[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,1 the interest of which amounted to more than seven minae a
year.
1 A drachma, that is, on each mina. This （12 percent） was the normal rate of interest on well-secured loans.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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