take the pains to estimate an obolus a day and the slaves at 400,000, computing only at four years’ purchase, you will find the sum above 12,000 talents, even though allowance be made for the great number of holidays in Athens. Besides, many of the slaves would have a much {p150} greater value from their art. The lowest that Demosthenes estimates any of his father’s slaves is two minas a head; and upon this supposition it is a little difficult, I confess, to reconcile even the number of 40,000 slaves with the census of 6000 talents.
Tenthly, Chios is said by Thucydides to contain more slaves than any Greek city except Sparta. Sparta then had more than Athens, in proportion to the number of citizens. The Spartans were 9000 in the town, 30,000 in the country. The male slaves, therefore, of full age, must have been more than 780,000; the whole more than 3,120,000—a number impossible to be maintained in a narrow barren country such as Laconia, which had no trade. Had the Helotes been so very numerous, the murder of 2000 mentioned by Thucydides would have irritated them without weakening them.