Crassus

But though he owned so many artisans, he built no house for himself other than the one in which he lived; indeed, he used to say that men who were fond of building were their own undoers, and needed no other foes. And though he owned numberless silver mines, and highly valuable tracts of land with the labourers upon them, nevertheless one night regard all this as nothing compared with the value of his slaves;

so many and so capable were the slaves he possessed,—readers, amanuenses, silver- smiths, stewards, table-servants; and he himself directed their education, and took part in it himself as a teacher, and, in a word, he thought that the chief duty of the master was to care for his slaves as the living implements of household management.

And in this Crassus was right, if, as he used to say, he held that anything else was to be done for him by his slaves, but his slaves were to be governed by their master. For household management, as we see, is a branch of finance in so far as it deals with lifeless things; but a branch of politics when it deals with men.[*](Cf. Aristotle, Pol. i. 1253b 32. ) He was not right, however, in thinking, and in saying too, that no one was rich who could not support an army out of his substance;

for war has no fixed rations, as King Achidamus said,[*](Cf. Cleomenes xxvii. 1; Morals, 190a; 219a. In Demosthenes, xvii. 3, the saying is put in the mouth of Crobylus, as Hegesippus the Athenian orator was familiarly called.) and therefore the wealth requisite for war cannot be determined. Far different was the opinion of Marius, who said, after distributing to each of his veterans fourteen acres of land and discovering that they desired more, May no Roman ever think that land too small which suffices to maintain him.