and so in the same proportion for any income above 300 and below 500.  Again, in the third class, or below 300, the proportion is a second time altered—­the Zeugite possessing exactly 200 drachmas of income was rated upon a still lower calculation, at 1,000 drachmas, or a sum equal to five times his income; and all incomes of this class (between 200 and 300 drachmas) would in like manner be multiplied by five in order to obtain the amount of ratable capital.  Upon these respective sums of schedule capital all direct taxation was levied.  If the state required 1 percent of direct tax, the poorest Pentacosiomedimnus would pay (upon 6,000 drachmas) 60 drachmas; the poorest Hippeus would pay (upon 3,000 drachmas) 30; the poorest Zeugite would pay (upon 1,000 drachmas) 10 drachmas.  And thus this mode of assessment would operate like a graduated income-tax, looking at it in reference to the three different classes—­but as an equal income-tax, looking at it in reference to the different individuals comprised in one and the same class.

All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less than two hundred medimni or drachmas were placed in the fourth class, and they must have constituted the large majority of the community.  They were not liable to any direct taxation, and perhaps were not at first even entered upon the taxable schedule, more especially as we do not know that any taxes were actually levied upon this schedule during the Solonian times.  It is said that they were all called Thetes, but this appellation is not well sustained, and cannot be admitted:  the fourth compartment in the descending scale was indeed termed the Thetic census, because it contained all the Thetes, and because most of its members were of that humble description; but it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land yielded to him a clear annual return of 100, 120, 140, or 180 drachmas, could ever have been designated by that name.

Such were the divisions in the political scale established by Solon, called by Aristotle a timocracy, in which the rights, honors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured out according to the assessed property of each.  The highest honors of the state—­that is, the places of the nine archons annually chosen, as well as those in the senate of Areopagus, into which the past archons always entered (perhaps also the posts of Prytanes of the Naukrari) were reserved for the first class:  the poor Eupatrids became ineligible, while rich men, not Eupatrids, were admitted.  Other posts of inferior distinction were filled by the second and third classes, who were, moreover, bound to military service—­the one on horseback, the other as heavy-armed soldiers on foot.  Moreover, the liturgies of the state, as they were called—­unpaid functions such as the trierarchy, choregy, gymnasiarchy, etc., which entailed expense and trouble on the holder of them—­were distributed in some way or other