For the people of Athens, the Athenian alliance was not just a political proposal but essentially an economic contract, and an exceedingly lucrative one. In 431 B.C., the yearly tribute (plus any other monies donated by the allies) came to six hundred talents. In 425 B.C., the sum collected was one thousand, three hundred talents. In 413 B.C. it was no more than about nine hundred talents. If you add to this the tolls on foreigners' and metics' commercial transactions, the city's income was sufficient to release well-to-do citizens from the obligation of paying any eisphora. Indeed, some of them were actually able to enrich themselves by entering into building and ship repair contracts.

By contrast, the fourth-century [B.C.] Second Athenian Confederacy was never a source of wealth for the Athenian state. Though more specific details are not available, we know from Demosthenes that each confederate paid into the war chest what was called a syntaxis ('agreed sum') - the term phoros (tribute) having been dropped. In all probability, at the outset at least, in cases of outstanding emergency, every one of Athens' allies paid some sum. Later on, the syntaxis evolved into an annual obligation. Some of the sums are recorded by Demosthenes: they are very obviously at lower levels than the allied eisphora of the previous century.