Antimenes of Rhodes

Antimenes was in the 4th century BC. The court treasurer of Alexander the great , as successor in office of the escaped Harpalus .

When Alexander in 324 BC When he returned to Susa from far India and punished several criminal governors and officials, the chief treasurer Harpalos , who resided in Babylon , preferred to flee, as he had unrestrainedly enriched himself and his favorites in his office. Alexander now appointed Antimenes, who came from Rhodes , to be his new supreme minister for the fiscal supervision of his entire world empire . In addition to the independent determination of taxes and duties, his division was responsible for overseeing all communication and supply routes and their logistics organization. Antimenes should not have officiated for long, as Alexander died the following year and his state began to dissolve in the Diadoch Wars that were now beginning .

Nevertheless, Antimenes has become known through three fiscal edicts . In the first, he introduced a road tariff for the province of Babylon , in which everyone had to pay a tenth of the imports they brought with them to the state coffers as soon as they wanted to enter Babylon.

In his second and probably most famous decree, Antimenes introduced the first known state-organized and guaranteed insurance in history; on a slave flight. People could insure themselves against the risk of their slaves fleeing for an amount payable to him . If this should then occur, the insured would be reimbursed for the value of the slave stated when the insurance was taken out. The persecution of the fugitive was the responsibility of the respective provincial governor ( satrap ) and, if successful, the resale value should be paid out to its former owner. The sum insured remained in the state treasury.

In his third decree, Antimenes obliged the provincial governors to constantly replenish the supply magazines along the Königsstrasse in accordance with the old Persian custom. The contents of these storage facilities should then be able to be sold under the supervision of the fiscal officials appointed by them to troop contingents moving through for the benefit of the state treasury.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Pseudo-Aristotle , Oikonomikos 2, 1352b.
2. ^ Pseudo-Aristotle, Oikonomikos 2, 1352b – 1353a.
3. ^ Pseudo-Aristotle, Oikonomikos 2, 1353a.

literature

• Helmut Müller: Hemiolios. Eumenes II., Toriaion and the financial organization of the Alexander empire, In: Chiron. Volume 35, 2005, pp. 355-384 (especially pp. 362-364).
• Waldemar Heckel : Who's who in the age of Alexander the Great. Prosopography of Alexander's empire . Blackwell, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-1-4051-1210-9 , pp. 34-35.