The Finances of the Alliance (Delian League)
The Athenian representatives came to dominate this erstwhile democracy, however, as a
result of the special arrangements made to finance the alliance's naval operations.
Aristides set the different levels of payments1 the various member states were to pay each year, based on their
size and prosperity. The Greek word describing the payments was
phoros
2, literally “that which is brought.” Modern historians
refer to the payments as “tribute,” but the translation
“dues” might come closer to the official terminology of the
alliance, so long as it is remembered that these dues were compulsory and permanent.
For their tribute payments,
larger member states were assessed the
responsibility of supplying entire warships3 complete with crews and pay; smaller states could share the
cost of a ship, or simply contribute cash which would be put together with others'
payments to pay for ships and crews. Over time, more and more of the members of the
alliance chose to pay their dues in cash rather than go to the trouble of furnishing
warships. The alliance's
funds were kept on the centrally-located island of
Delos4, in the group of islands in the Aegean Sea called the
Cyclades5, where they were placed under the guardianship of the god Apollo, to whom the
whole island of Delos was sacred. Historians today refer to the alliance as the Delian
League because its treasury was originally located on Delos.
The Warships of the Delian League
The warship of the time was a narrow vessel built for speed called a
trireme6（“triple-banks-of-oars ship”), a name
derived from its having three tiers of oarsmen on each side for propulsion in
battle. One hundred and eighty rowers were needed to propel a trireme, which fought
mainly by ramming enemy ships with a metal-clad ram attached to the bow and thus
sinking them bypuncturing their hulls below the water line. Triremes also carried a
complement of about twenty officers and marines; the marines, armed as infantry,
could board enemy ships. Effective battle tactics in triremes required extensive
training and physical conditioning of the crews.
Most member states of the
Delian League preferred to pay their annual dues in cash instead of furnishing
triremes7 because
it was beyond their capacities to build ships as specialized as triremes and to
train crews in the intricate teamwork required to work triple banks of oars in
battle maneuvers. Athens was far richer and more populous than most of its allies in
the Delian League, and it not only had the shipyards and craftsmen to build triremes
in numbers but also a large pool of poorer men eager to earn pay as rowers.
Therefore, Athens built and manned most of the alliance's triremes, using the dues
of allies to supplement its own contribution.
