capital all
direct taxation was levied. If the state required 1 percent of direct
tax, the poorest Pentacosiomedimnus would pay (upon 6,000 drachmas) 60
drachmas; the poorest Hippeus would pay (upon 3,000 drachmas) 30; the
poorest Zeugite would pay (upon 1,000 drachmas) 10 drachmas. And thus
this mode of assessment would operate like a _graduated_ income-tax,
looking at it in reference to the three different classes--but as an
_equal_ income-tax, looking at it in reference to the different
individuals comprised in one and the same class.

All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less than two
hundred medimni or drachmas were placed in the fourth class, and they
must have constituted the large majority of the community. They were not
liable to any direct taxation, and perhaps were not at first even
entered upon the taxable schedule, more especially as we do not know
that any taxes were actually levied upon this schedule during the
Solonian times. It is said that they were all called Thetes, but this
appellation is not well sustained, and cannot be admitted: the fourth
compartment in the descending scale was indeed termed the Thetic census,
because it contained all the Thetes, and because most of its members
were of that humble description; but it is not conceivable that a
proprietor whose land yielded to him a clear annual return of 100, 120,
140, or 180 drachmas, could ever have been designated by that name.

Such were the divisions in the political scale established by Solon,
called by Aristotle a _timocracy_, in which the rights, honors,
functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured out according
to the assessed property of each. The highest honors of the state--that
is, the places of the nine archons annually chosen, as well as those in
the senate of Areopagus, into which the past archons always entered
(perhaps also the posts of Prytanes of the Naukrari) were reserved for
the first class: the poor Eupatrids became ineligible, while rich men,
not Eupatrids, were admitted. Other posts of inferior distinction were
filled by the second and third classes, who were, moreover, bound to
military service--the one on horseback, the other as heavy-armed
soldiers on foot. Moreover, the _liturgies_ of the state, as they were
called--unpaid functions such as the trierarchy, choregy, gymnasiarchy,
etc., which entailed expense and trouble on the holder of them--were
distributed in some way or other betwe