So I looked into Rostovtzeff and Green for Hellenistic budgets, and was kind of put out by their unwillingness to detail expenditures all that well. However, income has been relatively well described.
Rostovtzeff's discussion of the Seleukid state stresses the importance to the state of "six classes of revenue", as described in the Oikonomika of Pseudo-Aristotle. By far, apparently, the chief source of cash was the land dues (the only indication Rostovtzeff gives as to proportion, which is infuriating), the ekthorion and the dekate (tithe) levied in differing amounts on landowners depending on where they worked the land - in the chora basilike (royal peasants), on the land of katoikiai and klerouchoi (military settlers), in the chora of various poleis, and in the rest of the chora. Of secondary concern were the revenues from idia, the private possessions of the king. Conveniently, since the king was the ultimate owner of all the junk in his empire by spear-won right of conquest, these included all revenues from the operation of mines, salt pans, forests, lakes, quarries, and so forth. These are apparently described separately from the levy on peasants of the chora basilike, i.e. they do not include land-taxes. Then comes the revenue from emporia, trade, including customs duties in general, harbor tolls, payments related to fairs, and the royal take from internal tolls levied at satrapal boundaries. Another source, from tele kata gen and agoraia tele, apparently relate to, respectively, tolls from using roads and a sales tax (perhaps only levied on commerce that takes place in city markets, it's unclear). "Boskymata", "cattle", apparently brought in enough revenue to warrant inclusion as a separate source as well, presumably as distinct from taxes related to the chora basilike. And then there are the phoroi, tribute from the independent poleis within the empire, which may or may not have included a sort of double taxation, on the chora each polis controlled.
Green, whose Marxist tendencies lead him to emphasize all sorts of fun stuff, starts off by saying that booty was apparently an extremely significant part of income, going from booty acquired in war to what was essentially piracy, running in grain ships for their cargoes. He provides the helpful figure of 15000 silver talents (on the Ptolemaic, not Attic, standard) for the annual income of Ptolemaios III Euergetes. (When he captured Seleukeia-in-Pieria, he snagged ten percent of his annual budget. Daaaaamn.) Green's view of part of the Oikonomika is one slanted towards the extraordinary plunder-related measures used by Hellenistic rulers to fill the blank spots in the budget - for instance, the famous Mausollos of Karia, who warned his people of a Persian invasion, and in so doing was able to collect a sizable donation from the people of his capital, Mylasa, to improve the fortifications...and then claimed that "heaven, for the time being, forbade the walls to be built". He details the taxes imposed by Hellenistic rulers as a litany of somewhat arbitrary measures aimed at doing nothing so much as milking a personal estate: 25% taxes on baking establishments, the 16.7% tax on wine (apomoira), the 5% combined sales, transfer, and inheritance tax (enkyklion), the royal crown taxes (stephanetikos), death duties, sacrifice-tithes, and fees for having herds, owning slaves, and being an artisan. His emphasis is on how the Hellenistic Greeks were totally unconcerned with investment and increasing production of any kind, so he dwells on how virtually all proceeds were banked unproductively in the royal treasuries after the enormous cost of maintaining the armed forces and the significantly smaller cost of maintaining the state bureaucracy were deducted. The monthly rate of pay for a Ptolemaic soldier in 158 BC is given at 350 copper drachmas plus one artaba of wheat (an artaba being slightly more than a medimnos, which itself was about 192 cups or 45 liters/dry measure). Unfortunately, I can't compare that to the 15,000 silver talent state budget of eighty years prior because the second-century Ptolemaioi massively debased their copper coinage, combined with truly disgusting inflation (the price of an artaba, for instance, quintupled over a few decades around the year 200 BC). Note, too, the two-percent Rhodian customs duty (said to have brought in over a million drachmas annually - Attic standard silver ones, not the copper Ptolemaic crap - implying a turnover of 8300 silver Attic talents annually in imports and exports). On the basis of this annual windfall the Rhodians were actually able to maintain an expensive grain dole system for metic-class citizens, which paid off by ensuring a large pool of healthy rowers for the fleet.
A long look into Shelmerdine and Bennet doesn't indicate what portion of the Mykenaian palace-culture's intake was set aside for what, but its expenditures chiefly centered around ritual feasting and the remuneration of workers and bureaucrats, most of which was unconnected with the wanaktes (kings) or the lawagetai (second-in-command, sort of, with probable responsibility for military operations). The stuff that passed into the hands of the wanaktes themselves, other than the food and drink for the ritual feasting, seems to have been oriented mostly on luxury items for the Mykenaian elite.
Dunno how helpful that is without a whole lot of numbers there.
Rostovtzeff's discussion of the Seleukid state stresses the importance to the state of "six classes of revenue", as described in the Oikonomika of Pseudo-Aristotle. By far, apparently, the chief source of cash was the land dues (the only indication Rostovtzeff gives as to proportion, which is infuriating), the ekthorion and the dekate (tithe) levied in differing amounts on landowners depending on where they worked the land - in the chora basilike (royal peasants), on the land of katoikiai and klerouchoi (military settlers), in the chora of various poleis, and in the rest of the chora. Of secondary concern were the revenues from idia, the private possessions of the king. Conveniently, since the king was the ultimate owner of all the junk in his empire by spear-won right of conquest, these included all revenues from the operation of mines, salt pans, forests, lakes, quarries, and so forth. These are apparently described separately from the levy on peasants of the chora basilike, i.e. they do not include land-taxes. Then comes the revenue from emporia, trade, including customs duties in general, harbor tolls, payments related to fairs, and the royal take from internal tolls levied at satrapal boundaries. Another source, from tele kata gen and agoraia tele, apparently relate to, respectively, tolls from using roads and a sales tax (perhaps only levied on commerce that takes place in city markets, it's unclear). "Boskymata", "cattle", apparently brought in enough revenue to warrant inclusion as a separate source as well, presumably as distinct from taxes related to the chora basilike. And then there are the phoroi, tribute from the independent poleis within the empire, which may or may not have included a sort of double taxation, on the chora each polis controlled.
Green, whose Marxist tendencies lead him to emphasize all sorts of fun stuff, starts off by saying that booty was apparently an extremely significant part of income, going from booty acquired in war to what was essentially piracy, running in grain ships for their cargoes. He provides the helpful figure of 15000 silver talents (on the Ptolemaic, not Attic, standard) for the annual income of Ptolemaios III Euergetes. (When he captured Seleukeia-in-Pieria, he snagged ten percent of his annual budget. Daaaaamn.) Green's view of part of the Oikonomika is one slanted towards the extraordinary plunder-related measures used by Hellenistic rulers to fill the blank spots in the budget - for instance, the famous Mausollos of Karia, who warned his people of a Persian invasion, and in so doing was able to collect a sizable donation from the people of his capital, Mylasa, to improve the fortifications...and then claimed that "heaven, for the time being, forbade the walls to be built". He details the taxes imposed by Hellenistic rulers as a litany of somewhat arbitrary measures aimed at doing nothing so much as milking a personal estate: 25% taxes on baking establishments, the 16.7% tax on wine (apomoira), the 5% combined sales, transfer, and inheritance tax (enkyklion), the royal crown taxes (stephanetikos), death duties, sacrifice-tithes, and fees for having herds, owning slaves, and being an artisan. His emphasis is on how the Hellenistic Greeks were totally unconcerned with investment and increasing production of any kind, so he dwells on how virtually all proceeds were banked unproductively in the royal treasuries after the enormous cost of maintaining the armed forces and the significantly smaller cost of maintaining the state bureaucracy were deducted. The monthly rate of pay for a Ptolemaic soldier in 158 BC is given at 350 copper drachmas plus one artaba of wheat (an artaba being slightly more than a medimnos, which itself was about 192 cups or 45 liters/dry measure). Unfortunately, I can't compare that to the 15,000 silver talent state budget of eighty years prior because the second-century Ptolemaioi massively debased their copper coinage, combined with truly disgusting inflation (the price of an artaba, for instance, quintupled over a few decades around the year 200 BC). Note, too, the two-percent Rhodian customs duty (said to have brought in over a million drachmas annually - Attic standard silver ones, not the copper Ptolemaic crap - implying a turnover of 8300 silver Attic talents annually in imports and exports). On the basis of this annual windfall the Rhodians were actually able to maintain an expensive grain dole system for metic-class citizens, which paid off by ensuring a large pool of healthy rowers for the fleet.
A long look into Shelmerdine and Bennet doesn't indicate what portion of the Mykenaian palace-culture's intake was set aside for what, but its expenditures chiefly centered around ritual feasting and the remuneration of workers and bureaucrats, most of which was unconnected with the wanaktes (kings) or the lawagetai (second-in-command, sort of, with probable responsibility for military operations). The stuff that passed into the hands of the wanaktes themselves, other than the food and drink for the ritual feasting, seems to have been oriented mostly on luxury items for the Mykenaian elite.
Dunno how helpful that is without a whole lot of numbers there.
), hence the Asian mode of production and similar theories.
