Ways and Means

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

disappointed, he loses the money he has spent. Therefore people nowadays are very chary of taking such a risk.

However, I think I can meet this difficulty too, and suggest a plan that will make the opening of new cuttings a perfectly safe undertaking. The Athenians, of course, are divided into ten tribes. Now assume that the state were to offer each tribe an equal number of slaves, and that when new cuttings were made, the tribes were to pool their luck.

The result would be that if one tribe found silver, the discovery would be profitable to all; and if two, three, four, or half the tribes found, the profits from these works would obviously be greater.

Nothing that has happened in the past makes it probable that all would fail to find.

Of course, private individuals also are able to combine on this principle and pool their fortunes in order to diminish the risk. Nevertheless there is no reason to fear that a public company formed on this plan will conflict with the interests of private persons, or be hampered by them. No, just as every new adhesion to a confederacy brings an increase of strength to all its members, so the greater the number of persons operating in the mines, the more treasure they will discover and unearth.

I have now explained what regulations I think should be introduced into the state in order that every Athenian may receive sufficient maintenance at the public expense.

Some may imagine that enough money would never be subscribed to provide the huge amount of capital necessary, according to their calculations, to finance all these schemes. But even so they need not despair.

For it is not essential that the plan should be carried out in all its details in order that any advantage may come of it. No, whatever the number of houses built, or of ships constructed, or of slaves purchased, they will immediately prove a paying concern.

In fact in one respect it will be even more profitable to proceed gradually than to do everything at once. For if everybody begins building, we shall pay more for worse work than if we carry out the undertaking gradually; and if we try to find an enormous number of slaves, we shall be forced to buy inferior men at a high price.

By proceeding as our means allow, we can repeat whatever is well conceived and avoid the repetition of mistakes.

Besides, were the whole scheme put in hand at once, we should have to find the whole of the money; but if some parts were proceeded with and others postponed, the income realised would help to provide the amount still required.

Possibly the gravest fear in everyone’s mind is that the works may become overcrowded if the state acquires too many slaves. But we can rid ourselves of that fear by not putting more men in year by year than the works themselves require.

Accordingly I hold that this, which is the easiest way, is also the best way of doing these things. On the other hand, if you think that the burdens imposed during the late war[*](The allusion is to the War of the Allies who had revolted from Athens. It lasted from 357 to 355 B.C. See Introduction.) make it impossible for you to contribute anything at all—well, keep down the cost of administration during the next year to the amount that the taxes yielded before the peace; and invest the balances over and above that amount, which you will get with peace, with considerate treatment of resident aliens and merchants, with the growth of imports and exports due to concentration of a larger population, and with the expansion of harbour and market dues, so that the investment will bring in the largest revenue.[*](i.e., invest the balances in the mines, and use the revenue obtained to carry out my scheme.)