advantageous position (Plb. 4.38.1–8). The strong maritime focus of
Polybius’account, as well as its nice political perspectives, would suggest
that he was drawing directly on a Rhodian source.^123
The historian, who is here referring to the situation some one hundred
years later,c. 220 bc, goes on to say that if the Byzantines had allied
themselves in the past with the Gauls, or, at the present time, with the
Thracians, then they (the Byzantines) would not be, as indeed they were,
the benefactors of all the Greeks. Polybius was being economical with the
truth. The sort of control created by the Byzantines over the Straits was a
benefit to merchants but at significant cost. The market-based economy
of the import and export trade in grain and other commodities through
the Straits represents only one aspect of the investment costs for mer-
chants and ships’captains, who were also obliged to pay the‘protection’
costs of the predatory arm of this exchange process, which operated in
strict synergy with the commercial one.^124
The origins of the predatory component in these relationships lie in
the measures set up by Athenian officials in the aftermath of the Greco-
Persian Wars, in order to secure the Straits for the Greek allies. The
Byzantines were among the‘big spenders’amongst Athens’allies. The
tribute that they paid to the Athenians on behalf of the League in thefifth
centurybcvaried, but it was never less than 15T (the amount paid in
450/49bc), whilst in 430bcthis tipped 21T. If we add to this the sum
paid to the Athenians for tolls through the Hellespont, collected by local
tax-farmers, then this could have raised the overall amount paid to
Athens up to between 41T and 50T.^125 When such tolls came into
existence is obscure. The evidence for tolls rests on the ten per cent
tax, thedekate,referred to in the so-calledfirst Kallias decree (IG I^3 52A
=MLGHI58A.7, variously dated to 434/3 or 431bc), and in any case
earlier than the similarly-named tax in Xenophon’sHellenika.^126 Xeno-
phon describes how Alkibiades sailed to Chrysopolis in 410/9bc, then a
locality in the control of Kalchedon, on the coast opposite Byzantion
(identified with modern Üsküdar), fortified it, and set up a toll station
(dekateuterion). Gabrielsen argues, persuasively, that there was an earlier
toll, operating in a similar way, originally located at Byzantion. But when
the city fell into Spartan hands, in 411bc, the Athenians lost control of
their toll-raising powers until the city was regained as an Athenian
(^123) WillHistoire Politique II (^2) , 47.
(^124) Gabrielsen 2007, 297.
(^125) Loukopoulou andŁajtar 2004, 916, collect the evidence; Gabrielsen 2007, 296, with
detailed discussion.
(^126) Xen.Hell. 1.1.22 (for 410/9bc); cf. Diod. 13.64.2–3; Polyb. 4.44. 3–4.
242 Regionalism and regional economies