Ways and Means

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.)

Or again, if any fear that this scheme would prove worthless in the event of war breaking out, they should observe that, with this system at work, war becomes far more formidable to the aggressors than to the city.

For what instrument is more serviceable for war than men? We should have enough of them to supply crews to many ships of the state; and many men available for service in the ranks as infantry could press the enemy hard, if they were treated with consideration.[*](Observe that Xenophon alludes here not to the resident aliens, but to the state-owned slaves in the mines.)