The privileges of the rich: ancient Athens and now

I am a bit surprised that some Tory with a classical background has not sprung to David Cameron's defence, in his "wealthgate" troubles, with the obvious parallel from classical Athens. For it seems that, however radical the Athenian democracy may have been in the fifth century BCE (most major offices of state being chosen by lot), at least one position was always reserved for the wealthiest group of citizens -- the 'pentakosiomedimnoi', or the people whose land produced 500 measures of wet and/or dry goods. That was the office of "state treasurer".

There are all kinds of caveats here. By the fifth century BC that old category of 500-measure-men may not have meant much, and the state treasurers may not have had the power they once did. But the basic reason, as I was taught it, was that the Athenians assumed that it was better to entrust the highest state finances to the rich (who had less incentive to be on the fiddle) than to the poor.

We might be more cynical than the Athenians, who do not seem to have wondered whether some of the rich had been on the fiddle already (that was why they were rich?). But I was still half expecting some Boris-look-alike to jump up with this fifth century parallel in defence of those accounts.

As it is, we have been looking at an embarrassing and at times puzzling joust of special pleading on all sides. To take the side of the rich ministers, for once, from what we have seen so far, there is nothing illegal going on. Tax avoidance (legal) is not tax evasion (illegal), and you might say that only a mug does not take legal and prudent steps to minimise his or her tax liability. (Why give your kids gifts now that become liable to inheritance tax, when giving then a few years earlier would have made then exempt?)

But that isn't really why people have got angry, even if it has partly focussed rather imprecisely on that issue. It's surely because, legal or not, the gift of a couple of hundred thousand quid in a single year from mum to son (or a fee of a quarter of a million a year for a newspaper column) undermines the "we're all in it together" rhetoric of austerity or the sense that we are all taking the hit. We're not. If it would take you 10 years to earn that ��200k gift, you can't help seeing it as an 'us and them' issue.

The radically democratic Athenians might have had a residual respect for the probity of the rich. But we, for good reasons, don't.