to his own advantage may be inferred from the fact that the sheet of paper which was sold in 296 B.C. for one obol (three and one half cents) cost on the average eleven in 279-250 B.C.[93] Thus set about by countless officials and shorn to the very skin, the fellahs lived under the Ptolemies, "patient, laborious, cheerful," yet filled with hidden bitterness at the magnificence in which their masters lived at their expense in Alexandria, venting their rage in impotent prophecies that "the great city at the water's edge should become a drying-place for the nets of fishers, and its gods should migrate to the native capital Memphis."[94] Clearly, the army of the Ptolemies could not be recruited from such elements. The Egyptians might be put on the warships as rowers, used in the transport service, and, occasionally when the need was great, in small numbers as soldiers. But granted that they might be useful in fighting abroad,--at home they belonged to the enemy from whom the early Ptolemies had greatly to fear. As such, the citizens of Alexandria, Naucratis, and Ptolemais were apparently exempt from military service. Hence the great problem of national defense could not have been solved by the founding of new Greek cities of this type in Egypt had there been room for them, or by the founding of any kind of cities, had Ptolemy thought it possible to organize the natives in urban communities round a Greek or Macedonian nucleus--as Alexander may have wished to do, as the Romans in fact did in the year 202 A.D.; for, even if Ptolemy had cared for that kind of thing, the Greek or Macedonian nucleus did not as yet exist in Egypt. It had to be brought there from abroad. Hence it was a question of life and death for the Ptolemaic dynasty to remain in constant communication with the regions of the eastern Mediterranean whence came supporters of their rule, soldiers for their armies. "But shouldst thou really mean a voyage out," says one Greek peasant to another in Theocritus,[95]-- "The freeman's best paymaster's Ptolemy. (_Æschines_) What is he else? (_Thyonichus_) A gentleman: a man Of wit and taste: the top of company; Loyal to ladies; one whose eye is keen For friends, and keener still for enemies. Large in his bounties, he, in kingly sort, Denies a boon to none: but, Æschines, One should not ask too often. This premised, If thou wilt clasp the military cloak O'er thy right shoulder, and with legs astride Await the onward rush of shielded men: Hie thee to Egypt."