160
PRICES IN GREECE.
CHAP. VI.
one century more to five times as much as at thefirst.
In very remote ages wars were undertakenchiefly for the sake of plunder. Individualswere engaged, too, perhaps, partly from a clanishspirit, and partly from the authority of elders orsuperiors. Under those circumstances militarypay was unknown. The Athenians first paidtheir troops in the time of Pericles , about 450years before our era 1 . From Athens the prac-tice was extended to the other Grecian states,and within one hundred years was adopted bythe whole of them.
At first, the pay of the foot-soldiers was twooboli a day 2 , or a little more than twopence half-penny, but within less than two centuries, whenthe mines of Laurion had been rendered moreproductive, 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 ofpersons had been admitted into the army whohad before been excluded. At the first periodthe soldiers must have been considered a supe-rior class to the labourers in the mines, whowere 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-