The First Athenian Tribute List Stele, 454/3–440/39 BC
The first of the Athenian tribute stelae, three and a half metres tall and reassembled from a hundred and forty-nine fragments, in the Epigraphic Museum at Athens. Each year from 454/3 it recorded the allied cities and the sixtieth part of their tribute paid to Athena.
The stone is the Delian League turning into an empire, written down. The treasury had been moved from Delos to Athens in 454, the sixtieth was skimmed for the goddess — which meant for Athens — and the list was cut in public where the allies' representatives could read their own assessments. Sparta's case in the years before 431 was that this was tyranny over Greeks; Athens did not deny the arrangement, only the word. See Athenian-Spartan relations in the decade before the war.
CC BY 2.5 — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
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