Agricola

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Agricola

A STUDY OF AGRICULTURE AND RUSTIC LIFE IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF LABOUR

By W E Heitland Ma Fellow Of St John’S College

Cambridge At The University Press 1921

_‘Inspect the basis of the social pile:_ _Inquire,’ said I, ‘how much of mental power_ _And genuine virtue they possess who live_ _By bodily toil, labour exceeding far_ _Their due proportion, under all the weight_ _Of that injustice which upon ourselves_ _Ourselves entail.’ Such estimate to frame_ _I chiefly looked (what need to look beyond?)_ _Among the natural abodes of men,_ _Fields with their rural works; recalled to mind_ _My earliest notices; with these compared_ _The observations made in later youth,_ _And to that day continued—For, the time_ _Had never been when throes of mighty Nations_ _And the world’s tumult unto me could yield,_ _How far soe’er transported and possessed,_ _Full measure of content; but still I craved_ _An intermingling of distinct regards_ _And truths of individual sympathy_ _Nearer ourselves._

WORDSWORTH, _Prelude_, book XIII.

Preface

Very few words are needed here, for the book is meant to explain its own scope. I have only to thank those to whose kindness I am deeply indebted. Professor Buckland was so good as to help me when I was striving to utilize the evidence of the Roman jurists. Chapter XLIX in particular owes much to his genial chastisement. On chapters II and LXI Mr G G Coulton has given me most valuable criticism. Yet I thank these gentlemen with some reluctance, fearing that I may seem to connect their names with errors of my own. Mr T R Glover kindly read chapter XXIX. Professor Housman called my attention to the ‘Farmer’s Law,’ and kindly lent me Mr Ashburner’s articles, to which I have referred in Appendix B. To all these, and to the Syndics of the University Press for undertaking the publication of this unconventional work, I hereby express my sincere gratitude. My reasons for adopting the method followed in this book are given on pages 5-6 and 468.

W E Heitland

Cambridge

_August 1920_

Table Of Contents

Pages

Introductory

I. Evidence 1-7

II. Land And Labour 7-15

Authorities In Detail—Greek

III. The Iliad And Odyssey 16-22

IV. Hesiod, Works And Days 22-24

V. Stray Notes From Early Poets 24-26

VI. Traces Of Serfdom In Greek States 26-28

VII. Herodotus 28-30

VIII. The Tragedians

Aeschylus and Sophocles 31-33

Euripides 33-37

IX. The ‘Constitution Of Athens’ Or ‘Old Oligarch’ 37-40

X. Aristophanes 40-48

XI. Thucydides 48-52

XII. Xenophon 53-61

XIII. The Comic Fragments 61-65

XIV. Early Lawgivers And Theorists 65-70

XV. Plato 70-80

XVI. The Earlier Attic Orators 80-85

XVII. Aristotle 85-103

XVIII. The Later Attic Orators 103-112

XIX. The Macedonian Period And The Leagues 112-130

Polybius etc—Theocritus—Plautus and Terence—Inscriptions—Letter of Philip V to Larisa—Evidence preserved by Plutarch, Diodorus, Livy, etc

Rome—Early Period To 200 Bc

XX. The Traditions Combined And Discussed 131-149

[No contemporary authors]

XXI. Abstract Of Conclusions 149-150

Rome—Middle Period

XXII. Introductory General View Of Period 200 Bc-180 Ad 151-164

Growth of slavery—Slave risings, etc

XXIII. Cato 164-173

XXIV. Agriculture In The Revolutionary Period 174-177

XXV. Varro 178-187

XXVI. Cicero 187-199

XXVII. Sallust Etc 199-202

Rome—The Empire

XXVIII. AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL LABOUR UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 203-212

Rome—Augustus To Nero

XXIX. Horace And Vergil 213-241

XXX. The Elder Seneca Etc 241-243

XXXI. Seneca The Younger 244-248

XXXII. Lucan, Petronius, Etc 248-250

XXXIII. Columella 250-269

Age Of The Flavian And Antonine Emperors

XXXIV. General Introduction 270-274

Note on emigration from Italy 274-275

XXXV. Musonius 275-280

XXXVI. Pliny The Elder 281-287

XXXVII. Tacitus 287-292

Note on an African inscription 293

XXXVIII. Frontinus 294-296

XXXIX. Inscriptions Relative To _Alimenta_ 296-300

XL. Dion Chrysostom 300-303

XLI. New Testament Writers 303-305

XLII. Martial And Juvenal 305-317

XLIII. Pliny The Younger 317-325

XLIV. Suetonius Etc 325-328

XLV. Apuleius 328-335

Commodus To Diocletian

XLVI. General Introduction 336-342

XLVII. The African Inscriptions 342-353

XLVIII. Discussion Of The Same 353-361

XLIX. The Jurists Of The _Digest_ 361-378

L. The Later Colonate, Its Place In Roman History 378-384

Additional notes 385

From Diocletian

LI. General Introduction 386-399

LII. Libanius 399-402

LIII. Symmachus 402-409

LIV. Ammianus 409-415

LV. Claudian 415-417

LVI. Vegetius 417-419

Christian Writers

LVII. Lactantius 420-422

LVIII. Sulpicius Severus 422-423

LIX. Salvian 423-426

LX. Apollinaris Sidonius 426-432

LXI. Concluding Chapter 432-459

Appendix

Some Byzantine Authorities

A. The _Geoponica_ 460-462

B. The ‘Farmer’s Law’ 462-464

C. Modern books, a few interesting extracts and references 465-46

D. List of some of the works found useful in this inquiry 468-471

Indices

I. General 472-479

II. Words And Phrases 479-482

III. Passages Cited 483-489

IV. Modern Authorities 489-490

V. Countries, Places And Peoples 490-492

Introductory

I. Evidence.

The inquiry of which the results are set forth in these pages was undertaken in the endeavour to satisfy my own mind on a very important question in the history of the past. Circumstances have compelled me to interest myself in the civilization of the Greco-Roman world. And it has always been a painful disadvantage to students of the ‘classical’ systems that the available record neither provides adequate labour-statistics nor furnishes a criticism of existing labour-conditions from the point of view of the handworkers. Accustomed as we are nowadays to continual agitations for increase of wages and reduction of working hours, with centuries of strange experience in the working of Poor-laws, we are in no danger of undervaluing the importance of the wage-earner in our social fabric. We are rather in danger of forgetting other (and perhaps not less vital) considerations, under pressure of the material claims of the labourer and his hire. Power goes by votes; the handworker is now a voter; and the voice of the handworker is loud in the land. No scheme is too wild to find advocates; and those who venture to assert the right of invention, organization and thrift to superior recognition as public benefits often think it necessary to adopt an apologetic tone. Now it may be that this is a passing phase, and that the so-called ‘working-class’—that is, handworkers for wages—will come to see that the civilization whose comforts they enjoy, and whose discomforts they resent, does not wholly depend upon the simple repeated acts of the handworkers themselves. Perhaps there are already signs of some such reaction. But, if so, the reaction must be voluntary; for no power exists in this country to constrain the handworker to take reasonable views, in short to face facts. In these words I am not implying any denial of the reasonableness of many of his claims. To offer an opinion on questions of more or less is no business of mine.

But, when we compare modern industries in general with those of the ancient world, we find ourselves in presence of a very different situation. The largest scale of operations attainable in antiquity seems small and crude by the side of recent achievements, for instance the building of the Pyramids compared with the Panama canal. Machinery, transport, and scientific discovery in general, have made it possible to carry out colossal undertakings with comparative ease and without wholesale destruction of human life. The greatest works of the ancients are for the most part silent witnesses to the ruthless employment of forced labour, either that of captives or bought slaves or that of the impressed subjects of an autocrat. Mere brute force, applied in unlimited quantity[1] with callous indifference to the sufferings of the toilers, was the chief means at disposal: mechanical invention had got so far as to render possible some tasks that without it could not have been performed at all. It gave extended effect to the mass of forced labour, and there it stopped, for we have no reason to think that it improved the labourer’s lot. The surviving evidence as to the condition[2] of slaves in mines and factories enables us to form some faint notion of the human wastage resulting from the cruel forced-labour system. We may then state the position briefly thus: to attempt great enterprises was only possible through the crude employment of labour in great masses: the supply of this labour was, or appeared to be, procurable only by compulsion: and compulsion was operative through the institution of slavery or the passive submission of cowed populations to the will of despots. But if slavery promoted large-scale enterprise, surely large-scale enterprise tended to establish slavery in the form of forced labour more firmly than ever. In the modern world the necessity of employing free labour has stimulated scientific invention, in mechanical and other departments, the tendency of which is to require greater intellectual[3] development in the labourer, and in the long run to furnish him with effective means of asserting his own freedom.

Under modern conditions, the gradual displacement of small handicraftsmen by the growth of great capitalistic combinations is going on, perhaps not always for good. The public accept this result as fate. And, if economy in production and prime-cost cheapness are the only things worth considering, it is not easy to condemn the process. But events are steadily demonstrating the fear once entertained, that handworkers in general would find their position weakened thereby, to be groundless. If the independent craftsman has lost ground, the wage-earning journeyman has gained. We need not follow out this topic in detail, but note the contrast presented by the ancient world. The ‘small man’ in crafts and trades was able to hold his own, for without steam-power the capitalist was not strong enough to suppress him. In a small way he was something of a capitalist himself, and commonly owned slave-apprentices. His part in ancient civilization was undoubtedly far more important than it appears in literature: for he ministered to the ordinary needs of every day, while literature, then as now and more than now, chiefly recorded the exceptional. When we turn to the wage-earner, who earns a living by hiring out his bodily powers to an employer, we are dealing with a wholly different class. These are the free men who in a slave-holding society have to compete with the slave. In the course of the present inquiry we must keep a sharp look-out for every reference or allusion to such persons in the department of agriculture, and in particular note numerous passages in which the status of labourers cannot be inferred with certainty from the language. But the importance of this special point is of course not confined to agriculture.

I have chosen to limit my inquiry to the case of agriculture for these reasons. First, because it was and is the industry on which human life, and therefore all other industries and all progress, did and do rest. Secondly, because its economic importance in the ancient world, so far from declining, manifestly increased. The problem of food-supply was always there. And it was never more pressing than in the later ages of Rome, when imperial efforts to enforce production, if successful, fed her barbarian armies, at the same time attracting the attention of barbarian invaders to lands that promised the food-crops which they themselves were too lazy to produce. Thirdly, because the importance of agriculture was and is not merely economic. Its moral value, as a nursery of steady citizens and, at need, of hardy soldiers, was and still should be recognized by thoughtful men. Therefore its conditions and its relative prosperity or decay deserve the attention of all historians of all periods. Unluckily statistical record of a scientific character is not available for the times that we call ancient, and numbers are notoriously liable to corruption in manuscripts. Therefore I have only ventured to give figures seldom and with reserve. For agriculture we have nothing on the scale of the inscriptions that record wages, for instance on public works at Athens. On the other hand we have for certain periods the evidence of specialists such as Cato, Varro and Columella, to whom we owe much information as to the actual or possible conditions of rustic enterprise and labour. The relation of agriculture and agricultural labour to the state as a whole is a subject illustrated by great theorists such as Plato and Aristotle. The practical problems of landowning and farming meet us now and then in the contemporary evidence of such men as Xenophon and the younger Pliny. Even orators, though necessarily partisan witnesses, at times give valuable help: they may distort facts, but it is not their interest to lessen their own power of persuasion by asserting what is manifestly incredible. The ancient historians tell us very little, even of the past; contemporary evidence from them is especially rare. They are preoccupied with public affairs, and the conditions of rustic life and labour only concern them at moments when serious distress or disorder compels attention. Rhetoricians and poets are doubtful witnesses. Like the orators, they use their matter freely and with much colouring for their immediate purposes. But they are not, like forensic orators, in direct contact with practical emergencies. The questions arising out of Vergil’s _Georgics_ are problems to be discussed by themselves.

The contribution of encyclopaedic or occasional writers is in some cases of value. I will here only name the elder Pliny and Apuleius. Books of travel and geography, for instance Herodotus and Strabo, give stray details, but generally in reference to distant countries, mostly in the East and so hardly within my subject, save for purposes of comparison. There are however two topics with which I am not directly concerned, but which it is impossible wholly to ignore in speaking of ancient agriculture. First, the relation of military duty to landholding [the farmer as citizen soldier], and mercenary service [the rustic as volunteer for pay]. This has been so fully treated in modern handbooks that I need say little about it. Secondly, the various conditions of tenure of land. That rustic life and therewith rustic labour were directly and deeply affected by varieties of tenure, needs no proof. The cited opinions of Roman lawyers in the Digest are the main authority on points of this kind, and stray references elsewhere serve to illustrate them. In conclusion I have only to insist again on the fact that we have no direct witness of the labourer’s, or even the working farmer’s, point of view. The evidence all comes from above; and therefore generally gives us a picture of conditions as the law meant them to be and presumed them normally to be. How far the practical working corresponded to the legal position, is only to be guessed with caution from the admissions involved in the elaboration of legal remedies; and, in the case of imperial _coloni_, from the unique evidence of the notable African inscriptions.

It is I trust after the above considerations not unreasonable to devote no special chapters to certain writers whom nevertheless it is often necessary to cite in notes. Diodorus, Livy, Athenaeus, Macrobius, Gellius, Palladius, are cases of the kind. Stray references in their works are valuable, but there is nothing to require a treatment of them as several wholes. Even Livy is chiefly useful as handing down remains of past tradition: hence he (and Dionysius and Plutarch with him) have a leading place in the introductory chapter on early Rome. So too the writers of the so-called _historia Augusta_ and the laws of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes find their place in the notes to certain chapters. On the other hand (to omit obvious cases) Euripides, Xenophon, the younger Seneca, Martial, the younger Pliny, Apuleius, Ammianus, Symmachus, Apollinaris Sidonius, need careful treatment with full regard to the periods and circumstances by which their evidential values are severally qualified. And in order to place each witness in his proper setting it is sometimes necessary to pause and group a number of circumstances together in a special chapter. This arises from the endeavour to preserve so far as possible the thread of continuity, which is always really there, though at times very thin, owing to the loss of many works in the course of ages. In such chapters one has to look both backward and forward, and often to digress for a moment on topics only connected indirectly with the main object.

I have tried to avoid needless repetitions, but some repetitions are unavoidable, since the same point often serves to illustrate different parts of the argument. To make a system of cross-references from chapter to chapter quite complete is hardly possible, and would add immensely to the bulk of footnotes. It has seemed better to attempt completeness by elaboration of the Index. A few details from a period later than that with which I am concerned are given in the Appendix, as being of interest. Also the names of some books from which in a course of miscellaneous reading I have derived more or less help, particularly in noting modern survivals or analogies. For significant matter occurs in quite unexpected quarters. And the observers who record facts of rustic life and labour in Italy or France, in North or Central or South America, without attempting to manipulate them in connexion with a theory, deserve much gratitude.

It is evident that in the handling of evidence there is room for some variety of method. And it seems reasonable to hold that the choice of method should be mainly guided by two leading considerations, the nature of the evidence available and the aim of the inquiry pursued. In the present case the inquiry deals with a part, a somewhat neglected part, of Greco-Roman history: and the subject is one that can by no means be strictly confined to ascertaining the bare facts of farm life and labour. That the conditions of agriculture were not only important in connexion with food-supply, but had an extensive moral and political bearing, is surely beyond dispute. And the nature of the surviving evidence favours, or rather requires, the taking of a correspondingly wide view. Outside the circle of technical writings, the literary evidence almost always has an eye to the position of agriculture as related to the common weal; nor is this point of view ignored even by the technical writers. Therefore, in treating the subject as I have tried to treat it, it is very necessary to take each witness separately so far as possible, and not to appraise the value of his testimony without a fair consideration of his condition and environment. This necessity is peculiarly obvious in the case of the theorists, whose witness is instructive in a very high degree, but only when we bear in mind the existing state of things from observation of which their conclusions were derived. And the changes of attitude in philosophic thought are sometimes highly instructive. Take farm life and labour as it appears to Plato and Aristotle and later to Musonius: a whole volume of history, economic moral and political, lies in the interval of some 400 years. Inscriptions furnish little to the student of this subject, but that little is worth having. To conclude this paragraph, I do not apologize for putting my authorities in the witness-box and questioning them one by one. For only thus do I see a possibility of giving a true picture of the conditions with which I am concerned. It is a long method, but perhaps not uninteresting, and I see no other.

It may seem necessary to explain why I have not devoted special chapters to rustic life and labour in Oriental countries, some of which eventually became parts of the Roman empire. Such countries are for instance Egypt, Palestine and Syria. One reason is that I could do nothing more than compile conclusions of the inquirers who have lately rescued a vast mass of detail, chiefly from the Egyptian papyri. Age forbade me to undertake this task unless it seemed clear that my inquiry really depended on it. But, inasmuch as I have not been trying to produce a technical treatise upon ancient agriculture, I do not think it necessary. That there is room for such a treatise, I have no doubt: nor that its writer will need to have many years at his disposal and a good knowledge of several sciences at his back. With regard to eastern countries other than Egypt, practically the Seleucid empire, knowledge is at present very scanty, as Rostowzew has to confess. Ancient India lies quite beyond my range, as having never been a part of the Roman empire: but there is evidently much of interest to be gathered in this field. From these extensive and promising researches my limited effort is divided by a clearly marked line. I am concerned with agriculture and agricultural labour not as the occupation of passive populations merely producing so much food year by year, peoples over whom centuries might pass without ascertainable change of a moral social or political character. Such peoples, in short, as do not get beyond the conception of ruler and ruled to that of state and citizen, or at least have not yet done so. For of all conclusions to be drawn from the history of the Greco-Roman world none seems to me more certain than the fact that, while political social and moral movements affected the conditions of agriculture, agricultural changes reacted upon political social and moral conditions. Thus the general history of the peoples, comprising the rise and fall of ancient efforts towards self-government, must always be kept in view: the fluctuations of what I may call civic values, and the position of farmers as labourers or employers of labour cannot be treated in separate compartments and their reciprocal effect ignored. That in the later stages of my inquiry Oriental influences begin to dominate Roman imperial policy, is evident, and I have not left this factor out of account. But this phenomenon announces the end of the old world. The long struggle of the Empire in the East and its final overthrow by the forces of Islam, its break-up in the West and the foundation of new nation-states, are beyond my range. In the Appendix I have put some remarks on two documents of the Byzantine period, from which we get glimpses of changes that were proceeding in the eastern empire while it still held its ground and was indeed the most highly organized of existing powers. To these I have subjoined a list of some of the books I have consulted and found helpful in various degrees, particularly such as have furnished modern illustrations in the way of analogy or survival. A few special quotations from some of these may serve to shew how very striking such illustrations can be.

II. Land And Labour.

Of the many difficult questions connected with the past history of the human race few have evoked such a difference of opinion as the practical importance of slavery. By some inquirers it has been held that the so-called ‘classical’ civilization of the Greco-Roman world rested upon a slavery basis, in short that slavery alone enabled that civilization to follow the lines of its actual development. In reply to this doctrine it is urged[4] that its holders have been led astray by an unhistorical method. They have been deeply impressed by the all-pervading evils of the economic and domestic slave-system during the period (say 200 BC-200 AD roughly) when it was in full extension and vigour. The prepossession thus created has led them to misinterpret the phenomena of earlier ages, and to ignore the significance of the later period of decline. Prejudiced eyes have detected slavery where it was not, and have seen in it where existent an importance greater than impartial inquiry will justify. Moreover the discussion of slavery-questions in modern times, conducted with the intemperate warmth of partisan controversy, have had an influence unfavourable to the statement of facts in their true relations, and therefore to the exercise of cool judgment. According to this view the facts of our record shew that, while slave-labour had its four centuries or so of predominance, free-labour never ceased, and on it, and not on slavery, the civilization of the ‘classical’ world was built up. It is argued that in primitive conditions there was little slavery, that growth of trade and exchange (and therewith of civilization) led to division of labour and the growth of larger enterprises. On this follows a time in which the employment of slave-labour becomes more and more common, and ends by being for some centuries the basis of economic and domestic life. In due course comes the period of decline, when for various reasons slaves became less numerous, and the highly-organized civilization of antiquity relapses into the primitive conditions of the early Middle Age. Slavery is not extinct, but reverts generally to various degrees of serfdom, resembling that which meets us in the early traditions of Greek slavery. Things have gone round the full circle, and the world takes a fresh start.

This version of the process is attractive. It presents to us a spectacle of cyclic movement, pleasing from its simplicity and dignity. But it seems to imply that the old civilization reached its height more or less concurrently with the growth of slavery. One is driven to ask[5] whether the concurrence was purely accidental or not. So far as concerns the manufacture of articles for export by slave-industry, it can hardly have been a mere chance: nor is it denied that in this department it was the demand created by the needs of growing civilization that called forth the supply. Luxury too is merely a name for such needs when they clearly exceed strict necessaries of life: and here too the monstrous extravagancies of domestic slavery were a characteristic feature of the civilization of the Greco-Roman world. That neither of these forms of servile employment could outlive the civilization that had produced them, is surely no wonder. The case of slavery in agriculture is less simple, and several questions may suggest themselves to anyone who considers this subject with an open mind.

Agriculture was long regarded, from a social point of view, as superior to other occupations dependent on bodily labour. This opinion dated from very early times when, as traditions agree, the land was owned by privileged nobles who as members of powerful clans formed aristocracies of a more or less military character. War was waged by men fighting hand to hand, and it was natural that handwork of a kind likely to promote health and strength should be honoured above manual trades of a less invigorating and even sedentary character. The development of cities and urban life, which in many states led to the overthrow of the old clan aristocracies, did not make handicraftsmen the equals of agriculturists in popular esteem. Pressure to win a firm footing on the land was as marked a feature in Athenian Attica as in Roman Latium. Agriculture was a profession worthy of the free citizen, and the ownership of a plot of land stamped the citizen as a loyal and responsible member of a free and self-conscious community. The ruin of Attic farmers in the Peloponnesian war, the disastrous changes in Italian agriculture after Rome became imperial, still left the old prepossession. The charm of country life and pursuits remained as an ineffective ideal. Greek philosophers were impressed with the virtues of farmer-folk, virtues social moral and ultimately political. From them Cicero and others learnt to praise rustic life: the Gracchi made vain efforts to revive it: the poets, led by Vergil, pictured the glories of old Italian agriculture: but the aspirations were vain. The ‘classical’ civilization was urban in its growth, and urban it remained. Writers on agriculture might lament that free men, capable of tilling the land, loitered idly in the city. In practice they had to take facts as they found them, and give elaborate precepts for a farm-system in which slavery was the essential factor.

It was and is possible to regard agriculture from various points of view. Three of these at least deserve a preliminary consideration. The nakedly economic view, that the production of food is necessary for any life above that of mere savages, and therefore is worthy of respect, can never have been wholly absent from men’s minds in any age. It was common property, and found frequent expression. Even when various causes led to much dependence on imported corn, the sentiment still survived, and its soundness was recognized by philosophers. The military view, that the hardy peasant makes the best soldier, was generally accepted in principle, but its relation to agriculture in the strict sense of tillage was not always a direct one. The technical training of skilled combatants began early in Greece. It was not only in the Spartan or Cretan systems that such training was normal: the citizen armies of Athens consisted of men who had passed through a long course of gymnastic exercises and drill. During their training these young men can hardly have devoted much labour to the tillage of farms, even those of them who were of country birth. What percentage of them settled down in their later years to farm-life, is just what one vainly wishes to know. The helot-system supplied the tillage that fed the warrior-caste of Sparta. It would seem that the toils of hunting played a great part in producing the military fitness required of the young Spartiate. We may be pretty sure that the Thessalian cavalry—wealthy lords ruling dependent cultivators—were not tillers of the soil. Boeotia and Arcadia were both lands in which there was a large farmer class. Boeotian infantry were notable for their steadiness in the shock of battle. But they were not untrained, far from it. United action was ever difficult in Arcadia, where small cities lay scattered in the folds of mountains. Hence no Arcadian League ever played a leading part in Greece. But the rustics of these country towns and villages were man for man as good material for war-work as Greece could produce. In the later age of professional soldering they, with the Aetolians and others in the less civilized parts, furnished numbers of recruits to the Greek mercenary armies. But the regular mercenary who had the luck to retire in comfortable circumstances, on savings of pay and loot, is portrayed to us as more inclined to luxury and wantonness in some great city than to the simple monotony of rustic life. Nor must we forget that slaves were often an important part[6] of war-booty, and that the professional warrior was used to the attendance of slaves (male and female) even on campaigns. So far the connexion of peasant and soldier does not amount to much more than the admission that the former was a type of man able to endure the hardships of a military career.

The national regular army formed by Philip son of Amyntas in Macedonia, afterwards the backbone of Alexander’s mixed host, is in itself a phenomenon of great interest: for in making it Philip made a nation. That the ranks were mainly filled with country folk is certain. But, what with wastage in wars and the settlement of many old soldiers in the East, there is little evidence to shew whether any considerable number of veterans returned to Macedon and settled on the land. I believe that such cases were few. The endless wars waged by Alexander’s successors with mixed and mongrel armies were hardly favourable to rustic pursuits: foundation of great new cities was the characteristic of the times. When we turn to Rome we find a very different story. Tradition represents landowners settled on the land and tilling it as the persons responsible for the defence of the state. Cincinnatus called from the plough to be dictator is the typical figure of early patriotic legend. When the Roman Plebeians dislodged the Patrician clans from their monopoly of political power, the burden of military service still rested on the _adsidui_, the men with a footing on the land. Tradition still shews us the farmer-soldier taking the risk of disaster to his homestead during his absence on campaigns. In the historical twilight of fragmentary details, coloured by later imagination, thus much is clear and credible. The connexion between landholding and soldiering was not openly disregarded until the reforms of Marius. The age of revolution was then already begun, and one of its most striking features was the creation of a professional soldiery, a force which, as experience proved, was more easy to raise than to disband. The method of pensioning veterans by assigning to them parcels of land for settlement was in general a failure, for the men were unused to thrift and indisposed to a life of patient and uneventful labour. The problem of the Republic was inherited by the Empire, and attempts at solution were only partially successful: but the system of standing armies, posted on the frontiers, made the settlement of veterans in border-provinces a matter of less difficulty. From the third century AD onwards we find a new plan coming into use. Men were settled with their families on lands near the frontiers, holding them by a military tenure which imposed hereditary liability to service in the armies. Thus the difficulty was for a time met by approaching it from the other end. The superiority of the rustic recruit was as fully recognized as ever: at the end of the fourth century it was reaffirmed[7] by Vegetius.

I pass on to the third point of view, which I may perhaps call philosophic. It appears in practice as the view of the statesman, in theory as that of the speculative philosopher. Men whose life and interests are bound up with agriculture are in general a steady class, little inclined to wild agitations and rash ventures. On a farm there is always something not to be left undone without risk of loss. The operations of nature go on unceasingly, uncontrolled by man. Man must adapt himself to the conditions of soil and weather: hence he must be ever on the watch to take advantage of his opportunities, and this leaves him scant leisure for politics. We may add that the habit of conforming to nature’s laws, and of profiting by not resisting what cannot be successfully resisted, is a perpetual education in patience. Working farmers as a class were not men lightly to embark in revolutionary schemes, so long as their condition was at all tolerable. It must be borne in mind that before the invention of representative systems a citizen could only vote by appearing in person at the city, where all the Assemblies were held. Assemblies might be adjourned, and two journeys, to the city and back, were not only time-wasting and tiresome, but might have to be repeated. Accordingly we hear of the encouragement of Attic farmers by Peisistratus[8] as being a policy designed to promote the stability of his government. At Rome we find reformers alarmed at the decay of the farmer-class in a great part of Italy, and straining to revive it as the sound basis of a national life, the only practical means of purifying the corrupted institutions of the state. Selfish opposition on the part of those interested in corruption was too strong for reformers, and the chance of building up a true Italian nation passed away. The working farmer had disappeared from Roman politics. The swords and the venal city mob remained, and the later literature was left to deplore the consequences.

The course of agricultural decline in Greece was different in detail from that in Italy, but its evil effects on political life were early noted, at least in Attica. The rationalist Euripides saw the danger clearly, during the Peloponnesian war; and the sympathy of the conservative Aristophanes with the suffering farmers was plainly marked. The merits of the farmer-class as ‘safe’ citizens, the backbone of a wise and durable state-life, became almost a commonplace of Greek political theory. Plato and Aristotle might dream of ideal states, governed by skilled specialists professionally trained for their career from boyhood. In their more practical moments, turning from aspirations to facts of the world around them, they confessed the political value of the farmer-class. To Aristotle the best hope of making democracy a wholesome and tolerable form of government lay in the strengthening of this element: the best Demos is the γεωργικὸς δῆμος, and it is a pity that it so often becomes superseded by the growing population devoted to trades and commerce. I need not carry further these brief and imperfect outlines of the honourable opinion held of agriculture in the Greco-Roman world. As producing necessary food, as rearing hardy soldiers, as favouring the growth and maintenance of civic virtues, it was the subject of general praise. Some might confess that they shrank from personal labour on the land. Yet even in Caesarian Rome it is somewhat startling when Sallust[9] dismisses farming in a few words of cynical contempt.

It is clear that the respect felt for agriculture was largely due to the opinion that valuable qualities of body and mind were closely connected with its practice and strengthened thereby. So long as it was on the primitive footing, each household finding labour for its own maintenance, the separation of handwork and direction could hardly arise. This primitive state of things, assumed by theorists ancient and modern, and depicted in tradition, had ceased to be normal in the time of our earliest records. And the employment of persons, not members of the household, as hired labourers, or of bondmen only connected with the house as dependents, at once differentiated these ‘hands’ from the master and his family. The master could not habitually hire day-labourers or keep a slave unless he found it paid him to do so. For a man to work for his own profit or for that of another were very different things. This simple truism, however, does not end the matter from my present point of view. It is necessary to ask whether the respect felt for agriculture was so extended as to include the hired labourer and the slave as well as the working master. We shall see that it was not. The house-master, holding and cultivating a plot of land on a secure tenure, is the figure glorified in traditions and legendary scenes. The Greek term αὐτουργός, the man who does his own work, is specially applied to him as a man that works with his own hands. It crops up in literature often, from Euripides to Polybius and Dion Chrysostom; and sometimes, when the word is not used, it is represented by equivalents. But both the hired labourer and the slave were employed for the express purpose of working with their own hands. And yet, so far as agriculture is concerned, I cannot find that they were credited with αὐτουργία, the connotation[10] of which is generally favourable, seldom neutral, never (I think) unfavourable. It seems then that the figure present to the mind was one who not only worked with his own hands, but worked for his own profit—that is, on his own farm. And with this interpretation the traditions of early Rome fully agree.

To admit this does not however imply that the working house-master employed neither hired labourer nor slave. So long as he took a hand in the farm-work, he was a working cultivator for his own profit. The larger the scale of his holding, the more he would need extra labour. If prosperous, he would be able to increase his holding or supplement his farming[11] by other enterprises. More and more he would be tempted to drop handwork and devote himself to direction. If still successful, he might move on a stage further, living in the city and carrying on his farms by deputy, employing stewards, hired freemen or slaves, or freedmen, his former slaves. If he found in the city more remunerative pursuits than agriculture, he might sell his land and the live and dead stock thereon, and become simply an urban capitalist. So far as I know, this last step was very seldom taken; and I believe the restraining influence to have been the prestige attached to the ownership of land, even when civic franchises had ceased to depend on the possession of that form of property alone. If this view be correct, the fact is notable: for the system of great landed estates, managed by stewards[12] on behalf of wealthy owners who lived in the city, was the ruin of the peasant farmer class, in whose qualities statesmen and philosophers saw the guarantee for the state’s lasting vigour. No longer were αὐτουργοὶ a force in politics: in military service the professional soldier, idling in the intervals of wars, superseded the rustic, levied for a campaign and looking forward to the hour of returning to his plough. It was in Italy that the consummation of this change was most marked, for Rome alone provided a centre in which the great landlord could reside and influence political action in his own interest. To Rome the wealth extorted from tributary subjects flowed in an ever-swelling stream. No small part of the spoils served to enrich the noble landlords, directly or indirectly, and to supply them with the funds needed for corrupting the city mob and so controlling politics. Many could afford to hold their lands even when it was doubtful whether estates managed by slaves or hirelings were in fact a remunerative investment. If we may believe Cicero, it was financial inability[13] to continue this extravagant policy that drove some men of apparent wealth to favour revolutionary schemes. The old-fashioned farmstead, the _villa_, was modernized into a luxurious country seat, in which the owner might now and then pass a brief recess, attended by his domestic slaves from Town, and perhaps ostentatiously entertaining a party of fashionable friends.

We have followed the sinister progress of what I will call the Agricultural Interest, from the ‘horny-handed’ peasant[14] farmer to the land-proud capitalist. No doubt the picture is a highly coloured one, but in its general outlines we are not entitled to question its truth. Exceptions there certainly were. In hilly parts of Italy a rustic population[15] of freemen survived, and it was from them that the jobbing gangs of wage-earners of whom we read were drawn. And in the great plain of the Po agricultural conditions remained far more satisfactory than in such districts as Etruria or Lucania, where great estates were common. A genuine farming population seems there to have held most of the land, and rustic slavery appeared in less revolting form. But these exceptions did not avail to stay the decline of rural Italy. True, as the supply of slave-labour gradually shrank in the empire, the working farmer reappeared on the land. But he reappeared as a tenant gradually becoming bound[16] to the soil, worried by the exactions of officials, or liable to a blood-tax in the shape of military service. He was becoming not a free citizen of a free state, but a half-free serf helplessly involved in a great mechanical system. Such a person bore little resemblance to the free farmer working with his own hands for himself on his own land, the rustic figure from whom we started. On the military side, he was, if a soldier, now soldier first and farmer afterwards: on the civic side, he was a mere subject-unit, whose virtues were of no political importance and commanded no respect. In the final stage we find the government recruiting its armies from barbarians and concerned to keep the farmer on the land. So cogent then was the necessity of insuring the supply of food for the empire and its armies.

At this point we must return to our first question, how far the agriculture of the Greco-Roman world depended on free or slave labour. It is clear that, while the presence of the slave presupposes the freeman to control him, the presence of the freeman does not necessarily imply that of the slave. Dion Chrysostom[17] was logically justified in saying that freedom comes before slavery in order of time. And no doubt this is true so long as we only contemplate the primitive condition of households each providing for its own vital needs by the labour of its members. But the growth of what we call civilization springs from the extension of needs beyond the limits of what is absolutely necessary for human existence. By what steps the advantages of division of labour were actually discovered is a subject for the reconstructive theorist. But it must have been observed at a very early stage that one man’s labour might be to another man’s profit. Those who tamed and employed other animals were not likely to ignore the possibilities offered by the extension of the system to their brother men. It would seem the most natural thing in the world. It might be on a very small scale, and any reluctance on the bondsman’s part might be lessened by the compensations of food and protection. A powerful master might gather round him a number of such dependent beings, and he had nothing to gain by treating them cruelly. On them he could devolve the labour of producing food, and so set free his own kinsmen to assert the power of their house. In an age of conflict stronger units tended to absorb weaker, and the formation of larger societies would tend to create fresh needs, to encourage the division of labour, and to promote civilization by the process of exchange. Labour under assured control was likely to prove an economic asset of increasing value. In agriculture it would be of special importance as providing food for warriors busied with serving the community in war.

This imaginative sketch may serve to remind us that there are two questions open to discussion in relation to the subject. First, the purely speculative one, whether the early stages of progress in civilization could have been passed without the help of slavery. Second, the question of fact, whether they were so passed or not. It is the latter with which I am concerned. The defects of the evidence on which we have to form an opinion are manifest. Much of it is not at first hand, and it will often be necessary to comment on its unsatisfactory character. In proceeding to set it out in detail, I must again repeat that two classes of free handworkers must be clearly kept distinct—those who work for themselves, and those who work for others. It is the latter class only that properly come into comparison with slaves. A man habitually working for himself may of course work occasionally for others as a wage-earner. But here, as in the case of the farmer-soldier, we have one person in two capacities.

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 appears[18] 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-labourers[21] 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 farming[23] operations. Thus we have ploughing, reaping, binding, threshing, winnowing. Most striking of all is the passage in which the work of irrigation[24] 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 man[25] (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 disgusted[27] 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 spared[28] 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 Trojans[29] is the ‘day of constraint,’ ἦμαρ ἀναγκαῖον, also expressed by δούλιον ἦμαρ. Viewed from the other side we find enslavement consisting in a taking away[30] 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 glimpse[31] 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 terms[32] 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 sale[33] to a third party. We find Odysseus ready to consign offending slaves[34] to torture mutilation or death. In the story of his visit to Troy[35] 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 terms[36] 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 secondary[37] 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 hopes[38] 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’ question[39] 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. Handicraftsmen[40] 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 religion[42] protects, to be roughly shewn the door: he is αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης[43], and trades on the reverence felt for one who appeals as stranger to hospitable custom. Thus he picks up a living[44] from the scraps and offals of great houses. But he is despised, and, what concerns us here, despised[45] 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 gardens[46] 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 provides[47] 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 contrast[49] 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 Cyclops[50] 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 plowman[53] 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 offer[54] 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, repudiating[55] 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 mentioned[56] in the same breath.

That slaves are employed on the farm is clear enough. When Penelope sends for old Dolius[57], 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 slaves[58] 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 contrast[59] 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 slave[60] 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 Laertes[61] of Phoenician kidnappers. In romancing about his own past experiences Odysseus describes a raid in Egypt, and how the natives rallied[62] 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 made[63] 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 up[64] 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 absence[65] 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 retorts[66] ‘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. Poverty[67] 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 avoided[68] 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 exhortation[71] 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 sweat[72] of his brow that the farmer is to thrive. Such is the ordinance of the gods. Man is meant to resemble[73] the worker bee, not the worthless drone. It is not ἔργον but idleness (ἀεργίη) that is a reproach. Get wealth[74] by working, and the idler will want to rival you: honour and glory attend on wealth. Avoid delays[75] 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 outer[76] 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 rivals[77] 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 mentioned[78] also. Seafaring[79] for purposes of gain illustrates what men will dare in quest of wealth. You should not cast a man’s poverty[80] in his teeth: but do not fancy that men will give you[81] 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 protected[82] 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 estate[83] and not another buy yours’—that is, that the gods may give you increase. Just so you should keep a watch-dog, that thieves[84] 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 passage[85] 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 certain[88] mention: indeed there could be little demand for domestic attendants in the farmer’s simple home. Such work as weaving[89] is to be done by his wife. For the farmer is to marry, though the risks[90] 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 staple[91] 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 remains[92] 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 clients[93] 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 man[94] 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 Peisistratus[95] 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 Cretan[96] 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 own[97] 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 antipathy[98] 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 described[99] 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 passages[100] 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 passage[101] 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 class[102] as devoted to the tillage of the soil, but two of herdsmen, in charge of cattle and swine. Later authorities mention[103] the γεωργοί, and connect them with the military class, rightly, it would seem: for Herodotus[104] 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 contrast[105] offered by systems of serfage in the Greek world?

It is curious that wage-labour is hardly ever directly mentioned. In describing[106] 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 deserters[107] 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 behind[108] 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 poverty[109] 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 statement[110] 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 mention[111] 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-offer[112] 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 families[113] 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 _Persae_[114] he makes Persian speakers refer to their own people as βάρβαροι, and that in a bitter passage of the _Eumenides_ he expresses[115] 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-wisdom[116] is useful to others than the farmer, and the Scythian steppes are untilled land. A fragment, telling of a happy land[117] 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 passages[118] 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 signs[119] 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 passage[120] celebrating the resourcefulness of Man. The herdsman, usually a slave, is once[121] spoken of as perhaps a hired servant. One curious passage[122] 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. Poverty[123] 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 stage[124] 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 antipathy[125] 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 natural[126] 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 is[127] 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 weaker[128] 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 saying[129] 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 repudiate[130] 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 labour[131] 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 to[132] 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 united[133] to a poor and powerless freeman. He is fully occupied[134] 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 performing[135] 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 dawn[136] 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 slaves[137]. Again, the Theban herald in the _Supplices_[138], 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 described[139] 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 passage[140] 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 reference[142] 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 ‘Constitution[143] 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 compensations[144] 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 system[145] 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 cause[146] 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 Zimmern[147] in calling him the _Old Oligarch_.

His disgust at the lack of discipline in the slaves at Athens, and his ingenious explanation[148] 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 given[149] 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 account[150] 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 skill[151] 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 passage[152] 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 population[153] 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 told[154] 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 protest[155] 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 discussion[156] 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-allotments[157] 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 _Plutus_[158], when asked ‘are you a husbandman?’ replies ‘do you take me for a madman?’ Earlier in the play[159] 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 rustics[160], 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 persuading[161] 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 describes[162] 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 farms[163] 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-hearted[164] in determination to end the war and go home. Trygaeus their leader, according to the Greek sketch of the plot an elderly rustic, describes himself[165] 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 triumphant[166] 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 neither[167] 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 thing[168] 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 home[169] in his own rural deme, and he calls his slave Xanthias to carry the phallus in the procession. In the _Clouds_[170] 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 indignant[171] 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 scene[172] 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 differently[173] 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, offers[174] 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 scheme[175] 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 working[176] 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 him[177] 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 stated[178] 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 reference[179] 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, digging[180]. ‘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 reference[181] 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 burdens[182] 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 connected[183] 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 goats[184] 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 implements[185]—is set out in the _Peace_. Loss of oxen, a yoke of two, driven off by Boeotian raiders, is pitifully bewailed[186] 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 two[187] 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 made[188] 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 labour[189] 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 Cornford[190] 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 life[191] 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 passage[192] 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 encourage[193] 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 Beloch[194] 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 below[195] 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 established[196] 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 charged[197] 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 state[198] 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 tells[199] 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 district[200] 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 slaves[201] 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 case[202] 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 such[203] 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 treated[204] 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 rule[205] 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 Lesbos[206] 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 stay[207] 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 cases[208] at least the choice of settlers was confined to members of the