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THE HISTORY

OF THE

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

OF

ANCIENT GREECE.

BY J. A. ST. JOHN.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,

Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.

1842.

London:

Printed by S. & J. Bentley, Wilson, and Fley,

Bangor House, Shoe Lane.

CONTENTS
OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

THE HISTORY
OF THE
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
OF
ANCIENT GREECE.

BOOK V.

CHAPTER VII.
SLAVES.

It will have been remarked, that both in town and country, the mean and painful drudgery was chiefly performed by slaves,[^[1]] whose origin, condition, and numbers, in the principal Grecian states, it now becomes necessary to describe. The greatest writers of antiquity[^[2]] were on this subject perplexed and undecided. They appear to have comprehended the full extent of the evil,[^[3]] but to have been too much the slaves themselves of habit and prejudice to discover, that no form or modification of servitude is consistent with human happiness or with justice, without which no happiness can be. This is evident from the conversation in Crete between Plato and his Gnosian and Spartan companions. They do not trouble their minds with inquiries respecting the origin of slavery, which, while some tribes of men are stronger and more civilised than others, could never be difficult to be conjectured; but considering its existence easy to be accounted for, they are concerned to discover by what means may be avoided or mitigated the mischiefs they everywhere saw accompanying it.

Most perplexing of all,[^[4]] however, was the Laconian Heloteia; because in that case the comparatively great number of the servile caste rendered it necessary, in the opinion of some, to break their spirit and bring them down to their condition by a system of severity which constitutes the infamy of Sparta.

The discredit, however, of subsisting on slave labour was to a certain extent shared by all the states of Greece, even by Athens. They appear to have supposed that no slaves, no body politic.[^[5]] But in the treatment of those unfortunate men there was as much variation as from the differences of national character might have been inferred. The Athenians in this respect, as in most others, being the antipodes of the Spartans, and falling into the error, if such a thing can be conceived, of extreme humanity and indulgence.

It is no doubt possible by kindness to obliterate many of the ugly features of slavery, so that between the vassal and his lord strong mutual affection may spring up.[^[6]] We hear, accordingly, of slaves whose love for their masters exceeded the love of brothers, or of children;[^[7]] they have toiled, fought, died, for them; nay they have sometimes surpassed them in courage, and taught them, in situations of imminent danger, how to die, as in the case of that military attendant, who, when taken prisoner with his master, and seeing him resolved on death, yet hesitating about the means, dashed his brains out against the wall to show him how it might be done. Another example is recorded of a slave who put on the disguise of his lord, that he might be slain in his stead. But what then? Do these examples prove that in servitude there is anything ennobling? On the contrary, the only inference to be drawn from them is, that in these cases great and worthy souls had been dealt with unjustly by fortune. However, since none but the incorrigibly base can now be found to advocate this worst of all human vices, I may spare my arguments, and proceed at once to trace the history of slavery in Greece.

In very remote ages mankind, according to tradition, dispensed with the labours of domestic slaves,[^[8]] whose place was supplied by the women of the family,[^[9]] who rose before day to grind corn for the household; and as they usually sang while thus engaged, the whole village on such occasions would seem alive with music. As in the East, also, they were accustomed to draw water from the wells, or seek it at a distance at the fountains, as I have already, in speaking of the Hellenic women, observed. But as soon as men began to give quarter in war, and became possessed of prisoners, the idea of employing them, and rendering their labours subservient to their maintenance naturally suggested itself. At the outset, therefore, as a very distinguished historian[^[10]] has remarked, servitude sprung from feelings of humanity; for when it was found that advantages could be derived from captured enemies they were no longer butchered in the field. Hence, from the verb signifying “to be subdued,” they were denominated Dmöes;[^[11]] for “of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”[^[12]] Of these constant mention is made in Homer. Thus Telemachos speaks of the Dmöes whom his father had left in his charge; and Agamemnon detained in his tent a number of Lesbian women taken captive in war. In the same condition was Briseïs: and to this fate Hector fears Andromache may be reserved after his death.[^[13]]

Possibly the practice was borrowed from the East, where the mention of slaves occurs in the remotest ages. Thus too in later times, Atossa, queen of Persia, is represented to have urged Darius into the Grecian war, that she might possess Athenian, Spartan, Argive, and Corinthian slaves.[^[14]] And the Pythoness foretelling the destruction of Miletus, exclaims:

“And of a numerous long-haired race thy wives shall wash the feet.”[^[15]]

The practice was when a number of prisoners had been taken, to make a division of them among the chiefs, generally by lot, and then to sell them for slaves.[^[16]] This Achilles boasts he had frequently done, and old Priam fears will be the destiny of his own sons, as it had been of Lycaon whom the Thessalian hero had seized[^[17]] in his garden. To the same purpose is the lament of Hecuba,[^[18]] who accuses him of having reduced many of her sons to slavery. Examples occur in antiquity of whole cities and states being at once subjected to servitude: thus the inhabitants of Judea were a first and a second time carried away captive to Babylon, where their masters, not perhaps from mockery, required of them to sing for their entertainment some of their national songs, to which, as we learn from the prophet, they replied: “How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?” The citizens likewise of Miletos, after the unsuccessful revolt of Aristagoras, were transported into Persia, as were those also of Eretria and Carystos in Eubœa.[^[19]] Like the Israelites, these Greeks long preserved in captivity their national manners and language, though surrounded by strangers and urged by every inducement to assimilate themselves to their conquerors. A similar fate overtook the inhabitants of Thebes, who were sold into slavery by Alexander, as were those of Mycene by the Argives, and the Corinthians by Mummius.[^[20]]

But the supply produced by war seldom equalled the demand; and in consequence a race of kidnappers sprung up, who, partly merchants and partly pirates, roamed about the shores of the Mediterranean, as similar miscreants do now about the slave-coasts, picking up solitary and unprotected individuals. Sometimes their boldness rose to the wives or daughters of the chiefs; as in the case of Paris, who robbed the house, and carried away the wife of Menelaus; and of those Phœnicians who having landed at Argos and held, during several days, a fair on the beach, ended by stealing the king’s daughter.[^[21]] Mitford’s supposition that both Io and her companions may have been allured on board,[^[22]] is founded on the apologetical narrative of the pirates themselves. The practice of kidnapping certainly prevailed widely. Thus Eumæos was, by the Phœnicians, sold to Laertes, and a similar fate awaited the woman whom the Taphian pirates stole away at the same time.[^[23]] Odysseus himself relates how a Phœnician rogue plotted against his liberty when he was sailing with him towards Libya, and that the Thesprotians had meditated a like design.[^[24]] To enumerate no other instances, Laomedon menaces Apollo and Poseidon with servitude, observing that he will have them bound and shipped to some distant island for sale.[^[25]]

Neither war, however, nor piracy sufficed at length to furnish that vast multitude of slaves, which the growing luxury of the times induced the Greeks to consider necessary. Commerce by degrees conducted them to Caria and other parts of Asia Minor, particularly the southern coasts of the Black Sea, those great nurseries of slaves from that time until now.[^[26]] The first Greeks who engaged in this traffic, which even by the Pagans was supposed to be attended by a curse, are said to have been the Chians, and we shall presently see how ill it prospered with them. They purchased their slaves from the barbarians, among whom the Lydians, the Phrygians, and the natives of Pontos, with many others were accustomed, like the modern Circassians, to carry on a trade in their own people.[^[27]] We find mention made in the Anabasis of a Macronian, who having been a slave at Athens and obtaining his liberty, afterwards became a soldier and served the Ten Thousand as an interpreter at a critical moment during their passage through his native country.[^[28]]

Before proceeding, however, with the history of the slave-trade, it may be proper to describe the power possessed by masters over their domestics during the heroic ages. Every man appears to have been then a king in his own house, and to have exercised his authority most regally. Thus we find the young Telemachos taking pleasure in the idea that he shall be king over his slaves;[^[29]] and Andromache, with a mother’s fondness, fears lest her son should become the drudge of an unfeeling lord.[^[30]] Power generally, when unchecked by law, is fierce and inhuman, and over their household, gentlemen, in those ages, exercised the greatest and most awful power, that of life and death, as they afterwards did at Rome.[^[31]] This is illustrated by an example in the Odyssey, where the hero being, while in disguise, insulted grossly by Melanthios, threatens the slave that he will incite Telemachos to cut him in pieces. Afterwards, when he has recovered his authority, the terrible menace is remembered and fulfilled. The culprit is seized and mutilated with savage barbarity, his members, torn from the body, are thrown to the dogs, and even the poet, upon the whole so humane, does not seem to consider the punishment too great for the offence.[^[32]] It has even been supposed that this kind of mutilation was a punishment peculiar to slaves; for Laomedon, while menacing the gods in the manner above described, adds, that he will cut off their ears.[^[33]] When supposed to deserve death they were executed ignominiously by hanging, as in the case of the domestics of Odysseus, whose offences, though grave, would scarcely in any free country be visited with capital punishment.[^[34]] This was regarded as an impure end. To die honourably was to perish by the sword.[^[35]]

The practice of manumission already in the heroic ages prevailed.[^[36]] Odysseus promises their freedom to his herdsman and swineherd if by their aid he should slaughter the suitors; and, according to Plutarch, Telemachos actually bestowed on Eumæos and his companions both their liberty and the rights of citizenship, and from them, he adds, the celebrated families of the Koliades and Bukoli were descended.[^[37]]

Nor does the illustrious race appear to be yet extinct, Professor Koliades[^[38]] claiming to be a lineal descendant from Eumæos, which may very well be since he must be descended from somebody; and there is no reason why a descendant of Eumæos should not be a professor.

In addition to the slaves there were likewise free labourers who worked for hire, and were called Thetes.[^[39]] These sometimes seem to have been placed on the extremities of estates, as the guardians of boundaries, a post which Eurymachos offers with good wages to Odysseus.[^[40]] And it is the condition of one of these hinds that Achilles prefers in Hades to the empire of the shades.[^[41]] The gods also in their sojourn upon earth sometimes submitted to the hardships of this condition. Thus Phœbos Apollo kept the flocks of Admetos, king of Thessaly,[^[42]] and the belief in this humble condition of the gods on earth is objected by Lucian and Dionysius of Halicarnassus,[^[43]] as blameworthy to the Greeks. Herodotus, too, relates that the three sons of Temenos—Gavanes, Aëropos, and Perdiccas—fled from Argos into Illyria and thence into Upper Macedonia to the city of Lebæa, where they served the king for hire, the first tending the royal stud, the second the cattle, and the third the sheep and goats.[^[44]]

From the history of Minos, which, whether true or fabulous, still illustrates the manners of the times, we learn, that the tribute exacted by a victorious enemy sometimes consisted of slaves. Thus the Cretan king, having made a successful descent on the Attic coast, was propitiated (as by our own ancestors were the Danes and other Northern savages) by an annual offering of fourteen youths and virgins, who, being conveyed to Crete, were there said to be destroyed by a monster born of Pasiphaë, daughter of the sun.[^[45]] Theseus, the great hero of the Ionic race, delivered his country from this obnoxious tax, and on his return to Athens was received by the people with unbounded gratitude; sacrifices and processions were instituted in his honour, and the memory of his noble achievement was religiously preserved as long as paganism endured.[^[46]]

And in some such ways as the above, slaves, in early times, must have been procured; for, as Timæos of Taormina[^[47]] remarks, the Greeks of those ages obtained none in the regular course of traffic. He further adds, that Aristotle was generally accused of having misunderstood the usages of the Locrians, among whom, as among the Phocians,[^[48]] it was not of old the custom to possess slaves, whether male or female. The practice, however, prevailed in later times; and the wife of that Philomelos who took Delphi is said to have been the first who was attended by two servile handmaids.[^[49]] But when men commence evil courses, they seldom know where to stop. Mnason, a Phocian, and friend of Aristotle,[^[50]] ambitious of rivalling Nicias, the son of Niceratos, purchased for his own service a thousand slaves, for which he was accused by his countrymen of lavishing upon them what would have supported an equal number of free persons.[^[51]] In that country, therefore, it is clear there existed a class of labourers like the Thetes described by Homer, who were ready to work for hire.[^[52]] In their domestic economy the simplicity of their manners enabled the Phocians and Locrians to dispense with the services of slaves, it being the custom among them, as among the rustics of Eubœa, whom we have described above, for the younger members of the family to wait on the elder.[^[53]]

The Chians, as I have already observed, are said to have been the first Grecian people who engaged in a regular slave-trade.[^[54]] For, although the Thessalians and Spartans possessed, at a period much anterior, their Penestæ and their Helots, they obtained them by different means: the latter, by reducing to subjection the ancient Achæan inhabitants of Peloponnesos;[^[55]] the former, by their conquests over the Magnesians, Perrhæbians, and Bœotians of Arnè. But the Chians possessed only such barbarian slaves as they had purchased with money, in which they more nearly resembled the slave-holding nations of modern times.[^[56]] Other circumstances, likewise, in the history of slavery among the Chians,[^[57]] strongly suggest the parallel, and deserve to be studied with more care than appears to have been bestowed upon them. We have here, perhaps, the first type of the Maroon wars, though on a smaller scale, and marked by fewer outbreaks of atrocity. It is not, indeed, stated that the females were flogged, though throughout Greece the males were so corrected; but, whatever the nature of the severities practised on them may have been,[^[58]] the yoke of bondage was found too galling to be borne,[^[59]] and whole gangs took refuge in the mountains. Fortunately for them, the interior of the island abounded in fastnesses, and was, in those days, covered with forest.

Here, therefore, the fugitives, erecting themselves dwellings, or taking possession of caverns among almost inaccessible cliffs, successfully defended themselves, subsisting on the plunder of their former owners. Shortly before the time of the writer, to whom we are indebted for these details, a bondsman, named Drimacos, made his escape from the city and reached the mountains, where, by valour and conduct, he soon placed himself at the head of the servile insurgents over whom he ruled like a king.[^[60]] The Chians led several expeditions against him in vain. He defeated them in the field with great slaughter; but, at length, to spare the useless effusion of human blood, invited them to a conference, wherein he observed, that the slaves, being encouraged in their revolt by an oracle, would never lay down their arms or submit to the drudgery of servitude. Nevertheless, the war might be terminated. “For, if my advice,” said he, “be followed, and we be suffered to enjoy tranquillity, numerous advantages will thence accrue to the state.”

There being little prospect of a satisfactory settlement of the matter by arms, the Chians consented to enter into a truce as with a public enemy. Humbled by their losses and defeats, Drimacos found them submissive to reason. He, therefore, provided himself with weights, measures, and a signet,[^[61]] and exhibiting them to his former masters, said, “When, in future, our necessities require that I should supply myself from your stores, it shall always be by these weights and measures, and having possessed myself of the necessary quantity of provisions, I shall be careful to leave your warehouses sealed with this signet. With respect to such of your slaves as may fly and offer themselves to me, I will institute a rigid examination into their story, and if, upon inquiry, they appear to have had just grounds for complaint, I will protect them—if not, they shall be sent back to their proprietors.”

To these conditions the magistrates readily acceded, upon which the slaves who still remained with their masters grew more obedient, and seldom took to flight, dreading the decision of Drimacos.[^[62]] Over his own followers he exercised a despotic authority. They, in fact, stood far more in fear of him than when in bondage of their lords, and performed his bidding without question or murmur, as soldiers obey their commander. For he was severe in the punishment of the unruly, and permitted no man to plunder or lay waste the country, or commit any act of injustice,—in short, to do anything without his order. The public festivals he was careful to observe, going round and collecting from the proprietors of the land, who bestowed upon him voluntarily both wine and the finest victims; but if, on these occasions, he discovered that a plot was hatching, or any ambush laid for him, he would take speedy vengeance.

So far the affairs of the Chians and their revolted bondsmen proceeded smoothly. But things continued not always on this footing. Observing old age to be creeping upon Drimacos, and rendered wanton apparently by prosperity, the government issued a proclamation, offering a great reward to any one who should capture him, or bring them his head.[^[63]] The old general, discerning, perhaps, signals of treachery, or convinced that, at last, it must come to that, took aside a young man whom he loved, and said, “I have ever regarded you with a stronger affection than any other man, and to me you have been, instead of a son, a brother, and every other tie. But now, the days of my life are at an end, nor would I have them prolonged. With you, however, it is not so. Youth and the bloom of youth are yours. What then is to be done? You must prove yourself to possess valour and greatness of soul; and since the state offers riches and freedom to whomsoever shall slay me and bear them my head, let the reward be yours. Strike it off, and be happy!”

At first the youth rejected the proposal, but ultimately Drimacos prevailed. The old man fell, and his friend on presenting his head received the sum which had been offered by the state, together with his freedom, and thereupon after burying his benefactor’s remains, he sailed away to his own country. Now, however, the Chians underwent the just punishment of their treachery. No longer guided by the wisdom and authority of Drimacos, the fugitive slaves returned to their original habits of plunder and devastation; whereupon, remembering the moderation of the dead, they erected an Heroön upon his grave, and denominated him the propitious hero. The insurgents, too, holding his memory in no less veneration, continued for ages to offer up the first-fruits of their spoil at his tomb. He was, in fact, honoured with a kind of apotheosis, and canonized among the gods of the island; for it was believed that his shade often appeared to men in dreams for the purpose of revealing some servile conspiracy while yet in the bud: and they to whom he vouchsafed these warning visits, more grateful than when he yet lived, never failed to proceed to his chapel, and offer sacrifice to his manes.[^[64]]

In another department of iniquity the Chians would appear to have been engaged about the period of Xerxes’ expedition into Greece; I mean the making of eunuchs for the Eastern market. Panionios, a miscreant engaged in this traffic, who had mutilated and sold into slavery a young man named Hermotimos, at length expiated his offence against human nature by being himself, together with his four sons, subjected to the same operation.[^[65]] His countrymen, also, in process of time, were, in like manner, compelled to drain the bitter cup of servitude. For, as we find recorded by Nicolaos the Peripatetic, and Posidonios the Stoic, having been subjugated by Mithridates of Cappadocia, they were delivered up to their own slaves to be carried away captive into Colchis, which Athenæus, a man not overburdened with religion, considers the just punishment of their wickedness in having been the first who introduced the slave-trade into Greece, when they might have been better served by freemen for hire. From this ancient villany of the Chians is supposed to have arisen the proverb—“the Chian has bought himself a master,” which Eupolis introduced into his drama called the “Friends.”[^[66]]

The servile war which took place among the Samians, had a more fortunate issue, though but few particulars respecting it have come down to us. It was related, however, by Malacos, in his annals of the Siphnians, that Ephesos was first founded by a number of Samian slaves, who having retired to a mountain on the island to the number of a thousand, inflicted numerous evils on their former tyrants. These in the sixth year of the war, having consulted the oracle, came to an understanding with their slaves, who being permitted to depart in safety from the island, sailed away, and became the founders of the city and people of Ephesos.[^[67]]

In Attica, the institution of slavery,[^[68]] though attended, as it everywhere must be, by innumerable evils, nevertheless exhibited itself under the mildest form which it anywhere assumed in the ancient world.[^[69]] With their characteristic attention to the interests of humanity, the Athenians enacted a law, in virtue of which slaves could indict their masters for assault and battery. Hyperides, accordingly, observed in his oration against Mantitheos, “our laws making no distinction in this respect between freemen and slaves, grant to all alike the privilege of bringing an action against those who insult or injure them.”[^[70]] To the same effect spoke Lycurgus[^[71]] in his first oration against Lycophron; but Demosthenes has preserved the law which empowered any Athenian, not labouring under legal disability, to denounce to the Thesmothetæ the person who offered violence to man, woman, or boy, whether slave or free. The action was tried before the court of Heliæa, and numerous were the examples of men who had suffered death for crimes committed against bondsmen. Not, therefore, without reason did the orator eulogise the humane spirit of the law, or dwell upon the beneficial effects which a knowledge of its existence must produce among those barbarous nations who furnished Greece with servile labourers.[^[72]] Another privilege enjoyed by the slave class in Attica was that of purchasing their own freedom, as often as, by the careful management of the peculium secured them by law, they were enabled to offer to their owners an equivalent for their services.[^[73]]

Still, even in Attica, the yoke of bondage was a heavy yoke, the law itself, in other matters, drawing distinctions between freemen and slaves doubly galling because palpably unnecessary. Legally, for example, they were not allowed to wear long hair,[^[74]] or a garment with two sleeves,[^[75]] to drink wine, save at the festival of Pithœgia on the first day of the month Anthesterion; to anoint themselves as in the gymnasia, to be present at the procession in honour of the Eumenides, or in the case of females to enter the temple of Demeter during the celebration of the Thesmophoria.[^[76]] A similar spirit pervaded the servile code in other parts of Greece. Thus, in the island of Cos they were prohibited from joining in the sacrifices to Hera, and from tasting the victims. They were, likewise, forbidden to be present when offerings were presented to the Manes of Phorbas. But from the very words of the law which authorised the temple wardens to exclude them on these occasions, it is clear that on all others they might freely enter.[^[77]] At Athens, with the exceptions above mentioned, every temple in the city appears to have been open to them. Occasionally, moreover, certain of their number were selected to accompany their masters to consult the oracle at Delphi, when even they were permitted, like free citizens, to wear crowns upon their heads, which, for the time conferred upon them exemption from blows or stripes.[^[78]] Among their more serious grievances, was their liability to personal chastisement, which, besides being inflicted as our punishment of the treadmill, or whipping,[^[79]] at the carts’-tail, by an order of the magistrates,[^[80]] was too much left to the discretion of their owners, whose mercies in many cases would be none of the most tender. In time of war, however, this planter’s luxury could not be enjoyed,[^[81]] since the flogged slaves might go over to the enemy, as sometimes happened.[^[82]] They are said, besides, to have worked the mines in fetters; probably, however, only in consequence of the revolt described by Posidonios, in which they slew the overseers of the mines, and taking possession of the acropolis of Sunium,[^[83]] laid waste for a considerable time the whole of the adjacent districts. This took place simultaneously with the second insurrection of the slaves in Sicily (there was, perhaps, an understanding between them) in the quelling of which nearly a million of their number were destroyed.[^[84]] Other grievances they endured, which will be noticed as we proceed; but in addition to those that actually existed, a learned modern writer has imagined another, which, in his opinion, reduces their condition beneath that of the Helots. “Nearly all the ties of family were broken,” he says, “among the slaves of Athens;” and further explaining himself in a note remarks, that the marriage of slaves was there an uncommon event.[^[85]] We find, however, from contemporary writers, that except in cases of incorrigible perverseness, slaves were, on the contrary, encouraged to marry, it being supposed they would thus become more attached to their masters.[^[86]] The same bold and ingenious writer endeavours to give a reason for what has been quoted above, by saying, “it was cheaper to purchase than to bring up slaves.” This was not the opinion of the ancients, “we,” say they, “prefer and put more trust in slaves born and brought up in the house, than in such as are purchased.”[^[87]]

It has been observed that, from the most grievous insults and contumely, slaves were protected by the laws; but if, in spite of legal protection, their masters found means to render their lives a burden, the state provided them with an asylum in the temples of Theseus and the Eumenides.[^[88]] Having there taken sanctuary, their oppressors could not force them thence without incurring the guilt of sacrilege.[^[89]] Thus, in a fragment of Aristophanes’ Seasons we find a slave deliberating whether he should not take refuge in the Theseion, and there remain till he could procure his transfer to a new master;[^[90]] for any one who conducted himself too harshly towards his slaves was by law compelled to sell them.[^[91]] Nay and not only so, but the slave could institute an action against his lord called αἰκιάς δίκη, or against any other citizen who had behaved unjustly or injuriously towards him. But the right of sanctuary was no doubt limited, and only extended from the time of the slave’s flight to the next New Moon, when a periodical slave-auction appears to have been held.[^[92]]

On this occasion the slaves were stationed, as I have seen them in the bazaars of modern Egypt, in a circle in the market-place, and the one whose turn it was to be sold mounted a table, which seems to have been of stone, where he exhibited himself and was knocked down to the best bidder. Sometimes when the articles were lively they made great sport for the company, as in the case of Diogenes who bawled aloud “whoever among you wants a master, let him buy me.”[^[93]]

To the friskiness whether natural or assumed which the young barbarians often exhibited on this occasion, Menander alludes in the following fragment of his Ephesian:[^[94]]

I scorn by the gods to be breechesless found,

And for sale tripping briskly the vile circles round.

Slaves of little or no value were contemptuously called “salt-bought,” from a custom prevalent among the inland Thracians, of bartering their captives for salt;[^[95]] whence it may be inferred, that domestics from that part of the world were considered inferior.

Respecting the price of slaves an important passage occurs in the Memorabilia, where Socrates, conversing with Antisthenes, on the subject of friendship, inquires whether friends were to be valued at so much per head, like slaves, some of whom he says were not worth a demimina, while others would fetch two, five, or even ten minæ,[^[96]] that is, the price varied from forty shillings to forty pounds. Nay it is even said that Nicias, son of Niceratos, bought an overseer for his silver mines at the price of a talent, or two hundred and forty-one pounds sterling.[^[97]] This passage is in substance quoted by Boeckh,[^[98]] who observes that, exclusively of the fluctuations caused by the variations in the supply and the demand, the market-price of slaves was affected by their age, health, strength, beauty, natural abilities, mechanical ingenuity, and moral qualities. The meanest and cheapest class were those who worked in the mills,[^[99]] where mere bodily strength was required, and therefore by setting Samson at this labour the Philistines intimated their extreme contempt for his blind energy. A very low value was set upon such slaves as worked in the mines, about 150 drachmas in the age of Demosthenes.[^[100]] Ordinary house-slaves, whether male or female, might be valued at about the same price. Demosthenes, in fact, considered two minæ and a half a large sum for a person of this class. Of the sword-cutlers possessed by the orator’s father some were valued at six minæ, others at five, while the lowest were worth above three. Chair-makers sold for about two minæ.

In his discussion on this point, Boeckh[^[101]] charges Demosthenes with intentional falsehood, because, in his oration against Aphobos, he reckons fourteen sword-cutlers at forty minæ, something less than three minæ a-piece. But among those possessed by his father at his death some were reckoned at only three minæ. His guardians made use of them for ten years, that is, till they were grown old, by which time the best would have deteriorated, and the others become of no value.[^[102]] This being the case, I do not see upon what ground Boeckh bases his accusation. The wages of slaves, when let out by their masters on hire, varied greatly, as did also the profit derived from them. A miner was supposed to yield his master an obolos per day, a leather-worker two oboli, and a foreman or overseer three. Expert manufacturers of fine goods, such as head-nets, stuffs of Amorgos, and variegated fabrics like our flowered muslins, must have produced their owners much greater returns.[^[103]]

Slaves, at Athens, were divided into two classes, private and public. The latter, who were the property of the state, performed several kinds of service supposed to be unworthy of freemen: they were, for example, employed as vergers, messengers, apparitors, scribes, clerks of public works,[^[104]] and inferior servants of the gods. Most of the temples of Greece possessed, in fact, a great number of slaves or serfs, who cultivated the sacred domains, exercised various humbler offices of religion, and were, in short, ready on all occasions to execute the orders of the priests.[^[105]] At Corinth, where the worship of Aphrodite chiefly prevailed, these slaves consisted almost exclusively of women,[^[106]] who having, on certain occasions, burnt frankincense, and offered up public prayers to the goddess, were sumptuously feasted within the precincts of her fane.

Among the Athenians, the slaves of the republic, generally captives taken in war, received a careful education, and were sometimes entrusted with important duties. Out of their number were selected the secretaries,[^[107]] who, in time of war, accompanied the generals and treasurers of the army, and made exact minutes of their expenditure, in order that, when on their return these officers should come to render an account of their proceedings, their books might be compared with those of the secretaries. In cases of difficulty, moreover, these unfortunate individuals were subjected to torture, in order to obtain that kind of evidence which the ancients deemed most satisfactory.[^[108]]

The servile vocabulary was necessarily abundant: διάκονος,[^[109]] a servant in general; ὑπηρέτης,[^[110]] a personal attendant or valet; ἀργυρώ-νητης,[^[111]] a slave bought with money; ὤνιος, the same; οἰκότριψ,[^[112]] οἰκοτραφὴς, a male slave born in the house. The name given to the female slave in the same condition was σηκὶς, or οἰκογενὴς.[^[113]] The housekeeper, likewise a slave, received the appellation of ταμεία[^[114]] from her office. A lady’s maid they called παιδίσκη,[^[115]] though it be doubtful, according to Pollux, whether the orator Lysias, who uses the word, does so with reference to the girl’s youth or condition.[^[116]] A slave born of slaves in the house is called οἰκοτριβαίος.[^[117]] Chrysippos makes a distinction between οἰκέτης[^[118]] and δοῦλος,[^[119]] but without much foundation. Clitarchus enumerates various names by which slaves were known in Greece: ἄζοι, θεραπόντες,[^[120]] ἀκόλουθοι,[^[121]] πάλμονες, and λάτρεις. Rural slaves were called ἐρκίται. Hermon, in his Cretan Glossaries, observes, that slaves, born of free parents (εὐγένεις), were, in the island of Crete, called μνῶται. Seleucus informs us, that ἄζοι signifies servants male and female.[^[122]] The latter were also denominated ἀποφράσαι and βολίζαι. A male slave, born of a slave, was termed σινδρὼν; a female attendant on a lady, ἀμφίπολος; a slave-girl who walked before her mistress, πρόπολος. Female slaves were, at Lacedæmon, called χαλκίδες. The term οἰκέτης was applied to any person employed about a house, whether slave or free.

A very pleasant and significant custom prevailed when a slave newly purchased was first brought into the house. They placed him before the hearth, where his future master, mistress, and fellow-servants, poured baskets of ripe fruit, dates, figs, filberts, walnuts, and so on, upon his head, to intimate that he was come into the abode of plenty.[^[123]] The occasion was converted by his fellow-slaves into a holiday and a feast; for custom appropriated to them whatever was thus cast upon the new-comer, and as there were sweetmeats among the rest, they had wherewith to make merry.[^[124]]

Their food was commonly, as might be expected, inferior to that of their masters. Thus the dates grown in Greece, which ripened but imperfectly, were appropriated to their use; and for their drink they had a small thin wine called Lora,[^[125]] by the Romans made of the husks of grapes, laid, after they had been pressed, to soak in water,[^[126]] and then squeezed again, like our Bunnel, in the perry country.[^[127]] That they generally ate barley-bread in Attica was no peculiar hardship,[^[128]] since the citizens themselves frequently did the same. We find, moreover, that to give a relish to their coarse meal, plain broth, and salt fish,[^[129]] they were indulged with pickled gherkins. In the early ages of the commonwealth they imitated the frugal manner of their lords, so that no slave who valued his reputation would be seen to enter a tavern; but in later times they naturally shared largely in the general depravity of morals, and placed their summum bonum in eating and drinking. Their whole creed, on this point, has been summed up in a few words by the poet Sotion.[^[130]] “Wherefore,” exclaims a slave, “dole forth these absurdities, these ravings of sophists, prating up and down the Lyceum, the Academy, and the gates of the Odeion? In all these there is nothing of value. Let us drink, let us drink deeply, O Sicon, Sicon![^[131]] Let us rejoice, whilst it is yet permitted us to delight our souls. Enjoy thyself, O Manes! Nothing is sweeter than the belly, which alone is to thee as thy father and thy mother. Virtues, embassies, generalships, are vain pomps, resembling the plaudits of a dream. Heaven, at the fated hour, will deliver thee to the cold grasp of death, and thou wilt bear with thee nothing but what thou hast drunk and eaten! All else is dust, like Pericles, Codros, and Cimon.”

The employment of household slaves necessarily varied according to the rank and condition of their lords. In the dwellings of the wealthy and luxurious they were accustomed to fan their masters and mistresses, and to drive away the flies with branches of myrtle, instead of which, in the East, they make use of flappers of palm-leaves. Among the Roman ladies it was customary to retain a female attendant for the sole purpose of looking after the Melitensian lap-dogs[^[132]] of their mistresses, in which they were less ambitious than that dame in Lucian, who kept a philosopher for this purpose.[^[133]] Female cup-bearers filled the place of our saucy footmen.[^[134]] Ladies’ maids were likewise slaves. They were initiated in all the arts of the toilette; and it is told of Julia, whose hair turned prematurely grey, that her ornatrix was sometimes surprised plucking out the white hairs by the entrance of her father.[^[135]] The offices of these ornamenters is thus described by Manilius:

Illis cura sui vultus frontisque decoræ

Semper erit, tortosque in plexum ponere crineis,

Aut nodis revocare, et rursus vertice denso

Fingere et appositis caput emutare capillis.[^[136]]

In these arts they were regularly taught under masters, and there would likewise appear to have been a set of men who earned their subsistence by initiating slaves in household labours. An example is mentioned at Syracuse of a person[^[137]] who probably had an establishment of his own, where he instructed slaves in the whole round of their domestic duties, such as bread-making, cooking, washing, and so on. In the baker’s business Anaxarchos, an Eudaimonist philosopher, one of the fitting companions of Alexander the Great,[^[138]] introduced an improvement by which modern times may profit,—to preserve his bread pure from the touch, and even from the breath of the slaves who made it, he caused them to knead the dough with gloves on their hands, and to wear a respirator of some gauze-like substance over the mouth.[^[139]] Other individuals, who grudged their domestics a taste of their delicacies, obliged them, while employed at the kneading-trough, to wear a broad collar, like a wheel, which prevented them from bringing their hands to their mouths.[^[140]] This odious practice, however, could not have been general, as it is clear, from an expression in Aristophanes[^[141]] and his scholiast, that slaves employed in making bread used to amuse themselves by eating the dough. This seems to be one of the principal causes of disgust to the rogues in the piece employed in preparing the delicacies with which Trygæos feeds the beetle whereon he is about to mount to the court of Zeus.

In the city of Abdera, as we find from an anecdote of Stratonicos,[^[142]] every private citizen kept a slave who served him in the capacity of herald, and announced by sound of trumpet the appearance of the new moon, and the festival by which it was followed. A bon mot worth repeating is ascribed to this travelling wit. Being one day in the cemetery of Teicheios, a town of the Milesian territory,[^[143]] inhabited by a mixed population from all the neighbouring countries, and seeing on every tomb the name of some foreigner, “Come,” said he to his slave, “let us depart from this place. Nobody dies here but strangers.”

One of the most steady and faithful of the domestics was usually selected to be the porter.[^[144]] Occasionally, moreover, in the establishments of opulent and ostentatious persons, as Callias for example, eunuchs, imported from Asia, were employed as door-keepers.[^[145]]

The directions, as Mitford justly observes, which Penelope’s housekeeper gives to the menial servants for the business of the day, might still serve in the East without variation: “Go quickly,” she said, “some of you sweep the house, and sprinkle it, and let the crimson carpets be spread upon the seats; let all the tables be well rubbed with sponges, and wash carefully the bowls and cups. Some of you go immediately to the fountain for water.”[^[146]]

Besides working at the mill, and fetching water, both somewhat laborious employments, we find that female slaves were sometimes engaged in offices still more unfeminine; that is, in woodcutting upon the mountains, where the impudent old fellow, in Aristophanes, takes advantage of Thratta.[^[147]] Events of this kind, however, could only happen among the peasant girls. In the city both mistresses and maids were too domestic to meet with adventures in forest or on mountains. Towards the decline of the commonwealth, it became a mark of wealth and consequence to be served by black domestics, both male and female, as was also the fashion among the Romans and the Egyptian Greeks. Thus Cleopatra[^[148]] had negro boys for torch-bearers; and the shallow exclusive, in Cicero,[^[149]] is anxious to make it known that he has an African valet. Juvenal, in his sarcastic style, alludes to this practice.[^[150]]

Tibi pocula cursor

Gætulus dabit aut nigri manus ossea Mauri.

The Athenian ladies, like our Indian dames, affected as a foil, perhaps, to be attended by waiting-maids rendered “by Phœbus’ amorous pinches black.”[^[151]]

Travellers among the higher Alps are almost invariably attended by Swiss guides who, laden with their employer’s baggage, climb before them up the rocks, and are less fatigued at the close of the day’s journey than the rich pedestrians who carry nothing beyond their own weight. This is an exact image of the style of travelling in antiquity. It was then common even for opulent men, to “make their own legs their compasses,” as Scriblerus phrases it; but, not to load their own delicate shoulders with a knapsack, they were attended, like Bacchos in the Frogs, by a steady slave, who carried the baggage, mounted on a porter’s knot upon his shoulders. To employ more than one valet in this service was esteemed a mark of luxurious habits; and therefore Æschines reproaches Demosthenes that, during his embassy, he was attended by two domestics with each a carpet-bag.[^[152]] Both by Theophrastus and Xenophon this attendant is called an Acoluthos, or follower, because it was his duty to walk behind his master; but this name in general signified a youthful valet, kept in personal attendance on the great.[^[153]] The simplicity of republican manners at Athens condemned the habit of maintaining many of those elegant youths, which, moreover[moreover] was prohibited by law.[^[154]]

From the severity of manners, however, one evil arose—the single slave was sometimes condemned by vanity to carry the burden of two; and as their grumblings were proportioned to their hardship, their case was soon taken up by the comic poets, not, I fear, so much for the sake of humanity, as because it often furnished them with a good joke or two. By degrees, as no writers dwell so constantly on a fruitful topic or so frankly imitate each other, it became the fashion of the stage to introduce a miserable devil into every comedy, whose misfortunes, like those of the clown in our pantomimes, usually kept the theatre in a roar. The practice, however, had already grown stale in the time of Aristophanes, who both ridiculed and followed it; for while his sneers at the grumbling valet are repeated usque ad nauseam, much of the humour and interest of the Frogs arise out of the tricks and adventures of a melancholy wag of this description as Casaubon[^[155]] long ago observed.

When men have usurped an undue dominion over their fellows, they seldom know where to stop. The Syrians themselves, enslaved politically, and often sold into servitude abroad, affected when rich a peculiarly luxurious manner: female attendants waited on their ladies, who, when mounting their carriages, required them to crawl on all-fours that they might make a foot-stool of their backs.[^[156]]

[1]. On the state of domesticity in modern times, see the interesting work by Monsieur Grégoire, Sur la Domesticité, p. 3, sqq.

[2]. Cf. Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 38.

[3]. Thus Metrodoros:—Δοῦλος ἀναγκαῖον μὲν κτῆμα, οὐχ ἡδὺ δὲ. Stob. Florileg. Tit. 62. 44.

[4]. Cf. Plat. de Legg. vi. t. vii. p. 460.

[5]. Even no house according to Aristot. Polit. i. 3. Stob. Floril. Tit. 62. 44.

[6]. Herodes Atticus, for instance, lamented the death of his slaves as if they had been his relations, and erected statues to their memory in woods, or fields, and beside fountains. Philost. Vit. Soph. ii. 10. Among respectable slaves it was thought disgraceful to drink when the family was in trouble. Vict. Var. Lect. viii. 4. A striking example of the affection produced by good usage is mentioned by Libanius: “Sed, ut intelligas,” says the sophist, writing to Uranius, “quam fidum habeas servum, quæsivi ego tunc otiosus, cur, præter ejus generis hominum, consuetudinem tanta fide res tuas curaret? Is vero mihi graviter sapientissimèque respondit se novum quoddam fidissimæ servitutis genus excogitare oportuisse, quoniam herum habeat nomine, re vero fratrem, cum quo eundem cibum caperet, idem vinum biberet, à quo non modo vapularet, sed ne malum quidem unquam aliquid audiret,” Epistol. i. 16. Lat. ed J. C. Wolf. p. 739. a.

[7]. Plato, de Legg. vi. t. vii. p. 460.

[8]. In old times there were neither Manes nor Sekis: the women did everything. Athen. vi. 83. Cf. Herod. vi. 137. Of these early periods, however, few records remain, for as soon as the Greeks appear upon the stage of history they are attended by slaves. On this account Philo Judæus admires the Argonauts, who on their celebrated expedition forewent the aid of servile labour: ἄγαμαι καὶ τῶν Ἀργοναυτῶν, οἰ σύμπαν ἀπέφῃναν ἐλεύθερον τὸ πλήρομα, μηδένα μήτε τᾶς εἰς ἀναγκαίας ὑπηρεσίας προσέμενοι δοῦλον, ἀδελφὸν ἐλευθερίας αὐτουργίαν ἐν τῷ τότε ἀσπασαμένων Lib. quisq. virt. Stud. t. ii. p. 467. ed. Mangey.

[9]. In later times, however, this laborious task devolved upon female slaves. “Gottlieb Fischer (Disput. Philolog. de Molis Manual. Vet. in 4. Gedani, 1728,) établit, par des preuves multipliées, que chez les Egyptiens, les Babyloniens, les Perses, les Arabes, les Grecs, les Romains, ce travail étoit ordinairement le partage des femmes esclaves. L’invention des moulins à eau fut pour elles l’époque d’une joie universelle, dont le poète Antipater se rendit l’interprète par une pièce arrivée jusqu’à nous: Femmes occupées a moudre, ne fatiguez plus vos bras, dormez la longue matinée ... Cérès a ordonné aux nymphes de remplacer l’ouvrage de vos mains, etc.” Grégoire de la Domesticité, p. 7.

[10]. Mitford, Hist, of Greece, i. 405.$1“$2”$3See on this subject, Grotius de Jur. Bell. et Pac. iii. 14. Rousseau’s Contrat Social, i. 4.

[11]. Δμῶες dicti παρὰ δαμᾶσθαι, à domando, Feith. Antiq. Hom. ii. 20. p. 180. Horn. Odyss. ρ. 299.

[12]. II. Epist. Peter, ch. ii. ver. 19.

[13]. Odyss. α. 398. Iliad. θ. 128, seq. β. 689, sqq. τ. 193. Virg. Æneid. iii. 326, seq.

[14]. Herod, iii. 134. Ἐπιθυμέω observes the queen, γὰρ λόγῳ πυνθανομένη, Λακαίνας τέ μοι γενέσθαι θεράπαινας καὶ Ἀργείας καὶ Ἀττικὰς καὶ Κορινθίας. The same thing is related by Ælian (De Nat. Animal, xi. 27); but it is probable that Herodotus was the authority on which he based his narrative.

[15]. Herod, vi. 19.

[16]. Eurip. Troad. 30, sqq.

[17]. Feith, Antiq. Horn. p. 181.

[18]. Iliad. φ. 102. ω. 751, seq.

[19]. Herod, vi. 20, 119.

[20]. Diod. Sicul. xi. Arrian, Anab. i. p. 11. Plut. Symp. ix. 1. Mitf. Hist. of Greece, ii. 176.

[21]. Herod, i. 1.

[22]. History of Greece, i. 32.

[23]. Odyss. ο. 427. 482.

[24]. Odyss. ζ. 340.

[25]. Iliad. φ. 453, seq. Feith observes that the Romans afforded no encouragement to those low and sordid villains who stole and sold their fellow-creatures, and kept none as slaves, but such as were lawfully captured in war. Antiq. Hom. ii. 20.

[26]. Female slaves were obtained from Thrace, Phrygia, and Paphlagonia. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 261. Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. viii. 7. 12. Cf. Plut. Sympos. v. 7. 1.

[27]. Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. viii. 7. 12. The demoralising effects of this traffic were never perhaps better illustrated than by Barbot. This writer, while describing the arts by which men entice their own children, kindred, or neighbours, to the European factories for the purpose of selling them, relates an anecdote exhibiting the ne plus ultra of human depravity: “I was told of one who designed to sell his own son; but he, understanding French, dissembled for a while, and then contrived it so cunningly as to persuade the French that the old man was his slave, and not his father, by which means he delivered him up into captivity; and thus made good the Italian proverb, a furbo furbo e mezzo; amounting to as much as ‘set a thief to catch a thief’ or ‘diamond cuts diamond.’” Descr. of Guinea, i. 4. The son immediately after was relieved of his ill-got gains and himself sold for a slave.

[28]. Xenoph. Anab. iv. 8. 4.

[29]. Odyss. α. 397.

[30]. Iliad. ω. 734.

[31]. See Joach. Hopp. Comment. Succinct. ad Instit. Justin. 1. i. Tit. viii. § 1. p. 61. Grot. De Jur. Bell. et Pac. ii. 5. 28. iii. 7. 3.

[32]. Odyss. ρ. 369. χ. 475, sqq. In most parts of the ancient world the punishments of slaves were to the last degree disproportionate and unjust: “Cibum enim adurere, mensam evertere, dicto tardius audientem fuisse, cruce, aut flagellis ad minus expiabantur. (Cf. Plut. De Cohibend. Irâ. § 13. 15.) Dixisses, omnes penitus dominos professos fuisse Stoicam sectam, adeò illis altè insederat, omnia servorum peccata æqualia esse. Quo factum est, ut servi nuper empti non quærerent an superstitiosum, vel invidum, sed an iracundum herum nacti essent. Seneca; (de Irâ. iii. 28) quid est, quare ego servi mei hilarius responsum, et contumaciorem vultum, et non pervenientem usque ad me murmurationem, flagellis et compedibus expiem.” Pignor. De Servis, p. 5.

[33]. Feith. Antiq. Hom. ii. 20.

[34]. Odyss. χ. 462.

[35]. Eustath. ad loc. p. 1934. Cf. Virg. xii. 603.

[36]. In later times freedmen accused of ingratitude returned, if convicted, to slavery. Etym. Mag. 124. 53, seq. This also was the practice under the Roman law, but among our own ancestors, a bondsman, once disenthralled, could never again be reduced to servitude. Fortescue de Laud. Leg. Angl. cap. 46. p. 108 b. Under certain circumstances, we find Athenian emancipated slaves accounted honourable and permitted to marry free women. Dem. in Steph. i. § 20. Mention occurs in Demosthenes of a magnificent monument made in honour of the wife of one of these freedmen. § 22.

[37]. Plut. Hellen. Problem. 14.

[38]. See Mr. Nelson Coleridge, Introduction to the Study of the Greek Poets. Pt. 1. p. 306.

[39]. Odyss. δ. 644. Cf. Clavier, Hist. des Prem. Temps de la Grèce. ii. 315. Suid. v. θῆτες. 1322, who says their hire was called θητώνιον.

[40]. Odyss. ρ. 356.

[41]. Odyss. λ. 488.

[42]. Iliad. υ. 434, seq.

[43]. Antiq. Rom. ii. 19.

[44]. Herod. viii. 137.

[45]. Isocrat. Helen. Encom. § 14.

[46]. Mitf. Hist. of Greece, i. 70.

[47]. Ap. Athen. vi. 86. See, however, the testimony of Polybius, xii. 5.

[48]. Cf. Suid. v. δουλοσύνη. i. 769.

[49]. Athen. vi. 86.

[50]. Ælian. Var. Hist. iii. 19.

[51]. Athen. vi. 86.

[52]. Odyss. δ. 644.

[53]. Athen. vi. 86.

[54]. Steph. Byzant. v. Χῖος. p. 758. b. Arrian. in Indic. p. 529.

[55]. Cœl. Rhodig. xxv. 19.

[56]. Athen. vi. 88.

[57]. The servile wars of Sicily assumed a far more important character, and resembled rather those civil commotions in states in which one division of the citizens carries on hostilities against the other; for the wealth of the islanders increasing rapidly after the expulsion of the Carthaginians, they purchased great multitudes of slaves, chiefly from the East, whom they employed in the usual drudgery, and treated with extraordinary rigour, branding them in the body like cattle:—Χαρακτῆρα ἐπέβαλλον καὶ στιγμὰς τοῖς σώμασιν. Diodor. Sicul. 34. ap. Phot. Biblioth. Cod. 244. p. 384. Bekk.

[58]. We may probably, however, form some conjecture respecting the injuries they endured from the description of the atrocities practised by the Sicilians against their slaves. These unhappy men were compelled, as history informs us, to forego even the common reward of labour, and, though they toiled incessantly for their owners, to provide for their daily subsistence by plunder and murder:—βαρέως δ᾽ αὐτοῖς κατά τε τὰς ὑπηρεσίας ἐχρῶντο, καὶ ἐπιμελείας παντελῶς ὀλίγης ἠξίουν ὅσα τε ἐντρέφεσθαι καὶ ὅσα ἐνδύσασθαι· ἐξ ὠν οἱ πλείους ἀπὸ λῃστείας τὸ ζῇν ἐπορίζοντο, καὶ μεστὰ φόνον ἦν ἅπαντα καθάπερ στρατευμάτων διεσπαρμένων τῶν λῃστῶν. Diodor. Sicul. ap. Phot. ubi supra.

[59]. They, as well as the Achæans, had a prison called Zetreion, where their slaves worked in chains. Etym. Mag. 411. 33.

[60]. The history of the servile revolt in Sicily offers numerous points of resemblance to that of Chios, though Eunus, the leader of the Sicilian slaves, by no means deserves, either for character or abilities, to be compared with Drimacos. Eunus was an impostor, who, by visions and pretended prophecies, excited the slaves to insurrection. He obtained credit for his predictions by concealing a bored walnut-shell, filled with some fiery substance, in his mouth, and then breathing forth sparks and flames like a chimera. His mind, however, was capable of ambition, for, among the other events which he foretold, he was careful to introduce the fact, that he was one day, by the decrees of heaven, to be a king. Diodor. Sicul. 34. Ap. Phot. Biblioth. Cod. 244. p. 384. Bekk. The contrivances by which he supported his pretensions to miraculous powers are thus described by Florus, iii. 19: Syrus quidam nomine Eunus (magnitudo claudium facit, ut meminerimus) fanatico furore simulato, dum Syriæ deæ comas, jactat ad libertatem et arma servos, quasi numinum imperio concitavit idquæ ut divinitus fieri probaret, in ore abdita nuce quam sulfure, et igne stipaveret, leniter inspirans flammam inter verba fundebat.

[61]. In illustration of the ancient practice of sealing storehouses and other places where valuable things were kept, we may cite the following anecdote from Diogenes Laertius. (iv. 8. 3.) Lacydes, who succeeded Arcesilaus as principal professor in the New Academy, having, as it would appear, a set of thievish domestics, was in the habit of carefully sealing the door of his storeroom; but, in order not to run any risk of losing the seal, he used, unobserved, as he thought, to slip it into the chamber through an aperture in the door. The slaves, however, diligently reconnoitering his movements, discovered the old gentleman’s secret, and visiting his stores as often as they thought proper, they escaped detection by sealing the door again, and placing through the hole the signet where he had left it.

[62]. The conduct of Eunus and his followers, when, immediately after their revolt, they took possession of the city of Euna, presented the most striking contrast with this moderation of the Chian slaves: they pillaged the houses, and, without distinction of age or sex, slaughtered the inhabitants, plucking the infants from the breasts, and dashing them to the ground. Over part of their atrocities the historian modestly drops a veil: Εἰς δὲ τὰς γυναῖκας observes he, οὐδ᾽ ἔστιν εἰπειν (καὶ τότε βλεπόντων τῶν ἀνδρῶν) ὅσα ἐνύβριζόν τε καὶ ἐνησέλγαινον, πολλοῦ αὐτοῖς πλήθους τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς πόλεως δούλων προστεθέντος οἱ καὶ κατὰ τῶν κυρίων πρότερον τὰ ἔσχατα ἐνδεικνύμενοι οὕτω πρὸς τὸν τῶν ἄλλων φόνον ετρέποντο. Diodor. Sicul. ap. Phot. Biblioth. p. 385.

[63]. The Romans, it must be owned, conducted the war against Eunus, who had adopted the style and title of a king, in a manner more worthy of the republic. The number of the insurgents amounted at one time to sixty thousand men, who, armed with axes, slings, stakes, and cooking-spits, defeated several armies, and carried on hostilities during upwards of three years. Pursuing them, however, without relaxation, the state prevailed at length, utterly crushed the insurrection, and carried Eunus a prisoner to Rome, where, according to Plutarch, he, like the dictator, Sylla, was devoured by vermin: Εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ των ἀπ´ οὐδενὸς μὲν χρηστοῦ γνωρίμων δ´ ἄλλως ἐπιμνησθῆναι, λέγεται τὸν ἄρξαντα τοῦ δουλικοῦ πολέμου περὶ Σικελίαν δραπέτην, Εὔνουν ὄνομα μετὰ τὴν ἄλωσιν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀγόμενον ὑπὸ φθειριάσεως ἀποθανεῖν. Vit. Syl. § 36. Cf. Diod. Sicul. 34. Ap. Phot. Biblioth. 386. The conclusion of the war by Perperna is thus related by Florus: Tandem Perperna imperatore supplicium de eis sumptum est. Hic enim victos et apud Eunam novissimè obsessos quum fame quasi pestilentia consumpsisset reliquias latronum compedibus catenis religavit, crucibusque punivit fuitque de servis ovatione contentus, ne dignitatem triumphi servili inscriptione violaret. iii. 19.

[64]. Nymphiodor. ap. Athen. vi. 88, sqq.

[65]. Herod. viii. 105.

[66]. Athen. vi. 91.

[67]. Athen. vi. 92.

[68]. For the condition of the public slaves δημόσιοι see the notes on Demosth. Olynth. ii. 7. Orat. Att. t. v. p. 45.

[69]. Occasionally we find them sleeping with their masters in the same apartment, which, doubtless, resembled the chambre de ménage of the old French. Aristoph. Nub. 5, et Schol.

[70]. Ap. Athen. vi. 92.

[71]. Lycurg. Frag. xi. Orat. Att. iv. 482. Cf. Meurs. Them. Att. ii. 11. Petit. Legg. Att. vi. 5. 470. Plato was less just to them than the laws of his country. If, in his imaginary state, a slave killed a slave in self-defence he was judged innocent; if a freeman, he was to be put to death like a parricide. De Legg. t. viii. p. 150.

[72]. Cont. Mid. § 14.

[73]. Petit. Legg. Att. ii. 6, p. 179.

[74]. Schol. Arist. Vesp. 444. In rainy weather they wore dog-skin caps, id. ib. δοῦλος ὤν κόμην, ἔχεις, was a proverb applied to persons acting irrationally. Suid. Port. t. i. p. 769.

[75]. Etymol. Mag. 90. 55.

[76]. Meurs. Them. Att. ii. 11. 85, seq. with the authors there cited.

[77]. Athen. vi. 81.

[78]. Aristoph. Plut. 21.

[79]. The thongs of whips used in scourging slaves, had sometimes we find small pieces of bronze fastened at the end. Caylus, Rec. D’Antiq. ii. p. 334. Among the Tyrrhenians, slaves were absurdly beaten to the sound of music. Plut. De Cohibend. Irâ. § 11.

[80]. Meurs. Them. Att. ii. 11.

[81]. Xenophon, in fact, complains that they could not be struck:—οὔτε πατάξαι ἔξεστιν αὐτόθι. De Rep. Athen. i. 10. Cf. Muret. in Arist. Ethic. v. p. 434, sqq. Elsewhere in Greece the beating of slaves would appear to have been a matter of every day occurrence. Plut. De Cohibend. Irâ. § 15.

[82]. Aristoph. Nub. 6, et Schol. When a slave once ran away from Diogenes he would not pursue him, but observed, that it would be a frightful thing if Diogenes could not do without the slave, since the slave could do without Diogenes. Stob. Florileg. Tit. 62. 47.

[83]. They would appear to have made every slave who joined them a citizen of Sunium, whence the proverb, “Slaves to-day, and Sunians to-morrow.” Athen. vi. 83. On one occasion certain slaves took possession of a number of galleys, and infested the coast of Italy as pirates. 87.

[84]. Athen. vi. 104.

[85]. Müll. Dor. ii. 37. Among the Romans, slaves were thought to be incapable of contracting marriage, properly so called. Porrò ad militaris contubernii similitudinem quandam factum est ut, cùm inter servos jure Romano veræ nuptiæ dici nequeant, servile connubium non matrimonium, ut inter liberos, sed, uti mera cohabitatio, contubernium diceretur. Torrent. in Suet. Vesp. p. 362.

[86]. Xen. Œcon. ix. 5. Aristot. Œcon. i. 5, (who says that slaves were to be bound by the pledge of children.) Columell. i. 8. 5.

[87]. Πεφύκαμεν γὰρ καὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν μᾶλλον πιστεύειν τοῖς οἴκοι γεννηθεῖσι καὶ τραφεῖσιν ἤ οὕς ἄν κτησώμεθα πριάμενοι. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 2.

[88]. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 1309.

[89]. Plut. Thes. § 36. With the commentators on Pollux. t. v. p. 232, seq. Cf. Phil. Jud. Lib. quisq. virt. Stud. t. ii. p. 467. ed. Mangey. Grot. Le Droit de la Guerre et de la Paix, l. iii. ch. 7. § 8, with the notes of Barbeyrac.

[90]. Pollux. vii. 13. Such as took refuge at the Altar of Hestia or the domestic hearth were denominated ἑδρῖται. Etymol. Mag. 316, 52.

[91]. In modern times the Turks claim the credit of superior humanity towards their slaves who, through marriage with their masters’ sons or daughters, often rise to the highest degree of opulence and distinction. Most of the Pashas and great officers of state have sprung from a servile origin. The same thing may be said of the Sultanas and principal ladies of the empire; for which reason the Circassian princes and nobles have always been ambitious to have one at least of their daughters established in a Turkish harem. Habesci, State of the Ottoman Empire, chap. 31. p. 396, sqq. A correspondent of the Malta Times, writing from Turkey, observes: “Should the slave object to remain with his master, he himself has the power to go to the market and declare he wishes to be sold. The master never opposes this, and it proves such a check upon him that he seldom dares even to scold his slave.” Times, February 28, 1842. All this must be understood, however, with considerable reserve, since no traveller can pass through the Ottoman Empire without discovering numerous examples of the cruelty of masters towards their domestics.

[92]. Ἐν δὲ ταῖς νουμηνίαις οἱ δοῦλοι ἐπωλούντο. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 43. The auctioneer or slave-broker (προπάτωρ) was answerable at law for the quality of the persons whom he sold; that is, that they corresponded with the description given of them in the catalogue. Poll. vii. 11. 12. Cf. Casaub. ad Theoph. Charact. p. 257, and Scaliger on the word Propula ad Virg. Cul. 411. p. 1255, seq. Slaves were sometimes sold in the temple of Castor and Polydeukes. Dem. in Steph. i. § 23.

[93]. Diogen. Laert. vi. 1. 4.

[94]. Harpocrat. v. κύκλοι. p. 108. Vales. Cf. Poll. vii. 11.

[95]. Poll. vii. 14, seq.

[96]. Cf. Demosth. adv. Spud. § 3.

[97]. Xenoph. Mem. ii. 5. 2.

[98]. Pub. Econ. of Athens, i. 92.

[99]. Suid. v. ἱμαῖον ᾆσμα, t. i. p. 1239. c. Poll. vii. 180. Of the mill-houses of the ancients we have the following description in Apuleius: “Ibi complurium jumentorum multivii circuitus intorquebant molas ambage varia; nec die tantum, verum perpeti etiam nocte prorsus instabili machinarum vertigine lucubrabant perviligem farinam.” He then sketches a frightful picture of the slaves who work there: “Homunculi vibicibus livedinis totam cutem depicti, dorsumque plagosum scissili centunculo magis inumbrati, quàm obtecti; nonnulli exiguo tegili tantummodo pubem injecti, cuncti tamen sic tunicati, ut essent per pannulos manifesti; frontes literati, et capillum semirasi, et pedes annulati.” Metamorph. ix. p. 204, seq. Cf. Pignor. De Servis, p. 9, seq.

[100]. In Pantænet. §§ 2. 5. Barthelémy, however, who had curiously examined the subject, supposes, that a mina was worth from 300 to 600 drachmæ. Voy. du J. Anach. v. 35.

[101]. Pub. Econ. of Athens, i. 94.

[102]. Orat. in Aphob. § 2.

[103]. Boeckh Pub. Econ. of Athen. i. 92, sqq.

[104]. Rudig. ad Dem. Olynth. B. § 7. Etymol. Mag. 265. 29, seq.

[105]. Dissen. ad Fragm. Pind. p. 640.

[106]. See a representation of sacred female slaves dancing, in Zoëga, Bassi Relievi. Tav. 20, seq.

[107]. Vid. Stock. ad Dem. Olynth. B. § 7. Ulp. ad loc. Harpocrat. v. δημόσιος. Vales. ad Maussac. p. 374.

[108]. Lycurg. cont. Leocrat. § 9. Antiph. de Cæd. Herod. § 6. On the extreme uncertainty of evidence extracted by the torture, see Sir John Fortescue, de Laud. Leg. Angl. c. 22.

[109]. Etym. Mag. 268. 25.

[110]. Etym. Mag. 780. 40, sqq.

[111]. Etym. Mag. 285. 6. Suid. v. ἀργυρώνη. t. i. p. 416. a.

[112]. Suid. v. οἰκότριψ. t. ii. p. 278. b. Etym. Mag. 598. 15. Ammonius is more explicit:—οἰκότριψ καὶ οἰκέτης διαφέρει. Οἰκότριψ μὲν γὰρ, ὁ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ διατρεφόμενος, ὃν ἡμεῖς θρεπτὸν καλοῦμεν· οἰκέτης δὲ, ὁ δοῦλος ὁ ὠνητός· παρὰ δὲ Σόλωνι ἐν τοῖς ἄξοσιν οἰκεὺς κέκληται ὁ οἰκότριψ. De Adfin. Vocab. Differ. p. 101, seq. See, also, Valckenaër, Animadvers. c. iii. p. 172, sqq. Thom. Magist. v. οἰκότριψ. p. 645. The estimation in which they were held may be learned from Photius:—οἰκότριβες, οἱ ἐκ δούλων δοῦλοι, οἱ καὶ οἰκογενεῖς λέγονται· νομίθοντο δὲ τὸ παλαιὸν ἀτιμότεροι τῶν οἰκετὼν, ὅτι οἱ μὲν ἐκ δούλων, οἱ δὲ ἐξ ἐλευθέρων ἐγένοντο, καὶ οἱ μὲν ἀεὶ δοῦλοι, οἱ δὲ ὕστεροι.

[113]. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 768. Etym. Mag. 590. 14. Suid. v. οἰκογενὴς. t. ii. p. 278. a.

[114]. Cf. Etym. Mag. 745. 13, sqq.

[115]. Suid. v. παιδίσκη. t. ii. p. 472. a.

[116]. Poll. iii. 76. Annot. t. iv. p. 562, seq. There was over the female slaves of the household an inspector, called σκοπὸς. Etym. Mag. 718. 51.

[117]. Cf. Meurs. Cret. p. 192.

[118]. Οἰκέται οὐ μόνον οἱ δοῦλοι, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντες οἱ ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ, γυνὴ καὶ τέκνα. Ἡρόδοτος ἐν τῇ ὀγδόῃ· ἢν κομίσας τοὺς οἰκέτας οἰκέῃ ἐκείνη· ὥστε ὑποδεξάμενον τοὺς λόγους τὸν Πανιώνιον, κομίσαι τὰ τέκνα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα. Thom. Magist. p. 644. Suid. v. οἰκέται. t. ii. p. 276. b.

[119]. Etym. Mag. 284. 49.

[120]. Etym. Mag. 446. 41.

[121]. Dem. cont. Mid. § 44.

[122]. Athen. vi. 93.

[123]. Sch. Aristoph. Plut. 768, with the commentators. Pollux, iii. 77.

[124]. Cf. Vales. ad Harpocrat. p. 298.

[125]. Varro, De Re Rust. i. 54. Colum. xii. 40. Cato. 25.

[126]. See Dioscorid. v. 13.

[127]. A drink precisely similar, and manufactured in the same manner, is known in the wine districts of France under the name of piquette. Commonly, also, it is there appropriated to the use of the domestics. Among the ancient Egyptians the poor, and, à fortiori, it may be conjectured, the slaves were condemned to rely upon beer for the delights of intoxication. Athen. i. 61.

[128]. Nevertheless, Trygæos considers it a misfortune to be confined to this kind of food, since he wishes that the armourers, who desire that their trade may flourish, might fall into the hands of robbers, and be dieted on barley-bread:—ληφθεὶς ὑπὸ ληστῶν ἐθίοι κριθὰς μόνας. Pac. Aristoph. 448. Küst. Vid. Schol. 447. But this was to wish them long life and sharp senses, since the longevity and keen sight of the Chaldæans, which enabled them, I suppose, to look into futurity, are chiefly attributed to their bannocks of barley-meal. Luc. Macrob. § 5. Cf. Poll. ii. 353. Thucyd. iii. 49. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 816. We find, from the same scholiast, (Eq. 488.) that barley-dough was designated by a particular term, φύραμα. Cf. Athen. ix. 67.

[129]. Luc. Quomod. Hist. Sit conscrib. § 20, where the sophist ridicules a slave who, having inherited his master’s property, neglected the dainties set before him, such as poultry, pork, and game, and fell to on the articles of his former diet. Similar traits were exhibited by the French servants, who made great fortunes during the Mississippi scheme. For example, a footman who had enriched himself and purchased a carriage, instead of entering got up behind it. Lord John Russell. Hist. of Europe, t. ii. p. 217.

[130]. Athen. viii. 15. Servile names were usually brief, as Mida, Phryx, &c. Schol. Arist. Vesp. 433. Cf. Strab. l. vii. t. i. p. 467. a. Casaub.

[131]. Euripides describes in a few verses the two very different views taken of servitude by the freeman and the slave:

Orest. Δοῦλος ὢν φοβεῖ τὸν Ἄιδην

ὅς σ’ ἀπαλλάξ εκ κακῶν.

Phryx. Πᾶρ’ ἀνὴρ κἂν δοῦλος

ἦι τις ἥδεται τὸ φῶς ὁρῶν.

Orest. 1537, sqq.

The observation of the Phrygian is just; for God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, mitigates also the misery of the slave, and enables him to look upon the light with something like joy.

[132]. Pignor. De Serv. p. 190. In illustration of the fondness of certain persons for animals, it is related, that there was an old lady in Egypt who habitually slept with a crocodile. Plut. Solert. Anim. § 23.

[133]. De Merced. Conduct. § 34.

[134]. Pignor. De Serv. p. 190. Athen. i. 20.

[135]. Macrob. Saturn. ii. 5.

[136]. Manil. v. p. 117. v. 28. ed. Scalig.

[137]. Arist. Polit. i. 2. Cf. Dem. adv. Leochar. § 20.

[138]. Diog. Laert. ix. 10. 60.

[139]. This Anaxarchos, upon whom complaisant antiquity bestowed the name of philosopher, was in reality nothing but a libertine courtier, whose manners and tastes are thus described by Clearchos of Soli: Τῶν Εὐδαιμονικῶν καλουμένον Ἀναξάρχω διὰ τὴν τῶν χορηγησάντων ἄγνοιαν περιπεσούσης ἐξουσίας, γυμνὴ μὲν ᾠνοχόει παιδίσκη πρόσηβος, ἡ προκριθεῖσα διαφέρειν ὥρᾳ τῶν ἄλλων· ἀνασύρουσα πρὸς ἀλήθειαν τὴν τῶν οὕτως αὐτῇ χρωμένων ἀκρασίαν· ὁ δὲ σιτοποιὸς χειρίδας ἔχων, καὶ περὶ τῷ στόματι κημὸν, ἔτριβέ τὸ σταῖς, ἵνα μηδὲ ἱδρὼς ἐπιῤῥέῃ, μήτε τοῖς φυράμασιν ὁ τρίβων ἐμπνέοι. Athen. xii. 70.

[140]. Poll. vii. 20. x. 112. Suid. v. παυσικάπη. t. ii. p. 467. b. This and similar practices are noticed by M. Grégoire. “Les anciens mettoient aux esclaves, (v. Fabretti Inscrip. Antiq. Explic. p. 522,) comme on met aux chiens, des colliers ou cercles de fer, sur lesquels étoient gravés les noms, profession et demeure du propriétaire, avec invitation de les ramener à leurs maîtres en cas de fuite. Dans le Supplément aux Antiquités Grecques et Romaines de Poleni, on peut lire diverses inscriptions de ce genre.(Utriusque Thesauri Antiquitatem, etc., nova supplementa, ab J. Poleno, t. iv. p. 1247.)Les colons avoient enchéri sur les anciens en inventions, pour torturer leur semblables: telle est, par example, l’énorme triangle de fer au cou des nègres, pour les empêcher de fuir. Cependant, la coutume de museler les esclaves, de leur cadenasser la bouche afin qu’ils ne puissent se désaltérer en suçant une canne à sucre, n’est qu’une imitation de l’antiquité, car Suidas et Pollux nous apprennent qu’on leur mettoit au cou une machine, nommé pausicape, en forme de roue, qui les empêchoit de porter la main à la bouche et de manger de la farine lorsqu’on les occupoit à tourner la meule.” De la Domesticité chez les Peuples Anciens et Modernes, p. 6. Cf. Pignor. de Servis, p. 15, seq.

[141]. Pac. 12. seq.

Ιδού,

Ἑνὸς μὲν, ὦνδρες[ὦνδρες], ἀπολελῦσθαί μοι δοκῶ.

Οὐδεις γὰρ ἂν φαίη με μάττοντ᾽ ἐσθίειν.

Upon which the Scholiast remarks: εἰώθασι γὰρ ἅμα τῳ μάρτειν, ἐσθίειν.

[142]. Athen. viii. 41.

[143]. Athen. viii. 43.

[144]. Mention is also made of female porters. Dem. in Ev. et Mnes. § 10.

[145]. The scene in which Callias’s eunuch-porter is introduced to us is painted in Plato’s liveliest manner. This ancient Bababalouk exhibits all the crabbedness of the keeper of an oriental harem; and as we listen to him bawling at Socrates through the door, we appear to be transported to the establishment of the Emir Fakreddin. Δοκεῖ οὖν μοι, ὁ θυρωρός, εὐνοῦχός[εὐνοῦχός] τις, κατήκουεν ἡμῶν· κινδυνεύει δὲ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν σοφιστῶν ἄχθεσθαι γοῦν ἐκρούσαμεν τὴν θύραν, ἀνοίξας καὶ ἰδων ἡμᾶς, Ἔα, ἔφη, σοφισταί[σοφισταί] τινες· οὐ σχολὴ αὐτῷ. Καὶ ἁμα ἀμφοῖν τοῖν χεροῖν τὴν θύραν πάνυ προθύμως ὡς οἷός τ᾽ ἦν ἐπήραξε. Καὶ ἡμεῖς πάλιν ἐκρούομεν. καὶ ὃς ἐγκεκλῃμένης τῆς θύρας ἀποκρινόμενος εἶπεν, Ὦ ἄνθρωποι, ἔφη, οὐκ ἀκηκόατε ὅτι οὐ σχολὴ αὐτῷ; Ἀλλ᾽ ὠγαθέ[ὠγαθέ], ἔφην ἐγώ, οὔτε παρὰ Καλλίαν ‘ἀλλ᾽ ὠγαθέ,’ ἥκομεν οὔτε σοφισταί ἐσμεν, ἀλλὰ θάῤῥει· Πρωταγόραν γάρ τι δεόμενοι ἰδεῖν ἢλθομεν. εἰσάγγειλον οὖν. Μόγις οὖν ποτὲ ἡμῖν ἄνθρωπος ἀνέωξε τὴν θύραν. Protag. t. i. p. 159, seq.

[146]. Odyss. υ. 149. Hist. of Greece, i. 186. Cf. Athen. iii. 73.

[147]. Acharn. 272. The principle on which names were bestowed upon slaves is thus explained by Helladius: οἱ κωμικοὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας τὸ μὲν πλέον ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους κάλουν οἷον Σύρον καρίωνα Μίδαν Γέταν καὶ τὰ ὅμοια, ἐκαλουν δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐξ ἐπιθέτων, ὡς ἀπὸ τοῦ χρώματος μὲν Πυῤῥιαν καὶ Ξανθίαν ἀπὸ τοῦ τρόπου δὲ Παρμένωνα καὶ Πιστὸν καὶ Δρόμωνα. ἐκάλουν δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐν ᾗ ὠνήσαντο τὸν οἰκέτην, ἐξ οὗ καὶ τοὺς Νουμηνίας ὠνόμαζον. Chrestomath. ap. Phot. Bib. 532. b. 36, seq. See also the note of Meursius. p. 57.

[148]. Athen. iv. 29.

[149]. Rhetoric. ad Heren.

[150]. Sat. v. 52, seq.

[151]. Theoph. Char. p. 58, et ad Casaub. loc. p. 329, seq.

[152]. Συνηκολούθουν δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἄνθρωποι δύο στρωματόδεσμα φέροντες, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἑτέρῳ τούτων, ὁς αὐτος ἔφη, τάλαντον ἐνῆν ἀργυρίου. De Fals. Legat. 31.

[153]. Demosth. cont. Mid. § 44.

[154]. Οὐκ ἐξῆν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις[Ἀθηναίοις] ἀργὸν τρέφειν οἰκέτην διόπερ οἱ μὲν αὐλοποιοὺς, οἱ δὲ μαχαιροποιοὺς εἷχον τοὺς δούλους. Μειδίας δὲ τοὺς τοσούτους ἀργοὺς περιάγων, τοὺς τυράννους μιμεῖται, δορυφορούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν οἰκετῶν. Ulp. in Demosth. cont. Mid. § 44. Orat. Att. t. x. p. 225. Here we see the reason why Demosthenes inveighed against Meidias on account of the number of his followers.

[155]. Ad. Theoph. Char. p. 248.

[156]. Montaigne, Essais, iv. 224. Athen. iii. 72. Plut. De Adulat. et Amic. § 3.

CHAPTER VIII.
SERFS OF SPARTA, CRETE, THESSALY, ETC.

If we now pass from the consideration of slavery in the comparatively mild form which it assumed in Attica to an examination of the state of the Laconian Helots, we shall discover the spirit which actuated the two governments to present a still broader contrast in this, the lowest stage of its influence, than when operating upon the nobler citizens on the great arena of public life.

Among certain scholars on the continent it appears to be very much the fashion to oppose an invincible scepticism to the testimony of ancient writers, as often as that testimony makes against any theory they desire to establish; and on the subject of the Helots several of the ablest authors among them have adopted an opinion which cannot be supported without annihilating several Greek authors, who, in their opinion, prophesy as awkwardly as Calchas did for the peace of Agamemnon.

Among these the principal is Mr. Müller, from whom I have the misfortune to differ on many points, but without in the least disparaging his ability or his learning, for both of which I entertain the highest respect.[^[157]]

As, however, he has adopted a very peculiar system in the interpretation of antiquity, which, though plausible and ingenious, seems ill-calculated to lead to truth, I have found it impossible to participate on many important points the views which he maintains, more especially on the subject of the Helots. In fact, with all his talents and sagacity he has chosen rather to become an advocate than an historian, and pushes so far his eagerness to defend his favourite people, as not unfrequently to provoke a smile. In his derivation of the term Helot, however, he is perhaps correct,[^[158]] it being more probable that it should have sprung from an ancient word signifying “The Prisoners” than from the name of the town. In the absence of all testimony we might likewise entertain the conjecture, “that they were an aboriginal race subdued at a very early period, and which immediately passed over as slaves to the Doric conquerors.” But we have the weighty authority of Theopompos to oppose to this inference, and the words of this historian[^[159]] attentively considered would lead to the etymology of the name given by Müller:—“having taken them prisoners,” he says, “they called them εἵλωτες.” They were, however, Greeks of the Achaian race, who fell, together with the land, into the power of the new-comers, so that the excuse of only tyrannising over a foreign and half-savage race is wanting to the Spartans, which was the object aimed at by Mr. Müller’s ingenious conjecture.

In considering the condition of the Helots, I shall not affect, with the historian of the Doric race,[^[160]] “to range their political rights and personal treatment,” under separate heads; in the first place because, strictly speaking, they had no political rights, and, secondly, because in the treatment they experienced consists whatever is peculiar in their position. Several of this learned historian’s notions on the Lacedæmonian serfs appear to be in direct contradiction with those of the writers from whom all we know concerning the Helots is obtained. Of this he seems to be conscious, and in the following way endeavours to bring discredit on them; assuming as a settled thing, that the Helots must have possessed political rights, he concludes that they “were doubtless exactly defined by law and custom, though the expressions made use of by ancient authors are frequently vague and ambiguous.”[^[161]] Whether this be the case or not we shall presently see. The remark of Ephoros is, that “they were in a certain point of view public slaves. Their possessor could neither liberate them nor sell them beyond the borders.” On this passage which he quotes,[^[162]] the historian raises a superstructure which it will by no means support. “From this,” he says, “it is evident, that they were considered as belonging properly to the state, which, to a certain degree, permitted them to be possessed, and apportioned them out to individuals, reserving to itself the power of enfranchising them.”[^[163]]

The contrary I think is the inference. They were the property of individuals, but the state reserved to itself the right of enfranchising them and preventing their emancipation, lest persons should be found who, like Marcus Porcius, Cato,[^[164]] and the Dutch at the Cape, would sell or give them their liberty when too old to labour. “But to sell them out of the country,” says Mr. Müller, “was not in the power even of the state.” It is true there was an ancient law prohibiting the exportation of the Helots,[^[165]] but the same authority which enacted that law could have abrogated it. Had Sparta then chosen to convert her Helots into an article of traffic, who or what was to prevent her? Since she arrogated to herself the right of beating, maiming, and putting them to death,[^[166]] though completely innocent, is it to be supposed that, had it suited her policy, she would have hesitated to sell them? And after all are we quite certain that these unhappy people were not frequently sold into foreign lands? On the contrary, we find, that a regular trade was carried on in female Helots, who were exported into all the neighbouring countries for nurses.[^[167]] Thus it appears that the state both had and exercised the power to convert its serfs into merchandise.

That the males also were not exported like cattle, than which they were far worse treated, was owing simply to the calculation, that it would be more profitable to retain them. For, as the Spartans possessed estates, which personally they never cultivated, the Helots, who equally belonged to them, were stationed throughout the country upon those estates, which it was their business to till for the owners. To live it was of course necessary that they should eat, and therefore a portion of the produce was abandoned to them, according to Tyrtæos,[^[168]] the half, a division which must have borne very hard upon them, since their numbers were five times greater than those of the Spartans.[^[169]] However, even in this arrangement, the learned historian discovers something to praise “as this quantity had been definitively settled at a very early period (to raise the amount being forbidden under very heavy imprecations) the Helots were the persons who profited by a good and lost by a bad harvest, which must have been to them an encouragement to industry and good husbandry; a motive which would have been wanting if the profit and loss had merely affected the landlords.”[^[170]] But on the res rusticæ the notions of this writer are somewhat confused. For in another place he remarks that, owing to the “usurpations of the successive conquerors of Peloponnesos, agriculture was kept in a constant state of dependence and obscurity, so that we seldom hear of the improvement of the country, which is a necessary part of the husbandman’s business.” It therefore did not flourish in Laconia. No, says the historian, that is not the conclusion we must come to, for, notwithstanding that we never hear of any improvements in it, “agriculture was always followed with great energy and success!”[^[171]]

There appear to have been instances of Helots becoming comparatively wealthy in spite of the oppressions they endured: but so we have known peasants growing rich in the worst despotisms of the East, and such too was in the middle ages the case with the Jews, notwithstanding the terrible persecutions and cruelties they endured. This fact, therefore, only proves that no pressure of hardship or ill-usage can entirely destroy the elasticity of the spirit; and no doubt, like all slaves, the Helots sought to soften their miseries by the gratification which a sense of property procures even in bondage to the sordid mind.[^[172]] “By means of the rich produce of the land, and in part by plunder obtained in war, they collected a considerable property, to the attainment of which almost every access was closed to the Spartans.”[^[173]] But of what value is property to a man who is himself the property of another? Besides, the expression[expression] of the historian in this place seems calculated to lead to erroneous conclusions respecting the Spartans, who, so far from being debarred the means of amassing wealth,[^[174]] rose frequently to extraordinary opulence, insomuch that this self-denying community came at length to be the richest in Greece.[^[175]] To assume that the Helots, like the Thessalian Penestæ,[^[176]] enjoyed means of augmenting their possessions superior to those permitted themselves by their masters, is to propagate an error which must vitiate our whole conception of the Lacedæmonian commonwealth.

It is confessed that very little intercourse between the Spartans and the Helots took place, at least in earlier times; for afterwards, when the masters themselves quitted the capital, resided on their estates,[^[177]] and took to husbandry, the link must necessarily have been more closely drawn. And this circumstance renders more probable the account transmitted to us of Spartan harshness towards them. Intercommunion would have begotten more humane feelings in the master, more attachment in the slave. For like other men the Spartans felt the influence of intimacy, as is proved by their practice of enfranchising the companions of their childhood. They paid, therefore, an involuntary compliment to their own hearts when they kept the Helots at a distance, that they might be able to tyrannise over them. They could not have resisted the power of close contact, and acted like Messallina, who fled in tears from the room where a man was pleading for his life, lest she should forgive him, whispering as she went to her instrument that the accused must not be suffered to escape nevertheless.[^[178]] However, a certain number of Helots were retained in the city as personal attendants on the Spartans, and there waited at the public tables, and were lent by one person to another,[^[179]] like so many dogs, or oxen; although it seems probable that all the drudgery of the capital was not performed by the Helots alone, but that along with them were associated other classes of domestic slaves,[^[180]] on whose history and condition antiquity affords us little or no light. But as the Spartans were constantly making prisoners in their wars with the neighbouring states, which were occasionally restored at the termination of hostilities, we appear to be authorized in concluding, that these captives were commonly reduced to servitude in Laconia, whether employed in household labours,[^[181]] or dispersed among the Helots in the field.

Another service the Helots performed for their masters, which necessarily produced some degree of intimacy, I mean the military service in which they fought and bled by their side.[^[182]] The state was, no doubt, reluctant to admit them among the Hoplitæ, or heavy-armed, where the discipline was rigorous, and their weapons would have placed them on a level with their oppressors. But even this was sometimes hazarded, as in the reinforcements forwarded to Gyleppus, at Syracuse,[^[183]] when six hundred Neodomades and picked Helots were complimented with this dangerous distinction. As light troops, however, they almost invariably formed the majority of the Lacedæmonian forces. In other countries, where the subject races were more humanely treated, no fear was entertained at entrusting them with arms. Among the Dardanians, for example, where it was not uncommon for a private individual to possess a thousand slaves, or more, they in time of peace cultivated the land, and in war filled the ranks of the army, their masters serving as officers.[^[184]]

From this circumstance one of two things must be inferred; either that the Dardanians considered them in the light of subjects, as we do the natives of India, where large armies are officered by Englishmen, or that that people understood better than any other in antiquity the art of ruling over men.

Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Plutarch, and a number of other writers agree in convicting the Spartans of great barbarity towards their bondsmen, differing, however, as to the degree of that barbarity. But their “philanthropic views”[^[185]] are discarded by the historian, who with the skill of an able pleader, overlooks these great writers, whom he could not treat with so much want of ceremony, to bring forward the picture of Myron of Priene, whose history he denominates a romance, and whose testimony he contumeliously rejects. In order the more completely, as he thinks, to demolish this humble writer he quotes the following passage of his work preserved by Athenæus: “The Helots perform for the Spartans every ignominious service. They are compelled to wear a cap of dog-skin,[^[186]] to bear a covering of sheep-skin, and are severely beaten every year without having committed any fault, in order that they may never forget they are slaves. In addition to this, those amongst[amongst] them who, either by their stature or their beauty, raise themselves above the condition of a slave are condemned to death, and the masters who do not destroy the most manly of them are liable to punishment.”[^[187]] The accusation here made is a serious one, and the apologist naturally feels his indignation kindle against its author. In this state of mind he employs very harsh language, charges Myron with “ignorance and partiality,” and altogether speaks as if he were in possession of facts wherewith to demolish the Prenian’s statement. But has he any? Not a single one. He misunderstands entirely the gist of Myron’s words, in the matter of the dog-skin cap, and then, on the strength of his own error, presumes to accuse him of misrepresentation. It is at the first blush evident that Myron considered the hardship to consist, not in the wearing of the cap, but in being compelled to wear it. Mr. Müller’s examples, consequently, are nothing to the purpose; they simply prove that other people had endured similar hardships, (the mention of Laërtes is superfluous,) nevertheless, without having uttered one syllable to justify his triumph, he proceeds with much self-satisfaction to remark, that “since Myron manifestly misrepresents this circumstance, it is very probable that his other objections are founded in error.”[^[188]]

But the allegations of Myron, as the reader will perceive, remain not only untouched, but more confirmed and established than ever by such a defence. It happens, in fact, that they are true to the letter, and what is more, are by no means the gravest imputation which can be substantiated against the Dorian model-state. We shall proceed, however, step by step examining fairly, and in order, the charges and the defence. Plutarch,[^[189]] whose testimony, when favourable, is unhesitatingly accepted, “relates that the Helots were compelled to intoxicate themselves, and perform indecent dances as a warning to the Spartan youth.”[^[190]] Shall we credit Plutarch? No we must not; because “common sense is opposed to so absurd a method of education.” But if everything in history which we may determine to be opposed to common sense were on that account to be rejected, we should make sad inroads upon the domains of antiquity. That which increases the ridicule of the practice is, that from among those same Helots they selected tutors for their younger children,[^[191]] as well as companions, so that in the very article wherein Xenophon[^[192]] discovered the superiority of Lycurgus’s educational system, it was completely on a level with that of the other Greeks, habituating the youth to the intimacy and government of slaves.[^[193]]

If, however, the relation of Plutarch stood alone, its force would be less, though with no face could we reject it while admitting in other respects his favourable testimony. But from many authors, besides him, it is clear, that to demoralise the Helots was the constant policy of Sparta. Thus when the Thasians brought a number of useless dainties to Agesilaos and his army: “Give them,” said he, “to those Helots, whom it is better to corrupt than ourselves.”[^[194]] Consistently with the same system, and the more completely to debase their minds, they were commanded to sing obscene songs and perform indecent jigs, while the Pyrrhic dance and every warlike lay was forbidden them. In proof of this, it is related, that when the Thebans, under Epaminondas, invaded Laconia, and made prisoners a number of the Helots, they commanded them to sing them some of the songs of Sparta, of Spendon, for example, or Alcman, or Terpander. But the Helots[^[195]] professed their inability, observing, that the acquisition of those lays was forbidden them. In short, to adopt the words of Theopompos, they were at all times cruelly and bitterly treated;[^[196]] deluded, sometimes, from the protection of sanctuary by perjury, and then coolly assassinated in contempt of religion and oaths, as in the case of those suppliants who took refuge in the temple of Poseidon at Tænaros.[^[197]]

But all this harsh usage was mild compared with other injuries which the laws of Sparta inflicted on them. The reader will perceive that I am about to speak of the Crypteia, not one feature of which, to my mind, has been softened or explained away, or rendered doubtful by the ingenious but very useless special pleading of some distinguished scholars among our contemporaries.[^[198]] Mr. Müller, with much intrepidity, leads the van of Sparta’s defenders, and, by an artifice not unfamiliar to rhetoricians, seeks to beat down the authorities on which belief in the Crypteia rests. He affects to think slightingly of their means of obtaining information, though certainly, in this respect, at least, the very meanest of them possessed incalculable advantages over himself. However, of Isocrates he thus unceremoniously disposes: “Isocrates speaks of this institution in a very confused manner and from mere report.”[^[199]] On the contrary, this “old man eloquent,” as Milton affectionately terms him, luminously, (would that Mr. Müller and I possessed equal art!) and upon the best authorities,[^[200]] sketches the history of the Lacedæmonian government, its injustice, its oppressions; and concludes by describing the annual massacre of the Helots. It is worthy of remark, that, with Aristotle,[^[201]] he attributes to the Ephori the direction of this servile war, in which the reins of slaughter were loosed or tightened by their authority.

The relation, however, of Isocrates, who probably descended to particulars, appears not to have come down to us entire. Plutarch, though he be the panegyrist, rather than the faithful historian, of Sparta, has supplied the deficiency. He does so, indeed, reluctantly; trumpets in the narration with epic flourishes, seeking, by all the art he is master of, to shield his beloved Lycurgus from the stern but deserved rebuke of Plato.[^[202]] Too honest, however, was the old Bœotian entirely to suppress the truth. So that, at length, after much preparation, the massacre is described hurriedly, briefly, with vehement unwillingness, but, for that very reason, with the more terrible effect.

Having enumerated the regulations affecting the free citizens, “In these,” he says, “there is no trace of that injustice and griping ambition which some object to the institutions of Lycurgus, considering them well adapted to beget bravery though not honest principles. It was probably the institution of the Crypteia (if as Aristotle contends, it proceeded from Lycurgus) that inspired Plato with such an opinion of the legislator and his laws. According to this ordinance the rulers, selecting from among the youths those most distinguished for ability, sent them forth armed with daggers and furnished with the necessary provisions, to scour the country, separating and concealing themselves in unfrequented places by day, but issuing out at night and slaughtering all such of the Helots as they found abroad. Sometimes, indeed, they fell upon them while engaged in their rural labours in the fields, and there cut off the best and bravest of the race.”[^[203]] Plutarch felt that connected with this system, as flowing from the same principle of policy and designed to effect the same purpose, were those extensive massacres recorded in history, by one of which more than two thousand of those unhappy men, having been insidiously deluded into the assertion of sentiments conformable to the gallant actions they had performed in the service of the state,[^[204]] were removed in a day. Lulled by the gift of freedom, crowned, smiled upon, they were conducted to the temples, as if to implicate the very gods in the treachery:—and then suddenly they disappeared; nor to this hour has the fate which overtook them been revealed.[^[205]] Compared with this the slaughter of the Janisaries appears less culpable.

But had Sparta no apology to offer, for these actions, to humanity? Her rulers discovered one which appears to have satisfied their own consciences. Every year, on taking office, the Ephori, formally, in their good city of Sparta, declared war against their unarmed and unhappy vassals, “that they might be massacred under pretence of law.”[^[206]] Mr. Müller overwhelmed with the weight of these testimonies, does not yet yield up the point: “Were not these Helots, who in many districts lived entirely alone, united by despair for the sake of common protection; and did they not every year kindle a most bloody and determined war throughout the whole of Laconia?” The historian is pleasant upon the Helots. Kindle a war! How happens it that the Chinese, who, at many periods of their history, have rivalled the Helots in suffering, and like them, too, have rebelled occasionally, yet make annually no “bloody and determined war” against the Mantchoo Tartars? The answer is written on every page of the history of the world, and was put in form by Alexander when he inquired whether one butcher were afraid of many sheep? Nevertheless, even the spirit of slavery itself did sometimes revolt against oppression and cruelty, and kindled such “bloody and determined wars” as Sparta, without foreign aid, was unable to terminate. They were, in fact, during many years, prevented from disputing with the Athenians the supremacy in Greece, by contests with their own vassals.[^[207]] And on the occasion of the great earthquake when nearly every house in Sparta was shaken to the ground,[^[208]] did not the Helots rejoice at the calamity, and come flocking to the environs of the city from the whole country round, in order to put an end to their tyrants as they were escaping in terror from their tottering habitations? Revolt, then, was not unfamiliar to the Helots—again and again was the standard of freedom unfurled[^[209]]—and the day, though late, at length came, when the Spartan saw his slave placed on a level with himself.[^[210]]

To render credible this sketch of cruelty, the character and education of the Spartans must be kept in view:

Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,

was not their maxim.[^[211]] They loved to trample on the fallen. Even in boyhood and among themselves, they practised gouging as an accomplishment, and as an Athenian did music—as a necessary consequence, even the writers most favourable to their state, confess them to have been brutal, inhuman, perfidious.[^[212]] Nor among a people so ignorant, so prejudiced, so narrow-minded, whose understandings were possibly incapable of comprehending the idea of justice or liberality, can we altogether wonder at such an outbreak of barbarism. Men have been known in modern times to shoot slaves for their amusement; a king of France has been known from the same motive to shoot his subjects, and a learned professor,[^[213]] not very remarkable for cruelty, has pronounced the panegyric of that king. There is nothing, therefore, at all incredible in the Spartan Crypteia, which exactly harmonizes with all we know of the nation.

An attempt, however, has been made to explain the whole away, by the unauthorized inference, that in the casual glance which Megillos, in the laws of Plato, makes at this institution, we have a complete description of it in all its features. But very far is this from being the case. The Spartan interlocutor is there making out a defence of his own country, and consequently alludes only to such points as appear capable of a favourable interpretation. Of course he is careful to keep the massacre of the Helots in the back-ground; and merely says, “There is also amongst us what is called the Crypteia, the pain of undergoing which is scarcely credible. It consists in going barefoot in storms, in enduring the privations of the camp, performing menial offices without a servant, and wandering night and day through the whole country.”[^[214]] This is the picture of a Spartan, dwelling on his own hardships; which, however, must have been endured for some purpose, and what was that? If exercise and military seasoning were alone aimed at, where was the necessity for that concealment, that lying in ambush, which the word itself signifies? It is well known that the Helots were a constant terror to their masters—that whenever occasion offered, they revolted—whenever any enemy to the state presented himself, they joined him—that they fled whenever flight was possible—and were, it is confessed, so numerous and so bold, that Sparta was compelled, in treaties with foreign states, to stipulate “for aid against her own subjects.”[^[215]] What more probable, therefore, under the circumstances, than the institution of the Crypteia? What more in harmony with the genius of the people?

There can be no doubt that on certain extraordinary occasions these chief of slaves obtained their freedom from the state; but that any “legal way to liberty and citizenship stood open to them,”[^[216]] does not appear.[^[217]] The chain of “probabilities” by which this conclusion is attempted to be arrived at is perfectly unique, and would lead with equal force to any other whatever. “The many intermediate steps, it is said, seem to prove the existence of a regular mode of transition from the one rank to the other.” It has not, however, been proved that there were any intermediate steps; and the very attempt is based almost wholly on a fragment of that Myron of Priene, whose Messenian History Mr. Müller denominates a romance, and whose “partiality and ignorance” he considers so self-evident but a few passages back.

1. The Helots who were esteemed worthy of an “especial confidence were called ἀργεῖοι.”[^[218]] This however, is no intermediate step, as it is not said that their being thus called was necessarily followed by any result.

2. The ἐρυκτῆρες enjoyed the same “(especial confidence) in war.”[^[219]] On points of this kind it is necessary to rely on some authority, and the historian adduces none.[^[220]] It has, indeed, been conjectured, from the derivation of their name, that this class of freedmen served as a body-guard to their former masters. Positively, however, nothing whatever is known of their condition.

3. The ἀφέται were, probably, released from “all service.” The expression of Eustathius[^[221]] is, “being made free, they were called aphetæ.”

4. “The δεσποσιοναύται,[^[222]] who served in the fleet, resembled, probably, the freedmen of Attica, who were called the out-dwellers.”[^[223]] This phrase is calculated to convey an erroneous impression, as though these freedmen necessarily took up their quarters in the country, whereas οἱ χωρὶς οἰκούντες merely signifies persons who have establishments of their own. With respect to the Desposionautæ, they would appear to have been slaves brought up in their masters’ houses, and afterwards enfranchised, and ordered to be employed about the fleet.

5. “When they (the Helots) received their liberty, they also obtained permission to dwell where they wished, and, probably, at the same time, a[a] portion of land was granted to them without the lot of their former masters.” This is drawing a general inference from a particular case. Thucydides,[^[224]] the authority relied on, speaks only of those Helots who having served in Thrace under Brasidas, obtained enfranchisement on their return, together with a portion of the lands recently taken from the Lepreatæ. On other occasions, as the whole of Laconia and Messenia had been divided among the citizens, it is difficult to understand whence the state could have obtained lands to bestow. The probability, therefore, is, that they bestowed none.

Of the Neodamodes or “new citizens,” our knowledge is little less scanty than of the other classes of freedmen. That they were enfranchised Helots is confidently maintained by several learned writers, though others suppose them to have been the sons of enfranchised Helots.[^[225]] This latter supposition, however, is inconsistent with the testimony of Myron, who observes, that “the Lacedæmonians often emancipated their slaves, some of whom were then called aphetæ, others adespotæ, others eructeres, others desposionautæ; there were others whom they denominated neodamodes, different from the Helots.”[^[226]] Of those modern writers who have treated of the Spartan institutions, some elude the discussion altogether, while others acquiescing in the commonly received opinion contend, that the Neodamodes were those Helots who, having conducted themselves gallantly in war, had for some time enjoyed their freedom. But this decision, however plausible it may seem, is by no means satisfactory. For, wherever Thucydides, or any other historian of authority, has occasion to mention this class of freedmen, they appear to be carefully distinguished from the enfranchised Helots. Thus, when the companions of Brasidas, before spoken of, had received their freedom, and were sent as settlers into the Lepreatis, it is added, that they were accompanied by a number of Neodamodes.[^[227]] But if this term signified nothing more than Helots who had been rewarded with liberty, in what did they differ from the other Helots who had likewise been made free? One learned commentator,[^[228]] not without ingenuity, infers that they were a class of tributary subjects inhabiting the neighbourhood of the capital, on whom the right of citizenship had been conferred, though they did not enjoy perfect equality with the elder citizens. But, as it is distinctly stated, that they were enfranchised slaves, we are compelled to abandon even this hypothesis, and seek to discover some other clue to the truth.

It has already been observed, that the Spartans appear to have possessed numbers of slaves properly so called, besides their oppressed and miserable bondsmen, with whom they seem often to have been confounded. These, by being more constantly about their masters, were, doubtless, able to gain more upon their affections, and could not possibly be viewed with equal dread, since they were necessarily brought together from various countries, and connected consequently by no bond of union. As often, therefore, as the state required a fresh supply of citizens, it is from among these that they appear to have been selected; and that, too, in numbers so considerable, that Agesilaos, on one occasion, was enabled to select two thousand to attend him on an expedition wherein he was accompanied by only thirty Spartans.[^[229]]

Another class of persons[^[230]] commonly ranked among the Laconian slaves were the Mothaces,[^[231]] to determine whose origin, rank, and condition, appears to be a matter of no small difficulty. That they never, during the flourishing ages of the commonwealth, formed any part of the servile caste may be regarded as certain, whatever may be found to the contrary in the grammarians of later times. For the Mothaces, observes Athenæus, though not Lacedæmonians, were free. And to the same purpose speaks Philarchos, whose words are: “The Mothaces were the brotherlike companions of the Lacedæmonians. For every youthful citizen, according to his means, chose one, two, or more of these to be brought up along with him; and, notwithstanding that they enjoyed not the rank of citizens, they were free, and participated in all the advantages of the national education. It is even said that Lysander, who defeated the Athenians at sea, was one of this class of men, but raised to the rank of citizen for his valour.”[^[232]] To the same section of the Laconian population belonged also Callicratidas and Gylippos,[^[233]] a circumstance which of itself appears completely to overthrow the hypothesis of those who derive the Mothaces directly from the Helots; for Cleandridas, the father of Gylippos,[^[234]] was chosen to accompany King Pleistoanax, as chief of his councillors, during an expedition into Attica, an honour which would not, I imagine, have been conferred upon a Helot. Again, Lysander, whom by one authority we are taught to regard as a Mothax, is by another spoken of not barely as a Spartan, but as descended from the Heracleidæ.[^[235]]

How then are we to reconcile these seeming contradictions? Probably by supposing, that the Mothaces consisted, first of the sons of such Spartans as were too poor to defray the expenses of their maintenance and education,[^[236]] which seems to have been the case with Aristocritos, the father of Lysander, whose early indigence is celebrated; secondly of bastard Spartans, who it is well known shared the education of their legitimate brethren; and thirdly, of the sons of persons of rank and distinction among the Periœci. To these perhaps, in very late times, the sons of favourite slaves born in the house may have been added, though there is no ground for believing that this was habitually the case in the earlier ages. Be this, however, as it may, it seems to be quite evident, that Lycurgus laid much less stress on “birth and blood” than on that steadiness and patience of toil which are the first qualities of a soldier. Whoever from childhood upward gave proof of these, by submitting unmurmuringly to the rigorous trial he enjoined the youth of Sparta, was elevated in the end to the rank of a citizen, while they who shrunk from the severity of his discipline, according to some even though they had descended from the blood royal, sunk into a state of degradation or were even confounded with the Helots.[^[237]] Foreigners who enjoyed the privileges of this system of instruction received among the Lacedæmonians the name of Trophimoi.

Of the Epeunactæ, a peculiar class of freedmen, we have the following curious account: Having in the Messenian war lost a number of Spartans, the government began to apprehend that the enemy might discover its weakness; to conceal which a Helot was substituted in the place of every fallen warrior. Shortly afterwards these men were raised to the rank of citizens and denominated Epeunactæ, because they occupied the beds (εὐναι) of other men.[^[238]]

But wherever men are base-minded there will be slaves; and accordingly we find that, in all other parts of Greece, no less than at Sparta, this miserable class existed for the performance of servile drudgery. Posidonios, the Stoic,[^[239]] observes, that persons lacking sense to provide for themselves, voluntarily became the slaves of any who would take care of them. Thus the Maryandinians submitted to the citizens of Heraclea,[^[240]] to be their perpetual serfs, stipulating only that they should always be furnished with the necessaries of life, and on no account be sold out of the country. They were in fact simply tributaries, as is implied in the verse of Euphorion, the epic poet,

“Gift-bearers called, who cower before their chiefs.”[^[241]]

This appellation of Gift-bearers—though their gifts, like the royal benevolences of our ancestors, were extorted from them—was no doubt however invented, as Callicratos[^[242]] observes, to disguise the true nature of their condition. Besides engaging in agricultural labours, they likewise served on board ship, and consequently contributed greatly to increase the commerce and naval power of Heraclea.[^[243]]

The Thessalians denominated Penestæ,[^[244]] not those who were born in servitude, but persons who were made captive in war. They were sometimes also known by the name of Thettaloiketes. Archemachos, in his History of Eubœa, affords illustration of a very curious point of ancient history mentioned briefly but with some variation, by Thucydides.[^[245]] According to him, certain Bœotians migrating northward, founded Arnæa in Thessaly; after which some returned to Bœotia, while, delighted with the land, others remained, and became the voluntary villains of the Thessalians. Here, however, as elsewhere in like cases, it was stipulated that they should neither be put to death nor sold beyond the borders; while on their part they agreed to cultivate the land and pay the requisite tribute.[^[246]] On this account they were called Menestæ,[^[247]] that is “those who remain,” which appellation was by degrees corrupted into Penestæ. Of these serfs many were richer than their masters. Euripides,[^[248]] in his “Phryxas,” observes, moreover, that they were sometimes of very ancient families. Thucydides, on the other hand, represents them to have been the original inhabitants of Arnè, driven thence by the Thessalians sixty years after the Trojan war, though a portion of the nation had long before settled in Bœotia and joined in the expedition against Troy.[^[249]]

A state of things not greatly dissimilar[^[250]] prevailed in Crete, where the servile caste was divided into several classes: first, those of the cities, called Chrysonetæ, or “bought with gold,” who were doubtless barbarians; second, those of the country, who received the name of Aphamiotæ,[^[251]] from their being bound to the Aphamiæ, or estates of the landed gentry. These were the aboriginal tribes of the island reduced to servitude by a nation of foreign conquerors. They were sometimes likewise denominated Clarotæ,[^[252]] from their having been divided among the conquerors by κλᾶρος, or lot; or, according to others, from their being located on the lots of the citizens which were called κλᾶροι.[^[253]] In condition, the Aphamiotæ resembled the Helots,[^[254]] and differed from the peasantry, or Hypekooi,[^[255]] in much the same degree as the purchased private slaves of the Turks differ from their rayahs, or subjects. These are habitually protected from being sold out of the country; though in cases of revolt the captives are reduced to the level of the common slaves, and sold like cattle. Thus the markets of Egypt were crowded with Cretans after the late revolt against Mohammed Ali. Third, there existed in every state in Crete a class of public bondsmen denominated Mnoia or Mnoa, because reduced to that condition by Minos.[^[256]] These serfs cultivated the public lands, upon what conditions is not exactly known: it merely appears that they were compelled to furnish the body of the citizens a certain sum of money, together with a part of their flocks and herds and agricultural produce.[^[257]] That they were sufficiently numerous and powerful to inspire their masters with dread, is evident from the regulation by which they were excluded from the gymnasia, and prohibited the use of arms.

Besides these, there was another class of the Cretan population which must by no means be confounded with the slaves or serfs,—I mean, the Hypekooi.[^[258]] These were the inhabitants of the smaller towns who had lost their political independence, but were permitted the use of arms, and allowed to frequent the public places of exercise, like the nobler citizens.[^[259]]

In the city of Cydonia, during certain festivals of Hermes, the slaves were left masters of the place, into which no free citizen had permission to enter; and if he infringed this regulation it was in their power to chastise him with whips.[^[260]] In other parts of Crete customs similar to those of the Roman Saturnalia prevailed; for, while the slaves in the Hermæan festival were carousing and taking their ease, their lords, travestied into domestics, waited upon them at table, and performed, in their stead, all other menial offices. Something of the same kind took place during the month Gerœstion, at Trœzen, where the citizens feasted their slaves on one day of the great annual festival, and played at dice with them.[^[261]] Among the Babylonians, moreover, we find a similar custom; for, during the Sacæan festival, which lasted five days, and was celebrated in the month of August,[^[262]] the owners waited on their slaves, one of whom, habited in a royal robe, enacted the part of king.

Upon the whole it may be inferred, that the treatment and condition of the Cretan serfs were milder than in any other Doric state, though it would be incorrect to decide,[^[263]] that they were less oppressed than in any other state in all Greece, since we discover in the song of Hybrias traces not to be mistaken of their abject state:

Great riches have I in my spear and sword,

And hairy shield, like a rampart thrown

Before me in war; for by these I am lord

Of the fields where the golden harvests are grown;

And by these I press forth the red red wine,

While the Mnotæ around salute me king;

Approaching, trembling, these knees of mine,