st conveniently
assigned to the archonship of Callimedes, towards the end of
360 B.C., at the moment when Chabrias had just arrived in
Egypt, and was certain to endeavour to secure the help of
Athens for the king he served.

Chabrias exhorted him to execute his project, and as he had not
sufficient money to defray the expenses of a long campaign outside his
own borders, the Athenian general instructed him how he might procure
the necessary funds. He suggested to him that, as the Egyptian priests
were wealthy, the sums of money annually assigned to them for the
sacrifices and maintenance of the temples would be better employed
in the service of the state, and counselled him to reduce or even to
suppress most of the sacerdotal colleges. The priests secured their own
safety by abandoning their personal property, and the king graciously
deigned to accept their gifts, and then declared to them that in future,
as long as the struggle against Persia continued, he should exact from
them nine-tenths of their sacred revenues. This tax would have sufficed
for all requirements if it had been possible to collect it in full, but
there is no doubt that very soon the priests must have discovered means
of avoiding part of the payment, for it was necessary to resort to other
expedients. Chabrias advised that the poll and house taxes should be
increased; that one obol should be exacted for each "ardeb" of corn
sold, and a tithe levied on the produce of all ship-building yards,
manufactories, and manual industries. Money now poured into the
treasury, but a difficulty arose which demanded immediate solution.
Egypt possessed very little specie, and the natives still employed
barter in the ordinary transactions of life, while the foreign
mercenaries refused to accept payment in kind or uncoined metal; they
demanded good money as the price of their services. Orders were issued
to the natives to hand over to the royal exchequer all the gold and
silver in their possession, whether wrought or in ingots, the state
guaranteeing gradual repayment through the nomarchs from the future
product of the poll-tax, and the bullion so obtained was converted into
specie for the payment of the auxiliary troops. These measures, though
winning some unpopularity for Tachos, enabled him to raise eighty
thousand native troops and ten thousand Greeks, to equip a fleet of
two hundred vessels, and to engage the best generals of the period. His
eag