[28]
You think perhaps that
this is a sound proposal, but you are chiefly anxious to hear what the cost will
be and how it will be raised. I now proceed to deal with that point. As to the
cost then: the maintenance, the bare rationing of this force, comes to rather
more than ninety talents; for the ten fast galleys forty talents, or twenty
minae a ship every month; for two thousand men the same amount, that each may
receive ten drachmas a month ration-money; for the two hundred cavalry twelve
talents, if each is to receive thirty drachmas a month.1
1 The proposed pay is 2 obols a day for infantry and marines, 1 drachma for cavalry. The crew of a trireme numbered 200. The daily pay would therefore be: Galleys: 2 ob. x 200 x 10 = 4000 ob. Infantry: 2 ob. x 2000 = 4000 ob. Cavalry: 6 ob. x 200 = 1200 ob. Total, 9200 obols or 15 1/3 minae a day; 460 minae or 7 2/3 talents a month; 92 talents a year. The hoplite normally received 2 obols for pay and the same for rations; the cavalry thrice this amount. Demosthenes' proposal amounts to this, that the pay should be halved and the men encouraged to make it up by looting. To appreciate these sums, it should he noted that an unskilled laborer at Athens received 3 or 4 obols a day.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1930.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.