* In this volume an obol is reckoned as equivalent in buying power to 17 cents in United States currency in 1938, a drachma as $1, a talent as $6000. These equivalents are only approximate, for prices rose throughout Greek history; cf. section V of this chapter.

* Plutarch, Pericles. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, 272, and Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, 61, feel that the Athenian disdain for manual labor has been exaggerated; but cf. Glotz, Ancient Greece at Work 160.

* The figure is Gomme’s, I.e. Possibly the number was much greater: Suidas, on the authority of a speech uncertainly attributed to Hypereides in 338, gives the number of adult male slaves alone as 150,000;³⁷ and according to the unreliable Athenaeus the census of Attica by Demetrius Phalereus about 317 gave 21,000 citizens, 10,000 metics and freedmen, and 400,000 slaves. Timaeus about 300 reckoned the slaves of Corinth at 460,000, and Aristotle, about 340, those of Aegina at 470,000.³⁸ Perhaps these high figures are due to including slaves transiently offered for sale in the slave marts of Corinth, Aegina, and Athens.

* The great fortunes of Greek antiquity were of course modest in amount by modern standards. Callias, the wealthiest of the Athenians, is said to have had two hundred talents ($1,200,000); Nicias, one hundred.⁵²

* The sculptors and architects of Greece formed a guild of builders, with their own religious mysteries, and became the forerunners of the Freemasons of later Europe.⁶⁰