Further he tells us that from the booty of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Megalopolis&groupId=745&placeId=1360">Megalopolis</a> six thousand talents fell to the Lacedaemonians, of which two thousand were given to Cleomenes according to usage.
Now in this statement one marvels first at his lack of practical experience and of that general notion of the wealth and power of Greece so essential to a historian.
For, not speaking of those times, when the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Peloponnese&groupId=861&placeId=1552">Peloponnese</a> had been utterly ruined by the Macedonian kings and still more by continued intestinal wars,
but in our own times, when all are in complete unison and enjoy, it is thought, very great prosperity, I assert that a sale of all the goods and chattels, apart from slaves, in the whole <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Peloponnese&groupId=861&placeId=1552">Peloponnese</a> would not bring in such a sum.
That I do not make this assertion lightly but after due estimate will be evident from the following consideration.
Who has not read that when the Athenians, in conjunction with the Thebans, entered on the war against the Lacedaemonians, sending out a force of ten thousand men and manning a hundred triremes,
they decided to meet the war expenses by a property-tax and made a valuation for this purpose of the whole of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Attica&groupId=383&placeId=721">Attica</a> including the houses and other property.
This estimate, however, fell short of 6000 talents by 250, from which it would seem that my assertion about the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Peloponnese&groupId=861&placeId=1552">Peloponnese</a> at the present day is not far wide of the mark.
But as regards the times of which we are dealing, no one, even if he were exaggerating, would venture to say that more than three hundred talents could be got out of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Megalopolis&groupId=745&placeId=1360">Megalopolis</a>,
since it is an acknowledged fact that most of the free population and the slaves had escaped to Messene. But the best proof of what I have to say is the following:
<a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Mantinea&groupId=731&placeId=1339">Mantinea</a>, both in wealth and power, was second to no city in Arcadia, as Phylarchus himself says, and it surrendered after a siege, so that it was not easy for anyone to escape or for anything to be stolen,
but yet the value of the whole booty together with slaves amounted at this very period to but three hundred talents.
Walbank Commentary