page_title: Liturgy (ancient Greece)
section_title: Taking on a liturgy: the financial burden
hierarchical_section_title: Liturgy (ancient Greece) / Cost and operation / Taking on a liturgy: the financial burden
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Fragment d'un bas-relief représentant une trière athénienne avec 9 rameurs. Deux autres fragments existent de ce relief au Musée national et dans les apothèques. Selon la reconstruction de L. Beschi, la composition originale représentait une grande trière avec ses 25 rameurs, le navigateur et le commandant. Un jeune homme à droite représente probablement le héros Paralos, inventeur de la navigation.
context_page_description: The liturgy was in ancient Greece a public service established by the city-state whereby its richest members, more or less voluntarily, financed the State with their personal wealth. It took its legitimacy from the idea that "personal wealth is possessed only through delegation from the city". The liturgical system dates back to the early days of Athenian democracy, but gradually fell into disuse by the end of the 4th century BC, eclipsed by the development of Euergetism in the Hellenistic period. However a similar system was in force during the Roman empire, see Liturgy#Etymology.
context_section_description: The cost of a liturgy varied greatly according to its nature and prestige. The least expensive was the eutaxia (εὐταξία), known by a single mention, which cost only 50 drachmas; its nature is unknown - it may be related to the Amphiareia Games at Oropos and probably did not last a long time. A dithyrambic chorus at the Panathenaea cost only 300 drachmas. However, a choregia in the Dionysia could  cost up to 3000 drachmas, or, "counting the consecration of the tripod, 5000 drachmas".
  The trierarchy was among the more expensive liturgies,  as determined by the generosity of an individual trierarch, the duration of the military campaign and the initial condition of the vessel entrusted to him. The trierarchy cost a minimum of 2,000–3,000 drachmas, and ranged as high as 4,000 to 6,000. A litigant championed by Lysias claimed that in his seven years as trierarch he spent six talents, and Demosthenes said that "by paying a talent, trierarchs bore the expenses of the trierarchy". The great expense of these liturgies explains the appearance of the syntrierarchy, which placed the financial burden on two individuals, and Periander's establishment in 357 of 20 symmoriai composed of 60 taxpayers each. This move expanded the group responsible for the trierarchy from 300 to 1200 individuals, and sought to make the expense of the trierarchy less onerous. Such expansion, however (which still represents only 2.5% of the total male population of free Athenians), was even more necessary with the reform of the eisphora in 378–377. A new liturgy, the proeisphora,  made the wealthiest Athenians responsible for advancing the sum owed by the  tax group (symmoriai) to which they belonged.  It was then their responsibility to seek reimbursement from the  other members of the symmoria, which was not always forthcoming.
  Even for the richest Athenians, the liturgy represented a significant expense. Assuming a yield of 8% from  the land they held, the poorest liturgists, who had a net worth of ten talents (as Demosthenes did in 360 /59), were forced to devote the greater part of a year's revenue to the trierarchy.  Therefore, they were often forced to borrow,  to pay for liturgies. In a speech of Lysias, a litigant says, "my father in the whole course of his life, has spent more on the city than for himself and his family - twice what we have now". By comparison, the liturgy that was the least expensive, the choregia of the Panathenaia, represents almost a year's salary of a skilled worker in the 5th century B.C. The most expensive cost more than three times  the income of the hoplite class, that is to say the wealth threshold at which one was required to serve as an Athenian soldier.
caption: The arming of a trireme, the most expensive of the liturgies (the Lenormant relief, c. 410–400 BC., Acropolis Museum, Athens)
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