160 PRICES IN GREECE. CHAP. vi. 



one century more to five times as much as at the 

 first. 



In very remote ages wars were undertaken 

 chiefly for the sake of plunder. Individuals 

 were engaged, too, perhaps, partly from a clanish 

 spirit, and partly from the authority of elders or 

 superiors. Under those circumstances military 

 pay was unknown. The Athenians first paid 

 their troops in the time of Pericles, about 450 

 years before our era l . From Athens the prac- 

 tice was extended to the other Grecian states, 

 and within one hundred years was adopted by 

 the whole of them. 



At first, the pay of the foot-soldiers was two 

 oboli a day 2 , or a little more than twopence half- 

 penny, but within less than two centuries, when 

 the mines of Laurion had been rendered more 

 productive, we find the pay of the same descrip- 

 tion of troops had advanced to double that sum, 

 or four oboli 3 . At the earlier period the sol- 

 diers were taken from a better class of inhabit- 

 ants than in the later, when a description of 

 persons had been admitted into the army who 

 had before been excluded. At the first period 

 the soldiers must have been considered a supe- 

 rior class to the labourers in the mines, who 

 were paid but an obolus a day. It is not im- 

 probable that from the inferior relative rank of 



1 Ulpianus in Orat. de Syntaxi. ' 2 Demost. Philipp. 1. 

 3 Thucydides, lib. iii. 



