Ways and Means

Were my proposals adopted, the only innovation would be, that just as private individuals have built up a permanent income by becoming slave owners, so the state would become possessed of public slaves, until there were three for every citizen.

Whether my plan is workable, let anyone who chooses judge for himself by examining it in detail.

So let us take first the cost of the men. Clearly the treasury is in a better position to provide the money than private individuals. Moreover the Council can easily issue a notice inviting all and sundry to bring slaves, and can buy those that are brought to it.

When once they are purchased, why should there be more hesitation about hiring from the treasury than from a private person, the terms offered being the same? At any rate men hire consecrated lands[*](The MSS. add καὶ ἱερά, and temples, for which καὶ ἱερεῖα (victims for sacrifice) has been conjectured. But (1) μισθοῦνται is not contract to supply, and (2) it appears that the sacrifices were, in point of fact, paid for out of the rents received for the τεμένη, and the victims were not supplied by individuals on contract. Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 47, writing of the leases of state property, says nothing about victims.) and houses, and farm taxes under the state.

The treasury can insure the slaves purchased by requiring some of the lessees to become guarantors, as it does in the case of the tax-farmers. In fact a tax-farmer can swindle the state more easily than a lessee of slaves.

For how are you to detect the export of public money? Money looks the same whether it is private property or belongs to the state. But how is a man to steal slaves when they are branded with the public mark and it is a penal offence to sell or export them?

So far, then, it appears to be possible for the state to acquire and to keep men.

But, one may ask, when labour is abundant, how will a sufficient number of persons be found to hire it? Well, if anyone feels doubtful about that, let him comfort himself with the thought that many men in the business will hire the state slaves as additional hands, since they have abundance of capital, and that among those now working in the mines many are growing old. Moreover there are many others, both Athenians and foreigners, who have neither will nor strength to work with their own hands, but would be glad to to make a living by becoming managers.

Assume, however, that the total number of slaves to begin with is twelve hundred. By using the revenue derived from these the number might in all probability be raised to six thousand at the least in the course of five or six years. Further, if each man brings in a clear obol a day, the annual revenue derived from that number of men is sixty talents.

Out of this sum, if twenty talents are invested in additional slaves, the state will have forty talents available for any other necessary purpose. And when a total of ten thousand men is reached, the revenue will be a hundred talents.

But the state will receive far more than that, as anyone will testify who is old enough to remember how much the charge for slave labour brought in before the trouble at Decelea.[*](In 413 B.C., when great numbers of slaves deserted, and labour in the mines dwindled.) And there is another proof. During the history of the mines an infinite number of men has worked in them; and yet the condition of the mines to-day is exactly the same as it was in the time of our ancestors, and their memory ran not to the contrary.

And present conditions all lead to the conclusion that the number of slaves employed there can never be greater than the works need. For the miners find no limit to shaft or gallery.

And, mark you, it is as possible now to open new veins as in former times. Nor can one say with any certainty whether the ore is more plentiful in the area already under work or in the unexplored tracts.

Then why, it may be asked, are fewer new cuttings made nowadays than formerly? Simply because those interested in the mines are poorer. For operations have only lately been resumed, and a man who makes a new cutting incurs a serious risk. If he strikes good stuff he makes a fortune; but if he is