9
From this evidence it is clear what the value of the property was. Three talents is the tax on an estate of fifteen, and this tax they saw fit to pay. But you will see this more clearly if you hear what the property was. My father, men of the jury, left two factories, both doing a large business. One was a sword-manufactory, employing thirty-two or thirty-three slaves, most of them worth five or six minae each and none worth less than three minae. From these my father received a clear income of thirty minae each year. The other was a sofa-manufactory, employing twenty slaves, given to my father as security for a debt of forty minae. These brought him in a clear income of twelve minae. In money he left as much as a talent, loaned at the rate of a drachma a month,A drachma, that is, on each mina. This (12 percent) was the normal rate of interest on well-secured loans. the interest of which amounted to more than seven minae a year.
10
This was the amount of productive capital which my father left, as these men will themselves admit, the principal amounting to four talents and five thousand drachmae,In mercantile affairs the Greeks often preferred to reckon in thousands of drachmae instead of tens of minae. and the proceeds to fifty minae each year. Besides this, he left ivory and iron, used in the factory, and wood for sofas, worth about eighty minae; and gallThis was obtained from the oak-apple and was used for staining wood or ivory. and copper, which he had bought for seventy minae; furthermore, a house worth three thousand drachmae, and furniture and plate, and my mother’s jewelry and apparel and ornaments, worth in all ten thousand drachmae, and in the house eighty minae in silver.
