34^	THE     PEOPLE    AND     THE    STATE	XIII
section did not sit.^1 Even men suffering from fever or illness
went to court, though they were certainly not really fit to act^2
We have referred to the importance of the meals which fol-
lowed public sacrifices; meat was scarce and expensive, so the
meat of the victims was much in demand.^3 Even the public
meals in the prytaneion, formerly a rarely awarded honour,
came to have an economic value which many a man made the
most of, and might even sell or buy; the same is said of the
proedria, though in both cases there may be some comic
exaggeration/ Anyhow, times had changed since the days
when nobody made money from public service and everybody
brought his modest portion of food and drink with him.^6
Now the citizens lived on the public treasure which lay in
Athena's temple, and from which the various fees were paid;
public money served private gain.^6 The thing to do was not
to give but to take, a maxim which in the years after 400 could
even be regarded as traditional and 'deriving from our fathers'.^7
It remains, however, doubtful (we have mentioned this before
and shall mention it again) how many of the citizens were, in
fact, guilty of such practices, though it is clear that, whatever
their number, many of those who were unwilling to work for
their living were no longer the old easy-going type of citizens,
but men whose chief aim was to make money
The democracy, as we have seen, sometimes paid out official
fees which were on a higher scale than the ordinary payments >
but in many cases legal and illegal methods were hard to dis-
tinguish Thus ambassadors received substantial travelling
allowances, and might be in no hurry to get home, moreover
they might be bribed by the Persian king.^8 Certain offices,
high or low, afforded ample opportunity for private profit —
for instance, the post of inspector (episkopos) of the allies, or
that of contractor for providing supplies for the troops, or that
of a customs official.^9 Competition for a lucrative office could
^1Pln66f	^2W8i3	^3Cf K4io, 655^, W 654, above, p *$%{
^4 K 28o£F» 575f. — An early example is an epigram against Xanthippos found
on an ostrakon and convincingly explained by O. Broneer, Am Journ Arch
LII (1948), 341 fF Xanthippos is denounced as ^4an accursed cheat who did
violence to the Prytaneion', apparently because he misused the privilege of having
free meals at the expense of the State
^5E303fT	^8L624f.-E2o6f.	* E yy8f
^8	A-53, 65$; 192, 6ooff, W i27iff - Plat  119
^9	B ii nf, Kratmos 38 P, 32 - B toirff, W $$6f, K 248, F 362^"