ABSTRACT
The literal meaning of ἀτέλεια is 'non-payment' or 'exemption from payment', and sometimes it refers to payments of an entirely unofficial kind. Most often the word is used in connection with liturgies. Thus a man who performed a liturgy had ateleia from other liturgies in the same year and from all liturgies in the following year. A liturgy normally involved performance of certain activities, such as commanding a ship or organizing a chorus, as well as expenditure of money. Leukon was unlikely ever to travel to Athens to make use of Athenian ateleia, but if the word could be used by Demosthenes to refer to exemption from export or import duties in Bosporos, it probably was used to refer to a similar exemption in Athens. After Leukon, Demosthenes' next example is a man named Epikerdes of Kyrene.
