[
1259a]
[1]
and Apollodorus
1 of
Lemnos have
written about both agriculture and fruit-farming, and similarly others also on
other topics, so these subjects may be studied from these authors by anybody
concerned to do so; but in addition a collection ought also to be made
2 of the scattered accounts of methods that have brought success
in business to certain individuals. All these methods are serviceable for those
who value wealth-getting, for
example the plan of Thales
3 of
Miletus, which is a
device for the business of getting wealth, but which, though it is attributed to
him because of his wisdom, is really of universal application. Thales, so the
story goes, because of his poverty was taunted with the uselessness of
philosophy; but from his knowledge of astronomy he had observed while it was
still winter that there was going to be a large crop of olives, so he raised a
small sum of money and paid round deposits for the whole of the olive-presses in
Miletus and
Chios, which he hired at a low rent as nobody
was running him up; and when the season arrived, there was a sudden demand for a
number of presses at the same time, and by letting them out on what terms he
liked he realized a large sum of money, so proving that it is easy for
philosophers to be rich if they choose, but this is not what they care about.
Thales then is reported to have
thus displayed his wisdom, but as
[20]
a
matter of fact this device of taking an opportunity to secure a monopoly is a
universal principle of business; hence even some states have recourse to this
plan as a method of raising revenue when short of funds: they introduce a
monopoly of marketable goods. There
was a man in
Sicily who used a sum of
money deposited with him to buy up all the iron from the iron mines, and
afterwards when the dealers came from the trading-centers he was the only
seller, though he did not greatly raise the price, but all the same he made a
profit of a hundred talents
4 on his capital of fifty. When Dionysius
5 came to
know of it he ordered the man to take his money with him but clear out of
Syracuse on the spot,
6 since he was inventing
means of profit detrimental to the tyrant's own affairs. Yet really this device
is the same as the discovery of Thales, for both men alike contrived to secure
themselves a monopoly. An acquaintance with these devices is also serviceable
for statesmen, for many states need financial aid and modes of revenue like
those described, just as a household may, but in greater degree; hence some
statesmen even devote their political activity exclusively to finance.
And since, as we saw,
7 the science of household
management has three divisions, one the relation of master to slave, of which we
have spoken before,
8 one the
paternal relation, and the third the conjugal
9—for it is a part of the household science to
rule over wife and children (over both as over freemen, yet not with the same mode of government,
but over the wife to exercise republican government and over the children
monarchical);