La politica del grano pubblico nelle città greche. Alcune riflessioni a partire dalla legge di Agirrio.

The beautiful “Athenian Grain-Tax Law of 374/3 BC” (the so called ‘Agyrrhios' Law’, published by R. S. Stroud in Hesperia Supplement 19, 1998) is a good starting-point for a new investigation in the fascinating theme of the administration of public stocks of grain (sitos demosios) in Greek poleis of the Classical and Hellenistic period. A thorough analysis of the available evidence shows that, if we leave out poleis included in the ‘satrapic’ or ‘royal’ economies, taxes in kind always played a very limited role in the formation of these stocks. The exceptions are a few Greek cities where, since the Archaic age, citizenship was connected to the participation in ‘common messes’ (fed by tributes of peasants of servile status) and a few sanctuaries, mainly in the colonial world but also at Eleusis and Samos, which collected rents or taxes in kind (and sometimes sold grain at a fixed price). In Greek poleis the common way of getting stocks of public grain, rapidly spreading in the Hellenistic world since the age of Alexander the Great, was the purchase of cereals through public interest-bearing funds secured by private and royal liberalities, but sometimes also by civic finances. Normally the public grain was sold at a price fixed by the people (which could be below the market price), only rarely freely distributed (as it happens in 3rd century Samos and probably in late Hellenistic Paros). Though the sums of money are not very high in the available (almost only inscriptional) evidence, these funds were in theory expansible and often administered according to general laws concerning the sitos demosios. The public grain was undoubtedly a small percentage of the total consumption of cereals, but it could represent a welcome integration of the food supply deriving from the normal commercial circuits. This holds good above all for the urban component of the population and especially if the public grain was offered for sale (as attested by the Agyrrhios' Law itself and other Hellenistic documents) in the most critical season of year, early spring, in order to fill the gap of supply before the harvesting time and to damp the ensuing increases of prices on the free market of cereals. Moreover the awareness of the social aims of this institution, more rationally organized than it is currently thought, clearly comes out from the phraseology of some of the documents. In conclusion, the system described by the Agyrrhios' Law is relatively exceptional in the Greek world as far as it presupposes a taxation in kind aimed at the creation of a stock of grain at community's disposal (l. 6: en toi koinoi). This peculiarity is probably due to the huge grain requirements of Athens and to the uniqueness of the kleruchic Athenian system in the islands of Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, provided (especially the former two) with extensive good corn-lands and perhaps accustomed to a form of direct taxation which is not the rule in the fiscal systems of most Greek poleis (from this point of view the system envisaged in the law somehow anticipates later taxation systems of the Hellenistic kingdoms and of the Roman provinces). At the same time, the biography of the Athenian Agyrrhios, described both as a man devoted to the popular interests and a financial expert, makes of him the most suitable character for the devising of a legislative measure in which the social aims were skilfully linked up with the financial needs of Athens in a difficult stage of her 4th century history.