602 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



Citizen workmen could not resist suck a condition, and besides, 

 tlie allurement of gain led all Hellenic society to resort more and 

 more to slave labor. 



The municipalities themselves engaged contractors to go abroad 

 in search of cargoes of slaves, paying all the expenses. Xenophon, 

 seeking a way to enrich Athens without the rislcs of war, insisted on 

 worldng the silver mines, and for that labor proposed to buy 10,000 

 slaves, the purchase of which he said would be quickly compensated 

 for by the cheap cost of their labor. 



An estimate has been made, and we know that Xenophon was 

 entirely right. A free laborer for 360 days' work cost 540 drachmas 

 ($75) . A slave whose maintenance cost 2 or 3 oboles (5 to 8 cents) 

 per day would accomplish the same amount of labor for 180 drachmas 

 ($26). But there remains the purchase price of 300 drachmas. 

 The interest of that amount at 12 per cent, the rate at that period, 

 represented 36 drachmas ($5) a year. The slave could no doubt 

 work 10 years or more. By redeeming his purchase price in five 

 years one would be guaranteed against all risks of sickness for a 

 number of even feeble slaves. Tliis cost for quick redemption would 

 represent oidy 60 drachmas per year. And incorporating it in the 

 annual revenue from the work of a slave, all tliis, interest on pur- 

 chase price included, would be only 276 drachmas. Take the round 

 sum of 300 drachmas, and we have the advantage over the cost of a 

 free laborer of 240 drachmas ($33.34) the first year. This shows that 

 one would be reimbursed for the purchase price of a slave the first 

 year within 44 francs ($8.50) and entirely so in 15 months. 



Some contractors, having need of manual labor for only a time, 

 hired slaves at an obole (about 2^ cents) per day, instead of engaging 

 free men. Even if the}^ paid the same price as for a free man there 

 was stdl an advantage in employing slaves, because they could 

 compel them to do what they mshed. Therefore th'e purchase of 

 slaves for liiring out was a very profitable undertaldng. Ever^^one 

 then wanted to have slaves. A modest artisan able to buy some 

 tools for the use of a slave had a workshop and became a master in 

 a modest way. The workmen at the mint in Athens were public 

 slaves. It resulted that at Athens the class that we would call com- 

 mon people made their living from the work of slaves. Personal 

 wealth, what has since been called capital, was then acquired, as I 

 have said, through slave labor, for the first time. The idea of capi- 

 tal was not thought of before jVristotle. We know the condition of 

 many individual fortunes, especially through the pleadings of law- 

 yers. We thus learn that a certain Phainippos derived from the sale 

 of his wine, barley, and timber the relatively large sum of 3,600 

 drachmas ($500). With 1,000 slaves Niccas, working the silver 



