IGII2 2492 Lease of public land by the deme Aixone, 345/4 BC

Lease of public land by the deme Aixone, 345/4 BC

IG II² 2492 Date: 345/4 BC

On the following terms the Aixoneans have leased the Phelleïs^[1] to Autokles son of Auteas and to Auteas son of Autokles for forty years, for one hundred and fifty-two drachmas each year, on condition that they undertake (5) plantings and use it in whatever other way they wish. They shall pay the rent in the month of Hekatombaion, and if they do not pay it, the Aixoneans shall have right of seizure (enechurasian) both of the crops from the property (chōriou) and of all the other property of the one who does not pay. (10) The Aixoneans shall not be permitted to sell or lease it to anyone else, until the forty years have expired. If enemy troops prevent access or destroy anything, the Aixoneans shall have half of what is produced on the property.^[2] When the forty years (15)have expired, the lessees shall hand over half of the land uncultivated (cherron), and such trees as there are on the property. The Aixoneans shall send in a vinedresser (ampelourgon) for the last five years.^[3] The term of the lease begins with the archonship of Euboulos (345/4) for the cereals (Dēmētriou karpou), and with the successor of Euboulos (20) for the woody products (xulinou);^[4] and having inscribed the lease on stone stelai, the treasurers in the demarchy of Demosthenes shall stand one in the sanctuary of Hebe, inside, and the other in the hall (leschei), and boundary markers on the property no less than three feet high, two on each side;^[5] and if any (25)property-based tax (eisphora) is levied on the property for the city, the Aixoneans shall pay it, and if the lessees pay it, it shall be counted towards their rent.^[6] No one shall be permitted to take any earth dug on the property away from the property itself. If anyone makes or puts to the vote a proposal contrary to this (30)agreement (sunthēkas) before the forty years have expired, he shall be liable to the lessees to a legal action for damage (blabēs). Eteokles son of Skaon of Aixone proposed: whereas the lessees of the Phelleïs, Autokles and Auteas, have agreed to cut back (ekkopsai) the olive trees for the Aixoneans, to choose men who, (35) together wih the demarch and the treasurers and the lessee will sell the olive trees to the highest bidder, and having calculated the interest (tokon) on the money thus obtained at the rate of one drachma (per mina per month),^[7] to subtract half of it from the rent and inscribe on the stelai that the rent is that much less. (40) The Aixoneans are to receive the interest (tokon) on the money from the sale of the olive trees. The buyer is to cut back the olive trees when Anthias^[8] has collected the harvest (karpon) in the archonship following that of Archias (346/5), before the ploughing (aroto), and leave stumps (mukētas) of no less than a palm high in the pits (perichutrismasin), (45) so that the olive trees become as fine and big as possible in these (forty) years. These men were chosen to sell the olive trees: Eteokles, Nauson, Hagnotheos.^[9]

References:

IG II² 2492 (Translated text) (PHI)

Syll.³ 966

Pernin, Baux ruraux 18

Ackermann, Aixone, 186-216 no. 7

ELGIN 174

Russo, Ripartizioni, D9

Translation by: Stephen Lambert, Feyo Schuddeboom

Images: Museum of Antiquities, Leiden - (1)

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Lease

Original location: Aixone (sanctuary of Hebe)

Findspot: Pirnari (= Aixone), excavations in area of church of Agios Nikolaos (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden RO I A 8)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] On the deme Aixone and its inscriptions see Ackermann no. 1, with notes. This is one of a number of extant inscriptions which document leases, by the city, demes and other public bodies. Most, like this one, relate to agricultural land. See IG I³ 84, with notes; and for another example, IG II² 2498, in which the deme Piraeus provides for the lease of its sacred estates. Such inscriptions are a manifestation of the culture of public accountability that characterised Classical Athens; in contrast there are no inscribed records of private leases, though these must in fact have been much more numerous. The leasing of land is one of the two main ways that public bodies made their capital productive, the other being loans (cf. IG I³ 258, with notes). Lessees and borrowers were typically, as in this case, members of the group making the lease or loan. The income was used for common purposes, above all sacrifices.

The inscription falls into two parts: the first (1-31) contains the principal provisions of the lease; the second (31-47) supplementary arrangements (a "rider"), presented as a proposal brought forward in a deme meeting, relating to the cutting back of the olive trees on the property. Such "riders" are quite common in Assembly decrees at this period, but are unusual in deme decrees (for an implied example in another decree of Aixone see IG II² 1199). It is especially striking here where the first part of the lease is not presented as a decree proposed by a named individual. However, though supplementary in character, the inscribed text of ll. 31-47 was formulated before the text of 1-31 was finalised, as we can see from the fact that the archon of 345/4 BC is named as Euboulos in l. 19, but his name does not seem to have been known when ll. 42-43 were drafted ("archon after Archias"), and from the fact that the requirement to adjust the rent downwards, stipulated in l. 39, is reflected in the amount of the rent specified in ll. 3-4 (152 dr.). As D. Behrend, Attische Pachturkunden, 1970, 80-83 no. 25, noted, signs of an earlier version of ll. 1-31 are apparent in the ungrammatical use of singular in phyteuonta (for plural phyteuontas, 4-5) and perhaps also apodidontos ("the one who does not pay", 9). In his view, these formulations originated in the regulation (syngraphē) in which the deme stipulated the terms of the lease in general terms, envisaging a singular tenant, before the lease contract (synthēkē) was concluded with two specific lessees.

As usual in deme leases, we are not told the size of the property, nor its precise location. In a relatively small community such information would have been common knowledge. Like some other properties that were the subject of public leases, this one has a name, Phelleïs, which evokes an uneven, rocky (φελλεύς) place (compare the names of the properties leased by Piraeus, IG II² 2498, not all of them flattering). This is consistent with the focus of the lease on olives, which tolerate poor soil, though the lease also implies that vines and cereals, which require better conditions, were also grown on the property, and perhaps other plants (the term used for "plantings", phyteuontas, ll. 4-5, would normally imply woody plants, e.g. fruit trees and vines, rather than cereals). The prominence of olives in the cultivation scheme is also apparent in the unusually long term of the lease, 40 years, which was apparently designed to allow time for the maturation and subsequent exploitation of the fresh growth of the olive trees, which were to be cut back to their stumps under the provisions of ll. 31-47. The detail that this was to take place "before the ploughing" (43) may suggest that cereals were planted in the interstices between the olive trees.

The tenants (2) are a father-and-son pair, an arrangement doubtless designed to accommodate the long term of the lease. The son, Auteas, is also attested as choregos in the deme in 340/339 (?) BC, Ackermann no. 4, ll. 2-3, implying a family of means. [2] I.e. in place of the rent that would normally be payable. This type of clause making special provisions in case the property is impacted by war occurs in some other Attic leases, cf. Ackermann, 207. [3] "Half the land uncultivated": this apparently implies biennial fallow, a common feature of Attic leases, but unusual outside Attica (attested only in a lease from Amorgos). "Such trees as there are on the property": this is sometimes interpreted as implying that the trees on the property at the beginning of the lease should not be removed at or before the end of it, but this does not seem very realistic over such a long lease term in which trees could be expected to die off and need replacing. Note also that the tenants are explicitly envisaged as carrying out new plantings (4-5). It should perhaps, therefore, be understood as simply preventing the tenants from removing trees from the property at the end of the lease term.

Vine-dresser: this provision is not found in any other lease. Ackermann, 205-6, persuasively interprets it not, as some previous scholars had thought, as implying an obligation to plant new vines, but as protecting the deme's interest in the property and its future letting potential by ensuring that the existing vines are in good order at the end of the lease term. [4] This staggered start to the lease is also an unusual feature, but is comprehensible as permitting the current tenant to collect the harvest of "his" fruit, vines and olives, which will have taken place later in the season than the cereal harvest. The precise start-date for the lease is not specified, but the use of archon dates might imply that it started at the beginning of the Attic year, when the new archon entered office, in Hekatombaion (ca. July), i.e. after the cereal harvest, but before the harvest of fruit, vines and olives. Note that the rental payments are due in that month also (6-7), and are not staggered across the year, as in some other leases. [5] Since this inscription was found together with an honorific decree which was set up in the sanctuary of Hebe, IG II² 1199, it was most likely the copy set up in that sanctuary. The lease has no obvious connection with Hebe or its sanctuary, so we may perhaps infer that it was the principal sanctuary of this deme. There is an implicit link in that the cult would most likely have been funded from the revenue from the lease (and note the prominent role later played in the cult of Hebe by the son of one of the 3-man commission charged with selling the olive-wood, below n. 9). The specification that the inscription was to be "inside" the sanctuary is unusual. Normally where inscriptions are to be set up in sanctuaries, it is unclear whether they are to be inside or outside. The rationale for the specification in this case is obscure. A leschē is a secular building typically used for social gatherings, as it were a "village hall". It is very unusual as a location for erecting inscriptions. It might have been in the deme (Ackermann, 213-4, suggests in the deme agora; one wonders if it might rather have been on the property being leased), or possibly in the city (compare the posting of notices "at whatever place the Dekeleans frequent in the city", at RO 5, ll. 61-64; and note that at least some deme meetings, e.g. Halimous in Demosthenes 57, took place in the city). Sometimes inscriptions relating to landed property were set up on the property in question, e.g. IG I³ 84, IG II² 1180; but in this case inscribed stone markers, horoi are to be set up on it, also a common provision. It is interesting that the horoi seem to be an innovation, and one wonders what the arrangements were under the previous lease. One possibility is that the need for such horoi was generated by increasingly intensive cultivation of the land in this deme at this period (cf. the discussion of other evidence for this, including terracing on the slopes of Hymettos apparently dating to this period, by Ackermann, chapter 3). [6] Public land was not exempt from the periodic levy of the tax based on property holdings, the eisphora, and it was therefore necessary in leases to specify whether the landlord or the tenant was liable. Cf. for the deme Piraeus, IG II² 2498, ll. 7-8. [7] The olive trees on this property had clearly become unproductive, perhaps with age (according to Theophrastos, HP 4.13.4-5, the productivity of an olive tree declines after about 200 years). The grubbing up of olive trees was strictly regulated in Attica (see Dem. 43.71; some olives were "sacred" and subject to special protection, Lysias 7, cf. Ackermann, 209); but in this case the olives are not to be grubbed up, but radically cut back or pruned to encourage new growth (the procedure is described by Theophrastos, HP 2.7.2-3). The wood thus obtained was clearly of considerable value, enough to warrant rather complicated measures for profiting from it. The inscription specifies what is to happen with the interest on the sum obtained from this sale, viz. it is to be credited to the deme, but half of it is to be deducted from the rent paid by the lessee. The interest rate is specified as 1% of the sum obtained per month, i.e. 12% per annum. What is not stated, but is apparently implied, is that the proceeds of the wood sale are to be loaned out by the deme, most likely (though that is not stated) at an interest rate of 12% per annum. Such loans are very well attested in the demes (cf. IG I³ 258, with notes). [8] Anthias is apparently the current tenant. The Greek in l. 44 actually states that the stumps are to be "no less than a talent" (talantiaious), but since specifying the weight of an olive stump makes no sense in this context, it has been universally assumed that this is a mistake, and that what should have been inscribed is "no less than a palm high" (palastiaious). The word translated "pits", perichytrismata, is attested only here. Its etymology suggests ceramic pots or ditches at the base of the tree lined with ceramic, i.e. to retain water, but exactly what arrangements are implied by the term is obscure. "... so that the olive trees become as fine and big as possible in these (forty) years": apparently it would take 15 years for the trees to become productive again following this procedure and the full forty years term of the tenancy to reach peak productivity (Ackermann, 213). [9] Eteokles is the instigator of the arrangements for cutting back the olives (31-32); [Skaon?] son of Eteokles, public arbitrator in IG II³ 4, 24, l. 10, was perhaps his father. Nauson (a rare name) was the father of Anticharmos who is attested playing a prominent role in the cult of Hebe by IG II² 1199. Hagnotheos is not otherwise identifiable. [SDL]

Added: 19 Jul 2022
Updated: 5 Dec 2023
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