He levied money on the Syracusans, and later, when he saw them lamenting and begging and protesting that they had none, he ordered a second levy, and this he did twice or thrice. 1 But when, after calling for still more, he heard that they laughed and jeered as they went about in the market-place, he [p. 33] ordered a halt in the proceeding; ‘For now they really have nothing,’ said he, ‘since they hold us in contempt.’
1 Cf. Aristotle, Politics, v. ii., and the Aristotelian Oeconomica, ii. 20, and Polyaenus, Strategemata, v. 19.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 3.
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