[19]
It is useful to remind them that the state supports an expenditure of nearly forty talents1 a year in order that she may not have to look about for cavalry in the event of war, but may have it ready for immediate use. For with this thought in their minds the men are likely to take more pains with their horsemanship, so that when war breaks out they may not have to fight untrained for the state, for glory and for life.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 Say 9,500 pounds as reckoned about the year 1925. The pay is, of course, alluded to. The expenditure would amount daily to nearly 666 drachmae. The cavalryman's normal pay was a drachma a day. Hence it looks as if the number of the cavalry in 365 B.C. had fallen to about 650.
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.