We are hardly authorized to conclude from the passage of Herodotus that _all_ the sum received from the mines was about to be distributed: the treasury was very rich, and a distribution was about to be made,—but it does not follow that nothing was to be left in the treasury after the distribution. Accordingly, all calculations of the total produce of the mines, based upon this passage of Herodotus, are uncertain. Nor is it clear that there was any regular annual distribution, unless we are to take the passage of Cornelius Nepos as proving it: but he talks rather about the magistrates employing this money for jobbing purposes,—not about a regular distribution: “Nam cum pecunia publica quæ ex metallis redibat, largitione magistratuum quotannis periret.” Corn. Nep. Themist. c. 2. A story is told by Polyænus, from whomsoever he copied it,—of a sum of one hundred talents in the treasury, which Themistoklês persuaded the people to hand over to one hundred rich men, for the purpose of being expended as the latter might direct, with an obligation to reimburse the money in case the people were not satisfied with the expenditure: these rich men employed each the sum awarded to him in building a new ship, much to the satisfaction of the people (Polyæn. i, 30). This story differs materially from that of Herodotus, and we cannot venture either to blend the two together or to rely upon Polyænus separately. I imagine that the sum of thirty three talents, or fifty talents, necessary for the distribution, formed part of a larger sum lying in the treasury, arising from the mines. Themistoklês persuaded the people to employ the _whole_ sum in ship-building, which of course implied that the distribution was to be renounced. Whether there had been distributions of a similar kind in former years, as M. Boëckh affirms, is a matter on which we have no evidence. M. Boëckh seems to me not to have kept in view the fact, which he himself states just before, that there were two sources of receipt into the treasury,—original purchase-money paid down, and reserved annual rent. It is from the former source that I imagine the large sum lying in the treasury to have been derived: the small reserved rent probably went among the annual items of the state-budget.