Seventhly, during the Decelian War, as the Greek historians call it, 20,000 slaves deserted and brought the Athenians to great distress, as we learn from Thucydides. This could not have happened had they been only the twentieth part. The best slaves would not desert.
Eighthly, Xenophon proposes a scheme for entertaining by the public 10,000 slaves. “And that so great a number may possibly be supported any one will be convinced,” says he, “who considers the numbers we possessed before the Decelian War”—a way of speaking altogether incompatible with the larger number of Athenæus.
Ninthly, the whole census of the state of Athens was less than 6000 talents; and though numbers in ancient manuscripts be often suspected by critics, yet this is unexceptionable, both because Demosthenes, who gives it, gives also the detail, which checks him, and because Polybius assigns the same number and reasons upon it. Now, the most vulgar slave could yield by his labour an obolus a day, over and above his maintenance, as we learn from Xenophon, who says that Nicias’s overseer paid his master so much for slaves, whom he employed in digging of mines. If you will