At Athens in the generation that preceded the tyranny it is reported of Solon that “he encouraged the citizens to take up manual trades[70],” a policy perhaps to be connected with his release from debt and semi-slavery of the “pelatai” and the “hektemoroi[71],” since fresh employment had possibly to be found for many of these liberated serfs. It is further reported of Solon that he offered the citizenship to any who “transplanted themselves to Athens with their whole family for the sake of exercising some manual trade[72].” Aeschines quotes Solon, laws attributed to whom were still in force when the orator flourished, to the effect that “he does not drive a man from the platform” (_i.e._ he allows him to speak in the assembly of citizens) “even if he is practising some handicraft, but welcomes that class most of all[73].” Solon himself, describing the various paths by which men pursue riches, declares that Another learns the works of Athena and Hephaestus of the many crafts, and with his hands gathers a livelihood[74]. The tyrants themselves are repeatedly found making it part of their policy to keep their subjects employed on big industrial concerns. In more than one case we shall see their power collapsing just when this policy becomes financially impossible[75]. This part of the tyrants’ policy is noticed by Aristotle, who quotes the dedications (buildings and works of art) of the Cypselids at Corinth, the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens by the Peisistratids, and the works of Polycrates round Samos[76]. To these names we may add Theagenes of Megara, Phalaris of Agrigentum, Aristodemus of Cumae, and the Tarquins of Rome, all of whom are associated with works of this kind[77]. Aristotle says that the object of these works was to keep the people busy and poor. This explanation is more than doubtful, as has been already recognized[78]. It is not employment that leads to poverty. More probably the tyrants pursued this industrial policy because, to quote an expression used in another context by Plutarch, “stimulating every craft and busying every hand it made practically the whole city wage earners (ἔμμισθον),” employed, as in the case Plutarch is describing, by the government of the state. In other words may not the tyrants have been building up an industrial state of employee subjects who in their turn involved an army of “customer subjects[79]”? The words just quoted come from the life of Pericles[80] and refer to the way that he employed the poorer citizens (τὸν θητικὸν ὄχλον) in the rebuilding and adornment of Athens. Among the people so employed he mentions carpenters, sculptors, coppersmiths, stone masons, dyers, moulders of gold and ivory, painters, embroiderers, engravers, merchants, sailors, wheelwrights, waggoners, drivers, rope-makers, flax workers, leather cutters, road-makers, miners. We still possess fragments of the accounts of payments made to