list of jars making up the cash holdings, just before the list of jars entering during the financial period of 169 (l. 79‑84). It is mentioned just after the one holding the perion of the year 172, but the chronological order was not always strictly observed by the hieropoioi in their records insofar as some deposits, in particular for the perion, came in later than others. In any event, we have an indication for situating this payment rather around 169 than 179 and probably somewhere around 172. Now, as early as 173, the balance, as known from fragment Γ766γ, verged on 350,000 drachmas. But the fragmentary account ID 455 states that the cash holdings received in the sacred fund did not exceed 70,000 drachmas (Ab, l. 19). So the jar of freshly minted Delian coinage would seem to have been added to the cash holdings between the years 173 and 170.

    52The whole question is whether these 55,978 drachmas replaced old drachmas in the sacred fund or whether they were a contribution from an outside source. Contrary to what I thought in Athènes et Délos classique, it seems to me more plausible that the Delians sought to replace the lyre (citharephore) drachmas by palm-tree (phoinikophore) ones. The study of the monetary practices shows that they probably, at the time of their first issue of money in 279, took the opportunity of repayments to the god to introduce the new local coinage into the sacred chest.48 This may well be what happened, too, when the palm-tree coins were struck: the cash holding of only 70,000 drachmas in 173 (ID 455, Ab, l. 19), shows that the treasury was emptied of some of its assets. The contribution of 55,978 drachmas could, as in 279, correspond to the restoration of withdrawals. There would not in that case have been any additional contributions in the form of aparche.

    53Now, these 55,978 drachmas correspond exactly to an issue of 80,000 Delian drachmas in the new weight of palm-tree coins.49 The proportion of Delian coinage in the sacred fund would therefore have been substantial, far more so in any event than is to be supposed from the 11,189 palm-tree drachmas inventoried by the Athenians in 153/2 (ID 1432, Bv, I and Ba, II).

    54These 9.3 talents of silver were not the totality of the god’s assets. To them one must add the former cash holdings, made up of ten jars for a total of 8 talents, which the hieropoioi left untouched in the second century.50

    55These ten jars were still inventoried in the final accounts of Independence in an identical manner (as in ID 461, Aa, l. 1‑9). In the jar inventory of the year 169 were also a minimum of 34,800 drachmas (5.8 talents) that made up the remainder of the cash holdings, in addition to the new issue of coinage. The total of the god’s treasure was then in 169 at least 23.6 talents (141,600 drachmas) before the withdrawals made in the year, which are not conserved on the stele.

    56So it is on the basis of these 141,600 drachmas or so of cash holdings in the sacred fund that we must attempt to reconstruct the approximate size of the balance, with no possibility of achieving more than an order of magnitude. There also entered into the sacred chest the deposits of the year, that might include not just loan repayments and deposits of earlier years but also payments of various remainders from the public fund, that might have totalled 5,000 drachmas.51 In 179, not counting the sums repaid by the city for its claims, the sacred fund received a minimum of 11,200 drachmas.52 In addition to this sum was the perion of the stele. Besides some 160,000 drachmas at least that may have been made up by movements of monies of the sacred fund, the presence of nearly 190,000 drachmas has to be justified that must have represented the monies of the public fund, to reach a balance of 350,000 drachmas.

    57The public fund, in 192, presented a balance of a little less than 120,000 drachmas. Could the city-state’s fund have built up a substantial profit in the space of twenty years? The account of the year 178 (ID 443, l. 38) shows that at least 60,000 drachmas were deposited in the public fund in the course of the year. The movements of monies of the public fund are therefore one of the factors that explains the swelling of the cash holdings. They were largely due to the circulation of the money of the sitonia, 18,560 drachmas of which came in and went out of the public fund three times a year.

    58While the balance of about 250,000 drachmas in 177 can be explained by the steady increase in funds, we have far less scope, on the basis of the figures conserved in the accounts, for explaining precisely the figure of 350,000 drachmas that appeared as of 173 because we have virtually no further information, at that date, on the account of the public fund. Only the cash holdings of the sacred fund have been conserved in the account of 169, which is cut off before the entries for the year.

    Table 10 — The account balances of the end of Independence (sacred fund and public fund).

    Date

    Reference

    Sacred Fund

    Public Fund

    Total

    192

    ID 399, A,
    l. 16, 35, 54, 58, 68‑73

    82 395 dr.
    [93 282 dr. +]    

    113 275 dr.

    195 670 dr. +
    [206 557 dr. +]    

    179

    ID 442, A, l. 54‑55, 74‑75, 99,
    121‑122, 139‑140, 255              

    87 978 dr.53
    [93 116 dr.]

    98 437 dr.

    186 415 dr.
    [191 553 dr.]

    177

    ID 444, A, l. 56 corrected

    243 933.1 dr.

    173

    Γ766γ54

    348 304.8 dr.

    168

    ID 465, Ac, l. 21-22

    350 000 dr.

    59This analysis leads in any event to a twofold conclusion.55 For one thing, it is pointless introducing other explanations than the steady increase in monies to understand the size of the account balance of the end of Independence. For another, the accounts of the hieropoioi do indeed record the total of the sacred fund and detail all the movements of monies.

    The Assets Statement

    60In the foregoing analyses, we have studied movements of monies from the account balances, the only item that provides a full view of the changes in the god’s assets. This can be taken as a basis for evaluating the size of the sacred fortune. Through an equilibrium between its receipts and its spending – the latter being essentially for building work that was a permanent sink for the treasury – the sacred fund maintained the level of its assets at between 13 and 15 talents throughout the period. This amount enabled it in particular to ensure the loans necessary for the city‑state. At the end of Independence, the coined assets came to at least 23.6 talents, as can be established from the account of the year 169 (ID 461). This increase can probably be explained by two reasons: the slow-down in building activity after the major works undertaken in the late third century for the construction of the Hypostyle Hall and shortly before 179 for the Artemision, and the positive effects of the apportionment of assets between the public fund and the sacred fund that enabled the city-state to develop, in the public fund, with the sitonia, an efficient and self-standing system of financing public grain purchases that probably turned a profit.

    61The public fund had seen a surge in profits. Its remainder seems to have been stable from 192 to 179 at between 37,000 and 40,000 drachmas, or slightly over 6 talents, that must have formed the capital reserves that were the city’s own. While the balance of the public account may have stood at 190,000 drachmas at the end of Independence,56 one must reduce the 54,000 drachmas representing the movements of monies of the sitonia to the 18,000 drachmas or so of capital invested, making total assets of about 150,000 drachmas (25 talents). But this total includes monies belonging to the sacred fund and that the public fund received as loans, making it almost impossible to estimate the city-state’s assets reliably. It is reasonable in any event to settle on an amount of 6 talents, which, being a recurrent remainder, represented the city-state’s monetary reserves.

    62Apollo, through his stewards, was at the head of a well administered fortune albeit a small fortune. One must add to this a fortune in the form of the hoard of precious metal that can largely be evaluated.

    The precious offerings

    63The administrators’ interest in drawing up the inventory of offerings patently stemmed from them wanting to evaluate the sanctuary’s assets. During the period of Independence more specifically it is clear that the hieropoioi were keen to take stock of the treasures whose precious metal objects could be valued by their weight in silver. They omitted other treasures that did not contain precious metal offerings, as shown by comparison with the Athenian audit conducted after Athens took back control of the island in 167. The audit included an inventory of buildings that the hieropoioi did not mention.57

    64Oddly enough the inventory specialists have never undertaken the valuation of the Delian offerings. J. Tréheux examines primarily the movements of the collections and the rationale behind the way the inventories were drawn up. R. Hamilton sets about tracking the mention of each object in particular without forming an overview of the treasure. C. Prêtre’s interest lies in certain categories of objects or the material organization of the collections inside the buildings. And yet these inventories of precious metal offerings include a quantity of essential information about the metal and monetary equivalencies that deserve to be further exploited (tables 11‑21).

    Table 11 — Catalogue of gold and pure silver vases housed in the Artemision in 364/3 BC (ID 104, l. 7‑106).

    Number of vases       Weight in drachmas     
    silver                  1st rhymos (140 phialai)12 000
    2nd rhymos (138 phialai)12 000
    3rd rhymos (135 phialai)12 000
    4th rhymos (136 phialai)11 736
          5th rhymos (various vases, l. 13‑18)      7 950
    1 (crater)9 600
    pros argurion
    silver58
    16953
    1145
    180
    199
    1113
    3240
    12280
    143
    133
    263
    silver1146
    41 075.5
    196
    4234
    148
    11985
    gold155.5
    61 190.4
    7983.6
    2100
    1195
    1697.4
    1685
    silver1836
    gold11 193
    1820.4
    11 232.4
    silver1703
    1660
    6700
    189
    151 122
    gold1111.5
    Miscellaneous158
    Miscellaneous315
    Miscellaneous220.4
    silver1335
    1136
    123
    Total82 481 dr. (13.7 T)

    65The precious metal offerings were all weighed, but a straight monetary equivalence could only be given for the offerings in silver relative to the “full” silver monetary standard (ὁλοσχερές) in force on Delos as in Attica. Gold offerings were weighed for their silver weight, enabling the administrators, if need should be, to calculate their market value from the gold‑to‑silver ratio at a given date, since the rate varied over time.59 They set about their work therefore in a perfectly logical and rational way from the perspective of a monetary valuation of the assets.

    66Some composite objects were inscribed at the time of manufacture with the weight of silver the item contained. So even when it was impossible to weigh them anew because that would have meant dismantling the votive offering, the indication of the value remained. One of the inventories of the time of the Second Athenian Domination, around 150 BC, thus gave a description of a wooden table all plated in silver that was kept in the Temple of Apollo “the weight of which according to the inscription is 4,440 drachmas” (τράπεζα[ν ξυλ]ίνην περιηργυρωµ[ένην ἐντελῆ ἧ]ς ὁλκὴ κατὰ τὴν ἐ[πιγραφ]ὴν ΧΧΧΧImageΗ[ΗΗΗ∆∆∆∆?] – ID 1429, B, I, l. 34‑35). It was therefore also the donor’s intention to display the monetary value of his investment for the godhead.

    The Classical Treasure

    67The treasure of offerings of the classical period can be evaluated from the inventory of the years 364/3 drawn up by authority of the Athenian officials (ID 104). The precious items were divided among the Artemision, the Temple of the Athenians and the Porinos Naos (referred to in the inventory as the “Temple of the Delians”).

    68The inventory began with the catalogue of phialai in the Artemision, stored on shelves or rhymoi counting respectively 140, 138, 135 and 136 phialai, making a total of 549 vases (l. 19) and a fifth rhymos weighing 7,950 drachmas. The aim was indeed to see the collection grow because the administrators reported (l. 10‑11) that the fourth rhymos was incomplete: it was 264 drachmas short of 2 talents.60 The 9.2 talents (55,686 drachmas) corresponding to the five rhymoi were to be added to a number of vases made of gold and silver, for a total weight of 13.7 talents of silver (table 11). The inventory also lists composite objects of silver or gold plated bronze (for a total weight in silver of 3,644 drachmas).

    69The temple further housed a collection of jewels and various coins (l. 59‑106). Among the important treasures one should also count the famous offering from the Geranos in silver for a weight of 4,808 drachmas (l. 76‑77; l. 84) and a set of silver fixed to the columns and lintel for a weight of 11,240 drachmas (l. 84‑86). Other small objects, again made of silver, came to a total weight of 153 drachmas (L. 94‑97).

    Table 12 — Apportionment of precious metal treasures in the Delian temples in the fourth century BC.

    Gold

    Silver

    Temple of the Delians (Porinos)       

    339 dr.

    Artemision

    7 957.6 dr.

    90 725 dr.

    Temple of the Athenians

    ± 2 000 dr.

    Total

    ± 10 297 dr. (1.7 T)          

    90 725 dr. (15.1 T)        

    70The total weight of precious offerings in the Artemision therefore came to 17 talents (102,326 drachmas).

    71The Temple of the Athenians housed the series of gold crowns offered to Apollo at the penterteric Delia, for a silver-equivalent weight of about 2,000 drachmas, not all the figures having been conserved (l. 107‑123). Other gold crowns, in addition to a series of bronze objects, were kept in the Porinos Naos for a total weight of 339 drachmas.

    72All told, the hoarded fortune in precious offerings of gold and silver came, in classical times, to 16.8 talents of weight in silver, including 15.1 talents of pure silver (90,725 drachmas) and 1.7 talents (10,297 drachmas) of gold as measured in weight of silver (table 12).

    The Treasure at the End of Independence

    73The mass of hoarded offerings increased substantially over the course of two centuries.

    74The inventory for the year 179 is complete and can be used to establish the following apportionment (tables 13‑16). A first lot of offerings, mainly made of gold, in the Temple of Apollo weighed by the hieropoioi came to 1,556 drachmas in silver weight. In addition were 15 series (rhymoi) of 904 phialai in all, for a weight of more than 14 talents of silver (86,371 drachmas). The collection also included silver phialai on plinths, that were merely counted, for a total of 85, and other gold and silver items (l. 30‑40).

    Table 13 — Catalogue of silver phialai in the Temple of Apollo (ID 442, B, l. 20‑29).

      Rhymos   Number of phialai   Talents    Minas    Drachmas     Total (drachmas)   
    13837503 750
    26311706 170
    317161 600
    4641406 040
    5621406 040
    6621206 020
    7621206 020
    86316 000
    9631306 030
    10631306 030
    11631306 030
    12631606 060
    13631206 020
    14621206 020
    156715506 550
    Suppl.29136911 991
    Total90413711 27186 371 dr. = 14.4 T

    Table 14 — Catalogue of various silver vases in the Temple of Apollo (ID 442, B, l. 40‑155) (gold items in italics).

        Number of vases             Drachmas          Number of vases   Drachmas  
    271 8701100
    32171100
    44001100
    2200161 600
    22004400
    16 1 6002200
    44002200
    11001100
    1100161 600
    22004400
    16 16002200
    4400161 600
    161 6004400
    44001139
    22001143
    16 16001139
    44001140
    22001136
    22001135
    21001136
    1601198.5
    1601196.5
    1601192
    1601196
    1601190.5
    1601685
    22001679
    16 1 6001100
    4400161 600
    14004400
    110016 1 600
    161 6004400
    44002200
    1100161 600
    1100189
    202 0001100
    11002200
    22004400
    1100187
    22001720
    4400202 000
    1100161 600
    202 0004400
    22002200
    15523 200
    150202 000
    140161 600
    150161 600
    22004400
    202 0002200
    11004400
    2200161 600
    1100Total for 558 vases
                  - silver
                   - gold
    79 090 dr. = 13.18 T
    75 684.5 dr. (12.6 T)
    3 405.5 dr.
    161 600
    1100

    75Yet other phialai were counted on the left of the entrance. They were mostly handed down by the city-state treasurers or the council (l. 52‑78 and 84‑86). Others were offerings from private individuals (l. 78‑84), hence the greater variability in their weights. In this series, almost 13.2 talents of silver were further counted.

    76To these were added 12 honorific crowns, most worth 100 drachmas each (l. 85‑86; 90; 99‑105; 107; 130), for a total weight of 1,055 drachmas of silver.

    77In the preceding years, men appointed to melt down damaged offerings received fragments of precious metal (mostly gold from crowns but also silver) for recasting (l. 25‑26; 119‑120, 123‑125).61 The hieropoioi drew up the inventory of series of ingots (chymata), their weight being given in chrysoi with subdivisions in drachmas. They corresponded to what was obtained from recasting damaged objects. The inventory totalled entries for a weight of 775 chrysoi and 339.4 drachmas of silver (l. 118‑125). The chrysoi corresponded to two-drachma staters, as shown for example by the weight of gold crowns offered by Queen Stratonike, expressed in gold staters.62 This series of offerings can therefore be evaluated at a weight of 1,949.4 drachmas of Attic silver. The hieropoioi also reported various fragments of gold weighing a total of 320 drachmas of silver (l. 134; 136; 138; 150; 154).

    78The whole of the precious metal treasures housed in the Temple of Apollo came, then, to a total weight of 28.39 talents of silver (170,340 drachmas).

    79Of course, we take account here only of gold and silver items which, for the hieropoioi, were part of monetary accounting. Other valuable items were housed in the oikos of the Andrians (l. 155‑177), the Temple of the Athenians (l. 177‑178), the Porinos Naos (l. 178‑179) and the Artemision (l. 179‑216). Not all were weighed because they were sometimes made of composite materials. Other objects were weighed by talent and by mina, such as a stock of ivory kept in the oikos of the Andrians (l. 165‑166). The building also housed bronze and iron in various forms.

    80A series of gold vases and objects in the Artemision was accounted for by the hieropoioi by their weight in silver for a total of 7,186 drachmas (l. 181‑200). They also took stock of series of silver vases by rhymoi for more than 13 talents (l. 204‑211). In addition were 56 phialai mounted on plinths, that were not weighed, and 21 other phialai weighing the equivalent of 1,433 drachmas. The total of offerings in gold and silver in the Artemision weighed by the hieropoioi came to a total of 14.6 talents of silver (88,169 drachmas).

    Table 15 — Catalogue of silver vases in the Artemision (ID 442, B, l. 179‑216).

      Rhymos    Number of vases    Talents    Minas    Drachmas      Total (drachmas)    
    16016 000
    26516 000
    38116 000
    47316 000
    56916 000
    67216 000
    76216 000
    86816 000
    96916 000
    106216 000
    11?16 000
    125616 000
    13??75507 550
    Extra2114331 433
    Total758 +80 983 dr. = 13.5 T

    81The inventory of the year 179 provided a total for gold and silver offerings accounted for by the hieropoioi in their weight in silver. It came to 43 talents (258,509 drachmas). Taking only the silver offerings, mostly phialai, representing the straightforward transformation of drachmas into silverware, this gives a hoarded mass of 40.5 talents of silver. The treasure had therefore more than doubled in two centuries through offerings and hoarding.

    82The weight of gold, at the end of Independence in this inventory, stood at 2.5 talents (15,472 drachmas). Its market value in silver drachmas could be readily calculated by the hieropoioi on the basis of its weight using the gold/silver ratio. The collections in gold rose by a smaller proportion compared with the treasure in the classical period, when the sanctuary had total gold offerings worth 1.7 talents of silver. However, it should be observed that several gold crowns were not weighed because they were too fragile. The weights recorded for gold items often corresponded to items already labelled with the information (ID 442, B, l. 78‑73: ἐπιγραφὴ ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ.).

    Table 16 — Distribution of precious metal treasures in the temples in 179 BC.

    Gold

    Silver

    Temple of Apollo                

    8 286 dr.

    162 055 dr. (27 T)

    Artemision

    7 186 dr. (1.19 T)

    80 983 dr. (13.5 T)

    Total

    15 472 dr. (2.57 T)                

    243 038 dr. (40.5 T)                 

    83It remains to be asked, as with the god’s fortune in coin, whether this growth in hoarded treasures was linear throughout the period of Independence. The inventory of the precious offerings was accompanied between the late fourth and mid-second centuries by several transfers of collections as and when the status of certain buildings changed and new constructions, such as the Great Temple, were completed. These various episodes made it more complex to take stock of the offerings and can often explain the variances detected between inventories.

    Variations in the Collection

    84While the collections of valuable offerings kept in the Artemision, the Temple of the Athenians and the Porinos Naos came to 15.1 talents of pure silver (90,725 drachmas) and 1.7 talents (10,297 drachmas) of gold by weight of silver shortly before the fourth century BC, the earliest inventories of the period of Independence paint a different picture. The Delians’ methods of cataloguing were not exactly identical to those of the Athenians.

    The treasure at the beginning of Independence

    85In a chapter of his unpublished thesis, J. Tréheux reproduces a fragment of the stoichedon inventory from the beginning of Independence (Γ765) and shows that it made up, with two other separate stelae (IG XI 2, 149 and 150), the inventory of the year 297 which was probably the first to have been carved after 314, renewing the tradition initiated by the Athenian amphictyons.63 Four collections were inventoried: those of the Porinos Naos, the Temple of the Athenians, the Neokorion and the Hieropoion. The inventory of the Artemision does not feature on the stone. Taking stock of the collections was therefore so lengthy and time-consuming an activity that the hieropoioi were unable, at least in the early years of Independence, to have the entire inventories inscribed each year. Not only did they confine themselves to precious metal offerings, whose monetary value could be quantified, unlike their Athenian successors who sought to be exhaustive after 167, but they also broke the task down. As of 279 (IG XI 2, 161 B) the organization of the inventories followed a pattern that was to last, with the catalogue of the objects of the Artemision coming first.

    86The full inventory of the year 279 means the state of the collections can be compared with that known for the classical period (tables 17 and 18).

    87In the Artemision, the hieropoioi recorded series of silver phialai (rhymoi) each weighing 3.5 talents. They completed the inventory, again by counting rhymoi, with various vases and silver items of various offerings, including the Geranos (l. 7‑8). In addition there was a collection of vases, jewels and gold crowns for a total weight in silver of 10,601 drachmas. In total 16.5 talents of silver were weighed in the Artemision, including 14.7 talents of pure silver (88,610 drachmas).

    Table 17 — The collections of the Artemision in the year 279 BC (IG XI 2, 161, B, l. 3‑65).

    Number
    of vases
    TalentsMinasDrachmasTotal (drachmas)

    Rhymos 1

    1041.59 000

    Rhymos 2

    1031.59 000

    Rhymos 3

    1041.59 000

    Rhymos 4

    1021.59 000

    Rhymos 5

    1041.59 000

    Rhymos 6

    1211.59 000

    Rhymos 7

    11016 000

    Rhymos 8

    891107 000

    Rhymos 9

    6716 000

    Rhymos 10

    Miscellaneous items222 200

    Rhymos 11

    88126 200

    Rhymos 12

    303 000

    Rhymos 13

    12242 400

    Silver crater

    9 5729 572

    Sundry silver vases

    2 8392 839

    Gold, silver and bronze coins

    51310 601

    Sundry gold offerings

    685

    14 gold phialai
    (l. 27‑31)

    2 393

    Other gold vases

    3 047

    Other gold items
    (jewels, crowns)

    3 963

    Total

    99 211 (16.5 T)

    88The hieropoioi then inventoried the offerings kept in the Temple of Apollo. These included 25 phialai that were not weighed because most of them seem to have been bimetallic. However, the hieropoioi weighed the silver trireme offered by Seleucos (l. 78‑79) at 1,554 drachmas. Other silver offerings and various coins weighed 660 drachmas. The offerings of gold, mostly crowns, came to a silver weight of 4,619 drachmas (l. 81‑97).

    89The Temple of the Athenians housed a collection of gold crowns offered to Apollo at the Delia. They came to a total silver weight of 2,031 drachmas. The temple also stored a collection of silver votive vases dating from the classical period and weighing 2,677 drachmas (l. 107).

    90The inventory went on to catalogue the objects of the Eileithyiaion (including 163 drachmas in pure silver) and the Chalkotheke that contained bronzes primarily.

    91All told, in 279, the collection of sacred offerings counted 15.6 talents of pure silver (93,664 drachmas) and 2.8 talents (17,521 drachmas) of gold by weight of silver. It is therefore interesting to observe that, compared with the inventory drawn up a century later in 179, the mass of gold offerings grew more at the beginning of Independence than the mass of silver offerings. But it is noticeable, too, that the fortune in gold diminished slightly over the century, from 2.8 talents in 279 to 2.6 talents in 179. The gold items were more fragile because the collection was largely made up of crowns. The wear and tear of the gold crowns probably explains the loss and warrants the decision to convert a part of them into ingots. It is also possible, though, that some of the batch was used or went to pay the craftsman who did the casting. Another part of the collection consisted of coins, although it is not known what became of them.

    Table 18 — Distribution of precious metal treasures in the temples in 279 BC.

    Gold

    Silver

    Temple of Apollo

    4 619 dr.

    2  214 dr.

    Artemision

    10 601 dr.

    88 610 dr.

    Temple of the Athenians           

    2 031 dr.

    2  677 dr.

    Other buildings

    163 dr.

    Total

    17 251 dr. (2.8 T)              

    93 664 dr. (15.6 T)              

    The treasure in the mid‑third century BC

    92The inventory of the year 250 (IG XI 2, 287, B) provides a further point of comparison (table 19). It begins with the collections of the Artemision (l. 2‑32): it includes crowns, gold vases, jewels and gold coins for a silver weight of 3,101 drachmas. Also counted are 5,154 drachmas of silver coins of various provenances that were weighed and a silver phiale of 120 drachmas. In all the Artemision housed 8,375 drachmas in weight of silver.

    93In the Temple of Apollo, 59 phialai were recorded (l. 45)64 with no indication as to weight. Also included in this collection were various items of gold and silver tableware for which weight is seldom given. It seems that for that year the hieropoioi gave precedence to weight indications for gold objects, probably because the weight was already noted with the object and merely had to be copied.65

    94The weight of gold thus came to 3,461 drachmas of silver. On top of this were a few silver vases weighing 600 drachmas (l. 72‑74).

    95In the Temple of the Athenians, the gold crowns weighed a total of 2,099 drachmas of silver.

    96In the Porinos Naos, 13 silver phialai were counted with no weight indication.

    97In the oikos of the Andrians, gold objects were weighed for 45 drachmas of silver. Other silver vases were not weighed.

    98The hieropoioi then made a catalogue of the silver phialai (l. 91‑129), that numbered 143.66 Only the entries for the year were weighed (l. 127‑129): each phiale weighed 100 drachmas of silver. The administrators then took stock of the vases offered by Stesileos specifying that “they were weighed in the smaller of the two scales of the agoranomion, in good weight of Attic silver” (l. 143), that is, by reference to the Attic standard of oloscheres money, for a total weight of 5,329 drachmas.67 Added to this were two vases that entered the treasury in the course of the year for 91 drachmas (l. 144).

    99Given the absence of weight indications for most of the silver offerings, it is difficult to exploit this inventory in the same way as the previous ones. However, if we restore an average of 100 drachmas for the silver phialai counted by the hieropoioi, we obtain the following break-down:

    Table 19 — Apportionment of the precious metal treasures in the temple in 250 BC.

    Gold

    Silver

    Temple of Apollo

    3 461 dr.

    [6 100] + 600 = 6 700 dr.

    Artemision

    3 101 dr.

    5 274 dr.

    Temple of the Athenians        

    2 099 dr.

    Porinos Naos

    [1 300] dr.

    Other buildings

    45 dr.

    [8 200] + 5 420 = 13 620 dr.             

    Total

    8 706 dr. (1.4 T)         

    26 894 dr. (4.4 T)

    100For the year 250, the total of offerings valued by the hieropoioi came therefore to a silver weight of 35,600 drachmas or at least 6 Attic talents. The value of the whole was far below the earlier inventory and it was clearly the administrators’ procedure that was at issue.

    101None of the subsequent inventories was complete to the point of enabling comparison, but it can be observed from reading the inventory of the year 240 (ID 298) that the same habit of indicating the weight of offerings of gold rather than that of offerings of silver continued. The phialai were merely counted. There were 229 in the Temple of Apollo with the entries for the year (l. 56‑96). The vases of Stesileos were weighed for a total of 6,291 drachmas (l. 107). In addition to this were 67 other vases in the oikos of the Andrians (l. 114) and 13 phialai in the Porinos Naos (l. 122). The inventory also included the collection of phialai of the Artemision arranged in rhymoi (l. 161‑178). The total weight of gold offerings, based on figures kept in this inventory that does have gaps, though, came to more than 1 talent (6,083 drachmas).

    102For the silver offerings, one can only observe that the collections grew, mainly by hoarding from the proceeds of the endowment funds.68

    103The gold offerings, despite the steady growth of the collection from the entry of honorific gold crowns, did not increase in the same proportions, far from it. The gold crowns were also more fragile objects, subject to deterioration, as evidenced by the making of gold ingots from fragments collected by the hieropoioi in the first quarter of the second century. This conversion goes some way to explaining why the total amount of gold kept in the sanctuary in 179 was even slightly down on the figure recorded a century earlier. But it is surprising that the collection remained in identical proportions between the third and second centuries. We have no trace of the use of votive gold removed from the treasury to meet expenses. For expenses concerning statues, for example, the sanctuary purchased gold.69 It is even unlikely that the hieropoioi transferred to the monetary circuit any gold coins paid into the treasury by way of offerings, since the two parts of the treasure (the monetary part in circulation and the hoarded part) were clearly kept separate by the administrators.

    104One cannot but observe, then, that, between the mid-third and early second centuries, gold became a scarce commodity and was little used in votive offerings on Delos, while the greater part of the collection of gold offerings was built up between the second half of the classical period and the early third century (tabl 20). This should probably be seen as reflecting the de‑hoarding of Persian treasures, which, for the use of gold, was directly reflected in the votive practices on Delos.70

    Table 20 — Changes in the apportionment of gold and silver offerings in Apollo’s treasure (in talents).

    Image

    Apollo’s fortune as financial power?

    105Having been associated with the stewardship in the fourth century BC, the Delians had learnt from the Athenians a number of accounting and financial principles which they applied while exercising a Delian administration proper. In this sense, the accounts also reflected the outside situation. Being directly involved in Aegean economic activity through its constructions, orders, and purchases, the sanctuary suffered the consequences of political domination and the military expeditions that plied the Aegean Sea blocking supplies and causing fluctuations in provision, and it was subject to the vagaries of the economic situation. Behind the monumental facades that the accounts formed, seemingly testifying to unchanging administrative practices, one can therefore feel the light wind of History and the way the Delians down the centuries attempted to adapt to a constantly changing world.

    106Now, Apollo’s fortune was maintained within stable proportions over the course of the centuries, to the extent that the increasing profits offset overall the withdrawals made for the works. Yet the stewardship of the sacred fortune posed several problems for the Delians: technical problems because they had to acquire and perfect a number of administrative and management methods and practices as and when the stakes changed; but also problems of authority in ensuring the return of capital lent to individuals and, to a lesser extent, to cities.

    The Apportionment of Assets

    107All told, the fortune in coinage managed by the hieropoioi at the end of Independence did not exceed some 50 or so talents, sacred fund and public fund combined. The inventories of the jars of the sacred chest showed that the god’s fortune reached 23.6 talents in 169 whereas the monies handled in the public fund might have totalled 25 talents, although it is difficult to say what proportion of those monies might have been lent from the god’s treasure.

    108A far greater proportion was held in the form of hoarded offerings. For the sacred fund alone, the distribution of assets at the end of Independence stood at about one-third of coined silver (15‑20 talents) for two-thirds of hoarded offerings (40 talents). The inventory of silver phialai shows besides that this type of stock taking was part of an accounting logic: at the end of Independence 40.5 talents of pure silver were added to the 23.6 talents of coined money in the sacred chest. The god’s total assets in silver, counting the money in the sacred fund and the offerings, therefore exceeded 60 talents by the end of Independence (table 21).

    Table 21 — Apportionment of the sacred fortune in silver coin, silver offerings and gold offerings.

                                  Silver

    Gold                       

    coins                         

    offerings                      

    4th century                   

    ± 10 T

    15.1 T

    1.7 T

    279

    14 T

    15.6 T

    2.8 T

    179

    15.5 T

    40.5 T

    2.6 T

    169

    23.6 T

    ?

    ?

    109It is possible, then, to measure in some way the sanctuary’s economic scope and, insofar as the inequalities in the records allow, to compare it with the economic wealth of rich individuals. The fortune Apollo had in the course of Independence set the god on a level with a few financiers and entrepreneurs known from sources. The father of Demosthenes left a fortune of 14 talents on his death (XXVII Against Aphobos I, 4) but bankers in Athenian circles known in the fourth century had far more money at their disposal. The fortune of Pasion was evaluated several times with varying results (between 40 and 74 talents).71 A passage from Demosthenes (XXXVI For Phormion, 5‑6) tells us he had 39 talents of claims towards the end of his life, plus other property.

    110So Delian Apollo’s financial wealth could vie with that of a few wealthy businessmen in the fourth century. This comparison also provides a better grasp of the specificities and interest of the financial policy developed on Delos. However, the god’s fortune fell well short of the financial possibilities of the Hellenistic kings: Callias of Sphettos in 270/269 BC received in one lot for the city of Athens from Ptolemy II, 50 talents of silver and 20,000 medimns of wheat.72

    Delian Apollo and the Other Gods

    111To what extent can the composition of other sacred fortunes be evaluated? It should be emphasized first of all that we are dependent in this regard on the choices of carving that were themselves sometimes the outcome of upheavals in the administrative pattern. Accordingly we owe it to the pillage of the sanctuary of Delphi and the Phocidean fine that we have the carved accounts of payments and their use, and examples could be multiplied. In several instances, account stelae were erected at the time of new construction: this was so at Epidaurus for the programme of embellishment of the sanctuary between about 370 and 250, including, among others, the Temple of Asclepios and the Tholos. Sanctuaries had various engraving practices. The sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma kept lists of offerings recording precious objects consecrated year after year, without regularly taking up the state of collections. These were therefore lists of what the Athenian terminology for inventories called epeteia, but even if they were kept regularly by the administrators on other media, they were not inscribed annually. Observation of the hands and the corrections in carving shows that several annual lists were inscribed together at the same time.73 This choice of inscription prevents us therefore from evaluating the aggregate fortune in hoarded offerings. Conversely the administrators of the Attic sanctuaries and of the sanctuary of Apollo on Delos maintained over several centuries the habit of having inscribed each year, based on documents updated each month on perishable materials, one or more stelae recording the revenue and expenditure of the sacred fund and the full inventory of the offerings laid out in the sacred and treasuries, steadily incremented by new entries.74

    112As the epigraphic practice of carving the accounts might be independent of regular record keeping on perishable materials, this disparity in documentation sometimes prevents us from getting very far with the quantitative evaluation of sacred fortunes.

    113We are sometimes able to evaluate the cost of construction of monuments and to question the capacity of sacred treasuries for financing them. At Epidaurus, the building programme stretched over a century and came to an estimated total of 240 to 290 talents.75 But we do not know how the financing of the building was organized. What role did the city-state play? What part did the sacred treasury have? To what extent were subscriptions required, as for example those levied by the naopoi of Delphi for rebuilding the Temple of Apollo in the fourth century?

    114These figures remain low compared with other building costs: between 460 and 500 talents for the Parthenon,76 some 300 talents for the ancient Temple of Apollo at Delphi (that of the sixth century) according to Herodotus (II, 180). Again it was little compared with the 400 talents of annual revenues that Thucydides (II, 13, 3) announces for the Delian League.

    115A few numerical indications allow us to evaluate at least a part of the sacred fortunes.77 Diodorus of Sicily (XVI, 56, 6), speaking of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, puts at 10,000 talents the size of the fortune stolen by the Phocideans to pay their mercenaries. This evaluation might include monetary resources of the sacred treasury (proceeds from rents, taxes, fines collected, etc.) but for the most part it must have been valuable offerings that had to be melted down as need arose.78

    116By comparison the sanctuary of Delian Apollo seemed far less wealthy. The 100 talent mark was not reached on Delos at the end of the period documented, which did not prevent the sanctuary from having a particularly well developed building activity. In any event, sources, outside of Delos, do not provide a picture of property over the long term: they provide a snapshot of financing capacity or an accumulation of assets making any comparison virtually impossible.

    Hoarding and Circulation

    117There results from such a record the impression that the hoarded offerings made up a large part of the sacred fortune. But one must not draw overhasty conclusions. The epigraphic and literary documentation tends to give precedence to these unchanging lists and to draw attention to these precious objects. According to the passages of Diodorus of Sicily referring to the plundering of Delphi (XVI, 28, 2; 30, 1; 37, 2; 56, 5), it is known that the valuable gold offerings amounted to the equivalent of less than 4,000 talents in silver. The remaining 6,000 talents must have made up the silver fortune of the sanctuary, but much of its was probably not coined. Besides, literary testimonies that might fill in the missing epigraphic information are mostly interested in previous offerings when it comes to narrating episodes of pillage. The same Diodorus (XXXVIII/XXXIX, 7, 1) and Cassius Dio (CCC) and Plutarch (Life of Sulla, 12, 6‑9) speak of Sulla plundering the treasures of Delphi, Epidaurus and Olympia in 86/5 BC, without providing precise figures but emphasizing that these sanctuaries were filled with gold and silver that provided Sulla with great wealth.79

    118The metallic cash holdings and changes to it were certainly the subject of systematic recordings but generally did not give rise to systematic inscription of accounts, apart from construction operations, except on Delos where we are lucky enough to be able to trace in detail and fairly comprehensively the changes in the coined money holdings. On Delos as in other sanctuaries, part of the accounts in Hellenistic times were in all likelihood kept with the help of banks. That is where the particulars of the book-keeping were to be found.80

    119Above all, the distinction between metallic offerings and coined cash holdings is not always relevant when speaking of the circulation of wealth. There were hoarded monetary treasures that were less mobile than precious metal offerings, which were sometimes melted down and coined. The jar inventories on Delos in the first third of the second century show there were amounts of coinage that were immobilized in the sacred chest.81 Similarly, on taking over the administration of the sanctuary in 166 BC, the Athenian administrators separated from the cash holdings the coins that were not of the Attic standard and drew up an inventory of them.82 Elsewhere sanctuaries housed unproductive sums made up of deposits with the temple by private individuals.83 The terminology used in the literary texts shows, however, that the offerings were evaluated from a monetary perspective: this was the role weighing played in estimating the results that could be obtained by striking coinage.84 In this way, Plutarch relates how Sulla sent the Phocian Kaphis to Delphi ordering him to weigh what he took away (Life of Sulla, 12, 4: σταθµῶι παραλαβεῖν, “to receive each item by weight”). Similarly the regular administrators sought to weigh the precious offerings so they could make a valuation of the sacred fortune, for both the cash holdings and the objects.85 This was the case at Didyma where, whatever the outcome of the debate on the forms of weighing (with coins or weights), it arises from the lists of offerings that the administrators wanted to make an estimate of the value of the objects kept in the sanctuary, in silver weight. The weighing was done at the time the offering was consecrated or shortly afterwards and the weights of the offerings expressed in the monetary standard in use at Miletus.86

    120Hoarding involved two separate circuits. On the one side, the gods’ treasuries laid hold of capital among private individuals who consecrated items made of precious metal. On the other side, they mobilized a part of the cash profits from sacred capital when a silver phiale or gold crown was consecrated from the proceeds of the god’s revenue. This was common practice in the case of endowment funds loaned at interest with part of the proceeds leading to the making of precious metal phialai alongside spending on sacrifices and banquets.87 It was also widespread in other settings. In Hellenistic times, the inventories of Didyma show that the city of Miletus sometimes opted to convert the surplus of certain revenues into silver bowls, noted as such in the lists of offerings.88

    121There were therefore in the sanctuaries both cash holdings in circulation, that were often difficult to spot, and a treasure which, in hoarding practices, it was attempted to evaluate in monetary terms, whether it was made up of coined silver or of precious metals. One sees in the composition of the sacred fortune a conception of capital that it would probably be wrong to categorize too exclusively as unproductive because that fortune was evaluated comprehensively, both the cash and the offerings. In principle the fortune could be recovered at any time in the circuits of redistribution of property. Hoards seem indeed to have been savings that could be converted into monetary form. But the part actually in circulation was less than the part that was hoarded and could itself lead to fresh hoarding of the profits. The inventory practices intended to provide a monetary estimation of the sacred fortune at the same time indicated the fairly small proportions of precious metals (gold and silver) circulating as money in Hellenistic times.89

    122The valuing of the Delian fortune and its possible economic impact should therefore be thought of primarily in terms of patterns of investment. By mobilizing the production capacities of its environment to the full, by allowing the city of Delos to benefit from steady borrowing in the form of credit lines to meet needs that were themselves limited to a small population and without massive military expenditure to be met, the Delians had set themselves what were overall limited objectives whereas the Athenians of the classical period had exploited the sanctuary’s wealth more in support of their imperialist policy. If hoarding was important in the Delian sanctuary, it was not for want of stewardship: the accounting methods implemented by the hieropoioi are evidence of marked advances in the construction of a complex system of book-keeping. But the absence of major projects other than building work, diplomacy and the needs of the city left scope for hoarding that took the form of saving.

    Conclusion: The destiny of the Delian treasure under the second Athenian domination

    123Composed of both precious offerings and coined silver, the treasure of Apollo’s sanctuary was capital that bore fruit over the centuries despite administrative and political changeovers. The treasure of the Delian League, which was housed for a time in the Porinos Naos as from 478 BC alongside that of Apollo, before the Athenians decided to transfer it to Athens probably in 454, was only a transient item with respect to the permanence of the temple collections. While Delos could well have lost its attraction when it ceased to be the venue for the League to assemble, Athenian domination was maintained over the sanctuary allowing the implementation of a financial administration that turned Apollo’s property to account. It was this that the Delians inherited in 314 BC and perpetuated for a century and a half.

    124In 167/6 BC, by the will of Rome and as part of territorial rearrangements that followed the final victory of the Roman armies over the Antigonid monarchy, the Delians were banished from their territory and the island handed over to the Athenians while becoming a free port.90 The threat had loomed over the Delians since the beginning of the second century, because the Athenians had constantly told the Romans of their eagerness to recover their former possessions.91 Delian diplomacy, which had awarded honorific crowns to the Roman People and the Senate in the preceding years (ID 465 c, l. 20), as it had long done for the Antigonids to assert the sacred island’s neutrality, proved powerless to maintain the civic community it defended.

    125The Roman Senate’s decision compelled the Delians to leave their island allowing them the right to take their movable property. Most Delians emigrated to Achaea where they were welcomed by the Achaean Confederation which granted them citizenship in several of its city-states, and from where they constantly laid claim to their rights with the Roman authority.92 Other families settled on Rhenea where their funerary monuments reveal their presence and perhaps also the return of some Delians towards the end of the second century.93 Clearly a few Delian families never left the island: Echenike, well known in the inscriptions of the period of Independence, was named in a list of loans from the sanctuary in 161/0 (ID 1408, A, col. I, l. 38‑40) with the privileged status of resident foreigner (οἰκοῦσα ἐν ∆ήλωι).94 At least one Delian, Timotheos, became an Athenian citizen of the Paiania deme and held office as epimeletes of the emporion in 146/5 (ID 1507, l. 17): he was known as a debtor and a guarantor during the period of Independence in 175 (ID 449, B, l. 22‑25). Under the Athenian Domination, he pursued his personal activities because we also find him as guarantor for loans and as a borrower with the sacred fund.95

    126For twenty or so years, the inscriptions on Delos mention the Athenian cleruchs settled on Delos to replace the Delian population, ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆµος ὁ Ἀθηναίων τῶν ἐν ∆ήλωι κατοικούντων. There was also a very large proportion of foreign residents on Delos as shown by the rentals of Apollo’s properties.96

    127The return of the Athenians as masters both of the sanctuary and of the entire island is apparent in the administration of the sanctuary by the assertion of a return to the old order: the denominations of the sacred properties, for example, attest to this.97 They also set about methodically numbering the jars of coined treasure and the series of phialai.98 After more than a century away, the Athenian administrators, taking back possession of their responsibilities, clearly sought to reassert continuity with their fourth-century methods, developed besides in other Attic sanctuaries.99

    128Their inventories took the shape of an audit of Apollo’s property, by order of the Areopagus, as attested by a passage of the act ID 1403 (Bb, col. I, l. 23‑29), which was one of the first texts after the return of the island to the Athenians. The text relates to offerings laid out in an opisthodomos, perhaps that of the Chalkotheke or the Temple of Apollo:

    ταῦτα οὐ παρεστήσα[µ]εν οὕτως, ἀλλ’ ὡς ὑπογεγραµµέναι εἰσὶν αἱ στάσεις διὰ τὸ τοὺς ἐξ Ἀρέου π[άγο]υ ἄνδρας ἀποσταλέντας κατὰ τὸ ψήφισµα ὃ Θεαίνετος Αἰγι[λ]ιεὺς ἔγραψεν ἐλθό[ντας] εἰς ∆ῆλον ἐξετάσαι τὰ ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς κατὰ τὴµ Μικίωνος [π]αράδοσιν καὶ στησάν[των] α[ὐ]τῶν ὡς αὐτοῖς προσετέτακτο τὸ πρότερον µηκέτι δυνηθῆ[ναι] ἡµᾶς εὑρεῖν [τ]ὴν [παρ]ά̣σ{․}τασιν? τῶν ἐν τῶι ὀπισθοδόµωι χαλκωµάτων.

    We did not put these objects back in this way but in the order in which they are inscribed because the men of the Areopagus, sent to Delos pursuant to the decree written by Theainetos of Aigilia to take stock of the property of the sanctuaries in accordance with the transmission of Mikion, having arranged the offerings as they had first been told to, we were unable to find the order of the bronze offerings of the opisthodomos.

    129This commission from the Areopagites led by the Athenian Mikion was tasked with passing on the offerings from the hands of the Delian administration of 167 BC.100 This first inventory operation, that should have gone along with the weighing of offerings, patently gave rise to transfers of the collections, for which the administrators of the inventory ID 1403 meant to disclaim responsibility. It may be this first inventory that was erected in the Agora in Athens, because four fragments were found there that matched not just the inventories of the collections of the second Athenian domination but also the Delian inventory of the year 179 (ID 442, B, l. 5‑12).101

    130With the money from the sanctuary’s coffers, the Athenians conducted a reclassifying operation, setting aside the Athenian coins.102 Because they did not use these cash holdings, they met the operating expenditure with the income generated in the course of their financial period. They were attentive to the return of loans granted by the Delian hieropoioi, since, in 161/0, they received the capital and interest on loans granted by the hieropoioi in 168 and 167 (ID 461, Ab, l. 51; ID 1408, A, col. II, l. 38‑39).103 One of these repayments was from Hermon son of Solon, an important figure of independent Delos since he was a friend of King Massinissa, from whom he had obtained a gift of grain for the city‑state of Delos and had thanked him with a statue in the sanctuary.104 So it was certainly with the political and institutional support of their city‑state authorities that the Athenian administrators managed to bring in these monies, and one might think that the dispute Polybius alludes to (XXXII, 7), involving arbitration in Rome between Delians of Achaea and the city of Athens in 159/8, was not alien to these matters. Besides the Delians won their case.105

    131Characteristically, in the Athenian acts, the inventory took up the most room and ordered the logic underpinning the act.106 The share concerning stewardship took up less room even if the leasing of estates and property as well as loans at interest continued.107 Expenditure did not take up the space allowed for by the accounts of the hieropoioi: the Athenian acts were no longer the inscription of accounts as with the Delians but the recording of the conservation of the property of the island’s sanctuaries. Their discontinuation around 140 BC, while the religious activity continued, was plainly the sign of declining interest for the carving of these documents and for the property perspective they represented.

    132Indeed the perspective adopted by the Athenian administrators also expressed the position of the fund of the Temple of Apollo as from 167/6: it was no longer the heart of the island’s financial and economic activity, because this was from then on conducted by financiers, importers, warehousers and bankers who conducted their business in the free port. The public bank of Delos set up on the return of the Athenians probably took up activities that had fallen to the Delian stewards of the sacred monies.108 Accounting practices without a doubt continued and were perfected but for want of inscribed documents we no longer have access to those records.

    Notes de bas de page

    1 Athenaeus, IV, 173, b‑c: παράσιτοι τοῦ θεοῦ.

    2 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 324‑337.

    3 The epigraphic records appended (Appendix 1) set out a cost accounting version of Delian book-keeping, transposing the data featured on the stelae in the form of accounting tables. I take the opportunity in the tables that follow to correct a few mistakes as to the figures that had remained in Chankowski 2008a. They have no repercussions on the reasoning presented in that paper, which showed a steady increase in Apollo’s fortune.

    4 I believe this is the error in the method of reasoning in Migeotte 2014, pp. 649‑653.

    5 The hieropoioi relinquished keeping the accounts in talents, which they had inherited from the Athenian administration, shortly after the beginning of Independence, in the early years of the third century. Cf. Chankowski 2002, pp. 42‑43 and Nouveau Choix, pp. 18‑20. However, I continue to use amounts converted into talents here so that orders of magnitude can be more easily grasped.

    6 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 175‑177; Chankowski 2008b and 2014a; Bogaert 1968, pp. 126‑165 on these banks.

    7 Vial 1984, pp. 225‑227.

    8 Account 224 is the stele for the year 258 but contains the indication of the surplus outstanding of the previous year (perion).

    9 See Appendix 1 about this number and a probable carving error.

    10 This statement drawn up by the hieropoioi for 231 omits the revenues and expenditure for the year: a perion must have been recorded subsequently.

    11 The accounts for these years are very fragmentary. Account ID 364, A, l. 22 mentions the passing on of other funds to the hieropoioi of 208, the figures for which have not been conserved.

    12 As from 192, the accounts giving the inventory of the public fund and the sacred fund were drawn up ignoring periodic revenues, forming working capital the hieropoioi drew on for current spending. They merely added the surplus outstanding (perion) of this periodic account to the total of the balance.

    13 Vial 1984, p. 140; Bogaert 1968, pp. 131‑15 and 159. Migeotte 2014, pp. 624‑626.

    14 Vial 1988, p. 55 and n. 26.

    15 Bogaert 1968, p. 158.

    16 The calculations presented by Larsen 1938, p. 159, are based on a misunderstanding of the structure of the account.

    17 I depart here from the computations in Bogaert 1968, p. 159, which take it that the amount shown in the account of 219 should be doubled because it was authored by a single hieropoios. The record is admittedly for an incomplete financial period but there is no evidence as to how tasks were divided in that year. It is even unlikely that each hieropoios of the board collected a part of the interest payment.

    18 Migeotte 2013, p. 320 takes the view that according to the first account, IG XI 2, 135, l. 16‑22, 44,080 drachmas were in circulation (i.e. 7.3 talents) among private individuals at the beginning of Independence. But the size of the interest payments suggests these were arrears recouped by the hieropoioi at the beginning of the Delian administration. See Chapter 1 above on how tenaciously the Delians collected monies owed to Apollo by the city‑states.

    19 See Chapter 1 above, p. 44 on accounting methods.

    20 On the possible connection with the city-state’s striking of coinage in those years, see Chapter 4 below, pp. 199‑200.

    21 And so there is no need to surmise, as I did in Chankowski 2008a, pp. 336‑337, the appearance of older monies only accounted for when jar inventories began.

    22 See Chapter 3 below, p. 175.

    23 It is possible to restore the amount of the period from the account balance, to which it has plainly been added, as is the case for the account of 179; see Appendix 1 below, pp. 337‑338.

    24 See the conclusions by V. Mathé in a PhD thesis entitled “Le prix de la construction en Grèce aux IVe et IIIe siècles avant J.‑C. Etude sur les chantiers financés par les sanctuaires de Delphes, d’Epidaure et de Délos”, defended in Lyon on 27 November 2010 under the supervision of J.‑C. Moretti.

    25 See the tables presented by Fraisse and Moretti 2007, pp. 203‑206, which also show the arithmetic is wanting.

    26 Fraisse and Moretti 2007, p. 235; Moretti 2010.

    27 Burford 1969, p. 83.

    28 Feyel 2006, table 34 and graph 54, p. 481.

    29 See Chapter 1 above, p. 26‑27.

    30 Feyel 2006, p. 481. This conclusion is taken up by Migeotte 2014, pp. 641‑642: “The slow pace of construction work can be explained primarily by the necessity of spreading its financing.”

    31 See Chapter 5 below, p. 241.

    32 On this principle of the Athenian administration on Delos see Chankowski 2008a, pp. 319‑322; Chankowski 2005, p. 76.

    33 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 173‑178.

    34 See also the chronology of the inscriptions presented in Appendix 7.

    35 Etienne 1990, p. 111.

    36 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 317‑341.

    37 See Chapter 1 above, p. 54 about account ID 442 (year 179).

    38 Cf. Vial 1984, p. 211 and n. 85. This passage is understood differently by Sosin 2003, but see my observations in Bull. 2004, 373 and Chapter 3 below, pp. 163‑164.

    39 On the point that the hieropoioi added the perion directly to the account balance, see Chapter 1, above, p. 50. On the amounts of the annual profits of which records are conserved see table 8.

    40 See Chapter 1 above, p. 50.

    41 Fantasia 1989, pp. 51‑52; Sosin 2003, p. 76 and the tables on pp. 72‑74.

    42 See Chapter 1 above, pp. 59‑63.

    43 Chankowski 2008a, pl. IV. Cf. Tréheux 1985a: this fragment casts light on the use of the sign ∆ capping the M to write 100,000, which might explain that it was not noticed by F. Durrbach in account ID 444. Yet, the editor of the corpus had read, in the account of the year 230 (ID 317, l. 35), the same combination of figures: see Chapter 1 above, p. 53.

    44 Chankowski 2008a, p. 334.

    45 On this extraordinary commission, cf. Vial 1984, p. 245.

    46 Chankowski 2008a, p. 334 and pl. V.

    47 See Chapter 4 below, pp. 201‑202.

    48 Ibid. p. 199‑201.

    49 Ibid. p. 215.

    50 See Chapter 3 below, p. 146.

    51 See Chapter 3 below, p. 173.

    52 See Appendix 2.

    53 Cash holdings + entries with the 3,733 drachmas in bronze coin + perion of the year = spending + remainder + perion.

    54 Tréheux 1985a, p. 490.

    55 Chankowski 2008a, p. 335.

    56 See p. 82 above.

    57 Hamilton 2000, pp. 8‑11.

    58 The offerings listed in l. 20‑27 were probably made of silver because the weights give round numbers, unlike the gold offerings. They are listed in the pros argurion category because their weights were not standardized, unlike the vases making up the rhymoi.

    59 Lewis 1968; Marchetti 1987.

    60 This way of counting assets corresponds to an accounting practice known elsewhere: see the demonstration by P. Marchetti for Delphi (Marchetti 1987). Here it is easy to understand that the formulation is associated with the process of weighing offerings with respect to a reference weight of 2 talents per series.

    61 On the procedure for appointing these commissions, see Vial 1984, p. 186 and n. 137.

    62 Thirty‑one chrysoi in IG XI 2, 287, B, l. 67‑68, or 63 drachmas in ID 442, B, l. 5‑6.

    63 Tréheux 1959, chapter I: Unpublished inventory of the Temple of Apollo, pp. 11‑32. In 302 the hieropoioi simply drew up a list of new offerings that they passed on to their successors (IG XI 2, 145, l. 46‑82).

    64 But a little further on in the inventory of phialai, the hieropoioi report 61 phialai in the Temple of Apollo (l. 92).

    65 Cf. l. 83 about the crowns of the Temple of the Athenians, received and passed on without being weighed.

    66 Sixty‑one of which were in the Temple of Apollo (see n. 64) above.

    67 Translation and mistaken figures in Nouveau Choix, p. 138.

    68 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 127‑129 on the endowment funds.

    69 Chankowski 2014b, p. 43.

    70 See the quantitative estimates given by Callataÿ 1989.

    71 Bogaert 1968, pp. 388‑389.

    72 Shear 1978 (l. 50‑55); Bull. 1981, 230.

    73 Debord 1982, p. 419, n. 22; Marcellesi 2004, p. 5.

    74 On the existence of these cataloguing practices in Delphi, see Picard 2005, pp. 56‑58.

    75 Burford 1969, pp. 81‑85.

    76 Stanier 1953.

    77 Callataÿ 2006a, p. 49.

    78 Bousquet 1988, p. 160.

    79 Callataÿ 2006a, pp. 49‑50; Chankowski 2011b.

    80 For Cos, see the remarks on this topic by Parker and Obbink 2000 and 2001. For Delos, cf. Chankowski 2008b.

    81 See Chapter 3 below, p. 146: 8.5 talents in all; Chankowski 2002.

    82 Tréheux 1991.

    83 Bogaert 1968, pp. 281‑288.

    84 But F. de Callataÿ (Callataÿ 2006a) rightly points out, p. 38 and p. 49, that one should not systematically interpret the verb κατακόπτω as striking money from offerings that had been melted down.

    85 As expressed for example in the traditional wording of the Athenian and Delian inventories (cf. ID 104, l. 2‑3): τάδε παρέδοσαν σταθµῶι καὶ ἀριθµῶι , “here is what has been handed down weighed [i.e. for the metallic offerings allowing an equivalent in silver] and counted [i.e. for the various ex‑voto]”.

    86 Marcellesi 2004, pp. 5‑25 and more especially pp. 12‑13; Bresson 2000, pp. 213‑219. See also Debord 1982, p. 218 on the financial role of inventories of precious offerings of Didyma for evaluating the wealth of the city‑state.

    87 For example, Vial 1984, pp. 213‑214.

    88 For example Didyma 433 (a. 270/269), l. 16‑17.

    89 Callataÿ 2006a, p. 65: “If the proportion in money form seems tiny, it is because gold and silver were kept above all in the form of ingots or tableware and jewellery”; Chankowski 2011b.

    90 Polybius, XXX, 20. See Chapter 5 below, pp. 289‑293.

    91 See Chapter 4, p. 216; Perrin-Saminadayar 1994; Habicht 2006, pp. 273‑274 and p. 217, on the problem of the interpolations of Valerius Antias in Polybius’ text. See also Roussel 1916, pp. 2‑7 on this matter.

    92 Polybius, XXXII, 7; Habicht 2006, pp. 273‑274.

    93 Couilloud 1974, pp. 66‑67 and p. 128 n. 182; Baslez 1976.

    94 Baslez 1976, pp. 345‑346. But Echenike failed to secure a new loan: she repaid the capital and interest of a loan dating from the period of Independence. This Delian woman is not to be confused with Echenike daughter of Stesileos, who made a donation to the sanctuary (Vial 2008, s.v.).

    95 Baslez 1976, pp. 359‑360 and Vial 2008, s.v.

    96 Roussel 1916, pp. 149‑156 and p. 160.

    97 Chankowski 2008a, p. 341.

    98 See Chapter 4 below, pp. 182‑183.

    99 For the Asklepieion, for example, see the study by S. Aleshire (Aleshire 1989).

    100 Habicht 2006, p. 273. The Athenian administration began in the course of the year 167/6, as shown by the list of gymnasiarchs appointed to the island: Charneux and Tréheux 1997, pp. 153‑172.

    101 Merrit 1944, pp. 254‑257, n. 11.

    102 See Chapter 4 below, p. 183.

    103 There was no reason, as Roussel 1916, pp. 128‑129 assumed, for the office of hieropoioi to last under the Athenian Domination. The Athenian act simply copies the main points of the loan agreement mentioning the name of the Delian hieropoioi who had been responsible for it.

    104 ID 442, A, l. 102‑105 and 443, Ab, l. 10; ID 1115, 3.

    105 Habicht 2006, p. 274 and Walbank 1979, pp. 525‑526.

    106 See Chapter 4 below, pp. 182‑183 about the inventory of the earlier cash holdings.

    107 On the ways the Athenians managed farm rents, property rents and loans, see Roussel 1916, pp. 126‑179.

    108 On banks, see Chapter 4 below, pp. 230‑233.

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    1 Athenaeus, IV, 173, b‑c: παράσιτοι τοῦ θεοῦ.

    2 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 324‑337.

    3 The epigraphic records appended (Appendix 1) set out a cost accounting version of Delian book-keeping, transposing the data featured on the stelae in the form of accounting tables. I take the opportunity in the tables that follow to correct a few mistakes as to the figures that had remained in Chankowski 2008a. They have no repercussions on the reasoning presented in that paper, which showed a steady increase in Apollo’s fortune.

    4 I believe this is the error in the method of reasoning in Migeotte 2014, pp. 649‑653.

    5 The hieropoioi relinquished keeping the accounts in talents, which they had inherited from the Athenian administration, shortly after the beginning of Independence, in the early years of the third century. Cf. Chankowski 2002, pp. 42‑43 and Nouveau Choix, pp. 18‑20. However, I continue to use amounts converted into talents here so that orders of magnitude can be more easily grasped.

    6 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 175‑177; Chankowski 2008b and 2014a; Bogaert 1968, pp. 126‑165 on these banks.

    7 Vial 1984, pp. 225‑227.

    8 Account 224 is the stele for the year 258 but contains the indication of the surplus outstanding of the previous year (perion).

    9 See Appendix 1 about this number and a probable carving error.

    10 This statement drawn up by the hieropoioi for 231 omits the revenues and expenditure for the year: a perion must have been recorded subsequently.

    11 The accounts for these years are very fragmentary. Account ID 364, A, l. 22 mentions the passing on of other funds to the hieropoioi of 208, the figures for which have not been conserved.

    12 As from 192, the accounts giving the inventory of the public fund and the sacred fund were drawn up ignoring periodic revenues, forming working capital the hieropoioi drew on for current spending. They merely added the surplus outstanding (perion) of this periodic account to the total of the balance.

    13 Vial 1984, p. 140; Bogaert 1968, pp. 131‑15 and 159. Migeotte 2014, pp. 624‑626.

    14 Vial 1988, p. 55 and n. 26.

    15 Bogaert 1968, p. 158.

    16 The calculations presented by Larsen 1938, p. 159, are based on a misunderstanding of the structure of the account.

    17 I depart here from the computations in Bogaert 1968, p. 159, which take it that the amount shown in the account of 219 should be doubled because it was authored by a single hieropoios. The record is admittedly for an incomplete financial period but there is no evidence as to how tasks were divided in that year. It is even unlikely that each hieropoios of the board collected a part of the interest payment.

    18 Migeotte 2013, p. 320 takes the view that according to the first account, IG XI 2, 135, l. 16‑22, 44,080 drachmas were in circulation (i.e. 7.3 talents) among private individuals at the beginning of Independence. But the size of the interest payments suggests these were arrears recouped by the hieropoioi at the beginning of the Delian administration. See Chapter 1 above on how tenaciously the Delians collected monies owed to Apollo by the city‑states.

    19 See Chapter 1 above, p. 44 on accounting methods.

    20 On the possible connection with the city-state’s striking of coinage in those years, see Chapter 4 below, pp. 199‑200.

    21 And so there is no need to surmise, as I did in Chankowski 2008a, pp. 336‑337, the appearance of older monies only accounted for when jar inventories began.

    22 See Chapter 3 below, p. 175.

    23 It is possible to restore the amount of the period from the account balance, to which it has plainly been added, as is the case for the account of 179; see Appendix 1 below, pp. 337‑338.

    24 See the conclusions by V. Mathé in a PhD thesis entitled “Le prix de la construction en Grèce aux IVe et IIIe siècles avant J.‑C. Etude sur les chantiers financés par les sanctuaires de Delphes, d’Epidaure et de Délos”, defended in Lyon on 27 November 2010 under the supervision of J.‑C. Moretti.

    25 See the tables presented by Fraisse and Moretti 2007, pp. 203‑206, which also show the arithmetic is wanting.

    26 Fraisse and Moretti 2007, p. 235; Moretti 2010.

    27 Burford 1969, p. 83.

    28 Feyel 2006, table 34 and graph 54, p. 481.

    29 See Chapter 1 above, p. 26‑27.

    30 Feyel 2006, p. 481. This conclusion is taken up by Migeotte 2014, pp. 641‑642: “The slow pace of construction work can be explained primarily by the necessity of spreading its financing.”

    31 See Chapter 5 below, p. 241.

    32 On this principle of the Athenian administration on Delos see Chankowski 2008a, pp. 319‑322; Chankowski 2005, p. 76.

    33 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 173‑178.

    34 See also the chronology of the inscriptions presented in Appendix 7.

    35 Etienne 1990, p. 111.

    36 Chankowski 2008a, pp. 317‑341.

    37 See Chapter 1 above, p. 54 about account ID 442 (year 179).

    38 Cf. Vial 1984, p. 211 and n. 85. This passage is understood differently by Sosin 2003, but see my observations in Bull. 2004, 373 and Chapter 3 below, pp. 163‑164.

    39 On the point that the hieropoioi added the perion directly to the account balance, see Chapter 1, above, p. 50. On the amounts of the annual profits of which records are conserved see table 8.

    40 See Chapter 1 above, p. 50.

    41 Fantasia 1989, pp. 51‑52; Sosin 2003, p. 76 and the tables on pp. 72‑74.

    42 See Chapter 1 above, pp. 59‑63.

    43 Chankowski 2008a, pl. IV. Cf. Tréheux 1985a: this fragment casts light on the use of the sign ∆ capping the M to write 100,000, which might explain that it was not noticed by F. Durrbach in account ID 444. Yet, the editor of the corpus had read, in the account of the year 230 (ID 317, l. 35), the same combination of figures: see Chapter 1 above, p. 53.

    44 Chankowski 2008a, p. 334.

    45 On this extraordinary commission, cf. Vial 1984, p. 245.

    46 Chankowski 2008a, p. 334 and pl. V.

    47 See Chapter 4 below, pp. 201‑202.

    48 Ibid. p. 199‑201.

    49 Ibid. p. 215.

    50 See Chapter 3 below, p. 146.

    51 See Chapter 3 below, p. 173.

    52 See Appendix 2.

    53 Cash holdings + entries with the 3,733 drachmas in bronze coin + perion of the year = spending + remainder + perion.

    54 Tréheux 1985a, p. 490.

    55 Chankowski 2008a, p. 335.

    56 See p. 82 above.

    57 Hamilton 2000, pp. 8‑11.

    58 The offerings listed in l. 20‑27 were probably made of silver because the weights give round numbers, unlike the gold offerings. They are listed in the pros argurion category because their weights were not standardized, unlike the vases making up the rhymoi.

    59 Lewis 1968; Marchetti 1987.

    60 This way of counting assets corresponds to an accounting practice known elsewhere: see the demonstration by P. Marchetti for Delphi (Marchetti 1987). Here it is easy to understand that the formulation is associated with the process of weighing offerings with respect to a reference weight of 2 talents per series.

    61 On the procedure for appointing these commissions, see Vial 1984, p. 186 and n. 137.

    62 Thirty‑one chrysoi in IG XI 2, 287, B, l. 67‑68, or 63 drachmas in ID 442, B, l. 5‑6.

    63 Tréheux 1959, chapter I: Unpublished inventory of the Temple of Apollo, pp. 11‑32. In 302 the hieropoioi simply drew up a list of new offerings that they passed on to their successors (IG XI 2, 145, l. 46‑82).

    64 But a little further on in the inventory of phialai, the hieropoioi report 61 phialai in the Temple of Apollo (l. 92).

    65 Cf. l. 83 about the crowns of the Temple of the Athenians, received and passed on without being weighed.

    66 Sixty‑one of which were in the Temple of Apollo (see n. 64) above.

    67 Translation and mistaken figures in Nouveau Choix, p. 138.

    68 See Chapter 3 below, pp. 127‑129 on the endowment funds.

    69 Chankowski 2014b, p. 43.

    70 See the quantitative estimates given by Callataÿ 1989.

    71 Bogaert 1968, pp. 388‑389.

    72 Shear 1978 (l. 50‑55); Bull. 1981, 230.

    73 Debord 1982, p. 419, n. 22; Marcellesi 2004, p. 5.

    74 On the existence of these cataloguing practices in Delphi, see Picard 2005, pp. 56‑58.

    75 Burford 1969, pp. 81‑85.

    76 Stanier 1953.

    77 Callataÿ 2006a, p. 49.

    78 Bousquet 1988, p. 160.

    79 Callataÿ 2006a, pp. 49‑50; Chankowski 2011b.

    80 For Cos, see the remarks on this topic by Parker and Obbink 2000 and 2001. For Delos, cf. Chankowski 2008b.

    81 See Chapter 3 below, p. 146: 8.5 talents in all; Chankowski 2002.

    82 Tréheux 1991.

    83 Bogaert 1968, pp. 281‑288.

    84 But F. de Callataÿ (Callataÿ 2006a) rightly points out, p. 38 and p. 49, that one should not systematically interpret the verb κατακόπτω as striking money from offerings that had been melted down.

    85 As expressed for example in the traditional wording of the Athenian and Delian inventories (cf. ID 104, l. 2‑3): τάδε παρέδοσαν σταθµῶι καὶ ἀριθµῶι , “here is what has been handed down weighed [i.e. for the metallic offerings allowing an equivalent in silver] and counted [i.e. for the various ex‑voto]”.

    86 Marcellesi 2004, pp. 5‑25 and more especially pp. 12‑13; Bresson 2000, pp. 213‑219. See also Debord 1982, p. 218 on the financial role of inventories of precious offerings of Didyma for evaluating the wealth of the city‑state.

    87 For example, Vial 1984, pp. 213‑214.

    88 For example Didyma 433 (a. 270/269), l. 16‑17.

    89 Callataÿ 2006a, p. 65: “If the proportion in money form seems tiny, it is because gold and silver were kept above all in the form of ingots or tableware and jewellery”; Chankowski 2011b.

    90 Polybius, XXX, 20. See Chapter 5 below, pp. 289‑293.

    91 See Chapter 4, p. 216; Perrin-Saminadayar 1994; Habicht 2006, pp. 273‑274 and p. 217, on the problem of the interpolations of Valerius Antias in Polybius’ text. See also Roussel 1916, pp. 2‑7 on this matter.

    92 Polybius, XXXII, 7; Habicht 2006, pp. 273‑274.

    93 Couilloud 1974, pp. 66‑67 and p. 128 n. 182; Baslez 1976.

    94 Baslez 1976, pp. 345‑346. But Echenike failed to secure a new loan: she repaid the capital and interest of a loan dating from the period of Independence. This Delian woman is not to be confused with Echenike daughter of Stesileos, who made a donation to the sanctuary (Vial 2008, s.v.).

    95 Baslez 1976, pp. 359‑360 and Vial 2008, s.v.

    96 Roussel 1916, pp. 149‑156 and p. 160.

    97 Chankowski 2008a, p. 341.

    98 See Chapter 4 below, pp. 182‑183.

    99 For the Asklepieion, for example, see the study by S. Aleshire (Aleshire 1989).

    100 Habicht 2006, p. 273. The Athenian administration began in the course of the year 167/6, as shown by the list of gymnasiarchs appointed to the island: Charneux and Tréheux 1997, pp. 153‑172.

    101 Merrit 1944, pp. 254‑257, n. 11.

    102 See Chapter 4 below, p. 183.

    103 There was no reason, as Roussel 1916, pp. 128‑129 assumed, for the office of hieropoioi to last under the Athenian Domination. The Athenian act simply copies the main points of the loan agreement mentioning the name of the Delian hieropoioi who had been responsible for it.

    104 ID 442, A, l. 102‑105 and 443, Ab, l. 10; ID 1115, 3.

    105 Habicht 2006, p. 274 and Walbank 1979, pp. 525‑526.

    106 See Chapter 4 below, pp. 182‑183 about the inventory of the earlier cash holdings.

    107 On the ways the Athenians managed farm rents, property rents and loans, see Roussel 1916, pp. 126‑179.

    108 On banks, see Chapter 4 below, pp. 230‑233.

    Parasites of the God

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    Chankowski, V. (2023). The sacred fortune: the Assets Statement. In Parasites of the God (1‑). École française d’Athènes. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efa.16206
    Chankowski, Véronique. « The Sacred Fortune: The Assets Statement ». In Parasites of the God. Athènes: École française d’Athènes, 2023. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efa.16206.
    Chankowski, Véronique. « The Sacred Fortune: The Assets Statement ». Parasites of the God, École française d’Athènes, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efa.16206.

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    Chankowski, V. (2023). Parasites of the God (1‑). École française d’Athènes. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efa.16192
    Chankowski, Véronique. Parasites of the God. Athènes: École française d’Athènes, 2023. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efa.16192.
    Chankowski, Véronique. Parasites of the God. École française d’Athènes, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.efa.16192.
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