Xenophon’s Poroi and the Political Economy of a Good Society
Posted: 21 Aug 2011
Date Written: August 20, 2011
Abstract
From 357 to 355 BC the Athenians fought a “social war” with their allies in the Aegean Sea. This left Athens financially strapped, and unable to capitalize on the collapse of either Spartan hegemony in the Peloponnesus or Theban control of the north. In response to this crisis, Xenophon wrote a short political tract, the Poroi - also known as or Ways and Means, or de Vectigalibus, On Revenues - with an economic plan to return Athens to a preeminent position among the Greeks. His radical proposals offered nothing less than a repudiation of the power politics by which the first and second Athenian empires had been achieved, and a turn to benevolent economic growth based on rewards and mutual benefits for foreign Greeks as well as Athenians. He lays out, in other words, a proposal for a good society that challenged many of the norms active in Athens.
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