Whatever the facts about the laura, the sums that Polycrates spent on his public works in general and the number of hands that he employed on them must have been very large. Of the life led by these employees we know little. Aristotle states that the object of the tyrant’s works was “the employment and poverty of his subjects[408].” This implies that the work was ill-paid and unpopular. It is doubtful however whether Aristotle quite understood the social and economic conditions of sixth century Samos[409]. On the other hand no inferences as to the normal wages in the days of the tyrant are to be drawn from occasional instances of high payments made by him for exceptional work[410]. One fact however becomes plain from the statement in the _Politics_. The hands employed by Polycrates must have been mainly free men. Like some tyrannical employers of labour in more recent times, Polycrates appears to have recognized the value of having his employees provided with amusements of not too elevated a type. Holidays and drunkenness appear to have been frequent under his regime[411]. The encouragement or permission of unprofitable amusements for the multitude is of course quite consistent with great severity in other directions[412], and more particularly with the suppression of the liberal forms of recreation popular among citizens of the better class[413]. [Sidenote: The tyrant’s mercenaries.] He maintained his power by means of mercenaries, native it should be noticed, as well as foreign[414]. These mercenaries were in all probability a development of the fifteen men at arms[415] with which he had seized supreme power, and, like the original fifteen, they were presumably free men[416]. [Sidenote: His pension scheme for the mothers of fallen soldiers.] While on the subject of Polycrates’ warlike achievements it is interesting to note that he did something to put military service on a sound financial basis by providing for the mothers of soldiers who fell in his service. The way he did so is described by Duris, a historian of Polycrates’ own island, who was born about 340 B.C.[417]. “He gathered together the mothers of those who had fallen in war, and gave them to the wealthy among the citizens to support, saying to each, ‘I give you this woman to be your mother.’” No provision was made for the widows; but from the Greek point of view this was hardly required. They would naturally be provided for by their second husbands[418]. The method of financing this popular measure recalls the Athenian liturgies. The measure itself points to the tyrant’s troops having been free men.