On the Navy-Boards

Demosthenes

Demosthenes. Vol. I. Olynthiacs, Philippics, Minor Public Speeches, Speech Against Leptines, I-XVII, XX. Vince, J. H., translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930 (printing).

When these preliminaries are settled, I propose that your wealth also should be organized, and that as the ratable value of the country is six thousand talents, this sum should be divided into a hundred parts of sixty talents each, and that then five of these parts should be allotted to each of the twenty full boards, and that the board itself should assign one part, consisting of sixty talents,[*](i.e. by a tax on this fraction, one hundredth, of the whole ratable value. The actual cost of a trierarchy was from 40 minae to one talent. The value of a mina (=100 drachmae) is usually put at £4 and that of a talent at £240: but the actual value must have been much greater, as a drachma was the average wage of an artisan.) to each of its own five groups.