Agricola: Agriculture and Rustic Life in the Greco-Roman World

Authorities in Detail — Greek

III. The Homeric Poems

The Iliad. In a great war-poem we can hardly expect to find many references to the economic labours of peace. And an army fighting far from home in a foreign land would naturally be out of touch with the rustic life of Greece. Nor was the poet concerned to offer us the details of supply-service, though he represents the commissariat as efficient. Free labour appears18 in various forms of handicraft, and the mention of pay (μισθός)19 shews wage-earning as a recognized fact. We hear of serving for hire (θητεύειν)20, and the ἔριθοι or farm-labourers21 seem to be θῆτες under a special name. That labour is not viewed as a great degradation may fairly be inferred from the case of Hephaestus the smith-god, from the wage-service of Poseidon and Apollo under Laomedon, and from the herdsman-service of Apollo under Admetus. Agriculture is assumed, and in the Catalogue ‘works’ (ἔργα)22 occurs in the sense of ‘tilled lands.’ But it is chiefly in similes or idyllic scenes that we get glimpses of farming23 operations. Thus we have ploughing, reaping, binding, threshing, winnowing. Most striking of all is the passage in which the work of irrigation24 is graphically described. There is no reason to suppose that any of the workers in these scenes are slaves: they would seem to be wage-earners. But I must admit that, if slaves were employed under the free workers, the poet would very likely not mention such a detail: that is, if slavery were a normal institution taken for granted. For the present I assume only free labour in these cases. We are made aware of a clear social difference between the rich and powerful employer and the employed labourer. The mowers are at work in the field of some rich man25 (ἀνδρὸς μάκαρος κατ’ ἄρουραν), who does not appear to lend a hand himself. Or again in the close of a ruler (τέμενος βασιλήιον)26, with binders following them, a busy scene. The βασιλεὺς himself stands watching them in dignified silence, staff in hand. There is nothing here to suggest that the small working farmer was a typical figure in the portraiture of rural life. Flocks and herds are of great importance, indeed the ox is a normal standard of value. But the herdsmen are mean freemen. Achilles is disgusted27 at the prospect of being drowned by Scamander ‘like a young swineherd swept away by a stream in flood.’ For the heroes of the poem are warrior-lords: the humble toilers of daily life are of no account beside them.

And yet the fact of slavery stands out clearly, and also its connexion with the fact of capture in war. The normal way of dealing with enemies is to slay the men and enslave the women. The wife of a great warrior has many handmaidens, captives of her lord’s prowess. A slave-trade exists, and we hear of males being spared28 and ‘sold abroad’: for they are sent ‘to islands far away’ or ‘beyond the salt sea.’ We do not find male slaves with the army: perhaps we may guess that they were not wanted. A single reference to δμῶες (properly slave-captives) appears in XIX 333, where Achilles, speaking of his property at home in Phthia, says κτῆσιν ἐμὴν δμῶάς τε. But we cannot be certain that these slaves are farm-hands. We can only reflect that a slave bought and paid for was not likely to be fed in idleness or put to the lightest work. In general it seems that what weighed upon the slave, male or female, was the pressure of constraint, the loss of freedom, not the fear of cruel treatment. What Hector keeps from the Trojans29 is the ‘day of constraint,’ ἦμαρ ἀναγκαῖον, also expressed by δούλιον ἦμαρ. Viewed from the other side we find enslavement consisting in a taking away30 the ‘day of freedom,’ ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ. The words δούλην III 409 and ἀνδραπόδεσσι VII 475 are isolated cases of substantives in passages the genuineness of which has been questioned. On the whole it is I think not an unfair guess that, if the poet had been depicting the life of this same Greek society in their homeland, and not under conditions of present war, we should have found more references to slavery as a working institution. As it is, we get a momentary glimpse31 of neighbour landowners, evidently on a small scale, engaged in a dispute concerning their boundaries, measuring-rod in hand; and nothing to shew whether such persons supplied the whole of their own labour in tillage or supplemented it by employing hired men or slaves.

The Odyssey is generally held to be of later date than the Iliad. A far more important distinction is that its scenes are not episodes of war. A curious difference of terms32 is seen in the case of the word οἰκῆες, which in the Iliad seems to mean ‘house-folk’ including both free and slave, in the Odyssey to mean slaves only. But as to the condition of slaves there is practically no difference. A conquered foe was spared on the battlefield by grace of the conqueror, whose ownership of his slave was unlimited: and this unlimited right could be conveyed by sale33 to a third party. We find Odysseus ready to consign offending slaves34 to torture mutilation or death. In the story of his visit to Troy35 as a spy we hear that he passed for a slave, and that part of his disguise consisted in the marks of flogging. Yet the relations of master and mistress to their slaves are most kindly in ordinary circumstances. The faithful slave is a type glorified in the Odyssey: loyalty is the first virtue of a slave, and it is disloyalty, however shewn, that justifies the master’s vengeance. For they live on intimate terms36 with their master and mistress and are trusted to a wonderful degree. In short we may say that the social atmosphere of the Odyssey is full of mild slavery, but that in the background there is always the grim possibility of atrocities committed by absolute power. And we have a trace even of secondary37 slavery: for the swineherd, himself a slave, has an under-slave of his own, bought with his own goods from slave-dealers while his own master was abroad. Naturally enough we find slaves classed as a part of the lord’s estate. Odysseus hopes38 that before he dies he may set eyes on his property, his slaves and his lofty mansion. But another and perhaps socially more marked distinction seems implied in the suitors’ question39 about Telemachus—‘who were the lads that went with him on his journey? were they young nobles of Ithaca, or his own hired men and slaves (θῆτές τε δμῶές τε)?’ The answer is that they were ‘the pick of the community, present company excepted.’ The wage-earner and the slave do not seem to be parted by any broad social line. Indeed civilization had a long road yet to travel before levelling movement among the free classes drew a vital distinction between them on the one side and slaves on the other.

Free workers of various kinds are often referred to, and we are, owing to the circumstances of the story, brought more into touch with them than in the Iliad. Handicraftsmen40 are a part of the life of the time, and we must assume the smith the carpenter and the rest of the males to be free: female slaves skilled in working wool do not justify us in supposing that the corresponding men are slaves. Beside these are other men who practise a trade useful to the community, ‘public-workers’ (δημιοεργοί)41, but not necessarily handworkers. Thus we find the seer, the leech, the bard, classed with the carpenter as persons whom all men would readily entertain as guests; the wandering beggar none would invite. The last is a type of ‘mean freeman,’ evidently common in that society. He is too much akin to the suppliant, whom religion42 protects, to be roughly shewn the door: he is αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης43, and trades on the reverence felt for one who appeals as stranger to hospitable custom. Thus he picks up a living44 from the scraps and offals of great houses. But he is despised, and, what concerns us here, despised45 not only for his abject poverty but for his aversion to honest work. That the poet admires industry is clear, and is curiously illustrated by his contrasted pictures of civilization and barbarism. In Phaeacia are the fenced-in gardens46 that supply Alcinous and his people with never-failing fruits: the excellence of their naval craftsmen is expressed in the ‘yarn’ of ships that navigate themselves. In the land of the Cyclopes, nature provides47 them with corn and wine, but they neither sow nor plough. They have flocks of sheep and goats. They have no ships or men to build them. They live in caves, isolated savages with no rudiments of civil life. It is not too much to say that the poet is a believer in work and a contemner of idleness: the presence of slaves does not suggest that the free man is to be lazy. Odysseus boasts of his activities (δρηστοσύνη)48. He is ready to split wood and lay a fire, to prepare and serve a meal, and in short to wait on the insolent suitors as inferiors do on nobles. Of course he is still the unknown wanderer: but the contrast49 between him and the genuine beggar Irus is an effective piece of by-play in the poem.

Turning to agriculture, we may note that it fills no small place. Wheat and barley, pounded or ground to meal, seem to furnish the basis of civilized diet. The Cyclops50 does not look like a ‘bread-eating man,’ and wine completely upsets him to his ruin. Evidently the bounty of nature has been wasted on such a savage. But the cultivation of cereal crops is rather assumed than emphasized in the pictures of Greek life. We hear of tilled lands (ἔργα)51, and farm-labour (ἔργον)52 is mentioned as too wearisome for a high-spirited warrior noble. The tired and hungry plowman53 appears in a simile. But the favourite culture is that of the vine and olive and other fruits in orchards carefully fenced and tended. One of the suitors makes a jesting offer54 to the unknown Odysseus ‘Stranger, would you be willing to serve for hire (θητευέμεν), if I took you on, in an outlying field—you shall have a sufficient wage—gathering stuff for fences and planting tall trees? I would see that you were regularly fed clothed and shod. No, you are a ne’er-do-weel (ἔργα κάκ’ ἔμμαθες) and will not do farm-work (ἔργον): you prefer to go round cringing for food to fill your insatiate belly.’ This scornful proposal sets the noble’s contempt for wage-earning labour in a clear light. And the shade of Achilles, repudiating55 the suggestion that it is a great thing to be a ruler among the dead in the ghostly world, says ‘I had rather be one bound to the soil, serving another for hire, employed by some landless man of little property, than be king of all the dead.’ He is speaking strongly: to work for hire, a mean destiny at best, is at its meanest when the employer is a man with no land-lot of his own (ἄκληρος), presumably occupying on precarious tenure a bit of some lord’s estate. After such utterances we cannot wonder that as we saw above, θῆτες and δμῶες are mentioned56 in the same breath.

That slaves are employed on the farm is clear enough. When Penelope sends for old Dolius57, a servus dotalis of hers (to use the Roman expression) she adds ‘who is in charge of my fruit-garden,’ So too the aged Laertes, living a hard life on his farm, has a staff of slaves58 to do his will, and their quarters and farm duties are a marked detail of the picture. The old man, in dirty rags like a slave, is a contrast59 to the garden, in which every plant and tree attests the devoted toil of his gardeners under his own skilled direction. Odysseus, as yet unrecognized by his father, asks him how he comes to be in such a mean attire, though under it he has the look of a king. Then he drops this tone and says ‘but tell me, whose slave60 are you, and who owns the orchard you are tending?’ The hero knows his father, but to preserve for the present his own incognito he addresses him as the slave that he appears to be. Now if garden work was done by slaves, surely the rougher operations of corn-growing were not confined to free labour, and slaves pass unmentioned as a matter of course. Or are we to suppose that free labour had been found more economical in the long run, and so was employed for the production of a staple food? I can hardly venture to attribute so mature a view to the society of the Odyssey. We must not forget that animal food, flesh and milk, was an important element of diet, and that the management of flocks and herds was therefore a great part of rustic economy. But the herdsmen in charge are slaves, such as Eumaeus, bought in his youth by Laertes61 of Phoenician kidnappers. In romancing about his own past experiences Odysseus describes a raid in Egypt, and how the natives rallied62 and took their revenge. ‘Many of our company they slew: others they took alive into the country, to serve them in forced labour.’ As the ravaging of their ‘beautiful farms’ was a chief part of the raiders’ offence, the labour exacted from these captives seems most probably agricultural.

An interesting question arises in reference to the faithful slaves, the swineherd and the goatherd. When Odysseus promises them rewards in the event of his destroying the suitors with their help, does this include an offer of freedom? Have we here, as some have thought, a case of manumission—of course in primitive form, without the legal refinements of later times? The promise is made63 so to speak in the character of a father-in-law: ‘I will provide you both with wives and give you possessions and well-built houses near to me, and you shall in future be to me comrades and brothers of Telemachus.’ The ‘brotherhood’ suggested sounds as if it must imply freedom. But does it? Eumaeus had been brought up64 by Laertes as the playmate of his daughter Ctimene; yet he remained nevertheless a slave. Earlier in the poem Eumaeus, excusing the poor entertainment that he can offer the stranger (Odysseus), laments the absence65 of his lord, ‘who’ he says ‘would have shewn me hearty affection and given me possessions such as a kindly lord gives his slave (οἰκῆι), a house and a land-lot (κλῆρον) and a wife of recognized worth (πολυμνήστην), as a reward for laborious and profitable service.’ Here also there is no direct reference to an expected grant of freedom: nor do I think that it is indirectly implied. It is no doubt tempting to detect in these passages the germ of the later manumission. But it is not easy to say why, in a world of little groups ruled by noble chiefs, the gift of freedom should have been a longed-for boon. However high-born the slave might have been in his native land, in Ithaca he was simply a slave. If by belonging to a lord he got material comfort and protection, what had he to gain by becoming a mere wage-earner? surely nothing. I can see no ground for believing that in the society of the ‘heroic’ age the bare name of freedom was greatly coveted. It was high birth that really mattered, but the effect of this would be local: nothing would make Eumaeus, though son of a king, noble in Ithaca. No doubt the slave might be at the mercy of a cruel lord. Such a slave would long for freedom, but such a lord was not likely to grant it. On the whole, it is rash to read manumission into the poet’s words.

Reviewing the evidence presented by these ‘Homeric’ poems, it may be well to insist on the obvious truism that we are not dealing with formal treatises, charged with precise definitions and accurate statistics. The information given by the poet drops out incidentally while he is telling his tale and making his characters live. It is all the more genuine because it is not furnished in support of a particular argument: but it is at the same time all the less complete. And it is not possible to say how far this or that detail may have been coloured by imagination. Still, allowing freely for the difficulty suggested by these considerations, I think we are justified in drawing a general inference as to the position of handworkers, particularly on the land, in Greek ‘heroic’ society as conceived by the poet. If the men who practise handicrafts are freemen, and their presence welcome, this does not exalt them to anything like equality with the warrior nobles and chiefs. And in agriculture the labourer is either a slave or a wage-earner of a very dependent kind. The lord shews no inclination to set his own hand to the plough. When one of the suitors derisively invites the supposed beggar to abandon his idle vagrancy for a wage-earning ‘job on the land,’ the disguised Odysseus retorts66 ‘Ah, if only you and I could compete in a match as reapers hard at work fasting from dawn to dark, or at ploughing a big field with a pair of full-fed spirited oxen,—you would soon see what I could do.’ He adds that, if it came to war, his prowess would soon silence the sneer at his begging for food instead of working. Now, does the hero imply that he would really be willing to reap or plough? I do not think so: what he means is that he is conscious of that reserve of bodily strength which appears later in the poem, dramatically shewn in the bending of the famous bow.

IV. Hesiod

Hesiod, Works and Days. Whether this curious poem belongs in its present shape to the seventh century BC, or not, I need not attempt to decide. It seems certain that it is later than the great Homeric poems, but is an early work, perhaps somewhat recast and interpolated, yet in its main features representing conditions and views of a society rural, half-primitive, aristocratic. I see no reason to doubt that it may fairly be cited in evidence for my present purpose. The scene of the ‘Works’ is in Boeotia: the works (ἔργα) are operations of farming, and the precepts chiefly saws of rustic wisdom. Poverty67 is the grim spectre that haunts the writer, conscious of the oppressions of the proud and the hardness of a greedy world. Debt, want, beggary, must be avoided at all costs. They can only be avoided68 by thrift, forethought, watchfulness, promptitude that never procrastinates, and toil that never ceases. And the mere appeal to self-interest is reinforced by recognizing the stimulus of competition (ἔρις)69 which in the form of honest rivalry is a good influence. The poet represents himself as owner of a land-lot (κλῆρος)70, part of a larger estate, the joint patrimony of his brother Perses and himself: this estate has already been divided, but points of dispute still remain. Hesiod suggests that Perses has been wronging him with the help of bribed ‘kings.’ But wrongdoing is not the true road to wellbeing. A dinner of herbs and a clear conscience are the better way. As the proverb says ‘half is more than the whole.’ Perses is treated to much good advice, the gist of which is first and foremost an exhortation71 to work (ἐργάζευ), that is, work on the land, in which is the source of honourable wealth. Personal labour is clearly meant: it is in the sweat72 of his brow that the farmer is to thrive. Such is the ordinance of the gods. Man is meant to resemble73 the worker bee, not the worthless drone. It is not ἔργον but idleness (ἀεργίη) that is a reproach. Get wealth74 by working, and the idler will want to rival you: honour and glory attend on wealth. Avoid delays75 and vain talk: the procrastinator is never sure of a living; for he is always hoping, when he should act. Whether sowing or ploughing or mowing, off with your outer76 garment, if you mean to get your farm-duties done in due season. The farmer must rise early, and never get behindhand with his work: to be in time, and never caught napping by changes of weather, is his duty.

Here is a picture of humble and strenuous life, very different from the scenes portrayed in the ‘heroic’ epics. It seems to belong to a later and less warlike age. But the economic and social side of life is in many respects little changed. The free handicraftsmen seem much the same. Jealousy of rivals77 in the same trade—potter, carpenter, beggar, or bard—is a touch that attests their freedom. The smith, the weaver, the shoemaker, and the shipwright, are mentioned78 also. Seafaring79 for purposes of gain illustrates what men will dare in quest of wealth. You should not cast a man’s poverty80 in his teeth: but do not fancy that men will give you81 of their store, if you and your family fall into poverty. Clearly the beggar is not more welcome than he was in the world of the Odyssey. Suppliant and stranger are protected82 by religion, and a man should honour his aged father, if he would see good days. A motive suggested for careful service of the gods is ‘that you may buy another’s estate83 and not another buy yours’—that is, that the gods may give you increase. Just so you should keep a watch-dog, that thieves84 may not steal your goods by night. Hesiod’s farmer is to keep the social and religious rules and usages—but he is before all things a keen man of business, no Roman more so.

The labour employed by this close-fisted countryman is partly free partly slave. In a passage85 of which the exact rendering is disputed the hired man (θῆτα) and woman (ἔριθον) are mentioned as a matter of course. For a helper (ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ)86 his wage must be secure (ἄρκιος) as stipulated. References to slaves (δμῶες)87 are more frequent, and the need of constant watchfulness, to see that they are not lazy and are properly fed housed and rested, is insisted on. The feeding of cattle and slaves is regulated according to their requirements in different seasons of the year: efficiency is the object, and evidently experience is the guide. Of female slaves there is no certain88 mention: indeed there could be little demand for domestic attendants in the farmer’s simple home. Such work as weaving89 is to be done by his wife. For the farmer is to marry, though the risks90 of that venture are not hidden from the poet, who gives plain warnings as to the exercise of extreme care in making a suitable choice. The operations of agriculture are the usual ploughing sowing reaping threshing and the processes of the vineyard and the winepress. Oxen sheep and mules form the live-stock. Corn is the staple91 diet, with hay as fodder for beasts.

Looking on the picture as a whole, we see that the Hesiodic farmer is to be a model of industry and thrift. Business, not sentiment, is the note of his character. His function is to survive in his actual circumstances; that is, in a social and economic environment of normal selfishness. If his world is not a very noble one, it is at least eminently practical. He is a true αὐτουργός, setting his own hand to the plough, toiling for himself on his own land, with slaves and other cattle obedient to his will. It is perhaps not too much to say that he illustrates a great truth bearing on the labour-question,—that successful exploitation of other men’s labour is, at least in semi-primitive societies, only to be achieved by the man who shares the labour himself. And it is to be noted that he attests the existence of wage-earning hands as well as slaves. I take this to mean that there were in his rustic world a number of landless freemen compelled to make a living as mere farm labourers. That we hear so much less of this class in later times is probably to be accounted for by the growth of cities and the absorption of such persons in urban occupations and trades.

V. Stray Notes From Early Poets

A few fragments may be cited as of interest, bearing on our subject. The most important are found in the remains92 of Solon, illustrating the land-question as he saw and faced it at the beginning of the sixth century BC. The poets of the seventh and sixth centuries reflect the problems of an age of unrest, among the causes of which the introduction of metallic coinage, susceptible of hoarding and unaffected by weather, played a great part. Poverty, debt and slavery of debtors, hardship, begging, the insolence and oppression of rich and greedy creditors, are common topics. The sale of free men into slavery abroad is lamented by Solon, who claims to have restored many such victims by his measures of reform. In particular, he removed encumbrances on land, thus setting free the small farmers who were in desperate plight owing to debt. The exact nature and scope of his famous reform is a matter of dispute. Whether he relieved freeholders from a burden of debt, or emancipated the clients93 of landowning nobles from dependence closely akin to serfdom, cannot be discussed here, and does not really bear on the matter in hand. In either case the persons relieved were a class of working farmers, and the economic reform was the main thing: political reform was of value as tending to secure the economic boon. It is remarkable that Solon, enumerating a number of trades (practically the old Homeric and Hesiodic list), speaks of them merely as means of escaping the pressure of poverty, adding ‘and another man94 is yearly servant to those interested in ploughing, and furrows land planted with fruit-trees.’ This man seems to be a wage-earner (θὴς) working for a large farmer, probably the owner of a landed estate in the rich lowland (πεδιάς) of Attica. The small farmers were mostly confined to the rocky uplands. Evidently it is not manual labour that is the hardship, but the dependent position of the hired man working on another’s land. The hard-working independent peasant, willing to till stony land for his own support, is the type that Solon encouraged and Peisistratus95 approved.

The life of such peasant farmers was at best a hard one, and little desired by men living under easier conditions. Two fragments from Ionia express views of dwellers in that rich and genial land. Phocylides of Miletus in one of his wise counsels says ‘if you desire wealth, devote your care to a fat farm (πίονος ἀγροῦ), for the saying is that a farm is a horn of plenty.’ The bitter Hipponax of Ephesus describes a man as having lived a gluttonous life and so eaten up his estate (τὸν κλῆρον): the result is that he is driven to dig a rocky hillside and live on common figs and barley bread—mere slave’s fodder (δούλιον χόρτον). Surely the ‘fat farm’ was not meant to be worked by the owner singlehanded; and the ‘slave’s fodder’ suggests the employment of slaves. Ionia was a home of luxury and ease.

The oft-quoted scolion of the Cretan Hybrias illustrates the point of view of the warrior class in more military communities. His wealth is in sword spear and buckler. It is with these tools that he does his ploughing reaping or vintage. That is, he has command of the labour of others, and enjoys their produce. We shall speak below of the well-known lords and serfs of Crete.

VI. Traces of Serfdom in Greek States

Before passing on to the times in which the merits of a free farmer-class, from military and political points of view, became a matter of general and conscious consideration, it is desirable to refer briefly to the recorded cases of agricultural serfdom in Greek states. For the rustic serf is a type quite distinct from the free farmer, the hired labourer, or the slave; though the language of some writers is loose, and does not clearly mark the distinction. Six well-known cases present themselves, in connexion with Sparta, Crete, Argos, Thessaly, Syracuse, and Heraclea on the Pontus. Into the details of these systems it is not necessary to enter, interesting though many of them are. The important feature common to them all is the delegation of agricultural labour. A stronger or better-organized people become masters of a weaker population, conquering their country by force of arms, and sparing the conquered on certain terms. The normal effect of the compact is that the conquerors are established as a ruling warrior class, whose subsistence is provided by the labour of the subject people. These subjects remain on the land as farmers, paying a fixed quota of their produce to their masters. Some are serfs of the state, and pay their dues to the state authorities: some are serfs of individuals, and pay to their lords. In either case they are strictly attached to the land, and cannot be sold out of the country. This clearly marks off the serf from the slave held in personal bondage. In some cases certainly, probably in all, the warrior class (at least the wealthier of them) had also slaves for their own personal service. The serf-system differs from a caste-system. Both, it is true, are hereditary systems, or have a strong tendency to become so. The ruling class do not easily admit deserving subjects into their own ranks. And they take precautions to hinder the degradation of their equals into lower conditions through poverty. The warrior’s land-lot (κλᾶρος), the sale of which is forbidden, is a favourite institution for the purpose. That such warrior aristocracies could not be kept up in vigour for an indefinite time, was to be proved by experience. Their duration depended on external as well as internal conditions. Hostile invasion might destroy the efficiency of state regulations, however well adapted to keep the serfs under control. Sparta always feared her Helots, and it was essential to keep an enemy out of Laconia. Early in the history of Syracuse the unprivileged masses were supported by the serfs in their rising against the squatter-lords, the γαμόροι whose great estates represented the allotments of the original settlers. In Crete and Thessaly matters were complicated by lack of a central authority. There were a number of cities: subordination and cooperation were alike hard to secure, and the history of both groups is a story of jealousy, collisions, and weakness. The Thessalian Penestae often rebelled. The two classes of Cretan96 serfs (public and private) were kept quiet partly by rigid exclusion from all training of a military kind, partly by their more favourable condition: but the insular position of Crete was perhaps a factor of equal importance. The long control of indigenous barbarian serfs by the city of Heraclea was probably the result of similar causes.

But in all these cases it is conquest that produces the relation between the tiller of the soil and his overlord. Whether the serf is regarded as a weaker Greek or as a Barbarian (non-Greek) is not at present the main question from my point of view. The notion of castes, belonging to the same society and influenced by the same racial and religious traditions, but each performing a distinct function—priestly military agricultural etc.—as in ancient India, is another thing altogether. Caste separates functions, but the division is in essence collateral. Serfdom is a delegation of functions, and is a compulsory subordination. That the Greeks of the seventh and sixth centuries BC were already becoming conscious of a vital difference between other races and themselves, is fairly certain. It was soon to express itself in the common language. Contact with Persia was soon to crystallize this feeling into a moral antipathy, a disgust and contempt that found voice in the arrogant claim that while nature’s law justifies the ruling of servile Barbarians by free Greeks, a reversal of the relation is an unnatural monstrosity. Yet I cannot discover that Greeks ever gave up enslaving brother Greeks. Callicratidas in the field and Plato in his school might protest against the practice; it still remained the custom in war to sell as slaves those, Greek or Barbarian, whom the sword had spared. We shall also find cases in which the remnant of the conquered were left in their homes but reduced to the condition of cultivating serfs.

Among the little that is known of the ancient Etruscans, whose power was once widely extended in Italy, is the fact that they dwelt in cities and ruled a serf population who lived chiefly in the country. The ruling race were apparently invaders not akin to any of the Italian stocks: their subjects probably belonged to the old Ligurian race, in early times spread over a large part of the peninsula. That the Etruscan cities recognized a common interest, but in practice did not support each other consistently, was the chief cause of their gradual weakening and final fall. Noble lords with warlike traditions had little bent for farm life or sympathy with the serfs who tilled the soil. The two classes seem to have kept to their own97 languages, and the Etruscan gradually died out under the supremacy of Rome.

VII. Herodotus

Herodotus, writing in the first half of the fifth century BC, partly recording the results of his own travels, partly dependent on the work of his predecessors, is a witness of great value. In him we find the contrast and antipathy98 of Greek and Barbarian an acknowledged fact, guiding and dominating Greek sentiment. Unhappily he yields us very little evidence bearing on the present subject. To slavery and slave-trade he often refers without comment: these are matters of course. The servile character of oriental peoples subject to Persia is contemptuously described99 through the mouth of the Greek queen of Halicarnassus. Nor does he spare the Ionian Greeks, whose jealousies and consequent inefficiency made them the unworthy tools of Persian ambition; a sad contrast to those patriotic Greeks of old Hellas who, fired by the grand example of Athens, fought for their freedom and won it in the face of terrible odds. The disgust—a sort of physical loathing—with which the free Greek, proud of training his body to perfection, regarded corporal mutilation as practised in the East, is illustrated by such passages100 as that in which the Persians are astounded at the Greek athletic competitions for a wreath of olive leaves, and that in which he coolly tells the story of the eunuch’s revenge. But all this, interesting as giving us his point of view, does not help us in clearing up the relations of free and slave labour. As for handicrafts, it is enough to refer to the well-known passage101 in which, while speaking of Egypt, he will not decide whether the Greeks got their contempt for manual trades from the Egyptians or not. That the Greeks, above all the Spartans, do despise χειρωναξίαι, is certain; but least true of the Corinthians. Barbarians in general respect the warrior class among their own folk and regard manual trades as ignoble. So the source of Greek prejudice is doubtful. That the craftsmen are free is clear from the whole context. It is remarkable that in enumerating seven classes of the Egyptian population he mentions no class102 as devoted to the tillage of the soil, but two of herdsmen, in charge of cattle and swine. Later authorities mention103 the γεωργοί, and connect them with the military class, rightly, it would seem: for Herodotus104 refers to the farms granted by the kings to this class. They are farmer-soldiers. It would seem that they were free, so far as any Egyptian could be called free, and worked their land themselves. If this inference be just, we may observe that a Greek thought it a fact worth noting. Was this owing to the contrast105 offered by systems of serfage in the Greek world?

It is curious that wage-labour is hardly ever directly mentioned. In describing106 the origin of the Macedonian kings, who claimed descent from an Argive stock, he says that three brothers, exiles from Argos, came to Macedon. There they served the king for wages as herdsmen in charge of his horses cattle sheep and goats. The simplicity of the royal household is emphasized as illustrating the humble scale of ancient monarchies. Alarmed by a prodigy, the king calls his servants (τοὺς θῆτας) and tells them to leave his country. The sequel does not concern us here: we need only note that work for wages is referred to as a matter of course. The same relation is probably meant in the case of the Arcadian deserters107 who came to Xerxes after Thermopylae, in need of sustenance (βίου) and wishing to get work (ἐνεργοὶ εἶναι). But the term θητεύειν is not used. And the few Athenians who stayed behind108 in the Acropolis when Athens was evacuated, partly through sheer poverty (ὑπ’ ἀσθενείης βίου), would seem to be θῆτες. It is fair to infer that hired labour is assumed as a normal fact in Greek life. For the insistence on poverty109 as naturally endemic (σύντροφος) in Hellas, only overcome by the manly qualities (ἀρετὴ) developed in the conquest of hard conditions by human resourcefulness (σοφίη), shews us the background of the picture present to the writer’s mind. It is his way of telling us that the question of food-supply was a serious one. Out of her own soil Hellas was only able to support a thin population. Hence Greek forces were absurdly small compared with the myriads of Persia: but the struggle for existence had strung them up to such efficiency and resolute love of freedom that they were ready to face fearful odds.

The passage occurs in the reply of Demaratus the Spartan to a question of Xerxes, and refers more particularly to Sparta. In respect of courage and military efficiency the claim is appropriate: but poverty was surely characteristic of nearly all the European Hellas, and the language on that point is strictly correct, probably representing the writer’s own view. It is also quite consistent with the statement110 that in early times, before the Athenians had as yet driven all the indigenous population out of Attica, neither the Athenians nor the Greeks generally had slaves (οἰκέτας). The context seems to indicate that domestic slaves are specially meant. I do not lay much stress on this allegation, urged as it is in support of a case by one party to the dispute: but it is a genuine tradition, which appears again in the later literature. In the time of Herodotus there were plenty of domestic slaves. Accordingly he finds it worth while to mention111 that Scythian kings are attended by persons of their own race, there being no bought servants employed.

Herodotus is a difficult witness to appraise justly, partly from the occasional uncertainty as to whether he is really pledging his own authority on a point, partly because the value of his authority varies greatly on different points. But on the whole I take his evidence to suggest that agriculture was carried on in Greece either by free labouring farmers employing hired men when needed, or by serfs. I do not see any evidence to shew that no slaves were employed. The subject of his book placed him under no necessity of mentioning them: and I can hardly believe that farm-slavery on a small scale had died out all over Greece since the days of Hesiod. Nor do I feel convinced on his authority that the poverty of Greece was, so far as mere food is concerned, as extreme as he makes Demaratus represent it. When the Spartans heard that Xerxes was offering the Athenians a separate peace, they were uneasy, and sent a counter-offer112 on their own behalf. Not content with appealing to the Hellenic patriotism of Athens, they said ‘We feel for you in your loss of two crops and the distress that will last some while yet. But you shall have all this made good. We, Spartans and confederates, will find food for your wives and your helpless families113 so long as this war lasts.’ Supposing this offer to have been actually made, and to have been capable of execution, surely it implies that there were food-stuffs to spare in the Peloponnese. It may be that I am making too much of this passage, and of the one about poverty. The dramatic touch of Herodotus is present in both, and I must leave the apparent inconsistency between them as it stands. The question of Peloponnesian agriculture will come up again in connexion with a passage of Thucydides.

VIII. The Tragedians

The lives of Aeschylus (died 456 BC) Sophocles and Euripides (both died 406 BC) cover a period of stirring events in the history of Greece, particularly of Athens. Aeschylus had borne his part in the Persian wars: he was a fighting man when Herodotus was born, and Sophocles a boy. Euripides saw the rise of Athenian power to its greatest height, and died with Sophocles on the eve of its fall. These men had seen strange and terrible things. Hellas had only beaten off the Persian to ruin herself by her own internecine conflicts. While the hatred and contempt for ‘barbarians’ grew from sentiment into something very like a moral principle, Greeks butchered or enslaved brother Greeks on an unprecedented scale. Greek lands were laid waste by Greek armies: the devastation of Attica in particular had serious effects on the politics and policy of Athens. Athens at length lost her control of the Euxine corn trade and was starved out. For the moment a decision was reached: the reactionary rural powers, backed by the commercial jealousy of Corinth, had triumphed. No thoughtful man in Athens during the time when the rustic population were crowded into the city, idle and plagued with sickness, could be indifferent to the strain on democratic institutions. This spectacle suggested reflexions that permanently influenced Greek thought on political subjects. The tendency was to accept democracy in some form and degree as inevitable in most states, and to seek salvation in means of checking the foolish extravagancies of mob-rule. The best of these means was the encouragement of farmer-citizens: but the circumstances of Greek history made practical success on these lines impossible. In practice, oligarchy meant privilege, to which a scattered farming population would submit; democracy meant mob-rule sooner or later, and the dominance of urban interests. The problem which Plato and Aristotle could not solve was already present in the latter part of the Peloponnesian war. Aristophanes might ridicule Euripides, but on the country-and-town issue the two were agreed.

Aeschylus indeed furnishes very little to my purpose directly. The Greek antipathy to the Barbarian is very clearly marked; but the only points worth noting are that in the Persae114 he makes Persian speakers refer to their own people as βάρβαροι, and that in a bitter passage of the Eumenides he expresses115 his loathing of mutilations and tortures, referring no doubt to Persian cruelties. Agriculture can hardly be said to be mentioned at all, for the gift of weather-wisdom116 is useful to others than the farmer, and the Scythian steppes are untilled land. A fragment, telling of a happy land117 where all things grow in plenty unsown without ploughing or digging, reminds us of the Odyssey, minus the savages: another, referring to the advance made in domestication of beasts to relieve men of toil, make up the meagre list. All are in connexion with Prometheus. There are two interesting passages118 in which the word γαμόρος (landholder) occurs, but merely as an expression for a man with the rights and responsibilities of a citizen. There is nothing of tillage. It was natural for the champion of the power of the Areopagus to view the citizen from the landholding side. He is a respecter of authority, but at the same time lays great stress on the duty and importance of deference to public opinion. This tone runs through the surviving plays, wherever the scene of a particular drama may be laid. Athenian conditions are always in his mind, and his final judgment appears in the Eumenides as an appeal to all true citizens to combine freedom with order. Ties of blood, community of religious observances, the relation between citizens and aliens, are topics on which he dwells again and again. In general it is fair to conclude that, while he cheerfully accepted the free constitution of Athens as it stood since the democratic reform of Cleisthenes, he thought that it was quite democratic enough, and regarded more recent tendencies with some alarm. Now these tendencies, in particular the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles, were certainly in the direction of lessening the influence of the Attic farmers and increasing that of the urban citizens, who were on the spot to take advantage of them. To put it in the briefest form, Aeschylus must be reckoned an admirer of the solid and responsible citizens of the old school, men with a stake in the country.

Sophocles also supplies very little. The antipathy of Greeks to Barbarians appears in a milder form: Aeschylus was naturally more bitter, having fought against the Persian invader. The doctrine that public opinion (of citizens) ought to be respected, that obedience to constituted authorities is a duty, in short the principle that freedom should be combined with order, is set forth in various passages of dramatic debate. Yet the scenes of the plays, as those of Aeschylus, are laid in legendary ages that knew not democracy. The awful potency of ties of blood, and the relations of citizen and alien, are topics common to both. But I think it may fairly be said that political feeling is less evident in Sophocles. This is consistent with his traditional character. In their attitude towards slavery there is no striking difference: both treat it as a matter of course. But in Sophocles there are already signs119 of the questioning that was soon to become outspoken, as to the justice of the relation of master and slave. Agriculture is hardly mentioned. The words γεωργός, γεωργεῖν, γεωργία, are (as in Aeschylus) not used. A reference to ploughing occurs in a famous passage120 celebrating the resourcefulness of Man. The herdsman, usually a slave, is once121 spoken of as perhaps a hired servant. One curious passage122 calls for notice. In the Trachiniae the indifference of Heracles to his children is compared by his wife Deianira to the conduct of a farmer (γῄτης) who has got a farm at a distance (ἄρουραν ἔκτοπον) and only visits it at seed-time and harvest. The man is apparently a non-resident landowner, living presumably in the city (surely Athens is in the poet’s mind) and working his farm by deputy—a steward—and only inspecting it at important seasons. Whether the labour employed is slave or free, there is nothing to shew. It is of interest to find the situation sufficiently real to be used in a simile. But I infer that the situation, like the conduct of Heracles, is regarded as exceptional.

Euripides takes us into a very different atmosphere. An age of movement was also an age of criticism and inquiry, social religious political ethical. The intellectual leaders came from various parts of the Greek world, but the intellectual centre of ‘obstinate questionings’ was Athens, and their poet Euripides. The use of drama, with plots drawn from ancient legend, as a vehicle for reflexions on human problems, addressed to a contemporary audience and certain to evoke assent and dissent, is the regular practice of Euripides. His plays give us a mass of information as to the questions exercising the minds of thoughtful men in a stirring period. The point of view is that of the new school, the enlightened ‘thinkers’ who claimed the right to challenge traditional principles, opinions, prejudices, and institutions, testing them by the canons of human reason fearlessly applied. This attitude was naturally resented by men of the old school, averse to any disturbing influence tending to undermine the traditional morality, and certain to react upon politics. Their opposition can still be traced in the comedies of Aristophanes and in various political movements during the Peloponnesian war. Among the topics to which the new school turned their attention were two of special interest to Euripides. The power of wealth was shewing itself in the growth of capitalistic enterprise, an illustration of which is seen in the case of the rich slaveowner Nicias. Poverty123 and its disadvantages, sometimes amounting to sheer degradation, was as ever a subject of discontent: and this was closely connected with the position of free wage-earning labour. At Athens political action took a strong line in the direction of utilizing the wealth of the rich in the service of the state: for the poor, its dominant tendency was to provide opportunities of drawing state pay (μισθός), generally a bare living wage, for the performance of various public duties. The other topic, that of slavery, had as yet hardly reached the stage of questioning the right or wrong of that institution as such. But the consciousness that the slave, like his master, was a blend of human virtues and human vices,—was a man, in short,—was evidently becoming clearer, and suggesting the conclusion that he must be judged as a man and not as a mere chattel. Otherwise Euripides would hardly have ventured to bring slaves on the stage124 in so sympathetic a spirit, or to utter numerous sayings, bearing on their merits and failings, in a tone of broad humanity.

In such circumstances how came it that there was no sign of a movement analogous to modern Abolitionism? If the slave was confessedly a man, had he not the rights of a man? The answer is plain. That a man, simply as a man, had any rights, was a doctrine not yet formulated or clearly conceived. The antipathy125 between Greek and Barbarian was a practical bar to its recognition. The Persian was not likely to moderate his treatment of Greeks in his power from any such consideration: superior force, nothing less, would induce him to conform to Greek notions of humanity. While force was recognized as the sole foundation of right as against free enemies, there could not be much serious doubt as to the right of holding aliens in slavery. But in this questioning age another theoretical basis of discussion had been found. Men were testing institutions by asking in reference to each ‘is it a natural126 growth? does it exist by nature (φύσει)? or is it a conventional status? does it exist by law (νόμῳ)?’ Here was one of the most unsettling inquiries of the period. In reference to slavery we find two conflicting doctrines beginning to emerge. One is127 that all men are born free (φύσει) and that slavery is therefore a creation of man’s device (νόμῳ). The other is that superior strength is a gift of nature, and therefore the rule of the weaker128 by the stronger is according to nature. The conflict between these two views was destined to engage some of the greatest minds of Greece in later years, when the political failure of the Greek states had diverted men’s thoughts to problems concerning the individual. For the present slavery was taken for granted, but it is evident that the seeds of future doubt had been sown. Among the stray utterances betraying uneasiness is the oft-quoted saying129 of the sophist Alcidamas ‘god leaves all men free: nature makes no man a slave.’ The speaker was contemporary with Euripides, whose sayings are often in much the same tone, if less direct. A remarkable passage is that in which he makes Heracles repudiate130 the myths that represent slavery as existing among the gods. No god that is a real god has any needs, and such tales are rubbish—an argument that was destined to reappear later as bearing upon slavery among men, particularly in connexion with the principles of the Cynic school.

I have said enough as to the point of view from which the questioners, such as Euripides, regarded slavery. It is somewhat surprising that the poet’s references to hired labour131 are very few, and all of a depressing kind, treating θητεύειν as almost or quite equivalent to δουλεύειν. The references or allusions to handicrafts are hardly to the point: such men are doubtless conceived as θῆτες, but they would generally direct themselves in virtue of their trade-skill: they are not hired ‘hands.’ Herdsmen often appear, but generally if not always they seem to be slaves or serfs. Nor is it clear that the digger (σκαφεύς) is free; he is referred to132 as a specimen of the meanest class of labourer. But in three of the plays there occur passages directly descriptive of the poor working farmer, the αὐτουργὸς of whom I have spoken above. In the Electra, the prologue is put in the mouth of the poor but well-born αὐτουργὸς to whom the crafty Aegisthus has given Electra in marriage. The scene between husband and wife is one of peculiar delicacy and interest. The points that concern us here are these. The princess has been united133 to a poor and powerless freeman. He is fully occupied134 with the hard labour of his farm, which he apparently cultivates singlehanded. He understands the motive of Aegisthus, and shews his respect for Electra by refraining from conjugal rights. She in turn respects his nobility, and shews her appreciation by cheerfully performing135 the humble duties of a cottar’s wife. When the breadwinner (ἐργάτης) comes home from toil, he should find all ready for his comfort. He is shocked to see her, a lady of gentle breeding (εὖ τεθραμμένη) fetch water from the spring and wait upon his needs. But he has to accept the situation: the morrow’s dawn136 shall see him at his labour on the land: it is all very well to pray for divine aid, but to get a living the first thing needful is to work. Now here we have a picture of the free farmer on a small scale, who lives in a hovel and depends on the labour of his own hands. He is the ancient analogue of the French peasant, who works harder than any slave, and whose views are apt to be limited by the circumstances of his daily life. He has no slaves137. Again, the Theban herald in the Supplices138, speaking of the incapacity of a Demos for the function of government, says ‘but a poor husbandman (γαπόνος ἀνὴρ πένης), even if not stupid, will be too busy to attend to state affairs.’ Here is our toiling rustic, the ideal citizen of statesmen who desire to keep free from popular control. The same character appears again in the Orestes, on the occasion of a debate in the Argive Assembly (modelled on Athens), as defender of Orestes. He is described139 as ‘not of graceful mien, but a manly fellow, one who seldom visits the city and the market-place, a toiler with his hands (αὐτουργός), of the class on whom alone the safety of the country depends; but intelligent and prepared to face the conflict of debate, a guileless being of blameless life.’ So vivid is this portrait, that the sympathy of the poet with the rustic type of citizen can hardly be ignored. Now, why did Euripides take pains to shew this sympathy? I take it to be a sign that he saw with regret the declining influence of the farmer class in Attic politics.

Can we go a step further, and detect in these passages any sort of protest against a decline in the number of small working farmers, and a growth of exploitation-farming, carried on by stewards directing the labour of slaves or hired hands? In the next generation we find this system in use, as indeed it most likely always had been to some extent on the richer soils of lowland Attica. The concentration of the country folk in the city during the great war would tend to promote agriculture by deputy after the return of peace. Deaths, and the diversion of some farmers to other pursuits, were likely to leave vacancies in the rural demes. Speculators who took advantage of such chances to buy land would not as a rule do so with intent to live on the land and work it themselves; and aliens were not allowed to hold real estate. It seems fairly certain that landlords resident in Athens, to whom land was only one of many forms of investment, and who either let their land to tenant-farmers or exploited its cultivation under stewards, were a class increased considerably by the effects of the war. We shall see further reasons below for believing this. Whether Euripides in the passages cited above is actually warning or protesting, I do not venture to say: that he grasped the significance of a movement beginning under his very eyes, is surely a probable conjecture.

That we should hear little of the employment of slaves in the hard work of agriculture, even if the practice were common, is not to be wondered at. Assuming the existence of slavery, there was no need for any writer other than a specialist to refer to them. But we have in the Rhesus a passage140 in which Hector forecasts the result of an attack on the Greeks while embarking: some of them will be slain, and the rest, captured and made fast in bonds, will be taught to cultivate (γαπονεῖν) the fields of the Phrygians. That this use of captives is nothing extraordinary appears below, when Dolon the spy is bargaining for a reward in case of success. To a suggestion that one of the Greek chiefs should be assigned to him he replies ‘No, hands gently nurtured (εὖ ’τεθραμμέναι)141 are unfit for farm-work (γεωργεῖν).’ The notion of captive Greeks slaving on the land for Asiatic lords is a touch meant to be provocative of patriotic indignation. And the remark of Dolon would surely fall more meaningly on the ears of men acquainted with the presence of rustic slavery in their own country. To serfage we have a reference142 in the Heraclidae, but the retainer (πενέστης) is under arms, ‘mobilized,’ not at the time working on the land. His reward, when he brings the news of victory, is to be freedom.

IX. The ‘Constitution of Athens’ or ‘Old Oligarch.’

One of the most remarkable documents that have come down to us bearing upon Athenian politics is the ‘Constitution143 of Athens’ wrongly assigned to Xenophon. It is certainly the work of an earlier writer, and the date of its composition can be fixed as between 430 and 424 BC. Thus it refers to the first years of the Peloponnesian war, during which Attica was repeatedly invaded, its rural economy upset, and the manifold consequences of overcrowding in the city of refuge were beginning to shew themselves. Not a few of the ‘better classes’ of Athenian citizens (οἱ βέλτιστοι) were dissatisfied with the readiness of the Demos, under the guidance of Pericles, to carry out a maritime and aggressive policy abroad at the cost of sacrificing rural interests at home. For the sacrifice fell on the landowners, more particularly on the larger owners: the compensations144 of state-pay and chances of plunder might suffice for the peasant farmer driven into Athens. At the same time it was undeniable that the astounding energy displayed by democratic Athens had surprised the Greek world; and the most discontented Athenian could hardly suppress an emotion of patriotic pride. The writer of the pamphlet before us—for a pamphlet it is—was under the influence of these conflicting feelings. Whether it is right to describe him as an Oligarch depends on what that term is taken to connote. That he would greatly prefer a system145 under which the educated orderly and honest citizens should enjoy greater consideration and power, is evident: also that in his view these qualities are normal attributes of the wealthier classes. For he finds in poverty the main cause146 of democratic misdeeds. That the masses are ill-informed and lack judgment and self-control, is the result of their preoccupation with necessities of daily life. But from this conviction to aiming at a serious oligarchic revolution is a long step. The democracy in its less aggressive form, before the recent developments owing to the presence of an idle refugee population, might conceivably have sufficed for his requirements. He is a prejudiced contemporary witness, frank and cynical in the extreme, praising the Demos for doing the very things that he hates and despises, because those things are in the interest of the democracy such as it appears to him: they would be fools to act otherwise. For convenience sake I follow Mr Zimmern147 in calling him the Old Oligarch.

His disgust at the lack of discipline in the slaves at Athens, and his ingenious explanation148 of the causes that have led to toleration of the nuisance, are very characteristic of his whole attitude. But the slaves of whom he speaks are those labourers whom their owners allowed to work for hire in the city and Peiraeus, taking a share of their pay as rent for their services. Perhaps the state slaves are meant also. He admits that you have to put up with the airs of these fellows, who often become men of substance (πλούσιοι δοῦλοι) and think themselves as good as the citizens. Truth is, the master depends on the return he gets from his investment: if the rent comes in regularly, he asks no questions and the slave is given149 a free hand. No wonder the bondman jostles his betters in the public streets, a state of things inconceivable in orderly Sparta. Now on the face of it this picture has nothing to do with the agricultural situation. But let us look further. The stress of the great war had increased the city population. The increased demand for imported food-stuffs and for materials of war (such as ship-timber) had undoubtedly increased the demand for dock-labourers, boatmen, porters, carters, and other ‘hands.’ Male citizens had enough to do in services by land and sea. From what source was the extra force of rough able-bodied labour recruited? Is it likely that a number of raw barbarian slaves were imported for the purpose? I think not; time would be needed to make them efficient, and the available shipping had already a difficult task to keep up the supply of indispensable goods. Is it not much more likely that rustic slaves, brought into Athens by their owners, were turned to account150 in another department of labour, thus earning wages for themselves while they maintained their masters? The probability of this view will depend largely on proof that rustic slaves were employed in Attica under normal conditions at this time. We shall presently see how the evidence of Aristophanes bears on the point.

Meanwhile let us see what references to agriculture are to be found in this pamphlet. In speaking of the nautical skill151 now a common accomplishment among Athenians, the writer remarks that the possession of estates abroad, and the duties of offices concerned with external affairs, have something to do with it. Men have to cross the water: they and their attendants (ἀκόλουθοι) thus pick up skill by experience without intending it: for it happens time and again that both master and slave (καὶ αὐτὸν καὶ τὸν οἰκέτην) have to take a turn at the oar. The estates referred to are chiefly state-lands allotted to Athenian cleruchs in confiscated districts, but also private properties. The voyages to and fro are nothing exceptional. Whether a man resided on his estate and had need to visit Athens, or whether he resided in Athens and had to visit his estate from time to time, he must go to sea. It is to be borne in mind that allottees in cleruchies often let their lands to the former owners as tenants. In another passage152 he points out the disadvantage to Athens, as a maritime power, of not being on an island and so secure from invasion. ‘As things are, those Athenians who farm land or are wealthy (οἱ γεωργοῦντες καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι) are more inclined to conciliate the enemy (ὑπέρχονται = cringe to), while the Demos, well aware that their own belongings are in no danger of destruction, is unconcerned and defiant.’ A notable admission, confirmed by other evidence, as we shall see. It is to be observed that farmers and wealthy men are coupled together. The class more especially meant are probably those represented in Aristophanes by the substantial farmers of the Peace. But capitalists with investments in land are also included, and small-holders or tenants; these last working the land themselves, but not necessarily without employing hired or slave labour.

X. Aristophanes

Aristophanes is a witness of great importance. Of eleven surviving plays the Acharnians appeared in 425 BC, the Plutus in 388. Thus we have from this prince of wit and humour a series of comments on the social and political life of Athens and Attica from the point of view of conservative admirers of good old times. The evidence of Comedy is liable to be suspect, on the ground of a tendency to exaggerate and distort facts: but to make allowances for this tendency is not a task of extreme difficulty. Nor can it fairly be said that the political bias of the poet is such as to deprive his evidence of all authority. If he seems at times to be singularly detached from the prejudices of the war-party, dominating Athens under the democratic leaders, and able to discern and boldly to declare that the right was not solely on their own side in the war; still he was a warm patriot, devoted to the Athens whose defects he could not ignore. Among the striking events of the time nothing seems to have impressed him more forcibly than the devastation of Attica and the consequent ruin of the agricultural interest. That the cooping-up of the rural population153 within the walls month after month was a progressive calamity, could hardly escape the notice of any one then resident. It was not merely the squalor or the appalling sickness, though these were in themselves enough to produce a terrible strain. Discontent and recklessness took hold of the masses, and other observers beside Aristophanes remarked the degeneration of the democracy. Aristophanes was an opponent of the war-policy, and strove hard to rally the farmer-folk in favour of peace. He spared no pains to discredit the noisy demagogues, accusing them of prolonging the war in order to retain or increase their own importance at the cost of the soundest element in the civic body. But, while he turned the farmers’ grievances to account in political advocacy, he was no mere unscrupulous partisan. His frequent references to the homely joys of country life, sometimes in sympathetic rural vignettes, have the ring of sincerity. Like many another dweller in the unwholesome city, he sighed for the fresh air, the wholesome food, the peace and quiet of Attic farmsteads: no doubt he idealized the surroundings, though he did not depict them as scenes of spotless innocence. But the details that drop out casually are often very significant from the point of view of my inquiry, and very helpful as giving us a genuine picture of the time.

On no point is information more to be desired than the relation of agriculture to wealth. Is the typical farmer of the period a man of large estate or not? We have seen that the ‘old oligarch’ classed together the wealthy and the farmers as favouring a peace-policy. That such a body of opinion, large or small, existed in Athens, is also suggested by passages in Aristophanes. In the Ecclesiazusae, the play in which the leader of the female politicians offers to cure distress by a communistic scheme, we are told154 that a proposal to mobilize a fleet divides the Assembly: the poor man votes for it, but the wealthy and the farmers are against it. I take it that, as in the case of the Sicilian expedition, the man who wants to get paid for service (with a chance of profit) supports the motion; those who dislike having to pay for the enterprise, or see no way of profiting by it, are in opposition. This is a phenomenon normal in politics, and does not tell us whether the ‘farmers’ are cultivators on a large scale or small. Later in the play we find a protest155 against the iniquity of the present juxtaposition of wealth and destitution, the state of things in which one man farms much land while another has not enough to afford him a grave. Even a comic poet would hardly put this into the mouth of one of his characters if there were not some section of the audience to whom it might appeal. It is probable that at the time (393-2 BC) communistic suggestions were among the currents of opinion in humbled and impoverished Athens. To squeeze the rich had long been the policy of the democrats, and a jealousy of wealth in any form became endemic in the distressful city. A few years later (388 BC) the poet gave in the Plutus a pointed discussion156 of economic questions, ridiculing the notion that all could be rich at the same time: for nobody would work, and so civilization would come to an end. True, the individualistic bent of the average Athenian, grasping and litigious, prevented the establishment of downright communism: but Athens was henceforth never free from the jealous and hardly patriotic demands of the clamorous poor We must remember that military service, no longer offering prospects of profit in addition to pay, was becoming unpopular; that land-allotments157 in conquered territories had ceased; and that agriculture in a large part of Attica was toilsome and unremunerative. Poverty was widespread, and commerce declined: this implies that the supply of slaves, and the money to buy them, would be reduced. Was there then much to attract the poor man to the lonely tillage of a patch of rocky land? The generation of small farmers before and during the great war had some outlook for themselves and their sons, serving in victorious armies or fleets, getting booty or allotments abroad. Hence they took a keen interest in politics. The fall of Athens had changed all this: the profits of empire had departed, and with them the buoyancy of an imperial pride. No wonder if there were signs of unwillingness to follow a hard rustic life. So the Informer in the Plutus158, when asked ‘are you a husbandman?’ replies ‘do you take me for a madman?’ Earlier in the play159 Chremylus, wishing to share with old cronies the profits of having captured the god of wealth, says to his slave ‘invite my fellow farmers: I fancy you’ll find them working themselves (αὐτοὺς) on their farms.’

I have taken this later picture first, in order to bring out more clearly the contrast presented by that given in the earlier plays. Naturally enough, many details are the same in both, but the general character of the farmers is different. The farmer class makes an important figure. They are sturdy rustics160, old-fashioned and independent, rough in manners, fond of simple country life, and inclined (perhaps justly) to mistrust the city folk, who cheat them in business whenever they can, and take advantage of them in other ways, such as liability to military service at short notice. When driven to take refuge in Athens, their hearts are in their farms, and they have to make up their minds whether to support the war-party in hope of regaining their homes and property by force of arms, or to press for peace in order to end what is from their point of view an unnecessary war, kept going in the interest of demagogues and others who are profiting by the opportunities of offices and campaigns abroad. The issue appears in our earliest play, the Acharnians (425 BC). The farmers of the deme Acharnae, one of whose occupations was wood-cutting and charcoal-burning, at first come on as stubborn rustics, all for war and revenge on the enemy. But Dicaeopolis the chief character of the play, himself a farmer, and a sufferer in the same kind by the Spartan raids, succeeds in persuading161 them that Athenian policy, provocative and grasping, is really to blame for their losses. In the end they come over to his views, and the play serves as a manifesto of the peace-party. Of course we are not to take it as history. But the conflict between the two sections of opinion is probably real enough. When Dicaeopolis describes162 himself as ‘with my eyes ever turned to my farm, a lover of peace, detesting the city and hankering after my own deme, that never yet bade me buy charcoal or rough wine or olive oil,’ he is giving us a portrait of the rustic who is resolved not to part with cash for what can be produced on the farm.

But, whatever policy may seem best adapted to achieve their purpose, the purpose itself is clearly and consistently marked. The desire of the war-time farmers is simply to return to their farms163 and to resume the life of toil and plenty, varied by occasional festivals, that had been interrupted by the war. They long to escape from the abominations of the crowding and unhealthiness prevailing in the city. Once they get back to their old surroundings, all will be well. Time and labour will even repair the damages caused by the enemy. No misgivings suggest that a change of circumstances may be found to have robbed Attic country life of some of its charm. Nothing like the loss of the empire, the fall of Athens, and the deadly depression of economic and political life, is foreboded: they face the sequel with undisturbed faith in the stability of the existing system. Nor indeed until the Sicilian disaster (413 BC) was there much to cause uneasiness. So we find the same spirit illustrated in the Peace (421 BC), which may be regarded as driving home the lesson of the Acharnians. The agricultural interests are now represented as solidly in favour of the peace of Nicias, unsatisfactory though it soon proved to be. While other interests are slack, indifferent or even hostile, farmers are whole-hearted164 in determination to end the war and go home. Trygaeus their leader, according to the Greek sketch of the plot an elderly rustic, describes himself165 as a ‘skilled vine-dresser, one who is no informer or fomenter of troubles (lawsuits).’ Needless to say, he carries his point, and the farmers march off triumphant166 to their farms, eager to take up the old easygoing life once more. We must not take our comic poet too literally, but we have no reason to doubt that feelings such as he depicts in this play did prevail, and perhaps widely. And, though the peace was insincere, and warfare never really ceased, the immunity of Attica from invasion for several years gave time for agriculture to revive. When Agis occupied Deceleia in the winter of 413, his marauders would find on the Attic farms all manner of improvements and new plantations to destroy. And the destruction of the fruits of a laborious revival is to be reckoned among the depressing influences that weighed upon falling and desperate Athens. It was surely at work in the year 411, when Aristophanes was preaching a policy of concord at home and sympathetic treatment of the Allies in order to save the shaken empire. In the Lysistrata he represents the mad war-fury of the Greek states as due to the misguided men, whom the women coerce by privation into willingness for peace. This is strung up into a passionate longing, so that neither167 of the principal parties is disposed to haggle over details. The Athenian breaks out ‘I want to strip and work my land at once.’ The Spartan rejoins ‘and I want to be carting manure.’ There is still no misgiving expressed, and the poet is probably true to facts. The struggles of the time were a fearful strain on Athenian resources, but it still seemed possible that the empire would weather the storm.

This brief sketch leads on to the inquiry, what do we gather as to the labour employed on the farms? We have to consider three possibilities (a) the farmer, including his family, (b) hired labourers, (c) slaves. It is well to begin by remarking that frequency of reference to one of these does not necessarily imply the same proportion in actual employment. Slavery being assumed as a fact in all departments of life (as it is by all writers of the period), and the slave being an economic or domestic appliance rather than a person, there was no need to call special attention to his presence. Hence it is natural that the rustic slave should, as such, be seldom referred to in the plays. He is in fact mentioned several times, rather more often than the yoke of oxen. Nor was it necessary to mention the wage-earner, the man employed for the job under a temporary contract, and in connexion with agriculture he hardly appears at all. But the working farmers were a class of citizens. They had votes, and they were on political grounds a class to whose sympathies the poet was anxious to appeal. Therefore he had no choice but to lay stress upon their virtues and magnify their importance. Any careful reader of Aristophanes will I think admit that he does this consistently. In doing this with political aims he was subject to the temptation of passing lightly over any considerations that might, whether justly or unjustly, be turned against his case. This may serve to explain why he refers almost solely to the small working farmer, who himself labours on the land. We are not to infer that there were no large estates worked by deputy, though probably there were not many: to lay stress on the interested views of large landowners was not likely to please the jealous Demos. Nor are we to infer that the small farmer used no slaves: that he laboured himself is no proof, for no man could get more out of a slave’s labour than the working owner, on whom the burden of making good his slave’s neglect must fall. I turn now to the passages from which the various details may be gleaned.

In the Acharnians the working farmer Dicaeopolis is delighted at having made a separate peace on his own account. He holds it a fine thing168 that he should now be able to perform religious rites and celebrate the festival of the rustic Dionysia with his slaves. He is back at home169 in his own rural deme, and he calls his slave Xanthias to carry the phallus in the procession. In the Clouds170 old Strepsiades says that he lives in the heart of the country, and his preference for the easy and rather squalid life on a farm is plainly expressed. And the play opens with his complaint that in war-time a man has not a free hand to punish his slaves. It is however not clear that he is supposed to be at the time living on the farm. In the Wasps the chorus of old dicasts are indignant171 that their old comrade Philocleon should be dragged off by his own slaves at the order of his son. The old man himself, struggling and protesting, reminds the leading slave of the time when he caught the rogue stealing grapes (obviously in his vineyard) and thrashed him soundly. In the Peace a rustic scene172 is described. The weather being unfavourable for work on the land, but excellent for the seed just sown, it is proposed to make merry indoors. Country fare is made ready, and the female slave Syra is told to call in the man slave Manes from the farm. A little below Trygaeus is mocking the workers in war-trades. To the trumpet-maker he says, fit up your trumpet differently173 and you can turn it into a weighing-machine: ‘it will then do for serving out rations of figs to your slaves on the farm.’ In the Lysistrata the chorus, being aware that an interval of distress will follow the conclusion of peace, offers174 to tide over the crisis by helping the fathers of large families and owners of hungry slaves by doles of food. ‘Let them bring their bags and wallets for wheat: my Manes shall fill them.’ After these passages the announcement of the working of the communistic scheme175 in the Ecclesiazusae carries us into a very different atmosphere. ‘But who is to till the soil under the new order?’ asks Blepyrus. ‘Our slaves,’ replies Praxagora, his typical better-half. We see that this amounts to basing society on a serf-system, for the slaves will be common property like the rest. In the Plutus old Chremylus is a farmer, apparently a working176 farmer, but he has a slave, indeed more than one. Age has probably led him to do most of his work by deputy. When Poverty, in the course of her economic lecture, explains to him177 that wealth for all means slaves for none and that he will have to plough and dig for his own proper sustenance, he is indignant. The weak points of the argument do not concern us here. The solution offered in the play, the cure of the Wealth-god’s blindness, enabling him to enrich only the deserving, is a mere piece of sportive nonsense, meant to amuse an audience, not to hold out a serious hope of better things.

Enough has been said to shew that the slave had a place in farm life as depicted by Aristophanes. It will be observed that in the earlier plays the references are all of a casual kind: that is to say, that slave-labour calls for no particular attention or remark. The consideration of slave-labour as such, in fact as an economic phenomenon, only appears later. This is, I repeat, significant of the change that had come upon Athens and Attica in consequence of exhaustion. In respect of hired labour it is obvious that pressure of poverty, as stated178 in the Plutus, directly influences the supply. If the possession of a competency will deter men from professional industry in trades, even more will it deter them from the drudgery of rough labour. The hired men (μισθωτοί) were commonly employed in all departments, for instance in the building trades, to which there is a reference179 in the Birds. But we may fairly assume that during the great war the number of such ‘hands’ available for civilian services was much reduced. In agriculture there would be little or no demand for them. And any able-bodied citizen could earn good pay from the state. Moreover rough labour was not much to the taste of the average Athenian,—above all, digging180. ‘I cannot dig’ was proverbial. On the other hand there were farm-duties in the performance of which sufficient care and intelligence could only be exacted through the medium of wage-paying. Such was that of olive-pickers, to whom and their wage we have a reference181 in the Wasps. They are probably free persons, but it is possible that wage-earning slaves, paying rent to their owners, might be thus employed. That in some occupations free and slave-labour were both employed indifferently, is certain. The carriage of burdens182 is a case in point. But employment in odd jobs would be far more frequent in the city, including Peiraeus, than in country places. I do not think it rash to conclude that hired free labourers were few on the farms of Attica in the time of Aristophanes.

Turning to citizen agriculturists, it must be mentioned that views differ as to the proportion of large estates held and worked by wealthy owners in this period. Such estates would almost certainly employ slave-labour. So far as the evidence of Aristophanes goes, I should infer that they were few. No doubt he had reasons for not making much of such cases; still I believe that the comfortable working farmer, homely and independent, the poet’s favourite character, was in fact the normal type. They were not paupers,—far from it: but their capital consisted in land, buildings, dead and live farm-stock, and the unexhausted value of previous cultivation. These items could not suddenly be converted into money without ruinous loss: most of them could not be carried away in the flight to Athens. Hence the dislike felt by such men to an adventurous policy, in which their interests were sacrificed. The passages in which agriculture is connected183 with large property occur in a play produced 392 BC, at which time great changes had happened. It is highly probable that, among these changes, much Attic land had passed from the hands of ruined yeomen into those of rich men possessed of ready money and able to buy in a glutted market. In a later period we shall find γεωργεῖν used in the sense of acting the country landowner. To illustrate the life and ways of the peasant farmers of this period Aristophanes supplies endless references descriptive and allusive. The chief of these have been cited above. A few more may be added here. In the Clouds Strepsiades, urging his son to a rustic life, hopes to see him dressed in a leathern jerkin, like his father before him, driving in the goats184 from the waste (φελλέως, the rocky hill-pasture). Here is a good instance of husbandry in the Attic highlands, in short a case of crofters. What a refugee might hope to save in his flight and take back to his farm on the return of peace—it amounts to a few implements185—is set out in the Peace. Loss of oxen, a yoke of two, driven off by Boeotian raiders, is pitifully bewailed186 by a farmer in the Acharnians. But in general the farmers of the earlier plays are represented as tough elderly men. They are the ‘elder generation,’ and the poet genuinely admires them. For the younger generation he has a profound contempt. Evidently he thought that the soundest breed of Athenian citizens was dying out; and I am not sure that he was wrong.

I conclude that the evidence of Aristophanes on the whole points to an agriculture mainly carried on by working farmers with the help of slaves. This system was subjected to a very severe strain by the war-conditions prevailing for many years, and I do not think that it was possible to revive it on the same footing as before, even when Attica was no longer exposed to frequent raids. It was not merely the loss of fixed capital that told on the farmer class. Importation of corn was so developed and organized to meet the necessities of the crowded city, that it completely dominated the market, and in the production of cereals the home agriculture could now no longer compete with foreign harvests. There remained the culture of the olive and vine: but it needed years to restore plantations of these and other fruit-trees, and to wait for revival needed a capital possessed by few. The loss of imperial revenues impoverished Athens, and the struggle with financial difficulties runs through all her later history. It did not take the poorer citizens long to see that how to get daily bread was the coming problem. State-pay was no longer plentiful, and one aim of jealous franchise-regulations was to keep down the number of claimants. Had Aristophanes any inkling of the evil days to come? At all events he was aware that poverty works in two187 ways: if it leads one man to practise a trade for his living, it tempts another to evildoing, perhaps to crime.

XI. Thucydides

Thucydides is a writer from whom it is extremely difficult to extract any evidence on the subject of agricultural labour. The preeminent importance of the problem of food-supply in the Greece of his day may be amply illustrated from his work; but mainly in casual utterances, the full significance of which is only to be gathered by thorough examination such as has been made188 by Dr Grundy. The economic revolution in Attica that followed the reforms of Solon, the extended culture of the vine and olive, the reduced growth of cereal crops, the development of manufactures and sea-borne trade, the growing dependence on imported corn, and the influence of these changes on the public policy of Athens, are now seen more clearly as a whole than ever before. But to the great historian these things were part of the background of his picture. They are parts of a movement taken for granted rather than understood. And the same is true of the existence and application of slave-labour. In the time of Thucydides slavery was an economic and social fact, unchallenged. It may be that it affected unfavourably the position of the free handworker in the long run, and gave opportunities to slaveowning capitalists. But this effect came about slowly, and freeman and slave could and did labour189 side by side, for instance in the great public works promoted by Pericles. How far slave-labour was really cheaper than free is a question beyond my subject. But it is important to note the attitude of the poor citizen towards the question of what we call a living wage. Once the great outlay on public works began to fall off, and industries on a larger scale to compete with the individual craftsman, how was the poor citizen to live? Directly or indirectly, the profits of empire supplied the answer. Now it was obvious that the fewer the beneficiaries the larger would be the average dividend of each. So the policy favoured by the poorer classes was a jealous restriction of the franchise. It was not the slave as labour-competitor against whom protection was desired, but the resident freeman of doubtful origin as a potential profit-sharer.

During nearly the whole of the period covered by the history of Thucydides the public policy of Athens was controlled by urban influences. Even before the rustic citizens were cooped up in the city, it was no doubt city residents that formed the normal majority in the Assembly, and to whom most of the paid offices and functions fell. Even allowing for the recent growth of ‘seafaring rabble’ in Peiraeus, these Athenians were not at all a mere necessitous mob. But it must be remembered that the commercial and industrial capitalists were interested in foreign trade. As Mr Cornford190 points out, even metics of this class must have had considerable influence owing to wealth and connexions. Thus the urban rich as well as the urban poor were tempted to favour a policy of adventure, contrary to the wishes and interests of the Attic farmers. Now these latter were the truest representatives of the old Attic stock. Once they were crowded into the city and many of them diverted to state service, any sobering influence that they might at first exercise would become less and less marked, and they would tend to be lost in the mass. Therefore we hear only of the rustic life191 from which they unwillingly tore themselves in 431 BC: we do not get any detailed picture of it, for the historian’s attention was otherwise occupied. In the passage192 accounting for the unpopularity of Pericles in 430 BC we read that the Demos was irritated because ‘having less (than the rich) to start with, it had been deprived of that little,’ while the upper class (δυνατοὶ) had lost their fine establishments. Here the context seems to imply that the δῆμος referred to is especially the small farmers, still dwelling on their losses and not yet otherwise employed.

One passage is so important that it must be discussed by itself. Pericles is made to encourage193 the Athenians in resistance to the Spartan demands by pointing out the superiority of their resources compared with those of the enemy. ‘The Peloponnesians’ he says ‘are working farmers (αὐτουργοί). They have no store of wealth (χρήματα) either private or public. Nor have they experience of protracted warfare with operations beyond the sea: for their own campaigns against each other are short, owing to poverty.’ After explaining how they must be hampered by lack of means, he resumes thus ‘And working farmers are more ready to do service in person than by payment. They trust that they may have the luck to survive the perils of war; but they have no assurance that their means will not be exhausted before it ends: for it may drag out to an unexpected length—and this is likely to happen.’ Two questions at once suggest themselves. Is this a fair sketch of agricultural conditions in Peloponnese? Does it imply that Attic farmers were not αὐτουργοί? To take the latter first, it is held by Professor Beloch194 that the passage characterizes the Peloponnese as a land of free labour, in contrast with slave-holding Athens. To this view I cannot assent. I am convinced that the Attic farmer who worked with his own hands did often, if not always, employ slave-labour also. He would not have a large gang of slaves, like the large-scale cultivator: he could not afford to keep an overseer. But it might pay him to keep one or two slaves, not more than he could oversee himself. If the contrast be clearly limited, so as to compare the wealth of Athens, now largely industrial and commercial, with the wealth of a purely agricultural population, scattered over a wide area, and having little ready money, it is reasonable and true. But this does not raise the question of the Attic farmer at all. A little below195 Pericles is made to urge that class to submit quietly to invasion and serious loss. They are not the people on whose resources he relies to wear out the enemy. That enemy finds it hard to combine for common action or to raise money by war-taxes. Athens is a compact community, able to act quickly, and has at disposal the forces and tribute of her subjects, secured by naval supremacy. To the other question, that of Peloponnesian agriculture, I see no simple answer. All the southern parts, the region of Spartan helotry, can hardly be called a land of free labour in any rational sense. Nor does it appear that Argolis, in spite of the various revolutions in local politics, could rightly be described thus. Elis and Achaia were hardly of sufficient importance to justify such a general description, even if it were certain that it would apply to them locally. Arcadia, mostly mountainous and backward, is the district to which the description would be most applicable. But that there were slaves in Arcadia is not only probable but attested by evidence, later in date but referring to an established196 state of things. At festivals, we are told, slaves and masters shared the same table. This does not exclude rustic slaves: it rather seems to suggest them. The working farmer entertaining his slaves on a rural holiday is even a conventional tradition of ancient country life. Arcadia, a land of peasant farmers, where a living had to be won by hard work, a land whence already in the fifth century (and still more in the fourth) came numbers of mercenary soldiers, a land whence Sparta raised no small part of her ‘Peloponnesian’ armies, is what Pericles has chiefly in mind. And that Arcadians were normally αὐτουργοὶ did not imply that they had no slaves.

So far as Attica is concerned, Thucydides himself incidentally attests the presence of rustic slaves. He would probably have been, surprised to hear such an obvious fact questioned. In refusing to repeal the ‘Megarian decree’ the Athenians charged197 the Megarians with various offences, one of which was the reception of their runaway slaves. In the winter 415-4 BC Alcibiades, urging the Spartans to occupy Deceleia, is made to state198 the advantages of that move thus ‘For of all the farm-stock in the country the bulk will at once come into your possession, some by capture, and the rest of its own accord (αὐτόματα).’ I take the last words to refer especially to slaves,—rustic slaves. In recording the success of the plan, the historian tells199 us that more than 20000 slaves, a large part of whom were artisans (χειροτέχναι), deserted to the enemy. We may guess that many or most of the artisan slaves had escaped from Athens. Their loss would be felt in the reduction of manufacturing output, so far as such enterprise was still possible at the time, and perhaps in the dockyards. But the rest would be rustic slaves, many of them (to judge by the map) from a district200 in which there were probably many small farms. On the other hand, the slaves welcomed by the Megarians were probably from larger estates in the Thriasian plain. Turning from Attica, we find references to rustic slaves201 in Corcyra (427 BC) and Chios (412 BC), where they were numerous and important in their effect on operations. And in other passages where the slaves belonging to the people of this or that place are mentioned we are not to assume that only urban slaves are meant. For to live in a town, and go out for the day’s work on the land, was and is a common usage in Mediterranean countries. An extreme case202 is where people live on an island and cross water to cultivate farms elsewhere. It is perhaps hardly necessary to remark that rich slaveowners, who could afford overseers, did not need to reside permanently on their estates. Such a man might have more than one farm, and in more than one district, not necessarily in Attica at all, as Thucydides himself exploited a mining concession in Thrace. In any case a well-equipped ‘country place’ was a luxury, and is characterized as such203 in words put into the mouth of Pericles, who as the democratic statesman was concerned to stifle discontent by insinuating that it was a mere expression of the selfishness of the rich.

The settlement of Athenians in colonies (ἀποικίαι) or on allotments of conquered land (κληρουχίαι), in the islands or on the seaboard has been fully treated204 by Dr Grundy. He shews that this movement had two aims, the occupation of strategic points as an imperial measure of security, and the provision of land-lots for poorer citizens as a measure of economic relief. The latter purpose is part of a general plan for reducing the financial liabilities of the state with respect to its citizen population, the necessity for which Dr Grundy explains. By these settlements abroad some surplus population was removed and provided with means of livelihood. If the assumption of a surplus citizen population be sound (and I am not in a position to challenge it), we must also assume a certain degree of genuine land-hunger, at least more than the Attic territory could satisfy. If there was such land-hunger, it is perhaps not unreasonable to connect it with the survival of old Attic traditions of country life. And it would seem that the settlers, cleruchs or colonists, did as a rule205 stay and live in their settlements. They would probably work their lands on much the same general plan as their brethren in Attica, and their labour-arrangements would be much the same. But in 427 BC, when Pericles was dead and there was surely no surplus population, at least of able-bodied men, owing to the war, we find a curious record. Reconquered Lesbos206 had to be dealt with. It was not subjected to an assessed tribute (φόρος), but parcelled into 3000 allotments, 2700 of which were reserved for 2700 Athenian citizens, those who drew the lucky lots (τοὺς λαχόντας), and these 2700 were sent out. But they did not stay207 there. They let their shares to the old inhabitants as cultivating tenants, at a rent of two minae per share per annum, and evidently returned to Athens. By this arrangement a sum of about £21000 a year would come in to the shareholders in Athens, who would have a personal interest in seeing that it was punctually paid. Whether these non-resident landlords were chosen by lot from all citizens, rich or poor, is not stated. We know that in some cases208 at least the choice of settlers was confined to members of the two lowest property-classes; and it may well be that on this occasion the opportunity209 was taken to compensate to some extent members of rural families, who had suffered loss from the invasions of Attica, but did not wish to go abroad. In any case their tenants would farm as they had done before, employing or not employing slave labour according to their means and the circumstances of the several farms. So too in cases of lands let on lease, and in the confiscations and redistributions of lands, proposed or carried out, it was simply their own profit and comfort that attracted the lessees or beneficiaries. We are entitled to assume that if it paid to employ slaves, and slaves were to be had, then slaves were employed. In short, the scraps of evidence furnished by Thucydides leave us pretty much where we were.

XII. Xenophon

Xenophon, who lived somewhere between 440 and 350 BC, introduces us to a great change in the conditions of the Greek world. The uneasiness and sufferings of the Greek states from the fall of Athens in 404 to the time of exhaustion resulting from the battle of Mantinea in 362 do not concern us here. Of such matters we hear much, but very little directly of the economic changes that were undoubtedly going on. Poverty was as before a standing trouble in Greece. In the more backward parts210 able-bodied men left their homes to serve as hired soldiers. The age of professional mercenaries was in full swing. Arcadians Achaeans Aetolians Acarnanians Thessalians and other seekers after fortune became more and more the staple material of armies. Athens could no longer support imperial ambitions on imperial tributes, and had to depend on the sale of her products to procure her supplies of food. These products were chiefly oil and wine and urban manufactures, and there is reason to think that in general the most economical method of production was by slave labour under close and skilful superintendence. Slaves were supplied by kidnappers from the Euxine and elsewhere, but prisoners captured by armies were another source of supply. This living loot was one of the perquisites that made military life attractive, and the captives found their way to such markets as the industrial centres of Athens and Corinth. What happened in the rural districts of Attica, how far there was a revival of the small farmer class, is a point on which we are very much in the dark. The indirect evidence of Xenophon is interesting but not wholly conclusive.

It is perhaps important to consider what significance should be attached to the mention of agricultural work done by men of military forces on land or sea. In 406 BC we hear of hardships211 endured by the force under the Spartan Eteonicus who were cut off in Chios after the defeat of Arginusae. During the summer months they ‘supported themselves on the fruits of the season and by working for hire in the country.’ This is meant to shew that they were in sad straits, as the sequel clearly proves. Again, in 372 BC Iphicrates was with a force in Corcyra, and naval operations were for the time over. So he ‘managed212 to provide for his oarsmen (νάυτας) chiefly by employing them in farm-work for the Corcyraeans,’ while he undertook an expedition on the mainland with his soldiers. In both these cases want of pay was no doubt one reason for emergency-labour. In the earlier case the destitution of the men led them to look for any paid work: in the second the general had to do his best in spite of irregular and insufficient supplies from home. In both cases it is the exceptional nature of the arrangement that makes it worth mentioning. It can hardly be viewed as having any economic significance. But it is of some interest in connexion with a passage of Aristotle213 that will require notice below.

In the Anabasis Xenophon reports his own arguments, urging the Greek army to fight their way out of the Persian empire. He feared that, now Cyrus was dead, and they were cut off far from home in an enemy’s country, they might in despair surrender to the King and take service under him. At best this meant giving up Greece and settling in Persia on the King’s terms. This he begged them not to do: that they could under Greek discipline cut their way out was evident from the independence of many peoples of Asia Minor, who lived and raided as they chose in defiance of the Persian power. He added ‘Therefore I hold214 that our right and proper course is first to make a push to reach Hellas and our own kinsmen, and to demonstrate to the Greeks that their poverty is their own fault: for, if they would only convey to these parts those of their citizens who are now living in want at home, they could see them in plenty (πλουσίους).’ But he reminds them that the good things of Asia are only to be had as the reward of victory. For my present purpose the one important point is that a mixed host of Greek mercenaries are said to have been appealed to by a reference to the fact of poverty and land-hunger among their folks at home, and that this reference is said to have been made by an Athenian. Writing this in later life, Xenophon would hardly have set down such an argument had it not then, as on the occasion recorded, had considerable force. In another passage215 he gives an interesting account of the motives that had induced most of the men to join the expedition. He is explaining why they were irritated at a rumour that they were to be pressed to settle down at a spot on the Euxine coast. ‘It was not lack of subsistence that had led most of the soldiers to go abroad on this paid service: they had been told of the generosity of Cyrus. Some had other men following them, some had even spent money for the cause: others had run away from their parents, or left children behind, meaning to win money and return to them, on the faith of the reported prosperity of those already in the service of Cyrus. Such was the character of the men, and they were longing to get safe home to Greece.’ In short, full-blooded men were not content to drag on poor ill-found stagnant lives in corners of Greece. And we may add that nothing stimulated the enterprises of Greek adventurers in the East, and led up to the conquests of Alexander, more effectually than the experiences of the Ten Thousand.

Among these experiences was of course the capture of booty, more particularly216 in the form of marketable prisoners. So many of these were sometimes in hand that they were a drag on the march: in a moment of peril217 they had to be abandoned. Even so, a considerable sum had been raised by sales218 and was shared out at Cerasus. The Greek cities on the Pontic seaboard would all no doubt be resorts of slave-dealers. One of the Ten Thousand himself, formerly a slave219 at Athens, recognized as kinsmen by their speech the people of a mountain tribe in Armenia. In Thrace too we hear of the chieftain Seuthes, when short of cash, offering220 to make a payment partly in slaves. Nor was selling into slavery a fate reserved for barbarians alone. Greeks221 had been treated thus in the great war lately ended; and now the Spartan harmost, anxious to clear the remainder of the Ten Thousand222 out of Byzantium safely, made them an offer of facilities for a raid in Thrace: any that stayed behind in the town were to be sold as slaves. And more than 400 were accordingly sold. It seems reasonable to infer that at this time the slave-markets were as busy as ever, perhaps more so than had been the case during the great war. It may be going too far to say that in some parts of Greece people were now trying to restore a broken prosperity by industrial exploitation of slave-labour, while from other parts soldiers of fortune and kidnappers went forth to enlarge the supply of slaves. But that there is some truth in such a statement I do not doubt. It was evidently no easy matter for persons of small means to live in any sort of comfort at Athens. We hear of Socrates223 discussing with a friend the embarrassments of a genteel household. The late civil disorders have driven a number of this man’s sisters cousins and aunts to take refuge in his house. In the present state of things neither land nor house property are bringing in anything, and nobody will lend. How is he to maintain a party of 14 free persons in all? Socrates points to the case of a neighbour who provides for a still larger household without difficulty. Questions elicit the fact that this household consists of slave-artisans trained to useful trades. The distressed party have been brought up as ladies, to do nothing. Socrates suggests that they had better work for bread than starve. The adoption of this suggestion produced the happiest results in every way. Such was the way in which Socrates led his friend. He drew from him the assertion that free people are superior to slaves, and so brought him round to the conviction that superiority could not be shewn by mere incapacity for work.

In this conversation of Socrates may be detected the germ of a complete revolution in thought on labour-subjects. It avoids the topic of common humanity. That the slave is a man and brother, only the victim of misfortune, had been hinted by Euripides and was to become a theme of comic poets. But Socrates lets this point alone, and argues from natural economic necessity. Elsewhere he denounces224 idleness and proclaims that useful labour is good for the labourer, taking a moral point of view. Again, he suggests225 that the shortcomings of slaves are largely due to their masters’ slackness or mismanagement. But he accepts slavery as a social and economic fact. All the same he makes play at times with the notion of moral worthlessness, which many people regarded as characteristic of slaves in general. It is the knowledge of the true qualities226 of conduct, in short of the moral and political virtues, that makes men honourable gentlemen (καλοὺς κἀγαθούς), and the lack of this knowledge that makes them slavish (ἀνδραποδώδεις). But, if the difference between a liberal and an illiberal training, expressed in resulting habits of mind, is thus great, the slavish must surely include many of those legally free. Hence he even goes so far as to say ‘Therefore we ought to spare no exertions to escape being slaves (ἀνδράποδα).’ And he lays stress on the need of moral qualities227 in slaves as well as freemen: we should never be willing to entrust our cattle or our store-houses or the direction of our works to a slave devoid of self-control. His position suggests two things: first, that the importance of the slave in the economic and social system was a striking fact now recognized: second, that the unavoidable moral degradation generally assumed to accompany the condition of slavery was either wrongfully assumed or largely due to the shortcomings of masters. The conception of the slave as a mere chattel, injury to which is simply a damage to its owner, was proving defective in practice, and the philosopher was inclined to doubt its soundness in principle. Xenophon had been brought into touch with such questionings by his intercourse with Socrates. It remains to see how far he shews traces of their influence when he comes to treat labour-problems in connexion with agriculture.

References to agriculture228 are few and unimportant in the Memorabilia. The Economicus deals directly with the subject. A significant passage throws light on the condition of rural Attica at the end of the fifth century BC. The speaker Ischomachus tells229 how his father made money by judicious enterprise. He bought up farms that were let down or derelict, got them into good order, and sold them at a profit when improved. Clearly he was a citizen, able to deal in real estate, and a capitalist. There can hardly be a doubt that he operated by the use of slave-labour on a considerable scale. All through the Economicus slavery is presupposed, but the attitude of Xenophon is characteristically genial and humane. The existence of a slave-market230, where you may buy likely men, even skilled craftsmen, is assumed. But the most notable feature of the book is the seriousness with which the responsibility of the master231 is asserted. There is no querulous evasion of the issue by laying the blame of failure on the incorrigible vices of slaves. Prosperity will depend on securing good service: good service cannot be secured by any amount of chains and punishments, if the master be slack and fitful: both in the house and on the farm, good sympathetic discipline, fairly and steadily enforced, is the secret of success. Carelessness malingering and desertion must be prevented or checked. And to achieve this is the function of the economic art, operating through the influence of hope rather than fear. The training of slaves232 is a matter needing infinite pains on the part of the master and mistress. She must train her housekeeper (ταμία) as he trains his steward (ἐπίτροπος), and both are to act in a humane and kindly spirit. Yet the strictly animal view of slaves233 appears clearly in a passage where the training of slaves is compared with that of horses or performing dogs. ‘But it is possible to make men more obedient by mere instruction (καὶ λόγῳ), pointing out that it is to their interest to obey: in dealing with slaves the system which is thought suitable for training beasts has much to recommend it as a way of teaching obedience. For by meeting their appetites with special indulgence to their bellies you may contrive to get much out of them.’ We gather that the better and more refined type of Athenian gentleman with a landed estate, while averse to inhumanity, and aware that slaves were human, still regarded his slaves as mere chattels. His humanity is prompted mainly by self-interest. As for rights, they have none.

The system of rewards and punishments on the estate of course rests wholly on the masters will. The whole success of the working depends on the efficiency of the steward or stewards. Accordingly the passage in which Ischomachus explains how he deals with these trusted slaves is of particular interest. Having carefully trained a man, he must judge him234 according to a definite standard—does he or does he not honestly and zealously discharge his trust? ‘When I find that in spite of good treatment they still try to cheat me, I conclude that their greediness is past curing, and degrade them235 from their charge.’ This seems to mean that they are reduced to the position of the ordinary hands. ‘But when I observe any induced to be honest236 not merely because honesty pays best, but because they want to get a word of praise from me, these I treat as no longer slaves (ὥσπερ ἐλευθέροις ἤδη). I not only enrich them, but shew them respect as men of honour.’ One is tempted to interpret these last words as implying that actual manumission takes place, the services of the men being retained as freedmen. But the words do not say so plainly, and it is safer to read into them no technical sense. That the men are trusted and allowed to earn for themselves, is enough. The agriculture depicted in the Economicus is that of a landowner with plenty of capital, not that of the peasant farmer. The note of it is superintendence237 (ἐπιμέλεια), not bodily labour (αὐτουργία). In one place αὐτουργία is mentioned, when agriculture is praised, one of its merits being the bodily strength that those gain who work with their own hands. It is as well to repeat here that the fact of a farmer labouring himself does not prove that he employs no other labour. On the other hand there is good reason to infer that the other class, those who ‘do their farming by superintendence,’ are not manual labourers at all. The benefit to them is that agriculture ‘makes them early risers and smart in their movements.’ The master keeps a horse, and is thus enabled to ride out238 early to the farm and stay there till late.

It is remarkable that in this book we hear nothing of hired labourers. There are two references239 to the earning of pay, neither of them in connexion with agricultural labour. Yet the existence of a class of poor people who have to earn their daily bread240 is not ignored. Socrates admires the economic skill241 of Ischomachus. It has enabled him to be of service to his friends and to the state. This is a fine thing, and shews the man of substance. In contrast, ‘there are numbers of men who cannot live without depending on others: numbers too who are content if they can procure themselves the necessaries of life.’ The solid and strong men are those who contrive to make a surplus and use it as benefactors. I read this passage as indirect evidence of the depression of small-scale free industry and the increase of slaveowning capitalism in the Athens of Xenophon’s time. And I find another indication242 of this in connexion with agriculture. In the course of the dialogue it appears that the chief points of agricultural knowledge are simple enough: Socrates knew them all along. Why then do some farmers succeed and others fail? The truth of the matter is, replies Ischomachus, that the cause of failure is not want of knowledge but want of careful superintendence. This criticism is in general terms, but it is surely inapplicable to the case of the working peasant farmer: he who puts his own labour into the land will not overlook the shortcomings of a hired man or a slave. In the agriculture of which this book treats it is the practical and intelligent self-interest of the master that rules everything. His appearance on the field243 should cause all the slaves to brighten up and work with a will: but rather to win his favour than to escape his wrath. For in agriculture, as in other pursuits, the ultimate secret of success244 is a divine gift, the power of inspiring a willing obedience.

I have kept back one passage which needs to be considered with reference to the steward245. Can we safely assume that an ἐπίτροπος was always, or at least normally, a slave? Of those who direct the labourers, the real treasure is the man who gets zealous and steady work out of the hands, whether he be steward or director (ἐπίτροπος or ἐπιστάτης). What difference is connoted by these terms? In the Memorabilia246, Socrates meets an old friend who is impoverished by the results of the great war, and driven to earn his living by bodily labour. Socrates points out to him that this resource will fail with advancing age: he had better find some employment less dependent on bodily vigour. ‘Why not look out for some wealthy man who needs an assistant in superintendence of his property? Such a man would find it worth his while to employ you as director (or foreman, ἔργων ἐπιστατοῦντα), to help in getting in his crops and looking after his estate.’ He answers ‘it would gall me to put up with a servile position (δουλείαν).’ Clearly the position of ἐπιστάτης appears to him a meaner occupation than free wage-earning by manual labour. In another place247 we hear of an ἐπιστάτης for a mine-gang being bought for a talent (£235). That superintendents, whatever their title, were at least normally slaves, seems certain. As to the difference between ‘steward’ and ‘director’ I can only guess that the former might be a slave promoted from the ranks, but might also be what the ‘director’ always was, a new importation. It seems a fair assumption that, as a free superintendent must have been a new importation, a specially bought slave ‘director’ would rank somewhat higher than an ordinary ‘steward,’ whose title ἐπίτροπος at once marked him as a slave. In relation to the general employment of slave-labour there is practically no difference: both are slave-driving ‘overseers.’ As the pamphlet on the Revenues has been thought by some critics not to be the work of Xenophon, I pass it by, only noting that it surely belongs to the same generation. It fully attests the tendency to rely248 on slave-labour, but it is not concerned with agriculture.

The romance known as Cyropaedia wanders far from fact. Its purpose is to expound or suggest Xenophon’s own views on the government of men: accordingly opportunities for drawing a moral are sought at the expense of historical truth. But from my present point of view the chief point to note is that it does not touch the labour-question with which we are concerned. True, we hear249 of αὐτουργοί, and of the hardship and poverty of such cultivators, gaining a painful livelihood from an unkind soil. That the value of a territory depends on the presence of a population250 able and willing to develop its resources, is fully insisted on by Cyrus. But this is in connexion with conquest. The inhabitants of a conquered district remain as tributary cultivators, merely changing their rulers. That the labour of the conquered is to provide the sustenance of the conquering race, is accepted as a fundamental principle. It is simply the right of the stronger: if he leaves anything to his subject, that is a voluntary act of grace. The reason why we hear little of slavery is that all are virtually slaves save the one autocrat. The fabric of Xenophon’s model government is a very simple one: first, an oriental Great King, possessed of all the virtues: second, a class of warrior nobles, specially trained and dependent on the King’s favour: third, a numerous subject population, whose labour supports the whole, and who are practically serfs. A cynical passage251 describes the policy of Cyrus, meant to perpetuate the difference of the classes. After detailing minutely the liberal training enjoined on those whom he intended to employ in governing (οὓς... ἄρχειν ᾤετο χρῆναι), Xenophon proceeds to those whom he intended to qualify for servitude (οὓς... κατεσκεύαζεν εἰς τὸ δουλεύειν). These it was his practice not to urge to any of the liberal exercises, nor to allow them to possess arms. He took great care to spare them any privations: for instance at a hunt: the hunters had to take their chance of hunger and thirst, being freemen, but the beaters had ample supplies and halted for meals. They were delighted with this consideration, the design of which was to prevent their ever ceasing to be slaves (ἀνδράποδα). The whole scheme is frankly imperial. All initiative and power rests with the autocrat, and all depends on his virtues. That a succession of such faultless despots could not be ensured, and that the scheme was consequently utopian, did not trouble the simple Xenophon. Like many other thoughtful men of the time, he was impressed by the apparent efficiency of the rigid Spartan system, and distrusted the individual liberty enjoyed in democratic states, above all in Athens. In Persia, though he thought the Persians were no longer what Cyrus the Great had made them, he had seen how great was still the power arising from the control of all resources by a single will. These two impressions combined seem to account for the tone of the Cyropaedia, and the servile position of the cultivators explains why it has so very little bearing on the labour-question in agriculture.

XIII. The Comic Fragments

In pursuing our subject from period to period, and keeping so far as possible to chronological order, it may seem inconsistent to take this collection252 of scraps as a group. For Attic Comedy covers nearly two centuries, from the age of Cratinus to the age of Menander. Many changes happened in this time, and the evidence of the fragments must not be cited as though it were that of a single witness. But the relevant passages are few; for the writers, such as Athenaeus and Stobaeus, in whose works most of the extracts are preserved, seldom had their attention fixed on agriculture. The longer fragments253 of Menander recently discovered are somewhat more helpful. The adaptations of Plautus and Terence must be dealt with separately.

That country life and pursuits had their share of notice on the comic stage is indicated by the fact that Aristophanes produced a play254 named Γεωργοί, and Menander a Γεωργός. That the slave-market was active is attested by references in all periods. So too is wage-earning labour of various kinds: but some of these passages certainly refer to wage-earning by slaves paying a rent (ἀποφορά) to their owners. Also the problems arising out of the relation between master and slave, with recognition of the necessity of wise management. The difference between the man who does know how to control slaves255 and the man who does not (εὔδουλος and κακόδουλος) was early expressed, and indirectly alluded to throughout. The good and bad side of slaves, loyalty treachery honesty cheating etc, is a topic constantly handled. But these passages nearly always have in view the close relation of domestic slavery. I think we are justified in inferring that the general tone steadily becomes more humane. Common humanity gains recognition as a guide of conduct. Many of the fragments have been handed down as being neatly put moral sentences, and of these not a few256 recognize the debt that a slave owes to a good master. These are utterances of slaves, for the slave as a character became more and more a regular figure of comedy, as comedy became more and more a drama of private life. Side by side with this tone is the frank recognition of the part played by chance257 in the destinies of master and slave; a very natural reflexion in a state of things under which you had but to be captured and sold out of your own country, out of the protection of your own laws, to pass from the former condition to the latter. A few references to manumission also occur, and the Roman adaptations suggest that in the later Comedy they were frequent. On the other hand several fragments seem to imply that circumstances were working unfavourably to the individual free craftsmen, at least in some trades. The wisdom of learning a craft (τέχνη), as a resource258 that cannot be lost like external possessions, is insisted on. But in other passages a more despairing view259 appears; death is better than the painful struggle for life. No doubt different characters were made to speak from different points of view.

It is to be noted that two fragments of the earlier Comedy refer to the old tradition260 of a golden age long past, in which there were no slaves (see under Herodotus), and in which the bounty of nature261 provided an ample supply of food and all good things (see the passages cited from the Odyssey). Athenaeus, who has preserved262 these extracts, remarks that the old poets were seeking by their descriptions to accustom mankind to do their own work with their own hands (αὐτουργοὺς εἶναι). But it is evident that the subject was treated in the broadest comic spirit, as his numerous quotations shew. When in the restoration of good old times the articles of food are to cook and serve themselves and ask to be eaten, we must not take the picture very seriously. These passages do however suggest that there was a food-question at the time when they were written, of sufficient importance to give point to them: possibly also a labour-question. Now Crates and Pherecrates flourished before the Peloponnesian war and during its earlier years, Nicophon was a late contemporary of Aristophanes. The evidence is too slight to justify a far-reaching conclusion, but it is consistent with the general inferences drawn from other authorities. In the fragments of the later Comedy we begin to find passages bearing on agriculture, and it is surely a mere accident that we do not have them in those of the earlier.

The contrast between life in town and life in the country is forcibly brought out263 by Menander. The poor man has no chance in town, where he is despised and wronged: in the country he is spared the galling presence of witnesses, and can bear his ill fortune on a lonely farm. The farm then is represented as a sort of refuge from unsatisfactory surroundings in the city. When we remember that in Menander’s time Athens was a dependency of one or other of Alexander’s Successors, a community of servile rich and mean poor, fawning on its patrons and enjoying no real freedom of state-action, we need not wonder at the poet’s putting such a view into the mouths of some of his characters. The remains of the play Γεωργὸς are of particular interest. The old master is a tough obstinate old fellow, who persists in working264 on the land himself, and even wounds himself by clumsy use of his mattock. But he has a staff of slaves, barbarians, on whom he is dependent. These paid no attention to the old man in his misfortune; a touch from which we may infer that the relations between master and slaves were not sympathetic. But a young free labourer in his employ comes to the rescue, nurses him, and sets him on his legs again. While laid up, the old man learns by inquiry that this youth is his own son, the fruit of a former amour, whom his mother has reared in struggling poverty. Enough of the play remains to shew that the trials of the free poor were placed in a strong light, and that, as pointed out above, the struggle for existence in the city was felt to be especially severe. In this case whether the old man is rich or not does not appear: at all events he has enough property to make amends for his youthful indiscretions by relieving the necessities of those who have a claim on him. He is probably the character in whose mouth265 were put the words ‘I am a rustic (ἄγροικος); that I don’t deny; and not fully expert in affairs of city life (lawsuits etc?): but I was not born yesterday.’

The functions of the rustic slaves may give us some notion of the kind of farms that Menander had in mind. In the Γεωργός, the slave Davus, coming in from his day’s labour, grumbles266 at the land on which he has to work: shrubs and flowers of use only for festival decorations grow there as vigorous weeds, but when you sow seed you get back what you sowed with no increase. This savours of the disappointing tillage of an upland farm. In the Ἐπιτρέποντες267, Davus is a shepherd, Syriscus a charcoal-burner, occupations also proper to the hill districts. We must not venture to infer that Attic agriculture was mainly of this type in the poet’s day. The favourite motive of plots in the later Comedy, the exposure of infants in remote spots, their rescue by casual herdsmen or other slaves, and their eventual identification as the very person wanted in each case to make all end happily, would of itself suggest that lonely hill-farms, rather than big estates in the fat lowland, should be the scene. From my point of view the fact of chief interest is that slave-labour appears as normal in such an establishment. Rustic clothing268 and food served out in rations269 are minor details of the picture, and the arrangement by which a slave can work as wage-earner270 for another employer, paying over a share to his own master (the ἀποφορά), surely indicates that there was nothing exceptional about it. There are one or two other fragments directly bearing on agricultural labour. One of uncertain age271 speaks of a tiresome hand who annoys his employer by chattering about some public news from the city, when he should be digging. I doubt whether a slave is meant: at least he is surely a hired one, but why not a poor freeman, reduced to wage-earning? Such is the position of Timon272 in Lucian—μισθοῦ γεωργεῖ—a passage in which adaptations from Comedy are reasonably suspected. That rustic labour has a better side to it, that ‘the bitter of agriculture has a touch of sweet in it,’ is admitted273 by one of Menander’s characters, but the passage which seems the most genuine expression of the prevalent opinion274 is that in which we read that a man’s true part is to excel in war, ‘for agriculture is a bondman’s task’ (τὸ γὰρ γεωργεῖν ἔργον ἐστὶν οἰκέτου).

The nature and condition of the evidence must be my excuse for the unsatisfactory appearance of this section. The number of passages bearing on slavery in general, and the social and moral questions connected therewith, is large and remote from my subject. They are of great interest as illustrating the movement of thought on these matters, but their bearing on agricultural labour is very slight. To the virtues of agriculture as a pursuit tending to promote a sound and manly character Menander275 bears witness. ‘A farm is for all men a trainer in virtue and a freeman’s life.’ Many a town-bred man has thought and said the same, but praise is not always followed by imitation. Even more striking is another276 remark, ‘farms that yield but a poor living make brave men.’ For it was the hard-living rustics from the back-country parts of Greece that succeeded as soldiers of fortune, the famous Greek mercenaries whose services all contemporary kings were eager to secure. In short, to the onlooker it seemed a fine thing to be bred a healthy rustic, but the rustic himself was apt to prefer a less monotonous and more remunerative career.

XIV. Early Lawgivers and Theorists

The treatises of the two great philosophers on the state (and therefore on the position of agriculture in the state) did not spring suddenly out of nothing; nor was it solely the questionings of Socrates277 that turned the attention of Plato and Aristotle to the subject. Various lawgivers had shewn in their systems a consciousness of its importance, and speculative thinkers outside278 the ranks of practical statesmen had designed model constitutions in which a reformed land-system played a necessary part. It is to Aristotle, the great collector of experience, that we owe nearly all our information of these attempts. It is convenient to speak of them briefly together. All recognize much the same difficulties, and there is a striking similarity in the means by which they propose to overcome them. The lawgivers279 referred to are Pheidon of Corinth and Philolaus, also a Corinthian though his laws were drafted for Thebes, and thirdly280 Solon. The dates of the first two are uncertain, but they belong to early times. The two constitution-framers281 are Hippodamus of Miletus, whose birth is placed about 475 BC, and Phaleas of Chalcedon, probably somewhat later. Both witnessed the growth of imperial Athens, and Phaleas at least is thought to have been an elder contemporary of Plato. Very little is known about them. If we say that the attempt to design ideal state systems shews that they were not satisfied with those existing, and that the failure of past legislation may have encouraged them to theorize, we have said about all that we are entitled to infer.

On one point there was general agreement among Greek states: all desired to be ‘free’ or independent of external control. For some special purpose one people might for a time be recognized as the Leaders (ἡγεμόνες) of a majority of states, or more permanently as Representatives or Patrons (προστάται). But these unofficial titles only stood for a position acquiesced in under pressure of necessity. Each community wanted to live its own life in its own way, and the extreme jealousy of interference remained. Side by side with this was an internal jealousy causing serious friction in most of the several states, at first between nobles and commons, later between rich and poor. The seditions (στάσεις) arising therefrom were causes, not only of inner weakness and other evils, but in particular of intervention from without Therefore it was often the policy of the victors in party strife to expel or exterminate their opponents, in order to secure to themselves undisputed control of their own state. This tendency operated to perpetuate the smallness of scale in Greek states, already favoured by the physical features of the land. That the Greeks with all their cleverness never invented what we call Representative Government is no wonder. Men’s views in general were directed to the independence of their own state under control of their own partisans. The smaller the state, the easier it was to organize the control: independence could only be maintained by military efficiency, and unanimous loyalty was something to set off against smallness of numbers. Moreover the Greek mind had an artistic bent, and the sense of proportion was more easily and visibly gratified on a smaller scale. The bulk of Persia did not appear favourable to human freedom and dignity as understood in Hellas. In the Persian empire there was nothing that a Greek would recognize as citizenship. The citizen of a Greek state expected to have some voice in his own government: the gulf between citizen and non-citizen was the line of division, but even in Sparta the full citizens were equals in legal status among themselves. We may fairly say that the principle of equality (τὸ ἴσον) was at the root of Greek notions of citizenship. Privilege did not become less odious as it ceased to rest on ancestral nobility and became more obviously an advantage claimed by wealth.

Since the light thrown on the subject282 by Dr Grundy, no one will dispute the importance of economic considerations in Greek policy, and in particular of the ever-pressing question of the food-supply. The security of the land and crops was to most states a vital need, and necessitated constant readiness to maintain it in arms. Closely connected therewith was the question of distribution. Real property was not only the oldest and most permanent investment. Long before Aristotle283 declared that ‘the country is a public thing’ (κοινόν), that is an interest of the community, that opinion was commonly held, whether formulated or instinctive. The position of the landless man was traditionally a dubious one. The general rule was that only a citizen could own land in the territory of the state. From this it was no great step to argue that every citizen ought to own a plot of land within the borders. This was doubtless not always possible. In such a state as Corinth or Megara or Miletus commercial growth in a narrow territory had led to extensive colonization from those centres. And the normal procedure in the foundation of Greek colonies was to divide the occupied territory into lots (κλῆροι) and assign them severally to settlers. In course of time the discontents generated by land-monopolizing in old Hellas were liable to reappear beyond the seas, particularly in colonial states of rapid growth: a notorious instance is found in the troubles arising at Syracuse out of the squatter-sovranty created by the original colonists. We meet with plans for confiscation and redistribution of land as a common phenomenon of Greek revolutions. The mischievous moral effects of so unsettling a process on political wellbeing did not escape the notice of thoughtful observers. But on one important point we have practically no evidence. Did the new allottees wish to be, and in fact normally become, working farmers (αὐτουργοί)? Or did they aim at providing for themselves an easy life, supported by the labour of slaves? I wish I could surely and rightly decide between these alternatives. As it is, I can only say that I believe the second to be nearer the truth.

Under such conditions Greek lawgivers and theorists alike seem to have looked to much the same measures for remedying evils that they could not ignore. The citizen as landholder is the human figure with which they are all concerned. To prevent destitution arising from the loss284 of his land-lot is a prime object. Some therefore would forbid the sale of the lot. To keep land in the same hands it was necessary to regulate numbers of citizen households, and this was attempted285 in the laws of Pheidon. Families may die out, so rules to provide for perpetuity by adoptions286 were devised by Philolaus. Again, there is the question of the size of the lots, and this raises the further question of a limit to acquisition. Such a limitation is attributed287 to certain early lawgivers not named, and with them apparently to Solon. Phaleas would insist on equality of landed estate288 among his citizens: a proposal which Aristotle treats as unpractical, referring to only one form of wealth, and leaving out of account slaves, tame animals, coin, and the dead-stock tools etc. His exclusive attention to internal civic wellbeing is also blamed, for it is absurd to disregard the relations of a state to other states: there must be a foreign policy, therefore you must provide289 military force. The fanciful scheme of Hippodamus, a strange doctrinaire genius, seems to have been in many points inconsistent from want of attention to practical detail. From Aristotle’s account he appears not to have troubled himself with the question of equal land-lots, but his fixing the number290 of citizens (10,000) is evidence that his point of view necessitated a limit. He proceeds on a system of triads. The citizens are grouped in three classes, artisans (τεχνῖται), husbandmen (γεωργοί), and the military, possessors of arms. The land is either sacred (for service of religion, ἱερά), public (δημοσία or κοινή) or the property of the husbandmen (ἰδία). The three classes of land and citizens are to be assumed equal. The military are to be supported by the produce of the public land. But who cultivates it? Aristotle shews that the scheme is not fully thought out. If the soldiers, then the distinction, obviously intended, between soldier and farmer, is lost. If the farmers, then the distinction between the public and private land is meaningless. If neither, a fourth class, not allowed for in the plan, will be required. This last is probably what Hippodamus meant: but to particularize the employment of slaves may have appeared superfluous. Into the purely constitutional details I need not enter, but one criticism is so frankly expressive of Greek ideas that it can hardly be omitted. What, says Aristotle, is the use of political rights to the artisans and husbandmen? they are unarmed, and therefore will practically be slaves of the military class. This was the truth in Greek politics generally, and is one of the most significant facts to be borne in mind when considering the political failure of the Greeks.

A curious difference of economic view is shewn in the position assigned to the artisan291 or craftsman element by Hippodamus and Phaleas respectively. Phaleas would have them state-slaves (δημόσιοι), Hippodamus makes them citizens, though unarmed. On the former plan the state would no doubt feed them and use their produce, as we do with machinery. Of the latter plan Aristotle remarks that τεχνῖται are indispensable: all states need them, and they can live of the earnings of their crafts, but the γεωργοὶ as a distinct class are superfluous. We may reply that, if the craftsmen live of their earnings and stick to their several crafts, they will need to buy food, and the farmers are surely there to supply it. The reply is so obvious that one feels as if Aristotle’s meaning had been obscured through some mishap to the text. For the present purpose it suffices that the professional craftsmen in these two Utopias are to be either actual slaves or citizens de iure who are de facto as helpless as slaves. In the scheme of Hippodamus the farmer-class also are virtually the slaves of the military. Another notable point, apparently neglected by Hippodamus, is the trust reposed in education292 or training by both Phaleas and his critic. How to implant in your citizens the qualities needed for making your institutions work well in practice, is the problem. Phaleas would give all the same training, on the same principle as he gives equal land-lots. To Aristotle this seems crude nonsense: the problem to him is the discovery of the appropriate training, whether the same for all or not. This insistence on training as the main thing in citizen-making is, as we shall see, a common feature of Greek political speculation. But in the artistic desire to produce the ‘complete citizen,’ and thereby make possible a model state, the specializing mania outruns the humbler considerations of everyday human society, and agriculture, for all its confessed importance, is apt to be treated with something very like contempt. The tendency to regard farmer and warrior as distinct classes is unmistakeable. The peasant-soldier of Roman tradition is not an ordinary Greek figure. How far the small scale of Greek states may have favoured this differentiation is very hard to say. But Greek admiration for the athlete type had probably something to do with the growth of military professionalism.

The recognition of a land-question and attempts to find a solution were probably stimulated by observation of contemporary phenomena, especially in the two leading states of the fifth century. Sparta had long held the first place, and even the rise of Athens had not utterly destroyed her ancient prestige. That her military system was effective, seemed proved by the inviolability of Laconian territory and the successes of her armies in external wars. That it was supported by the labour of a Greek population reduced to serfdom, was perhaps a weak point in her institutions; but that Greek opinion was seriously shocked by the fact can hardly be maintained. It was now and then convenient to use it as a passing reproach, but even Athens did not refuse to aid in putting down Helot rebellions. And this weak point was set off by a strong one. Whatever the reasons293 for her policy, she interfered very little in the internal affairs of her allies and did not tax them. To be content with the leadership of confederates, and not to convert it into an empire of subjects, assured to her a certain amount of respectful sympathy in the jealous Greek world. Thus she afforded an object-lesson in the advantages of rigid specialization. She provided her own food in time of peace, and took her opponents’ food in time of war. The disadvantages of her system were yet to appear. Athens on the other hand was becoming more and more dependent on imported food. She was the leader of the maritime states and islands: she had become their imperial mistress. However easy her yoke might be in practice, it left no room for independent action on the part of her subject allies: what had been contributions from members of a league had become virtually imperial taxation, and to Greek prejudices such taxation appeared tyranny. Nor was this prejudice allowed to die out. The rival interests of commercial Corinth saw to it that the enslavement, not of Greeks but of Greek states, should be continually borne in mind. The contrast between the two leading powers was striking. But, if many Greek states feared in Athens a menace to their several independence, on the other hand they shrank from copying the rigid discipline of Sparta. No wonder that some of the more imaginative minds had dreams of a system more congenial to Greek aspirations. But the land-question was a stumbling-block. That a citizen should take an active personal share in politics was assumed, and that he should do this tended to make him depute non-political duties to others. Thus the notion that all citizens should be equal in the eye of the law and share in government—democracy in short—was not favourable to personal labour on the land. No distribution of land-lots could convert the city politician into a real working farmer. Therefore either there must be a decline in agriculture or an increase of slave-labour, or both. From these alternatives there was no escape: but ingenious schemers long strove to find a way. And from those days to these no one has succeeded in constructing a sound and lasting civilization on a basis of slavery.

XV. Plato

An Athenian who died in 347 BC at the age of 80 or 82 years had witnessed extraordinary changes in the Hellenic world, more particularly in the position of Athens. With the political changes we are not here directly concerned. But they were closely connected with economic changes, both as cause and as effect. The loss of empire294 entailed loss of revenue. The amounts available as state-pay being reduced, the poorer citizens lost a steady source of income: that their imperial pride had departed did not tend to make them less sensitive to the pinch of poverty. Athens, thrown back upon her own limited resources, had to produce what she could in order to buy what she needed, and capital, employing slave-labour, found its opportunity. In this atmosphere discontent and jealousy grew fast: conflicting interests of rich and poor were at the back of all the disputes of political life. Athens it is true avoided the crude revolutionary methods adopted in some less civilized states. The Demos did not massacre or banish the wealthy Few, and share out their lands and other properties among the poor Many. But they consistently regarded the estates of the rich as the source from which the public outlay should as far as possible be drawn. They left the capitalist free to make money in his own way, and squeezed him when he had made it. Whether he were citizen or metic295 mattered not from the economic point of view. Capitalistic industry was really slave-industry. The ‘small man’ had the choice of either competing, perhaps vainly, with the ‘big man’ on the land or in the workshop, or of giving up the struggle and using his political power to make the ‘big man’ disgorge some of his profits. Moreover military life no longer offered the prospects of conquest and gain that had made it attractive. The tendency was to treat the citizen army as a defensive force, and to employ professional mercenaries (of whom there was now296 no lack) on foreign service. To a thoughtful observer these phenomena suggested uneasy reflexions. Demos in Assembly was a dispiriting spectacle. Selfish297 and shortsighted, he cared more for his own belly and his amusements than for permanent interests of state. Perhaps this was no new story. But times had changed, and the wealthy imperial Athens, able to support the burden of her own defects, had passed away. Bad government in reduced circumstances might well be productive of fatal results.

It was not Athens alone that had failed. Fifteen years before Plato’s death the failure of both Sparta and Thebes had left Hellas exhausted298 and without a leading state to give some sort of unity to Greek policy. There was still a common Hellenic feeling, but it was weak compared with separatist jealousy. Antipathy to the Barbarian remained: but the Persian power had been called in by Greeks to aid them against other Greeks, and this was a serious danger to the Greek world. Things were even worse in the West. How anarchic democracy had paved the way for military tyranny at Syracuse, how the tyranny had lowered the standard of Greek civilization in Sicily and Italy, and had been the ruin of Greek cities, no man of that age knew better than Plato. Plato was not singular in his distrust of democracy: that attitude was common enough. Among the companions of Socrates I need only refer to Xenophon and Critias. Socrates had insisted that government is a difficult art, for success in which a thorough training is required. Now, whatever might be the case in respect of tyrannies or oligarchies, democracy was manifestly an assertion of the principle that all citizens were alike qualified for a share in the work of government. Yet no craftsman would dream of submitting the work of his own trade to the direction of amateurs. Why then should the amateur element, led by amateurs, dominate in the sphere of politics? It was easy to find instances of the evil effects of amateurism in public affairs. It is true that this line of argument contained a fallacy, as arguments from analogy very often do. But it had a profound influence on Plato, and it underlay all his political speculations. It was reinforced by an influence that affected many of his contemporaries, admiration of Sparta on the score of the permanence299 of her system of government. That this admiration was misguided, and the permanence more apparent than real, matters not: to a Greek thinker it was necessarily attractive, seeking for some possibly permanent principle of government, and disgusted with the everlasting flux of Hellenic politics. Nor was there anything strange in imagining an ideal state in which sound principles might be carried into effect. The foundation of colonies, in which the settlers made a fresh start as new communities, was traditionally a Greek custom. Such was the foundation, logical and apparently consistent with experience, on which Plato designed to build an Utopia. Avoiding the unscientific laisser-faire of democratic politics, functions were to be divided on a rational system, and government placed in the hands of trained specialists.

It is well to note some of the defects of Greek civilization as Plato saw it, particularly in Athens. The confusion and weakness of democratic government, largely the fruit of ignorance haste and prejudice, has been referred to above. In most states the free citizen population were born and bred at the will of their fathers under no scientific state-regulation, not sifted out in youth by scientific selection, and only trained up to the average standard locally approved. Something better was needed, if more was to be got out of human capacity. But it seems certain that Plato found the chief and most deep-seated source of social and political evils in the economic situation. The unequal distribution of wealth and the ceaseless struggle between rich and poor lay at the root of that lack of harmonious unity in which he saw the cause of the weakness and unhappiness of states. To get rid of the plutocrat and the beggar300 was a prime object. Confiscation and redistribution301 offered no lasting remedy, so long as men remained what they were. A complete moral change was necessary, and this could only be effected by an education that should train all citizens cheerfully and automatically to bear their several parts in promoting the happiness of all. There must be no more party-strivings after the advantage of this or that section: the guiding principle must be diversity of individual functions combined with unity of aim. An ideal state must be the Happy Land of the Expert, and each specialist must mind his own business. Thus each will enjoy his own proper happiness: friction competition and jealousy will pass away. There will be no more hindrance to the efficiency of craftsmen: we shall not see one tempted by wealth302 to neglect his trade, while another is too poor to buy the appliances needed for turning out good work. The expert governors or Guardians must be supplied with all necessaries303 by the classes engaged in the various forms of production. Thus only can they be removed from the corruptions that now pervert politicians. To them at least all private property must be denied. And, in order that they may be as expert in their own function of government as other craftsmen are in their several trades, they must be bred selected and educated on a strictly scientific system the very opposite of the haphazard methods now in vogue.

This brief sketch of the critical and constructive scope of the Republic must suffice for my purpose. Plato laid his finger on grave defects, but his remedies seem fantastic in the light of our longer and more varied experience. Any reform of society had to be carried out by human agency, and for the difficulty of adapting this no adequate allowance is made. He recognizes the difficulty of starting an ideal community on his model. Old prejudices will be hard to overcome. So he suggests304 that it will be necessary for the philosophical rulers to clear the ground by sending all the adult inhabitants out into the country, keeping in the city only the children of ten years and under: these they will train up on their system. He implies that with the younger generation growing up under properly regulated conditions the problems of establishment will solve themselves by the effect of time. This grotesque proposal may indicate that Plato did not mean his constructive design to be taken very seriously. But a more notable weakness appears in the narrowness of outlook. It was natural that a Greek should think and write as a Greek for Greeks, and seek lessons in Greek experience. But the blight of disunion and failure was already on the little Greek states; and their experience, not likely to recur, has in fact never really recurred. Hence the practical value of Plato’s stimulating criticism and construction is small. In the labour-question we find no advance. Slavery is assumed as usual, but against the enslavement of Greeks, of which recent warfare supplied many examples, he makes305 a vigorous protest. Euripides had gone further than this, and questionings of slavery had not been lacking. Another very Greek limitation of view comes out in the contempt306 for βαναυσία, the assumed physical and moral inferiority of persons occupied in sedentary trades. That such men were unfitted for the rough work of war, and therefore unfitted to take part in ruling an independent Greek state, was an opinion not peculiar to Plato. But this objection could not well be raised against the working farmer. Why then does Plato exclude the farmer-class from a share in the government of his ideal state? I think we may detect three reasons. First, the husbandman, though necessary to the state’s existence, has not the special training required for government, nor the leisure to acquire it. Second, it is his intense occupation that alone secures to the ruling class the leisure needful for their responsible duties. Third, the belief307 that a man cannot be at the same time a good husbandman and a good soldier. These three may be regarded as one: the philosopher would get rid of haphazard amateurism by making the expert specialist dominant in all departments of civil and military life. The influence of the Spartan system (much idealized), and the growth of professional soldiering, on his theories is too obvious to need further comment.

Reading the Republic from the labour-question point of view, one is struck by the lack of detail as to the condition of the classes whose labour feeds and clothes the whole community. We must remember that the dialogue starts with an attempt to define Justice, in the course of which a wider field of inquiry is opened up by assuming an analogy308 between the individual and the state. As the dominance of his nobler element over his baser elements is the one sure means of ensuring the individual’s lasting happiness, so the dominance of the nobler element in the state alone offers a like guarantee. On these lines the argument proceeds, using an arbitrary psychology, and a fanciful political criticism to correspond. The construction of a model state is rather incidental than essential to the discussion. No wonder that, while we have much detail as to the bodily and mental equipment of the ‘Guardians’ (both the governing elders and the warrior youths) we get no information as to the training of husbandmen and craftsmen. Like slaves, they are assumed to exist: how they become and remain what they are assumed to be, we are not told. We are driven to guess that at this stage of his speculations Plato was content to take over these classes just as he found them in the civilization of his day. But he can hardly have imagined that they would acquiesce in any system by which they would be excluded from all political power. The hopeless inferiority of the husbandman is most clearly marked when contrasted with the young warriors of the ‘Guardian’ class. Duties are so highly specialized that men are differentiated for life. The γεωργὸς cannot be a good soldier. But if a soldier shews cowardice he is to be punished309 by being made a γεωργὸς or δημιουργός—a degradation in itself, and accompanied by no suggestion of a special training being required to fit him for his new function. It is unnecessary to enlarge on such points: constructors of Utopias cannot avoid some inconsistencies and omissions. The simple fact is that the arrangements for differentiation of classes in the model state are not fully worked out in detail.

Plato’s Guardians are to have no private property; for it is private property310 that seems to him the cause of sectional and personal interests which divide and weaken the state and lead to unhappiness. But the other classes are not so restricted. They can own land and houses etc; on exactly what tenure, is less clear. Meanwhile, what is it that the Guardians have in common? It is the sustenance (τροφὴ) provided as pay (μισθὸς) for their services by the mass of workers over whom they rule. It is expressly stated311 that in the model state the Demos will call the Rulers their Preservers and Protectors, and the Rulers call the Demos their Paymasters and Sustainers. In existing states other than democracies their mutual relation is too often expressed as that of Masters and Slaves. I cannot refrain from noting that, if the pay of the Guardians consists in their sustenance, this is so far exactly the case of slaves. That power and honour should be reserved for men maintained thus, without private emoluments, is remarkable. The Spartiates, however much an idealizing of their system may have suggested the arrangement, were maintained by the sulky labour of Helot serfs. Are the husbandmen in Plato’s scheme really any better than Helots? In describing the origin of states in general, Plato finds the cause312 of that development in the insufficiency of individuals to meet their own needs. But in tracing the process of the division of labour, and increasing complexity of civilization, he ignores slavery, though slavery is often referred to in various parts of the book. Now, if the husbandman has under him no slaves, and is charged with the food-supply of his rulers, he comes very near to the economic status of a serf. He works with his own hands, but not entirely at his own will or for his own profit. And in one respect he would, to Greek critics, seem inferior to a Spartan313 Helot: he is, by the extreme specializing system, denied all share in military service, and so can hardly be reckoned a citizen at all. How came Plato to imagine for a single moment that a free Greek would acquiesce in such a position? I can only guess that the present position of working farmers and craftsmen in trades seemed to him an intolerable one. If, as I believe from the indications in Xenophon and other authorities, agriculture and the various industries of Attica were now steadily passing into the hands of slaveowning capitalists, and small men going to the wall, there would be much to set a philosopher thinking and seeking some way of establishing a wholesomer state of things. On this supposition speculations, however fantastic and incapable of realization in fact, might call attention to practical evils and at least prepare men’s minds for practical remedies. In admitting the difficulty of making a fresh start, and the certainty that even his model state would in time lose its purity314 and pass through successive phases of decay, Plato surely warns us not to take his constructive scheme seriously. But whether he really believed that free handworkers could (save in an oligarchy, which315 he detests,) be induced to submit to a ruling class, and be themselves excluded on principle from political interests of any kind, is more than I can divine.

That the scheme outlined in the Republic was not a practical one was confessed by Plato in his old age by producing the Laws, a work in which the actual circumstances of Greek life were not so completely disregarded. The main points that concern us are these. Government is to be vested in a detailed code of laws, administered by magistrates elected by the citizens. There is a Council and an Assembly. Pressure is put upon voters, especially316 on the wealthier voters, to make them vote. The influence of the Solonian model is obvious. Provision is made317 for getting over the difficulties of the first start, while the people are still under old traditions which the new educational system will in due course supersede. But, so far from depending on perfect Guardians with absolute power, and treating law as a general pattern318 modifiable in application by the Guardians at their discretion, we have law supreme and Guardians dependent on the people’s will. It is a kind of democracy, but Demos is to be carefully trained, and protected from his own vagaries by minute regulations. The number of citizens319 is by law fixed at 5040. Each one has an allotment of land, a sacred κλῆρος that cannot be sold. This passes by inheritance from father to son as an undivided whole. Extinction of a family may be prevented by adoptions under strict rules. Excess of citizen population may be relieved by colonies. Poverty is excluded320 by the minimum guaranteed in the inalienable land-lot, excessive wealth by laws fixing a maximum. It is evident that in this detailed scheme of the Laws agriculture must have its position more clearly defined than in the Republic.

So indeed it has. In order that all may have a fair share, each citizen’s land-lot321 is in two parts, one near the city, the other near the frontier. Thus we see that all citizens will be interested in cultivating the land. We see also that this will be absolutely necessary: for it is intended322 that the model state shall not be dependent on imported food (like Athens), but produce its own supply. Indeed commerce is to be severely restricted. What the country cannot produce must if necessary be bought, and for this purpose only323 will a recognized Greek currency be employed: internal transactions will be conducted with a local coinage. The evil effects324 seen to result from excessive commercial dealings will thus be avoided. When we turn to the agricultural labour-question, we find that wholesale employment of slaves325 or serfs is the foundation of the system. For Plato, holding fast to the principle of specialization, holds also that leisure326 is necessary for the citizens if they are to bear their part in politics with intelligent judgment. As, in this second-best Utopia, the citizens are the landowners, and cannot divest themselves of their civic responsibilities, they must do their cultivating by deputy. And this practically amounts to building the fabric of civilization on a basis of slavery—nothing less. In the matter of agriculture, the industry on which this self-sufficing community really rests, this dependence on slave-labour is most striking. It even includes a system327 of serf-tenants (probably for the borderland farms) who are to be left to cultivate the land, paying a rent or quota of produce (ἀπαρχὴ) to the owners. The importance of not having too large a proportion328 of the slaves in a gang drawn from any one race is insisted on as a means of preventing combinations and risings. At the same time careful management is enjoined, sympathetic329 but firm: a master should be kind, but never forget that he is a master: no slave must be allowed to take liberties. To implant a sound tradition of morality is recognized as a means of promoting good order in the community, and this influence should be brought to bear330 on slaves as well as on freemen. Yet the intrinsic chattelhood of the slave appears clearly in many ways; for instance, the damage to a slave is made good by compensating331 his owner. The carelessness of ill-qualified practitioners332 who treat slaves, contrasted with the zeal of competent doctors in treating freemen, is another significant touch.

It seems then that Plato, the more he adapts his speculations to the facts of existing civilization, the more positively he accepts slave-labour as a necessary basis. The conception of government as an art is surely the chief cause of this attitude. The extreme specialization of the Republic is moderated in the Laws, but there is not much less demand for leisure, if the civic artists are to be unhampered in the practice of their art. Of the dangers333 of servile labour on a large scale he was well aware, and he had evidently studied with attention334 the awkward features of serfdom, not only in the old Hellas, but in the Greek colonial states of the East and West. Nevertheless he would found his economy on the forced labour of human chattels. A system that had grown up in the course of events, extending or contracting according to changes of economic circumstance, was thus presented as the deliberate result of independent thought. But the only theory at the back of traditional slavery was the law335 of superior force—originally the conqueror’s will. Plato was therefore driven to accept this law as a principle of human society. To accept it was to bring his speculations more into touch with Greek notions; for no people have surpassed the Greeks in readiness to devolve upon others the necessary but monotonous drudgery of life. This attitude of his involves the conclusion that the Barbarian is to serve the Greek, a position hardly consistent with his earlier336 doctrine, that no true line could be drawn distinguishing Greek and Barbarian. Such a flux of speculative opinion surely weakens our respect for Plato’s judgment in these matters. We can hardly say that he offers any effective solution of the great state-problems of his age. But that these problems were serious and disquieting his repeated efforts bear witness. And one of the most serious was certainly that of placing the agricultural interest on a sound footing. Its importance he saw: but neither of his schemes, neither passive free farmers nor slave-holding landlords, was likely to produce the desired result. To say this is not to blame a great man’s failure. Centuries have passed, and experience has been gained, without a complete solution being reached: the end is not yet.

A few details remain to be touched on separately. The employment of hired labourers is referred to as normal337 in the Politicus Republic and Laws. They are regarded simply as so much physical strength at disposal. They are free, and so able to transfer their labour from job to job according to demand. Intellectually and politically they do not count. But the μισθωτὸς is neither a chattel like the slave, nor bound to the soil like the serf. I have found no suggestion of the employment of this class in agriculture; and, as I have said above, I believe that they were in fact almost confined to the towns, especially such as the Peiraeus. It is also worth noticing that we find favourable mention of apprenticeship338 as a method of learning a trade. But this principle also seems not applied to agriculture. Again, we are told339 in the Laws that one who has never served (δουλεύσας) will never turn out a creditable master (δεσπότης). From the context this would seem to refer only to the wardens of the country (ἀγρονόμοι), who must be kept under strict discipline in order to perform very responsible duties. It does not apply to farmers. Another curious rule340 is that kidnapping of men is not to be allowed. Yet there are bought slaves, and therefore a market. That the dealer in human flesh should be despised341 by his customers is a feeling probably older than Plato, and it lasted down to the days of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In view of Plato’s acceptance of the sharp line drawn between Greek and Barbarian (and this does touch rustic slavery) it is interesting to note that he observed342 with care the different characters of alien peoples. He also refers343 to them without contempt in various contexts side by side with Greeks, and cites344 their common belief as a proof of the existence of the gods.

If I may venture to make a general comment on Plato’s position in relation to the labour-question, I would remark that he is already in the same difficulty which proved embarrassing to Aristotle, and which has always beset those who seek to find a theoretical justification for slavery. True, he is less definite and positive than Aristotle, but the attempt to regard a human being as both a man and a chattel is a failure. This point need not be further pressed here. But it is well to observe that agriculture is the department in which the absurdity most strikingly appears. Heavy farm-labour without prospect of personal advantage was recognized as a function that no man would willingly perform. Hence to be sent to labour on a farm was one of the punishments that awaited the offending domestic slave. Hence overseers were employed to exact from rustic slaves their daily task under the menace of severe and often cruel punishments. Hence the humaner masters (as Xenophon shews us) tried to secure more cheerful and effective service by a system of little rewards for good work. In short there was in practical life a miserable attempt to treat the slave both as a brute beast and as a moral being capable of weighing consequences and acting accordingly. One form of reward, manumission, was apparently not at this time common345 in Greece: and it was one not easy to apply in agriculture. It was not easy to know what to do with a worn-out farm-hand, unless he was transferred to lighter duties on the farm; for he would be useless elsewhere. Sooner or later a time would come when he could no longer do anything of any value. What then? Was he charitably fed by the master346 whom he had served, or was he cast adrift in nominal freedom? From the fragments of Comedy one may perhaps guess that the humaner practice generally prevailed. But the silence of Plato seems to suggest that to him, and indeed to Greeks generally, the point was not an important one. Even for a citizen, if destitute in old age, the state-relief was very small. We must therefore not wonder at the silence generally maintained as to the treatment of the worn-out rustic slave. Slave artisans, and those whose services were let out to other employers with reservation of a rent to their own masters, could scrape together the means of sustenance in their old age. It is possible that manumission of rustic slaves may have occasionally taken place, and that they too may have scraped together some small savings: but I can find no ground for thinking that such cases were normal or even frequent. In the Laws Plato allows for the presence of freedmen347, and frames regulations for their control, probably suggested by experience of the Attic laws and their defects. Manumission by the state348 as reward of slave-informers is also mentioned. But there is nothing in these passages to weaken the natural inference that town slaves, and chiefly domestics, are the class to whom in practice such rules would apply. In short, we must not look to a philosopher reared in a civilization under which manual labour tended to become the burden of the unfree and the destitute, and to be despised as mean and unworthy of the free citizen, for a wholesome solution of the problem of farm-labour.

XVI. The Earlier Attic Orators

It is convenient to take the speeches and pamphlets of the masters of Attic oratory in two sections, though there can be no exact chronological division between the two. The political background is different in the two cases. To Isocrates the urgent problem is how to compose Greek jealousies by uniting in an attack on the common enemy, Persia: to Demosthenes it is how to save the separate independence of the weary Greek states from the control of the encroaching king of Macedon. True, the disunion of Greece was not to be ended by either effort. But the difficulties of Isocrates lay largely outside Athens: the states did not want to have a leader; Philip, to whom he turned in his old age, was no more welcome to them than the rest of his proposed leaders. Demosthenes had to face the fact of a Macedonian party in Athens itself, as well as to overcome the apathy and inertia which had been growing continually since the fall of the Athenian empire. His opponents were not all mere corrupt partisans of the Macedonian king. Athens was now no longer a great power, and they knew it: Demosthenes is forgiven by historians for his splendid defiance of facts. Naturally enough, in the conflicts of political opinion from the time of the revolution of the Four Hundred to the death of Demosthenes (411-322 BC) we have few references to agriculture. Yet we know that the question of food-supply was still a pressing one for many Greek states, above all for Athens. Some of the references have a value as being contemporary. But a large part of these are references to litigation, and deal not with conditions of cultivation but with claims to property. Among the most significant facts are the importance attached to the control of the Hellespontine trade-route and the careful regulations affecting the import and distribution349 of corn.

The period on which we get some little light from passages in the earlier orators is roughly about 410-350 BC. It includes the general abandonment of agricultural enterprises abroad, owing to the loss of empire and therewith of cleruchic properties. By this shrinkage the relative importance of home agriculture must surely have been increased. Yet I cannot find a single direct statement or reference to this effect. It seems reasonable to suppose that it was not necessary to assert what was only too obvious. Corn had to be imported, and imported it was from various350 sources of supply. To guard against failure of this supply was a chief preoccupation of the Athenian government. But that some corn was still grown in Attica is clear. Isocrates says351 that one act of hostility to the Thirty was the destruction of corn in the country by the democrats. And in another place352 he lays stress upon the mythical legend of the earliest introduction of corn-growing, the civilizing gift of Demeter to her favoured Attica. Yet there are signs that the culture of the olive and vine was more and more displacing cereal crops: the fig tree, often a sacred thing, was, and had long been, a regular feature of the countryside. Live stock, goats sheep and cattle, were probably abundant, though there was seldom need for an orator to mention them. If we judge by the remaining references, it would seem that land was not generally cultivated by its owners. Letting to tenant farmers353 was the plan adopted by the state in dealing with public lands, and the collection of the rents was farmed out in its turn to capitalist speculators by public auction. We have several specimens354 of mixed estates, described by an orator in connexion with some litigation. From these we may fairly infer that the policy of not putting all their eggs into one basket found favour with Athenian capitalists. Landed estate is in such cases but one item, side by side with house-property, mortgages and money at interest on other securities, slaves and other stock employed or leased to employers, stock in hand, specie and other valuables, mentioned in more or less detail. Consistently with this picture of landlord and tenant is the statement355 that formerly, in the good old times before Athens entered upon her ill-starred career of imperialism, the country houses and establishments of citizens were superior to those within the city walls; so much so, that even the attraction of festivals could not draw them to town from their comfortable country-seats. Evidently a great change had come over rural Attica, if the writer is to be trusted. We are not to suppose that personal direction of a farm by the owner of the land was altogether a thing of the past. Suburban farms at least were, as we learn from Xenophon, sometimes managed by men living in the city and riding out to superintend operations and give orders. The injured husband356 defended by Lysias may even have gone to and fro on foot. He does not seem to have been a wealthy man, and he may have been a αὐτουργός, taking part in the labours of his farm: that he earned his night’s rest and slept sound seems suggested by the context of his curious story.

That there was no lack of interest in the prospects of agriculture generally may be inferred from various references to the different qualities of soils not only in Attica but in other parts of Greece and abroad. The smallness of the cultivable area in rocky Samothrace357 was noted by Antiphon. Isocrates remarked358 that in Laconia the Dorian conquerors appropriated not only the greater part of the land but the most fertile. The results of their greed and oppression had not been wholly satisfactory in the long run: adversity carried with it the peril359 of Helot risings. No fertility of soil can compensate for the ill effects of bad policy and lack of moderation: the independence and wellbeing of cramped rocky Megara, contrasted360 with the embarrassments of wide fruitful Thessaly, is an object-lesson. The Greek race needs to expand361, as it did of old, when Athens led the colonization of the Asiatic seaboard. It is monstrous to try and wring contributions from (δασμολογεῖν)362 the islanders, who have to till mountain sides for lack of room. It is in Asia that the new Greece must find relief, at the expense of Persia, whose subjects let vast areas lie idle, while the parts that they do cultivate keep them in great plenty; so fertile is the land. Attica itself was once a prosperous farming country. In the good old days, before the unhappy dissension between selfish rich and grudging poor, agriculture was one of the chief means363 used to avert poverty and distress. Farms let at fair rents kept the people profitably employed, and so out of mischief. Men could and did364 live well in the country: they were not jostling each other in the city to earn a bare subsistence by pitiful state-fees—beggars all—as they are doing now. The great pamphleteer may be overdrawing his picture, but that it contains much truth is certain, and it seems pretty clear that he saw no prospect of a local revival. Athens had run her course of ambitious imperialism, and the old country life, developed in long security, could not be restored. Any man who felt inclined to live a farmer’s life would, if I read the situation aright, prefer some cheap and profitable venture abroad to the heavy and unremunerative struggles of a crofter in upland Attica. Small farms in the rich lowland were I take it very seldom to be had. And, if he had the capital to work a large farm, he was under strong temptation to employ his capital in urban industries, state-contracts, loans at interest, etc, and so to distribute his risks while increasing his returns. For his main object was to make money, not to provide himself and his family with a healthy and comfortable home. The land-question in Attica is illustrated by a passage of Isaeus in which he refers to the fraud of a guardian. The scoundrel, he says, has robbed his nephew of the estate: he is sticking to the farm (τὸν ἀγρόν) and has given him a hill pasture365 (φελλέα).

Farming enterprise abroad had been a product of the Athenian empire with its cleruchies and colonies, and probably private ventures of individuals, unofficial but practically resting on imperial protection. The collapse of this system would ruin some settlers and speculators, and impoverish more. Even those who returned to Athens still possessed of considerable capital would not in all cases take to Attic farming, even supposing that they were willing to face its risks and that suitable farms were available. It was to Athens a most important object to retain or recover all she could of her island territories, partly no doubt in order to control the cultivable lands in them. In the peace-negotiations of 390 BC the extreme opposition party at Athens were not content366 with the proposals by which she was to recover the islands of Lemnos Imbros and Scyros: they demanded also the restitution of the Thracian Chersonese and estates and debts elsewhere. So strong was the feeling of dependence on these investments abroad. And Isocrates, in depicting the evil results of imperial ambition, recalls367 to the citizens that, instead of farming the lands of others, the Peloponnesian war had for years prevented them from setting eyes upon their own.

Thus far I have said nothing of the labour-question. Orators and pamphleteers were not likely to concern themselves much with this topic, for there was nothing in the nature of an Abolitionist controversy to bring them into discussion of the subject. Slavery is in this department of Greek literature more a fundamental assumption than ever. The frequent arguments on the torture of slave witnesses and the moral value of evidence so extracted are plain proof of this. But what about agricultural labour? In the case of the sacred olive-stump we hear from Lysias368 that the farm in question several times changed hands by sale. Some of the purchasers let it to tenants. The words used of the persons who actually farmed it from time to time are the usual ones, ἐγεώργει, εἰργάσατο etc. That these tenants were not merely αὐτουργοί, but employers of labour, may fairly be guessed from the case of the present tenant, accused of sacrilege. He at least is an owner of slaves, and argues369 that he could never have been so mad as to put himself at their mercy. They would have witnessed his sacrilege, and could have won their freedom by informing against their master. Isocrates370 draws no real distinction between serfs and slaves in the case of Sparta. Here too the slave was dangerous, though in a different way: but he was on the land. A fragment of Isaeus371 runs ‘he left on the farm old men and cripples.’ The context is lost, but the persons referred to must surely be slaves: no one would employ wage-labour of this quality. In another place he casually mentions372 the sale of a flock of goats with the goatherd. These little scraps of evidence all serve to strengthen the impression, derived from other sources, of slave-labour as the backbone of Attic agriculture in this period. To free labour there are very few references, and none of these seem to have any connexion with agriculture. This does not prove that no hired freemen were employed on farms. For special jobs, as we shall see later, they were called in: but this was only temporary employment. The μισθτοὶ or θῆτες were a despised373 class: some of them were freedmen. The competition with slave-labour doubtless had something to do with this, and to be driven by necessity to such labour was galling to a citizen, as we have already learnt from Xenophon.

XVII. Aristotle

The great founder of the philosophy of experience is a witness374 of exceptional value. He collected and recorded the facts and traditions of the past, judging them from the point of view of his own day. Stimulated by the theories of his master Plato, he also strove, by sketching the fabric of a model state, to indicate the lines on which Greek political development might be conducted with advantage. Inasmuch as ideal circumstances were rather to be desired than expected, he did not restrict his interest in the future to the mere designing of an ideal: taking states as he found them, conditioned by their situation and past history, he sought for the causes of their growth and decay, and aimed at discovering cures for their various maladies. But throughout, whether looking to the past or the future, he was guided by a characteristic moral purpose. For him ‘good living’ (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) is the aim and object of political institutions. It is in the state that man finds the possibility of reaching his full development: for he is by nature a ‘political animal.’ That is, he cannot live alone. Each step in association (household, village,) brings him nearer to that final union of the city. In this he attains the highest degree of manhood of which he (as Man, differentiated from other animals by reason and speech,) is capable. This completion of his potentialities is the proof of his true nature; that he realizes his best self in the πόλις shews that he is a πολιτικὸν ζῷον. The animal needs met in the more primitive associations are of course met in the city also. But there is something more, and this something more is a moral element, from which is derived the possibility of ‘good living,’ as contrasted with existence of a more predominantly animal character. Therefore, though in point of time the man comes before the state, in logical order the state comes first: for the man can only exist in the fulness of his nature when he is a citizen. He is by the law of his nature part of a state, potentially: as such a part he is to be regarded. As states vary, so do the several types of citizens. In the best state the qualities of good man and good citizen are identical and complete.

The aim of political science (πολιτική) is to frame and employ the machinery of states so as to promote the perfection of human excellence (ἀρετή), and to train the citizens on such principles as will insure the effective working and permanence of their institutions. We may call it Aristotle’s response to the Greek yearning after a stability which was in practice never attained. To design a model state was one way of approaching the problem. But Aristotle was surely not the man to believe that such an ideal could be practically realised. To make the best of existing systems was a more promising enterprise. Now in either procedure it was evident that material equipment375 could not be left out of account. Without food clothing and shelter men cannot live at all, and therefore cannot live well. Experience also shewed that the means of defence against enemies could not safely be neglected. It is under the head of equipment (χορηγία) that we get the philosopher’s view of the proper position of agriculture in the life of a state. We must bear in mind the general Greek conception of citizenship common to statesmen and theorists, present to Plato and Aristotle no less than to Cleisthenes or Pericles. Residence gave no claim to it. Either it was hereditary, passing from father to son on proof of citizen descent and certain religious qualifications; or it was deliberately conferred on a person or persons as a privilege. That beside the citizens there should be resident within the state376 a number of persons, not citizens or likely to become citizens, was a necessity generally admitted. They might be free aliens, more or less legally connected with the state, or slaves public or private. These alien persons were very numerous in some states, such as Athens or Corinth. Subject or serf populations of Greek origin, as in Laconia or Thessaly, are not to be distinguished from them for the present purpose. One common mark of citizenship was the right of owning land within the territory of the state. We know that the Attic landowner must be an Athenian citizen, and such was the general rule. Who did the actual work of cultivation, or tended the flocks and herds, is another question. We have seen reason for believing that personal labour377 of the owner on his farm had at one time been usual, and that the practice still in the fourth century BC prevailed in those parts of Greece where there had been little development of urban life. And that slave-labour was employed by farmers on a greater or less scale, according to the size of their estates, seems as certain as certain can be. In Attica the slave overseer, entrusted with the direction of a gang of slave labourers, had become378 a well-recognized figure, and farming by deputy, as well as labouring by deputy, was an ordinary thing. Citizens resided in the city more than ever. Rich men visited their country estates to keep an eye on their overseers, or paid the penalty of their neglect. Poor citizens, resident and able to attend meetings of the Assembly, had to be kept quiet by systematic provision of fees for performance of civic functions. It may be too strong to say that squeezing the wealthy was the leading fact of politics: but there was too much of that sort of thing, and the scramble for state pay was demoralizing. Immediate personal interest tended to deaden patriotism in a state that within human memory had, whatever its faults, been the most public-spirited community among the leading states of Greece.

In treating of politics, and therewith in assigning a position to agriculture, Aristotle was affected by three main influences. First, the historical; the experience of Greek states, and more particularly of Athens. Secondly, the theoretical; the various attempts of earlier philosophers, particularly of Plato, to find a solution of political problems on speculative lines. Thirdly, his own firm conviction that the lasting success of state life depended on devotion to a moral end. It will be the simplest and best plan to consider his utterances on agriculture from these three points of view.

The supply of food being the first of necessities, and being in fact (as we have seen) an ever-pressing problem in Greece, it is no wonder that land-hunger, leading to wars for territory, and land-grabbing, a fertile cause of internal dissension and seditions in states, were normal phenomena of Greek history. And what happened in old Hellas was reproduced abroad, as the Greek colonists overflowed into lands beyond the seas. Once the possession of territory was secured by war, and the means of its defence organized, two problems soon presented themselves for solution. It was at once necessary to decide by what labour the land was to be cultivated. Greek colonists, desirous no doubt of an easier life than they had led in the old country, generally contrived to devolve this labour upon others at a very early stage of their establishment. Either they reduced natives to the condition of serfs, or they employed slaves, whom the profits of growing trade and commerce enabled them to procure in larger and larger numbers. Meanwhile in the mother country various systems went on side by side. There were large districts of agricultural serfage, in which a race of conquerors were supported by the labour of the conquered. In other parts independent peoples, backward in civilization, lived a free rustic life of a largely pastoral character. Others again devoted themselves more to the tillage of the soil, with or without the help of slaves. It was known that in earlier times a population of this kind in Attica had long existed, and that after the unification of Attica and the reforms of Solon it had for a time been the backbone of the Athenian state. But in fertile lowland districts there was a not unnatural tendency towards larger estates, worked by hireling or slave-labour. It seems fairly certain that in Attica before the time of Aristotle the supply of free wage-earners for farm-work was failing: the development of the city and the Peiraeus, and the growing number of those in receipt of civil and military pay, had drawn the poor citizen away from rustic labour. Nor is there reason to think that after the loss of empire there was any marked movement back to the land on the part of free labourers or even small farmers. It would rather seem that Attic land was passing into fewer hands, and that the employment of stewards or overseers, free or slave, was one of the features of a change by which the farming of land was becoming a symptom of considerable wealth.

But beside the decision as to labour there was the question as to a means of checking land-monopoly. Such monopoly, resulting in the formation of a discontented urban mob, was a serious menace to the stability of a constitution. For all poor citizens to get a living by handicrafts was perhaps hardly possible; nor would the life of an artisan suit the tastes and wishes of all. Nature does (or seems to do) more for the farmer on his holding than for the artisan in his workshop, and the claim to a share of the land within the boundaries of their states had led to seditions and revolutions, ruinous and bloody, followed by ill feeling, and ever liable to recur. Colonial states, in which the first settlers usually allotted the land (or most of it) among themselves and handed down their allotments to their children, were particularly exposed to troubles of this kind. The various fortunes of families, and the coming of new settlers, early raised the land-question there in an acute form, as notoriously at Syracuse. No wonder that practical and theoretical statesmen tried to find remedies for a manifest political evil. Stability was only to be assured by internal peace. To this end two main lines of policy379 found favour. Security of tenure was promoted by forbidding the sale of land-lots or making it difficult to encumber them by mortgages: while the prohibition of excessive acquisition380 was a means of checking land-grabbers and interesting a larger number of citizens in the maintenance of the land-system. But there is no reason to think that measures of this kind had much success. Nor were vague traditions381 of the equality of original land-lots in some Greek states of any great importance. Some theoretical reformers might aim at such an arrangement, but it was a vain aspiration. Indeed, regarded from the food-producing point of view, nothing like a true equality was possible in practice. Confiscation and redistribution were only to be effected at the cost of civil war, and the revered wisdom of Solon382 had rejected such a proceeding. Communistic schemes had little attraction for the average Greek, so far as his own labour or interests might be involved: even the dream of Plato was far from a thoroughgoing communism.

Of the farmer in his character of citizen383 Aristotle had a favourable impression formed from the experience of the past. The restless activity of Assemblies frequently meeting, and with fees for attendance, was both a cause and an effect of the degeneration of democracies in his day. It meant that political issues were now at the mercy of the ignorant and fickle city-dwellers, a rabble swayed by the flattery of self-seeking demagogues. Athens was the notable instance. Yet tradition alleged (and it can hardly be doubted) that in earlier times, when a larger part of the civic body lived and worked in the country, a soberer and steadier policy384 prevailed. The farmers, never free from responsibilities and cares, were opposed to frequent Assemblies, to attend which involved no small sacrifice of valuable time. For this sacrifice a small fee would have been no adequate compensation, and in fact they had none at all. Naturally enough Aristotle, admitting385 that in the states of his day democratic governments were mostly inevitable, insists on the merits of the farmer-democracies of the good old times, and would welcome their revival. But the day for this was gone by, never to return. Another important point arises in connexion with the capacity of the state for war, a point seldom overlooked in Greek political speculation. In discussing the several classes out of which the state is made up, Aristotle observes386 that individuals may and will unite in their own persons the qualifications of more than one class. So the same individuals may perform various functions: but this does not affect his argument, for the same persons may be, and often are, both hoplites and cultivators, who yet are functionally distinct parts of the state. Just below, speaking of the necessity of ‘virtue’ (ἀρετὴ) for the discharge of certain public duties (deliberative and judicial), he adds ‘The other faculties may exist combined in many separate individuals; for instance, the same man may be a soldier a cultivator and a craftsman, or even a counsellor of state or a judge; but all men claim to possess virtue, and think they are qualified to hold most offices. But the same men cannot be at once rich and poor. The common view therefore is that Rich and Poor are the true parts of a state.’ That is to say, practical analysis can go no further. In another passage387, discussing the formation of the best kind of democracy, he says ‘for the best Demos is that of farmers (ὁ γεωργικός): so it is possible to form (a corresponding?) democracy where the mass of the citizens gets its living from tillage or pasturage (ἀπὸ γεωργίας ἢ νομῆς).’ After considering the political merits of the cultivators, busy and moderate men, he goes388 on ‘And after the Demos of cultivators the next best is that where the citizens are graziers (νομεῖς) and get their living from flocks and herds (βοσκημάτων): for the life in many respects resembles that of the tillers of the soil, and for the purposes of military campaigning these men are peculiarly hardened389 by training, fit for active service, and able to rough it in the open.’ The adaptability of the rustic worker is further admitted390 in a remark let fall in a part of his treatise where he is engaged in designing a model state. It is to the effect that, so long as the state has a plentiful supply of farm-labourers, it must also have plenty of seamen (ναυτῶν). Having just admitted that a certain amount of maritime commerce will be necessary, and also a certain naval power, he is touching on the manning of the fleet. The marine soldiers will be freemen, but the seamen (oarsmen) can be taken from unfree classes working on the land. Their social status does not at this stage concern us: that such labourers could readily be made into effective oarsmen is an admission to be noted. To the philosopher himself it is a comfort to believe that he has found out a way of doing without the turbulent ‘seafaring rabble’ (ναυτικὸς ὄχλος) that usually throngs seaport towns and embarrasses orderly governments. In other words, it is a relief to find that in a model state touching the sea it will not be necessary to reproduce the Peiraeus.

In considering the proposals of earlier theorists for the remedy of political defects it is hardly possible and nowise needful to exhaust all the indications of dissatisfaction with existing systems. Of Euripides and Socrates, the two great questioners, enough has been said above. The reactionary Isocrates was for many years a contemporary of Aristotle. What we can no longer reproduce is the talk of active-minded critics in the social circles of Athens. It happens that Xenophon has left us a sketch of the ordinary conversations of Socrates. No doubt these were the most important examples of their kind, and his method a powerful, if sometimes irritating, stimulus to thought. But we are not to assume a lack of other questioners, acute and even sincere, more especially among men of oligarchic leanings. That Aristotle came into touch with such persons is probable from his connexion with Plato. Certain passages in the Constitution of Athens, in which he is reasonably suspected391 of giving a partisan view of historical events, point to the same conclusion. We shall never know all the criticisms and suggestions of others that this watchful collector heard and noted. But it is both possible and desirable to recall those to which his own record proves him to have paid attention.

Both Hippodamus and Plato based their schemes on a class-system, in which the farmer-class form a distinct body: but the former made them citizens with voting rights. Being unarmed, and so at the mercy of the military class, Aristotle held that their political rights were nugatory. In the Republic, Plato gave them no voice in state-affairs, but in the Laws he admitted them to the franchise. While these two reformers made provision for a military force, Phaleas, ignoring relations with other states, made none. To Phaleas, equality in landed estate seemed the best means of promoting harmony and wellbeing in the community; and he would effect this equality by legal restrictions. This proposition Aristotle rejected as neither adequate nor suited to its purpose. Moral392 influences, hard work, discretion, even intellectual activity, can alone produce the temper of moderation that promotes concord and happiness. In short, if you are to effect any real improvement, you must start from the doctrine of the Mean393 and not trust to material equalizing. The several tenure of land-lots was generally recognized, with variations in detail; Plato in the Laws abandoned the impracticable land-system of the Republic, and not only assigned a κλῆρος to each citizen household, but arranged it in two394 sections, for reasons given above. The attempt to ensure the permanence of the number of land-lots and households by strict legal regulation, as some legislators had tried to do, is also a general feature of these speculations. Plato in the Laws even went further, and would place rigid restrictions on acquisition of property of all kinds. All agree in the usual Greek contempt for those engaged in manual or sedentary trades. Such ‘mechanical’ (βάναυσοι) workers were held to be debased in both body and mind below the standard of ‘virtue’ required of the good soldier or citizen. Phaleas made these ‘artisans’ public slaves de iure: Hippodamus placed them, with the farmers, in nominal citizenship but de facto bondage. Plato tolerates them because he cannot do without them. In the matter of hard bodily labour, free or slave, the position of Plato is clear. He would devolve it upon slaves; in agriculture, with a coexisting alternative system of serf-tenants. But both classes are to be Barbarians. It seems that Hippodamus meant the public, if not the private, land of his model state to be worked by slaves. Most striking is the fact that Plato in his later years combined the aim of self-sufficiency with dependence on servile labour. Commerce is, for the moral health of the state, to be strictly limited. The supply of necessary food-stuffs is to be a domestic industry, carried on by alien serfs or slaves for the most part. Such communism as exists among the Guardians in the Republic is a communism of consumers who take no part in material production: and it is abandoned in the Laws.

The above outlines must suffice as a sketch of the situation both in practice and in theory when Aristotle took the matter in hand. The working defects of Greek constitutions were obvious to many, and the incapacity of the ignorant masses in democracies was especially evident to thoughtful but irresponsible critics. Yet the selfishness of the rich in oligarchies was not ignored, and the instability of governments supported by only a minority of the citizens was an indisputable fact. The mass of citizens (that is, full members of the state according to the qualification-rules in force) had to come in somewhere, to give numerical strength to a government. How was governing capacity to be placed in power under such conditions? Experience suggested that things had been better for Athens when a larger part of her citizens lived on the land. Use could no doubt be made of this experience in case an opening for increasing the number of peasant farmers395 should occur. But it was precisely in states where such a policy was most needed that an opening was least likely to occur. It would seem then that the only chance of improving government lay in persuading the average citizen to entrust wider powers to a specially selected body of competent men, in short to carry into politics the specializing principle396 already developed by the advance of civilization in other departments. Now the average citizen was certain to test the plans of reformers by considering how their operation would affect cases like his own. It was therefore necessary to offer him a reassuring picture of projects of this kind, if they were to receive any hearing at all. To own a plot of land, inalienable and hereditary, was a security against indigence. To have the labour of cultivating it performed as a matter of course by others was a welcome corollary. To be relieved of mechanical drudgery by aliens and slaves was a proposal sure to conciliate Greek pride. And the resulting leisure for the enlightened discharge of the peculiarly civic functions of war and government was an appeal to self-esteem and ambition. But that the creation of a ruling class of Guardians with absolute power, such as those of Plato’s Republic, would commend itself to democratic Greeks, was more than any practical man could believe. Nor would the communism of those Guardians appear attractive to the favourers of oligarchy. Therefore Plato himself had to recast his scheme, and try to bring it out of dreamland by concessions to facts of Greek life. Not much was gained thereby, and the great difficulty, how to make a start, still remained. That much could be done by direct legislative action was a tradition in Greek thought fostered by tales of the achievements of early lawgivers. But to remodel the whole fabric of a state so thoroughly that an entire change should be effected in the political atmosphere in which the citizens must live and act, while the citizens themselves would be the same persons, reared in old conditions and ideas, was a project far beyond the scope of ordinary legislation. To Aristotle it seemed that the problem must be approached differently.

This is not the place to discuss the two distinct lines taken by him; first, that the character of the state depends on that of its members, and secondly, that the individual only finds his true self as member of a state. The subject has been fully397 treated, better than I could treat it; and in constructing a model there remains the inevitable difficulty, where to begin. The highest development of the individual is only attainable under the training provided by the model state, and this state is only possible as an association of model citizens. If we may conjecture Aristotle’s answer from a rule398 laid down in the Ethics, he would say ‘first learn by doing, and then you can do what you have learnt to do.’ That is, effort (at first imperfect) will improve faculty, and by creating habit will develope full capacity. But even so it would remain uncertain whether the individual, starting on a career of self-improvement, is to work up to the making of a model state, or the imperfect state to start training its present citizens to perfection. The practical difficulty is there still. Nor is it removed by putting the first beginnings of training so early399 that they even precede the infant citizen’s birth, in the form of rules for eugenic breeding. Aristotle’s procedure is to postulate favourable equipment, geographical and climatic, a population of high qualities (that is, Greek,) and then to consider how he would organize the state and train its members—if the postulated conditions were realized and he had a free hand. In this new Utopia it is most significant to observe what he adopts from historical experience and the proposals of earlier theorists, and in what respects he departs from them. It is in particular his attitude towards ownership and tillage of land, and labour in general, that is our present concern.

As it follows from his doctrine of the Mean that the virtue of the state and its several members must be based on the avoidance of extremes, so it follows400 from the moral aim of the state that its component elements are not all ‘parts’ of the state in the same strict sense. Economically, those who provide food clothing etc are parts, necessary to the existence of the community. Politically (for politics have a moral end) they are below the standard of excellence required for a share in the government of a perfect state. They cannot have the leisure or the training to fit them for so responsible a charge. Therefore they cannot be citizens. To maintain secure independence and internal order the citizens, and the citizens only, must bear arms. And, since the land must belong to the possessors of arms, none but citizens can own land. This does not imply communism. There will have to be public401 land, from the produce of which provision will be made for the service of religion and for the common tables at which citizens will mess. To maintain these last by individual contributions would be burdensome to the poor and tend to exclude them. For rich and poor there will be. But the evil of extreme poverty will be avoided. There will be private land, out of which each citizen (that is evidently each citizen-household) will have an allotment of land. This κλῆρος will be in two402 parcels, one near the city and the other near the state-frontier, so that issues of peace and war may not be affected by the bias of local interests. The cultivation of these allotments will be the work of subjects, either inhabitants of the district (περίοικοι) or slaves; in any case aliens, not Greeks; and in the case of slaves care must be taken not to employ too many of the same race together or such as are high-spirited. He is concerned to secure the greatest efficiency and to leave the least possible facilities for rebellion. The labourers will belong to the state or to individual citizens according to the proprietorship of the land on which they are severally employed. By these arrangements he has provided for the sustenance of those who in the true political sense are ‘parts’ of the state (πόλις), and for their enjoyment of sufficient leisure403 to enable them to conduct its government in the paths of virtue and promote the good life (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) which is the final cause of state existence.

The citizens then have the arms and the land and all political power. Among themselves they are on an equal footing, only divided functionally according to age: deliberative and judicial duties belonging to the elder men, military activities to the younger. It is impossible to overlook the influence of the Spartan system on the speculations of Aristotle as well as those of Plato. The equality of Spartan citizens was regarded as evidence404 of a democratic element in their constitution, and we find this same theoretical equality among the full citizens at any given moment in the developing constitution of Rome. It is significant that Aristotle felt the necessity of such an equality. He remarks405 that the permanence of a constitution depends on the will of the possessors of arms. We may observe that he seldom refers to the mercenaries so commonly employed in his day, save as his bodyguard of usurping tyrants. But in one passage406 he speaks of oligarchies being driven to employ them at a pinch for their own security against the Demos, and of their own overthrow in consequence. Therefore he did not ignore the risk run by relying on hirelings: naturally he would prefer to keep the military service of his model state in the hands of his model citizens. But he had no belief407 in the blind devotion of Sparta to mere preparation for warfare. Peace is the end of war, not war of peace. If you do not learn to make a proper use of peace, in the long run you will fail in war also: hence the attainment of empire was the ruin of Sparta: she had not developed the moral qualities needed for ruling in time of peace. But in his model state he seems not to make adequate provision for the numbers required in war. His agricultural labourers are not to be employed in warfare, as the Laconian Helots regularly were. He only admits them to the service of the oar, controlled by the presence of marine soldiers, who are free citizens like the poorer class of Athenians who generally served in that capacity. The servile character of rustic labour on his plan is thus reasserted, and with it the superior standing of land forces as compared with maritime. The days were past when Athenians readily served at the oar in their own triremes, cruising among the subject states and certain of an obsequious reception in every port. Hired rowers had always been employed to some extent, even by Athens: in this later period the motive power of war-gallies of naval states was more and more obtained from slaves. There was an economic analogy between farm-labour and oar-labour. The slave was forced to toil for practically no more408 than his food: the profits of the farm and the profits of war-booty fell to be shared in either case by few.

Aristotle, who was well aware of the merits of the working farmer, the peasant citizen, and recognized that such men had been a sound and stable element in the Athens of former days, would surely not have treated agriculture as a work reserved for servile hands, had he not been convinced that the old rural economy was gone and could never be revived. For, if suggestions from Sparta influenced him when designing Utopian institutions, it is no less clear that the Utopian setting—territory, city, port-town,—are merely modifications of Attica, Athens, Peiraeus. In Greece there was no state so favoured geographically, so well equipped by nature for independence prosperity and power. If a Greek community was ever to realize an artistic ideal, and live in peaceful and secure moderation a model life of dignity and virtue, it could hardly have a better chance of success than in some such advantageous position as that enjoyed by Athens. Her defects lay in her institutions, such as he viewed them at their present stage of development. These could not be approved as they stood: they needed both political and economic reform. Into the former we need not enter here: the later democracy could not but disgust one who judged merit from the standpoint of his doctrine of the Mean. Economically, we may infer from his own model project that two great changes would be required. Citizens must all have an interest in the land, though farmed by slave labour. The port-town must no longer be a centre of promiscuous commerce, thronged with a cosmopolitan population of merchants seamen dock-labourers etc and the various purveyors who catered for their various appetites. In truth the Peiraeus was a stumbling-block to him as to Plato, and probably to most men409 who did not themselves draw income from its trade or its iniquities, or who did not derive political power from the support of its democratic citizens. To have a state ‘self-sufficing’ so far as to get its necessary food from its own territory, and to limit commerce to a moderate traffic sufficient to procure by exchange such things as the citizens wanted but could not produce (for instance410 timber), was a philosopher’s aspiration.

While proposing to restrict commercial activity as being injurious in its effect, when carried to excess, on the higher life of the state, Aristotle like Plato admits411 that not only slaves but free aliens, permanently or temporarily resident, must form a good part of the population. He does not even412 like Plato propose to fix a limit to the permissible term of metic residence. Apparently he would let the resident alien make his fortune in Utopia and go on living there as a non-citizen of means. But he would not allow him to hold real property within the state, as Xenophon or some other413 writer had suggested. That the services of aliens other than slaves were required for the wellbeing of the state, is an important admission. For it surely implies that there were departments of trade and industry in which slave-labour alone was felt to be untrustworthy, while the model citizens of a model state could not properly be so employed. The power of personal interest414 in promoting efficiency and avoiding waste is an elementary fact not forgotten by Aristotle. Now the slave, having no personal interest involved beyond escaping punishment, is apt to be a shirker and a waster. The science of the master (δεσποτική)415, we are told, is the science of using slaves; that is, of getting out of them what can be got. It is a science of no great scope or dignity. Hence busy masters employ overseers. He suggests that some stimulus to exertion may be found in the prospect of manumission416 for good service. This occurs again in the Economics, but the question of what is to become of the worn-out rustic slave is not answered by him417 any more than it is by Plato. My belief is that, so far as farm staffs are concerned, he has chiefly if not wholly in view cases418 of stewards overseers etc. These would be in positions of some trust, perhaps occasionally filled by freemen, and to create in them some feeling of personal interest would be well worth the masters while. Domestic slavery was on a very different footing, but it too was often a worry419 to masters. Here manumission played an obvious and important part, and perhaps still more in the clerical staffs of establishments for banking and other businesses. These phenomena of Athenian life were interesting and suggestive. Yet Aristotle is even more reticent420 than Plato (and with less reason) on the subject of manumission: which is matter for regret.

The model state then will contain plenty of free aliens, serving the state with their talents and labour, an urban non-landholding element. They set the model citizens free for the duties of politics and war. Whether they will be bound to service in the army or the fleet, like the Athenian metics, we are not told. Nor is it easy to guess how Aristotle would have answered the question. Their main function is to carry on the various meaner or ‘mechanical’ trades and occupations, no doubt employing or not employing the help of slaves according to circumstances. All such trades were held to have a degrading effect421 on both body and mind, disabling those practising them from attaining the highest excellence, that is the standard of model citizens in war and peace. Aristotle finds the essence of this taint in transgression of the doctrine of the Mean. Specialization carried to extremes produces professionalism which, for the sake of perfecting technical skill, sacrifices the adaptability, the bodily suppleness and strength and the mental all-round alertness and serene balance,—qualities which every intelligent Greek admired, and which Aristotle postulated in the citizens of his model community. So strong is his feeling on the point that it comes422 out in connexion with music. The young citizens are most certainly to have musical training, but they are not to become professional performers; for this sort of technical excellence is nothing but a form of βαναυσία.

If neither the farmer nor the artisan are to be citizens, and the disqualification of the latter rests on his narrow professionalism, we are tempted to inquire whether the claim of the farmer may not also have been regarded as tainted by the same disability. That agriculture afforded scope for a high degree of technical skill is a fact not missed by Aristotle. He is at pains to point out423 that this most fundamental of industries is a source of profit if scientifically pursued, as well as a means of bare subsistence. For the exchange424 of products (such as corn and wine) by barter soon arises, and offers great opportunities, which are only increased to an injurious extent by the invention of a metallic currency. Now the founder of the Peripatetic school was not the man to ignore the principles of scientific farming, and the labour of collecting details had for him no terrors. Accordingly he refers to the knowledge425 required in several departments of pastoral and agricultural life. He sketches briefly the development of the industry, from the mere gathering of nature’s bounty, through the stage of nomad pasturage, to settled occupation and the raising of food-crops by tillage of the soil. But in the Politics he does not follow out this topic. His preoccupation is the development of man in political life: so he dismisses further detail with the remark426 (referring to the natural branch of χρηματιστική, the art of profit-making, which operates with crops and beasts) that in matters of this kind speculation is liberal (= worthy of a free man) but practice is not. This seems to imply that to be engrossed in the detailed study of various soils or breeds of beasts, with a view to their appropriate and profitable management, is an illiberal and cramping pursuit. He does not apply to it the term βαναυσία, and the reason probably is that the bodily defects of the sedentary artisan are not found in the working farmer. But the concentration upon mean details of no moral or political significance is common to both. That all unskilled427 wage-earners fall under the same ban is a matter of course, hardly worth mentioning. In short, all those who depend on the custom of others for a living are subject to a sort of slavery in a greater or less degree, and unfit to be citizens.

The value attached to ‘self-sufficiency’ as evidence of freedom and of not living ‘in relation to another’ (that is, in dependence428 on another,) is in striking contrast to views that have enjoyed a great vogue in modern economic theory. Neither the man nor the state can be completely429 self-sufficing: that Aristotle, and Plato before him, saw. Man, feeling his way upward through the household to the state, needs help. He first finds430 a helper (I am omitting the sex-union) in the ox, the forerunner of the slave, and still in primitive rustic life the helper of the poor. Growing needs bring division of labour and exchange by barter, and so on. As a political animal he can never be quite independent as an individual, but it is the law of his being that the expanding needs which draw him into association with his fellows result in making him more of a man. Here lies a pitfall. If through progress in civilization his daily life becomes so entangled with those of other men that his freedom of action is hampered thereby, surely he has lost something. His progress has not been clear gain, and the balance may not be easy to strike. It is therefore a problem, how to find a position in which man may profit by the advantages of civilization without risking the loss of more than he has gained. Aristotle does not state it in terms so brutally frank. But the problem is there, and he does in effect attempt a solution. The presence in sufficient numbers of slaves legally unfree, and workers legally free but virtually under a defined or special kind431 of servitude (ἀφωρισμένην τινὰ δουλείαν), is the only means by which a privileged class can get all the good that is to be got out of human progress. His model citizens are an aristocracy of merited privilege, so trained to virtue that to be governed by them will doubtless enable their subjects to enjoy as much happiness as their inferior natures can receive. This solution necessitates the maintenance of slavery432 as existing by nature, and the adoption of economic views that have been rightly called reactionary. The student of human nature and experience unwisely departed from the safer ground of his own principles and offered a solution that was no solution at all.

As the individual man cannot live in complete isolation, supplying his own needs and having no relations with other men,—for his manhood would thus remain potential and never become actual—so it will be with the state also. It must not merely allow aliens to reside in it and serve its purposes internally: it will have to stand in some sort of relations to other states. This is sufficiently asserted by the provision made for the contingency of war. But in considering how far a naval force would be required433 in his model state he remarks ‘The scale of this force must be determined by the part (τὸν βίον) played by our state: if it is to lead a life of leadership and have dealings with other states (ἡγεμονικὸν καὶ πολιτικὸν βίον), it will need to have at hand this force also on a scale proportioned to its activities.’ Then, jealous ever of the Mean, he goes on to deny the necessity of a great ‘nautical rabble,’ in fact the nuisance of the Peiraeus referred to above. On the protection of such maritime commerce as he would admit he does not directly insist; but, knowing Athens so well, no doubt he had it in mind. Another illustration of the virtuous Mean may be found in the rules of education. The relations of the quarrelsome Greek states had been too often hostile. The Spartan training had been too much admired. But it was too one-sided, too much a glorification of brute force, and its inadequacy had been exposed since Leuctra. Its success had been due to the fact that no other state had specialized in preparation for war as Sparta had done. Once others took up this war-policy in earnest, Sparta’s vantage was gone. This vantage was her all. Beaten in war, she had no reserve of non-military qualities to assuage defeat and aid a revival. The citizens of Utopia must not be thus brutalized. Theirs must be the true man’s courage (ἀνδρία)434, as far removed from the reckless ferocity of the robber or the savage as from cowardice. It is surely not too much to infer435 that military citizens of this character were meant to pursue a public policy neither abject nor aggressive.

It is in connexion with bodily training that we come upon views that throw much light on the position of agricultural labour. There is, he remarks, a general agreement436 that gymnastic exercises do promote manly courage, or as he puts it below ‘health and prowess.’ But at the present time there is, in states where the training of the young is made a special object, a tendency437 to overdo it: they bring up the boys as regular athletes, producing a habit of body that hinders the shapely development and growth of the frame. The Thebans in particular are thought to be meant. His own system does not thus run to excess. Gentle exercises gradually extended will develop fine bodies to match fine souls. Now his labouring classes receive no bodily training of the kind. The frame of the artisan is left to become cramped and warped by the monotonous movements of his trade. So too the farm-labourer is left to become hard and stiff-jointed. Neither will have the supple agility needed for fighting as an art. We have seen that this line had already been taken by Plato in the Republic; indeed it was one that a Greek could hardly avoid. Yet the shock-tactics of heavy columns were already revolutionizing Greek warfare as much as the light troops organized by Iphicrates. Were Aristotle’s military principles not quite up to date? Philip made the Macedonian rustic into a first-rate soldier. But the northern tribesman was a free man. The rustic of the model state was to be a slave or serf: therefore he could not be a soldier. To keep him in due subjection he must not be allowed to have arms or trained to use them skilfully. This policy is nothing more or less than the precautionary device438 resorted to in Crete; the device that he twits Plato with omitting in the Republic, though without it his Guardians would not be able to control the landholding Husbandmen. And yet the weakness of the Cretan system is duly noted439 in its place. The truth is, Aristotle was no more exempt from the worship of certain ill-defined political terms than were men of far less intellectual power. The democrat worshipped ‘freedom’ in the sense440 of ‘do as you please,’ the mark of a freeborn citizen. The philosopher would not accept so crude a doctrine, but he is none the less determined to mark off the ‘free’ from the unfree, socially as well as politically. Adapting an institution known in Thessalian441 cities, he would have two open ‘places’ (ἀγοραί) in his model state; one for marketing and ordinary daily business, the other reserved for the free citizens. Into the latter no tradesman (βάναυσον) or husbandman (γεωργόν), or other person of like status (τοιοῦτον), is to intrude—unless the magistrates summon him to attend.

It is a pity that Aristotle has left us no estimate of the relative numerical strength of the various classes of population in Utopia. He neglects this important detail more completely even than Plato. Yet I fancy that an attempt to frame such an estimate would very soon have exposed the visionary and unpractical nature of the whole fabric constructed on his lines. It would, I believe, have been ultimately wrecked on the doctrine of the Mean. Restriction of commerce had to be reconciled with financial strength, for he saw that wealth was needed442 for both peace and war. This εὐπορία could only arise from savings, the accumulated surplus of industry. The labouring classes would therefore have to provide not only their own sustenance etc and that of their rulers, but a considerable surplus as well. This would probably necessitate so numerous a labouring population that the citizens would have enough to do in controlling them and keeping them to their work. To increase the number of citizens would add to the unproductive443 mouths, and so on. Foreign war would throw everything out of gear, and no hiring of mercenaries is suggested. It is the carrying to excess of the principle of specialization that demands excess of ‘leisure,’ nothing less than the exemption of all citizens (all persons that count, in short,) from manual toil. Yet it was one who well knew the political merits of peasant farmers that was the author of this extravagant scheme for basing upon a servile agriculture the entertainment of a hothouse virtue.

The general effect produced by reviewing the evidence of Aristotle on agriculture and the labour-question is that he was a witness of the decay of the working-farmer class, and either could not or would not propose any plan for reviving it. The rarity of the words αὐτουργὸς and cognates is not to be wondered at in his works. They do not occur in the Politics. The Rhetoric furnishes two444 passages. One refers to the kinds of men especially liable to unfair treatment (ἀδικία) because it is not worth their while to waste time on legal proceedings, citing as instances aliens and αὐτουργοί. Rustics may be included, but are not expressly mentioned. The other445 refers to qualities that men generally like and respect, as justice. ‘Popular opinion finds this character in those who do not make their living out of others; that is, who live of their own labour, for instance those who live by farming (ἀπὸ γεωργίας), and, in other pursuits, those most of all who work with their own hands.’ Here we have the working farmer expressly cited as a type worthy of respect. But to single him out thus certainly does not suggest that the type was a common one. The great Aristotelian index of Bonitz supplies three446 more passages, all from the little treatise de mundo. They occur in a special context. God, as the cause that holds together the universe, is not to be conceived as a power enduring the toil of a self-working laborious animal (αὐτουργοῦ καὶ ἐπιπόνου ζῴου). Nor must we suppose that God, seated aloft in heaven and influencing all things more or less directly in proportion as they are near or far, pervades and flits through the universe regardless of his dignity and propriety to carry on the things of earth with his own hands (αὐτουργεῖ τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς). The third passage is in a comparison, illustrating the divine power by the Persian system, in which the Great King sitting on his throne pervades and directs his vast empire through his ministering agents. Such a fortiori is the government of God.

XVIII. The Later Attic Orators

It has already been remarked that no clear chronological line can be drawn to divide this famous group into two sections, but that there is nevertheless a real distinction between the period of hostility to Persia and that in which fear of Macedon was the dominant theme. The jealousies and disunion of the Greek states are the background of both. Isocrates447 had appealed in vain for Greek union as a means of realizing Greek ambitions and satisfying Greek needs. Demosthenes, so far as he did succeed in combining Greek forces to resist the encroachments of Philip, succeeded too late. In the fifth century BC we see the Greek states grouped under two great leading powers. The conflict of these powers leaves one of them the unquestioned head of the Greek world. The next half century witnessed the fall of Sparta, earned by gross misgovernment, and the rise and relapse of Thebes. In the same period Athens made another bid for maritime empire, but this second Alliance had failed. Isolation of Greek states was now the rule, and the hopelessness of any common policy consummated the weakness of exhaustion. At Athens the old fervent patriotism was cooling down, as we learn from the growing reluctance to make sacrifices in the country’s cause. Demos was no longer imperial, and he was evidently adapting himself to a humbler role. His political leaders had to secure his food-supply and provide for his festivals, and this out of a sadly shrunken income. To provide efficient fighting forces on land and sea was only possible by appropriating the Festival fund (θεωρικόν), and the mob of Athens was unwilling either to fight in person or to surrender its amusements in order to hire mercenaries. Too often the result was that mercenaries, hired but not paid, were left to pillage friend and foe alike for their own support. The truth is, individualism was superseding old-fashioned patriotism. The old simple views of life and duty had been weakened by the questionings of many thinkers, and no new moral footing had yet been found to compete with immediate personal interest. Athens was the chief centre of this decline, for the intellectual and moral influences promoting it were strongest there: but it was surely not confined to Athens. The failure of Thebes after the death of Epaminondas was one of many symptoms of decay. She had overthrown Sparta, but she could not herself lead Greece: her utmost achievement was a fatal equilibrium of weak states, of which the Macedonian was soon to take full advantage. And everywhere, particularly in rural districts, the flower of the male population was being drained away, enlisting in mercenary armies, lured by the hope of gain and willing to escape the prospect of hard and dreary lives at home. In short, each was for his own hand.

Such an age was not one to encourage the peaceful and patient toil of agriculture. The great cities, above all Athens, needed cheap corn. Their own farmers could not supply this, and so importation448 was by law favoured, and as far as possible inforced. Thus times of actual dearth seldom occurred, and home-grown corn was seldom a paying crop. Thrown back all the more on cultivation of the olive and vine the products of which were available for export, the farmer needed time for the development of his planted (πεφυτευμένη) land, and the waiting for returns necessitated a larger capital. He was then exposed to risk of greater damage in time of war. For his capital was irretrievably sunk in his vineyard or oliveyard, and its destruction would take years to repair—that is, more waiting and more capital. This was no novel situation. But its effect in reducing the number of small peasant farmers was probably now greater than ever. Not only were mercenary armies relentless destroyers and robbers (having no fear of reprisals and no conventional scruples to restrain them), but their example corrupted the practice of citizen forces. Even if no fighting took place in this or that neighbourhood, the local farmers449 must expect to be ruined by the mere presence of their own defenders. When we bear in mind the risks of drought in some parts or floods in others, the occasional losses of live stock, and other ordinary misfortunes, it is fair to imagine that the farmer of land needed to be a man of substance, not liable to be ruined by a single blow. And the sidelights thrown on the subject by the indirect references in the orators are quite consistent with this view.

The loss of the Thracian Chersonese in the disasters of 405 BC had not only dispossessed the Athenian settlers there, but made that region a source of continual anxiety to Athens. She was no longer in secure control of the strait through which the corn-ships passed from the Pontus. A considerable revival of her naval power enabled her in 365 to occupy the island of Samos and to regain a footing in the Chersonese. To both of these cleruchs were sent. But the tenure of the Chersonese was disputed by Thracian princes, and it was necessary to send frequent expeditions thither. The success or failure of these enterprises is recorded in histories of Greece. The importance of the position justified great efforts to retain it. Greek cities on the Propontis and Bosporus, not Thracian chiefs only, gave trouble. If short of supplies, as in 362, they were tempted to lay hands450 on the corn-ships, and consume what was meant for Athens. But the result of much confused warfare was that in 358 the Chersonese became once more a part of the Athenian empire. Even after the dissolution of that empire in the war with the Allies 358-6, part of the peninsula still remained Athenian. But it was now exposed to the menace of the growing power of Macedon under Philip. To induce the Demos, who needed the corn, to provide prompt and adequate protection for the gate of Pontic trade, was one of the many difficult tasks of Demosthenes.

Demosthenes is by far the most important witness to the circumstances of his age; though much allowance must be made for bias and partisan necessities, this does not greatly affect references to agricultural matters. Unfortunately his supreme reputation caused the works of other authors to be attributed to him in later times. Thus the total number of speeches passing under his name is a good deal larger than that of the undoubtedly genuine ones. But, if we set aside a few mere forgeries of later rhetoricians, the speeches composed by contemporary authors are no less authorities for stray details of rural life than those of Demosthenes himself. It is therefore not necessary to discuss questions of authorship, on which even the ablest specialists are often not agreed. But it is of interest to bear in mind that we are gleaning little items, from a strictly Athenian point of view, bearing on the condition of the same Athens and Attica as came under the cool observation of the outsider Aristotle. The lives of Aristotle and Demosthenes, from 384-3 to 322 BC, are exactly contemporary. And, as in matters of politics the speeches of the orators often illustrate the philosopher’s criticisms of democracy, so it is probable that the matters of food-supply and rural economy, referred to by speakers for purposes of the moment, were among the particulars noted by Aristotle when forming his conclusions on those subjects.

The right of owning real estate in Attica being reserved for Athenian citizens, aliens were debarred from what was sometimes a convenient form451 of investment. If the possible return on capital so placed was lower than in more speculative ventures, the risk of total loss was certainly much less, of partial loss comparatively small. Moreover it gave the owner a certain importance452 as a citizen of known substance. It enabled a rich man to vary453 his investments, as references to mixed estates shew. And he had a choice of policies in dealing with it: he could reside on his own property and superintend the management himself, or entrust the charge to a steward, or let it to a tenant. And, if at any time he wanted ready money for some purpose, he could raise it by a mortgage on favourable terms. If the land lay in a pleasant spot not too far from the city, he was tempted to make himself a ‘place in the country’ for his own occasional retirement and the entertainment of friends. That landowning presented itself to Athenians of the Demosthenic period in the aspects just sketched is manifest from the speeches belonging to the years from 369 to 322 BC. Of the small working farmer there is very little trace. But that some demand for farms existed seems indicated by the cleruchs sent to the Chersonese and Samos. No doubt these were meant to serve as resident garrisons at important points, and it is not to be supposed that they were dependent solely on their own labour for tillage of their lots. Another kind of land-hunger speaks for itself. The wars and wastings of this period placed large areas of land at the disposal of conquerors. Olynthian, Phocian, Boeotian territory was at one time or another confiscated and granted out as reward for this or that service. No reproaches of Demosthenes are more bitter than the references to these cruel and cynical measures of Philip’s corrupting policy. Individuals shared454 these and other spoils: the estates of Aeschines and Philocrates in Phocis, and later of Aeschines in Boeotia, are held up as the shameful wages of treachery. These estates can only have been worked by slave-labour under stewards, for politicians in Athens could not reside abroad. They are specimens of the large-scale agriculture to which the circumstances of the age were favourable.

A dispute arising out of a case of challenge to exchange properties455 (ἀντίδοσις), in order to decide which party was liable for performance of burdensome state-services, gives us a glimpse of a large holding in Attica. It belongs to 330 BC or later. The farm is an ἐσχατιά, that is a holding near456 the frontier. It is stated to have been more than 40 stadia (about 5 miles) in circuit. The farmstead included granaries (οἰκήματα) for storing the barley and wheat which were evidently the chief crops on this particular farm. It included also a considerable vineyard producing a good quantity of wine. Among the by-products was brushwood (ὕλη, not timber ξύλα)457. The faggots were carried to market (Athens, I presume) on the backs of asses. The ass-drivers are specially mentioned. The returns from the faggot-wood are stated at over 12 drachms a day. The challenging speaker declares that this estate was wholly unencumbered: not a mortgage-post (ὅρος) was to be seen. He contrasts his own position, a man who has lost most of his property in a mining venture, though he has even toiled with his own458 hands, with that of the landlord (I presume not an αὐτουργός) enriched by the late rise of the prices of corn and wine. He may be grossly exaggerating the profits of this border-farm: his opponent would probably be able to cite very different facts from years when the yield had been poor or prices low. Still, to impress an Athenian jury, the picture drawn in this speech must at least have seemed a possible one. The labour on the farm would be mainly that of slaves: but to this I shall return below. In another speech459 we hear of a farmer in the far north, on the SE Crimean coast. The sea-carriage of 80 jars of sour wine is accounted for by his wanting it for his farm-hands (ἐργάται). Slaves are probably meant, but we cannot be sure of it in that slave-exporting part of the world. At any rate he was clearly farming on a large scale. If he was, as I suppose, a Greek settler, the case is an interesting one. For it would seem to confirm the view of Isocrates, that Greek expansion was a feasible solution of a felt need, provided suitable territory for the purpose could be acquired; and that of Xenophon, when he proposed to plant necessitous Greeks in Asiatic lands taken from Persia.

The type of farmer known to us from Aristophanes, who works a holding of moderate size, a man not wealthy but comfortable, a well-to-do peasant proprietor who lives among the slaves whose labour he directs, is hardly referred to directly in the speeches of this period. Demosthenes460 in 355 BC makes the general remark ‘You cannot deny that farmers who live thrifty lives, and by reason of rearing children and domestic expenses and other public services have fallen into arrear with their property-tax, do the state less wrong than the rogues who embezzle public funds.’ But he does not say that there were many such worthy citizen-farmers, nor does he (I think) imply it. In a similar passage461 three years later he classes them with merchants, mining speculators, and other men in businesses, as better citizens than the corrupt politicians. Such references are far too indefinite, and too dependent on the rhetorical needs of the moment, to tell us much. In one of the earlier private speeches462 Demosthenes deals with a dispute of a kind probably common. It is a neighbours’ quarrel over a wall, a watercourse, and right of way. To all appearance the farms interested in the rights and wrongs were not large holdings. They were evidently in a hilly district. The one to protect which from floods the offending wall had been built had at one time belonged to a ‘town-bred463 man’ who disliked the place, neglected it, and sold it to the father of Demosthenes’ client. There is nothing to shew that this farm was the whole of the present owner’s estate: so that it is hardly possible to classify him economically with any exactitude. We do by chance learn that he had a staff of slaves, and that vines and fig-trees grew on the land.

The author of one of the earlier speeches464 (between 368 and 365 BC) furnishes much more detail in connexion with estates of what was apparently a more ordinary type. Neighbours are quarrelling as usual, and we have of course only ex parte statements. The farms, worked by slave-labour, produce vines and olives and probably some corn also. The enclosure and tending of valuable plants is represented as kept up to a high standard. Incidentally we learn that the staff used to contract465 for the gathering of fruit (ὀπώραν) or the reaping and carrying of other crops (θέρος ἐκθερίσαι), clearly on other estates. The contract was always made by a person named, who is thereby proved to have been the real owner of these slaves,—a point in the case. According to his own account, the speaker had for some time been settled (κατῴκουν) on the estate. That is, he had a house there and would sometimes be in residence. The amenities of the place are indicated by the mention of his young rose-garden, which was ravaged by trespassers, as were his olives and vines. The house from which they carried off ‘all the furniture, worth more than 20 minas,’ seems to have been in Athens, and the mention of the lodging-house (συνοικία) that he mortgaged for 16 minas shews that his estate was a mixed one. Country houses were no exceptional thing. A mining speculator speaks of an opponent466 as coming to his house in the country and intruding into the apartments of his wife and daughters. A party protesting against being struck off the deme-register says467 that his enemies made a raid on his cottage in the country (οἰκίδιον ἐν ἀγρῷ). He is probably depreciating the house, in order not to have the dangerous appearance of a rich man.

We hear also of farms near Athens, the suburban position of which no doubt enhanced their value. In the large mixed estate inherited and wasted by Timarchus, Aeschines468 mentions (344 BC) a farm only about a mile and a half from the city wall. The spendthrift’s mother entreated him to keep this property at least: her wish was to be buried there. But even this he sold, for 2000 drachms (less than £80). In the speech against Euergus and Mnesibulus the plaintiff tells469 how his opponents raided his farm and carried off 50 soft-wooled sheep at graze, and with them the shepherd and all the belongings of the flock, also a domestic slave, etc. This was not enough: they pushed on into the farm and tried to capture the slaves, who fled and escaped. Then they turned to the house, broke down the door that leads to the garden (κῆπον), burst in upon his wife and children, and went off with all the furniture that remained in the house. The speaker particularly points out470 that he had lived on the place from childhood, and that it was near the race-course (πρὸς τῷ ἱπποδρόμῳ). It must then have been near Athens. The details given suggest that it was a fancy-farm, devoted to the production of stock valued for high quality and so commanding high prices. The garden seems to be a feature of an establishment more elegant than that of a mere peasant farmer. It corresponds to the rose-bed in a case referred to above: Hyperides471 too mentions a man who had a κῆπος near the Academy, doubtless a pleasant spot. The farm in the plain (ὀ ἐν πεδίῳ ἀγρός)472 belonging to Timotheus, and mortgaged by him to meet his debts, is only mentioned in passing (362 BC) with no details: we can only suppose it to have been an average holding in the rich lowland.

A few passages require separate consideration in connexion with the labour-question. In the speech on the Crown (330 BC) Demosthenes quotes473 Aeschines as protesting against being reproached with the friendship (ξενίαν) of Alexander. He retorts ‘I am not so crazy as to call you Philip’s ξένος or Alexander’s φίλος, unless one is to speak of reapers or other wage-earners as the friends of those who hire them... but on a former occasion I called you the hireling (μισθωτὸν) of Philip, and I now call you the hireling of Alexander.’ Here the reaper (θεριστής) is contemptuously referred to as a mere hireling. Such was the common attitude towards poor freemen who lived by wage-earning labour,—θῆτες in short. But is it clear that the μισθωτὸς is necessarily a freeman? The passage cited above from an earlier speech makes it doubtful. If a gang of slaves could contract to cut and carry a crop (θέρος μισθοῖντο ἐκθερίσαι), their owner acting for them, surely they were strictly μισθωτοὶ from the point of view of the farmer who hired them. They were ἀνδράποδα μισθοφοροῦντα, to use the exact Greek phrase. In the speech against Timotheus an even more notable passage474 (362 BC) occurs. Speaking of some copper said to have been taken in pledge for a debt, the speaker asks ‘Who were the persons that brought the copper to my father’s house? Were they hired men (μισθωτοί), or slaves (οἰκέται)?’ Here, at first sight, we seem to have the hireling clearly marked off as free. For the argument475 proceeds ‘or which of my slave-household (τῶν οἰκετῶν τῶν ἐμῶν) took delivery of the copper? If slaves brought it, then the defendant ought to have handed them over (for torture): if hired men, he should have demanded our slave who received and weighed it.’ Strictly speaking, slaves, in status δοῦλοι, are οἰκέται476 in relation to their owner, of whose οἰκία they form a part. But if A in a transaction with B employed some slaves whom he hired for the purpose from C (C being in no way personally involved in the case), would not these477 be μισθωτοί, in the sense that they were not his own οἰκέται, but procured by μισθὸς for the job? It is perhaps safer to assume that in the case before us the hirelings meant by the speaker are freemen, but I do not think it can be considered certain. Does not their exemption from liability to torture prove it? I think not, unless we are to assume that the slaves hired from a third person, not a party in the case, could be legally put to question. That this was so, I can find no evidence, nor is it probable. The regular practice was this: either a party offered his slaves for examination under torture, or he did not. If he did not, a challenge (πρόκλησις) was addressed to him by his opponent, demanding their surrender for the purpose. But to demand the slaves of any owner, not a party in the case, was a very different thing, and I cannot discover the existence of any such right. I am not speaking of state trials, in which the claims of the public safety might override private interests, but of private cases, in which the issue lay between clearly defined adversaries. In default of direct and unquestionable authority, I cannot suppose that an Athenian slaveowner could be called upon to surrender his property (even with compensation for any damage thereto) for the purposes of a case in which he was not directly concerned.

Stray references to matters of land-tenure, such as the letting of sacred lands478 (τεμένη) belonging to a deme, are too little connected with our subject to need further mention here. And a curious story479 of some hill-lands (ὄρη) in the district of Oropus, divided by lot among the ten Tribes, apparently as tribal property, is very obscure. Such allotments would probably be let to tenants. What is more interesting in connexion with agriculture is the references to farming as a means of getting a livelihood, few and slight though they are. Demosthenes480 in 349 BC tells the Assembly that their right policy is to attack Philip on his own ground, not to mobilize and then await him in Attica: such mobilization would be ruinous to ‘those of you who are engaged in farming.’ The speech against Phaenippus481 shews us an establishment producing corn and wine and firewood and alleged to be doing very well owing to the prices then ruling in the market. We have also indications of the presence of dealers who bought up crops, no doubt to resell at a profit. From the expressions482 ὀπώραν πρίασθαι and ὀπωρώνης it might seem that fruit-crops in particular were disposed of in this way. Naturally a crop of this sort had to be gathered quickly, and a field gang would be employed—slaves or freemen, according to circumstances. For that in these days poverty was driving many a free citizen483 to mean and servile occupations for a livelihood, is not only a matter of certain inference but directly affirmed by Demosthenes in 345 BC. Aeschines484 in 344 also denies that the practice of any trade to earn a bare living was any political disqualification to a humble citizen of good repute. From such poor freemen were no doubt drawn casual hands at critical moments of farm life, analogues of the British hop-pickers485. But, with every allowance for possible occasions of employing free labour, particularly in special processes where servile apathy was plainly injurious, the farm-picture in general as depicted in these speeches is one of slave-labour. And this suggests to me a question in reference to the disposal of Greek slaves. For the vast majority of slaves486 in Greece, whether urban or rustic, were certainly Barbarians of several types for several purposes. The sale of the people of captured cities had become quite an ordinary thing. Sparta had sinned thus in her day of power, and the example was followed from time to time by others. The cases of Olynthus in 348 BC and Thebes in 335 fall in the present period. Aeschines mentions487 some captives working chained in Philip’s vineyard; but these can only have been few. The mass were sold, and a large sum of money realized thereby. At Thebes the captives sold are said to have numbered 30,000. What markets absorbed these unhappy victims? I can only guess that many found their way to Carthage and Etruria.

XIX. The Macedonian Period 322-146 BC

The deficiency of contemporary evidence illustrating the agricultural conditions of this troubled age in the Greek world makes it necessary to combine the various scraps of information in a general sketch. Hellas had now seen its best days. The break-up of the great empire of Alexander did not restore to the little Greek states the freedom of action which had been their pride and which had been a main influence in keeping up their vitality. The outward and visible sign of their failure was the impossibility of an independent foreign policy. The kingdoms of Alexander’s Successors might rise and fall, but Greek states could do little to affect the results. A new world was opened to Greek enterprise in the East, and Greek mercenaries and Greek secretaries traders and officials were carrying the Greek language and civilization into wide lands ruled by Macedonian kings. But these were individuals, attracted by the prospect of a gainful military or civil career. Either they settled abroad, and drained Greece of some of her ablest sons; or they returned home enriched, and formed an element of the population contrasting painfully with those who had stayed behind. In either case it seems certain that the movement tended to lower the standard of efficiency and patriotism in their native states. Citizen armies became more and more difficult to maintain. The influx of money no longer locked up in Oriental treasuries only served to accentuate the old social distinction488 of Rich and Poor. Men who came back with fortunes meant to enjoy themselves, and they did: the doings of the returned soldier of fortune were proverbial, and a fruitful theme for comic poets. But the spectacle of wanton luxury was more likely to lure enterprising individuals into ventures abroad than to encourage patient industry at home. And there is little doubt that such was the general result. The less vigorous of the poor citizens remained, a servile mob, ever ready by grovelling compliments to earn the bounties of kings.

Political decay and changes of social circumstance were accompanied by new movements in the sphere of thought. It is generally observed that in this period philosophy more and more appeals to the individual man, regardless of whether he be a citizen or not. How far this movement arose out of changed conditions may be open to difference of opinion: but, as usual in human affairs, what began as an effect continued to operate as a cause. The rapid spread of the Greek tongue and Greek civilization eastwards, known as Hellenizing, was a powerful influence promoting cosmopolitan views. Alien blood could no longer form an unsurmountable barrier: the Barbarian who spoke Greek and followed Greek ways had won a claim to recognition, as had already been foreseen by the mild sincerity489 of Isocrates. But these half-Greeks, some of them even of mixed blood, were now very numerous. They competed with genuine Hellenes at a time when the pride of the genuine Hellene was ebbing: even in intellectual pursuits, in which the Hellene still claimed preeminence, they were serious and eventually successful rivals. It is no wonder that earlier questionings took new life, and that consciousness of common humanity tended to modify old-established sentiment, even on such subjects as the relation of master and slave. It was not merely that the philosophic schools from different points of view, Cynic Cyrenaic Stoic Epicurean, persistently regarded man as a mental and moral unit, whatever his political or social condition might be. The fragments and echoes of the later Comedy suffice to shew how frankly the slave could be presented on the public stage as the equal, or more than equal, of his master.

The foundation of new cities by the Successor-kings was another influence acting in the same direction. These were either royal capitals or commercial centres, or both, like Alexandria. Others were important from their situation as strategic posts, such as Lysimacheia by the Hellespont or Demetrias commanding the Pagasaean gulf. Competing powers could not afford to wait for gradual growth; so great efforts were made to provide populations for the new cities without delay. Sometimes multitudes were transplanted wholesale from older communities. In any case no strict inquiry into the past condition of transplanted persons can have taken place. In Sicily we know that Syracuse had become the one great centre of what remained of Greek power in that island. But, what with incorporation of foreign mercenaries and enfranchisement of slaves, what with massacres of Greek citizens, the population of Syracuse was a mongrel mob. Such, if in a less degree, were the populations of the new cities of the kings. There was nothing national about them. In some, for instance Alexandria, a rabble wavering between apathy and ferocity was a subject of concern to the government. Others were more noted as centres of industry: such were some of those in Asia Minor. But common to them all was the condition, a momentous change from a Greek point of view, of dependence. They were not states, with a policy of their own, but parts of this or that kingdom. However little their overlord might interfere with their internal affairs, still it was he, not they, that stood in relation to the world outside. They were not independent: but as a rule they were prosperous. In the new world of great state-units they filled a necessary place, and beside them the remaining state-cities of the older Greek world were for the most part decaying. These for their own protection had to conform their policy to that of some greater power. Patriotism had little material in which to find expression: apathy and cosmopolitan sentiment were the inevitable result. Such was in particular the case at Athens, which remained eminent as a centre of philosophic speculation, attracting inquirers and students from all parts. But the ‘fierce democraty’ of her imperial days was a thing of the past, and she lived upon her former glories and present subservience.

If academic distinction and cosmopolitanism went easily together, commercial activity was hardly likely to foster jealous state-patriotism of the old sort. The leading centre of commerce in the eastern Mediterranean was Rhodes. The island city was still a state. Its convenient position as a port of call on the main trade routes gave it wealth. Its usefulness to merchants from all parts enabled it to play off the kings against one another, and to enjoy thereby much freedom of action. Its steady conservative government and its efficient navy made it a welcome check on piracy in time of peace, and a valued ally in war. It was also a considerable intellectual centre. No power was so closely in touch with international questions generally, or so often employed as umpire in disputes. Till an unfortunate blunder at the time of the war with Perseus (168 BC) put an end to their old friendship with Rome, and led to their humiliation, the wise policy of the Rhodians preserved their independence and earned them general goodwill. But it was surely not in a state thriving on trade and traffic that the old narrow Greek patriotism could find a refuge. It is not necessary to refer to more cases in particular. The main point of interest is that in this age of cities and extensive maritime intercourse urban life was generally developing and rural life shrinking. Now it had been, and still was, the case that mixture of population normally took place in active cities, especially in seaport towns. It was in quiet country towns and hamlets that native purity of blood was most easily preserved.

If the general outline of circumstances has been fairly sketched in the above paragraphs, we should expect to find that agriculture on a small scale was not prospering in this period. Unhappily there is hardly any direct evidence on the point. Even indirect evidence is meagre and sometimes far from clear. One notable symptom of the age is seen in the rise of bucolic poetry. This is not a rustic growth, the rude utterance of unlettered herdsmen, but an artificial product of town-dwelling poets, who idealize the open-air life to amuse town-bred readers somewhat weary of the everlasting streets. In the endeavour to lend an air of reality to scenes of rural life, it was convenient to credit the rustics (shepherds goatherds etc) with a grossness of amorosity that may perhaps be exaggerated to suit the taste of urban readers. Of this tendency the idylls of Theocritus furnish many instances. We need not accept them as accurate pictures of the life of herds and hinds in Sicily or elsewhere, but they give us some notion of the ideas of rural life entertained by literary men of the Alexandrian school. Beside the guardians of flocks and herds with their faithful dogs, their flutes and pan-pipes, idling in the pleasant shade and relieving the tiresome hours with musical competition, we have the hinds ploughing mowing or busy with vintage and winepress. Some are evidently freemen, others are slaves; and we hear of overseers. There is milking and making of cheese, and woodmen490 are not forgotten. The bloom of flowers, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the whisper of the refreshing breeze, form the setting of these rural scenes, and might almost persuade us that we are privileged spectators of a genuine golden age. But the sayings and doings of the rustics undeceive us. And the artificiality of this poetry is further betrayed by that of the panegyric and pseudo-epic poems of the same author. His admiration of Hiero491 of Syracuse may be mainly sincere, but his praises of Ptolemy492 Philadelphus are the utterances of a courtier. His excursions into the region of mythology are brief, for the reading public of his day could not stand long epics on the adventures493 of Heracles or the Dioscuri. And the literary apparatus is antiquarian, a more or less direct imitation of the old Homeric diction, but unable to reproduce the varied cadences. It is generally remarked that the genius of Theocritus finds its happiest and liveliest expression in the fifteenth idyll, which depicts urban scenes. In this respect that idyll may be compared with the mimes of Herodas, which illustrate, probably with truth, the shadier sides of urban life in cities of the period, which Theocritus ignores.

It is in a miniature epic494 of mythological setting that we find the most direct references to tillage of the soil combined with the keeping of live stock—general agriculture, in short. We read of the plowman495 in charge of the crops, of the hard-working diggers496 (φυτοσκάφοι οἱ πολυεργοί), of the herdsmen497, of an overseer498 or steward (αἰσυμνήτης). The staff seems to consist entirely of slaves. But it is not easy to say how far the picture is meant as a reproduction of the primitive labour-conditions of the traditional Heroic age, how far the details may be coloured by the conditions of Theocritus’ own day. In the Idylls we find a shepherd, free presumably, in charge of a flock the property499 of his father. On the other hand ἐριθακὶς in one passage500 seems not to be a wage-earner, but a black slave. The ἐργάτης of the tenth idyll501 is probably a free man, but he is enamoured of a slave girl. No conclusion can be drawn from a reference502 to coarse but filling food meant for labourers. Roughness and a certain squalor are conventional rustic attributes: a town-bred girl repulses the advances of a herdsman503 with the remark ‘I’m not used to kiss rustics, but to press town-bred lips,’ and adds further detail. Nor is the mention of Thessalian504 serfs (πενέσται) in the panegyric of Hiero anything more than a part of the poet’s apparatus. And the reference505 to the visit of Augeas to his estate, followed by a comment on the value of the master’s personal attention to his own interests, is a touch of truism common to all peoples in every age. To Theocritus, the one poet of learned Alexandria who had high poetic genius, the life and labour of farmers was evidently a matter of little or no concern. He could hardly idealize the Egyptian fellah. And the one passage506 in which he directly illustrates the position of the Greek contemporary farmer is significant. Discontented owing to a disappointment in love, the man is encouraged by his friend to enter the service of the generous Ptolemy as a mercenary soldier.

One or two small references may be gleaned from the Characters of Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus. That the bulk of these typical portraits are drawn from town-folk is only to be expected, but this point is not to be pressed overmuch, for philosophers did not frequent country districts. The general references to treatment of slaves, the slave-market, and so forth, are merely interesting as illustrative of the general prevalence of slavery, chiefly of course in Athens. But we do get to the farm in the case507 of the rustic boor (ἄγροικος). His lack of dignity and proper reserve is shewn in talking to his slaves on matters of importance: he makes confidants of them, and so far forgets himself as to lend a hand in grinding the corn. It has been remarked that Greek manners allowed a certain familiarity508 in the relations of master and slave. But this person overdoes it: in Peripatetic language, he transgresses the doctrine of the Mean. He employs also hired men (μισθωτοί), and to them he recounts all the political gossip (τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας), evidently a sign of his awkwardness and inability to hold his tongue. I take these wage-earners to be poor freemen. They might be slaves hired from another owner: this practice appears elsewhere in connexion with town slaves. But the general impoverishment of the old Greece, save in a few districts, is beyond doubt: and the demand for slaves in new cities would raise the price of slaves and tend to drive the free poor to manual labour.

The exact dates of the birth and death of Polybius are uncertain, but as an observer of events his range extended from about 190 or 189 to 122 or 121 BC. Though his references to agriculture are few and separately of small importance, they have a cumulative value on certain points. He wrote as historian of the fortunes of the civilized world of his day, treated as a whole, in which a series of interconnected struggles led up to the supremacy of Rome. His Greece is the Greece of the Leagues. No leading state of the old models had been able to unite the old Hellas effectively under its headship, but the Macedonian conquest had plainly proved that in isolation509 the little separate states had no future open to them but slavery. The doings of Alexander’s Successors further inforced the lesson. It was clear that the only hope of freedom lay in union so far as possible, for thus only could Greek powers be created able to act with any sort of independence and self-respect in their relations with the new great powers outside. Accordingly there took place a revival of old local unions in districts where a community of interest between tribes or cities had in some form or other long been recognized. Such were the tribal League of Aetolia and the city League of Achaia. But these two were but notable instances of a federative movement much wider. The attempt to unite the scattered towns of Arcadia, with a federal centre at Megalopolis, seems to have been less successful. But the general aim of the movement towards federalism in Greece is clear. That it did not in the end save Greek freedom was due to two defects: it was too partial and too late. For no general union was achieved. Greek jealousy remained, and Leagues fought with Leagues in internal strife: then they were drawn into quarrels not their own, as allies of great foreign powers. It was no longer possible to remain neutral with safety. No League was strong enough to face the risk of compromising itself with a victorious great power. Achaean statesmen did their best, but they too could not save their country from ruin, once the League became entangled in the diplomacy of Rome. Nor was it the old Hellas alone that thus drifted to its doom. Between Rome and Carthage the western Greeks lost whatever power and freedom their own disunion and quarrels had left them. The Rhodian republic and its maritime League of islanders had to become the subject allies of Rome.

One point stands out clearly enough. In the Greece of the third century BC the question of food-supply was as pressing as it had ever been in the past. The operations of King Philip were often conditioned by the ease or difficulty of getting supplies510 of corn for his troops: that is, he had to work on an insufficient margin of such resources. In 219, after driving the Dardani out of Macedonia, he had to dismiss his men511 that they might get in their harvest. In 218, the success of his Peloponnesian campaign was largely dependent512 on the supplies and booty captured in Elis, in Cephallenia, in Laconia; and on the subsidies of corn and money voted by his Achaean allies. The destruction of crops513 was as of old a principal means of warfare. And when he had to meet the Roman invasion in 197, the race to secure what corn514 was to be had was again a leading feature of the war. It is true that the feeding of armies was a difficulty elsewhere515, as in Asia, and in all ages and countries: also that difficulties of transport were a considerable part of it. But the war-indemnities516 fixed by treaties, including great quantities of corn, shew the extreme importance attached to this item. And the gifts of corn517 to the Rhodian republic after the great earthquake (about 225 BC), and the leave granted them518 in 169 by the Roman Senate to import a large quantity from Sicily, tell the same story. Another article in great demand, only to be got wholesale from certain countries, such as Macedonia, was timber. It was wanted for domestic purposes and for construction of military engines, which were greatly developed in the wars of the Successors; but above all for shipbuilding, commercial and naval. Rhodes in particular519 needed a great supply; and the gifts of her friends in 224 BC were largely in the form of timber. There was no doubt a great demand for it at Alexandria, Syracuse, Corinth, and generally in seaport towns. It is evident that in strictly Greek lands the wood grown was chiefly of small size, suitable for fuel. There is no sign of an advance on the conditions of an earlier time in the way of afforestation: nor indeed was such a policy likely.

But food had to be found somehow. Agriculture therefore had to go on. Outside the commercial centres, where food-stuffs could be imported by sea, there was no alternative: the population had to depend on the products of local tillage and pasturage. A few cities celebrated as art-centres might contrive to live by the sale of their works, but this hardly affects the general situation. We should therefore very much like to know how things stood on the land. Was the tendency towards large landed estates, or was the small-farm system reviving? Was farm-labour chiefly that of freemen, or that of slaves? If of freemen, was it chiefly that of small owners, or that of wage-earners? In default of any authoritative statement, we have to draw what inferences we can from slight casual indications. That the career of Alexander was directly and indirectly the cause of great disturbances in Greek life, is certain. Of the ways in which it operated, two are of special importance. The compulsory restoration of exiles520 whose properties had been confiscated led to claims for restitution; and in the matter of real estate the particular land in question was easily identified and made the subject of a bitter contest. Now uncertainty of tenure is notoriously a check on improvement, and the effect of the restorations was to make tenures uncertain. At the same time the prospects of professional soldiering in the East were a strong temptation to able-bodied husbandmen who were not very prosperous. From the rural parts of Greece a swarm of mercenaries went forth to join the host of Alexander, and the movement continued long. In the stead of one Alexander, there arose the rival Successor-kings, who competed in the military market for the intelligent Greeks. It was worth their while, and they paid well for a good article. So all through the third century there was a draining away of some of the best blood of Greece. Some of these men had no doubt parted with farms before setting out on the great venture. Of those who survived the wars, some settled down abroad as favoured citizens in some of the new cities founded by the kings. The few who returned to Greece with money saved did not come home to labour on a small farm: they settled in some city where they could see life and enjoy the ministrations of male and female slaves. Now it is not likely that all lands disposed of by these men were taken up by husbandmen exposed to the same temptations. Probably the greater part were bought up by the wealthier residents at home, and so went to increase large holdings.

How far do stray notices bear out this conclusion? At Athens in 322 BC a constitution was imposed by Antipater, deliberately framed for the purpose of placing power in the hands of the richer classes. He left 9000 citizens in possession of the full franchise, excluding 12000 poor. For the latter he offered to provide allotments of land in Thrace. Accounts521 vary, but it seems that some accepted the offer and emigrated. It was not a compulsory deportation, but it was exile. Economically it may have been a relief to Athens by reducing the number of citizens who shared civic perquisites. But it had no tendency to bring more citizens back on to Attic land: such a move would have implied displacement of present landholders, whom it was Antipater’s policy to conciliate. In the course of the third century we get a glimpse of the agrarian situation at Sparta. It is clear that the movement, already noted by Aristotle, towards land-monopoly522 in the hands of a few rich, had been steadily going on. It ended by provoking a communistic reaction under the reforming kings Agis IV and Cleomenes III. Blood was shed, and Sparta became a disorderly state, the cause of many troubles in Greece down to the time of the Roman conquest. The growing Achaean League, in the side of which revolutionary Sparta was a thorn, was essentially a conservative federation. However democratic its individual members might be, the constitution of the League worked523 very effectively in the interest of the rich. On the occasion of the capture of Megalopolis by Cleomenes Polybius is at pains to warn his readers524 against believing stories of the immense booty taken there. Though the Peloponnese had enjoyed a period of prosperity, still these stories are gross exaggerations. Megalopolis, an important member of the League, had been from the first laid out on too ambitious525 a scale. That the ‘Great City’ was a great desert, had found proverbial expression in a verse. A little later, when Philip was campaigning in Peloponnesus, we hear of the great prosperity526 of Elis, especially in agriculture. The Eleans had enjoyed a great advantage in the protection afforded them by religion as guardians of Olympia. We may add that they were allied with the Aetolian League, whose hostility other Greek states were not forward to provoke. A class of wealthy resident landlords existed in Elis, and much of the country was good farming land under tillage. But in most of the Achaean and Arcadian527 districts pastoral industry, and therefore sparse population, was the rule, owing to the mountainous nature of those parts. In central Greece we need only refer to the restored Thebes, centre once more of a Boeotian confederacy. The fertile lowland of Boeotia supplied plenty of victual; and among Greek delicacies the eels of the lake Copais were famous. Boeotians were known as a well-nourished folk. In the fragments of the comic poet Eubulus528 (assigned to the fourth century BC) we have them depicted as gluttonous, with some grossness of detail. Such being their tradition, I can see nothing strange in the picture529 given of the Boeotians in his own day by Polybius. The ceaseless guzzling, the idleness and political corruption of the people, may be overdrawn. I admit that such qualities were not favourable to lasting prosperity; but their prosperity was not lasting. In the view of Polybius the subjection of Greece by the Romans was rather an effect than a cause of Greek degeneracy, and I dare not contradict him. Moreover a piece of confirmatory evidence relative to the third century BC occurs in a fragment of Heraclides Ponticus. In a traveller’s description530 of Greece Boeotia is thus referred to. Round Tanagra the land is not very rich in corn-crops, but stands at the head of Boeotian wine-production. The people are well-to-do, but live simply: they are all farmers (γεωργοί), not labourers (ἐργάται). At Anthedon on the coast the people are all fishermen ferrymen etc: they do not cultivate the land, indeed they have none. Of Thebes he remarks that the territory is good for horse-breeding, a green well-watered rolling country, with more gardens than any other Greek city owns. But, he adds, the people are violent undisciplined and quarrelsome. I think we may see here an earlier stage in the degeneracy that disgusted Polybius.

In all this there is nothing to suggest that small farming was common and prosperous during the Macedonian period in Greece. The natural, inference is rather that agriculture in certain favoured districts was carried on by a limited number of large landowners on a large scale, pastoral industry varying locally according to circumstances. The development of urban life and luxury, and the agrarian troubles in the Peloponnese, are both characteristic phenomena of the age. In town and country alike the vital fact of civilization was the conflict of interests between rich and poor. Macedonia presents a contrast. There no great cities drew the people away from the country. A hardy and numerous population supplied the material for national armies whenever needed, and loyalty to the reigning king gave unity to national action. Hence the long domination of Macedon in Greece; the only serious opposition being that of the Aetolian League. Of all the Successor-kingdoms, Macedon alone was able to make any stand against the advance of Rome.

It remains to consider the few indications—I can hardly call them references—from which we can get a little light on the labour-question. The passages cited from Theophrastus and Theocritus point to the prevalence of slave-labour. And the same may be said of Polybius. In speaking531 of the blunder in exaggerating the value of the booty taken at Megalopolis, he says ‘Why, even in these more peaceful and prosperous days you could not raise so great a sum of money in all the Peloponnese out of the mere movables (ἐπίπλων) unless you took slaves into account (χωρὶς σωμάτων).’ His word for live-stock not human is θρέμματα. Evidently to him slave-property is a large item in the value of estates. Again, speaking of the importance of Byzantium532 on the Pontic trade-route, he insists on the plentiful and useful supply of bestial and human stock to Greece by this traffic. The high farming of rural Elis533 is shewn in its being full of σώματα and farm-stock (κατασκευῆς). Hence these ‘bodies’ formed a considerable part of the booty taken there by Philip. And in the claims534 made at Rome in 183 BC against Philip a part related to slave-property. References to the sale of prisoners of war, to piracy and kidnapping, are frequent: but they only concern us as indicating time-honoured means of supplying the slave-market. As for rowing ships, so for heavy farm-work, able-bodied men were wanted. At a pinch such slaves could be, and were, employed in war535, with grant or promise of manumission: but this was a step only taken in the last resort. A curious remark536 of Polybius when speaking of Arcadia must not be overlooked. In 220 BC an Aetolian force invaded Achaia and penetrated into northern Arcadia, where they took the border town of Cynaetha, and after wholesale massacre and pillage burnt it on their retreat. The city had for years suffered terribly from internal strife, in which the doings of restored exiles had played a great part. Polybius says that the Cynaethans were thought to have deserved the disaster that had now fallen upon them. Why? Because of their savagery (ἀγριότητος). They were Arcadians. The Arcadians as a race-unit (ἔθνος) enjoy a reputation for virtue throughout Greece, as a kindly hospitable and religious folk. But the Cynaethans outdid all Greeks in cruelty and lawlessness. This is to be traced to their neglect of the time-honoured Arcadian tradition, the general practice of vocal and instrumental music. This practice was deliberately adopted as a refining agency, to relieve and temper the roughness and harshness incidental to men living toilsome lives in an inclement climate. Such was the design of the old Arcadians, on consideration of the circumstances, one point in which was that their people generally worked in person (τὴν ἑκάστων αὐτουργίαν). On this I need only remark that he is referring to the past, but may or may not include the Arcadians of his own day: and repeat what I have said before, that to be αὐτουργὸς does not exclude employment of slaves as well. That there was still more personal labour in rural Arcadia than in many other parts of Greece, is probable. But that is all.

That the slavery-question was a matter of some interest in Greece may be inferred from the pains taken by Polybius537 to refute an assertion of Timaeus, that to acquire slaves was not a Greek custom. The context is lost, and we cannot tell whether it was a general assertion or not. If general, it was no doubt nonsense. A more effective piece of evidence is the report538 of Megasthenes, who visited India early in the third century. He told his Greek readers that in India slavery was unknown. The contrast to Greece was of course the interesting point. It is also affirmed539 that in this period manumissions became more common, as a result of the economic decline of Greece combined with the moral evolution to be traced in the philosophic schools. Calderini, from whom I take this, is the leading authority on Greek manumission. And, so far as the records are concerned, the number of inscribed ‘acts’ recovered from the important centre of Delphi540 confirms the assertion. From 201 to 140 BC these documents are exceptionally numerous. But the not unfrequent stipulation found in them, that the freed man or woman shall remain in attendance541 on his or her late owner for the owner’s life or for some fixed period, or shall continue to practise a trade (or even learn a trade) on the profits of which the late owner or his heirs shall have a claim, suggest strongly that these manumissions were the rewards of domestic service or technical skill. I do not believe that they have any connexion with rustic542 slavery. Calderini also holds that as Greek industries and commerce declined free labour competed more and more with slave-labour. So far as urban trades are concerned, this is probably true: and likewise a certain decline in domestic slavery due to the straitened circumstances of families and experience of the waste and nuisance of large slave-households. This last point, already noticed543 e.g. by Aristotle, is to be found expressed in utterances of the comic poets. Rustic slavery appears in the fragments of Menander’s Γεωργός, but the old farmer’s slaves are Barbarians, who will do nothing to help him when accidentally hurt, and who are hardly likely to receive favours. The ordinary view of agriculture in Menander’s time seems most truly expressed in his saying544 that it is a slave’s business.

Mention of the comic poets may remind us that most of the surviving matter of the later Comedy has reached us in the Latin versions and adaptations of Plautus and Terence. It is necessary to speak of their evidence separately, in particular where slavery is in question, for the relative passages are liable to be touched with Roman colouring. In the case of manumission this is especially clear, but to pursue the topic in detail is beyond my present purpose. The passages of Plautus bearing on rustic life are not many, but the picture so far as it goes is clear and consistent. In general the master is represented as a man of means with a house in town and a country estate outside. The latter is worked by slaves under a slave-bailiff or steward (vilicus). The town-house is staffed by slaves, but the headman is less absolute than the steward on the farm: departmental chiefs, such as the cook, are important parts of the household. This is natural enough, for the master generally resides there himself, and only pays occasional545 visits to the farm. The two sets of slaves are kept apart. If the steward546 or some other trusted farm-slave has to come to town, he is practically a stranger, and a quarrel is apt to arise with leading domestics: for his rustic appearance and manners are despised by the pampered menials. But he is aware that his turn may come: some day the master in wrath may consign the offending town-slave to farm-labour, and then—. Apart from slavery, rustic life is regarded547 as favourable to good morals: honest labour, frugal habits, freedom from urban temptations, commend it to fathers who desire to preserve their sons from corrupting debauchery. In short, the urban moralist idealizes the farm. Whether he would by choice reside there, is quite another thing. Clearly the average young citizen would not. That the farm is occasionally used548 as a retreat, is no more than a point of dramatic convenience. In one passage549 we have a picture of a small farm, with slave-labour employed on it. Freemen as agricultural labourers hardly appear at all. But a significant dialogue550 between an old freeman and a young one runs thus: ‘Country life is a life of toil.’ ‘Aye, but city indigence is far more so.’ The youth, who has offered to do farm-work, is representative of that class of urban poor, whose lot was doubtless a very miserable one. Very seldom do we hear anything of them, for our records in general only take account of the master and the slave. In the play just referred to551 there occur certain terms more or less technical. The neutral operarius seems equivalent to ἐργάτης, and mercennarius to μισθωτός, distinct from552 servus. But these terms are not specially connected with agriculture.

The references in Terence give us the same picture. An old man of 60 or more is blamed553 by a friend. ‘You have a first-rate farm and a number of slaves: why will you persist in working yourself to make up for their laziness? Your labour would be better spent in keeping them to their tasks.’ The old man explains554 that he is punishing himself for his treatment of his only son. In order to detach the youth from an undesirable amour, he had used the stock reproaches of fathers to erring sons. He had said ‘At your time of life I wasn’t hanging about a mistress: I went soldiering in Asia for a living, and there I won both money and glory.’ At length the young man could stand it no longer: he went off to Asia and entered the service of one of the kings. The old man cannot forgive himself, and is now busy tormenting himself for his conduct. He has sold off555 all his slaves, male or female, save those whose labour on the farm pays for its cost, and is wearing himself out as a mere farm hand. Another556 old farmer, a man of small means who makes his living by farming, is evidently not the owner but a tenant. Another557 has gone to reside on his farm, to make it pay; otherwise the expenses at home cannot be met. In general country life is held up as a model558 of frugality and industry. In one passage559 we hear of a hired wage-earner employed on a farm (a villa mercennarium) whom I take to be a free man, probably employed for some special service. Such are the gleanings to be got from these Roman echoes of the later Attic comedy. I see no reason to believe that they are modified by intrusion of details drawn from Italy. The period in which Plautus and Terence wrote (about 230-160 BC) included many changes in Roman life, particularly in agriculture. In large parts of Italy the peasant farmers were being superseded by great landlords whose estates were worked by slave-labour, and the conditions of farm life as shewn by the Attic playwrights were not so strange to a Roman audience as to need recasting. And we can only remark that the evidence drawn from the passages above referred to is in full agreement with that taken from other sources.

A very interesting sidelight on conditions in Greece, agriculture included, towards the end of the third century BC, is thrown by the correspondence560 of Philip V of Macedon with the authorities of Larisa. An inscription found at Larisa preserves this important record. Two points must first be noted, to give the historical setting of the whole affair. Thessaly was under Macedonian overlordship, and its economic and military strength a matter of concern to Philip, who had succeeded to the throne of Macedon in 220 BC. Moreover, the defeat of Carthage in the first Punic war (264-41), the Roman occupation of the greater part of Sicily and Sardinia, the Gallic wars and extension of Roman dominion in Italy, the Illyrian war (230-29) and intervention of Rome beyond the Adriatic, had attracted the attention of all the Greek powers. The western Republic had for some years been carefully watched, and the admission of Corcyra Epidamnus and Apollonia to the Roman alliance was especially disquieting to the Macedonian king. So in 219 BC, just before the second Punic war, Philip sent a letter to Larisa, pointing out that the number of their citizens had been reduced by losses in recent wars and urging them to include in their franchise the Thessalians and other Greeks resident in the city. Among other advantages, the country561 would be more fully cultivated. The Larisaeans obeyed his injunctions. In 217 the war in Greece was ended by his concluding peace with the Aetolians, his chief antagonists. Hannibal was now in Italy, and the victory of Cannae in 216 raised hopes in Philip of using the disasters of the Romans to drive them out of Illyria. In 215 he concluded an alliance with Hannibal. The Romans replied by naval activity in the Adriatic and later by stirring up Greek powers, above all the Aetolians, to renew the war against him. Meanwhile things had not gone on quietly at Larisa. The old Thessalian noble families had given way to the king’s pressure unwillingly for the moment, but internal troubles soon broke out. The nobles regained control and annulled the recent concessions. Philip therefore addressed to them a second letter in 214, censuring their conduct, and calling upon them to give effect to the enfranchisement-policy previously agreed to. Thus they would not only conform to his decision as their overlord, but would best serve their own interests. Their city would gain strength by increasing the number of citizens, and they would not have their territory disgracefully562 lying waste (καὶ τὴν χώραν μὴ ὥσπερ νῦν αἰσχρῶς χερσεύεσθαι). He went on to refer to the advantageous results of such incorporations elsewhere: citing in particular the experience of Rome, whose growth and colonial expansion were the fruits of a franchise-policy so generous as to grant citizenship even to manumitted slaves. He called upon the Larisaeans to face the question without aristocratic prejudice (ἀφιλοτίμως). And the Larisaeans again complied.

Now here we have a glimpse of agricultural decline in one of the most fertile parts of Greece. The stress laid upon it by Philip shews that to him it seemed a very serious matter. He saw trouble coming, and wished to keep his dependent allies strong. That his difficulty lay in controlling the aristocratic families, who still retained much of their former power, is clear. After his defeat in 197 the Romans restored563 the aristocratic governments in Thessalian cities; indeed all through the wars of this period in Greece the popular parties inclined to Macedon, while the propertied classes favoured Rome. In Thessaly the private estates of the nobles were cultivated by serfs. How would an incorporation of more citizens tend to promote a fuller cultivation of the land? I think we may take it for granted that the new citizens were not expected to till the soil in person. That they were to have unemployed serfs assigned to them, and so to enter the ranks of cultivating landlords, is a bold assumption: for we do not know that there were any unemployed serfs or that any distribution of land was contemplated. I can only suggest that the effect of receiving citizenship would be to acquire the right of holding real estate. Then, if we suppose that there were at the time landed estates left vacant by the war-casualties to which the king refers, and that each of these carried with it a right to a certain supply of serf labour, we do get some sort of answer to the question. But so far as I know this is nothing but guesswork. More owners interested in the profits of farming would tend, if labour were available, to employ more labour on the farms. In short, we have evidence of the decay of agriculture in a particular district and period, but as to the exact causes of this decay, and the exact nature of the means proposed for checking it, we are sadly in the dark.

The garden or orchard had always been a favourite institution in Greek life, and the growth of cities did not make it less popular. The land immediately beyond the city walls was often laid out in this manner. When Aratus in 251 BC took Sicyon and attached it to the Achaean League, the surprise was effected by way of a suburban564 garden. And we have no reason to suppose that holdings near a city lacked cultivators. Even in the horrible period of confusion and bloodshed at Syracuse, from the death of Dionysius the elder to the victory of Timoleon, we hear565 of Syracusans living in the country, and of the usual clamour for redistribution of lands. In the endeavour to repopulate the city an invitation to settlers was issued, with offer566 of land-allotments, and apparently the promise was kept. These notices suggest that there was a demand for suburban holdings, but tell us nothing as to the state of things in the districts further afield, or as to the class of labour employed on the land. In any case Syracuse was a seaport, and accustomed to get a good part of its supplies by sea. Very different was the situation in Peloponnesus, where the up-country towns had to depend chiefly on the produce of their own territories. There land-hunger was ever present. The estates of men driven out in civil broils were seized by the victorious party, and restoration of exiles at once led to a fresh conflict over claims to restitution of estates. One of the most difficult problems567 with which Aratus had to deal at Sicyon was this; and in the end he only solved it by the use of a large sum of money, the gift of Ptolemy Philadelphus. The restored exiles on this occasion are said to have been not less than 580 in all. They had been expelled by tyrants who had in recent years ruled the city, and whose policy it had evidently been to drive out the men of property—sworn foes of tyrants—and to reward their own adherents out of confiscated lands. To reverse this policy was the lifelong aim of Aratus. In the generation following, the life of his successor Philopoemen gives us a little light on agriculture from another point of view, that of the soldier. He was resolved to make the army of the Achaean League an efficient force. As a young man he concluded568 that the Greek athletic training was not consistent with military life, in which the endurance of hardship and ability to subsist on any diet were primary necessities. Therefore he devoted his spare time to agriculture, working569 in person on his farm, about 2½ miles from Megalopolis, sharing the labour and habits of the labourers (ἐργατῶν). The use of the neutral word leaves a doubt as to whether freemen or slaves are meant: taken in connexion with the passages cited from Polybius, it is perhaps more likely that the reference is to slaves. But the chief interest of the story as preserved by Plutarch lies in the discovery that, compared with athletes, husbandmen are better military material.

The conclusions of Beloch570 as to the population of Peloponnesus in this period call for serious consideration. His opinion is that the number capable of bearing arms declined somewhat since the middle of the fourth century, though the wholesale emancipation of Spartan Helots must be reckoned as an addition. But on the whole the free population was at the beginning of the second century about equal to the joint total of free and Helot population at the end of the fifth century. On the other hand, the slave population had in the interval greatly increased. He points to the importance of a slave corps571 in the defence of Megalopolis when besieged in 318 BC: to the Roman and Italian572 slaves (prisoners sold by Hannibal) in Achaean territory, found and released in 194 BC, some 1200 in number: and to the levy573 of manumitted home-born slaves in the last struggle of the League against Rome. I must say that this evidence, taken by itself, hardly seems enough to sustain the great historian’s broad conclusion. But many of the passages cited in preceding sections lend it support, and I am therefore not disposed to challenge its general probability. It may be added that increase in the number of slaves suggests an increase of large holdings cultivated by slave labour; and that the breeding of home-born (οἰκογενεῖς) slaves could be more easily practised by owners of a large staff than on a small scale. Moreover the loss of slaves levied for war purposes would fall chiefly on their wealthy owners. The men of property were rightly or wrongly suspected of leaning to Rome, and were not likely to be spared by the demagogues who presided over the last frantic efforts of ‘freedom’ in Greece. The truth seems to be that circumstances were more and more unfavourable to the existence of free husbandmen on small farms, the very class of whose solid merits statesmen and philosophers had shewn warm appreciation. The division between the Rich, who wanted to keep what they had and get more, and the Poor, who wanted to take the property of the Rich, was the one ever-significant fact. And the establishment of Roman supremacy settled the question for centuries to come. Roman capitalism, hastening to exploit the world for its own ends, had no mercy for the small independent worker in any department of life. In Greece under the sway of Rome there is no doubt that free population declined, and the state of agriculture went from bad to worse.

At this point, when the Greek world passes under the sway of Rome, it is necessary to pause and turn back to consider the fragmentary record of early Italian agriculture. This one great staple industry is represented as the economic foundation of Roman political and military greatness. No small part of the surviving Latin literature glorifies the soundness of the Roman farmer-folk and the exploits of farmer-heroes in the good old days, and laments the rottenness that attended their decay. How far this tradition is to be accepted as it stands, or what reservations on its acceptance should be made, and in particular the introduction or extension of slave-labour, are the questions with which it will be our main business to deal.