Symmoria
（
συμμορία). A copartnership, or company.
1.
A term used at Athens to denote a company formed to raise the property tax instituted in
the year B.C. 428, to defray war expenses. (See
Eisphora.) Each of the ten
phylae appointed 120 of its
wealthier citizens, and these were divided into two symmoriae of sixty members each, so that
the number of members in the twenty symmoriae amounted to 1200 (called
συμμορίται). Out of each of the twenty symmoriae, fifteen of the wealthier
citizens were chosen, making 300 in all, whose duty it was to pay the taxes in advance on
behalf of the rest. This sum had to be refunded to them by the rest in conjunction with the
poorer taxable citizens, who were likewise apportioned off to various symmoriae, but without
becoming actual members of them, and were drawn upon by the real
symmoritae to an extent proportional to their means.
2.
After 358, this method was applied to the duty of equipping the war vessels, known as the
trierarchia. (See
Liturgia.) Each of the twenty symmoriae had a certain number of ships assigned to it;
the real
symmoritae (not including the poorer citizens) divided the
expense among themselves, and a varying number (at the most sixteen) of the richest had to
raise the money advanced for a ship. To manage its affairs, each symmoria had its
superintendents, curators, and assessors. The magisterial control was in both cases in the
hands of the
strategi, being connected with the military supplies.
Though, by arrangement, the raising of taxes and fitting out of the ships were accelerated,
yet it was open to abuse if the
symmoritae unduly burdened the poor by
an unjust distribution. In the disputes which thus arose, the decision rested with the
strategi. If any one thought that another ought to have been taxed instead
of himself, he could avail himself of
antidosis (q. v.). Even the
metoeci, who (like the citizens) had to pay war taxes, were divided into
symmoriae. Aristotle (
Athen. Pol. 61) describes one of the
strategi as individually responsible for superintending the symmoriae for building
triremes. See Thumser,
De Civium Atheniensium Muneribus (Vienna,
1880).
