Flavio Santini, University of California, Berkeley
This paper aims to revisit the meaning and purpose of the Athenian Standards decree (IG I3 1453; Osborne-Rhodes, GHI 155). It claims that the new orthodox interpretations privileging the economic and financial rationale of the statute—either in connection to the reorganization of the tribute and its collection in the mid-420s (Mattingly 1996; Papazarkadas 2009, 72-3; Matthaiou 2010, 10-1; Hatzopoulos 2014) or to the later imposition on the allies of a 5-percent tax on imports and exports (Kallet 2001, 214-25; Kroll 2009, 201-3; Kallet-Kroll 2020, 104-22)—are only partially satisfactory. By contrast, this paper advocates for a more nuanced interpretative picture, in which the political and communicative dimensions of the decree are brought to the foreground.
To do so, I first probe into overlooked evidence that can support the idea that practices of standardization in Athens did not exclusively pertain to economy and finance. In this regard, the almost contemporary alliance between Athens, Argos, Elis and Mantinea and their allies (IG I3 83; Osborne-Rhodes, GHI 165) is a case in point. The treaty imposed to all the contracting parties—that is, even to the members of the Delian League—the use of Aeginetan coinage for the subsistence grant given to support troops in case of military attack (ll. 20-24). It shows that, when needed, Athens was able to impose different standards systems to its various allies based on political and ideological considerations.
As a second step, I look outside the Athenian context. Adopting a comparative perspective, I contend that evidence drawn from the short-lived Chinese Qin empire (221-206 bce), together with the use of concepts such as “common knowledge” and “coordination problem” (Chwe 2001; Ober 2008), further illuminate the political nature of the Standards decree. The capillary epigraphic diffusion of the decree among the allies and the extreme attention paid to the transfer of information (Osborne-Rhodes, GHI 154, §§ 1-2, 6-8) can be compared with the wide geographical distribution of numerous artifacts (clay vessels, bronze plaques, weights) bearing the text of the Qin imperial edict that publicized the reform, as well as the insistence on standardization attested in numerous inscriptions propagating the deeds of the emperors (the so-called ‘stele inscriptions:’ Kern 2000). Building on the argument that the intensity through which the Qin emperors spread this message across their newly unified territory aimed at to the creation of “common knowledge” of the central power (Sanft 2014, esp. 57-76), I make a similar claim in the case of Athens. The Athenian Standards decree represents the central authority’s attempt to cement a highly fragmented empire in a delicate moment, either during the last stages of the Archidamian war or just before the Sicilian expedition—a way to resolve the “coordination problem” and to reinforce cooperation among its members. Finally, the lack of any practical or commercial impact resulting from the unification of measures and weights in Qin territory (Pines et al. 2014, 48-52), as well as local variations in the production of weights (Li 2017), might help to explain the almost total absence of evidence for the effective implementation of the decree and to appreciate the quality of allied agency vis-à-vis Athens.