Note 250 — Chapter II · Athens

Xen., de Vect. IV. 17, advised the Athenian state to buy slaves to the number of three for each citizen and let them out to work the mines. The number of Athenian citizens at the time was about 20,000 (cp. Wallon, l’Esclavage2, I. pp. 222 f.), which makes the proposed number of slave miners about 60,000. This was admittedly many more than the number actually employed at the time of the proposal, and Xenophon suggests starting with 10,000, which Wallon, ibid. p. 230, thinks to have been probably the existing number of privately owned mining slaves. But even so these numbers show how influential a free mining population might well have been. See also de Vect. IV. 14, 15 and passim; Andoc. de Myst. 38 (6); Hyp. frag. 33 (Blass); and above, p. 45.