Appendix A (to P. 37). the Supposed Agricultural and Northern Diakria
(A) The farming population took little part in politics,
The agricultural or pastoral explanation of the party that supported Peisistratus has no inherent probability1485. Of course if it was specifically stated on good authority that in his days people of either of these two classes played the decisive part in politics, objections would be silenced. But the ancient evidence points all the other way. Aristotle repeatedly states that of all people farmers and herdsmen are least prone to support revolutions1486, and definitely pictures these two classes as having played an entirely passive part both under the regime of the early tyrants and during its establishment1487. When on the throne Peisistratus gave financial help to impoverished farmers1488, a fact that is brought by Grundy1489 into connexion with his supposed agricultural Diakrioi. But in doing so Grundy disregards some of the words that he himself quotes, which show that the tyrant is dealing not with his supporters but with a body of men who were not interested in politics but threatened to become so if driven off the land. Geographically there is nothing to connect with the Diakria the men whom Peisistratus thus relieved. In his earlier days the most distressed and discontented part of the agricultural population were the pelatai and hektemoroi1490 who worked the lands of the rich1491 and therefore presumably lived in the Plain.
According to the Constitution of Athens the hill men were made up largely of people not of pure race, whose claim to citizenship was more than doubtful1492. Such a description is singularly inapplicable to the people on the land in Attica, where in the fifth century they still prided themselves on having an undisturbed autochthonous population. Plutarch speaks of the hill men as a “mob of hirelings1493.” In the days just after Solon shepherds and small farmers of the hektemor class may have been hirelings, but they can hardly have ever been a mob.
There is therefore little to be said for the attempt to identify the hill men with the shepherds and hypothetical farmers of Mount Parnes. We cannot even be certain that the latter ever existed.
The soil of Attica was notoriously poor, abounding in stony districts (φελλεῖς) useful only for pasture1494. Attica claimed to be the land not of corn but of the olive. Demeter had her seat not in the great plain of Attica, but in the small and much more fertile plain of Eleusis.
and lived but little on the mountains,
None of the champions of an agricultural hill party dwelling on Mount Parnes seems to have seriously enquired into the upper limit of cultivation with wheat on the mountains of Attica. The only ancient writers who talk of agriculture being carried on there are the writer of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens and Statius.
The former1495 tells the story of the man with the farm on Hymettus (τὸν ἐν τῷ Ὑμηττῷ γεωργοῦντα). The story says nothing about the frequency of farms on Hymettus or of the height up the hillside of this particular farm. But it does say something about the soil and the crops. The soil consisted of stones, the crops, so the farmer told Peisistratus, were “troubles and sorrows.” This hardly suggests that in the days of the tyranny Hymettus was of any great importance agriculturally. The same conclusion is suggested by the story of the clever Pelasgians who succeeded in cultivating the land at the foot of Hymettus, much to the surprise of the Athenians1496.
Statius1497 speaks of the ploughmen of fragrant Hymettus (olentis arator Hymetti), and the vineyards of Parnes (Parnesque benignus uitibus). The former is almost a contradiction in terms. Fragrant is an allusion to the famous honey of Hymettus, or to the thyme that produced it1498. Thyme and honey do not go with cornfields. A “Parnes kindly to vines” is not easily reconciled with Pausanias, who makes the mountain a good hunting-place for bears and wild boars1499. Plato declares that in his days some of the Attic mountains were barren except for their yield of honey1500, whereas once they had been covered with forests1501, some of which had only recently been cut down. The fame of the honey of Hymettus went so far back, that the mountain was claimed as the place where bees were first created1502. Aristotle divides bees according to whether their haunts are cultivated (ἥμερα) or mountainous (ὀρεινά). The latter are described in the next sentence as haunting the forests (ὑλονόμοι)1503.
which were occupied by forests and wild beasts.
At the present day the Attic mountains are scarcely cultivated at all1504, and though in ancient Attica cultivation may have been more intense, yet apart from the difficulties of carrying it up the mountain side, the whole scheme of life presupposes vast supplies of timber for shipbuilding, fuel, and countless other purposes. Bursian is probably right when he says that in antiquity Parnes was “thickly covered with forest in which numerous beasts found shelter, including wild boars and bears1505.” During the period of Athens’ greatness, between 550 and 350 B.C., the supply of timber must have been constantly diminishing. Yet towards the end of the fifth century the charcoal-burners had their centre at Acharnae, below the southern slopes of Parnes, only about seven or eight miles from Athens. Thucydides excludes Acharnae from the plain1506, and we must infer that it was not then the land of corn and vines that it is now. If not forest it was waste. If the land round Acharnae had not been claimed for farming, it is hardly likely that farmers abounded higher up1507.
The same inference is suggested by a passage of Xenophon which implies that corn could not be grown in the mining district, which is distinctly hilly but does not reach anything like the height of Pentelicon, Hymettus, or Parnes, “and there is also land which when sown does not bear fruit, but being mined supports a population many times larger than it would if it was producing corn: and its argentiferous character is plainly due to Providence,” etc.1508.
Then again frequent mention is made in ancient Attic documents of “boundary estates” and these are explained by the scholiast to Aeschines as “lands on the border of the country, extending either to the mountains or the sea1509.” Such a definition implies that the mountains were almost as unused to cultivation as the sea itself. In Italy too the limit of cultivation of wheat seems to have been low. Latin writers repeatedly contrast the forest-clad mountains with the arable lowlands, and in some cases the mountains that these writers have in mind are considerably lower than the heights of Parnes1510.
(B) The case for a North-east “Hill Country” rests on misreadings or misinterpretations of ancient authorities.
Enough has been said to show how little reason there is for picturing the mountains of North and East Attica in the days of Peisistratus as the home of a large and active agricultural population. It remains for us to examine the evidence for thinking that this district was known as the “Hill Country.” We shall find that if possible it is flimsier still. The supporters of the prevailing view base their case mainly on the definition of the Diakria found in the printed editions of Hesychius. This definition is the main source of all existing misconceptions. It is necessary therefore to examine it. The words of Hesychius as generally quoted are these. “Diakrieis: not only certain of the Euboeans but also of the Athenians: also a place (τόπος) in Attica: the Diakria is the land from Parnes to Brauron.” The modern name for the hills at Brauron is Περάτι (End), which seems at first sight to harmonize well with the definition of the Diakria just quoted. But if we examine any good map of Attica, we see that Περάτι does not end the Southern extension of Parnes; it forms the North-east extremity of the hills of South Attica. That is a first difficulty. It is at least unusual to define the limits of a district by places beyond those limits. We do not say that Germany extends from Tilsit to Verviers.
The second objection is far more serious. It is that the MSS. say nothing of Brauron. The word they give is Balylon (εἰς Βαλυλωνος, sic). This was emended by Aldus to Babylon. Brauron is a conjecture of Palmerius, and by no means a certain one. In Byzantine times the familiar Babylon (pronounced Vavylon) would indeed be a very natural corruption for the then obscure Brauron (pronounced Vrafron). The MS. Balylon is not nearly so likely to be a phonetic corruption of Brauron. It might conceivably be an orthographic corruption of Aulon, a place or region in the mining district in the extreme South of Attica1511. The εἰς with the genitive of the MS. suggests however some more complete corruption1512.
But even if the reading “to Brauron (εἰς Βραυρῶνα)” were certain, Hesychius would still be a doubtful authority on this point. His definition of the “Coast” runs thus: “the Coast: Attica, whence also the ship Paralos (ἡ παραλία· ἡ Ἀττική, ἔνθεν καὶ ἡ ναῦς πάραλος).” This presumably means that the Coast was a synonym for Attica, the coastland par excellence. Such a definition might be supported by philological connexions between Ἀττική and ἀκτή1513. Conceivably with ἡ Ἀττική we should understand not γῆ but παραλία: the Coast means par excellence the Attic coast (compare the modern “Riviera”). This interpretation is supported by our author’s definition of the men of the coast (οἱ παράλιοι), which runs “those who occupy the coast of Attica.” Neither interpretation vindicates Hesychius as an authority on the triple division of Attica. He makes no mention of the Plain.
Modern writers, it is true, give the word “coast” (παραλία) a conventional meaning and confine it to the Southern apex of the Attic triangle, the district of Attica that has the largest proportion of coast to interior1514. Their view has one fact in its favour. After the expulsion of the tyrants, when Cleisthenes set himself to break up the old local political parties, the whole of this Southern apex was included among the “coast” trittyes or (th)ridings of his new triple division of the whole country. But there are indications that the inclusion of this whole district in the coast was never anything but an artificial arrangement1515 to prevent either of the other two divisions from overbalancing the coast1516. The Cleisthenic coast was of course not confined to this Southern apex. The moderns who imagine this restricted use base their assumption on a misunderstanding of their authorities. They quote Thucydides II. 55, where in reference to a Peloponnesian raid on Southern Attica he speaks of “the so-called coast land.” But the precise words of Thucydides show that the ravages were confined to the coast1517, while inscriptions and passages in other writers prove that the name “coast” was not confined to the Southern apex of Attica but was normally applied to the whole Attic seaboard1518. When Thucydides uses the expression “what is called the coast land” he need not be taken as meaning that the name “coast” in Attica was used as a synonym for what Herodotus calls the Sunium Heights1519. Very possibly he is commenting rather on the fact that the Attic coast was called by the poetical name πάραλος γῆ, παραλία (the land of the brine) instead of the good fifth century prose word παραθαλάσσιος, ἐπιθαλάσσιος (the land by the sea). He himself uses ἐπιθαλάσσιος in the very next chapter for the coast land of the Peloponnese1520.
Another text which has been thought1521 to establish a Northern or North-Eastern Diakria and a Southern Paralia is a fragment of Sophocles1522 in which the mythical king Pandion divides Attica between his three sons. Two scholia of Aristophanes1523 and a notice in Suidas1524 equate the North-Eastern of these divisions with the Diakria. But against this equation must be set that of Stephanus Byzantinus1525, who says that the Diakria fell to the son who received according to Sophocles the Southern division.