AGRICOLA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

AGRICOLA

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

BY
W E HEITLAND MA
FELLOW OF ST JOHN’S COLLEGE

CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1921

‘Inspect the basis of the social pile:

Inquire,’ said I, ‘how much of mental power

And genuine virtue they possess who live

By bodily toil, labour exceeding far

Their due proportion, under all the weight

Of that injustice which upon ourselves

Ourselves entail.’ Such estimate to frame

I chiefly looked (what need to look beyond?)

Among the natural abodes of men,

Fields with their rural works; recalled to mind

My earliest notices; with these compared

The observations made in later youth,

And to that day continued—For, the time

Had never been when throes of mighty Nations

And the world’s tumult unto me could yield,

How far soe’er transported and possessed,

Full measure of content; but still I craved

An intermingling of distinct regards

And truths of individual sympathy

Nearer ourselves.

Wordsworth, Prelude, book XIII.

PREFACE

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

W E HEITLAND

Cambridge
August 1920

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY

I. EVIDENCE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II. LAND AND LABOUR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AUTHORITIES IN DETAIL—GREEK

III. THE HOMERIC POEMS.

The Iliad. In a great war-poem we can hardly expect to find many references to the economic labours of peace. And an army fighting far from home in a foreign land would naturally be out of touch with the rustic life of Greece. Nor was the poet concerned to offer us the details of supply-service, though he represents the commissariat as efficient. Free labour appears[18] in various forms of handicraft, and the mention of pay (μισθός)[19] shews wage-earning as a recognized fact. We hear of serving for hire (θητεύειν)[20], and the ἔριθοι or farm-labourers[21] seem to be θῆτες under a special name. That labour is not viewed as a great degradation may fairly be inferred from the case of Hephaestus the smith-god, from the wage-service of Poseidon and Apollo under Laomedon, and from the herdsman-service of Apollo under Admetus. Agriculture is assumed, and in the Catalogue ‘works’ (ἔργα)[22] occurs in the sense of ‘tilled lands.’ But it is chiefly in similes or idyllic scenes that we get glimpses of farming[23] operations. Thus we have ploughing, reaping, binding, threshing, winnowing. Most striking of all is the passage in which the work of irrigation[24] is graphically described. There is no reason to suppose that any of the workers in these scenes are slaves: they would seem to be wage-earners. But I must admit that, if slaves were employed under the free workers, the poet would very likely not mention such a detail: that is, if slavery were a normal institution taken for granted. For the present I assume only free labour in these cases. We are made aware of a clear social difference between the rich and powerful employer and the employed labourer. The mowers are at work in the field of some rich man[25] (ἀνδρὸς μάκαρος κατ’ ἄρουραν), who does not appear to lend a hand himself. Or again in the close of a ruler (τέμενος βασιλήιον)[26], with binders following them, a busy scene. The βασιλεὺς himself stands watching them in dignified silence, staff in hand. There is nothing here to suggest that the small working farmer was a typical figure in the portraiture of rural life. Flocks and herds are of great importance, indeed the ox is a normal standard of value. But the herdsmen are mean freemen. Achilles is disgusted[27] at the prospect of being drowned by Scamander ‘like a young swineherd swept away by a stream in flood.’ For the heroes of the poem are warrior-lords: the humble toilers of daily life are of no account beside them.

And yet the fact of slavery stands out clearly, and also its connexion with the fact of capture in war. The normal way of dealing with enemies is to slay the men and enslave the women. The wife of a great warrior has many handmaidens, captives of her lord’s prowess. A slave-trade exists, and we hear of males being spared[28] and ‘sold abroad’: for they are sent ‘to islands far away’ or ‘beyond the salt sea.’ We do not find male slaves with the army: perhaps we may guess that they were not wanted. A single reference to δμῶες (properly slave-captives) appears in XIX 333, where Achilles, speaking of his property at home in Phthia, says κτῆσιν ἐμὴν δμῶάς τε. But we cannot be certain that these slaves are farm-hands. We can only reflect that a slave bought and paid for was not likely to be fed in idleness or put to the lightest work. In general it seems that what weighed upon the slave, male or female, was the pressure of constraint, the loss of freedom, not the fear of cruel treatment. What Hector keeps from the Trojans[29] is the ‘day of constraint,’ ἦμαρ ἀναγκαῖον, also expressed by δούλιον ἦμαρ. Viewed from the other side we find enslavement consisting in a taking away[30] the ‘day of freedom,’ ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ. The words δούλην III 409 and ἀνδραπόδεσσι VII 475 are isolated cases of substantives in passages the genuineness of which has been questioned. On the whole it is I think not an unfair guess that, if the poet had been depicting the life of this same Greek society in their homeland, and not under conditions of present war, we should have found more references to slavery as a working institution. As it is, we get a momentary glimpse[31] of neighbour landowners, evidently on a small scale, engaged in a dispute concerning their boundaries, measuring-rod in hand; and nothing to shew whether such persons supplied the whole of their own labour in tillage or supplemented it by employing hired men or slaves.

The Odyssey is generally held to be of later date than the Iliad. A far more important distinction is that its scenes are not episodes of war. A curious difference of terms[32] is seen in the case of the word οἰκῆες, which in the Iliad seems to mean ‘house-folk’ including both free and slave, in the Odyssey to mean slaves only. But as to the condition of slaves there is practically no difference. A conquered foe was spared on the battlefield by grace of the conqueror, whose ownership of his slave was unlimited: and this unlimited right could be conveyed by sale[33] to a third party. We find Odysseus ready to consign offending slaves[34] to torture mutilation or death. In the story of his visit to Troy[35] as a spy we hear that he passed for a slave, and that part of his disguise consisted in the marks of flogging. Yet the relations of master and mistress to their slaves are most kindly in ordinary circumstances. The faithful slave is a type glorified in the Odyssey: loyalty is the first virtue of a slave, and it is disloyalty, however shewn, that justifies the master’s vengeance. For they live on intimate terms[36] with their master and mistress and are trusted to a wonderful degree. In short we may say that the social atmosphere of the Odyssey is full of mild slavery, but that in the background there is always the grim possibility of atrocities committed by absolute power. And we have a trace even of secondary[37] slavery: for the swineherd, himself a slave, has an under-slave of his own, bought with his own goods from slave-dealers while his own master was abroad. Naturally enough we find slaves classed as a part of the lord’s estate. Odysseus hopes[38] that before he dies he may set eyes on his property, his slaves and his lofty mansion. But another and perhaps socially more marked distinction seems implied in the suitors’ question[39] about Telemachus—‘who were the lads that went with him on his journey? were they young nobles of Ithaca, or his own hired men and slaves (θῆτές τε δμῶές τε)?’ The answer is that they were ‘the pick of the community, present company excepted.’ The wage-earner and the slave do not seem to be parted by any broad social line. Indeed civilization had a long road yet to travel before levelling movement among the free classes drew a vital distinction between them on the one side and slaves on the other.

Free workers of various kinds are often referred to, and we are, owing to the circumstances of the story, brought more into touch with them than in the Iliad. Handicraftsmen[40] are a part of the life of the time, and we must assume the smith the carpenter and the rest of the males to be free: female slaves skilled in working wool do not justify us in supposing that the corresponding men are slaves. Beside these are other men who practise a trade useful to the community, ‘public-workers’ (δημιοεργοί)[41], but not necessarily handworkers. Thus we find the seer, the leech, the bard, classed with the carpenter as persons whom all men would readily entertain as guests; the wandering beggar none would invite. The last is a type of ‘mean freeman,’ evidently common in that society. He is too much akin to the suppliant, whom religion[42] protects, to be roughly shewn the door: he is αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης[43], and trades on the reverence felt for one who appeals as stranger to hospitable custom. Thus he picks up a living[44] from the scraps and offals of great houses. But he is despised, and, what concerns us here, despised[45] not only for his abject poverty but for his aversion to honest work. That the poet admires industry is clear, and is curiously illustrated by his contrasted pictures of civilization and barbarism. In Phaeacia are the fenced-in gardens[46] that supply Alcinous and his people with never-failing fruits: the excellence of their naval craftsmen is expressed in the ‘yarn’ of ships that navigate themselves. In the land of the Cyclopes, nature provides[47] them with corn and wine, but they neither sow nor plough. They have flocks of sheep and goats. They have no ships or men to build them. They live in caves, isolated savages with no rudiments of civil life. It is not too much to say that the poet is a believer in work and a contemner of idleness: the presence of slaves does not suggest that the free man is to be lazy. Odysseus boasts of his activities (δρηστοσύνη)[48]. He is ready to split wood and lay a fire, to prepare and serve a meal, and in short to wait on the insolent suitors as inferiors do on nobles. Of course he is still the unknown wanderer: but the contrast[49] between him and the genuine beggar Irus is an effective piece of by-play in the poem.

Turning to agriculture, we may note that it fills no small place. Wheat and barley, pounded or ground to meal, seem to furnish the basis of civilized diet. The Cyclops[50] does not look like a ‘bread-eating man,’ and wine completely upsets him to his ruin. Evidently the bounty of nature has been wasted on such a savage. But the cultivation of cereal crops is rather assumed than emphasized in the pictures of Greek life. We hear of tilled lands (ἔργα)[51], and farm-labour (ἔργον)[52] is mentioned as too wearisome for a high-spirited warrior noble. The tired and hungry plowman[53] appears in a simile. But the favourite culture is that of the vine and olive and other fruits in orchards carefully fenced and tended. One of the suitors makes a jesting offer[54] to the unknown Odysseus ‘Stranger, would you be willing to serve for hire (θητευέμεν), if I took you on, in an outlying field—you shall have a sufficient wage—gathering stuff for fences and planting tall trees? I would see that you were regularly fed clothed and shod. No, you are a ne’er-do-weel (ἔργα κάκ’ ἔμμαθες) and will not do farm-work (ἔργον): you prefer to go round cringing for food to fill your insatiate belly.’ This scornful proposal sets the noble’s contempt for wage-earning labour in a clear light. And the shade of Achilles, repudiating[55] the suggestion that it is a great thing to be a ruler among the dead in the ghostly world, says ‘I had rather be one bound to the soil, serving another for hire, employed by some landless man of little property, than be king of all the dead.’ He is speaking strongly: to work for hire, a mean destiny at best, is at its meanest when the employer is a man with no land-lot of his own (ἄκληρος), presumably occupying on precarious tenure a bit of some lord’s estate. After such utterances we cannot wonder that as we saw above, θῆτες and δμῶες are mentioned[56] in the same breath.

That slaves are employed on the farm is clear enough. When Penelope sends for old Dolius[57], a servus dotalis of hers (to use the Roman expression) she adds ‘who is in charge of my fruit-garden,’ So too the aged Laertes, living a hard life on his farm, has a staff of slaves[58] to do his will, and their quarters and farm duties are a marked detail of the picture. The old man, in dirty rags like a slave, is a contrast[59] to the garden, in which every plant and tree attests the devoted toil of his gardeners under his own skilled direction. Odysseus, as yet unrecognized by his father, asks him how he comes to be in such a mean attire, though under it he has the look of a king. Then he drops this tone and says ‘but tell me, whose slave[60] are you, and who owns the orchard you are tending?’ The hero knows his father, but to preserve for the present his own incognito he addresses him as the slave that he appears to be. Now if garden work was done by slaves, surely the rougher operations of corn-growing were not confined to free labour, and slaves pass unmentioned as a matter of course. Or are we to suppose that free labour had been found more economical in the long run, and so was employed for the production of a staple food? I can hardly venture to attribute so mature a view to the society of the Odyssey. We must not forget that animal food, flesh and milk, was an important element of diet, and that the management of flocks and herds was therefore a great part of rustic economy. But the herdsmen in charge are slaves, such as Eumaeus, bought in his youth by Laertes[61] of Phoenician kidnappers. In romancing about his own past experiences Odysseus describes a raid in Egypt, and how the natives rallied[62] and took their revenge. ‘Many of our company they slew: others they took alive into the country, to serve them in forced labour.’ As the ravaging of their ‘beautiful farms’ was a chief part of the raiders’ offence, the labour exacted from these captives seems most probably agricultural.

An interesting question arises in reference to the faithful slaves, the swineherd and the goatherd. When Odysseus promises them rewards in the event of his destroying the suitors with their help, does this include an offer of freedom? Have we here, as some have thought, a case of manumission—of course in primitive form, without the legal refinements of later times? The promise is made[63] so to speak in the character of a father-in-law: ‘I will provide you both with wives and give you possessions and well-built houses near to me, and you shall in future be to me comrades and brothers of Telemachus.’ The ‘brotherhood’ suggested sounds as if it must imply freedom. But does it? Eumaeus had been brought up[64] by Laertes as the playmate of his daughter Ctimene; yet he remained nevertheless a slave. Earlier in the poem Eumaeus, excusing the poor entertainment that he can offer the stranger (Odysseus), laments the absence[65] of his lord, ‘who’ he says ‘would have shewn me hearty affection and given me possessions such as a kindly lord gives his slave (οἰκῆι), a house and a land-lot (κλῆρον) and a wife of recognized worth (πολυμνήστην), as a reward for laborious and profitable service.’ Here also there is no direct reference to an expected grant of freedom: nor do I think that it is indirectly implied. It is no doubt tempting to detect in these passages the germ of the later manumission. But it is not easy to say why, in a world of little groups ruled by noble chiefs, the gift of freedom should have been a longed-for boon. However high-born the slave might have been in his native land, in Ithaca he was simply a slave. If by belonging to a lord he got material comfort and protection, what had he to gain by becoming a mere wage-earner? surely nothing. I can see no ground for believing that in the society of the ‘heroic’ age the bare name of freedom was greatly coveted. It was high birth that really mattered, but the effect of this would be local: nothing would make Eumaeus, though son of a king, noble in Ithaca. No doubt the slave might be at the mercy of a cruel lord. Such a slave would long for freedom, but such a lord was not likely to grant it. On the whole, it is rash to read manumission into the poet’s words.

Reviewing the evidence presented by these ‘Homeric’ poems, it may be well to insist on the obvious truism that we are not dealing with formal treatises, charged with precise definitions and accurate statistics. The information given by the poet drops out incidentally while he is telling his tale and making his characters live. It is all the more genuine because it is not furnished in support of a particular argument: but it is at the same time all the less complete. And it is not possible to say how far this or that detail may have been coloured by imagination. Still, allowing freely for the difficulty suggested by these considerations, I think we are justified in drawing a general inference as to the position of handworkers, particularly on the land, in Greek ‘heroic’ society as conceived by the poet. If the men who practise handicrafts are freemen, and their presence welcome, this does not exalt them to anything like equality with the warrior nobles and chiefs. And in agriculture the labourer is either a slave or a wage-earner of a very dependent kind. The lord shews no inclination to set his own hand to the plough. When one of the suitors derisively invites the supposed beggar to abandon his idle vagrancy for a wage-earning ‘job on the land,’ the disguised Odysseus retorts[66] ‘Ah, if only you and I could compete in a match as reapers hard at work fasting from dawn to dark, or at ploughing a big field with a pair of full-fed spirited oxen,—you would soon see what I could do.’ He adds that, if it came to war, his prowess would soon silence the sneer at his begging for food instead of working. Now, does the hero imply that he would really be willing to reap or plough? I do not think so: what he means is that he is conscious of that reserve of bodily strength which appears later in the poem, dramatically shewn in the bending of the famous bow.

IV. HESIOD.

Hesiod, Works and Days. Whether this curious poem belongs in its present shape to the seventh century BC, or not, I need not attempt to decide. It seems certain that it is later than the great Homeric poems, but is an early work, perhaps somewhat recast and interpolated, yet in its main features representing conditions and views of a society rural, half-primitive, aristocratic. I see no reason to doubt that it may fairly be cited in evidence for my present purpose. The scene of the ‘Works’ is in Boeotia: the works (ἔργα) are operations of farming, and the precepts chiefly saws of rustic wisdom. Poverty[67] is the grim spectre that haunts the writer, conscious of the oppressions of the proud and the hardness of a greedy world. Debt, want, beggary, must be avoided at all costs. They can only be avoided[68] by thrift, forethought, watchfulness, promptitude that never procrastinates, and toil that never ceases. And the mere appeal to self-interest is reinforced by recognizing the stimulus of competition (ἔρις)[69] which in the form of honest rivalry is a good influence. The poet represents himself as owner of a land-lot (κλῆρος)[70], part of a larger estate, the joint patrimony of his brother Perses and himself: this estate has already been divided, but points of dispute still remain. Hesiod suggests that Perses has been wronging him with the help of bribed ‘kings.’ But wrongdoing is not the true road to wellbeing. A dinner of herbs and a clear conscience are the better way. As the proverb says ‘half is more than the whole.’ Perses is treated to much good advice, the gist of which is first and foremost an exhortation[71] to work (ἐργάζευ), that is, work on the land, in which is the source of honourable wealth. Personal labour is clearly meant: it is in the sweat[72] of his brow that the farmer is to thrive. Such is the ordinance of the gods. Man is meant to resemble[73] the worker bee, not the worthless drone. It is not ἔργον but idleness (ἀεργίη) that is a reproach. Get wealth[74] by working, and the idler will want to rival you: honour and glory attend on wealth. Avoid delays[75] and vain talk: the procrastinator is never sure of a living; for he is always hoping, when he should act. Whether sowing or ploughing or mowing, off with your outer[76] garment, if you mean to get your farm-duties done in due season. The farmer must rise early, and never get behindhand with his work: to be in time, and never caught napping by changes of weather, is his duty.

Here is a picture of humble and strenuous life, very different from the scenes portrayed in the ‘heroic’ epics. It seems to belong to a later and less warlike age. But the economic and social side of life is in many respects little changed. The free handicraftsmen seem much the same. Jealousy of rivals[77] in the same trade—potter, carpenter, beggar, or bard—is a touch that attests their freedom. The smith, the weaver, the shoemaker, and the shipwright, are mentioned[78] also. Seafaring[79] for purposes of gain illustrates what men will dare in quest of wealth. You should not cast a man’s poverty[80] in his teeth: but do not fancy that men will give you[81] of their store, if you and your family fall into poverty. Clearly the beggar is not more welcome than he was in the world of the Odyssey. Suppliant and stranger are protected[82] by religion, and a man should honour his aged father, if he would see good days. A motive suggested for careful service of the gods is ‘that you may buy another’s estate[83] and not another buy yours’—that is, that the gods may give you increase. Just so you should keep a watch-dog, that thieves[84] may not steal your goods by night. Hesiod’s farmer is to keep the social and religious rules and usages—but he is before all things a keen man of business, no Roman more so.

The labour employed by this close-fisted countryman is partly free partly slave. In a passage[85] of which the exact rendering is disputed the hired man (θῆτα) and woman (ἔριθον) are mentioned as a matter of course. For a helper (ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ)[86] his wage must be secure (ἄρκιος) as stipulated. References to slaves (δμῶες)[87] are more frequent, and the need of constant watchfulness, to see that they are not lazy and are properly fed housed and rested, is insisted on. The feeding of cattle and slaves is regulated according to their requirements in different seasons of the year: efficiency is the object, and evidently experience is the guide. Of female slaves there is no certain[88] mention: indeed there could be little demand for domestic attendants in the farmer’s simple home. Such work as weaving[89] is to be done by his wife. For the farmer is to marry, though the risks[90] of that venture are not hidden from the poet, who gives plain warnings as to the exercise of extreme care in making a suitable choice. The operations of agriculture are the usual ploughing sowing reaping threshing and the processes of the vineyard and the winepress. Oxen sheep and mules form the live-stock. Corn is the staple[91] diet, with hay as fodder for beasts.

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

V. STRAY NOTES FROM EARLY POETS.

A few fragments may be cited as of interest, bearing on our subject. The most important are found in the remains[92] of Solon, illustrating the land-question as he saw and faced it at the beginning of the sixth century BC. The poets of the seventh and sixth centuries reflect the problems of an age of unrest, among the causes of which the introduction of metallic coinage, susceptible of hoarding and unaffected by weather, played a great part. Poverty, debt and slavery of debtors, hardship, begging, the insolence and oppression of rich and greedy creditors, are common topics. The sale of free men into slavery abroad is lamented by Solon, who claims to have restored many such victims by his measures of reform. In particular, he removed encumbrances on land, thus setting free the small farmers who were in desperate plight owing to debt. The exact nature and scope of his famous reform is a matter of dispute. Whether he relieved freeholders from a burden of debt, or emancipated the clients[93] of landowning nobles from dependence closely akin to serfdom, cannot be discussed here, and does not really bear on the matter in hand. In either case the persons relieved were a class of working farmers, and the economic reform was the main thing: political reform was of value as tending to secure the economic boon. It is remarkable that Solon, enumerating a number of trades (practically the old Homeric and Hesiodic list), speaks of them merely as means of escaping the pressure of poverty, adding ‘and another man[94] is yearly servant to those interested in ploughing, and furrows land planted with fruit-trees.’ This man seems to be a wage-earner (θὴς) working for a large farmer, probably the owner of a landed estate in the rich lowland (πεδιάς) of Attica. The small farmers were mostly confined to the rocky uplands. Evidently it is not manual labour that is the hardship, but the dependent position of the hired man working on another’s land. The hard-working independent peasant, willing to till stony land for his own support, is the type that Solon encouraged and Peisistratus[95] approved.

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

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

VI. TRACES OF SERFDOM IN GREEK STATES.

Before passing on to the times in which the merits of a free farmer-class, from military and political points of view, became a matter of general and conscious consideration, it is desirable to refer briefly to the recorded cases of agricultural serfdom in Greek states. For the rustic serf is a type quite distinct from the free farmer, the hired labourer, or the slave; though the language of some writers is loose, and does not clearly mark the distinction. Six well-known cases present themselves, in connexion with Sparta, Crete, Argos, Thessaly, Syracuse, and Heraclea on the Pontus. Into the details of these systems it is not necessary to enter, interesting though many of them are. The important feature common to them all is the delegation of agricultural labour. A stronger or better-organized people become masters of a weaker population, conquering their country by force of arms, and sparing the conquered on certain terms. The normal effect of the compact is that the conquerors are established as a ruling warrior class, whose subsistence is provided by the labour of the subject people. These subjects remain on the land as farmers, paying a fixed quota of their produce to their masters. Some are serfs of the state, and pay their dues to the state authorities: some are serfs of individuals, and pay to their lords. In either case they are strictly attached to the land, and cannot be sold out of the country. This clearly marks off the serf from the slave held in personal bondage. In some cases certainly, probably in all, the warrior class (at least the wealthier of them) had also slaves for their own personal service. The serf-system differs from a caste-system. Both, it is true, are hereditary systems, or have a strong tendency to become so. The ruling class do not easily admit deserving subjects into their own ranks. And they take precautions to hinder the degradation of their equals into lower conditions through poverty. The warrior’s land-lot (κλᾶρος), the sale of which is forbidden, is a favourite institution for the purpose. That such warrior aristocracies could not be kept up in vigour for an indefinite time, was to be proved by experience. Their duration depended on external as well as internal conditions. Hostile invasion might destroy the efficiency of state regulations, however well adapted to keep the serfs under control. Sparta always feared her Helots, and it was essential to keep an enemy out of Laconia. Early in the history of Syracuse the unprivileged masses were supported by the serfs in their rising against the squatter-lords, the γαμόροι whose great estates represented the allotments of the original settlers. In Crete and Thessaly matters were complicated by lack of a central authority. There were a number of cities: subordination and cooperation were alike hard to secure, and the history of both groups is a story of jealousy, collisions, and weakness. The Thessalian Penestae often rebelled. The two classes of Cretan[96] serfs (public and private) were kept quiet partly by rigid exclusion from all training of a military kind, partly by their more favourable condition: but the insular position of Crete was perhaps a factor of equal importance. The long control of indigenous barbarian serfs by the city of Heraclea was probably the result of similar causes.

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

Among the little that is known of the ancient Etruscans, whose power was once widely extended in Italy, is the fact that they dwelt in cities and ruled a serf population who lived chiefly in the country. The ruling race were apparently invaders not akin to any of the Italian stocks: their subjects probably belonged to the old Ligurian race, in early times spread over a large part of the peninsula. That the Etruscan cities recognized a common interest, but in practice did not support each other consistently, was the chief cause of their gradual weakening and final fall. Noble lords with warlike traditions had little bent for farm life or sympathy with the serfs who tilled the soil. The two classes seem to have kept to their own[97] languages, and the Etruscan gradually died out under the supremacy of Rome.

VII. HERODOTUS.

Herodotus, writing in the first half of the fifth century BC, partly recording the results of his own travels, partly dependent on the work of his predecessors, is a witness of great value. In him we find the contrast and antipathy[98] of Greek and Barbarian an acknowledged fact, guiding and dominating Greek sentiment. Unhappily he yields us very little evidence bearing on the present subject. To slavery and slave-trade he often refers without comment: these are matters of course. The servile character of oriental peoples subject to Persia is contemptuously described[99] through the mouth of the Greek queen of Halicarnassus. Nor does he spare the Ionian Greeks, whose jealousies and consequent inefficiency made them the unworthy tools of Persian ambition; a sad contrast to those patriotic Greeks of old Hellas who, fired by the grand example of Athens, fought for their freedom and won it in the face of terrible odds. The disgust—a sort of physical loathing—with which the free Greek, proud of training his body to perfection, regarded corporal mutilation as practised in the East, is illustrated by such passages[100] as that in which the Persians are astounded at the Greek athletic competitions for a wreath of olive leaves, and that in which he coolly tells the story of the eunuch’s revenge. But all this, interesting as giving us his point of view, does not help us in clearing up the relations of free and slave labour. As for handicrafts, it is enough to refer to the well-known passage[101] in which, while speaking of Egypt, he will not decide whether the Greeks got their contempt for manual trades from the Egyptians or not. That the Greeks, above all the Spartans, do despise χειρωναξίαι, is certain; but least true of the Corinthians. Barbarians in general respect the warrior class among their own folk and regard manual trades as ignoble. So the source of Greek prejudice is doubtful. That the craftsmen are free is clear from the whole context. It is remarkable that in enumerating seven classes of the Egyptian population he mentions no class[102] as devoted to the tillage of the soil, but two of herdsmen, in charge of cattle and swine. Later authorities mention[103] the γεωργοί, and connect them with the military class, rightly, it would seem: for Herodotus[104] refers to the farms granted by the kings to this class. They are farmer-soldiers. It would seem that they were free, so far as any Egyptian could be called free, and worked their land themselves. If this inference be just, we may observe that a Greek thought it a fact worth noting. Was this owing to the contrast[105] offered by systems of serfage in the Greek world?

It is curious that wage-labour is hardly ever directly mentioned. In describing[106] the origin of the Macedonian kings, who claimed descent from an Argive stock, he says that three brothers, exiles from Argos, came to Macedon. There they served the king for wages as herdsmen in charge of his horses cattle sheep and goats. The simplicity of the royal household is emphasized as illustrating the humble scale of ancient monarchies. Alarmed by a prodigy, the king calls his servants (τοὺς θῆτας) and tells them to leave his country. The sequel does not concern us here: we need only note that work for wages is referred to as a matter of course. The same relation is probably meant in the case of the Arcadian deserters[107] who came to Xerxes after Thermopylae, in need of sustenance (βίου) and wishing to get work (ἐνεργοὶ εἶναι). But the term θητεύειν is not used. And the few Athenians who stayed behind[108] in the Acropolis when Athens was evacuated, partly through sheer poverty (ὑπ’ ἀσθενείης βίου), would seem to be θῆτες. It is fair to infer that hired labour is assumed as a normal fact in Greek life. For the insistence on poverty[109] as naturally endemic (σύντροφος) in Hellas, only overcome by the manly qualities (ἀρετὴ) developed in the conquest of hard conditions by human resourcefulness (σοφίη), shews us the background of the picture present to the writer’s mind. It is his way of telling us that the question of food-supply was a serious one. Out of her own soil Hellas was only able to support a thin population. Hence Greek forces were absurdly small compared with the myriads of Persia: but the struggle for existence had strung them up to such efficiency and resolute love of freedom that they were ready to face fearful odds.

The passage occurs in the reply of Demaratus the Spartan to a question of Xerxes, and refers more particularly to Sparta. In respect of courage and military efficiency the claim is appropriate: but poverty was surely characteristic of nearly all the European Hellas, and the language on that point is strictly correct, probably representing the writer’s own view. It is also quite consistent with the statement[110] that in early times, before the Athenians had as yet driven all the indigenous population out of Attica, neither the Athenians nor the Greeks generally had slaves (οἰκέτας). The context seems to indicate that domestic slaves are specially meant. I do not lay much stress on this allegation, urged as it is in support of a case by one party to the dispute: but it is a genuine tradition, which appears again in the later literature. In the time of Herodotus there were plenty of domestic slaves. Accordingly he finds it worth while to mention[111] that Scythian kings are attended by persons of their own race, there being no bought servants employed.

Herodotus is a difficult witness to appraise justly, partly from the occasional uncertainty as to whether he is really pledging his own authority on a point, partly because the value of his authority varies greatly on different points. But on the whole I take his evidence to suggest that agriculture was carried on in Greece either by free labouring farmers employing hired men when needed, or by serfs. I do not see any evidence to shew that no slaves were employed. The subject of his book placed him under no necessity of mentioning them: and I can hardly believe that farm-slavery on a small scale had died out all over Greece since the days of Hesiod. Nor do I feel convinced on his authority that the poverty of Greece was, so far as mere food is concerned, as extreme as he makes Demaratus represent it. When the Spartans heard that Xerxes was offering the Athenians a separate peace, they were uneasy, and sent a counter-offer[112] on their own behalf. Not content with appealing to the Hellenic patriotism of Athens, they said ‘We feel for you in your loss of two crops and the distress that will last some while yet. But you shall have all this made good. We, Spartans and confederates, will find food for your wives and your helpless families[113] so long as this war lasts.’ Supposing this offer to have been actually made, and to have been capable of execution, surely it implies that there were food-stuffs to spare in the Peloponnese. It may be that I am making too much of this passage, and of the one about poverty. The dramatic touch of Herodotus is present in both, and I must leave the apparent inconsistency between them as it stands. The question of Peloponnesian agriculture will come up again in connexion with a passage of Thucydides.

VIII. THE TRAGEDIANS.

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

Aeschylus indeed furnishes very little to my purpose directly. The Greek antipathy to the Barbarian is very clearly marked; but the only points worth noting are that in the Persae[114] he makes Persian speakers refer to their own people as βάρβαροι, and that in a bitter passage of the Eumenides he expresses[115] his loathing of mutilations and tortures, referring no doubt to Persian cruelties. Agriculture can hardly be said to be mentioned at all, for the gift of weather-wisdom[116] is useful to others than the farmer, and the Scythian steppes are untilled land. A fragment, telling of a happy land[117] where all things grow in plenty unsown without ploughing or digging, reminds us of the Odyssey, minus the savages: another, referring to the advance made in domestication of beasts to relieve men of toil, make up the meagre list. All are in connexion with Prometheus. There are two interesting passages[118] in which the word γαμόρος (landholder) occurs, but merely as an expression for a man with the rights and responsibilities of a citizen. There is nothing of tillage. It was natural for the champion of the power of the Areopagus to view the citizen from the landholding side. He is a respecter of authority, but at the same time lays great stress on the duty and importance of deference to public opinion. This tone runs through the surviving plays, wherever the scene of a particular drama may be laid. Athenian conditions are always in his mind, and his final judgment appears in the Eumenides as an appeal to all true citizens to combine freedom with order. Ties of blood, community of religious observances, the relation between citizens and aliens, are topics on which he dwells again and again. In general it is fair to conclude that, while he cheerfully accepted the free constitution of Athens as it stood since the democratic reform of Cleisthenes, he thought that it was quite democratic enough, and regarded more recent tendencies with some alarm. Now these tendencies, in particular the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles, were certainly in the direction of lessening the influence of the Attic farmers and increasing that of the urban citizens, who were on the spot to take advantage of them. To put it in the briefest form, Aeschylus must be reckoned an admirer of the solid and responsible citizens of the old school, men with a stake in the country.

Sophocles also supplies very little. The antipathy of Greeks to Barbarians appears in a milder form: Aeschylus was naturally more bitter, having fought against the Persian invader. The doctrine that public opinion (of citizens) ought to be respected, that obedience to constituted authorities is a duty, in short the principle that freedom should be combined with order, is set forth in various passages of dramatic debate. Yet the scenes of the plays, as those of Aeschylus, are laid in legendary ages that knew not democracy. The awful potency of ties of blood, and the relations of citizen and alien, are topics common to both. But I think it may fairly be said that political feeling is less evident in Sophocles. This is consistent with his traditional character. In their attitude towards slavery there is no striking difference: both treat it as a matter of course. But in Sophocles there are already signs[119] of the questioning that was soon to become outspoken, as to the justice of the relation of master and slave. Agriculture is hardly mentioned. The words γεωργός, γεωργεῖν, γεωργία, are (as in Aeschylus) not used. A reference to ploughing occurs in a famous passage[120] celebrating the resourcefulness of Man. The herdsman, usually a slave, is once[121] spoken of as perhaps a hired servant. One curious passage[122] calls for notice. In the Trachiniae the indifference of Heracles to his children is compared by his wife Deianira to the conduct of a farmer (γῄτης) who has got a farm at a distance (ἄρουραν ἔκτοπον) and only visits it at seed-time and harvest. The man is apparently a non-resident landowner, living presumably in the city (surely Athens is in the poet’s mind) and working his farm by deputy—a steward—and only inspecting it at important seasons. Whether the labour employed is slave or free, there is nothing to shew. It is of interest to find the situation sufficiently real to be used in a simile. But I infer that the situation, like the conduct of Heracles, is regarded as exceptional.

Euripides takes us into a very different atmosphere. An age of movement was also an age of criticism and inquiry, social religious political ethical. The intellectual leaders came from various parts of the Greek world, but the intellectual centre of ‘obstinate questionings’ was Athens, and their poet Euripides. The use of drama, with plots drawn from ancient legend, as a vehicle for reflexions on human problems, addressed to a contemporary audience and certain to evoke assent and dissent, is the regular practice of Euripides. His plays give us a mass of information as to the questions exercising the minds of thoughtful men in a stirring period. The point of view is that of the new school, the enlightened ‘thinkers’ who claimed the right to challenge traditional principles, opinions, prejudices, and institutions, testing them by the canons of human reason fearlessly applied. This attitude was naturally resented by men of the old school, averse to any disturbing influence tending to undermine the traditional morality, and certain to react upon politics. Their opposition can still be traced in the comedies of Aristophanes and in various political movements during the Peloponnesian war. Among the topics to which the new school turned their attention were two of special interest to Euripides. The power of wealth was shewing itself in the growth of capitalistic enterprise, an illustration of which is seen in the case of the rich slaveowner Nicias. Poverty[123] and its disadvantages, sometimes amounting to sheer degradation, was as ever a subject of discontent: and this was closely connected with the position of free wage-earning labour. At Athens political action took a strong line in the direction of utilizing the wealth of the rich in the service of the state: for the poor, its dominant tendency was to provide opportunities of drawing state pay (μισθός), generally a bare living wage, for the performance of various public duties. The other topic, that of slavery, had as yet hardly reached the stage of questioning the right or wrong of that institution as such. But the consciousness that the slave, like his master, was a blend of human virtues and human vices,—was a man, in short,—was evidently becoming clearer, and suggesting the conclusion that he must be judged as a man and not as a mere chattel. Otherwise Euripides would hardly have ventured to bring slaves on the stage[124] in so sympathetic a spirit, or to utter numerous sayings, bearing on their merits and failings, in a tone of broad humanity.

In such circumstances how came it that there was no sign of a movement analogous to modern Abolitionism? If the slave was confessedly a man, had he not the rights of a man? The answer is plain. That a man, simply as a man, had any rights, was a doctrine not yet formulated or clearly conceived. The antipathy[125] between Greek and Barbarian was a practical bar to its recognition. The Persian was not likely to moderate his treatment of Greeks in his power from any such consideration: superior force, nothing less, would induce him to conform to Greek notions of humanity. While force was recognized as the sole foundation of right as against free enemies, there could not be much serious doubt as to the right of holding aliens in slavery. But in this questioning age another theoretical basis of discussion had been found. Men were testing institutions by asking in reference to each ‘is it a natural[126] growth? does it exist by nature (φύσει)? or is it a conventional status? does it exist by law (νόμῳ)?’ Here was one of the most unsettling inquiries of the period. In reference to slavery we find two conflicting doctrines beginning to emerge. One is[127] that all men are born free (φύσει) and that slavery is therefore a creation of man’s device (νόμῳ). The other is that superior strength is a gift of nature, and therefore the rule of the weaker[128] by the stronger is according to nature. The conflict between these two views was destined to engage some of the greatest minds of Greece in later years, when the political failure of the Greek states had diverted men’s thoughts to problems concerning the individual. For the present slavery was taken for granted, but it is evident that the seeds of future doubt had been sown. Among the stray utterances betraying uneasiness is the oft-quoted saying[129] of the sophist Alcidamas ‘god leaves all men free: nature makes no man a slave.’ The speaker was contemporary with Euripides, whose sayings are often in much the same tone, if less direct. A remarkable passage is that in which he makes Heracles repudiate[130] the myths that represent slavery as existing among the gods. No god that is a real god has any needs, and such tales are rubbish—an argument that was destined to reappear later as bearing upon slavery among men, particularly in connexion with the principles of the Cynic school.

I have said enough as to the point of view from which the questioners, such as Euripides, regarded slavery. It is somewhat surprising that the poet’s references to hired labour[131] are very few, and all of a depressing kind, treating θητεύειν as almost or quite equivalent to δουλεύειν. The references or allusions to handicrafts are hardly to the point: such men are doubtless conceived as θῆτες, but they would generally direct themselves in virtue of their trade-skill: they are not hired ‘hands.’ Herdsmen often appear, but generally if not always they seem to be slaves or serfs. Nor is it clear that the digger (σκαφεύς) is free; he is referred to[132] as a specimen of the meanest class of labourer. But in three of the plays there occur passages directly descriptive of the poor working farmer, the αὐτουργὸς of whom I have spoken above. In the Electra, the prologue is put in the mouth of the poor but well-born αὐτουργὸς to whom the crafty Aegisthus has given Electra in marriage. The scene between husband and wife is one of peculiar delicacy and interest. The points that concern us here are these. The princess has been united[133] to a poor and powerless freeman. He is fully occupied[134] with the hard labour of his farm, which he apparently cultivates singlehanded. He understands the motive of Aegisthus, and shews his respect for Electra by refraining from conjugal rights. She in turn respects his nobility, and shews her appreciation by cheerfully performing[135] the humble duties of a cottar’s wife. When the breadwinner (ἐργάτης) comes home from toil, he should find all ready for his comfort. He is shocked to see her, a lady of gentle breeding (εὖ τεθραμμένη) fetch water from the spring and wait upon his needs. But he has to accept the situation: the morrow’s dawn[136] shall see him at his labour on the land: it is all very well to pray for divine aid, but to get a living the first thing needful is to work. Now here we have a picture of the free farmer on a small scale, who lives in a hovel and depends on the labour of his own hands. He is the ancient analogue of the French peasant, who works harder than any slave, and whose views are apt to be limited by the circumstances of his daily life. He has no slaves[137]. Again, the Theban herald in the Supplices[138], speaking of the incapacity of a Demos for the function of government, says ‘but a poor husbandman (γαπόνος ἀνὴρ πένης), even if not stupid, will be too busy to attend to state affairs.’ Here is our toiling rustic, the ideal citizen of statesmen who desire to keep free from popular control. The same character appears again in the Orestes, on the occasion of a debate in the Argive Assembly (modelled on Athens), as defender of Orestes. He is described[139] as ‘not of graceful mien, but a manly fellow, one who seldom visits the city and the market-place, a toiler with his hands (αὐτουργός), of the class on whom alone the safety of the country depends; but intelligent and prepared to face the conflict of debate, a guileless being of blameless life.’ So vivid is this portrait, that the sympathy of the poet with the rustic type of citizen can hardly be ignored. Now, why did Euripides take pains to shew this sympathy? I take it to be a sign that he saw with regret the declining influence of the farmer class in Attic politics.

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

That we should hear little of the employment of slaves in the hard work of agriculture, even if the practice were common, is not to be wondered at. Assuming the existence of slavery, there was no need for any writer other than a specialist to refer to them. But we have in the Rhesus a passage[140] in which Hector forecasts the result of an attack on the Greeks while embarking: some of them will be slain, and the rest, captured and made fast in bonds, will be taught to cultivate (γαπονεῖν) the fields of the Phrygians. That this use of captives is nothing extraordinary appears below, when Dolon the spy is bargaining for a reward in case of success. To a suggestion that one of the Greek chiefs should be assigned to him he replies ‘No, hands gently nurtured (εὖ ’τεθραμμέναι)[141] are unfit for farm-work (γεωργεῖν).’ The notion of captive Greeks slaving on the land for Asiatic lords is a touch meant to be provocative of patriotic indignation. And the remark of Dolon would surely fall more meaningly on the ears of men acquainted with the presence of rustic slavery in their own country. To serfage we have a reference[142] in the Heraclidae, but the retainer (πενέστης) is under arms, ‘mobilized,’ not at the time working on the land. His reward, when he brings the news of victory, is to be freedom.

IX. THE ‘CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS’ OR ‘OLD OLIGARCH.’

One of the most remarkable documents that have come down to us bearing upon Athenian politics is the ‘Constitution[143] of Athens’ wrongly assigned to Xenophon. It is certainly the work of an earlier writer, and the date of its composition can be fixed as between 430 and 424 BC. Thus it refers to the first years of the Peloponnesian war, during which Attica was repeatedly invaded, its rural economy upset, and the manifold consequences of overcrowding in the city of refuge were beginning to shew themselves. Not a few of the ‘better classes’ of Athenian citizens (οἱ βέλτιστοι) were dissatisfied with the readiness of the Demos, under the guidance of Pericles, to carry out a maritime and aggressive policy abroad at the cost of sacrificing rural interests at home. For the sacrifice fell on the landowners, more particularly on the larger owners: the compensations[144] of state-pay and chances of plunder might suffice for the peasant farmer driven into Athens. At the same time it was undeniable that the astounding energy displayed by democratic Athens had surprised the Greek world; and the most discontented Athenian could hardly suppress an emotion of patriotic pride. The writer of the pamphlet before us—for a pamphlet it is—was under the influence of these conflicting feelings. Whether it is right to describe him as an Oligarch depends on what that term is taken to connote. That he would greatly prefer a system[145] under which the educated orderly and honest citizens should enjoy greater consideration and power, is evident: also that in his view these qualities are normal attributes of the wealthier classes. For he finds in poverty the main cause[146] of democratic misdeeds. That the masses are ill-informed and lack judgment and self-control, is the result of their preoccupation with necessities of daily life. But from this conviction to aiming at a serious oligarchic revolution is a long step. The democracy in its less aggressive form, before the recent developments owing to the presence of an idle refugee population, might conceivably have sufficed for his requirements. He is a prejudiced contemporary witness, frank and cynical in the extreme, praising the Demos for doing the very things that he hates and despises, because those things are in the interest of the democracy such as it appears to him: they would be fools to act otherwise. For convenience sake I follow Mr Zimmern[147] in calling him the Old Oligarch.

His disgust at the lack of discipline in the slaves at Athens, and his ingenious explanation[148] of the causes that have led to toleration of the nuisance, are very characteristic of his whole attitude. But the slaves of whom he speaks are those labourers whom their owners allowed to work for hire in the city and Peiraeus, taking a share of their pay as rent for their services. Perhaps the state slaves are meant also. He admits that you have to put up with the airs of these fellows, who often become men of substance (πλούσιοι δοῦλοι) and think themselves as good as the citizens. Truth is, the master depends on the return he gets from his investment: if the rent comes in regularly, he asks no questions and the slave is given[149] a free hand. No wonder the bondman jostles his betters in the public streets, a state of things inconceivable in orderly Sparta. Now on the face of it this picture has nothing to do with the agricultural situation. But let us look further. The stress of the great war had increased the city population. The increased demand for imported food-stuffs and for materials of war (such as ship-timber) had undoubtedly increased the demand for dock-labourers, boatmen, porters, carters, and other ‘hands.’ Male citizens had enough to do in services by land and sea. From what source was the extra force of rough able-bodied labour recruited? Is it likely that a number of raw barbarian slaves were imported for the purpose? I think not; time would be needed to make them efficient, and the available shipping had already a difficult task to keep up the supply of indispensable goods. Is it not much more likely that rustic slaves, brought into Athens by their owners, were turned to account[150] in another department of labour, thus earning wages for themselves while they maintained their masters? The probability of this view will depend largely on proof that rustic slaves were employed in Attica under normal conditions at this time. We shall presently see how the evidence of Aristophanes bears on the point.

Meanwhile let us see what references to agriculture are to be found in this pamphlet. In speaking of the nautical skill[151] now a common accomplishment among Athenians, the writer remarks that the possession of estates abroad, and the duties of offices concerned with external affairs, have something to do with it. Men have to cross the water: they and their attendants (ἀκόλουθοι) thus pick up skill by experience without intending it: for it happens time and again that both master and slave (καὶ αὐτὸν καὶ τὸν οἰκέτην) have to take a turn at the oar. The estates referred to are chiefly state-lands allotted to Athenian cleruchs in confiscated districts, but also private properties. The voyages to and fro are nothing exceptional. Whether a man resided on his estate and had need to visit Athens, or whether he resided in Athens and had to visit his estate from time to time, he must go to sea. It is to be borne in mind that allottees in cleruchies often let their lands to the former owners as tenants. In another passage[152] he points out the disadvantage to Athens, as a maritime power, of not being on an island and so secure from invasion. ‘As things are, those Athenians who farm land or are wealthy (οἱ γεωργοῦντες καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι) are more inclined to conciliate the enemy (ὑπέρχονται = cringe to), while the Demos, well aware that their own belongings are in no danger of destruction, is unconcerned and defiant.’ A notable admission, confirmed by other evidence, as we shall see. It is to be observed that farmers and wealthy men are coupled together. The class more especially meant are probably those represented in Aristophanes by the substantial farmers of the Peace. But capitalists with investments in land are also included, and small-holders or tenants; these last working the land themselves, but not necessarily without employing hired or slave labour.

X. ARISTOPHANES.

Aristophanes is a witness of great importance. Of eleven surviving plays the Acharnians appeared in 425 BC, the Plutus in 388. Thus we have from this prince of wit and humour a series of comments on the social and political life of Athens and Attica from the point of view of conservative admirers of good old times. The evidence of Comedy is liable to be suspect, on the ground of a tendency to exaggerate and distort facts: but to make allowances for this tendency is not a task of extreme difficulty. Nor can it fairly be said that the political bias of the poet is such as to deprive his evidence of all authority. If he seems at times to be singularly detached from the prejudices of the war-party, dominating Athens under the democratic leaders, and able to discern and boldly to declare that the right was not solely on their own side in the war; still he was a warm patriot, devoted to the Athens whose defects he could not ignore. Among the striking events of the time nothing seems to have impressed him more forcibly than the devastation of Attica and the consequent ruin of the agricultural interest. That the cooping-up of the rural population[153] within the walls month after month was a progressive calamity, could hardly escape the notice of any one then resident. It was not merely the squalor or the appalling sickness, though these were in themselves enough to produce a terrible strain. Discontent and recklessness took hold of the masses, and other observers beside Aristophanes remarked the degeneration of the democracy. Aristophanes was an opponent of the war-policy, and strove hard to rally the farmer-folk in favour of peace. He spared no pains to discredit the noisy demagogues, accusing them of prolonging the war in order to retain or increase their own importance at the cost of the soundest element in the civic body. But, while he turned the farmers’ grievances to account in political advocacy, he was no mere unscrupulous partisan. His frequent references to the homely joys of country life, sometimes in sympathetic rural vignettes, have the ring of sincerity. Like many another dweller in the unwholesome city, he sighed for the fresh air, the wholesome food, the peace and quiet of Attic farmsteads: no doubt he idealized the surroundings, though he did not depict them as scenes of spotless innocence. But the details that drop out casually are often very significant from the point of view of my inquiry, and very helpful as giving us a genuine picture of the time.

On no point is information more to be desired than the relation of agriculture to wealth. Is the typical farmer of the period a man of large estate or not? We have seen that the ‘old oligarch’ classed together the wealthy and the farmers as favouring a peace-policy. That such a body of opinion, large or small, existed in Athens, is also suggested by passages in Aristophanes. In the Ecclesiazusae, the play in which the leader of the female politicians offers to cure distress by a communistic scheme, we are told[154] that a proposal to mobilize a fleet divides the Assembly: the poor man votes for it, but the wealthy and the farmers are against it. I take it that, as in the case of the Sicilian expedition, the man who wants to get paid for service (with a chance of profit) supports the motion; those who dislike having to pay for the enterprise, or see no way of profiting by it, are in opposition. This is a phenomenon normal in politics, and does not tell us whether the ‘farmers’ are cultivators on a large scale or small. Later in the play we find a protest[155] against the iniquity of the present juxtaposition of wealth and destitution, the state of things in which one man farms much land while another has not enough to afford him a grave. Even a comic poet would hardly put this into the mouth of one of his characters if there were not some section of the audience to whom it might appeal. It is probable that at the time (393-2 BC) communistic suggestions were among the currents of opinion in humbled and impoverished Athens. To squeeze the rich had long been the policy of the democrats, and a jealousy of wealth in any form became endemic in the distressful city. A few years later (388 BC) the poet gave in the Plutus a pointed discussion[156] of economic questions, ridiculing the notion that all could be rich at the same time: for nobody would work, and so civilization would come to an end. True, the individualistic bent of the average Athenian, grasping and litigious, prevented the establishment of downright communism: but Athens was henceforth never free from the jealous and hardly patriotic demands of the clamorous poor We must remember that military service, no longer offering prospects of profit in addition to pay, was becoming unpopular; that land-allotments[157] in conquered territories had ceased; and that agriculture in a large part of Attica was toilsome and unremunerative. Poverty was widespread, and commerce declined: this implies that the supply of slaves, and the money to buy them, would be reduced. Was there then much to attract the poor man to the lonely tillage of a patch of rocky land? The generation of small farmers before and during the great war had some outlook for themselves and their sons, serving in victorious armies or fleets, getting booty or allotments abroad. Hence they took a keen interest in politics. The fall of Athens had changed all this: the profits of empire had departed, and with them the buoyancy of an imperial pride. No wonder if there were signs of unwillingness to follow a hard rustic life. So the Informer in the Plutus[158], when asked ‘are you a husbandman?’ replies ‘do you take me for a madman?’ Earlier in the play[159] Chremylus, wishing to share with old cronies the profits of having captured the god of wealth, says to his slave ‘invite my fellow farmers: I fancy you’ll find them working themselves (αὐτοὺς) on their farms.’

I have taken this later picture first, in order to bring out more clearly the contrast presented by that given in the earlier plays. Naturally enough, many details are the same in both, but the general character of the farmers is different. The farmer class makes an important figure. They are sturdy rustics[160], old-fashioned and independent, rough in manners, fond of simple country life, and inclined (perhaps justly) to mistrust the city folk, who cheat them in business whenever they can, and take advantage of them in other ways, such as liability to military service at short notice. When driven to take refuge in Athens, their hearts are in their farms, and they have to make up their minds whether to support the war-party in hope of regaining their homes and property by force of arms, or to press for peace in order to end what is from their point of view an unnecessary war, kept going in the interest of demagogues and others who are profiting by the opportunities of offices and campaigns abroad. The issue appears in our earliest play, the Acharnians (425 BC). The farmers of the deme Acharnae, one of whose occupations was wood-cutting and charcoal-burning, at first come on as stubborn rustics, all for war and revenge on the enemy. But Dicaeopolis the chief character of the play, himself a farmer, and a sufferer in the same kind by the Spartan raids, succeeds in persuading[161] them that Athenian policy, provocative and grasping, is really to blame for their losses. In the end they come over to his views, and the play serves as a manifesto of the peace-party. Of course we are not to take it as history. But the conflict between the two sections of opinion is probably real enough. When Dicaeopolis describes[162] himself as ‘with my eyes ever turned to my farm, a lover of peace, detesting the city and hankering after my own deme, that never yet bade me buy charcoal or rough wine or olive oil,’ he is giving us a portrait of the rustic who is resolved not to part with cash for what can be produced on the farm.

But, whatever policy may seem best adapted to achieve their purpose, the purpose itself is clearly and consistently marked. The desire of the war-time farmers is simply to return to their farms[163] and to resume the life of toil and plenty, varied by occasional festivals, that had been interrupted by the war. They long to escape from the abominations of the crowding and unhealthiness prevailing in the city. Once they get back to their old surroundings, all will be well. Time and labour will even repair the damages caused by the enemy. No misgivings suggest that a change of circumstances may be found to have robbed Attic country life of some of its charm. Nothing like the loss of the empire, the fall of Athens, and the deadly depression of economic and political life, is foreboded: they face the sequel with undisturbed faith in the stability of the existing system. Nor indeed until the Sicilian disaster (413 BC) was there much to cause uneasiness. So we find the same spirit illustrated in the Peace (421 BC), which may be regarded as driving home the lesson of the Acharnians. The agricultural interests are now represented as solidly in favour of the peace of Nicias, unsatisfactory though it soon proved to be. While other interests are slack, indifferent or even hostile, farmers are whole-hearted[164] in determination to end the war and go home. Trygaeus their leader, according to the Greek sketch of the plot an elderly rustic, describes himself[165] as a ‘skilled vine-dresser, one who is no informer or fomenter of troubles (lawsuits).’ Needless to say, he carries his point, and the farmers march off triumphant[166] to their farms, eager to take up the old easygoing life once more. We must not take our comic poet too literally, but we have no reason to doubt that feelings such as he depicts in this play did prevail, and perhaps widely. And, though the peace was insincere, and warfare never really ceased, the immunity of Attica from invasion for several years gave time for agriculture to revive. When Agis occupied Deceleia in the winter of 413, his marauders would find on the Attic farms all manner of improvements and new plantations to destroy. And the destruction of the fruits of a laborious revival is to be reckoned among the depressing influences that weighed upon falling and desperate Athens. It was surely at work in the year 411, when Aristophanes was preaching a policy of concord at home and sympathetic treatment of the Allies in order to save the shaken empire. In the Lysistrata he represents the mad war-fury of the Greek states as due to the misguided men, whom the women coerce by privation into willingness for peace. This is strung up into a passionate longing, so that neither[167] of the principal parties is disposed to haggle over details. The Athenian breaks out ‘I want to strip and work my land at once.’ The Spartan rejoins ‘and I want to be carting manure.’ There is still no misgiving expressed, and the poet is probably true to facts. The struggles of the time were a fearful strain on Athenian resources, but it still seemed possible that the empire would weather the storm.

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

In the Acharnians the working farmer Dicaeopolis is delighted at having made a separate peace on his own account. He holds it a fine thing[168] that he should now be able to perform religious rites and celebrate the festival of the rustic Dionysia with his slaves. He is back at home[169] in his own rural deme, and he calls his slave Xanthias to carry the phallus in the procession. In the Clouds[170] old Strepsiades says that he lives in the heart of the country, and his preference for the easy and rather squalid life on a farm is plainly expressed. And the play opens with his complaint that in war-time a man has not a free hand to punish his slaves. It is however not clear that he is supposed to be at the time living on the farm. In the Wasps the chorus of old dicasts are indignant[171] that their old comrade Philocleon should be dragged off by his own slaves at the order of his son. The old man himself, struggling and protesting, reminds the leading slave of the time when he caught the rogue stealing grapes (obviously in his vineyard) and thrashed him soundly. In the Peace a rustic scene[172] is described. The weather being unfavourable for work on the land, but excellent for the seed just sown, it is proposed to make merry indoors. Country fare is made ready, and the female slave Syra is told to call in the man slave Manes from the farm. A little below Trygaeus is mocking the workers in war-trades. To the trumpet-maker he says, fit up your trumpet differently[173] and you can turn it into a weighing-machine: ‘it will then do for serving out rations of figs to your slaves on the farm.’ In the Lysistrata the chorus, being aware that an interval of distress will follow the conclusion of peace, offers[174] to tide over the crisis by helping the fathers of large families and owners of hungry slaves by doles of food. ‘Let them bring their bags and wallets for wheat: my Manes shall fill them.’ After these passages the announcement of the working of the communistic scheme[175] in the Ecclesiazusae carries us into a very different atmosphere. ‘But who is to till the soil under the new order?’ asks Blepyrus. ‘Our slaves,’ replies Praxagora, his typical better-half. We see that this amounts to basing society on a serf-system, for the slaves will be common property like the rest. In the Plutus old Chremylus is a farmer, apparently a working[176] farmer, but he has a slave, indeed more than one. Age has probably led him to do most of his work by deputy. When Poverty, in the course of her economic lecture, explains to him[177] that wealth for all means slaves for none and that he will have to plough and dig for his own proper sustenance, he is indignant. The weak points of the argument do not concern us here. The solution offered in the play, the cure of the Wealth-god’s blindness, enabling him to enrich only the deserving, is a mere piece of sportive nonsense, meant to amuse an audience, not to hold out a serious hope of better things.

Enough has been said to shew that the slave had a place in farm life as depicted by Aristophanes. It will be observed that in the earlier plays the references are all of a casual kind: that is to say, that slave-labour calls for no particular attention or remark. The consideration of slave-labour as such, in fact as an economic phenomenon, only appears later. This is, I repeat, significant of the change that had come upon Athens and Attica in consequence of exhaustion. In respect of hired labour it is obvious that pressure of poverty, as stated[178] in the Plutus, directly influences the supply. If the possession of a competency will deter men from professional industry in trades, even more will it deter them from the drudgery of rough labour. The hired men (μισθωτοί) were commonly employed in all departments, for instance in the building trades, to which there is a reference[179] in the Birds. But we may fairly assume that during the great war the number of such ‘hands’ available for civilian services was much reduced. In agriculture there would be little or no demand for them. And any able-bodied citizen could earn good pay from the state. Moreover rough labour was not much to the taste of the average Athenian,—above all, digging[180]. ‘I cannot dig’ was proverbial. On the other hand there were farm-duties in the performance of which sufficient care and intelligence could only be exacted through the medium of wage-paying. Such was that of olive-pickers, to whom and their wage we have a reference[181] in the Wasps. They are probably free persons, but it is possible that wage-earning slaves, paying rent to their owners, might be thus employed. That in some occupations free and slave-labour were both employed indifferently, is certain. The carriage of burdens[182] is a case in point. But employment in odd jobs would be far more frequent in the city, including Peiraeus, than in country places. I do not think it rash to conclude that hired free labourers were few on the farms of Attica in the time of Aristophanes.

Turning to citizen agriculturists, it must be mentioned that views differ as to the proportion of large estates held and worked by wealthy owners in this period. Such estates would almost certainly employ slave-labour. So far as the evidence of Aristophanes goes, I should infer that they were few. No doubt he had reasons for not making much of such cases; still I believe that the comfortable working farmer, homely and independent, the poet’s favourite character, was in fact the normal type. They were not paupers,—far from it: but their capital consisted in land, buildings, dead and live farm-stock, and the unexhausted value of previous cultivation. These items could not suddenly be converted into money without ruinous loss: most of them could not be carried away in the flight to Athens. Hence the dislike felt by such men to an adventurous policy, in which their interests were sacrificed. The passages in which agriculture is connected[183] with large property occur in a play produced 392 BC, at which time great changes had happened. It is highly probable that, among these changes, much Attic land had passed from the hands of ruined yeomen into those of rich men possessed of ready money and able to buy in a glutted market. In a later period we shall find γεωργεῖν used in the sense of acting the country landowner. To illustrate the life and ways of the peasant farmers of this period Aristophanes supplies endless references descriptive and allusive. The chief of these have been cited above. A few more may be added here. In the Clouds Strepsiades, urging his son to a rustic life, hopes to see him dressed in a leathern jerkin, like his father before him, driving in the goats[184] from the waste (φελλέως, the rocky hill-pasture). Here is a good instance of husbandry in the Attic highlands, in short a case of crofters. What a refugee might hope to save in his flight and take back to his farm on the return of peace—it amounts to a few implements[185]—is set out in the Peace. Loss of oxen, a yoke of two, driven off by Boeotian raiders, is pitifully bewailed[186] by a farmer in the Acharnians. But in general the farmers of the earlier plays are represented as tough elderly men. They are the ‘elder generation,’ and the poet genuinely admires them. For the younger generation he has a profound contempt. Evidently he thought that the soundest breed of Athenian citizens was dying out; and I am not sure that he was wrong.

I conclude that the evidence of Aristophanes on the whole points to an agriculture mainly carried on by working farmers with the help of slaves. This system was subjected to a very severe strain by the war-conditions prevailing for many years, and I do not think that it was possible to revive it on the same footing as before, even when Attica was no longer exposed to frequent raids. It was not merely the loss of fixed capital that told on the farmer class. Importation of corn was so developed and organized to meet the necessities of the crowded city, that it completely dominated the market, and in the production of cereals the home agriculture could now no longer compete with foreign harvests. There remained the culture of the olive and vine: but it needed years to restore plantations of these and other fruit-trees, and to wait for revival needed a capital possessed by few. The loss of imperial revenues impoverished Athens, and the struggle with financial difficulties runs through all her later history. It did not take the poorer citizens long to see that how to get daily bread was the coming problem. State-pay was no longer plentiful, and one aim of jealous franchise-regulations was to keep down the number of claimants. Had Aristophanes any inkling of the evil days to come? At all events he was aware that poverty works in two[187] ways: if it leads one man to practise a trade for his living, it tempts another to evildoing, perhaps to crime.

XI. THUCYDIDES.

Thucydides is a writer from whom it is extremely difficult to extract any evidence on the subject of agricultural labour. The preeminent importance of the problem of food-supply in the Greece of his day may be amply illustrated from his work; but mainly in casual utterances, the full significance of which is only to be gathered by thorough examination such as has been made[188] by Dr Grundy. The economic revolution in Attica that followed the reforms of Solon, the extended culture of the vine and olive, the reduced growth of cereal crops, the development of manufactures and sea-borne trade, the growing dependence on imported corn, and the influence of these changes on the public policy of Athens, are now seen more clearly as a whole than ever before. But to the great historian these things were part of the background of his picture. They are parts of a movement taken for granted rather than understood. And the same is true of the existence and application of slave-labour. In the time of Thucydides slavery was an economic and social fact, unchallenged. It may be that it affected unfavourably the position of the free handworker in the long run, and gave opportunities to slaveowning capitalists. But this effect came about slowly, and freeman and slave could and did labour[189] side by side, for instance in the great public works promoted by Pericles. How far slave-labour was really cheaper than free is a question beyond my subject. But it is important to note the attitude of the poor citizen towards the question of what we call a living wage. Once the great outlay on public works began to fall off, and industries on a larger scale to compete with the individual craftsman, how was the poor citizen to live? Directly or indirectly, the profits of empire supplied the answer. Now it was obvious that the fewer the beneficiaries the larger would be the average dividend of each. So the policy favoured by the poorer classes was a jealous restriction of the franchise. It was not the slave as labour-competitor against whom protection was desired, but the resident freeman of doubtful origin as a potential profit-sharer.

During nearly the whole of the period covered by the history of Thucydides the public policy of Athens was controlled by urban influences. Even before the rustic citizens were cooped up in the city, it was no doubt city residents that formed the normal majority in the Assembly, and to whom most of the paid offices and functions fell. Even allowing for the recent growth of ‘seafaring rabble’ in Peiraeus, these Athenians were not at all a mere necessitous mob. But it must be remembered that the commercial and industrial capitalists were interested in foreign trade. As Mr Cornford[190] points out, even metics of this class must have had considerable influence owing to wealth and connexions. Thus the urban rich as well as the urban poor were tempted to favour a policy of adventure, contrary to the wishes and interests of the Attic farmers. Now these latter were the truest representatives of the old Attic stock. Once they were crowded into the city and many of them diverted to state service, any sobering influence that they might at first exercise would become less and less marked, and they would tend to be lost in the mass. Therefore we hear only of the rustic life[191] from which they unwillingly tore themselves in 431 BC: we do not get any detailed picture of it, for the historian’s attention was otherwise occupied. In the passage[192] accounting for the unpopularity of Pericles in 430 BC we read that the Demos was irritated because ‘having less (than the rich) to start with, it had been deprived of that little,’ while the upper class (δυνατοὶ) had lost their fine establishments. Here the context seems to imply that the δῆμος referred to is especially the small farmers, still dwelling on their losses and not yet otherwise employed.

One passage is so important that it must be discussed by itself. Pericles is made to encourage[193] the Athenians in resistance to the Spartan demands by pointing out the superiority of their resources compared with those of the enemy. ‘The Peloponnesians’ he says ‘are working farmers (αὐτουργοί). They have no store of wealth (χρήματα) either private or public. Nor have they experience of protracted warfare with operations beyond the sea: for their own campaigns against each other are short, owing to poverty.’ After explaining how they must be hampered by lack of means, he resumes thus ‘And working farmers are more ready to do service in person than by payment. They trust that they may have the luck to survive the perils of war; but they have no assurance that their means will not be exhausted before it ends: for it may drag out to an unexpected length—and this is likely to happen.’ Two questions at once suggest themselves. Is this a fair sketch of agricultural conditions in Peloponnese? Does it imply that Attic farmers were not αὐτουργοί? To take the latter first, it is held by Professor Beloch[194] that the passage characterizes the Peloponnese as a land of free labour, in contrast with slave-holding Athens. To this view I cannot assent. I am convinced that the Attic farmer who worked with his own hands did often, if not always, employ slave-labour also. He would not have a large gang of slaves, like the large-scale cultivator: he could not afford to keep an overseer. But it might pay him to keep one or two slaves, not more than he could oversee himself. If the contrast be clearly limited, so as to compare the wealth of Athens, now largely industrial and commercial, with the wealth of a purely agricultural population, scattered over a wide area, and having little ready money, it is reasonable and true. But this does not raise the question of the Attic farmer at all. A little below[195] Pericles is made to urge that class to submit quietly to invasion and serious loss. They are not the people on whose resources he relies to wear out the enemy. That enemy finds it hard to combine for common action or to raise money by war-taxes. Athens is a compact community, able to act quickly, and has at disposal the forces and tribute of her subjects, secured by naval supremacy. To the other question, that of Peloponnesian agriculture, I see no simple answer. All the southern parts, the region of Spartan helotry, can hardly be called a land of free labour in any rational sense. Nor does it appear that Argolis, in spite of the various revolutions in local politics, could rightly be described thus. Elis and Achaia were hardly of sufficient importance to justify such a general description, even if it were certain that it would apply to them locally. Arcadia, mostly mountainous and backward, is the district to which the description would be most applicable. But that there were slaves in Arcadia is not only probable but attested by evidence, later in date but referring to an established[196] state of things. At festivals, we are told, slaves and masters shared the same table. This does not exclude rustic slaves: it rather seems to suggest them. The working farmer entertaining his slaves on a rural holiday is even a conventional tradition of ancient country life. Arcadia, a land of peasant farmers, where a living had to be won by hard work, a land whence already in the fifth century (and still more in the fourth) came numbers of mercenary soldiers, a land whence Sparta raised no small part of her ‘Peloponnesian’ armies, is what Pericles has chiefly in mind. And that Arcadians were normally αὐτουργοὶ did not imply that they had no slaves.

So far as Attica is concerned, Thucydides himself incidentally attests the presence of rustic slaves. He would probably have been, surprised to hear such an obvious fact questioned. In refusing to repeal the ‘Megarian decree’ the Athenians charged[197] the Megarians with various offences, one of which was the reception of their runaway slaves. In the winter 415-4 BC Alcibiades, urging the Spartans to occupy Deceleia, is made to state[198] the advantages of that move thus ‘For of all the farm-stock in the country the bulk will at once come into your possession, some by capture, and the rest of its own accord (αὐτόματα).’ I take the last words to refer especially to slaves,—rustic slaves. In recording the success of the plan, the historian tells[199] us that more than 20000 slaves, a large part of whom were artisans (χειροτέχναι), deserted to the enemy. We may guess that many or most of the artisan slaves had escaped from Athens. Their loss would be felt in the reduction of manufacturing output, so far as such enterprise was still possible at the time, and perhaps in the dockyards. But the rest would be rustic slaves, many of them (to judge by the map) from a district[200] in which there were probably many small farms. On the other hand, the slaves welcomed by the Megarians were probably from larger estates in the Thriasian plain. Turning from Attica, we find references to rustic slaves[201] in Corcyra (427 BC) and Chios (412 BC), where they were numerous and important in their effect on operations. And in other passages where the slaves belonging to the people of this or that place are mentioned we are not to assume that only urban slaves are meant. For to live in a town, and go out for the day’s work on the land, was and is a common usage in Mediterranean countries. An extreme case[202] is where people live on an island and cross water to cultivate farms elsewhere. It is perhaps hardly necessary to remark that rich slaveowners, who could afford overseers, did not need to reside permanently on their estates. Such a man might have more than one farm, and in more than one district, not necessarily in Attica at all, as Thucydides himself exploited a mining concession in Thrace. In any case a well-equipped ‘country place’ was a luxury, and is characterized as such[203] in words put into the mouth of Pericles, who as the democratic statesman was concerned to stifle discontent by insinuating that it was a mere expression of the selfishness of the rich.

The settlement of Athenians in colonies (ἀποικίαι) or on allotments of conquered land (κληρουχίαι), in the islands or on the seaboard has been fully treated[204] by Dr Grundy. He shews that this movement had two aims, the occupation of strategic points as an imperial measure of security, and the provision of land-lots for poorer citizens as a measure of economic relief. The latter purpose is part of a general plan for reducing the financial liabilities of the state with respect to its citizen population, the necessity for which Dr Grundy explains. By these settlements abroad some surplus population was removed and provided with means of livelihood. If the assumption of a surplus citizen population be sound (and I am not in a position to challenge it), we must also assume a certain degree of genuine land-hunger, at least more than the Attic territory could satisfy. If there was such land-hunger, it is perhaps not unreasonable to connect it with the survival of old Attic traditions of country life. And it would seem that the settlers, cleruchs or colonists, did as a rule[205] stay and live in their settlements. They would probably work their lands on much the same general plan as their brethren in Attica, and their labour-arrangements would be much the same. But in 427 BC, when Pericles was dead and there was surely no surplus population, at least of able-bodied men, owing to the war, we find a curious record. Reconquered Lesbos[206] had to be dealt with. It was not subjected to an assessed tribute (φόρος), but parcelled into 3000 allotments, 2700 of which were reserved for 2700 Athenian citizens, those who drew the lucky lots (τοὺς λαχόντας), and these 2700 were sent out. But they did not stay[207] there. They let their shares to the old inhabitants as cultivating tenants, at a rent of two minae per share per annum, and evidently returned to Athens. By this arrangement a sum of about £21000 a year would come in to the shareholders in Athens, who would have a personal interest in seeing that it was punctually paid. Whether these non-resident landlords were chosen by lot from all citizens, rich or poor, is not stated. We know that in some cases[208] at least the choice of settlers was confined to members of the two lowest property-classes; and it may well be that on this occasion the opportunity[209] was taken to compensate to some extent members of rural families, who had suffered loss from the invasions of Attica, but did not wish to go abroad. In any case their tenants would farm as they had done before, employing or not employing slave labour according to their means and the circumstances of the several farms. So too in cases of lands let on lease, and in the confiscations and redistributions of lands, proposed or carried out, it was simply their own profit and comfort that attracted the lessees or beneficiaries. We are entitled to assume that if it paid to employ slaves, and slaves were to be had, then slaves were employed. In short, the scraps of evidence furnished by Thucydides leave us pretty much where we were.

XII. XENOPHON.

Xenophon, who lived somewhere between 440 and 350 BC, introduces us to a great change in the conditions of the Greek world. The uneasiness and sufferings of the Greek states from the fall of Athens in 404 to the time of exhaustion resulting from the battle of Mantinea in 362 do not concern us here. Of such matters we hear much, but very little directly of the economic changes that were undoubtedly going on. Poverty was as before a standing trouble in Greece. In the more backward parts[210] able-bodied men left their homes to serve as hired soldiers. The age of professional mercenaries was in full swing. Arcadians Achaeans Aetolians Acarnanians Thessalians and other seekers after fortune became more and more the staple material of armies. Athens could no longer support imperial ambitions on imperial tributes, and had to depend on the sale of her products to procure her supplies of food. These products were chiefly oil and wine and urban manufactures, and there is reason to think that in general the most economical method of production was by slave labour under close and skilful superintendence. Slaves were supplied by kidnappers from the Euxine and elsewhere, but prisoners captured by armies were another source of supply. This living loot was one of the perquisites that made military life attractive, and the captives found their way to such markets as the industrial centres of Athens and Corinth. What happened in the rural districts of Attica, how far there was a revival of the small farmer class, is a point on which we are very much in the dark. The indirect evidence of Xenophon is interesting but not wholly conclusive.

It is perhaps important to consider what significance should be attached to the mention of agricultural work done by men of military forces on land or sea. In 406 BC we hear of hardships[211] endured by the force under the Spartan Eteonicus who were cut off in Chios after the defeat of Arginusae. During the summer months they ‘supported themselves on the fruits of the season and by working for hire in the country.’ This is meant to shew that they were in sad straits, as the sequel clearly proves. Again, in 372 BC Iphicrates was with a force in Corcyra, and naval operations were for the time over. So he ‘managed[212] to provide for his oarsmen (νάυτας) chiefly by employing them in farm-work for the Corcyraeans,’ while he undertook an expedition on the mainland with his soldiers. In both these cases want of pay was no doubt one reason for emergency-labour. In the earlier case the destitution of the men led them to look for any paid work: in the second the general had to do his best in spite of irregular and insufficient supplies from home. In both cases it is the exceptional nature of the arrangement that makes it worth mentioning. It can hardly be viewed as having any economic significance. But it is of some interest in connexion with a passage of Aristotle[213] that will require notice below.

In the Anabasis Xenophon reports his own arguments, urging the Greek army to fight their way out of the Persian empire. He feared that, now Cyrus was dead, and they were cut off far from home in an enemy’s country, they might in despair surrender to the King and take service under him. At best this meant giving up Greece and settling in Persia on the King’s terms. This he begged them not to do: that they could under Greek discipline cut their way out was evident from the independence of many peoples of Asia Minor, who lived and raided as they chose in defiance of the Persian power. He added ‘Therefore I hold[214] that our right and proper course is first to make a push to reach Hellas and our own kinsmen, and to demonstrate to the Greeks that their poverty is their own fault: for, if they would only convey to these parts those of their citizens who are now living in want at home, they could see them in plenty (πλουσίους).’ But he reminds them that the good things of Asia are only to be had as the reward of victory. For my present purpose the one important point is that a mixed host of Greek mercenaries are said to have been appealed to by a reference to the fact of poverty and land-hunger among their folks at home, and that this reference is said to have been made by an Athenian. Writing this in later life, Xenophon would hardly have set down such an argument had it not then, as on the occasion recorded, had considerable force. In another passage[215] he gives an interesting account of the motives that had induced most of the men to join the expedition. He is explaining why they were irritated at a rumour that they were to be pressed to settle down at a spot on the Euxine coast. ‘It was not lack of subsistence that had led most of the soldiers to go abroad on this paid service: they had been told of the generosity of Cyrus. Some had other men following them, some had even spent money for the cause: others had run away from their parents, or left children behind, meaning to win money and return to them, on the faith of the reported prosperity of those already in the service of Cyrus. Such was the character of the men, and they were longing to get safe home to Greece.’ In short, full-blooded men were not content to drag on poor ill-found stagnant lives in corners of Greece. And we may add that nothing stimulated the enterprises of Greek adventurers in the East, and led up to the conquests of Alexander, more effectually than the experiences of the Ten Thousand.

Among these experiences was of course the capture of booty, more particularly[216] in the form of marketable prisoners. So many of these were sometimes in hand that they were a drag on the march: in a moment of peril[217] they had to be abandoned. Even so, a considerable sum had been raised by sales[218] and was shared out at Cerasus. The Greek cities on the Pontic seaboard would all no doubt be resorts of slave-dealers. One of the Ten Thousand himself, formerly a slave[219] at Athens, recognized as kinsmen by their speech the people of a mountain tribe in Armenia. In Thrace too we hear of the chieftain Seuthes, when short of cash, offering[220] to make a payment partly in slaves. Nor was selling into slavery a fate reserved for barbarians alone. Greeks[221] had been treated thus in the great war lately ended; and now the Spartan harmost, anxious to clear the remainder of the Ten Thousand[222] out of Byzantium safely, made them an offer of facilities for a raid in Thrace: any that stayed behind in the town were to be sold as slaves. And more than 400 were accordingly sold. It seems reasonable to infer that at this time the slave-markets were as busy as ever, perhaps more so than had been the case during the great war. It may be going too far to say that in some parts of Greece people were now trying to restore a broken prosperity by industrial exploitation of slave-labour, while from other parts soldiers of fortune and kidnappers went forth to enlarge the supply of slaves. But that there is some truth in such a statement I do not doubt. It was evidently no easy matter for persons of small means to live in any sort of comfort at Athens. We hear of Socrates[223] discussing with a friend the embarrassments of a genteel household. The late civil disorders have driven a number of this man’s sisters cousins and aunts to take refuge in his house. In the present state of things neither land nor house property are bringing in anything, and nobody will lend. How is he to maintain a party of 14 free persons in all? Socrates points to the case of a neighbour who provides for a still larger household without difficulty. Questions elicit the fact that this household consists of slave-artisans trained to useful trades. The distressed party have been brought up as ladies, to do nothing. Socrates suggests that they had better work for bread than starve. The adoption of this suggestion produced the happiest results in every way. Such was the way in which Socrates led his friend. He drew from him the assertion that free people are superior to slaves, and so brought him round to the conviction that superiority could not be shewn by mere incapacity for work.

In this conversation of Socrates may be detected the germ of a complete revolution in thought on labour-subjects. It avoids the topic of common humanity. That the slave is a man and brother, only the victim of misfortune, had been hinted by Euripides and was to become a theme of comic poets. But Socrates lets this point alone, and argues from natural economic necessity. Elsewhere he denounces[224] idleness and proclaims that useful labour is good for the labourer, taking a moral point of view. Again, he suggests[225] that the shortcomings of slaves are largely due to their masters’ slackness or mismanagement. But he accepts slavery as a social and economic fact. All the same he makes play at times with the notion of moral worthlessness, which many people regarded as characteristic of slaves in general. It is the knowledge of the true qualities[226] of conduct, in short of the moral and political virtues, that makes men honourable gentlemen (καλοὺς κἀγαθούς), and the lack of this knowledge that makes them slavish (ἀνδραποδώδεις). But, if the difference between a liberal and an illiberal training, expressed in resulting habits of mind, is thus great, the slavish must surely include many of those legally free. Hence he even goes so far as to say ‘Therefore we ought to spare no exertions to escape being slaves (ἀνδράποδα).’ And he lays stress on the need of moral qualities[227] in slaves as well as freemen: we should never be willing to entrust our cattle or our store-houses or the direction of our works to a slave devoid of self-control. His position suggests two things: first, that the importance of the slave in the economic and social system was a striking fact now recognized: second, that the unavoidable moral degradation generally assumed to accompany the condition of slavery was either wrongfully assumed or largely due to the shortcomings of masters. The conception of the slave as a mere chattel, injury to which is simply a damage to its owner, was proving defective in practice, and the philosopher was inclined to doubt its soundness in principle. Xenophon had been brought into touch with such questionings by his intercourse with Socrates. It remains to see how far he shews traces of their influence when he comes to treat labour-problems in connexion with agriculture.

References to agriculture[228] are few and unimportant in the Memorabilia. The Economicus deals directly with the subject. A significant passage throws light on the condition of rural Attica at the end of the fifth century BC. The speaker Ischomachus tells[229] how his father made money by judicious enterprise. He bought up farms that were let down or derelict, got them into good order, and sold them at a profit when improved. Clearly he was a citizen, able to deal in real estate, and a capitalist. There can hardly be a doubt that he operated by the use of slave-labour on a considerable scale. All through the Economicus slavery is presupposed, but the attitude of Xenophon is characteristically genial and humane. The existence of a slave-market[230], where you may buy likely men, even skilled craftsmen, is assumed. But the most notable feature of the book is the seriousness with which the responsibility of the master[231] is asserted. There is no querulous evasion of the issue by laying the blame of failure on the incorrigible vices of slaves. Prosperity will depend on securing good service: good service cannot be secured by any amount of chains and punishments, if the master be slack and fitful: both in the house and on the farm, good sympathetic discipline, fairly and steadily enforced, is the secret of success. Carelessness malingering and desertion must be prevented or checked. And to achieve this is the function of the economic art, operating through the influence of hope rather than fear. The training of slaves[232] is a matter needing infinite pains on the part of the master and mistress. She must train her housekeeper (ταμία) as he trains his steward (ἐπίτροπος), and both are to act in a humane and kindly spirit. Yet the strictly animal view of slaves[233] appears clearly in a passage where the training of slaves is compared with that of horses or performing dogs. ‘But it is possible to make men more obedient by mere instruction (καὶ λόγῳ), pointing out that it is to their interest to obey: in dealing with slaves the system which is thought suitable for training beasts has much to recommend it as a way of teaching obedience. For by meeting their appetites with special indulgence to their bellies you may contrive to get much out of them.’ We gather that the better and more refined type of Athenian gentleman with a landed estate, while averse to inhumanity, and aware that slaves were human, still regarded his slaves as mere chattels. His humanity is prompted mainly by self-interest. As for rights, they have none.

The system of rewards and punishments on the estate of course rests wholly on the masters will. The whole success of the working depends on the efficiency of the steward or stewards. Accordingly the passage in which Ischomachus explains how he deals with these trusted slaves is of particular interest. Having carefully trained a man, he must judge him[234] according to a definite standard—does he or does he not honestly and zealously discharge his trust? ‘When I find that in spite of good treatment they still try to cheat me, I conclude that their greediness is past curing, and degrade them[235] from their charge.’ This seems to mean that they are reduced to the position of the ordinary hands. ‘But when I observe any induced to be honest[236] not merely because honesty pays best, but because they want to get a word of praise from me, these I treat as no longer slaves (ὥσπερ ἐλευθέροις ἤδη). I not only enrich them, but shew them respect as men of honour.’ One is tempted to interpret these last words as implying that actual manumission takes place, the services of the men being retained as freedmen. But the words do not say so plainly, and it is safer to read into them no technical sense. That the men are trusted and allowed to earn for themselves, is enough. The agriculture depicted in the Economicus is that of a landowner with plenty of capital, not that of the peasant farmer. The note of it is superintendence[237] (ἐπιμέλεια), not bodily labour (αὐτουργία). In one place αὐτουργία is mentioned, when agriculture is praised, one of its merits being the bodily strength that those gain who work with their own hands. It is as well to repeat here that the fact of a farmer labouring himself does not prove that he employs no other labour. On the other hand there is good reason to infer that the other class, those who ‘do their farming by superintendence,’ are not manual labourers at all. The benefit to them is that agriculture ‘makes them early risers and smart in their movements.’ The master keeps a horse, and is thus enabled to ride out[238] early to the farm and stay there till late.

It is remarkable that in this book we hear nothing of hired labourers. There are two references[239] to the earning of pay, neither of them in connexion with agricultural labour. Yet the existence of a class of poor people who have to earn their daily bread[240] is not ignored. Socrates admires the economic skill[241] of Ischomachus. It has enabled him to be of service to his friends and to the state. This is a fine thing, and shews the man of substance. In contrast, ‘there are numbers of men who cannot live without depending on others: numbers too who are content if they can procure themselves the necessaries of life.’ The solid and strong men are those who contrive to make a surplus and use it as benefactors. I read this passage as indirect evidence of the depression of small-scale free industry and the increase of slaveowning capitalism in the Athens of Xenophon’s time. And I find another indication[242] of this in connexion with agriculture. In the course of the dialogue it appears that the chief points of agricultural knowledge are simple enough: Socrates knew them all along. Why then do some farmers succeed and others fail? The truth of the matter is, replies Ischomachus, that the cause of failure is not want of knowledge but want of careful superintendence. This criticism is in general terms, but it is surely inapplicable to the case of the working peasant farmer: he who puts his own labour into the land will not overlook the shortcomings of a hired man or a slave. In the agriculture of which this book treats it is the practical and intelligent self-interest of the master that rules everything. His appearance on the field[243] should cause all the slaves to brighten up and work with a will: but rather to win his favour than to escape his wrath. For in agriculture, as in other pursuits, the ultimate secret of success[244] is a divine gift, the power of inspiring a willing obedience.

I have kept back one passage which needs to be considered with reference to the steward[245]. Can we safely assume that an ἐπίτροπος was always, or at least normally, a slave? Of those who direct the labourers, the real treasure is the man who gets zealous and steady work out of the hands, whether he be steward or director (ἐπίτροπος or ἐπιστάτης). What difference is connoted by these terms? In the Memorabilia[246], Socrates meets an old friend who is impoverished by the results of the great war, and driven to earn his living by bodily labour. Socrates points out to him that this resource will fail with advancing age: he had better find some employment less dependent on bodily vigour. ‘Why not look out for some wealthy man who needs an assistant in superintendence of his property? Such a man would find it worth his while to employ you as director (or foreman, ἔργων ἐπιστατοῦντα), to help in getting in his crops and looking after his estate.’ He answers ‘it would gall me to put up with a servile position (δουλείαν).’ Clearly the position of ἐπιστάτης appears to him a meaner occupation than free wage-earning by manual labour. In another place[247] we hear of an ἐπιστάτης for a mine-gang being bought for a talent (£235). That superintendents, whatever their title, were at least normally slaves, seems certain. As to the difference between ‘steward’ and ‘director’ I can only guess that the former might be a slave promoted from the ranks, but might also be what the ‘director’ always was, a new importation. It seems a fair assumption that, as a free superintendent must have been a new importation, a specially bought slave ‘director’ would rank somewhat higher than an ordinary ‘steward,’ whose title ἐπίτροπος at once marked him as a slave. In relation to the general employment of slave-labour there is practically no difference: both are slave-driving ‘overseers.’ As the pamphlet on the Revenues has been thought by some critics not to be the work of Xenophon, I pass it by, only noting that it surely belongs to the same generation. It fully attests the tendency to rely[248] on slave-labour, but it is not concerned with agriculture.

The romance known as Cyropaedia wanders far from fact. Its purpose is to expound or suggest Xenophon’s own views on the government of men: accordingly opportunities for drawing a moral are sought at the expense of historical truth. But from my present point of view the chief point to note is that it does not touch the labour-question with which we are concerned. True, we hear[249] of αὐτουργοί, and of the hardship and poverty of such cultivators, gaining a painful livelihood from an unkind soil. That the value of a territory depends on the presence of a population[250] able and willing to develop its resources, is fully insisted on by Cyrus. But this is in connexion with conquest. The inhabitants of a conquered district remain as tributary cultivators, merely changing their rulers. That the labour of the conquered is to provide the sustenance of the conquering race, is accepted as a fundamental principle. It is simply the right of the stronger: if he leaves anything to his subject, that is a voluntary act of grace. The reason why we hear little of slavery is that all are virtually slaves save the one autocrat. The fabric of Xenophon’s model government is a very simple one: first, an oriental Great King, possessed of all the virtues: second, a class of warrior nobles, specially trained and dependent on the King’s favour: third, a numerous subject population, whose labour supports the whole, and who are practically serfs. A cynical passage[251] describes the policy of Cyrus, meant to perpetuate the difference of the classes. After detailing minutely the liberal training enjoined on those whom he intended to employ in governing (οὓς ... ἄρχειν ᾤετο χρῆναι), Xenophon proceeds to those whom he intended to qualify for servitude (οὓς ... κατεσκεύαζεν εἰς τὸ δουλεύειν). These it was his practice not to urge to any of the liberal exercises, nor to allow them to possess arms. He took great care to spare them any privations: for instance at a hunt: the hunters had to take their chance of hunger and thirst, being freemen, but the beaters had ample supplies and halted for meals. They were delighted with this consideration, the design of which was to prevent their ever ceasing to be slaves (ἀνδράποδα). The whole scheme is frankly imperial. All initiative and power rests with the autocrat, and all depends on his virtues. That a succession of such faultless despots could not be ensured, and that the scheme was consequently utopian, did not trouble the simple Xenophon. Like many other thoughtful men of the time, he was impressed by the apparent efficiency of the rigid Spartan system, and distrusted the individual liberty enjoyed in democratic states, above all in Athens. In Persia, though he thought the Persians were no longer what Cyrus the Great had made them, he had seen how great was still the power arising from the control of all resources by a single will. These two impressions combined seem to account for the tone of the Cyropaedia, and the servile position of the cultivators explains why it has so very little bearing on the labour-question in agriculture.

XIII. THE COMIC FRAGMENTS.

In pursuing our subject from period to period, and keeping so far as possible to chronological order, it may seem inconsistent to take this collection[252] of scraps as a group. For Attic Comedy covers nearly two centuries, from the age of Cratinus to the age of Menander. Many changes happened in this time, and the evidence of the fragments must not be cited as though it were that of a single witness. But the relevant passages are few; for the writers, such as Athenaeus and Stobaeus, in whose works most of the extracts are preserved, seldom had their attention fixed on agriculture. The longer fragments[253] of Menander recently discovered are somewhat more helpful. The adaptations of Plautus and Terence must be dealt with separately.

That country life and pursuits had their share of notice on the comic stage is indicated by the fact that Aristophanes produced a play[254] named Γεωργοί, and Menander a Γεωργός. That the slave-market was active is attested by references in all periods. So too is wage-earning labour of various kinds: but some of these passages certainly refer to wage-earning by slaves paying a rent (ἀποφορά) to their owners. Also the problems arising out of the relation between master and slave, with recognition of the necessity of wise management. The difference between the man who does know how to control slaves[255] and the man who does not (εὔδουλος and κακόδουλος) was early expressed, and indirectly alluded to throughout. The good and bad side of slaves, loyalty treachery honesty cheating etc, is a topic constantly handled. But these passages nearly always have in view the close relation of domestic slavery. I think we are justified in inferring that the general tone steadily becomes more humane. Common humanity gains recognition as a guide of conduct. Many of the fragments have been handed down as being neatly put moral sentences, and of these not a few[256] recognize the debt that a slave owes to a good master. These are utterances of slaves, for the slave as a character became more and more a regular figure of comedy, as comedy became more and more a drama of private life. Side by side with this tone is the frank recognition of the part played by chance[257] in the destinies of master and slave; a very natural reflexion in a state of things under which you had but to be captured and sold out of your own country, out of the protection of your own laws, to pass from the former condition to the latter. A few references to manumission also occur, and the Roman adaptations suggest that in the later Comedy they were frequent. On the other hand several fragments seem to imply that circumstances were working unfavourably to the individual free craftsmen, at least in some trades. The wisdom of learning a craft (τέχνη), as a resource[258] that cannot be lost like external possessions, is insisted on. But in other passages a more despairing view[259] appears; death is better than the painful struggle for life. No doubt different characters were made to speak from different points of view.

It is to be noted that two fragments of the earlier Comedy refer to the old tradition[260] of a golden age long past, in which there were no slaves (see under Herodotus), and in which the bounty of nature[261] provided an ample supply of food and all good things (see the passages cited from the Odyssey). Athenaeus, who has preserved[262] these extracts, remarks that the old poets were seeking by their descriptions to accustom mankind to do their own work with their own hands (αὐτουργοὺς εἶναι). But it is evident that the subject was treated in the broadest comic spirit, as his numerous quotations shew. When in the restoration of good old times the articles of food are to cook and serve themselves and ask to be eaten, we must not take the picture very seriously. These passages do however suggest that there was a food-question at the time when they were written, of sufficient importance to give point to them: possibly also a labour-question. Now Crates and Pherecrates flourished before the Peloponnesian war and during its earlier years, Nicophon was a late contemporary of Aristophanes. The evidence is too slight to justify a far-reaching conclusion, but it is consistent with the general inferences drawn from other authorities. In the fragments of the later Comedy we begin to find passages bearing on agriculture, and it is surely a mere accident that we do not have them in those of the earlier.

The contrast between life in town and life in the country is forcibly brought out[263] by Menander. The poor man has no chance in town, where he is despised and wronged: in the country he is spared the galling presence of witnesses, and can bear his ill fortune on a lonely farm. The farm then is represented as a sort of refuge from unsatisfactory surroundings in the city. When we remember that in Menander’s time Athens was a dependency of one or other of Alexander’s Successors, a community of servile rich and mean poor, fawning on its patrons and enjoying no real freedom of state-action, we need not wonder at the poet’s putting such a view into the mouths of some of his characters. The remains of the play Γεωργὸς are of particular interest. The old master is a tough obstinate old fellow, who persists in working[264] on the land himself, and even wounds himself by clumsy use of his mattock. But he has a staff of slaves, barbarians, on whom he is dependent. These paid no attention to the old man in his misfortune; a touch from which we may infer that the relations between master and slaves were not sympathetic. But a young free labourer in his employ comes to the rescue, nurses him, and sets him on his legs again. While laid up, the old man learns by inquiry that this youth is his own son, the fruit of a former amour, whom his mother has reared in struggling poverty. Enough of the play remains to shew that the trials of the free poor were placed in a strong light, and that, as pointed out above, the struggle for existence in the city was felt to be especially severe. In this case whether the old man is rich or not does not appear: at all events he has enough property to make amends for his youthful indiscretions by relieving the necessities of those who have a claim on him. He is probably the character in whose mouth[265] were put the words ‘I am a rustic (ἄγροικος); that I don’t deny; and not fully expert in affairs of city life (lawsuits etc?): but I was not born yesterday.’

The functions of the rustic slaves may give us some notion of the kind of farms that Menander had in mind. In the Γεωργός, the slave Davus, coming in from his day’s labour, grumbles[266] at the land on which he has to work: shrubs and flowers of use only for festival decorations grow there as vigorous weeds, but when you sow seed you get back what you sowed with no increase. This savours of the disappointing tillage of an upland farm. In the Ἐπιτρέποντες[267], Davus is a shepherd, Syriscus a charcoal-burner, occupations also proper to the hill districts. We must not venture to infer that Attic agriculture was mainly of this type in the poet’s day. The favourite motive of plots in the later Comedy, the exposure of infants in remote spots, their rescue by casual herdsmen or other slaves, and their eventual identification as the very person wanted in each case to make all end happily, would of itself suggest that lonely hill-farms, rather than big estates in the fat lowland, should be the scene. From my point of view the fact of chief interest is that slave-labour appears as normal in such an establishment. Rustic clothing[268] and food served out in rations[269] are minor details of the picture, and the arrangement by which a slave can work as wage-earner[270] for another employer, paying over a share to his own master (the ἀποφορά), surely indicates that there was nothing exceptional about it. There are one or two other fragments directly bearing on agricultural labour. One of uncertain age[271] speaks of a tiresome hand who annoys his employer by chattering about some public news from the city, when he should be digging. I doubt whether a slave is meant: at least he is surely a hired one, but why not a poor freeman, reduced to wage-earning? Such is the position of Timon[272] in Lucian—μισθοῦ γεωργεῖ—a passage in which adaptations from Comedy are reasonably suspected. That rustic labour has a better side to it, that ‘the bitter of agriculture has a touch of sweet in it,’ is admitted[273] by one of Menander’s characters, but the passage which seems the most genuine expression of the prevalent opinion[274] is that in which we read that a man’s true part is to excel in war, ‘for agriculture is a bondman’s task’ (τὸ γὰρ γεωργεῖν ἔργον ἐστὶν οἰκέτου).

The nature and condition of the evidence must be my excuse for the unsatisfactory appearance of this section. The number of passages bearing on slavery in general, and the social and moral questions connected therewith, is large and remote from my subject. They are of great interest as illustrating the movement of thought on these matters, but their bearing on agricultural labour is very slight. To the virtues of agriculture as a pursuit tending to promote a sound and manly character Menander[275] bears witness. ‘A farm is for all men a trainer in virtue and a freeman’s life.’ Many a town-bred man has thought and said the same, but praise is not always followed by imitation. Even more striking is another[276] remark, ‘farms that yield but a poor living make brave men.’ For it was the hard-living rustics from the back-country parts of Greece that succeeded as soldiers of fortune, the famous Greek mercenaries whose services all contemporary kings were eager to secure. In short, to the onlooker it seemed a fine thing to be bred a healthy rustic, but the rustic himself was apt to prefer a less monotonous and more remunerative career.

XIV. EARLY LAWGIVERS AND THEORISTS.

The treatises of the two great philosophers on the state (and therefore on the position of agriculture in the state) did not spring suddenly out of nothing; nor was it solely the questionings of Socrates[277] that turned the attention of Plato and Aristotle to the subject. Various lawgivers had shewn in their systems a consciousness of its importance, and speculative thinkers outside[278] the ranks of practical statesmen had designed model constitutions in which a reformed land-system played a necessary part. It is to Aristotle, the great collector of experience, that we owe nearly all our information of these attempts. It is convenient to speak of them briefly together. All recognize much the same difficulties, and there is a striking similarity in the means by which they propose to overcome them. The lawgivers[279] referred to are Pheidon of Corinth and Philolaus, also a Corinthian though his laws were drafted for Thebes, and thirdly[280] Solon. The dates of the first two are uncertain, but they belong to early times. The two constitution-framers[281] are Hippodamus of Miletus, whose birth is placed about 475 BC, and Phaleas of Chalcedon, probably somewhat later. Both witnessed the growth of imperial Athens, and Phaleas at least is thought to have been an elder contemporary of Plato. Very little is known about them. If we say that the attempt to design ideal state systems shews that they were not satisfied with those existing, and that the failure of past legislation may have encouraged them to theorize, we have said about all that we are entitled to infer.

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

Since the light thrown on the subject[282] by Dr Grundy, no one will dispute the importance of economic considerations in Greek policy, and in particular of the ever-pressing question of the food-supply. The security of the land and crops was to most states a vital need, and necessitated constant readiness to maintain it in arms. Closely connected therewith was the question of distribution. Real property was not only the oldest and most permanent investment. Long before Aristotle[283] declared that ‘the country is a public thing’ (κοινόν), that is an interest of the community, that opinion was commonly held, whether formulated or instinctive. The position of the landless man was traditionally a dubious one. The general rule was that only a citizen could own land in the territory of the state. From this it was no great step to argue that every citizen ought to own a plot of land within the borders. This was doubtless not always possible. In such a state as Corinth or Megara or Miletus commercial growth in a narrow territory had led to extensive colonization from those centres. And the normal procedure in the foundation of Greek colonies was to divide the occupied territory into lots (κλῆροι) and assign them severally to settlers. In course of time the discontents generated by land-monopolizing in old Hellas were liable to reappear beyond the seas, particularly in colonial states of rapid growth: a notorious instance is found in the troubles arising at Syracuse out of the squatter-sovranty created by the original colonists. We meet with plans for confiscation and redistribution of land as a common phenomenon of Greek revolutions. The mischievous moral effects of so unsettling a process on political wellbeing did not escape the notice of thoughtful observers. But on one important point we have practically no evidence. Did the new allottees wish to be, and in fact normally become, working farmers (αὐτουργοί)? Or did they aim at providing for themselves an easy life, supported by the labour of slaves? I wish I could surely and rightly decide between these alternatives. As it is, I can only say that I believe the second to be nearer the truth.

Under such conditions Greek lawgivers and theorists alike seem to have looked to much the same measures for remedying evils that they could not ignore. The citizen as landholder is the human figure with which they are all concerned. To prevent destitution arising from the loss[284] of his land-lot is a prime object. Some therefore would forbid the sale of the lot. To keep land in the same hands it was necessary to regulate numbers of citizen households, and this was attempted[285] in the laws of Pheidon. Families may die out, so rules to provide for perpetuity by adoptions[286] were devised by Philolaus. Again, there is the question of the size of the lots, and this raises the further question of a limit to acquisition. Such a limitation is attributed[287] to certain early lawgivers not named, and with them apparently to Solon. Phaleas would insist on equality of landed estate[288] among his citizens: a proposal which Aristotle treats as unpractical, referring to only one form of wealth, and leaving out of account slaves, tame animals, coin, and the dead-stock tools etc. His exclusive attention to internal civic wellbeing is also blamed, for it is absurd to disregard the relations of a state to other states: there must be a foreign policy, therefore you must provide[289] military force. The fanciful scheme of Hippodamus, a strange doctrinaire genius, seems to have been in many points inconsistent from want of attention to practical detail. From Aristotle’s account he appears not to have troubled himself with the question of equal land-lots, but his fixing the number[290] of citizens (10,000) is evidence that his point of view necessitated a limit. He proceeds on a system of triads. The citizens are grouped in three classes, artisans (τεχνῖται), husbandmen (γεωργοί), and the military, possessors of arms. The land is either sacred (for service of religion, ἱερά), public (δημοσία or κοινή) or the property of the husbandmen (ἰδία). The three classes of land and citizens are to be assumed equal. The military are to be supported by the produce of the public land. But who cultivates it? Aristotle shews that the scheme is not fully thought out. If the soldiers, then the distinction, obviously intended, between soldier and farmer, is lost. If the farmers, then the distinction between the public and private land is meaningless. If neither, a fourth class, not allowed for in the plan, will be required. This last is probably what Hippodamus meant: but to particularize the employment of slaves may have appeared superfluous. Into the purely constitutional details I need not enter, but one criticism is so frankly expressive of Greek ideas that it can hardly be omitted. What, says Aristotle, is the use of political rights to the artisans and husbandmen? they are unarmed, and therefore will practically be slaves of the military class. This was the truth in Greek politics generally, and is one of the most significant facts to be borne in mind when considering the political failure of the Greeks.

A curious difference of economic view is shewn in the position assigned to the artisan[291] or craftsman element by Hippodamus and Phaleas respectively. Phaleas would have them state-slaves (δημόσιοι), Hippodamus makes them citizens, though unarmed. On the former plan the state would no doubt feed them and use their produce, as we do with machinery. Of the latter plan Aristotle remarks that τεχνῖται are indispensable: all states need them, and they can live of the earnings of their crafts, but the γεωργοὶ as a distinct class are superfluous. We may reply that, if the craftsmen live of their earnings and stick to their several crafts, they will need to buy food, and the farmers are surely there to supply it. The reply is so obvious that one feels as if Aristotle’s meaning had been obscured through some mishap to the text. For the present purpose it suffices that the professional craftsmen in these two Utopias are to be either actual slaves or citizens de iure who are de facto as helpless as slaves. In the scheme of Hippodamus the farmer-class also are virtually the slaves of the military. Another notable point, apparently neglected by Hippodamus, is the trust reposed in education[292] or training by both Phaleas and his critic. How to implant in your citizens the qualities needed for making your institutions work well in practice, is the problem. Phaleas would give all the same training, on the same principle as he gives equal land-lots. To Aristotle this seems crude nonsense: the problem to him is the discovery of the appropriate training, whether the same for all or not. This insistence on training as the main thing in citizen-making is, as we shall see, a common feature of Greek political speculation. But in the artistic desire to produce the ‘complete citizen,’ and thereby make possible a model state, the specializing mania outruns the humbler considerations of everyday human society, and agriculture, for all its confessed importance, is apt to be treated with something very like contempt. The tendency to regard farmer and warrior as distinct classes is unmistakeable. The peasant-soldier of Roman tradition is not an ordinary Greek figure. How far the small scale of Greek states may have favoured this differentiation is very hard to say. But Greek admiration for the athlete type had probably something to do with the growth of military professionalism.

The recognition of a land-question and attempts to find a solution were probably stimulated by observation of contemporary phenomena, especially in the two leading states of the fifth century. Sparta had long held the first place, and even the rise of Athens had not utterly destroyed her ancient prestige. That her military system was effective, seemed proved by the inviolability of Laconian territory and the successes of her armies in external wars. That it was supported by the labour of a Greek population reduced to serfdom, was perhaps a weak point in her institutions; but that Greek opinion was seriously shocked by the fact can hardly be maintained. It was now and then convenient to use it as a passing reproach, but even Athens did not refuse to aid in putting down Helot rebellions. And this weak point was set off by a strong one. Whatever the reasons[293] for her policy, she interfered very little in the internal affairs of her allies and did not tax them. To be content with the leadership of confederates, and not to convert it into an empire of subjects, assured to her a certain amount of respectful sympathy in the jealous Greek world. Thus she afforded an object-lesson in the advantages of rigid specialization. She provided her own food in time of peace, and took her opponents’ food in time of war. The disadvantages of her system were yet to appear. Athens on the other hand was becoming more and more dependent on imported food. She was the leader of the maritime states and islands: she had become their imperial mistress. However easy her yoke might be in practice, it left no room for independent action on the part of her subject allies: what had been contributions from members of a league had become virtually imperial taxation, and to Greek prejudices such taxation appeared tyranny. Nor was this prejudice allowed to die out. The rival interests of commercial Corinth saw to it that the enslavement, not of Greeks but of Greek states, should be continually borne in mind. The contrast between the two leading powers was striking. But, if many Greek states feared in Athens a menace to their several independence, on the other hand they shrank from copying the rigid discipline of Sparta. No wonder that some of the more imaginative minds had dreams of a system more congenial to Greek aspirations. But the land-question was a stumbling-block. That a citizen should take an active personal share in politics was assumed, and that he should do this tended to make him depute non-political duties to others. Thus the notion that all citizens should be equal in the eye of the law and share in government—democracy in short—was not favourable to personal labour on the land. No distribution of land-lots could convert the city politician into a real working farmer. Therefore either there must be a decline in agriculture or an increase of slave-labour, or both. From these alternatives there was no escape: but ingenious schemers long strove to find a way. And from those days to these no one has succeeded in constructing a sound and lasting civilization on a basis of slavery.

XV. PLATO.

An Athenian who died in 347 BC at the age of 80 or 82 years had witnessed extraordinary changes in the Hellenic world, more particularly in the position of Athens. With the political changes we are not here directly concerned. But they were closely connected with economic changes, both as cause and as effect. The loss of empire[294] entailed loss of revenue. The amounts available as state-pay being reduced, the poorer citizens lost a steady source of income: that their imperial pride had departed did not tend to make them less sensitive to the pinch of poverty. Athens, thrown back upon her own limited resources, had to produce what she could in order to buy what she needed, and capital, employing slave-labour, found its opportunity. In this atmosphere discontent and jealousy grew fast: conflicting interests of rich and poor were at the back of all the disputes of political life. Athens it is true avoided the crude revolutionary methods adopted in some less civilized states. The Demos did not massacre or banish the wealthy Few, and share out their lands and other properties among the poor Many. But they consistently regarded the estates of the rich as the source from which the public outlay should as far as possible be drawn. They left the capitalist free to make money in his own way, and squeezed him when he had made it. Whether he were citizen or metic[295] mattered not from the economic point of view. Capitalistic industry was really slave-industry. The ‘small man’ had the choice of either competing, perhaps vainly, with the ‘big man’ on the land or in the workshop, or of giving up the struggle and using his political power to make the ‘big man’ disgorge some of his profits. Moreover military life no longer offered the prospects of conquest and gain that had made it attractive. The tendency was to treat the citizen army as a defensive force, and to employ professional mercenaries (of whom there was now[296] no lack) on foreign service. To a thoughtful observer these phenomena suggested uneasy reflexions. Demos in Assembly was a dispiriting spectacle. Selfish[297] and shortsighted, he cared more for his own belly and his amusements than for permanent interests of state. Perhaps this was no new story. But times had changed, and the wealthy imperial Athens, able to support the burden of her own defects, had passed away. Bad government in reduced circumstances might well be productive of fatal results.

It was not Athens alone that had failed. Fifteen years before Plato’s death the failure of both Sparta and Thebes had left Hellas exhausted[298] and without a leading state to give some sort of unity to Greek policy. There was still a common Hellenic feeling, but it was weak compared with separatist jealousy. Antipathy to the Barbarian remained: but the Persian power had been called in by Greeks to aid them against other Greeks, and this was a serious danger to the Greek world. Things were even worse in the West. How anarchic democracy had paved the way for military tyranny at Syracuse, how the tyranny had lowered the standard of Greek civilization in Sicily and Italy, and had been the ruin of Greek cities, no man of that age knew better than Plato. Plato was not singular in his distrust of democracy: that attitude was common enough. Among the companions of Socrates I need only refer to Xenophon and Critias. Socrates had insisted that government is a difficult art, for success in which a thorough training is required. Now, whatever might be the case in respect of tyrannies or oligarchies, democracy was manifestly an assertion of the principle that all citizens were alike qualified for a share in the work of government. Yet no craftsman would dream of submitting the work of his own trade to the direction of amateurs. Why then should the amateur element, led by amateurs, dominate in the sphere of politics? It was easy to find instances of the evil effects of amateurism in public affairs. It is true that this line of argument contained a fallacy, as arguments from analogy very often do. But it had a profound influence on Plato, and it underlay all his political speculations. It was reinforced by an influence that affected many of his contemporaries, admiration of Sparta on the score of the permanence[299] of her system of government. That this admiration was misguided, and the permanence more apparent than real, matters not: to a Greek thinker it was necessarily attractive, seeking for some possibly permanent principle of government, and disgusted with the everlasting flux of Hellenic politics. Nor was there anything strange in imagining an ideal state in which sound principles might be carried into effect. The foundation of colonies, in which the settlers made a fresh start as new communities, was traditionally a Greek custom. Such was the foundation, logical and apparently consistent with experience, on which Plato designed to build an Utopia. Avoiding the unscientific laisser-faire of democratic politics, functions were to be divided on a rational system, and government placed in the hands of trained specialists.

It is well to note some of the defects of Greek civilization as Plato saw it, particularly in Athens. The confusion and weakness of democratic government, largely the fruit of ignorance haste and prejudice, has been referred to above. In most states the free citizen population were born and bred at the will of their fathers under no scientific state-regulation, not sifted out in youth by scientific selection, and only trained up to the average standard locally approved. Something better was needed, if more was to be got out of human capacity. But it seems certain that Plato found the chief and most deep-seated source of social and political evils in the economic situation. The unequal distribution of wealth and the ceaseless struggle between rich and poor lay at the root of that lack of harmonious unity in which he saw the cause of the weakness and unhappiness of states. To get rid of the plutocrat and the beggar[300] was a prime object. Confiscation and redistribution[301] offered no lasting remedy, so long as men remained what they were. A complete moral change was necessary, and this could only be effected by an education that should train all citizens cheerfully and automatically to bear their several parts in promoting the happiness of all. There must be no more party-strivings after the advantage of this or that section: the guiding principle must be diversity of individual functions combined with unity of aim. An ideal state must be the Happy Land of the Expert, and each specialist must mind his own business. Thus each will enjoy his own proper happiness: friction competition and jealousy will pass away. There will be no more hindrance to the efficiency of craftsmen: we shall not see one tempted by wealth[302] to neglect his trade, while another is too poor to buy the appliances needed for turning out good work. The expert governors or Guardians must be supplied with all necessaries[303] by the classes engaged in the various forms of production. Thus only can they be removed from the corruptions that now pervert politicians. To them at least all private property must be denied. And, in order that they may be as expert in their own function of government as other craftsmen are in their several trades, they must be bred selected and educated on a strictly scientific system the very opposite of the haphazard methods now in vogue.

This brief sketch of the critical and constructive scope of the Republic must suffice for my purpose. Plato laid his finger on grave defects, but his remedies seem fantastic in the light of our longer and more varied experience. Any reform of society had to be carried out by human agency, and for the difficulty of adapting this no adequate allowance is made. He recognizes the difficulty of starting an ideal community on his model. Old prejudices will be hard to overcome. So he suggests[304] that it will be necessary for the philosophical rulers to clear the ground by sending all the adult inhabitants out into the country, keeping in the city only the children of ten years and under: these they will train up on their system. He implies that with the younger generation growing up under properly regulated conditions the problems of establishment will solve themselves by the effect of time. This grotesque proposal may indicate that Plato did not mean his constructive design to be taken very seriously. But a more notable weakness appears in the narrowness of outlook. It was natural that a Greek should think and write as a Greek for Greeks, and seek lessons in Greek experience. But the blight of disunion and failure was already on the little Greek states; and their experience, not likely to recur, has in fact never really recurred. Hence the practical value of Plato’s stimulating criticism and construction is small. In the labour-question we find no advance. Slavery is assumed as usual, but against the enslavement of Greeks, of which recent warfare supplied many examples, he makes[305] a vigorous protest. Euripides had gone further than this, and questionings of slavery had not been lacking. Another very Greek limitation of view comes out in the contempt[306] for βαναυσία, the assumed physical and moral inferiority of persons occupied in sedentary trades. That such men were unfitted for the rough work of war, and therefore unfitted to take part in ruling an independent Greek state, was an opinion not peculiar to Plato. But this objection could not well be raised against the working farmer. Why then does Plato exclude the farmer-class from a share in the government of his ideal state? I think we may detect three reasons. First, the husbandman, though necessary to the state’s existence, has not the special training required for government, nor the leisure to acquire it. Second, it is his intense occupation that alone secures to the ruling class the leisure needful for their responsible duties. Third, the belief[307] that a man cannot be at the same time a good husbandman and a good soldier. These three may be regarded as one: the philosopher would get rid of haphazard amateurism by making the expert specialist dominant in all departments of civil and military life. The influence of the Spartan system (much idealized), and the growth of professional soldiering, on his theories is too obvious to need further comment.

Reading the Republic from the labour-question point of view, one is struck by the lack of detail as to the condition of the classes whose labour feeds and clothes the whole community. We must remember that the dialogue starts with an attempt to define Justice, in the course of which a wider field of inquiry is opened up by assuming an analogy[308] between the individual and the state. As the dominance of his nobler element over his baser elements is the one sure means of ensuring the individual’s lasting happiness, so the dominance of the nobler element in the state alone offers a like guarantee. On these lines the argument proceeds, using an arbitrary psychology, and a fanciful political criticism to correspond. The construction of a model state is rather incidental than essential to the discussion. No wonder that, while we have much detail as to the bodily and mental equipment of the ‘Guardians’ (both the governing elders and the warrior youths) we get no information as to the training of husbandmen and craftsmen. Like slaves, they are assumed to exist: how they become and remain what they are assumed to be, we are not told. We are driven to guess that at this stage of his speculations Plato was content to take over these classes just as he found them in the civilization of his day. But he can hardly have imagined that they would acquiesce in any system by which they would be excluded from all political power. The hopeless inferiority of the husbandman is most clearly marked when contrasted with the young warriors of the ‘Guardian’ class. Duties are so highly specialized that men are differentiated for life. The γεωργὸς cannot be a good soldier. But if a soldier shews cowardice he is to be punished[309] by being made a γεωργὸς or δημιουργός—a degradation in itself, and accompanied by no suggestion of a special training being required to fit him for his new function. It is unnecessary to enlarge on such points: constructors of Utopias cannot avoid some inconsistencies and omissions. The simple fact is that the arrangements for differentiation of classes in the model state are not fully worked out in detail.

Plato’s Guardians are to have no private property; for it is private property[310] that seems to him the cause of sectional and personal interests which divide and weaken the state and lead to unhappiness. But the other classes are not so restricted. They can own land and houses etc; on exactly what tenure, is less clear. Meanwhile, what is it that the Guardians have in common? It is the sustenance (τροφὴ) provided as pay (μισθὸς) for their services by the mass of workers over whom they rule. It is expressly stated[311] that in the model state the Demos will call the Rulers their Preservers and Protectors, and the Rulers call the Demos their Paymasters and Sustainers. In existing states other than democracies their mutual relation is too often expressed as that of Masters and Slaves. I cannot refrain from noting that, if the pay of the Guardians consists in their sustenance, this is so far exactly the case of slaves. That power and honour should be reserved for men maintained thus, without private emoluments, is remarkable. The Spartiates, however much an idealizing of their system may have suggested the arrangement, were maintained by the sulky labour of Helot serfs. Are the husbandmen in Plato’s scheme really any better than Helots? In describing the origin of states in general, Plato finds the cause[312] of that development in the insufficiency of individuals to meet their own needs. But in tracing the process of the division of labour, and increasing complexity of civilization, he ignores slavery, though slavery is often referred to in various parts of the book. Now, if the husbandman has under him no slaves, and is charged with the food-supply of his rulers, he comes very near to the economic status of a serf. He works with his own hands, but not entirely at his own will or for his own profit. And in one respect he would, to Greek critics, seem inferior to a Spartan[313] Helot: he is, by the extreme specializing system, denied all share in military service, and so can hardly be reckoned a citizen at all. How came Plato to imagine for a single moment that a free Greek would acquiesce in such a position? I can only guess that the present position of working farmers and craftsmen in trades seemed to him an intolerable one. If, as I believe from the indications in Xenophon and other authorities, agriculture and the various industries of Attica were now steadily passing into the hands of slaveowning capitalists, and small men going to the wall, there would be much to set a philosopher thinking and seeking some way of establishing a wholesomer state of things. On this supposition speculations, however fantastic and incapable of realization in fact, might call attention to practical evils and at least prepare men’s minds for practical remedies. In admitting the difficulty of making a fresh start, and the certainty that even his model state would in time lose its purity[314] and pass through successive phases of decay, Plato surely warns us not to take his constructive scheme seriously. But whether he really believed that free handworkers could (save in an oligarchy, which[315] he detests,) be induced to submit to a ruling class, and be themselves excluded on principle from political interests of any kind, is more than I can divine.

That the scheme outlined in the Republic was not a practical one was confessed by Plato in his old age by producing the Laws, a work in which the actual circumstances of Greek life were not so completely disregarded. The main points that concern us are these. Government is to be vested in a detailed code of laws, administered by magistrates elected by the citizens. There is a Council and an Assembly. Pressure is put upon voters, especially[316] on the wealthier voters, to make them vote. The influence of the Solonian model is obvious. Provision is made[317] for getting over the difficulties of the first start, while the people are still under old traditions which the new educational system will in due course supersede. But, so far from depending on perfect Guardians with absolute power, and treating law as a general pattern[318] modifiable in application by the Guardians at their discretion, we have law supreme and Guardians dependent on the people’s will. It is a kind of democracy, but Demos is to be carefully trained, and protected from his own vagaries by minute regulations. The number of citizens[319] is by law fixed at 5040. Each one has an allotment of land, a sacred κλῆρος that cannot be sold. This passes by inheritance from father to son as an undivided whole. Extinction of a family may be prevented by adoptions under strict rules. Excess of citizen population may be relieved by colonies. Poverty is excluded[320] by the minimum guaranteed in the inalienable land-lot, excessive wealth by laws fixing a maximum. It is evident that in this detailed scheme of the Laws agriculture must have its position more clearly defined than in the Republic.

So indeed it has. In order that all may have a fair share, each citizen’s land-lot[321] is in two parts, one near the city, the other near the frontier. Thus we see that all citizens will be interested in cultivating the land. We see also that this will be absolutely necessary: for it is intended[322] that the model state shall not be dependent on imported food (like Athens), but produce its own supply. Indeed commerce is to be severely restricted. What the country cannot produce must if necessary be bought, and for this purpose only[323] will a recognized Greek currency be employed: internal transactions will be conducted with a local coinage. The evil effects[324] seen to result from excessive commercial dealings will thus be avoided. When we turn to the agricultural labour-question, we find that wholesale employment of slaves[325] or serfs is the foundation of the system. For Plato, holding fast to the principle of specialization, holds also that leisure[326] is necessary for the citizens if they are to bear their part in politics with intelligent judgment. As, in this second-best Utopia, the citizens are the landowners, and cannot divest themselves of their civic responsibilities, they must do their cultivating by deputy. And this practically amounts to building the fabric of civilization on a basis of slavery—nothing less. In the matter of agriculture, the industry on which this self-sufficing community really rests, this dependence on slave-labour is most striking. It even includes a system[327] of serf-tenants (probably for the borderland farms) who are to be left to cultivate the land, paying a rent or quota of produce (ἀπαρχὴ) to the owners. The importance of not having too large a proportion[328] of the slaves in a gang drawn from any one race is insisted on as a means of preventing combinations and risings. At the same time careful management is enjoined, sympathetic[329] but firm: a master should be kind, but never forget that he is a master: no slave must be allowed to take liberties. To implant a sound tradition of morality is recognized as a means of promoting good order in the community, and this influence should be brought to bear[330] on slaves as well as on freemen. Yet the intrinsic chattelhood of the slave appears clearly in many ways; for instance, the damage to a slave is made good by compensating[331] his owner. The carelessness of ill-qualified practitioners[332] who treat slaves, contrasted with the zeal of competent doctors in treating freemen, is another significant touch.

It seems then that Plato, the more he adapts his speculations to the facts of existing civilization, the more positively he accepts slave-labour as a necessary basis. The conception of government as an art is surely the chief cause of this attitude. The extreme specialization of the Republic is moderated in the Laws, but there is not much less demand for leisure, if the civic artists are to be unhampered in the practice of their art. Of the dangers[333] of servile labour on a large scale he was well aware, and he had evidently studied with attention[334] the awkward features of serfdom, not only in the old Hellas, but in the Greek colonial states of the East and West. Nevertheless he would found his economy on the forced labour of human chattels. A system that had grown up in the course of events, extending or contracting according to changes of economic circumstance, was thus presented as the deliberate result of independent thought. But the only theory at the back of traditional slavery was the law[335] of superior force—originally the conqueror’s will. Plato was therefore driven to accept this law as a principle of human society. To accept it was to bring his speculations more into touch with Greek notions; for no people have surpassed the Greeks in readiness to devolve upon others the necessary but monotonous drudgery of life. This attitude of his involves the conclusion that the Barbarian is to serve the Greek, a position hardly consistent with his earlier[336] doctrine, that no true line could be drawn distinguishing Greek and Barbarian. Such a flux of speculative opinion surely weakens our respect for Plato’s judgment in these matters. We can hardly say that he offers any effective solution of the great state-problems of his age. But that these problems were serious and disquieting his repeated efforts bear witness. And one of the most serious was certainly that of placing the agricultural interest on a sound footing. Its importance he saw: but neither of his schemes, neither passive free farmers nor slave-holding landlords, was likely to produce the desired result. To say this is not to blame a great man’s failure. Centuries have passed, and experience has been gained, without a complete solution being reached: the end is not yet.

A few details remain to be touched on separately. The employment of hired labourers is referred to as normal[337] in the Politicus Republic and Laws. They are regarded simply as so much physical strength at disposal. They are free, and so able to transfer their labour from job to job according to demand. Intellectually and politically they do not count. But the μισθωτὸς is neither a chattel like the slave, nor bound to the soil like the serf. I have found no suggestion of the employment of this class in agriculture; and, as I have said above, I believe that they were in fact almost confined to the towns, especially such as the Peiraeus. It is also worth noticing that we find favourable mention of apprenticeship[338] as a method of learning a trade. But this principle also seems not applied to agriculture. Again, we are told[339] in the Laws that one who has never served (δουλεύσας) will never turn out a creditable master (δεσπότης). From the context this would seem to refer only to the wardens of the country (ἀγρονόμοι), who must be kept under strict discipline in order to perform very responsible duties. It does not apply to farmers. Another curious rule[340] is that kidnapping of men is not to be allowed. Yet there are bought slaves, and therefore a market. That the dealer in human flesh should be despised[341] by his customers is a feeling probably older than Plato, and it lasted down to the days of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In view of Plato’s acceptance of the sharp line drawn between Greek and Barbarian (and this does touch rustic slavery) it is interesting to note that he observed[342] with care the different characters of alien peoples. He also refers[343] to them without contempt in various contexts side by side with Greeks, and cites[344] their common belief as a proof of the existence of the gods.

If I may venture to make a general comment on Plato’s position in relation to the labour-question, I would remark that he is already in the same difficulty which proved embarrassing to Aristotle, and which has always beset those who seek to find a theoretical justification for slavery. True, he is less definite and positive than Aristotle, but the attempt to regard a human being as both a man and a chattel is a failure. This point need not be further pressed here. But it is well to observe that agriculture is the department in which the absurdity most strikingly appears. Heavy farm-labour without prospect of personal advantage was recognized as a function that no man would willingly perform. Hence to be sent to labour on a farm was one of the punishments that awaited the offending domestic slave. Hence overseers were employed to exact from rustic slaves their daily task under the menace of severe and often cruel punishments. Hence the humaner masters (as Xenophon shews us) tried to secure more cheerful and effective service by a system of little rewards for good work. In short there was in practical life a miserable attempt to treat the slave both as a brute beast and as a moral being capable of weighing consequences and acting accordingly. One form of reward, manumission, was apparently not at this time common[345] in Greece: and it was one not easy to apply in agriculture. It was not easy to know what to do with a worn-out farm-hand, unless he was transferred to lighter duties on the farm; for he would be useless elsewhere. Sooner or later a time would come when he could no longer do anything of any value. What then? Was he charitably fed by the master[346] whom he had served, or was he cast adrift in nominal freedom? From the fragments of Comedy one may perhaps guess that the humaner practice generally prevailed. But the silence of Plato seems to suggest that to him, and indeed to Greeks generally, the point was not an important one. Even for a citizen, if destitute in old age, the state-relief was very small. We must therefore not wonder at the silence generally maintained as to the treatment of the worn-out rustic slave. Slave artisans, and those whose services were let out to other employers with reservation of a rent to their own masters, could scrape together the means of sustenance in their old age. It is possible that manumission of rustic slaves may have occasionally taken place, and that they too may have scraped together some small savings: but I can find no ground for thinking that such cases were normal or even frequent. In the Laws Plato allows for the presence of freedmen[347], and frames regulations for their control, probably suggested by experience of the Attic laws and their defects. Manumission by the state[348] as reward of slave-informers is also mentioned. But there is nothing in these passages to weaken the natural inference that town slaves, and chiefly domestics, are the class to whom in practice such rules would apply. In short, we must not look to a philosopher reared in a civilization under which manual labour tended to become the burden of the unfree and the destitute, and to be despised as mean and unworthy of the free citizen, for a wholesome solution of the problem of farm-labour.

XVI. THE EARLIER ATTIC ORATORS.

It is convenient to take the speeches and pamphlets of the masters of Attic oratory in two sections, though there can be no exact chronological division between the two. The political background is different in the two cases. To Isocrates the urgent problem is how to compose Greek jealousies by uniting in an attack on the common enemy, Persia: to Demosthenes it is how to save the separate independence of the weary Greek states from the control of the encroaching king of Macedon. True, the disunion of Greece was not to be ended by either effort. But the difficulties of Isocrates lay largely outside Athens: the states did not want to have a leader; Philip, to whom he turned in his old age, was no more welcome to them than the rest of his proposed leaders. Demosthenes had to face the fact of a Macedonian party in Athens itself, as well as to overcome the apathy and inertia which had been growing continually since the fall of the Athenian empire. His opponents were not all mere corrupt partisans of the Macedonian king. Athens was now no longer a great power, and they knew it: Demosthenes is forgiven by historians for his splendid defiance of facts. Naturally enough, in the conflicts of political opinion from the time of the revolution of the Four Hundred to the death of Demosthenes (411-322 BC) we have few references to agriculture. Yet we know that the question of food-supply was still a pressing one for many Greek states, above all for Athens. Some of the references have a value as being contemporary. But a large part of these are references to litigation, and deal not with conditions of cultivation but with claims to property. Among the most significant facts are the importance attached to the control of the Hellespontine trade-route and the careful regulations affecting the import and distribution[349] of corn.

The period on which we get some little light from passages in the earlier orators is roughly about 410-350 BC. It includes the general abandonment of agricultural enterprises abroad, owing to the loss of empire and therewith of cleruchic properties. By this shrinkage the relative importance of home agriculture must surely have been increased. Yet I cannot find a single direct statement or reference to this effect. It seems reasonable to suppose that it was not necessary to assert what was only too obvious. Corn had to be imported, and imported it was from various[350] sources of supply. To guard against failure of this supply was a chief preoccupation of the Athenian government. But that some corn was still grown in Attica is clear. Isocrates says[351] that one act of hostility to the Thirty was the destruction of corn in the country by the democrats. And in another place[352] he lays stress upon the mythical legend of the earliest introduction of corn-growing, the civilizing gift of Demeter to her favoured Attica. Yet there are signs that the culture of the olive and vine was more and more displacing cereal crops: the fig tree, often a sacred thing, was, and had long been, a regular feature of the countryside. Live stock, goats sheep and cattle, were probably abundant, though there was seldom need for an orator to mention them. If we judge by the remaining references, it would seem that land was not generally cultivated by its owners. Letting to tenant farmers[353] was the plan adopted by the state in dealing with public lands, and the collection of the rents was farmed out in its turn to capitalist speculators by public auction. We have several specimens[354] of mixed estates, described by an orator in connexion with some litigation. From these we may fairly infer that the policy of not putting all their eggs into one basket found favour with Athenian capitalists. Landed estate is in such cases but one item, side by side with house-property, mortgages and money at interest on other securities, slaves and other stock employed or leased to employers, stock in hand, specie and other valuables, mentioned in more or less detail. Consistently with this picture of landlord and tenant is the statement[355] that formerly, in the good old times before Athens entered upon her ill-starred career of imperialism, the country houses and establishments of citizens were superior to those within the city walls; so much so, that even the attraction of festivals could not draw them to town from their comfortable country-seats. Evidently a great change had come over rural Attica, if the writer is to be trusted. We are not to suppose that personal direction of a farm by the owner of the land was altogether a thing of the past. Suburban farms at least were, as we learn from Xenophon, sometimes managed by men living in the city and riding out to superintend operations and give orders. The injured husband[356] defended by Lysias may even have gone to and fro on foot. He does not seem to have been a wealthy man, and he may have been a αὐτουργός, taking part in the labours of his farm: that he earned his night’s rest and slept sound seems suggested by the context of his curious story.

That there was no lack of interest in the prospects of agriculture generally may be inferred from various references to the different qualities of soils not only in Attica but in other parts of Greece and abroad. The smallness of the cultivable area in rocky Samothrace[357] was noted by Antiphon. Isocrates remarked[358] that in Laconia the Dorian conquerors appropriated not only the greater part of the land but the most fertile. The results of their greed and oppression had not been wholly satisfactory in the long run: adversity carried with it the peril[359] of Helot risings. No fertility of soil can compensate for the ill effects of bad policy and lack of moderation: the independence and wellbeing of cramped rocky Megara, contrasted[360] with the embarrassments of wide fruitful Thessaly, is an object-lesson. The Greek race needs to expand[361], as it did of old, when Athens led the colonization of the Asiatic seaboard. It is monstrous to try and wring contributions from (δασμολογεῖν)[362] the islanders, who have to till mountain sides for lack of room. It is in Asia that the new Greece must find relief, at the expense of Persia, whose subjects let vast areas lie idle, while the parts that they do cultivate keep them in great plenty; so fertile is the land. Attica itself was once a prosperous farming country. In the good old days, before the unhappy dissension between selfish rich and grudging poor, agriculture was one of the chief means[363] used to avert poverty and distress. Farms let at fair rents kept the people profitably employed, and so out of mischief. Men could and did[364] live well in the country: they were not jostling each other in the city to earn a bare subsistence by pitiful state-fees—beggars all—as they are doing now. The great pamphleteer may be overdrawing his picture, but that it contains much truth is certain, and it seems pretty clear that he saw no prospect of a local revival. Athens had run her course of ambitious imperialism, and the old country life, developed in long security, could not be restored. Any man who felt inclined to live a farmer’s life would, if I read the situation aright, prefer some cheap and profitable venture abroad to the heavy and unremunerative struggles of a crofter in upland Attica. Small farms in the rich lowland were I take it very seldom to be had. And, if he had the capital to work a large farm, he was under strong temptation to employ his capital in urban industries, state-contracts, loans at interest, etc, and so to distribute his risks while increasing his returns. For his main object was to make money, not to provide himself and his family with a healthy and comfortable home. The land-question in Attica is illustrated by a passage of Isaeus in which he refers to the fraud of a guardian. The scoundrel, he says, has robbed his nephew of the estate: he is sticking to the farm (τὸν ἀγρόν) and has given him a hill pasture[365] (φελλέα).

Farming enterprise abroad had been a product of the Athenian empire with its cleruchies and colonies, and probably private ventures of individuals, unofficial but practically resting on imperial protection. The collapse of this system would ruin some settlers and speculators, and impoverish more. Even those who returned to Athens still possessed of considerable capital would not in all cases take to Attic farming, even supposing that they were willing to face its risks and that suitable farms were available. It was to Athens a most important object to retain or recover all she could of her island territories, partly no doubt in order to control the cultivable lands in them. In the peace-negotiations of 390 BC the extreme opposition party at Athens were not content[366] with the proposals by which she was to recover the islands of Lemnos Imbros and Scyros: they demanded also the restitution of the Thracian Chersonese and estates and debts elsewhere. So strong was the feeling of dependence on these investments abroad. And Isocrates, in depicting the evil results of imperial ambition, recalls[367] to the citizens that, instead of farming the lands of others, the Peloponnesian war had for years prevented them from setting eyes upon their own.

Thus far I have said nothing of the labour-question. Orators and pamphleteers were not likely to concern themselves much with this topic, for there was nothing in the nature of an Abolitionist controversy to bring them into discussion of the subject. Slavery is in this department of Greek literature more a fundamental assumption than ever. The frequent arguments on the torture of slave witnesses and the moral value of evidence so extracted are plain proof of this. But what about agricultural labour? In the case of the sacred olive-stump we hear from Lysias[368] that the farm in question several times changed hands by sale. Some of the purchasers let it to tenants. The words used of the persons who actually farmed it from time to time are the usual ones, ἐγεώργει, εἰργάσατο etc. That these tenants were not merely αὐτουργοί, but employers of labour, may fairly be guessed from the case of the present tenant, accused of sacrilege. He at least is an owner of slaves, and argues[369] that he could never have been so mad as to put himself at their mercy. They would have witnessed his sacrilege, and could have won their freedom by informing against their master. Isocrates[370] draws no real distinction between serfs and slaves in the case of Sparta. Here too the slave was dangerous, though in a different way: but he was on the land. A fragment of Isaeus[371] runs ‘he left on the farm old men and cripples.’ The context is lost, but the persons referred to must surely be slaves: no one would employ wage-labour of this quality. In another place he casually mentions[372] the sale of a flock of goats with the goatherd. These little scraps of evidence all serve to strengthen the impression, derived from other sources, of slave-labour as the backbone of Attic agriculture in this period. To free labour there are very few references, and none of these seem to have any connexion with agriculture. This does not prove that no hired freemen were employed on farms. For special jobs, as we shall see later, they were called in: but this was only temporary employment. The μισθτοὶ or θῆτες were a despised[373] class: some of them were freedmen. The competition with slave-labour doubtless had something to do with this, and to be driven by necessity to such labour was galling to a citizen, as we have already learnt from Xenophon.

XVII. ARISTOTLE.

The great founder of the philosophy of experience is a witness[374] of exceptional value. He collected and recorded the facts and traditions of the past, judging them from the point of view of his own day. Stimulated by the theories of his master Plato, he also strove, by sketching the fabric of a model state, to indicate the lines on which Greek political development might be conducted with advantage. Inasmuch as ideal circumstances were rather to be desired than expected, he did not restrict his interest in the future to the mere designing of an ideal: taking states as he found them, conditioned by their situation and past history, he sought for the causes of their growth and decay, and aimed at discovering cures for their various maladies. But throughout, whether looking to the past or the future, he was guided by a characteristic moral purpose. For him ‘good living’ (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) is the aim and object of political institutions. It is in the state that man finds the possibility of reaching his full development: for he is by nature a ‘political animal.’ That is, he cannot live alone. Each step in association (household, village,) brings him nearer to that final union of the city. In this he attains the highest degree of manhood of which he (as Man, differentiated from other animals by reason and speech,) is capable. This completion of his potentialities is the proof of his true nature; that he realizes his best self in the πόλις shews that he is a πολιτικὸν ζῷον. The animal needs met in the more primitive associations are of course met in the city also. But there is something more, and this something more is a moral element, from which is derived the possibility of ‘good living,’ as contrasted with existence of a more predominantly animal character. Therefore, though in point of time the man comes before the state, in logical order the state comes first: for the man can only exist in the fulness of his nature when he is a citizen. He is by the law of his nature part of a state, potentially: as such a part he is to be regarded. As states vary, so do the several types of citizens. In the best state the qualities of good man and good citizen are identical and complete.

The aim of political science (πολιτική) is to frame and employ the machinery of states so as to promote the perfection of human excellence (ἀρετή), and to train the citizens on such principles as will insure the effective working and permanence of their institutions. We may call it Aristotle’s response to the Greek yearning after a stability which was in practice never attained. To design a model state was one way of approaching the problem. But Aristotle was surely not the man to believe that such an ideal could be practically realised. To make the best of existing systems was a more promising enterprise. Now in either procedure it was evident that material equipment[375] could not be left out of account. Without food clothing and shelter men cannot live at all, and therefore cannot live well. Experience also shewed that the means of defence against enemies could not safely be neglected. It is under the head of equipment (χορηγία) that we get the philosopher’s view of the proper position of agriculture in the life of a state. We must bear in mind the general Greek conception of citizenship common to statesmen and theorists, present to Plato and Aristotle no less than to Cleisthenes or Pericles. Residence gave no claim to it. Either it was hereditary, passing from father to son on proof of citizen descent and certain religious qualifications; or it was deliberately conferred on a person or persons as a privilege. That beside the citizens there should be resident within the state[376] a number of persons, not citizens or likely to become citizens, was a necessity generally admitted. They might be free aliens, more or less legally connected with the state, or slaves public or private. These alien persons were very numerous in some states, such as Athens or Corinth. Subject or serf populations of Greek origin, as in Laconia or Thessaly, are not to be distinguished from them for the present purpose. One common mark of citizenship was the right of owning land within the territory of the state. We know that the Attic landowner must be an Athenian citizen, and such was the general rule. Who did the actual work of cultivation, or tended the flocks and herds, is another question. We have seen reason for believing that personal labour[377] of the owner on his farm had at one time been usual, and that the practice still in the fourth century BC prevailed in those parts of Greece where there had been little development of urban life. And that slave-labour was employed by farmers on a greater or less scale, according to the size of their estates, seems as certain as certain can be. In Attica the slave overseer, entrusted with the direction of a gang of slave labourers, had become[378] a well-recognized figure, and farming by deputy, as well as labouring by deputy, was an ordinary thing. Citizens resided in the city more than ever. Rich men visited their country estates to keep an eye on their overseers, or paid the penalty of their neglect. Poor citizens, resident and able to attend meetings of the Assembly, had to be kept quiet by systematic provision of fees for performance of civic functions. It may be too strong to say that squeezing the wealthy was the leading fact of politics: but there was too much of that sort of thing, and the scramble for state pay was demoralizing. Immediate personal interest tended to deaden patriotism in a state that within human memory had, whatever its faults, been the most public-spirited community among the leading states of Greece.

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

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

But beside the decision as to labour there was the question as to a means of checking land-monopoly. Such monopoly, resulting in the formation of a discontented urban mob, was a serious menace to the stability of a constitution. For all poor citizens to get a living by handicrafts was perhaps hardly possible; nor would the life of an artisan suit the tastes and wishes of all. Nature does (or seems to do) more for the farmer on his holding than for the artisan in his workshop, and the claim to a share of the land within the boundaries of their states had led to seditions and revolutions, ruinous and bloody, followed by ill feeling, and ever liable to recur. Colonial states, in which the first settlers usually allotted the land (or most of it) among themselves and handed down their allotments to their children, were particularly exposed to troubles of this kind. The various fortunes of families, and the coming of new settlers, early raised the land-question there in an acute form, as notoriously at Syracuse. No wonder that practical and theoretical statesmen tried to find remedies for a manifest political evil. Stability was only to be assured by internal peace. To this end two main lines of policy[379] found favour. Security of tenure was promoted by forbidding the sale of land-lots or making it difficult to encumber them by mortgages: while the prohibition of excessive acquisition[380] was a means of checking land-grabbers and interesting a larger number of citizens in the maintenance of the land-system. But there is no reason to think that measures of this kind had much success. Nor were vague traditions[381] of the equality of original land-lots in some Greek states of any great importance. Some theoretical reformers might aim at such an arrangement, but it was a vain aspiration. Indeed, regarded from the food-producing point of view, nothing like a true equality was possible in practice. Confiscation and redistribution were only to be effected at the cost of civil war, and the revered wisdom of Solon[382] had rejected such a proceeding. Communistic schemes had little attraction for the average Greek, so far as his own labour or interests might be involved: even the dream of Plato was far from a thoroughgoing communism.

Of the farmer in his character of citizen[383] Aristotle had a favourable impression formed from the experience of the past. The restless activity of Assemblies frequently meeting, and with fees for attendance, was both a cause and an effect of the degeneration of democracies in his day. It meant that political issues were now at the mercy of the ignorant and fickle city-dwellers, a rabble swayed by the flattery of self-seeking demagogues. Athens was the notable instance. Yet tradition alleged (and it can hardly be doubted) that in earlier times, when a larger part of the civic body lived and worked in the country, a soberer and steadier policy[384] prevailed. The farmers, never free from responsibilities and cares, were opposed to frequent Assemblies, to attend which involved no small sacrifice of valuable time. For this sacrifice a small fee would have been no adequate compensation, and in fact they had none at all. Naturally enough Aristotle, admitting[385] that in the states of his day democratic governments were mostly inevitable, insists on the merits of the farmer-democracies of the good old times, and would welcome their revival. But the day for this was gone by, never to return. Another important point arises in connexion with the capacity of the state for war, a point seldom overlooked in Greek political speculation. In discussing the several classes out of which the state is made up, Aristotle observes[386] that individuals may and will unite in their own persons the qualifications of more than one class. So the same individuals may perform various functions: but this does not affect his argument, for the same persons may be, and often are, both hoplites and cultivators, who yet are functionally distinct parts of the state. Just below, speaking of the necessity of ‘virtue’ (ἀρετὴ) for the discharge of certain public duties (deliberative and judicial), he adds ‘The other faculties may exist combined in many separate individuals; for instance, the same man may be a soldier a cultivator and a craftsman, or even a counsellor of state or a judge; but all men claim to possess virtue, and think they are qualified to hold most offices. But the same men cannot be at once rich and poor. The common view therefore is that Rich and Poor are the true parts of a state.’ That is to say, practical analysis can go no further. In another passage[387], discussing the formation of the best kind of democracy, he says ‘for the best Demos is that of farmers (ὁ γεωργικός): so it is possible to form (a corresponding?) democracy where the mass of the citizens gets its living from tillage or pasturage (ἀπὸ γεωργίας ἢ νομῆς).’ After considering the political merits of the cultivators, busy and moderate men, he goes[388] on ‘And after the Demos of cultivators the next best is that where the citizens are graziers (νομεῖς) and get their living from flocks and herds (βοσκημάτων): for the life in many respects resembles that of the tillers of the soil, and for the purposes of military campaigning these men are peculiarly hardened[389] by training, fit for active service, and able to rough it in the open.’ The adaptability of the rustic worker is further admitted[390] in a remark let fall in a part of his treatise where he is engaged in designing a model state. It is to the effect that, so long as the state has a plentiful supply of farm-labourers, it must also have plenty of seamen (ναυτῶν). Having just admitted that a certain amount of maritime commerce will be necessary, and also a certain naval power, he is touching on the manning of the fleet. The marine soldiers will be freemen, but the seamen (oarsmen) can be taken from unfree classes working on the land. Their social status does not at this stage concern us: that such labourers could readily be made into effective oarsmen is an admission to be noted. To the philosopher himself it is a comfort to believe that he has found out a way of doing without the turbulent ‘seafaring rabble’ (ναυτικὸς ὄχλος) that usually throngs seaport towns and embarrasses orderly governments. In other words, it is a relief to find that in a model state touching the sea it will not be necessary to reproduce the Peiraeus.

In considering the proposals of earlier theorists for the remedy of political defects it is hardly possible and nowise needful to exhaust all the indications of dissatisfaction with existing systems. Of Euripides and Socrates, the two great questioners, enough has been said above. The reactionary Isocrates was for many years a contemporary of Aristotle. What we can no longer reproduce is the talk of active-minded critics in the social circles of Athens. It happens that Xenophon has left us a sketch of the ordinary conversations of Socrates. No doubt these were the most important examples of their kind, and his method a powerful, if sometimes irritating, stimulus to thought. But we are not to assume a lack of other questioners, acute and even sincere, more especially among men of oligarchic leanings. That Aristotle came into touch with such persons is probable from his connexion with Plato. Certain passages in the Constitution of Athens, in which he is reasonably suspected[391] of giving a partisan view of historical events, point to the same conclusion. We shall never know all the criticisms and suggestions of others that this watchful collector heard and noted. But it is both possible and desirable to recall those to which his own record proves him to have paid attention.

Both Hippodamus and Plato based their schemes on a class-system, in which the farmer-class form a distinct body: but the former made them citizens with voting rights. Being unarmed, and so at the mercy of the military class, Aristotle held that their political rights were nugatory. In the Republic, Plato gave them no voice in state-affairs, but in the Laws he admitted them to the franchise. While these two reformers made provision for a military force, Phaleas, ignoring relations with other states, made none. To Phaleas, equality in landed estate seemed the best means of promoting harmony and wellbeing in the community; and he would effect this equality by legal restrictions. This proposition Aristotle rejected as neither adequate nor suited to its purpose. Moral[392] influences, hard work, discretion, even intellectual activity, can alone produce the temper of moderation that promotes concord and happiness. In short, if you are to effect any real improvement, you must start from the doctrine of the Mean[393] and not trust to material equalizing. The several tenure of land-lots was generally recognized, with variations in detail; Plato in the Laws abandoned the impracticable land-system of the Republic, and not only assigned a κλῆρος to each citizen household, but arranged it in two[394] sections, for reasons given above. The attempt to ensure the permanence of the number of land-lots and households by strict legal regulation, as some legislators had tried to do, is also a general feature of these speculations. Plato in the Laws even went further, and would place rigid restrictions on acquisition of property of all kinds. All agree in the usual Greek contempt for those engaged in manual or sedentary trades. Such ‘mechanical’ (βάναυσοι) workers were held to be debased in both body and mind below the standard of ‘virtue’ required of the good soldier or citizen. Phaleas made these ‘artisans’ public slaves de iure: Hippodamus placed them, with the farmers, in nominal citizenship but de facto bondage. Plato tolerates them because he cannot do without them. In the matter of hard bodily labour, free or slave, the position of Plato is clear. He would devolve it upon slaves; in agriculture, with a coexisting alternative system of serf-tenants. But both classes are to be Barbarians. It seems that Hippodamus meant the public, if not the private, land of his model state to be worked by slaves. Most striking is the fact that Plato in his later years combined the aim of self-sufficiency with dependence on servile labour. Commerce is, for the moral health of the state, to be strictly limited. The supply of necessary food-stuffs is to be a domestic industry, carried on by alien serfs or slaves for the most part. Such communism as exists among the Guardians in the Republic is a communism of consumers who take no part in material production: and it is abandoned in the Laws.

The above outlines must suffice as a sketch of the situation both in practice and in theory when Aristotle took the matter in hand. The working defects of Greek constitutions were obvious to many, and the incapacity of the ignorant masses in democracies was especially evident to thoughtful but irresponsible critics. Yet the selfishness of the rich in oligarchies was not ignored, and the instability of governments supported by only a minority of the citizens was an indisputable fact. The mass of citizens (that is, full members of the state according to the qualification-rules in force) had to come in somewhere, to give numerical strength to a government. How was governing capacity to be placed in power under such conditions? Experience suggested that things had been better for Athens when a larger part of her citizens lived on the land. Use could no doubt be made of this experience in case an opening for increasing the number of peasant farmers[395] should occur. But it was precisely in states where such a policy was most needed that an opening was least likely to occur. It would seem then that the only chance of improving government lay in persuading the average citizen to entrust wider powers to a specially selected body of competent men, in short to carry into politics the specializing principle[396] already developed by the advance of civilization in other departments. Now the average citizen was certain to test the plans of reformers by considering how their operation would affect cases like his own. It was therefore necessary to offer him a reassuring picture of projects of this kind, if they were to receive any hearing at all. To own a plot of land, inalienable and hereditary, was a security against indigence. To have the labour of cultivating it performed as a matter of course by others was a welcome corollary. To be relieved of mechanical drudgery by aliens and slaves was a proposal sure to conciliate Greek pride. And the resulting leisure for the enlightened discharge of the peculiarly civic functions of war and government was an appeal to self-esteem and ambition. But that the creation of a ruling class of Guardians with absolute power, such as those of Plato’s Republic, would commend itself to democratic Greeks, was more than any practical man could believe. Nor would the communism of those Guardians appear attractive to the favourers of oligarchy. Therefore Plato himself had to recast his scheme, and try to bring it out of dreamland by concessions to facts of Greek life. Not much was gained thereby, and the great difficulty, how to make a start, still remained. That much could be done by direct legislative action was a tradition in Greek thought fostered by tales of the achievements of early lawgivers. But to remodel the whole fabric of a state so thoroughly that an entire change should be effected in the political atmosphere in which the citizens must live and act, while the citizens themselves would be the same persons, reared in old conditions and ideas, was a project far beyond the scope of ordinary legislation. To Aristotle it seemed that the problem must be approached differently.

This is not the place to discuss the two distinct lines taken by him; first, that the character of the state depends on that of its members, and secondly, that the individual only finds his true self as member of a state. The subject has been fully[397] treated, better than I could treat it; and in constructing a model there remains the inevitable difficulty, where to begin. The highest development of the individual is only attainable under the training provided by the model state, and this state is only possible as an association of model citizens. If we may conjecture Aristotle’s answer from a rule[398] laid down in the Ethics, he would say ‘first learn by doing, and then you can do what you have learnt to do.’ That is, effort (at first imperfect) will improve faculty, and by creating habit will develope full capacity. But even so it would remain uncertain whether the individual, starting on a career of self-improvement, is to work up to the making of a model state, or the imperfect state to start training its present citizens to perfection. The practical difficulty is there still. Nor is it removed by putting the first beginnings of training so early[399] that they even precede the infant citizen’s birth, in the form of rules for eugenic breeding. Aristotle’s procedure is to postulate favourable equipment, geographical and climatic, a population of high qualities (that is, Greek,) and then to consider how he would organize the state and train its members—if the postulated conditions were realized and he had a free hand. In this new Utopia it is most significant to observe what he adopts from historical experience and the proposals of earlier theorists, and in what respects he departs from them. It is in particular his attitude towards ownership and tillage of land, and labour in general, that is our present concern.

As it follows from his doctrine of the Mean that the virtue of the state and its several members must be based on the avoidance of extremes, so it follows[400] from the moral aim of the state that its component elements are not all ‘parts’ of the state in the same strict sense. Economically, those who provide food clothing etc are parts, necessary to the existence of the community. Politically (for politics have a moral end) they are below the standard of excellence required for a share in the government of a perfect state. They cannot have the leisure or the training to fit them for so responsible a charge. Therefore they cannot be citizens. To maintain secure independence and internal order the citizens, and the citizens only, must bear arms. And, since the land must belong to the possessors of arms, none but citizens can own land. This does not imply communism. There will have to be public[401] land, from the produce of which provision will be made for the service of religion and for the common tables at which citizens will mess. To maintain these last by individual contributions would be burdensome to the poor and tend to exclude them. For rich and poor there will be. But the evil of extreme poverty will be avoided. There will be private land, out of which each citizen (that is evidently each citizen-household) will have an allotment of land. This κλῆρος will be in two[402] parcels, one near the city and the other near the state-frontier, so that issues of peace and war may not be affected by the bias of local interests. The cultivation of these allotments will be the work of subjects, either inhabitants of the district (περίοικοι) or slaves; in any case aliens, not Greeks; and in the case of slaves care must be taken not to employ too many of the same race together or such as are high-spirited. He is concerned to secure the greatest efficiency and to leave the least possible facilities for rebellion. The labourers will belong to the state or to individual citizens according to the proprietorship of the land on which they are severally employed. By these arrangements he has provided for the sustenance of those who in the true political sense are ‘parts’ of the state (πόλις), and for their enjoyment of sufficient leisure[403] to enable them to conduct its government in the paths of virtue and promote the good life (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) which is the final cause of state existence.

The citizens then have the arms and the land and all political power. Among themselves they are on an equal footing, only divided functionally according to age: deliberative and judicial duties belonging to the elder men, military activities to the younger. It is impossible to overlook the influence of the Spartan system on the speculations of Aristotle as well as those of Plato. The equality of Spartan citizens was regarded as evidence[404] of a democratic element in their constitution, and we find this same theoretical equality among the full citizens at any given moment in the developing constitution of Rome. It is significant that Aristotle felt the necessity of such an equality. He remarks[405] that the permanence of a constitution depends on the will of the possessors of arms. We may observe that he seldom refers to the mercenaries so commonly employed in his day, save as his bodyguard of usurping tyrants. But in one passage[406] he speaks of oligarchies being driven to employ them at a pinch for their own security against the Demos, and of their own overthrow in consequence. Therefore he did not ignore the risk run by relying on hirelings: naturally he would prefer to keep the military service of his model state in the hands of his model citizens. But he had no belief[407] in the blind devotion of Sparta to mere preparation for warfare. Peace is the end of war, not war of peace. If you do not learn to make a proper use of peace, in the long run you will fail in war also: hence the attainment of empire was the ruin of Sparta: she had not developed the moral qualities needed for ruling in time of peace. But in his model state he seems not to make adequate provision for the numbers required in war. His agricultural labourers are not to be employed in warfare, as the Laconian Helots regularly were. He only admits them to the service of the oar, controlled by the presence of marine soldiers, who are free citizens like the poorer class of Athenians who generally served in that capacity. The servile character of rustic labour on his plan is thus reasserted, and with it the superior standing of land forces as compared with maritime. The days were past when Athenians readily served at the oar in their own triremes, cruising among the subject states and certain of an obsequious reception in every port. Hired rowers had always been employed to some extent, even by Athens: in this later period the motive power of war-gallies of naval states was more and more obtained from slaves. There was an economic analogy between farm-labour and oar-labour. The slave was forced to toil for practically no more[408] than his food: the profits of the farm and the profits of war-booty fell to be shared in either case by few.

Aristotle, who was well aware of the merits of the working farmer, the peasant citizen, and recognized that such men had been a sound and stable element in the Athens of former days, would surely not have treated agriculture as a work reserved for servile hands, had he not been convinced that the old rural economy was gone and could never be revived. For, if suggestions from Sparta influenced him when designing Utopian institutions, it is no less clear that the Utopian setting—territory, city, port-town,—are merely modifications of Attica, Athens, Peiraeus. In Greece there was no state so favoured geographically, so well equipped by nature for independence prosperity and power. If a Greek community was ever to realize an artistic ideal, and live in peaceful and secure moderation a model life of dignity and virtue, it could hardly have a better chance of success than in some such advantageous position as that enjoyed by Athens. Her defects lay in her institutions, such as he viewed them at their present stage of development. These could not be approved as they stood: they needed both political and economic reform. Into the former we need not enter here: the later democracy could not but disgust one who judged merit from the standpoint of his doctrine of the Mean. Economically, we may infer from his own model project that two great changes would be required. Citizens must all have an interest in the land, though farmed by slave labour. The port-town must no longer be a centre of promiscuous commerce, thronged with a cosmopolitan population of merchants seamen dock-labourers etc and the various purveyors who catered for their various appetites. In truth the Peiraeus was a stumbling-block to him as to Plato, and probably to most men[409] who did not themselves draw income from its trade or its iniquities, or who did not derive political power from the support of its democratic citizens. To have a state ‘self-sufficing’ so far as to get its necessary food from its own territory, and to limit commerce to a moderate traffic sufficient to procure by exchange such things as the citizens wanted but could not produce (for instance[410] timber), was a philosopher’s aspiration.

While proposing to restrict commercial activity as being injurious in its effect, when carried to excess, on the higher life of the state, Aristotle like Plato admits[411] that not only slaves but free aliens, permanently or temporarily resident, must form a good part of the population. He does not even[412] like Plato propose to fix a limit to the permissible term of metic residence. Apparently he would let the resident alien make his fortune in Utopia and go on living there as a non-citizen of means. But he would not allow him to hold real property within the state, as Xenophon or some other[413] writer had suggested. That the services of aliens other than slaves were required for the wellbeing of the state, is an important admission. For it surely implies that there were departments of trade and industry in which slave-labour alone was felt to be untrustworthy, while the model citizens of a model state could not properly be so employed. The power of personal interest[414] in promoting efficiency and avoiding waste is an elementary fact not forgotten by Aristotle. Now the slave, having no personal interest involved beyond escaping punishment, is apt to be a shirker and a waster. The science of the master (δεσποτική)[415], we are told, is the science of using slaves; that is, of getting out of them what can be got. It is a science of no great scope or dignity. Hence busy masters employ overseers. He suggests that some stimulus to exertion may be found in the prospect of manumission[416] for good service. This occurs again in the Economics, but the question of what is to become of the worn-out rustic slave is not answered by him[417] any more than it is by Plato. My belief is that, so far as farm staffs are concerned, he has chiefly if not wholly in view cases[418] of stewards overseers etc. These would be in positions of some trust, perhaps occasionally filled by freemen, and to create in them some feeling of personal interest would be well worth the masters while. Domestic slavery was on a very different footing, but it too was often a worry[419] to masters. Here manumission played an obvious and important part, and perhaps still more in the clerical staffs of establishments for banking and other businesses. These phenomena of Athenian life were interesting and suggestive. Yet Aristotle is even more reticent[420] than Plato (and with less reason) on the subject of manumission: which is matter for regret.

The model state then will contain plenty of free aliens, serving the state with their talents and labour, an urban non-landholding element. They set the model citizens free for the duties of politics and war. Whether they will be bound to service in the army or the fleet, like the Athenian metics, we are not told. Nor is it easy to guess how Aristotle would have answered the question. Their main function is to carry on the various meaner or ‘mechanical’ trades and occupations, no doubt employing or not employing the help of slaves according to circumstances. All such trades were held to have a degrading effect[421] on both body and mind, disabling those practising them from attaining the highest excellence, that is the standard of model citizens in war and peace. Aristotle finds the essence of this taint in transgression of the doctrine of the Mean. Specialization carried to extremes produces professionalism which, for the sake of perfecting technical skill, sacrifices the adaptability, the bodily suppleness and strength and the mental all-round alertness and serene balance,—qualities which every intelligent Greek admired, and which Aristotle postulated in the citizens of his model community. So strong is his feeling on the point that it comes[422] out in connexion with music. The young citizens are most certainly to have musical training, but they are not to become professional performers; for this sort of technical excellence is nothing but a form of βαναυσία.

If neither the farmer nor the artisan are to be citizens, and the disqualification of the latter rests on his narrow professionalism, we are tempted to inquire whether the claim of the farmer may not also have been regarded as tainted by the same disability. That agriculture afforded scope for a high degree of technical skill is a fact not missed by Aristotle. He is at pains to point out[423] that this most fundamental of industries is a source of profit if scientifically pursued, as well as a means of bare subsistence. For the exchange[424] of products (such as corn and wine) by barter soon arises, and offers great opportunities, which are only increased to an injurious extent by the invention of a metallic currency. Now the founder of the Peripatetic school was not the man to ignore the principles of scientific farming, and the labour of collecting details had for him no terrors. Accordingly he refers to the knowledge[425] required in several departments of pastoral and agricultural life. He sketches briefly the development of the industry, from the mere gathering of nature’s bounty, through the stage of nomad pasturage, to settled occupation and the raising of food-crops by tillage of the soil. But in the Politics he does not follow out this topic. His preoccupation is the development of man in political life: so he dismisses further detail with the remark[426] (referring to the natural branch of χρηματιστική, the art of profit-making, which operates with crops and beasts) that in matters of this kind speculation is liberal (= worthy of a free man) but practice is not. This seems to imply that to be engrossed in the detailed study of various soils or breeds of beasts, with a view to their appropriate and profitable management, is an illiberal and cramping pursuit. He does not apply to it the term βαναυσία, and the reason probably is that the bodily defects of the sedentary artisan are not found in the working farmer. But the concentration upon mean details of no moral or political significance is common to both. That all unskilled[427] wage-earners fall under the same ban is a matter of course, hardly worth mentioning. In short, all those who depend on the custom of others for a living are subject to a sort of slavery in a greater or less degree, and unfit to be citizens.

The value attached to ‘self-sufficiency’ as evidence of freedom and of not living ‘in relation to another’ (that is, in dependence[428] on another,) is in striking contrast to views that have enjoyed a great vogue in modern economic theory. Neither the man nor the state can be completely[429] self-sufficing: that Aristotle, and Plato before him, saw. Man, feeling his way upward through the household to the state, needs help. He first finds[430] a helper (I am omitting the sex-union) in the ox, the forerunner of the slave, and still in primitive rustic life the helper of the poor. Growing needs bring division of labour and exchange by barter, and so on. As a political animal he can never be quite independent as an individual, but it is the law of his being that the expanding needs which draw him into association with his fellows result in making him more of a man. Here lies a pitfall. If through progress in civilization his daily life becomes so entangled with those of other men that his freedom of action is hampered thereby, surely he has lost something. His progress has not been clear gain, and the balance may not be easy to strike. It is therefore a problem, how to find a position in which man may profit by the advantages of civilization without risking the loss of more than he has gained. Aristotle does not state it in terms so brutally frank. But the problem is there, and he does in effect attempt a solution. The presence in sufficient numbers of slaves legally unfree, and workers legally free but virtually under a defined or special kind[431] of servitude (ἀφωρισμένην τινὰ δουλείαν), is the only means by which a privileged class can get all the good that is to be got out of human progress. His model citizens are an aristocracy of merited privilege, so trained to virtue that to be governed by them will doubtless enable their subjects to enjoy as much happiness as their inferior natures can receive. This solution necessitates the maintenance of slavery[432] as existing by nature, and the adoption of economic views that have been rightly called reactionary. The student of human nature and experience unwisely departed from the safer ground of his own principles and offered a solution that was no solution at all.

As the individual man cannot live in complete isolation, supplying his own needs and having no relations with other men,—for his manhood would thus remain potential and never become actual—so it will be with the state also. It must not merely allow aliens to reside in it and serve its purposes internally: it will have to stand in some sort of relations to other states. This is sufficiently asserted by the provision made for the contingency of war. But in considering how far a naval force would be required[433] in his model state he remarks ‘The scale of this force must be determined by the part (τὸν βίον) played by our state: if it is to lead a life of leadership and have dealings with other states (ἡγεμονικὸν καὶ πολιτικὸν βίον), it will need to have at hand this force also on a scale proportioned to its activities.’ Then, jealous ever of the Mean, he goes on to deny the necessity of a great ‘nautical rabble,’ in fact the nuisance of the Peiraeus referred to above. On the protection of such maritime commerce as he would admit he does not directly insist; but, knowing Athens so well, no doubt he had it in mind. Another illustration of the virtuous Mean may be found in the rules of education. The relations of the quarrelsome Greek states had been too often hostile. The Spartan training had been too much admired. But it was too one-sided, too much a glorification of brute force, and its inadequacy had been exposed since Leuctra. Its success had been due to the fact that no other state had specialized in preparation for war as Sparta had done. Once others took up this war-policy in earnest, Sparta’s vantage was gone. This vantage was her all. Beaten in war, she had no reserve of non-military qualities to assuage defeat and aid a revival. The citizens of Utopia must not be thus brutalized. Theirs must be the true man’s courage (ἀνδρία)[434], as far removed from the reckless ferocity of the robber or the savage as from cowardice. It is surely not too much to infer[435] that military citizens of this character were meant to pursue a public policy neither abject nor aggressive.

It is in connexion with bodily training that we come upon views that throw much light on the position of agricultural labour. There is, he remarks, a general agreement[436] that gymnastic exercises do promote manly courage, or as he puts it below ‘health and prowess.’ But at the present time there is, in states where the training of the young is made a special object, a tendency[437] to overdo it: they bring up the boys as regular athletes, producing a habit of body that hinders the shapely development and growth of the frame. The Thebans in particular are thought to be meant. His own system does not thus run to excess. Gentle exercises gradually extended will develop fine bodies to match fine souls. Now his labouring classes receive no bodily training of the kind. The frame of the artisan is left to become cramped and warped by the monotonous movements of his trade. So too the farm-labourer is left to become hard and stiff-jointed. Neither will have the supple agility needed for fighting as an art. We have seen that this line had already been taken by Plato in the Republic; indeed it was one that a Greek could hardly avoid. Yet the shock-tactics of heavy columns were already revolutionizing Greek warfare as much as the light troops organized by Iphicrates. Were Aristotle’s military principles not quite up to date? Philip made the Macedonian rustic into a first-rate soldier. But the northern tribesman was a free man. The rustic of the model state was to be a slave or serf: therefore he could not be a soldier. To keep him in due subjection he must not be allowed to have arms or trained to use them skilfully. This policy is nothing more or less than the precautionary device[438] resorted to in Crete; the device that he twits Plato with omitting in the Republic, though without it his Guardians would not be able to control the landholding Husbandmen. And yet the weakness of the Cretan system is duly noted[439] in its place. The truth is, Aristotle was no more exempt from the worship of certain ill-defined political terms than were men of far less intellectual power. The democrat worshipped ‘freedom’ in the sense[440] of ‘do as you please,’ the mark of a freeborn citizen. The philosopher would not accept so crude a doctrine, but he is none the less determined to mark off the ‘free’ from the unfree, socially as well as politically. Adapting an institution known in Thessalian[441] cities, he would have two open ‘places’ (ἀγοραί) in his model state; one for marketing and ordinary daily business, the other reserved for the free citizens. Into the latter no tradesman (βάναυσον) or husbandman (γεωργόν), or other person of like status (τοιοῦτον), is to intrude—unless the magistrates summon him to attend.

It is a pity that Aristotle has left us no estimate of the relative numerical strength of the various classes of population in Utopia. He neglects this important detail more completely even than Plato. Yet I fancy that an attempt to frame such an estimate would very soon have exposed the visionary and unpractical nature of the whole fabric constructed on his lines. It would, I believe, have been ultimately wrecked on the doctrine of the Mean. Restriction of commerce had to be reconciled with financial strength, for he saw that wealth was needed[442] for both peace and war. This εὐπορία could only arise from savings, the accumulated surplus of industry. The labouring classes would therefore have to provide not only their own sustenance etc and that of their rulers, but a considerable surplus as well. This would probably necessitate so numerous a labouring population that the citizens would have enough to do in controlling them and keeping them to their work. To increase the number of citizens would add to the unproductive[443] mouths, and so on. Foreign war would throw everything out of gear, and no hiring of mercenaries is suggested. It is the carrying to excess of the principle of specialization that demands excess of ‘leisure,’ nothing less than the exemption of all citizens (all persons that count, in short,) from manual toil. Yet it was one who well knew the political merits of peasant farmers that was the author of this extravagant scheme for basing upon a servile agriculture the entertainment of a hothouse virtue.

The general effect produced by reviewing the evidence of Aristotle on agriculture and the labour-question is that he was a witness of the decay of the working-farmer class, and either could not or would not propose any plan for reviving it. The rarity of the words αὐτουργὸς and cognates is not to be wondered at in his works. They do not occur in the Politics. The Rhetoric furnishes two[444] passages. One refers to the kinds of men especially liable to unfair treatment (ἀδικία) because it is not worth their while to waste time on legal proceedings, citing as instances aliens and αὐτουργοί. Rustics may be included, but are not expressly mentioned. The other[445] refers to qualities that men generally like and respect, as justice. ‘Popular opinion finds this character in those who do not make their living out of others; that is, who live of their own labour, for instance those who live by farming (ἀπὸ γεωργίας), and, in other pursuits, those most of all who work with their own hands.’ Here we have the working farmer expressly cited as a type worthy of respect. But to single him out thus certainly does not suggest that the type was a common one. The great Aristotelian index of Bonitz supplies three[446] more passages, all from the little treatise de mundo. They occur in a special context. God, as the cause that holds together the universe, is not to be conceived as a power enduring the toil of a self-working laborious animal (αὐτουργοῦ καὶ ἐπιπόνου ζῴου). Nor must we suppose that God, seated aloft in heaven and influencing all things more or less directly in proportion as they are near or far, pervades and flits through the universe regardless of his dignity and propriety to carry on the things of earth with his own hands (αὐτουργεῖ τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς). The third passage is in a comparison, illustrating the divine power by the Persian system, in which the Great King sitting on his throne pervades and directs his vast empire through his ministering agents. Such a fortiori is the government of God.

XVIII. THE LATER ATTIC ORATORS.

It has already been remarked that no clear chronological line can be drawn to divide this famous group into two sections, but that there is nevertheless a real distinction between the period of hostility to Persia and that in which fear of Macedon was the dominant theme. The jealousies and disunion of the Greek states are the background of both. Isocrates[447] had appealed in vain for Greek union as a means of realizing Greek ambitions and satisfying Greek needs. Demosthenes, so far as he did succeed in combining Greek forces to resist the encroachments of Philip, succeeded too late. In the fifth century BC we see the Greek states grouped under two great leading powers. The conflict of these powers leaves one of them the unquestioned head of the Greek world. The next half century witnessed the fall of Sparta, earned by gross misgovernment, and the rise and relapse of Thebes. In the same period Athens made another bid for maritime empire, but this second Alliance had failed. Isolation of Greek states was now the rule, and the hopelessness of any common policy consummated the weakness of exhaustion. At Athens the old fervent patriotism was cooling down, as we learn from the growing reluctance to make sacrifices in the country’s cause. Demos was no longer imperial, and he was evidently adapting himself to a humbler role. His political leaders had to secure his food-supply and provide for his festivals, and this out of a sadly shrunken income. To provide efficient fighting forces on land and sea was only possible by appropriating the Festival fund (θεωρικόν), and the mob of Athens was unwilling either to fight in person or to surrender its amusements in order to hire mercenaries. Too often the result was that mercenaries, hired but not paid, were left to pillage friend and foe alike for their own support. The truth is, individualism was superseding old-fashioned patriotism. The old simple views of life and duty had been weakened by the questionings of many thinkers, and no new moral footing had yet been found to compete with immediate personal interest. Athens was the chief centre of this decline, for the intellectual and moral influences promoting it were strongest there: but it was surely not confined to Athens. The failure of Thebes after the death of Epaminondas was one of many symptoms of decay. She had overthrown Sparta, but she could not herself lead Greece: her utmost achievement was a fatal equilibrium of weak states, of which the Macedonian was soon to take full advantage. And everywhere, particularly in rural districts, the flower of the male population was being drained away, enlisting in mercenary armies, lured by the hope of gain and willing to escape the prospect of hard and dreary lives at home. In short, each was for his own hand.

Such an age was not one to encourage the peaceful and patient toil of agriculture. The great cities, above all Athens, needed cheap corn. Their own farmers could not supply this, and so importation[448] was by law favoured, and as far as possible inforced. Thus times of actual dearth seldom occurred, and home-grown corn was seldom a paying crop. Thrown back all the more on cultivation of the olive and vine the products of which were available for export, the farmer needed time for the development of his planted (πεφυτευμένη) land, and the waiting for returns necessitated a larger capital. He was then exposed to risk of greater damage in time of war. For his capital was irretrievably sunk in his vineyard or oliveyard, and its destruction would take years to repair—that is, more waiting and more capital. This was no novel situation. But its effect in reducing the number of small peasant farmers was probably now greater than ever. Not only were mercenary armies relentless destroyers and robbers (having no fear of reprisals and no conventional scruples to restrain them), but their example corrupted the practice of citizen forces. Even if no fighting took place in this or that neighbourhood, the local farmers[449] must expect to be ruined by the mere presence of their own defenders. When we bear in mind the risks of drought in some parts or floods in others, the occasional losses of live stock, and other ordinary misfortunes, it is fair to imagine that the farmer of land needed to be a man of substance, not liable to be ruined by a single blow. And the sidelights thrown on the subject by the indirect references in the orators are quite consistent with this view.

The loss of the Thracian Chersonese in the disasters of 405 BC had not only dispossessed the Athenian settlers there, but made that region a source of continual anxiety to Athens. She was no longer in secure control of the strait through which the corn-ships passed from the Pontus. A considerable revival of her naval power enabled her in 365 to occupy the island of Samos and to regain a footing in the Chersonese. To both of these cleruchs were sent. But the tenure of the Chersonese was disputed by Thracian princes, and it was necessary to send frequent expeditions thither. The success or failure of these enterprises is recorded in histories of Greece. The importance of the position justified great efforts to retain it. Greek cities on the Propontis and Bosporus, not Thracian chiefs only, gave trouble. If short of supplies, as in 362, they were tempted to lay hands[450] on the corn-ships, and consume what was meant for Athens. But the result of much confused warfare was that in 358 the Chersonese became once more a part of the Athenian empire. Even after the dissolution of that empire in the war with the Allies 358-6, part of the peninsula still remained Athenian. But it was now exposed to the menace of the growing power of Macedon under Philip. To induce the Demos, who needed the corn, to provide prompt and adequate protection for the gate of Pontic trade, was one of the many difficult tasks of Demosthenes.

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

The right of owning real estate in Attica being reserved for Athenian citizens, aliens were debarred from what was sometimes a convenient form[451] of investment. If the possible return on capital so placed was lower than in more speculative ventures, the risk of total loss was certainly much less, of partial loss comparatively small. Moreover it gave the owner a certain importance[452] as a citizen of known substance. It enabled a rich man to vary[453] his investments, as references to mixed estates shew. And he had a choice of policies in dealing with it: he could reside on his own property and superintend the management himself, or entrust the charge to a steward, or let it to a tenant. And, if at any time he wanted ready money for some purpose, he could raise it by a mortgage on favourable terms. If the land lay in a pleasant spot not too far from the city, he was tempted to make himself a ‘place in the country’ for his own occasional retirement and the entertainment of friends. That landowning presented itself to Athenians of the Demosthenic period in the aspects just sketched is manifest from the speeches belonging to the years from 369 to 322 BC. Of the small working farmer there is very little trace. But that some demand for farms existed seems indicated by the cleruchs sent to the Chersonese and Samos. No doubt these were meant to serve as resident garrisons at important points, and it is not to be supposed that they were dependent solely on their own labour for tillage of their lots. Another kind of land-hunger speaks for itself. The wars and wastings of this period placed large areas of land at the disposal of conquerors. Olynthian, Phocian, Boeotian territory was at one time or another confiscated and granted out as reward for this or that service. No reproaches of Demosthenes are more bitter than the references to these cruel and cynical measures of Philip’s corrupting policy. Individuals shared[454] these and other spoils: the estates of Aeschines and Philocrates in Phocis, and later of Aeschines in Boeotia, are held up as the shameful wages of treachery. These estates can only have been worked by slave-labour under stewards, for politicians in Athens could not reside abroad. They are specimens of the large-scale agriculture to which the circumstances of the age were favourable.

A dispute arising out of a case of challenge to exchange properties[455] (ἀντίδοσις), in order to decide which party was liable for performance of burdensome state-services, gives us a glimpse of a large holding in Attica. It belongs to 330 BC or later. The farm is an ἐσχατιά, that is a holding near[456] the frontier. It is stated to have been more than 40 stadia (about 5 miles) in circuit. The farmstead included granaries (οἰκήματα) for storing the barley and wheat which were evidently the chief crops on this particular farm. It included also a considerable vineyard producing a good quantity of wine. Among the by-products was brushwood (ὕλη, not timber ξύλα)[457]. The faggots were carried to market (Athens, I presume) on the backs of asses. The ass-drivers are specially mentioned. The returns from the faggot-wood are stated at over 12 drachms a day. The challenging speaker declares that this estate was wholly unencumbered: not a mortgage-post (ὅρος) was to be seen. He contrasts his own position, a man who has lost most of his property in a mining venture, though he has even toiled with his own[458] hands, with that of the landlord (I presume not an αὐτουργός) enriched by the late rise of the prices of corn and wine. He may be grossly exaggerating the profits of this border-farm: his opponent would probably be able to cite very different facts from years when the yield had been poor or prices low. Still, to impress an Athenian jury, the picture drawn in this speech must at least have seemed a possible one. The labour on the farm would be mainly that of slaves: but to this I shall return below. In another speech[459] we hear of a farmer in the far north, on the SE Crimean coast. The sea-carriage of 80 jars of sour wine is accounted for by his wanting it for his farm-hands (ἐργάται). Slaves are probably meant, but we cannot be sure of it in that slave-exporting part of the world. At any rate he was clearly farming on a large scale. If he was, as I suppose, a Greek settler, the case is an interesting one. For it would seem to confirm the view of Isocrates, that Greek expansion was a feasible solution of a felt need, provided suitable territory for the purpose could be acquired; and that of Xenophon, when he proposed to plant necessitous Greeks in Asiatic lands taken from Persia.

The type of farmer known to us from Aristophanes, who works a holding of moderate size, a man not wealthy but comfortable, a well-to-do peasant proprietor who lives among the slaves whose labour he directs, is hardly referred to directly in the speeches of this period. Demosthenes[460] in 355 BC makes the general remark ‘You cannot deny that farmers who live thrifty lives, and by reason of rearing children and domestic expenses and other public services have fallen into arrear with their property-tax, do the state less wrong than the rogues who embezzle public funds.’ But he does not say that there were many such worthy citizen-farmers, nor does he (I think) imply it. In a similar passage[461] three years later he classes them with merchants, mining speculators, and other men in businesses, as better citizens than the corrupt politicians. Such references are far too indefinite, and too dependent on the rhetorical needs of the moment, to tell us much. In one of the earlier private speeches[462] Demosthenes deals with a dispute of a kind probably common. It is a neighbours’ quarrel over a wall, a watercourse, and right of way. To all appearance the farms interested in the rights and wrongs were not large holdings. They were evidently in a hilly district. The one to protect which from floods the offending wall had been built had at one time belonged to a ‘town-bred[463] man’ who disliked the place, neglected it, and sold it to the father of Demosthenes’ client. There is nothing to shew that this farm was the whole of the present owner’s estate: so that it is hardly possible to classify him economically with any exactitude. We do by chance learn that he had a staff of slaves, and that vines and fig-trees grew on the land.

The author of one of the earlier speeches[464] (between 368 and 365 BC) furnishes much more detail in connexion with estates of what was apparently a more ordinary type. Neighbours are quarrelling as usual, and we have of course only ex parte statements. The farms, worked by slave-labour, produce vines and olives and probably some corn also. The enclosure and tending of valuable plants is represented as kept up to a high standard. Incidentally we learn that the staff used to contract[465] for the gathering of fruit (ὀπώραν) or the reaping and carrying of other crops (θέρος ἐκθερίσαι), clearly on other estates. The contract was always made by a person named, who is thereby proved to have been the real owner of these slaves,—a point in the case. According to his own account, the speaker had for some time been settled (κατῴκουν) on the estate. That is, he had a house there and would sometimes be in residence. The amenities of the place are indicated by the mention of his young rose-garden, which was ravaged by trespassers, as were his olives and vines. The house from which they carried off ‘all the furniture, worth more than 20 minas,’ seems to have been in Athens, and the mention of the lodging-house (συνοικία) that he mortgaged for 16 minas shews that his estate was a mixed one. Country houses were no exceptional thing. A mining speculator speaks of an opponent[466] as coming to his house in the country and intruding into the apartments of his wife and daughters. A party protesting against being struck off the deme-register says[467] that his enemies made a raid on his cottage in the country (οἰκίδιον ἐν ἀγρῷ). He is probably depreciating the house, in order not to have the dangerous appearance of a rich man.

We hear also of farms near Athens, the suburban position of which no doubt enhanced their value. In the large mixed estate inherited and wasted by Timarchus, Aeschines[468] mentions (344 BC) a farm only about a mile and a half from the city wall. The spendthrift’s mother entreated him to keep this property at least: her wish was to be buried there. But even this he sold, for 2000 drachms (less than £80). In the speech against Euergus and Mnesibulus the plaintiff tells[469] how his opponents raided his farm and carried off 50 soft-wooled sheep at graze, and with them the shepherd and all the belongings of the flock, also a domestic slave, etc. This was not enough: they pushed on into the farm and tried to capture the slaves, who fled and escaped. Then they turned to the house, broke down the door that leads to the garden (κῆπον), burst in upon his wife and children, and went off with all the furniture that remained in the house. The speaker particularly points out[470] that he had lived on the place from childhood, and that it was near the race-course (πρὸς τῷ ἱπποδρόμῳ). It must then have been near Athens. The details given suggest that it was a fancy-farm, devoted to the production of stock valued for high quality and so commanding high prices. The garden seems to be a feature of an establishment more elegant than that of a mere peasant farmer. It corresponds to the rose-bed in a case referred to above: Hyperides[471] too mentions a man who had a κῆπος near the Academy, doubtless a pleasant spot. The farm in the plain (ὀ ἐν πεδίῳ ἀγρός)[472] belonging to Timotheus, and mortgaged by him to meet his debts, is only mentioned in passing (362 BC) with no details: we can only suppose it to have been an average holding in the rich lowland.

A few passages require separate consideration in connexion with the labour-question. In the speech on the Crown (330 BC) Demosthenes quotes[473] Aeschines as protesting against being reproached with the friendship (ξενίαν) of Alexander. He retorts ‘I am not so crazy as to call you Philip’s ξένος or Alexander’s φίλος, unless one is to speak of reapers or other wage-earners as the friends of those who hire them ... but on a former occasion I called you the hireling (μισθωτὸν) of Philip, and I now call you the hireling of Alexander.’ Here the reaper (θεριστής) is contemptuously referred to as a mere hireling. Such was the common attitude towards poor freemen who lived by wage-earning labour,—θῆτες in short. But is it clear that the μισθωτὸς is necessarily a freeman? The passage cited above from an earlier speech makes it doubtful. If a gang of slaves could contract to cut and carry a crop (θέρος μισθοῖντο ἐκθερίσαι), their owner acting for them, surely they were strictly μισθωτοὶ from the point of view of the farmer who hired them. They were ἀνδράποδα μισθοφοροῦντα, to use the exact Greek phrase. In the speech against Timotheus an even more notable passage[474] (362 BC) occurs. Speaking of some copper said to have been taken in pledge for a debt, the speaker asks ‘Who were the persons that brought the copper to my father’s house? Were they hired men (μισθωτοί), or slaves (οἰκέται)?’ Here, at first sight, we seem to have the hireling clearly marked off as free. For the argument[475] proceeds ‘or which of my slave-household (τῶν οἰκετῶν τῶν ἐμῶν) took delivery of the copper? If slaves brought it, then the defendant ought to have handed them over (for torture): if hired men, he should have demanded our slave who received and weighed it.’ Strictly speaking, slaves, in status δοῦλοι, are οἰκέται[476] in relation to their owner, of whose οἰκία they form a part. But if A in a transaction with B employed some slaves whom he hired for the purpose from C (C being in no way personally involved in the case), would not these[477] be μισθωτοί, in the sense that they were not his own οἰκέται, but procured by μισθὸς for the job? It is perhaps safer to assume that in the case before us the hirelings meant by the speaker are freemen, but I do not think it can be considered certain. Does not their exemption from liability to torture prove it? I think not, unless we are to assume that the slaves hired from a third person, not a party in the case, could be legally put to question. That this was so, I can find no evidence, nor is it probable. The regular practice was this: either a party offered his slaves for examination under torture, or he did not. If he did not, a challenge (πρόκλησις) was addressed to him by his opponent, demanding their surrender for the purpose. But to demand the slaves of any owner, not a party in the case, was a very different thing, and I cannot discover the existence of any such right. I am not speaking of state trials, in which the claims of the public safety might override private interests, but of private cases, in which the issue lay between clearly defined adversaries. In default of direct and unquestionable authority, I cannot suppose that an Athenian slaveowner could be called upon to surrender his property (even with compensation for any damage thereto) for the purposes of a case in which he was not directly concerned.

Stray references to matters of land-tenure, such as the letting of sacred lands[478] (τεμένη) belonging to a deme, are too little connected with our subject to need further mention here. And a curious story[479] of some hill-lands (ὄρη) in the district of Oropus, divided by lot among the ten Tribes, apparently as tribal property, is very obscure. Such allotments would probably be let to tenants. What is more interesting in connexion with agriculture is the references to farming as a means of getting a livelihood, few and slight though they are. Demosthenes[480] in 349 BC tells the Assembly that their right policy is to attack Philip on his own ground, not to mobilize and then await him in Attica: such mobilization would be ruinous to ‘those of you who are engaged in farming.’ The speech against Phaenippus[481] shews us an establishment producing corn and wine and firewood and alleged to be doing very well owing to the prices then ruling in the market. We have also indications of the presence of dealers who bought up crops, no doubt to resell at a profit. From the expressions[482] ὀπώραν πρίασθαι and ὀπωρώνης it might seem that fruit-crops in particular were disposed of in this way. Naturally a crop of this sort had to be gathered quickly, and a field gang would be employed—slaves or freemen, according to circumstances. For that in these days poverty was driving many a free citizen[483] to mean and servile occupations for a livelihood, is not only a matter of certain inference but directly affirmed by Demosthenes in 345 BC. Aeschines[484] in 344 also denies that the practice of any trade to earn a bare living was any political disqualification to a humble citizen of good repute. From such poor freemen were no doubt drawn casual hands at critical moments of farm life, analogues of the British hop-pickers[485]. But, with every allowance for possible occasions of employing free labour, particularly in special processes where servile apathy was plainly injurious, the farm-picture in general as depicted in these speeches is one of slave-labour. And this suggests to me a question in reference to the disposal of Greek slaves. For the vast majority of slaves[486] in Greece, whether urban or rustic, were certainly Barbarians of several types for several purposes. The sale of the people of captured cities had become quite an ordinary thing. Sparta had sinned thus in her day of power, and the example was followed from time to time by others. The cases of Olynthus in 348 BC and Thebes in 335 fall in the present period. Aeschines mentions[487] some captives working chained in Philip’s vineyard; but these can only have been few. The mass were sold, and a large sum of money realized thereby. At Thebes the captives sold are said to have numbered 30,000. What markets absorbed these unhappy victims? I can only guess that many found their way to Carthage and Etruria.

XIX. THE MACEDONIAN PERIOD 322-146 BC.

The deficiency of contemporary evidence illustrating the agricultural conditions of this troubled age in the Greek world makes it necessary to combine the various scraps of information in a general sketch. Hellas had now seen its best days. The break-up of the great empire of Alexander did not restore to the little Greek states the freedom of action which had been their pride and which had been a main influence in keeping up their vitality. The outward and visible sign of their failure was the impossibility of an independent foreign policy. The kingdoms of Alexander’s Successors might rise and fall, but Greek states could do little to affect the results. A new world was opened to Greek enterprise in the East, and Greek mercenaries and Greek secretaries traders and officials were carrying the Greek language and civilization into wide lands ruled by Macedonian kings. But these were individuals, attracted by the prospect of a gainful military or civil career. Either they settled abroad, and drained Greece of some of her ablest sons; or they returned home enriched, and formed an element of the population contrasting painfully with those who had stayed behind. In either case it seems certain that the movement tended to lower the standard of efficiency and patriotism in their native states. Citizen armies became more and more difficult to maintain. The influx of money no longer locked up in Oriental treasuries only served to accentuate the old social distinction[488] of Rich and Poor. Men who came back with fortunes meant to enjoy themselves, and they did: the doings of the returned soldier of fortune were proverbial, and a fruitful theme for comic poets. But the spectacle of wanton luxury was more likely to lure enterprising individuals into ventures abroad than to encourage patient industry at home. And there is little doubt that such was the general result. The less vigorous of the poor citizens remained, a servile mob, ever ready by grovelling compliments to earn the bounties of kings.

Political decay and changes of social circumstance were accompanied by new movements in the sphere of thought. It is generally observed that in this period philosophy more and more appeals to the individual man, regardless of whether he be a citizen or not. How far this movement arose out of changed conditions may be open to difference of opinion: but, as usual in human affairs, what began as an effect continued to operate as a cause. The rapid spread of the Greek tongue and Greek civilization eastwards, known as Hellenizing, was a powerful influence promoting cosmopolitan views. Alien blood could no longer form an unsurmountable barrier: the Barbarian who spoke Greek and followed Greek ways had won a claim to recognition, as had already been foreseen by the mild sincerity[489] of Isocrates. But these half-Greeks, some of them even of mixed blood, were now very numerous. They competed with genuine Hellenes at a time when the pride of the genuine Hellene was ebbing: even in intellectual pursuits, in which the Hellene still claimed preeminence, they were serious and eventually successful rivals. It is no wonder that earlier questionings took new life, and that consciousness of common humanity tended to modify old-established sentiment, even on such subjects as the relation of master and slave. It was not merely that the philosophic schools from different points of view, Cynic Cyrenaic Stoic Epicurean, persistently regarded man as a mental and moral unit, whatever his political or social condition might be. The fragments and echoes of the later Comedy suffice to shew how frankly the slave could be presented on the public stage as the equal, or more than equal, of his master.

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

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

If the general outline of circumstances has been fairly sketched in the above paragraphs, we should expect to find that agriculture on a small scale was not prospering in this period. Unhappily there is hardly any direct evidence on the point. Even indirect evidence is meagre and sometimes far from clear. One notable symptom of the age is seen in the rise of bucolic poetry. This is not a rustic growth, the rude utterance of unlettered herdsmen, but an artificial product of town-dwelling poets, who idealize the open-air life to amuse town-bred readers somewhat weary of the everlasting streets. In the endeavour to lend an air of reality to scenes of rural life, it was convenient to credit the rustics (shepherds goatherds etc) with a grossness of amorosity that may perhaps be exaggerated to suit the taste of urban readers. Of this tendency the idylls of Theocritus furnish many instances. We need not accept them as accurate pictures of the life of herds and hinds in Sicily or elsewhere, but they give us some notion of the ideas of rural life entertained by literary men of the Alexandrian school. Beside the guardians of flocks and herds with their faithful dogs, their flutes and pan-pipes, idling in the pleasant shade and relieving the tiresome hours with musical competition, we have the hinds ploughing mowing or busy with vintage and winepress. Some are evidently freemen, others are slaves; and we hear of overseers. There is milking and making of cheese, and woodmen[490] are not forgotten. The bloom of flowers, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the whisper of the refreshing breeze, form the setting of these rural scenes, and might almost persuade us that we are privileged spectators of a genuine golden age. But the sayings and doings of the rustics undeceive us. And the artificiality of this poetry is further betrayed by that of the panegyric and pseudo-epic poems of the same author. His admiration of Hiero[491] of Syracuse may be mainly sincere, but his praises of Ptolemy[492] Philadelphus are the utterances of a courtier. His excursions into the region of mythology are brief, for the reading public of his day could not stand long epics on the adventures[493] of Heracles or the Dioscuri. And the literary apparatus is antiquarian, a more or less direct imitation of the old Homeric diction, but unable to reproduce the varied cadences. It is generally remarked that the genius of Theocritus finds its happiest and liveliest expression in the fifteenth idyll, which depicts urban scenes. In this respect that idyll may be compared with the mimes of Herodas, which illustrate, probably with truth, the shadier sides of urban life in cities of the period, which Theocritus ignores.

It is in a miniature epic[494] of mythological setting that we find the most direct references to tillage of the soil combined with the keeping of live stock—general agriculture, in short. We read of the plowman[495] in charge of the crops, of the hard-working diggers[496] (φυτοσκάφοι οἱ πολυεργοί), of the herdsmen[497], of an overseer[498] or steward (αἰσυμνήτης). The staff seems to consist entirely of slaves. But it is not easy to say how far the picture is meant as a reproduction of the primitive labour-conditions of the traditional Heroic age, how far the details may be coloured by the conditions of Theocritus’ own day. In the Idylls we find a shepherd, free presumably, in charge of a flock the property[499] of his father. On the other hand ἐριθακὶς in one passage[500] seems not to be a wage-earner, but a black slave. The ἐργάτης of the tenth idyll[501] is probably a free man, but he is enamoured of a slave girl. No conclusion can be drawn from a reference[502] to coarse but filling food meant for labourers. Roughness and a certain squalor are conventional rustic attributes: a town-bred girl repulses the advances of a herdsman[503] with the remark ‘I’m not used to kiss rustics, but to press town-bred lips,’ and adds further detail. Nor is the mention of Thessalian[504] serfs (πενέσται) in the panegyric of Hiero anything more than a part of the poet’s apparatus. And the reference[505] to the visit of Augeas to his estate, followed by a comment on the value of the master’s personal attention to his own interests, is a touch of truism common to all peoples in every age. To Theocritus, the one poet of learned Alexandria who had high poetic genius, the life and labour of farmers was evidently a matter of little or no concern. He could hardly idealize the Egyptian fellah. And the one passage[506] in which he directly illustrates the position of the Greek contemporary farmer is significant. Discontented owing to a disappointment in love, the man is encouraged by his friend to enter the service of the generous Ptolemy as a mercenary soldier.

One or two small references may be gleaned from the Characters of Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus. That the bulk of these typical portraits are drawn from town-folk is only to be expected, but this point is not to be pressed overmuch, for philosophers did not frequent country districts. The general references to treatment of slaves, the slave-market, and so forth, are merely interesting as illustrative of the general prevalence of slavery, chiefly of course in Athens. But we do get to the farm in the case[507] of the rustic boor (ἄγροικος). His lack of dignity and proper reserve is shewn in talking to his slaves on matters of importance: he makes confidants of them, and so far forgets himself as to lend a hand in grinding the corn. It has been remarked that Greek manners allowed a certain familiarity[508] in the relations of master and slave. But this person overdoes it: in Peripatetic language, he transgresses the doctrine of the Mean. He employs also hired men (μισθωτοί), and to them he recounts all the political gossip (τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας), evidently a sign of his awkwardness and inability to hold his tongue. I take these wage-earners to be poor freemen. They might be slaves hired from another owner: this practice appears elsewhere in connexion with town slaves. But the general impoverishment of the old Greece, save in a few districts, is beyond doubt: and the demand for slaves in new cities would raise the price of slaves and tend to drive the free poor to manual labour.

The exact dates of the birth and death of Polybius are uncertain, but as an observer of events his range extended from about 190 or 189 to 122 or 121 BC. Though his references to agriculture are few and separately of small importance, they have a cumulative value on certain points. He wrote as historian of the fortunes of the civilized world of his day, treated as a whole, in which a series of interconnected struggles led up to the supremacy of Rome. His Greece is the Greece of the Leagues. No leading state of the old models had been able to unite the old Hellas effectively under its headship, but the Macedonian conquest had plainly proved that in isolation[509] the little separate states had no future open to them but slavery. The doings of Alexander’s Successors further inforced the lesson. It was clear that the only hope of freedom lay in union so far as possible, for thus only could Greek powers be created able to act with any sort of independence and self-respect in their relations with the new great powers outside. Accordingly there took place a revival of old local unions in districts where a community of interest between tribes or cities had in some form or other long been recognized. Such were the tribal League of Aetolia and the city League of Achaia. But these two were but notable instances of a federative movement much wider. The attempt to unite the scattered towns of Arcadia, with a federal centre at Megalopolis, seems to have been less successful. But the general aim of the movement towards federalism in Greece is clear. That it did not in the end save Greek freedom was due to two defects: it was too partial and too late. For no general union was achieved. Greek jealousy remained, and Leagues fought with Leagues in internal strife: then they were drawn into quarrels not their own, as allies of great foreign powers. It was no longer possible to remain neutral with safety. No League was strong enough to face the risk of compromising itself with a victorious great power. Achaean statesmen did their best, but they too could not save their country from ruin, once the League became entangled in the diplomacy of Rome. Nor was it the old Hellas alone that thus drifted to its doom. Between Rome and Carthage the western Greeks lost whatever power and freedom their own disunion and quarrels had left them. The Rhodian republic and its maritime League of islanders had to become the subject allies of Rome.

One point stands out clearly enough. In the Greece of the third century BC the question of food-supply was as pressing as it had ever been in the past. The operations of King Philip were often conditioned by the ease or difficulty of getting supplies[510] of corn for his troops: that is, he had to work on an insufficient margin of such resources. In 219, after driving the Dardani out of Macedonia, he had to dismiss his men[511] that they might get in their harvest. In 218, the success of his Peloponnesian campaign was largely dependent[512] on the supplies and booty captured in Elis, in Cephallenia, in Laconia; and on the subsidies of corn and money voted by his Achaean allies. The destruction of crops[513] was as of old a principal means of warfare. And when he had to meet the Roman invasion in 197, the race to secure what corn[514] was to be had was again a leading feature of the war. It is true that the feeding of armies was a difficulty elsewhere[515], as in Asia, and in all ages and countries: also that difficulties of transport were a considerable part of it. But the war-indemnities[516] fixed by treaties, including great quantities of corn, shew the extreme importance attached to this item. And the gifts of corn[517] to the Rhodian republic after the great earthquake (about 225 BC), and the leave granted them[518] in 169 by the Roman Senate to import a large quantity from Sicily, tell the same story. Another article in great demand, only to be got wholesale from certain countries, such as Macedonia, was timber. It was wanted for domestic purposes and for construction of military engines, which were greatly developed in the wars of the Successors; but above all for shipbuilding, commercial and naval. Rhodes in particular[519] needed a great supply; and the gifts of her friends in 224 BC were largely in the form of timber. There was no doubt a great demand for it at Alexandria, Syracuse, Corinth, and generally in seaport towns. It is evident that in strictly Greek lands the wood grown was chiefly of small size, suitable for fuel. There is no sign of an advance on the conditions of an earlier time in the way of afforestation: nor indeed was such a policy likely.

But food had to be found somehow. Agriculture therefore had to go on. Outside the commercial centres, where food-stuffs could be imported by sea, there was no alternative: the population had to depend on the products of local tillage and pasturage. A few cities celebrated as art-centres might contrive to live by the sale of their works, but this hardly affects the general situation. We should therefore very much like to know how things stood on the land. Was the tendency towards large landed estates, or was the small-farm system reviving? Was farm-labour chiefly that of freemen, or that of slaves? If of freemen, was it chiefly that of small owners, or that of wage-earners? In default of any authoritative statement, we have to draw what inferences we can from slight casual indications. That the career of Alexander was directly and indirectly the cause of great disturbances in Greek life, is certain. Of the ways in which it operated, two are of special importance. The compulsory restoration of exiles[520] whose properties had been confiscated led to claims for restitution; and in the matter of real estate the particular land in question was easily identified and made the subject of a bitter contest. Now uncertainty of tenure is notoriously a check on improvement, and the effect of the restorations was to make tenures uncertain. At the same time the prospects of professional soldiering in the East were a strong temptation to able-bodied husbandmen who were not very prosperous. From the rural parts of Greece a swarm of mercenaries went forth to join the host of Alexander, and the movement continued long. In the stead of one Alexander, there arose the rival Successor-kings, who competed in the military market for the intelligent Greeks. It was worth their while, and they paid well for a good article. So all through the third century there was a draining away of some of the best blood of Greece. Some of these men had no doubt parted with farms before setting out on the great venture. Of those who survived the wars, some settled down abroad as favoured citizens in some of the new cities founded by the kings. The few who returned to Greece with money saved did not come home to labour on a small farm: they settled in some city where they could see life and enjoy the ministrations of male and female slaves. Now it is not likely that all lands disposed of by these men were taken up by husbandmen exposed to the same temptations. Probably the greater part were bought up by the wealthier residents at home, and so went to increase large holdings.

How far do stray notices bear out this conclusion? At Athens in 322 BC a constitution was imposed by Antipater, deliberately framed for the purpose of placing power in the hands of the richer classes. He left 9000 citizens in possession of the full franchise, excluding 12000 poor. For the latter he offered to provide allotments of land in Thrace. Accounts[521] vary, but it seems that some accepted the offer and emigrated. It was not a compulsory deportation, but it was exile. Economically it may have been a relief to Athens by reducing the number of citizens who shared civic perquisites. But it had no tendency to bring more citizens back on to Attic land: such a move would have implied displacement of present landholders, whom it was Antipater’s policy to conciliate. In the course of the third century we get a glimpse of the agrarian situation at Sparta. It is clear that the movement, already noted by Aristotle, towards land-monopoly[522] in the hands of a few rich, had been steadily going on. It ended by provoking a communistic reaction under the reforming kings Agis IV and Cleomenes III. Blood was shed, and Sparta became a disorderly state, the cause of many troubles in Greece down to the time of the Roman conquest. The growing Achaean League, in the side of which revolutionary Sparta was a thorn, was essentially a conservative federation. However democratic its individual members might be, the constitution of the League worked[523] very effectively in the interest of the rich. On the occasion of the capture of Megalopolis by Cleomenes Polybius is at pains to warn his readers[524] against believing stories of the immense booty taken there. Though the Peloponnese had enjoyed a period of prosperity, still these stories are gross exaggerations. Megalopolis, an important member of the League, had been from the first laid out on too ambitious[525] a scale. That the ‘Great City’ was a great desert, had found proverbial expression in a verse. A little later, when Philip was campaigning in Peloponnesus, we hear of the great prosperity[526] of Elis, especially in agriculture. The Eleans had enjoyed a great advantage in the protection afforded them by religion as guardians of Olympia. We may add that they were allied with the Aetolian League, whose hostility other Greek states were not forward to provoke. A class of wealthy resident landlords existed in Elis, and much of the country was good farming land under tillage. But in most of the Achaean and Arcadian[527] districts pastoral industry, and therefore sparse population, was the rule, owing to the mountainous nature of those parts. In central Greece we need only refer to the restored Thebes, centre once more of a Boeotian confederacy. The fertile lowland of Boeotia supplied plenty of victual; and among Greek delicacies the eels of the lake Copais were famous. Boeotians were known as a well-nourished folk. In the fragments of the comic poet Eubulus[528] (assigned to the fourth century BC) we have them depicted as gluttonous, with some grossness of detail. Such being their tradition, I can see nothing strange in the picture[529] given of the Boeotians in his own day by Polybius. The ceaseless guzzling, the idleness and political corruption of the people, may be overdrawn. I admit that such qualities were not favourable to lasting prosperity; but their prosperity was not lasting. In the view of Polybius the subjection of Greece by the Romans was rather an effect than a cause of Greek degeneracy, and I dare not contradict him. Moreover a piece of confirmatory evidence relative to the third century BC occurs in a fragment of Heraclides Ponticus. In a traveller’s description[530] of Greece Boeotia is thus referred to. Round Tanagra the land is not very rich in corn-crops, but stands at the head of Boeotian wine-production. The people are well-to-do, but live simply: they are all farmers (γεωργοί), not labourers (ἐργάται). At Anthedon on the coast the people are all fishermen ferrymen etc: they do not cultivate the land, indeed they have none. Of Thebes he remarks that the territory is good for horse-breeding, a green well-watered rolling country, with more gardens than any other Greek city owns. But, he adds, the people are violent undisciplined and quarrelsome. I think we may see here an earlier stage in the degeneracy that disgusted Polybius.

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

It remains to consider the few indications—I can hardly call them references—from which we can get a little light on the labour-question. The passages cited from Theophrastus and Theocritus point to the prevalence of slave-labour. And the same may be said of Polybius. In speaking[531] of the blunder in exaggerating the value of the booty taken at Megalopolis, he says ‘Why, even in these more peaceful and prosperous days you could not raise so great a sum of money in all the Peloponnese out of the mere movables (ἐπίπλων) unless you took slaves into account (χωρὶς σωμάτων).’ His word for live-stock not human is θρέμματα. Evidently to him slave-property is a large item in the value of estates. Again, speaking of the importance of Byzantium[532] on the Pontic trade-route, he insists on the plentiful and useful supply of bestial and human stock to Greece by this traffic. The high farming of rural Elis[533] is shewn in its being full of σώματα and farm-stock (κατασκευῆς). Hence these ‘bodies’ formed a considerable part of the booty taken there by Philip. And in the claims[534] made at Rome in 183 BC against Philip a part related to slave-property. References to the sale of prisoners of war, to piracy and kidnapping, are frequent: but they only concern us as indicating time-honoured means of supplying the slave-market. As for rowing ships, so for heavy farm-work, able-bodied men were wanted. At a pinch such slaves could be, and were, employed in war[535], with grant or promise of manumission: but this was a step only taken in the last resort. A curious remark[536] of Polybius when speaking of Arcadia must not be overlooked. In 220 BC an Aetolian force invaded Achaia and penetrated into northern Arcadia, where they took the border town of Cynaetha, and after wholesale massacre and pillage burnt it on their retreat. The city had for years suffered terribly from internal strife, in which the doings of restored exiles had played a great part. Polybius says that the Cynaethans were thought to have deserved the disaster that had now fallen upon them. Why? Because of their savagery (ἀγριότητος). They were Arcadians. The Arcadians as a race-unit (ἔθνος) enjoy a reputation for virtue throughout Greece, as a kindly hospitable and religious folk. But the Cynaethans outdid all Greeks in cruelty and lawlessness. This is to be traced to their neglect of the time-honoured Arcadian tradition, the general practice of vocal and instrumental music. This practice was deliberately adopted as a refining agency, to relieve and temper the roughness and harshness incidental to men living toilsome lives in an inclement climate. Such was the design of the old Arcadians, on consideration of the circumstances, one point in which was that their people generally worked in person (τὴν ἑκάστων αὐτουργίαν). On this I need only remark that he is referring to the past, but may or may not include the Arcadians of his own day: and repeat what I have said before, that to be αὐτουργὸς does not exclude employment of slaves as well. That there was still more personal labour in rural Arcadia than in many other parts of Greece, is probable. But that is all.

That the slavery-question was a matter of some interest in Greece may be inferred from the pains taken by Polybius[537] to refute an assertion of Timaeus, that to acquire slaves was not a Greek custom. The context is lost, and we cannot tell whether it was a general assertion or not. If general, it was no doubt nonsense. A more effective piece of evidence is the report[538] of Megasthenes, who visited India early in the third century. He told his Greek readers that in India slavery was unknown. The contrast to Greece was of course the interesting point. It is also affirmed[539] that in this period manumissions became more common, as a result of the economic decline of Greece combined with the moral evolution to be traced in the philosophic schools. Calderini, from whom I take this, is the leading authority on Greek manumission. And, so far as the records are concerned, the number of inscribed ‘acts’ recovered from the important centre of Delphi[540] confirms the assertion. From 201 to 140 BC these documents are exceptionally numerous. But the not unfrequent stipulation found in them, that the freed man or woman shall remain in attendance[541] on his or her late owner for the owner’s life or for some fixed period, or shall continue to practise a trade (or even learn a trade) on the profits of which the late owner or his heirs shall have a claim, suggest strongly that these manumissions were the rewards of domestic service or technical skill. I do not believe that they have any connexion with rustic[542] slavery. Calderini also holds that as Greek industries and commerce declined free labour competed more and more with slave-labour. So far as urban trades are concerned, this is probably true: and likewise a certain decline in domestic slavery due to the straitened circumstances of families and experience of the waste and nuisance of large slave-households. This last point, already noticed[543] e.g. by Aristotle, is to be found expressed in utterances of the comic poets. Rustic slavery appears in the fragments of Menander’s Γεωργός, but the old farmer’s slaves are Barbarians, who will do nothing to help him when accidentally hurt, and who are hardly likely to receive favours. The ordinary view of agriculture in Menander’s time seems most truly expressed in his saying[544] that it is a slave’s business.

Mention of the comic poets may remind us that most of the surviving matter of the later Comedy has reached us in the Latin versions and adaptations of Plautus and Terence. It is necessary to speak of their evidence separately, in particular where slavery is in question, for the relative passages are liable to be touched with Roman colouring. In the case of manumission this is especially clear, but to pursue the topic in detail is beyond my present purpose. The passages of Plautus bearing on rustic life are not many, but the picture so far as it goes is clear and consistent. In general the master is represented as a man of means with a house in town and a country estate outside. The latter is worked by slaves under a slave-bailiff or steward (vilicus). The town-house is staffed by slaves, but the headman is less absolute than the steward on the farm: departmental chiefs, such as the cook, are important parts of the household. This is natural enough, for the master generally resides there himself, and only pays occasional[545] visits to the farm. The two sets of slaves are kept apart. If the steward[546] or some other trusted farm-slave has to come to town, he is practically a stranger, and a quarrel is apt to arise with leading domestics: for his rustic appearance and manners are despised by the pampered menials. But he is aware that his turn may come: some day the master in wrath may consign the offending town-slave to farm-labour, and then—. Apart from slavery, rustic life is regarded[547] as favourable to good morals: honest labour, frugal habits, freedom from urban temptations, commend it to fathers who desire to preserve their sons from corrupting debauchery. In short, the urban moralist idealizes the farm. Whether he would by choice reside there, is quite another thing. Clearly the average young citizen would not. That the farm is occasionally used[548] as a retreat, is no more than a point of dramatic convenience. In one passage[549] we have a picture of a small farm, with slave-labour employed on it. Freemen as agricultural labourers hardly appear at all. But a significant dialogue[550] between an old freeman and a young one runs thus: ‘Country life is a life of toil.’ ‘Aye, but city indigence is far more so.’ The youth, who has offered to do farm-work, is representative of that class of urban poor, whose lot was doubtless a very miserable one. Very seldom do we hear anything of them, for our records in general only take account of the master and the slave. In the play just referred to[551] there occur certain terms more or less technical. The neutral operarius seems equivalent to ἐργάτης, and mercennarius to μισθωτός, distinct from[552] servus. But these terms are not specially connected with agriculture.

The references in Terence give us the same picture. An old man of 60 or more is blamed[553] by a friend. ‘You have a first-rate farm and a number of slaves: why will you persist in working yourself to make up for their laziness? Your labour would be better spent in keeping them to their tasks.’ The old man explains[554] that he is punishing himself for his treatment of his only son. In order to detach the youth from an undesirable amour, he had used the stock reproaches of fathers to erring sons. He had said ‘At your time of life I wasn’t hanging about a mistress: I went soldiering in Asia for a living, and there I won both money and glory.’ At length the young man could stand it no longer: he went off to Asia and entered the service of one of the kings. The old man cannot forgive himself, and is now busy tormenting himself for his conduct. He has sold off[555] all his slaves, male or female, save those whose labour on the farm pays for its cost, and is wearing himself out as a mere farm hand. Another[556] old farmer, a man of small means who makes his living by farming, is evidently not the owner but a tenant. Another[557] has gone to reside on his farm, to make it pay; otherwise the expenses at home cannot be met. In general country life is held up as a model[558] of frugality and industry. In one passage[559] we hear of a hired wage-earner employed on a farm (a villa mercennarium) whom I take to be a free man, probably employed for some special service. Such are the gleanings to be got from these Roman echoes of the later Attic comedy. I see no reason to believe that they are modified by intrusion of details drawn from Italy. The period in which Plautus and Terence wrote (about 230-160 BC) included many changes in Roman life, particularly in agriculture. In large parts of Italy the peasant farmers were being superseded by great landlords whose estates were worked by slave-labour, and the conditions of farm life as shewn by the Attic playwrights were not so strange to a Roman audience as to need recasting. And we can only remark that the evidence drawn from the passages above referred to is in full agreement with that taken from other sources.

A very interesting sidelight on conditions in Greece, agriculture included, towards the end of the third century BC, is thrown by the correspondence[560] of Philip V of Macedon with the authorities of Larisa. An inscription found at Larisa preserves this important record. Two points must first be noted, to give the historical setting of the whole affair. Thessaly was under Macedonian overlordship, and its economic and military strength a matter of concern to Philip, who had succeeded to the throne of Macedon in 220 BC. Moreover, the defeat of Carthage in the first Punic war (264-41), the Roman occupation of the greater part of Sicily and Sardinia, the Gallic wars and extension of Roman dominion in Italy, the Illyrian war (230-29) and intervention of Rome beyond the Adriatic, had attracted the attention of all the Greek powers. The western Republic had for some years been carefully watched, and the admission of Corcyra Epidamnus and Apollonia to the Roman alliance was especially disquieting to the Macedonian king. So in 219 BC, just before the second Punic war, Philip sent a letter to Larisa, pointing out that the number of their citizens had been reduced by losses in recent wars and urging them to include in their franchise the Thessalians and other Greeks resident in the city. Among other advantages, the country[561] would be more fully cultivated. The Larisaeans obeyed his injunctions. In 217 the war in Greece was ended by his concluding peace with the Aetolians, his chief antagonists. Hannibal was now in Italy, and the victory of Cannae in 216 raised hopes in Philip of using the disasters of the Romans to drive them out of Illyria. In 215 he concluded an alliance with Hannibal. The Romans replied by naval activity in the Adriatic and later by stirring up Greek powers, above all the Aetolians, to renew the war against him. Meanwhile things had not gone on quietly at Larisa. The old Thessalian noble families had given way to the king’s pressure unwillingly for the moment, but internal troubles soon broke out. The nobles regained control and annulled the recent concessions. Philip therefore addressed to them a second letter in 214, censuring their conduct, and calling upon them to give effect to the enfranchisement-policy previously agreed to. Thus they would not only conform to his decision as their overlord, but would best serve their own interests. Their city would gain strength by increasing the number of citizens, and they would not have their territory disgracefully[562] lying waste (καὶ τὴν χώραν μὴ ὥσπερ νῦν αἰσχρῶς χερσεύεσθαι). He went on to refer to the advantageous results of such incorporations elsewhere: citing in particular the experience of Rome, whose growth and colonial expansion were the fruits of a franchise-policy so generous as to grant citizenship even to manumitted slaves. He called upon the Larisaeans to face the question without aristocratic prejudice (ἀφιλοτίμως). And the Larisaeans again complied.

Now here we have a glimpse of agricultural decline in one of the most fertile parts of Greece. The stress laid upon it by Philip shews that to him it seemed a very serious matter. He saw trouble coming, and wished to keep his dependent allies strong. That his difficulty lay in controlling the aristocratic families, who still retained much of their former power, is clear. After his defeat in 197 the Romans restored[563] the aristocratic governments in Thessalian cities; indeed all through the wars of this period in Greece the popular parties inclined to Macedon, while the propertied classes favoured Rome. In Thessaly the private estates of the nobles were cultivated by serfs. How would an incorporation of more citizens tend to promote a fuller cultivation of the land? I think we may take it for granted that the new citizens were not expected to till the soil in person. That they were to have unemployed serfs assigned to them, and so to enter the ranks of cultivating landlords, is a bold assumption: for we do not know that there were any unemployed serfs or that any distribution of land was contemplated. I can only suggest that the effect of receiving citizenship would be to acquire the right of holding real estate. Then, if we suppose that there were at the time landed estates left vacant by the war-casualties to which the king refers, and that each of these carried with it a right to a certain supply of serf labour, we do get some sort of answer to the question. But so far as I know this is nothing but guesswork. More owners interested in the profits of farming would tend, if labour were available, to employ more labour on the farms. In short, we have evidence of the decay of agriculture in a particular district and period, but as to the exact causes of this decay, and the exact nature of the means proposed for checking it, we are sadly in the dark.

The garden or orchard had always been a favourite institution in Greek life, and the growth of cities did not make it less popular. The land immediately beyond the city walls was often laid out in this manner. When Aratus in 251 BC took Sicyon and attached it to the Achaean League, the surprise was effected by way of a suburban[564] garden. And we have no reason to suppose that holdings near a city lacked cultivators. Even in the horrible period of confusion and bloodshed at Syracuse, from the death of Dionysius the elder to the victory of Timoleon, we hear[565] of Syracusans living in the country, and of the usual clamour for redistribution of lands. In the endeavour to repopulate the city an invitation to settlers was issued, with offer[566] of land-allotments, and apparently the promise was kept. These notices suggest that there was a demand for suburban holdings, but tell us nothing as to the state of things in the districts further afield, or as to the class of labour employed on the land. In any case Syracuse was a seaport, and accustomed to get a good part of its supplies by sea. Very different was the situation in Peloponnesus, where the up-country towns had to depend chiefly on the produce of their own territories. There land-hunger was ever present. The estates of men driven out in civil broils were seized by the victorious party, and restoration of exiles at once led to a fresh conflict over claims to restitution of estates. One of the most difficult problems[567] with which Aratus had to deal at Sicyon was this; and in the end he only solved it by the use of a large sum of money, the gift of Ptolemy Philadelphus. The restored exiles on this occasion are said to have been not less than 580 in all. They had been expelled by tyrants who had in recent years ruled the city, and whose policy it had evidently been to drive out the men of property—sworn foes of tyrants—and to reward their own adherents out of confiscated lands. To reverse this policy was the lifelong aim of Aratus. In the generation following, the life of his successor Philopoemen gives us a little light on agriculture from another point of view, that of the soldier. He was resolved to make the army of the Achaean League an efficient force. As a young man he concluded[568] that the Greek athletic training was not consistent with military life, in which the endurance of hardship and ability to subsist on any diet were primary necessities. Therefore he devoted his spare time to agriculture, working[569] in person on his farm, about 2½ miles from Megalopolis, sharing the labour and habits of the labourers (ἐργατῶν). The use of the neutral word leaves a doubt as to whether freemen or slaves are meant: taken in connexion with the passages cited from Polybius, it is perhaps more likely that the reference is to slaves. But the chief interest of the story as preserved by Plutarch lies in the discovery that, compared with athletes, husbandmen are better military material.

The conclusions of Beloch[570] as to the population of Peloponnesus in this period call for serious consideration. His opinion is that the number capable of bearing arms declined somewhat since the middle of the fourth century, though the wholesale emancipation of Spartan Helots must be reckoned as an addition. But on the whole the free population was at the beginning of the second century about equal to the joint total of free and Helot population at the end of the fifth century. On the other hand, the slave population had in the interval greatly increased. He points to the importance of a slave corps[571] in the defence of Megalopolis when besieged in 318 BC: to the Roman and Italian[572] slaves (prisoners sold by Hannibal) in Achaean territory, found and released in 194 BC, some 1200 in number: and to the levy[573] of manumitted home-born slaves in the last struggle of the League against Rome. I must say that this evidence, taken by itself, hardly seems enough to sustain the great historian’s broad conclusion. But many of the passages cited in preceding sections lend it support, and I am therefore not disposed to challenge its general probability. It may be added that increase in the number of slaves suggests an increase of large holdings cultivated by slave labour; and that the breeding of home-born (οἰκογενεῖς) slaves could be more easily practised by owners of a large staff than on a small scale. Moreover the loss of slaves levied for war purposes would fall chiefly on their wealthy owners. The men of property were rightly or wrongly suspected of leaning to Rome, and were not likely to be spared by the demagogues who presided over the last frantic efforts of ‘freedom’ in Greece. The truth seems to be that circumstances were more and more unfavourable to the existence of free husbandmen on small farms, the very class of whose solid merits statesmen and philosophers had shewn warm appreciation. The division between the Rich, who wanted to keep what they had and get more, and the Poor, who wanted to take the property of the Rich, was the one ever-significant fact. And the establishment of Roman supremacy settled the question for centuries to come. Roman capitalism, hastening to exploit the world for its own ends, had no mercy for the small independent worker in any department of life. In Greece under the sway of Rome there is no doubt that free population declined, and the state of agriculture went from bad to worse.

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

ROME—EARLY PERIOD

XX. THE TRADITIONS COMBINED AND DISCUSSED.

When we turn to Roman agriculture, and agricultural labour in particular, we have to deal with evidence very different in character from that presented by the Greek world. This will be most clearly seen if we accept the very reasonable division of periods made by Wallon in his History of Slavery—the first down to 201 BC, the end of the second Punic war, the second to the age of the Antonine emperors, 200 BC to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, and the third that of the later Empire. For of the first we have no contemporary or nearly contemporary pictures surviving. Traditions preserved by later writers, notes of antiquaries on words and customs long obscured by time and change, are the staple material at hand. Even with the help of a few survivals in law, inference from such material is unavoidably timid and incomplete. In collecting what the later Romans believed of their past we get vivid impressions of the opinions and prejudices that went to form the Roman spirit. But it does not follow that we can rely on these opinions as solid evidence of facts. An instance may be found in the assertion[574] that a clause requiring the employment of a certain proportion of free labourers to slaves was included in the Licinian laws of 367 BC. This used to be taken as a fact, and inferences were drawn from it, but it is now with reason regarded as an ‘anticipation,’ transferring the fact of a later attempt of the kind to an age in which the slave-gangs were not as yet an evident economic and social danger. In the second period, that of Roman greatness, we have not only contemporary witness for much of the time in the form of references and allusions in literature, but the works of the great writers on agriculture, Cato Varro and Columella, not to mention the great compiler Pliny, fall within it, and give us on the whole a picture exceptionally complete. We know more of the farm-management and labour-conditions in this period than we do of most matters of antiquity. The last period sees the development of a change the germs of which are no doubt to be detected in the preceding one. The great strain on the Empire, owing to the internal decay and the growing pressure of financial necessities, made the change inevitable; economic freedom and proprietary slavery died down, and we have before us the transition to predial serfdom, the system of the unfree tenant bound to the soil. The record of this change is chiefly preserved in the later Roman Law.

My first business is therefore to inquire what the tradition of early times amounts to, and how far it may reasonably be taken as evidence of fact. And it must be borne in mind that my subject is not the technical details of agriculture in general, but the nature of the labour employed in agriculture. In ages when voluntary peace between empires and peoples on bona fide equal terms was never a realized fact, and as yet hardly a dream, the stability of a state depended on the strength of its military forces,—their number, efficiency, and means of renewal. Mere numbers[575] were tried and failed. The hire of professional soldiers of fortune[576] might furnish technical skill, but it was politically dangerous. Their leaders had no personal sentiment in favour of the state employing them, and their interest or ambition disposed them rather to support a tyrant, or to become tyrants themselves, than to act as loyal defenders of the freedom of the state. Mercenaries[577] hired in the mass, barbarians, were less skilled but not less dangerous. That a well-trained army of citizens was the most trustworthy organ of state-protection, was not disputed: the combination of loyalty with skill made it a most efficient weapon. The ratio of citizen enthusiasm to the confidence created by exact discipline varied greatly in the Greek republics of the fifth century BC. But these two elements were normally present, though in various proportions. The common defect, most serious in those states that played an active part, was the smallness of scale that made it difficult to keep up the strength of citizen armies exposed to the wastage of war. A single great disaster might and did turn a struggle for empire into a desperate fight for existence. The constrained transition to employment of mercenary troops as the principal armed force of states was both a symptom and a further cause of decay in the Greek republics. For the sturdy soldiers of fortune were generally drawn from the rustic population of districts in which agriculture filled a more important place than political life. There is little doubt that a decline of food-production in Greece was the result: and scarcity of food had long been a persistent difficulty underlying and explaining most of the doings of the Greeks. The rise of Macedon and the conquests of Alexander proved the military value of a national army of trained rustics, and reasserted the superiority of such troops to the armed multitudes of the East. But Alexander’s career did not leave the world at peace. His empire broke up in a period of dynastic wars; for to supply an imperial army strong enough to support a single control and guarantee internal peace was beyond the resources of Macedonia.

If an army of considerable strength, easily maintained and recruited, loyal, the servant of the state and not its master, was necessary for defence and as an instrument of foreign politics, there was room for a better solution of the problem than had been found in Greece or the East. It was found in Italy on the following lines. An increase of scale could only be attained by growth. Growth, to be effective, must not consist in mere conquest: it must be true expansion, in other words it must imply permanent occupation. And permanent occupation implied settlement of the conquering people on the conquered lands. A growing population of rustic citizens, self-supporting, bound by ties of sentiment and interest to the state of which they were citizens, conscious of a duty to uphold the state to which they owed their homesteads and their security, supplied automatically in response to growing needs the growing raw material of power. Nor was Roman expansion confined to the assignation of land-allotments to individuals (viritim). Old towns were remodelled, and new ones founded, under various conditions as settlements (coloniae). Each settler in one of these towns received an allotment of land in the territory of the township, and was officially speaking a tiller of the soil (colonus). The effect of these Colonies was twofold. Their territories added to the sum of land in occupation of Romans or Roman Allies: so far the gain was chiefly material. But they were all bound to Rome and subjected to Roman influences. In their turn they influenced the conquered peoples among whom they were planted, and promoted slowly and steadily the Romanizing of Italy. Being fortified, they had a military value from the first, as commanding roads and as bases of campaigns. But their moral effect in accustoming Italians to regard Rome as the controlling centre of Italy was perhaps of even greater importance.

We must not ignore or underrate the advantages of Rome’s position from a commercial point of view. Little though we hear of this in tradition, it can hardly be doubted that it gave Rome a marked superiority in resources to her less happily situated neighbours, and enabled her to take the first great step forward by becoming dominant in central Italy. But the consolidation and completion of her conquest of the peninsula was carried out by means of an extended Roman agriculture. It was this that gave to Roman expansion the solid character that distinguished republican Rome from other conquering powers. What she took, that she could keep. When the traditional story of early Rome depicts the Roman commons as hungry for land, and annexation of territory as the normal result of conquest, it is undoubtedly worthy of belief. When it shews us the devastation of their enemies’ lands as a chief part—sometimes the whole—of the work of a campaign, it is in full agreement with the traditions of all ancient warfare. When we read[578] that the ruin of farms by raids of the enemy brought suffering farmers into debt, and that the cruel operation of debt-laws led to serious internal troubles in the Roman state, the story is credible enough. The superior organization of Rome enabled her to overcome these troubles, not only by compromises and concessions at home, but still more by establishing her poorer citizens on farms at the cost of her neighbours. As the area under her control was extended, the military force automatically grew, and she surpassed her rivals in the cohesion and vitality of her power. At need, her armies rose from the soil. So did those of other Italian peoples. But in dealing with them she enjoyed the advantage of unity as compared with the far less effective cooperation of Samnite cantons or Etruscan cities. Even the capture of Rome by the Gauls could not destroy her system, and she was able to strengthen her moral position by proving herself the one competent defender of Italy against invasion from the North. When the time came for the struggle with Carthage, she had to face a different test. But no blundering on the part of her generals, no strategy of Hannibal, could avail to nullify the solid superiority of her military strength. And this strength was in the last resort derived from the numbers and loyalty of the farm-population: it was in fact the product of the plough rather than the sword.

The agricultural conditions of early Rome[579] are a subject, and have been the subject, of special treatises. Only a few points can be noticed here. That a communal system of some kind once existed, whether in the form of the associations known to inquirers as Village Communities or on a gentile basis as Clan-estates, is a probable hypothesis. But the evidence for it is slight, and, however just the general inferences may be, they can hardly be said to help us much in considering the labour-question. It may well be true that lands[580] were held by clans, that they were cultivated in common, that the produce was divided among the households, that parcels of the land were granted to the dependants (clientes) of the clan as tenants at will (precario) on condition of paying a share of their crops. Or it may be that the normal unit was a village in which the members were several freeholders of small plots, with common rights over the undivided common-land, the waste left free for grazing and miscellaneous uses. And it is possible that at some stage or other of social development both these systems may have existed side by side. In later times we find Rome the mistress of a vast territory in Italy, a large part of which was reserved as state-domain (ager publicus populi Romani), the mismanagement of which was a source of grave evils. But in Rome’s early days there cannot have been any great amount of such domain-land. That there was land-hunger, a demand for several allotments in full ownership, on which a family might live, is not to be doubted. And the formation of communities, each with its village centre and its common pasture, was a very natural means to promote mutual help and protection. That men so situated worked with their own hands, and that the labour was mainly (and often wholly) that of the father and his family, is as nearly certain as such a proposition can be. But this does not imply or suggest that no slave-labour was employed on the farms. It merely means that farms were not worked on a system in which all manual labour was performed by slaves. We have to inquire what is the traditional picture of agricultural conditions in the early days of Rome, and how far that picture is worthy of our belief.

Now it so happens that, three striking figures stand out in the traditional picture of the Roman farmer-soldiers of the early Republic. Others fill in certain details, but the names of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, Manius Curius Dentatus, and Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, were especially notable in Roman legend as representing the strenuous patriotic and frugal lives of the heroes of old. The story of Cincinnatus[581] is told by Cicero Livy Dionysius and Pliny the elder, and often referred to by other writers. The hero is a Patrician of the old simple frugal patriotic masterful type, the admiration and imitation of which these edifying legends seek to encourage. He had owned seven iugera of land, but had been driven to pledge or sell three of these[582] in order to provide bail for his son, who had been brought to trial for disturbance of the public peace and had sought safety in flight. The forfeit imposed on the father left him with only four iugera. This little farm, on the further side of the Tiber, he was cultivating, when deputies from the Senate came to announce that he had been named Dictator to deal with a great emergency. They found him digging or ploughing, covered with dust and sweat: and he would not receive them till he had washed and gowned himself. Then he heard their message, took up the duties of the supreme office, and of course saved the state. It is to be noted that he chose as his Master of the Horse (the Dictator’s understudy) a man of the same[583] sort, Patrician by birth, poor, but a stout warrior. We may fairly suspect that a definite moral purpose has been at work, modelling and colouring this pretty story. In a later age, when the power of moneyed interests was overriding the prestige of Patrician blood, the reaction of an ‘old-Roman’ party was long a vigorous force in Roman life, as we see from the career of the elder Cato. Cato was a Plebeian, but any Plebeian who admired the simple ways of early Rome was bound to recognize that Patricians were the nobility of the olden time.

Now the fact of Cincinnatus working with his own hands is the one material point in the story. We need not doubt that there were many such men, and that a name (perhaps correct) was necessary in order to keep the story current and to impress later generations with the virtues of their ancestors. But, if the man had under him a slave or slaves, the fact would be quite unimportant for the purpose of the legend. Therefore it is no wonder that the versions of the story in general say nothing of slaves. It is more remarkable that in the version of Dionysius we read that Cincinnatus, after selling off most of his property to meet the liabilities incurred through his son, ‘kept for himself one small farm beyond the Tiber, on which there was a mean cabin: there he was living a life of toil and hardship, tilling the soil with a few slaves.’ That Dionysius was a rhetorician with an eye for picturesque detail, and liable to overdraw a picture, is certain: but it is not evident how the mention of the slaves is to be accounted for by this tendency. The impression of the hero’s poverty and personal labour is rather weakened by mention of slaves. The writer derived his story from Roman sources. Now, did the original version include the slaves or not? Did Livy and the rest leave them out, or did Dionysius put them in? Were they omitted as useless or embarrassing for the uses of edifying, or were they casually inserted owing to the prepossessions of a Greek familiar only with a developed slave-system, to whom ‘with a few slaves’ would fitly connote poverty? To answer these questions with confidence is perhaps unwise. But to me it seems far more likely that Roman writers left the detail out than that a Greek student put it in.

If the tradition of the early wars is of any value at all, it may give a general support to this opinion through the frequent references to the existence of rustic slavery. The devastation of an enemy’s country is the normal occupation of hostile armies. The capture of slaves[584], as of flocks and herds and beasts of burden, is a common item in the tale of booty from the farms. That writers of a later age may have exaggerated the slave-element in the farm-labour of early times is highly probable. The picturesque was an object, and it was natural to attempt it with the use of touches suggested by daily circumstances of the world in which they were living. But that they so completely misrepresented the conditions of a past age as to foist into the picture so important a figure as the slave, without authority or probability, is hardly to be believed, unless there is good reason for thinking that slavery was unknown in the age and country of which they speak. And the contrary is the case. The dawn of Roman history shews us a people already advanced in civilization to the stage of family and clan organization, and the tradition allows for the presence of the slave in the familia from the first. True, he does not appear as the despised human chattel of later times, but as a man whom misfortune has placed in bondage. His master is aware that fortune may turn, and that his bondman is quite capable of resuming his former position if restored in freedom to his native home. The slave seems to be normally an Italian[585], a captive in some war; he may have passed by sale from one owner to another. But he is not a mere foreign animal, good bad or indifferent, a doubtful purchase from a roguish dealer. He bears a name[586] that connects him with his master, Publipor Lucipor Marcipor Olipor and so on, formed by adding the suffix por to the forename of Publius Lucius Marcus or Aulus. But, granting that all households might include a slave or two, and that many so did, also that agriculture was a common and honourable pursuit,—is it likely that a farming owner would himself plough or dig and leave his slave[587] to look on? I conclude therefore that the age was one in which agriculture prevailed and that the ordinary farmer worked himself and employed slave-labour side by side with his own so far as his means allowed. All was on a small scale. Passages of Livy or Dionysius that imply the presence of great slave-gangs, and desertions on a large scale in time of war are falsely coloured by ‘anticipation’ of phenomena well known from the experience of more recent times. But, on however small a scale, slavery was there. Until there came an impulse of an ‘industrial’ kind, prompting men to engage in wholesale production for a large market, the slave remained essentially a domestic, bearing a considerable share of the family labours, whatever the nature of those labours might be.

As there is no difficulty in believing that Cincinnatus and others of his type in the fifth century BC worked with slaves beside them, so it is evident that Curius and Fabricius in the first half of the third century are meant to illustrate the same frugal life and solid patriotism. In both cases the story lays particular stress on the hero’s incorruptibility and cheerful endurance of poverty. A well-known scene[588] represents Curius at his rustic villa eating a dinner of herbs and refusing a gift of gold from Samnite ambassadors. He is an honest farmer-citizen of the good old sort. Fabricius is another, famed especially for his calm defiance of the threats and cajolery of Pyrrhus, and impervious to bribes. Both these traditions received much legendary colouring in course of time. The passage bearing most directly on my present inquiry is a fragment[589] of Dionysius, in which Fabricius is spurning the offers of king Pyrrhus, who is very anxious to secure the good man’s services as his chief minister on liberal terms. He says ‘nor need I tell you of my poverty, that I have but a very small plot of land with a mean cottage, and that I get my living neither from money at interest (ἀπὸ δανεισμάτων) nor from slaves (ἀπ’ ἀνδραπόδων).’ Below he declares that living under Roman conditions he holds himself a happy man, ‘for with industry and thrift I find my poor little farm sufficient to provide me with necessaries.’ And his constitution (φύσις) does not constrain him to hanker after unnecessary things. Here we have a good specimen of the moral stories with which the later rhetoricians edified their readers. But what does ‘from slaves’ mean? Is Fabricius denying that he employs slave-labour on his farm? If so, I confess that I do not believe the denial as being his own genuine utterance. I take it to be put into his mouth by Dionysius, writing under the influence of the agricultural conditions of a much later time, when great slaveowners drew large incomes from the exploitation of slave-labour on great estates. But I am not sure that Dionysius means him to be saying more than ‘I am not a big capitalist farming on a large scale by slave-gangs.’ How far this writer really understood the state of things in the third century BC, is hard to say. In any case he is repeating what he has picked up from earlier writers and not letting it suffer in the repetition. Taken by himself, he is no more a sufficient witness to the practice of Fabricius than to that of Cincinnatus. That there was slavery is certain: that Fabricius had scruples against employing slaves is hardly credible.

In the ages during which Rome gradually won her way to the headship of Italy the Roman citizen was normally both farmer and soldier: the soldier generally a man called up from his farm for a campaign, the farmer of military age always potentially a soldier. This state of things was evidently not peculiar to Rome. What makes it striking in the case of Rome is the well-considered system by which the military machine was kept in working order. The development of fortress colonies and extension of roads gave to Roman farmers in the border-lands more security than any neighbouring power could give to its own citizens on its own side of the border. Mobilization was more prompt and effective on the Roman side under a central control: the fortresses served as a hindrance to hostile invaders, as refuges to the rustics at need, and as bases for Roman armies. It is no great stretch of imagination to see in this organization a reason for the prosperity of Roman agriculture. Farms were no doubt laid waste on both sides of the border, but the balance of the account was in the long run favourable to Rome. Among the numerous legends that gathered round the name of king Pyrrhus is a story[590] that in reply to some discontent on the part of his Italian allies, to whom his strategy seemed over-cautious, he said ‘the mere look of the country shews me the great difference between you and the Romans. In the parts subject to them are all manner of fruit-trees and vineyards: the land is cultivated and the farm-establishments are costly: but the estates of my friends are so laid waste that all signs of human occupation have disappeared.’ The saying may be not authentic or merely overdrawn in rhetorical transmission. But it probably contains the outlines of a true picture of the facts. It was the power of giving to her farmer-settlers a more effective protection than her rivals could give to their own farmers that enabled Rome to advance steadily and continuously. The organization was simple enough: the sword was ready to guard the plough, and the plough to occupy and hold the conquests of the sword.

From the time of the first Punic war we have a remarkable story relating to M Atilius Regulus, the man around whose name so much patriotic legend gathered. He appears as one of the good old farmer-heroes. His farm[591] of seven iugera lay in an unhealthy part of the country, and the soil was poor. His advice to agriculturists, not to buy good land in an unhealthy district nor bad land in a healthy one, was handed down as the opinion of a qualified judge. We are told[592] that after his victory in Africa he desired to be relieved and return home; but the Senate did not send out another commander, and so he had to stay on. He wrote and complained of his detention. Among other reasons he urged in particular his domestic anxiety. In the epitome of Livy XVIII this appears as ‘that his little farm had been abandoned by the hired men.’ In Valerius Maximus[593] we find a fuller account, thus ‘that the steward in charge of his little farm (seven iugera in the Pupinia) had died, and the hired man (mercennarium) had taken the opportunity to decamp, taking with him the farm-stock: therefore he asked them to relieve him of his command, for he feared his wife and children would have nothing to live on now the farm was abandoned.’ On hearing this, the Senate ordered that provision should at once be made at the cost of the state (a) for cultivation of his farm[594] by contract (b) for maintenance of his wife and children (c) for making good the losses he had suffered. The reference of Pliny[595] rather confirms the details of Valerius, who by himself is not a very satisfactory witness. Livy is probably the source of all these versions. They are part of the Roman tradition of the first Punic war. Polybius, whose narrative is from another line of tradition, says not a word of this story. Indeed, he declares[596] that Regulus, so far from wishing to be relieved, wanted to stay on, fearing that he might hand over the credit of a final victory to a successor. The two traditions cannot be reconciled as they stand. Probably neither is complete. If we suppose the account of Polybius to be true, it does not follow as a matter of course that the other story is a baseless fiction. In any case, the relation of Regulus to the agriculture of his day, as represented by the story, seemed credible to Romans of a later age, and deserves serious consideration.

We are told that in the middle of the third century BC a man of such position and recognized merit that he was specially chosen to fill the place of a deceased consul in the course of a great war was a farmer on an estate of seven iugera, from which he was supporting his wife and family. In his absence on public duty he had left the farm in charge of a vilicus. The only reference to the labour employed there speaks of hired men (wage-earners, mercennarii). It does not say that there were no slaves. But the natural inference is that the vilicus had the control of a staff consisting wholly or largely of free labourers. Now that a slave vilicus might in the ordinary run of business be left in control of labourers, slave or free, seems clear from directions given by Cato[597] in the next century. The vilicus in this story was therefore probably a slave, as they were generally if not always. His death left the hired men uncontrolled, and they took the opportunity of robbing their employer. Roused by the absent consul’s complaints (whether accompanied by a request for relief or not), the Senate took up the matter and arranged to secure him against loss. We do not hear of the punishment of the dishonest hirelings, or even of a search for them. This may be merely an omitted detail: at any rate they had probably left the neighbourhood. The curious thing is that we hear nothing of the wife of Regulus: that a Roman matron submitted tamely to such treatment is hard to believe. Was it she who made the complaints and set the Senate in motion? The general outcome of the story is a conclusion that hired labour was freely employed in this age, not to exclusion of slave labour, but combined with it: that is, that the wage-earning work of landless men, such as appears in the earlier traditions, still went on. It was not yet overlaid by the plantation-system, and degraded by the associations of the slave-gang and the ergastulum.

When we pass on to the second Punic war, of which we have a fuller and less legendary record, we find the circumstances somewhat changed, but the importance of the Roman farmer’s grip of the land is recognized as clearly as before. It is not unlikely that since the time of the Pyrrhic war the practise of large-scale farming with slave-labour had begun to appear[598] in Italy, but it can hardly as yet have been widespread. Large or small, the farms in a large part of the country had suffered from the ravages of Hannibal, and it would be the land of Romans and their faithful allies that suffered most. Many rustics had to seek shelter in walled towns, above all in Rome, and their presence was no doubt in many ways embarrassing. Naturally, as the failure of Hannibal became manifest, the Roman Senate was desirous of restoring these refugees to the land and relieving the pressure on the city. Livy, drawing no doubt from an earlier annalist, tells us[599] that in 206 BC the Senate instructed the consuls, before they left for the seat of war, to undertake the bringing back of the common folk (plebis) on to the land. They pointed out that this was desirable, and possible under the better conditions now prevailing. ‘But it was for the people (populo) not at all an easy matter; for the free farmers (cultoribus) had perished in the war, there was a shortage of slaves (inopia servitiorum), the live stock had been carried off, and the farmsteads (villis) wrecked or burnt. Yet under pressure from the consuls a good many did go back to the land.’ He adds that what had raised the question at this particular juncture was the appeal of a deputation from Placentia and Cremona. These two Latin colonies, founded twelve years before as fortresses to hold the region of the Po, had suffered from Gaulish raids and had no longer a sufficient population, many settlers having gone off elsewhere. The Roman commander in the district was charged to provide for their protection, and the truant colonists ordered to return to their posts. It was evidently thought that with full numbers and military support there would be an end to the derelict condition of their territories, and that the two colonies would soon revive.

This attempt to reestablish the rustic population lays stress upon the general identity of farmer and soldier and the disturbance of agriculture by the ravages of war. But most notable is the mention of the shortage of slave-labour as a hindrance to resumption of work on derelict farms. It has been held[600] that this clause refers only to large estates worked by slave-gangs, while the free farmers stand for the men on small holdings, who presumably employed no slaves. Now it is quite conceivable that this contrast may have been in Livy’s mind as he wrote in the days of Augustus. That it was the meaning of the older author from whom he took the facts is not an equally probable inference. No doubt lack of slaves would hinder or prevent the renewal of tillage on a big estate. But what of a small farm whose owner had fallen in the war? The absence of the father in the army would be a most serious blow to the efficient working of the farm. If the raids of the enemy drove his family to take refuge in Rome, and the farm was let down to weeds, more labour than ever would be needed to renew cultivation. When there was no longer any hope of his return, the supply of sufficient labour was the only chance of reviving the farm. Surely there must have been many cases in which the help of one or two slaves was the obvious means of supplying it. Therefore, if we recognize that slave-labour had long been a common institution in Roman households, we shall not venture to assert that only large estates are referred to. That such estates, worked by slave-gangs, were numerous in 206 BC, is not likely: that small farmers often (not always) eked out their own labour with the help of a slave, is far more so. The actual shortage of slaves[601] had been partly brought about by the employment of many in military service. Some had no doubt simply run away. And the period of great foreign conquests and a full slave-market had yet to come.

I do not venture to dispute that the accumulation of capital in the form of ready money available for speculation in state leases, farming of revenues, and other contracts, had already begun at Rome in the age of the great Punic wars. In the second war, contracts for the supply of necessaries to the armed forces played a considerable part, and we hear of contractors[602] who practised shameless frauds on the state. Greed was a plant that throve in the soil of Roman life: the scandals of the later Republic were merely the sinister developments of an old tendency favoured by opportunities. Land-grabbing in particular was, if consistent tradition may be believed, from early times a passion of Roman nobles: and the effect of a law[603] forbidding them to become ship-owners and engage in commerce was to concentrate their enterprise on the acquisition of great landed estates. Another notable fact is the large voluntary loans[604] which the government was able to raise in the critical period of the great war. In the year 210, when the financial strain was extreme, a very large contribution of the kind took place. In 204 the Senate arranged a scheme[605] for repayment in three instalments. In 200 the lenders, apparently alarmed by the delay in paying the second instalment, became clamorous. The Punic war was at an end, and war with Philip of Macedon just declared: they wanted to get their money back. We are told[606] that the state was not able to find the cash, and that the cry of many creditors was ‘there are plenty of farms for sale, and we want to buy.’ The Senate devised a middle way of satisfying them. They were to be offered the chance of acquiring the state domain-land within fifty miles of Rome at a valuation fixed by the consuls. This seems to mean, up to the amount of the instalment then in question. But they were not thereby to receive the land in full private[607] property. A quit-rent of one as was to be set on each iugerum, in evidence that the property still belonged to the state. Thus, when the state finances should admit, they might get back their ready money if they preferred it and give back the land to the state. The offer was gladly accepted, and the land taken over on these terms was called ‘third-part land’ (trientabulum) as representing ⅓ of the money lent. The final instalment appears to have been paid in cash[608] in the year 196.

That these patriotic creditors were men with a keen eye for a bargain, and that they made a good one in the above arrangement, is pretty clear. This is the only occasion on which we hear of the trientabula plan of settling a money claim by what was in effect a perpetual lease at a nominal rent terminable by reconversion into a money claim at the pleasure of the lessee. No doubt the valuation was so made as to give the creditor a good margin of security over and above the sum secured. There was therefore no temptation to call for the cash and surrender the land. From the reference[609] to trientabula in the agrarian law of 111 BC it would seem that some at least of these beneficial tenancies were still in existence after the lapse of nearly 90 years. They would pass by inheritance or sale as the ordinary possessiones of state domains did, and eventually become merged in the private properties that were the final result of the land-legislation of the revolutionary age. For the capitalists, already powerful in 200 BC, became more and more powerful as time went on. And this use of public land to discharge public debts was undoubtedly a step tending to promote the formation of the great estates (latifundia) which were the ruin of the wholesome old land-system in a great part of Italy. With this tendency the wholesale employment of slave-labour went hand in hand.

But we must not forget that the creditors in 200 BC are made to press for their money on the ground that they wanted to invest it in land, of which there was plenty then in the market. This may be a detail added by Livy himself: but surely it is more likely that he is repeating what he found in his authorities. In any case the land referred to can hardly be other than the derelict farms belonging to those who had suffered by the war. In earlier times we have traditions of men losing their lands through inability to pay the debts for which they stood pledged. In a somewhat later time we hear[610] of small farmers being bought out cheaply by neighbouring big landlords, and bullied if they made difficulty about leaving their farms. The present case is different, arising directly out of the war. The father of a family might be dead, or disinclined to go back to monotonous toil after the excitements of military life, or unable to find the extra labour for reclaiming a wasted and weed-grown farm, or means of restocking it. He or his heir would probably not have capital to tide him over the interval before the farm was again fully productive: his immediate need was probably ready money. No wonder that farms were in the market, and at prices that made a land-grabber’s mouth water. The great war certainly marked a stage in the decay of the small-farm agriculture, the healthy condition of which had hitherto been the soundest element of Roman strength.

Before we leave the traditions of the early period it is necessary to refer to the question of free wage-earning labour. Have we any reason to think that under the conditions of early Rome there was any considerable class of rustic[611] wage-earners? Nearly all the passages that suggest an affirmative answer are found in the work of Dionysius, who repeatedly uses[612] the Greek word θητεύειν of this class of labour. It is represented as being practically servile, for it meant working with slaves or at least doing the work which according to the writer[613] was (even in the regal period) done by slaves. The poor Plebeians appear as loathing such service: their desire is for plots of land on which each man can work freely for himself. This desire their protectors, kings or tribunes, endeavour to gratify by allotments as occasion serves. Now that there was land-hunger from the earliest times, and that agriculture was in itself an honourable trade, we have no good reason for doubting. But that the dislike of wage-earning labour as such was the main motive of land-hunger is a more doubtful proposition. It may be true, but it sounds very like an explanation supplied by a learned but rhetorical historian. We know that Dionysius regarded Rome as a city of Greek origin. The legends of early Attica were doubtless familiar to him. We may grant that there was probably some likeness between the labour-conditions of early Rome and early Athens. But historians are ever tempted to detect analogies in haste and remodel tradition at leisure. I suspect that the two features of the same picture, the prevalence of rustic slavery and also of rustic wage-earning, are taken from different lines of tradition, and both overdrawn.

In connexion with this question it is necessary to turn back to a remarkable passage[614] of Livy referring to the year 362 BC. The famous L Manlius the martinet (imperiosus) was threatened with a public prosecution by a tribune for misuse of his powers as dictator in the year just past. To create prejudice against the accused, the prosecutor further alleged that he had treated his son Titus with cruel severity. The young man was slow of wit and speech, but no wrongdoing had been brought home to him. Yet his father had turned him out of his city home, had cut him off from public life and the company of other youths, and put him to servile work, shutting him up in what was almost a slaves’ prison (ergastulum). The daily affliction of such a life was calculated to teach the dictator’s son that he had indeed a martinet for his father. To keep his son among the flocks in the rustic condition and habit of a country boor was to intensify any natural defects of his own offspring, conduct too heartless for even the brute beasts. But the young Manlius upset all calculations. On hearing what was in contemplation he started for Rome with a knife, made his way into the tribune’s presence in the morning and made him solemnly swear to drop the prosecution by a threat of killing him then and there if he did not take the oath. The tribune swore, and the trial fell through. The Roman commons were vexed to lose the chance of using their votes to punish the father for his arbitrary and unfeeling conduct, but they approved the dutiful act of the son, and took the first opportunity of electing him a military officer. This young man was afterwards the renowned T Manlius Torquatus, who followed his father’s example of severity by putting to death his own son for a breach of military discipline.

The story is a fine specimen of the edifying legends kept in circulation by the Romans of later days. That the greatness of Rome was above all things due to their grim old fathers who endured hardness and sacrificed all tender affections to public duty, was the general moral of these popular tales. Exaggeration grew with repetition, and details became less and less authentic. In particular the circumstances of their own time were foisted in by narrators whose imagination did not suffice to grasp the difference of conditions in the past. In the above story we have a reference to ergastula, the barracoons in which the slave-gangs on great estates were confined when not actually at work. Now the system of which these private prisons were a marked feature certainly belongs to a later period, when agriculture on a large scale was widely practised, not to make a living for a man and his family, but to make a great income for a single individual by the labour of many. Here then we have a detail clearly not authentic, which throws doubt on the whole setting of the story. Again, we have agricultural labour put before us as degrading (opus servile). It is a punishment, banishing a young Roman from his proper surrounding in the life of Rome, and dooming him to grow up a mere clodhopper. There may have been some points in the original story of which this is an exaggerated version: for it is evident that from quite early days of the Republic men of the ruling class found it necessary to spend much time in or quite close to the city. But the representation of agriculture as a servile occupation is grossly inconsistent with the other legends glorifying the farmer-heroes of yore. It is of course quite impossible to prove that no isolated cases of a young Roman’s banishment to farm life ever occurred. But that such a proceeding was so far ordinary as fairly to be reckoned typical, is in the highest degree improbable. That later writers should invent or accept such colouring for their picture, is no wonder. In the Attic New Comedy, with which Roman society was familiarized[615] in the second century BC, this situation was found. The later conditions of Roman life, in city and country, tended to make the view of agriculture as a servile trade, capable of being rendered penal, more and more intelligible to Romans. Accordingly we find this view cynically accepted[616] by Sallust, and warmly protested against[617] by Cicero. In order to weaken the case of his client Sextus Roscius, it was urged that the young man’s father distrusted him and sent him to live the life of a boor on his farm in Umbria. Cicero, evidently anxious as to the possible effect of this construction of facts on the coming verdict, was at great pains to counter it by maintaining that the father’s decision was in truth a compliment: in looking for an honest and capable manager of his rustic estate he had found the right man in this son. The orator surely did not enlarge on this point for nothing. And it is to be noted that in insisting on the respectability of a farmer’s life he sees fit to refer to the farmer-consuls of the olden time. He feels, no doubt, that unsupported assertions[618] as to the employment of sons in agriculture by his contemporaries were not likely to carry much weight with the jury.

After the above considerations I come to the conclusion that Livy’s representation of agriculture as a servile occupation in the case of Manlius is a coloured utterance of no historical value. A minute consistency is not to be looked for in the writings of an author to whom picturesqueness of detail appeals differently at different moments. For Livy was in truth deeply conscious of the sad changes in Italian country life brought about by the transition to large-scale agriculture. Under the year 385 he is driven to moralize[619] on the constant renewal of Volscian and Aequian wars. How ever did these two small peoples find armies for the long-continued struggle? He suggests possible answers to the question, the most significant of which is that in those days there was a dense free population in those districts,—districts which in his own time, he says, would be deserted but for the presence of Roman slaves. To describe vividly the decay of free population, he adds that only a poor little nursery of soldiers is left (vix seminario exiguo militum relicto) in those parts. The momentous results of the change of system are not more clearly grasped by Lucan or Pliny himself. Livy then is not to be cited as a witness to the existence of great numbers of rustic slaves in Italy before the second Punic war, nor even then for the highly-organized gang-system by which an industrial character was given to agriculture.

One more story, and a strange one, needs to be considered, for it bears directly on the labour-question. The time in which it is placed is the latter part of the period of the Roman conquest of Italy. In a fragment[620] of one of his later books Dionysius tells us of the arbitrary doings of a consul Postumius, a Patrician of high rank who had already been twice consul. After much bullying he made his colleague, a Plebeian of recent nobility, resign to him the command in the Samnite war. This was an unpopular act, but he went on to worse. From his army he drafted some 2000 men on to his own estate, and set them to cut away brushwood without providing cutting tools (ἄνευ σιδήρου). And he kept them there a long time doing the work of wage-earners or slaves (θητῶν ἔργα καὶ θεραπόντων ὑπηρετοῦντας). Into the tale of his further acts of arbitrary insolence we need not enter here, nor into the public prosecution and condemnation to a heavy fine that awaited him at the end of his term of office. Suffice it that the story is in general confirmed[621] by Livy, and that the hero of it seems to have been remembered in Roman tradition as a classic instance of self-willed audacity and disregard of the conventions that were the soul of Roman public life. So far as the labour is concerned, it seems to me that what was objected to in the consul’s conduct was the use of his military supreme power (imperium) for his own private profit. He treated a fatigue-party as a farm labour-gang. Freemen might work on their own land side by side with their slaves: they might work for wages on another man’s land side by side with his slaves. Any objection they might feel would be due to the unwelcome pressure of economic necessity. But to be called out for military service (and in most cases from their own farms), and then set to farm-labour on another man’s land under military discipline, was too much. We must bear in mind that a Roman army of the early Republic was not composed of pauper adventurers who preferred a life of danger with hopes of loot and licence to hard monotonous toil. The very poor were not called out, and the ranks were filled with citizens who had at least some property to lose. Therefore it might easily happen that a soldier set to rough manual labour by Postumius had to do for him the service that was being done at home for himself by a wage-earner or a slave. He was a soldier because he was a free citizen; he was being employed in place of a slave because he was a soldier under martial law. In no free republic could such a wrong be tolerated. The words of the epitome of Livy state the case with sufficient precision. L Postumius consularis, quoniam cum exercitui praeesset opera militum in agro suo usus erat, damnatus est. It is remarkable that, among the other epitomators and collectors of anecdotes who drew from the store of Livy, not one, not even Valerius Maximus, records this story. To Livy it must have seemed important, or he would not have laid enough stress on it to attract the attention of the writer of the epitome. So too the detailed version of Dionysius, probably drawn from the same authority as that of Livy, struck the fancy of a maker of extracts and caused his text to be preserved to us. It surely descends, like many other of the old stories, in a line of Plebeian tradition, and is recorded as an illustration of the survival of Patrician insolence in a headstrong consul after the two Orders had been politically equalized by the Licinian laws.

Beside these fragments of evidence there are in the later Roman literature many passages in which writers directly assert that their forefathers lived a life of simple frugality and worked with their own hands on their own little farms. But as evidence the value of such passages is not very great. They testify to a tradition: but in most cases the tradition is being used for the purposes of moralizing rhetoric. Now the glorification of ‘good old times’ has in all ages tempted authors to aim rather at striking contrast between past and present than at verification of their pictures of the past. To impute this defect to satirists is a mere commonplace. But those who are not professed satirists are often exposed to the same influence in a less degree. The most striking phenomenon in this kind is the chorus of poets in the Augustan age. The Emperor, aware that the character of Reformer is never a very popular one, preferred to pose as Restorer. The hint was given, and the literary world acted on it. Henceforth the praises of the noble and efficient simplicity of the ancients formed a staple material of Roman literature.

XXI. ABSTRACT OF CONCLUSIONS.

In reference to the early period down to 201 BC I think we are justified in coming to the following conclusions.

1. The evidence, consisting of fragmentary tradition somewhat distorted and in some points exaggerated by the influence of moral purpose on later writers, is on the whole consistent and credible.

2. From it we get a picture of agriculture as an honourable trade, the chief occupation of free citizens, who are in general accustomed to work with their own hands.

3. The Roman citizen as a rule has an allotment of land as his own, and an early classification of citizens (the ‘Servian Constitution’) was originally based on landholding, carrying with it the obligation to military service.

4. The Roman family had a place for the slave, and the slave, a domestic helper, normally an Italian, was not as yet the despised alien chattel of whom we read in a later age.

5. As a domestic he bore a part in all the labours of the family, and therefore as a matter of course in the commonest of all, agriculture.

6. In this there was nothing degrading. Suggestions to that effect are the echoes of later conditions.

7. Under such relations of master and slave it was quite natural that manumission should (as it did) operate to make the slave not only free but a citizen. That this rule led to very troublesome results in a later period was owing to change of circumstances.

8. Slavery then was, from the earliest times of which we have any tradition, an integral part of the social and economic system, as much in Italy as in Greece. It was there, and only needed the stimulus of prospective economic gain for capitalists to organize it on a crudely industrial basis, without regard to considerations of humanity or the general wellbeing of the state.

9. Of wage-earning labour on the part of freemen we have little trace in tradition. The reported complaints of day-labour performed for Patrician nobles in early times are probably not unconnected with the institution of clientship, and in any case highly coloured by rhetoric.

ROME—MIDDLE PERIOD

XXII. INTRODUCTORY GENERAL VIEW.

The overthrow of Carthage put an end to a period of terrible anxiety to the Roman government, and the first feeling was naturally one of relief. But the sufferings of the war-weary masses had produced an intense longing for peace and rest. It might be true that a Macedonian war was necessary in the interest of the state: but it was only with great difficulty that the Senate overcame opposition to a forward policy. For the sufferings of the people, more particularly the farmers, were not at an end. The war indemnities from Carthage might refill the empty treasury, and enable the state to discharge its public obligations to contractors and other creditors. So far well: but receipts of this kind did little or nothing towards meeting the one vital need, the reestablishment of displaced peasants on the land. The most accessible districts, generally the best suited for tillage, had no doubt suffered most in the disturbances of war; and the future destinies of Rome and Italy were depending on the form that revival of agriculture would take. The race of small farmers had been hitherto the backbone of Roman power. But the wars of the last two generations had brought Rome into contact with an agricultural system of a very different character. Punic agriculture[622] was industrial: that is, conducted for profit on a large scale and directed by purely economic considerations. Cheap production was the first thing. As the modern large farmer relies on machinery, so his ancient predecessor relied on domesticated animals; chiefly on the animal with hands, the human slave.

It is to be borne in mind that during the second Punic war the Roman practice of employing contractors for all manner of state services (publica) had been greatly developed. Companies of publicani had played an active part and had thriven on their enterprises. These companies were probably already, as they certainly were in later times, great employers of slaves. In any case they represented a purely industrial and commercial view of life, the ‘economic’ as opposed to the ‘national’ set of principles. Their numbers were beyond all doubt greater than they had ever been before. With such men the future interests of the state would easily be obscured by immediate private interests, selfish appetite being whetted by the recent taste of profits. If a large section of the farmer class seemed in danger of extinction through the absorption of their farms in great estates, legislation to prevent it was not likely to have the warm support of these capitalists. That financial interests were immensely powerful in the later Roman Republic is universally admitted, but I do not think sufficient allowance is made for their influence in the time of exhaustion at the very beginning of the second century BC. The story of the trientabula, discussed above, is alone enough to shew how this influence was at work; and it was surely no isolated phenomenon. We have therefore reason to believe that many of the farmers dispossessed by the war never returned to their former homes, and we naturally ask what became of them. Some no doubt were unsettled and unfitted for the monotonous toil of rustic life by the habits contracted in campaigning. Such men would find urban idleness, or further military service with loot in prospect, more to their taste: some of these would try both experiences in turn. We trace their presence in the growth of a city mob, and in the enlistment of veterans to give tone and steadiness to somewhat lukewarm armies in new wars. But it is not to be assumed that this element constituted the whole, or even the greater part, of those who did not go back to their old farms. The years 200-180 saw the foundation of 19 new coloniae, and it is reasonable to suppose that the coloni included a number of the men unsettled by the great war. The group founded in 194-2 were designed to secure the coast of southern Italy against attack by an Eastern power controlling large fleets. Those of 189-1 were in the North, the main object being to strengthen the Roman grip of Cisalpine Gaul. But already in 198-5 it had been found necessary to support the colonies on the Po (Placentia and Cremona) against attacks of the Gauls, and in 190 they were reinforced with contingents of fresh colonists. For the firm occupation of northern Italy was a policy steadily kept in view, and only interrupted for a time by the strain of Eastern wars.

In trying to form a notion of the condition of agriculture in the second century BC, and particularly of the labour question, we must never lose sight of the fact that military service was still obligatory[623] on the Roman citizen, and that this was a period of many wars. The farmer-soldier, liable to be called up at any time until his forty-sixth year, might have to break off important work which could not without risk of loss be left in other hands. At the worst, a sudden call might mean ruin. Pauper wage-earners, landless men, were not reached by the military levy in the ordinary way. How soon they began to be enrolled as volunteers, and to what extent, is uncertain. But conscription of qualified citizens remained the staple method of filling the legions[624] until the famous levy held by Marius in 107. Conscription had for a long time been becoming more and more unpopular and difficult to enforce, save in cases where easy victory and abundant booty were looked for. The Roman government fell into the habit of employing chiefly the contingents of the Italian Allies in hard and unremunerative campaigns. This unfair treatment, and other wrongs to match, led to the great rebellion of 90 BC. But the grant of the Roman franchise to the Italians, extorted by force of arms, though it made more Roman citizens, could not make more Roman farmers. The truth is, a specializing process was going on. The soldier was becoming more and more a professional: farming was becoming more and more the organized exploitation of labour. Long and distant wars unfitted the discharged soldiers for the monotonous round of rustic life: while they kept the slave-market well supplied with captives, thus making it easy for capitalists to take advantage of great areas of land cheaply acquired from time to time. Moreover, the advance of Roman dominion had another effect beside the mere supply of labouring hands. It made Rome the centre of the Mediterranean world, the place where all important issues were decided, and where it was necessary to reside. The wealthy landowner was practically compelled to spend most of his time in the ruling city, in close touch with public affairs. Now this compelled him to manage his estates by stewards, keeping an eye on them so far as his engagements in Rome left him free to do so. And this situation created a demand for highly-qualified stewards. The supply of these had to come mainly from the eastern countries of old civilization. But if technical skill could thus be procured (and it was very necessary for the variety of crops that were taking the place of corn), it was generally accompanied by an oriental subtlety the devices of which were not easy to penetrate. From the warnings of the agricultural writers, as to the need of keeping a strict watch on a vilicus, we may fairly infer that these favoured slaves were given to robbing their masters. The master, even if he had the knowledge requisite for practical control, seldom had the leisure for frequent visits to his estate. What he wanted was a regular income to spend: and the astute steward who was always ready with the expected cash on the appointed day had little fear of reprimand or punishment. His own interest was that his own master should expect as little as possible, and it is obvious that this would not encourage a sincere effort to get the most out of the estate in a favourable year. His master’s expectations would then rise, and the disappointment of poor returns in a bad year might have serious consequences for himself.

These considerations may help us to understand why the history of the later Roman Republic gives so gloomy a picture of agriculture.

We find the small farmer, citizen and soldier too, dying out as a class in a great part of Italy. We find the land passing into the hands of a few large owners whose personal importance was vastly increased thereby. Whether bought cheap on a glutted market or ‘possessed’ in a sort of copyhold tenancy from the state, whether arable or pasture, it is at all events clear that the bulk of these latifundia (if not the whole) had been got on very easy terms. The new holders were not hampered by lack of capital or labour, as may often have been the case with the old peasantry. Slave-labour was generally cheap, at times very cheap. Knowledge and skill could be bought, as well as bone and muscle. Like the ox and the ass, the slave was only fed and clothed and housed sufficiently to keep him fit for work: his upkeep while at work was not the canker eating up profits. With the influx of wealth, the spoils of conquest, the tribute of subject provinces, the profits of blackmail and usury, prices of almost everything were rising in the second century BC. Corn, imported and sold cheap to the Roman poor, was an exception: but the Italian landlords were ceasing to grow corn, save for local consumption. Some authorities, if not all, thought[625] that grazing paid better than tillage: and it was notorious that pasturage was increasing and cultivation declining. The slave-herdsmen, hardy and armed against wolves and brigands, were a formidable class. When combined with mutinous gladiators they were, as Spartacus shewed in 73-1 BC, wellnigh irresistible save by regular armies in formal campaigns. The owner of a vast estate, controlling huge numbers of able-bodied ruffians who had nothing to lose themselves and no inducement to spare others, was in fact a public danger if driven to desperation. He could mobilize an army of robbers and cutthroats at a few days notice, live on the country, and draw recruits from all the slave-gangs near. It was not want of power that crippled the representatives of large-scale agriculture.

And yet in the last days of the Republic, when the fabric of the state was cracking under repeated strains, we are told that, among the various types of men led by financial embarrassments to favour revolutionary schemes, one well-marked group consisted of great landlords. These men, says[626] Cicero, though deep in debt, could quite well pay what they owe by selling their lands. But they will not do this: they are ‘land-proud.’ The income from their estates will not cover the interest on their debts, but they go on foolishly trying to make it do so. In this struggle they are bound to be beaten. In other words, the return on their landed estates is not enough to support a life of extravagance in Rome. So they borrow, at high interest. The creditors of course take good security, with a margin for risks. So, in order to keep the social status of a great landlord, the borrower takes a loan of less than the capital value of his land, while he has to pay for the accommodation more than the income from the land. Ruin is the certain end of such finance, and it is only in a revolution that there is any hope of ‘something turning up’ in favour of the debtor. We must not suppose that all or most of the great landlords of the day had reached the stage of embarrassment described by Cicero. That there were some in that plight, is not to be doubted, even when we have allowed freely for an orator’s overstatements. But it is hardly rash to suppose that there were some landlords who were not in debt, at least to a serious extent, either through good returns from their lands or from other investments, or even from living thriftily. What seems quite clear is that large-scale farming of land was by no means so remunerative financially as other forms of investment; and that though, as pointed out above, it was carried on with not a few points in its favour.

In the same descriptive passage[627] the orator refers to another class of landowners ripe for revolution. These were the veterans of Sulla, settled by him as coloni on lands of farmers dispossessed on pretext of complicity with his Marian opponents. Their estates were no doubt on a smaller scale than those of the class just spoken of above. But they were evidently comfortable allotments. The discharged soldiers made bad farmers. They meant to enjoy the wealth suddenly bestowed, and they had no notion of economy. Their extravagance, one form of which was the keeping of a number[628] of slaves, soon landed them hopelessly in debt. So they also saw their only chance of recovery in a renewal of civil war and fresh confiscations. It was said that a number of necessitous rustics (probably some of the very men ejected from the farms) were ready to join them in a campaign of plunder. Here we have a special picture of the military colonist, one of the most sinister figures in the last age of the Republic. It is no doubt highly coloured, but the group settled in Etruria were probably some of the worst specimens. In such hands agriculture could not flourish, and the true interests of Rome could hardly have suffered a more deadly blow than the transfer of Italian lands from those who could farm them to those who could not. It was not merely that lands were ‘let down.’ Italy was made less able to maintain a native population, fitted and willing to serve the state in peace and war. The effects of this diminution of the free rustic population were most seriously felt under the Empire. Writers of the Augustan age deplore[629] the disappearance of the old races in a large part of Italy, displaced by alien slaves; and their cry is repeated by later generations. The imperial country that had conquered the Mediterranean world became dependent on subjects and foreigners for her own defence.

The evil plight of agriculture in Cicero’s day was merely a continuation and development of the process observable in the second century. Experience had probably moderated some of the crude and blundering methods of the land-grabbers whose doings provoked the agrarian movement of the Gracchi. But in essence the system was the same. And it was a failure, a confessed evil. Why? It is easy to reply that slave-labour is wasteful; and this is I believe an economic truism. But it is well to look a little further. Let me begin by quoting from an excellent book[630] written at a time when this subject was one of immediate practical interest. ‘The profitableness which has been attributed to slavery is profitableness estimated exclusively from the point of view of the proprietor of slaves.... The profits of capitalists may be increased by the same process by which the gross revenue of a country is diminished, and therefore the community as a whole may be impoverished through the very same means by which a portion of its number is enriched. The economic success of slavery therefore is perfectly consistent with the supposition that it is prejudicial to the material wellbeing of the country where it is established.’ These propositions I do not dispute: I had come to the same conclusion long before I read this passage. I further admit that in the case of Rome and Italy the community as a whole was impoverished by the slave-system: it was the constant influx of tributes from the provinces that kept up the appearance of wealth at the centre of empire. But whether, in the case of agriculture, the capitalist landlords were really enriched by the profits of plantation slavery, is surely a question open to doubt.

Those of them whose capital sunk in great estates and gangs of slaves brought in only a moderate return, while they were borrowing at a higher rate of interest, were certainly not the richer for their landed investments. To keep up a fictitious show of solid wealth for the moment, they were marching to ruin. But the man who made his income from landed estates suffice for his needs,—can we say that he was enriched thereby? Hardly, if he was missing the chance of more remunerative investments by having his money locked up in land. He made a sacrifice, in order to gratify a social pride which had in Roman public life a certain political value. Under the Republic, this political value might be realized in the form of provincial or military appointments, profitable through various species of blackmail. But the connexion of such profits with ownership of great plantations is too remote to concern us here. A smart country-place, where influential friends could be luxuriously entertained, was politically more to the point. Now if, as seems certain, the great plantations were not always (perhaps very seldom were) a strictly economic success, though protected against Transalpine competition[631] in wine and oil, can we discern any defects in the system steadily operating to produce failure?

When we admit that slave-labour is wasteful, we mean that its output as compared with that of free labour is not proportionate to the time spent. Having no hope of bettering his condition, the slave does only just enough to escape punishment; having no interest in the profits of the work, he does it carelessly. If, as we know, the free worker paid by time needs constant watching to keep him up to the mark, much more is this true of the slave. Hence a system of piece-work is disliked by the free man and hardly applicable in practice to the case of the slave. But we are not to forget that the slave, having been bought and paid for, draws no money wage. The interest on his prime cost is on the average probably much less than a free man’s wage; but the master cannot pay him off and be rid of him when the job is done. The owned labourer is on his owner’s hands so long as that owner owns him. Against this we must set the very low standard of feeding clothing housing etc allowed in the case of the slave. Nor must we ignore the economic advantage of slavery as ensuring a permanent supply of labour: for the free labourer was (and is) not always to be had when wanted. These were pretty certainly the considerations that underlay the organization described by the Roman writers on res rustica; a regular staff of slaves for everyday work, supplemented by hired labour at times of pressure or for special jobs. And the growing difficulty of getting hired help probably furnished the motive for developing the system of coloni. By letting parcels of an estate to small tenants a landlord could secure the presence of resident freemen in his neighbourhood. These in their spare time could be employed as labourers. At how early a date stipulation for labour in part payment of their rents placed such tenants on a ‘soccage’ footing is not certain. It has rightly or not, been detected in Columella. At all events it contained the germ of predial serfdom.

Now, so long as slave-labour was the permanent and vital element in agriculture, success or failure depended entirely on the efficiency of direction and control. Accordingly the regular organization of a great estate was a complete hierarchy. At the head was the vilicus, having under him foremen skilled in special branches of farm work and head-shepherds and the like. Even among the rank and file of the slaves many had special duties occupying all or part of their time, for it was an object to fix responsibility. But it is clear that the efficiency of the whole organization depended on that of the vilicus. And he was a slave, the chattel of a master who could inflict on him any punishment he chose. The temptation to rob his master[632] for his own profit was probably not nearly so strong as we might on first thoughts suppose. If he had contrived to hoard the fruits of his pilferings in portable cash, what was he to do with it? He was not free to abscond with it. He would be well known in the neighbourhood: if any slave could escape detection as a runaway, it would not be he. And detection meant the loss of all his privileges as steward, with severe punishment to boot. His obvious policy was to cling to his stewardship, to induce his master to let him keep a few beasts of his own (as peculium)[633] on some corner of the estate, and to wait on events. It might be that he looked forward to manumission after long service. But I cannot find any authority for such a supposition, or any concrete instance of a manumitted vilicus. This inclines me to believe that in practice to such a man manumission was no boon. He was in most cases a native of some distant country, where he had long been forgotten. The farm of his lord was the nearest thing he had to a home. I am driven to suppose that as a rule he kept his post as long as he could discharge its duties, and then sank into the position of a quasi-pensioned retainer who could pay for his keep by watching his successor. Ordinary slaves when worn out may have been put to light duties about the farm, care of poultry etc, and he might direct them, so far as the new steward allowed. I am guessing thus only in reference to average cases. The brutal simplicity of selling off worn-out slaves for what they would fetch was apparently not unknown, and is approved[634] by Cato.

It has been briefly hinted above that the steward’s obvious interest lay in preventing his master from expecting too much in the way of returns from the estate. The demand for net income, that is to say the treatment of agriculture as an investment yielding a steady return year in and year out, was economically unsound. A landlord in public life wanted a safe income; interest on good debentures, as we should say. But to guarantee this some capitalist was needed to take the risks of business, of course with the prospect of gaining in good years more than he lost in bad ones. Now the Roman landlord had no such protection. In a business subject to unavoidable fluctuations he was not only entitled to the profits but liable to the losses. Imagine him just arrived from Rome, pledged already to some considerable outlay on shows or simple bribery, and looking for a cash balance larger than that shewn at the last audit. Let the steward meet him with a tale of disaster, and conceive his fury. Situations of this kind must surely have occurred, perhaps not very seldom: and one of the two men was in the absolute power of the other. We need not imagine the immediate[635] sequel. Stewards on estates for miles round would be reminded of their own risks of disgrace and punishment, and would look to their own security. I suggest that the habitual practice of these trusted men was to keep the produce of an estate down to a level at which it could easily be maintained; and, if possible, to represent it as being even less than it really was. Thus they removed a danger from themselves. This policy implied an easygoing management of the staff, but the staff were not likely to resent or betray it. A master like Cato was perhaps not to be taken in by a device of the kind: but Catos were rare, and the old man’s advice to look sharply after your vilicus sounds as if he believed many masters to be habitually fooled by their plausible stewards. If such was indeed the case, here we have at once a manifest cause of the decline of agriculture. The restriction of production would become year by year easier to arrange and conceal, harder and harder to detect. The employment of freemen[636] as stewards seems not to have been tried as a remedy; partly perhaps because they would have insisted on good salaries, partly because they were free to go,—and, if rogues[637], not empty-handed.

The cause to which I have pointed is one that could continue operating from generation to generation, and was likely so to continue until such time as the free farmer should once more occupy the land. The loving care that agriculture needs could only return with him. It was not lack of technical knowledge that did the mischief; Varro’s treatise is enough to prove that. It was the lack of personal devotion in the landlords and motive in the stewards. Principles without practice failed, as they have failed and will fail. Nor must we lay much stress on the disturbances of the revolutionary period. Had these, damaging though they were, been the effective cause of decline, surely the long peace under the early Empire would have led to a solid revival. But, though a court poet might sing of revival to please his master, more serious witnesses tell a different tale. In the middle of the first century AD we have Lucan Columella and the elder Pliny. If Lucan’s pictures of the countryside peopled with slave-gangs, and of the decay of free population, are suspected as rhetorically overdrawn, at least they agree with the evidence of Livy in the time of Augustus, so far as the parts near Rome are concerned. Columella[638] gravely deplores the neglect of agriculture, in particular the delegation of management to slaves. The landlord and his lady have long abdicated their interest in what was once a noble pursuit: it is now a degrading one, and their places are taken by the vilicus and vilica. Yet all he can suggest is a more perfect organization of the slave-staff, and the letting of outlying farms to tenants. Pliny tells the same woeful story. And while he vents his righteous indignation on the latifundia that have ruined Italy, he also mentions instances of great profits[639] made by cultivators of vines and olives on estates of quite moderate size. But these successful men were not of the social aristocracy: they were freedmen or other humble folks who themselves looked sharply after their own business.

Therefore, when we are told[640], and rightly, that with establishment of the Empire the political attraction of Rome was lessened, and that the interest of wealthy landlords became more strictly economic in character, we must not be in haste to identify this change with a return of genuine prosperity. That a sort of labour-crisis followed the restoration of peace is reasonably inferred from the fact that the kidnapping[641] of freemen, and their incorporation in the slave-gangs of great estates, was one of the abominations with which the early Principate had to deal. In a more peaceful world the supply of new slaves fell off, and the price doubtless rose. It would seem that at the same time free wage-earners were scarce, as was to be expected after the civil wars. So the highwayman, probably often a discharged soldier, laid hands on the unprotected wayfarer. After taking his purse, he made a profit of his victim’s person by selling him as a slave to some landowner in need of labourers, who asked no questions. Once in the ergastulum the man had small chance of regaining his freedom unless and until an inspection of these private prisons was undertaken by the government. Such phenomena are not likely to be the inventions of sensational writers; for the government, heavily weighted with other responsibilities, was driven to intervene and put down the scandal. But to do this was not to supply the necessary labour. That problem remained, and in the attempt to solve it an important development in the organization of large estates seems to have taken place. While the regular labour was as before furnished by the slave-staff, and greater care taken[642] to avoid losses by sickness, and while even the breeding of slaves under certain restrictions was found worthy of attention, the need of extra hands at certain seasons was met by an arrangement for retaining potential free labourers within easy reach. This was an extension of the system of tenant coloni. Parcels of the estate were let to small farmers, whose residence was thereby assured. Columella[643] advises a landlord in dealing with his tenants to be more precise in exacting from them work (opus) than rent (pensiones), and Weber[644] takes opus to mean not merely the proper cultivation of their several plots but a stipulated amount of labour on the lord’s farm. The practice of exacting labour from debtors[645] in discharge of their debt was not a new one, and this arrangement seems to be the same in a more systematic form. By taking care to keep the little farm sufficiently small, and fixing the rent sufficiently high, the tenant was pretty certain to be often behind with his rent. In such conditions, even if the tenant did not encumber himself by further borrowing, it is clear that he was very liable to sink into a ‘soccage’ tenant, bound to render regular services without wage. Nominally free, he was practically tied to the soil; while the landlord, nominally but the owner of the soil, gradually acquired what was of more value than a money rent,—the ownership of his tenant’s services. In the growing scarcity of slave labour the lord had a strong motive for insisting on his rights, and so the free worker travelled down the road to serfdom.

In reviewing the history of rustic slavery, and its bearing on the labour-question, from the end of the second Punic war to the time of Marcus Aurelius, it is not necessary to refer to every indication of the discontents that were normal in the miserable slave-gangs. A few actual outbreaks of which we have definite records will serve to illustrate the sort of sleeping volcano, ever liable to explode, on which thousands of Italian landlords were sitting. The writers on agriculture were fully conscious of the peril, and among various precepts designed to promote order (and, so far as possible, contentment) none is more significant than the advice[646] not to have too many slaves of the same race. Dictated by the desire to make rebellious combinations difficult, this advice is at least as old as Plato[647] and Aristotle.

So early as 196 BC we hear[648] of a slave-rising in Etruria, put down with great severity by a military force. In 185 there was a great rising[649] of slave-herdsmen (pastores) in Apulia, put down by the officer then commanding the SE district. In about another half-century we begin the series of slave-wars which troubled the Roman world for some 60 or 70 years and caused a vast destruction of lives and property. It was the growth of the plantation system under a weak and distracted government that made such horrors possible. In 139 we hear of a rising in Sicily, where the plantation system was in full swing. From 135 there was fierce war[650] in the island, not put down till 131 after fearful bloodshed. The war of Aristonicus[651] in the new province of Asia, from 132 to 130, seems to have been essentially a slave-war. In Sicily the old story[652] was repeated 103-99 with the same phenomena and results. And in the last age of the Republic, 73 to 71 BC, Italy was devastated by the bands of Spartacus, a joint force of gladiators[653] and rustic slaves. For many months the country was at their mercy, and their final destruction was brought about more by their own disunion than by the sword of Roman legions. It is recorded[654] to the credit of Catiline that he refused to enlist rustic slaves in the armed force with which he fought and fell at Pistoria, resisting the less scrupulous advice of his confederates in Rome. During the upheaval of the great civil wars the slaves enjoyed unusual license. Many took arms: probably many others escaped from bondage. But the establishment of the Empire, though the supply of slave labour was not equal to the demand, did not put an end to slave-risings. For instance, in 24 AD a former soldier of the Imperial Guard planned an insurrection[655] in the neighbourhood of Brundisium. By promising freedom to the bold slave-herdsmen scattered about the Apennine forests he got together what was evidently a force of considerable strength. The lucky arrival of a squadron of patrol vessels enabled the local quaestor to break up the conspiracy before it could make head. But Tiberius did not dally with so serious a matter: a detachment of troops carried off the ringleader and his chief accomplices to Rome. Tacitus remarks that there was in the city a widespread uneasiness, owing to the enormous growth of slave-gangs while the freeborn population was declining.

These specimens are enough to illustrate a public danger obvious a priori and hardly needing illustration. The letter of Tiberius[656] to the Senate in 22 AD shews how he had brooded over the social and economic condition of Italy. He saw clearly that the appearance of prosperity in a country where parks and mansions multiplied, and where tillage was still giving way to pasturage, was unsound. He knew no doubt that these signs pointed to the decline of the free rural population as still in progress. As an experienced general he could hardly ignore the value of such a free population for recruiting armies to serve the state, or regard its decline with indifference. He refers to the burden of imperial responsibilities. Now the system inherited from Augustus set Italy in a privileged position as the imperial land. Surely Tiberius cannot have overlooked the corresponding liability of Italy to take a full share in the defence of the empire. Yet in present circumstances her supply of vigorous manhood was visibly failing. If the present tendencies continued to act, the present system would inevitably break down. But, however much Tiberius was inclined to do justice to the Provinces, he could not escape his first duty to Italy without a complete change of system: and for this he was not prepared. Such misgivings of course could not be expressed in a letter to the Senate; but that an Emperor, temperamentally prone to worry, did not foresee the coming debility and degradation of Italy, and fret over the prospect, is to me quite incredible.

The movement for checking luxury, which drew this letter from Tiberius, resulted according to Tacitus in a temporary reduction of extravagance in entertainments. The influence of senators brought in from country towns or the Provinces helped in promoting a simpler life. It was example, not legislation, that effected whatever improvement was made. It was the example of Vespasian that did most to reform domestic economy. But the historian was well aware that reforms depending on the lead of individuals are transient. We have no reason to believe that any lasting improvement of agriculture was produced by these fitful efforts. From stray references in Tacitus, from the letters of the younger Pliny, from notices in Juvenal and Martial, it is evident that in the great plain of the Cisalpine and in the Italian hill country farming of one kind or another went on and prospered. In such districts a real country life might be found. But this was no new development: it had never ceased. Two conditions were necessary, remoteness from Rome and difficulty of access, which often coincided. Estates near the city (suburbana) were mostly, if not in all cases, held as resorts for rest or pleasure. If a steward could grow a fair supply of farm-produce, so much the better: but the duty of having all ready for visits of the master and his friends was the first charge on his time and attention. Even at some considerable distance from the city the same condition prevailed, if an estate lay near a main road and thus could be reached without inconvenient exertion.

XXIII. CATO.

The book de agri cultura[657] of M Porcius Cato (234-149 BC) is a remarkable work by a remarkable man. It is generally agreed that it represents his views, though the form in which it has come down to us has led to differences of opinion as to the degree in which the language has been modified in transmission. We need only consider some of the contemporary facts and movements with which Cato was brought into contact and which affected his mental attitude as a public man. He took part in the second Punic war, and died just as the third war was beginning: thus he missed seeing the destruction of the great city which it had in his later years been his passion to destroy. The success of the highly organized Punic agriculture is said[658] to have been one of the circumstances that alarmed his keen jealousy: but we can hardly doubt that he like others got many a hint from the rustic system of Carthage. Another of his antagonisms was a stubborn opposition to Greek influences. In the first half of the second century BC, the time of his chief activities, these influences were penetrating Roman society more and more deeply as Roman supremacy spread further and further to the East. We need not dwell on his denunciations of Greek corruption in general and warnings against the menace to Roman thrift and simplicity. A good instance may be found in the injunction[659] to his son, to have nothing whatever to do with Greek doctors, a pack of rascals who mean to poison all ‘barbarians,’ who charge fees to enhance the value of their services, and have the impudence to apply the term ‘barbarians’ to us. The leader of the good-old-Roman party was at least thorough in his hates. And his antipathies were not confined to foreigners and foreign ways, but found ample scope at home in opposition to the newer school of politicians, whose views were less narrow and hearty than his own.

In Cato’s time the formation of great landed estates, made easy by the ruin of many peasant farmers in the second Punic war, was in full swing. The effective government of Rome was passing more and more into the hands of the Senate, and the leading nobles did not neglect their opportunities of adding to their own wealth and power. Sharing the military appointments, they enriched themselves with booty and blackmail abroad, particularly in the eastern wars: and, being by law excluded from open participation in commerce, they invested a good part of their gains in Italian land. From what we learn as to the stale of Italy during the last century of the Republic, it seems certain that this land-grabbing process took place chiefly if not wholly in the more accessible parts of the country, so far as arable lands were concerned. Etruria and the districts of central Italy near Rome were especially affected, and also Lucania. Apulia soon became noted for its flocks and herds, which grazed there in winter and were driven in the summer months to the mountain pastures of Samnium. The pasturage of great private ‘runs’ (saltus) was thus supplemented by the use of wastes that were still state-property, and the tendency to monopolize these latter on favourable terms was no doubt still growing. With the troubles that arose later out of this system of possessiones we are not here concerned. But the increase of grazing as compared with tillage is an important point; for that it was the most paying sort of farming was one of the facts expressly recognised[660] by Cato. The working of estates on a large scale was promoted by the plentiful supply of slaves in this period. On arable lands they were now employed in large gangs, sometimes working in chains, under slave overseers whose own privileges depended on their getting the utmost labour out of the common hands. In pastoral districts they enjoyed much greater freedom. The time was to come when these pastores, hardy ruffians, often armed against wild beasts, would be a public danger. But for the present it is probable that one of their chief recommendations was that they cost next to nothing for their keep.

No man knew better than Cato that it was not on such a land-system as this that Rome had thriven in the past and risen to her present greatness. He was proud[661] of having worked hard with his own hands in youth, and he kept up the practice of simple living on his own estate, sitting down to meals with the slaves[662] whom he ruled with the strictness of a practical farmer. Around him was going on the extension of great ill-managed properties owned by men whom political business and intrigues kept nearly all the year in Rome, and who gave little personal attention to the farming of their estates. When the landlord rebuilt his villa, and used his new country mansion mainly for entertaining friends, the real charge of the farm more and more passed to the plausible slave who was always on the spot as steward. Cato knew very well that these vilici did not as a rule do the best for their lords. They had no real interest in getting the most out of the land. The owner, who wanted ready money for his ambitions and pleasures, was hardly the man to spend it on material improvements in hope of an eventual increase of income: thus a steward could easily find excuses for a low standard of production really due to his own slackness. All this demoralizing letting-down of agriculture was anathema to the champion of old-Roman ideas and traditions. It was a grave factor in the luxury and effeminacy that to his alarm were undermining the solid virtues of the Roman people. Above all things, it had what to his intensely Roman nature was the most fatal of defects—it did not pay. Roman nobles were in fact making their chief profits out of plundering abroad, and ceasing to exercise old-fashioned economy at home. With the former evil Cato waged open war as statesman and orator. How he dealt with the latter as a writer on agriculture I proceed to inquire.

We may classify the several points of view from which agriculture could be regarded under a few heads, and see what position in relation to each of these was taken up by Cato. First, as to the scale of farming operations. He does not denounce great estates. He insists on the maintenance of a due proportion[663] between the house and the land. Neither is to be too big for the other. A decent dwelling[664] will induce the landlord to visit his estate more often; a fine mansion will be costly and tempt him to extravagance. Secondly, it is on this frequent personal attention that successful management depends. For your steward needs the presence of the master’s eye to keep him to his duty. Thirdly, he accepts the position that the regular staff of labourers are to be slaves, and some at least of these[665] are in chains (compediti). For special work, in time of harvest etc, extra labour is to be hired, and of this some is free labour, perhaps not all. For contractors employing gangs of labourers play a considerable part. Their remuneration may be in cash, or they may receive a share[666] of the produce (partiario). Some of their labourers are certainly free: if they do not pay the wages regularly, the dominus is to pay them and recover from the contractor. But it is not clear that contractors employed freemen exclusively, and there is some indication[667] of the contrary. Fourthly, there is no suggestion of a return to quite small peasant holdings, though he opens the treatise with an edifying passage[668] on the social political and military virtues of farmers, and cites the traditional description of virum bonum as being bonum agricolam bonumque colonum. For his own scheme is not one for enabling a poor man to win a living for himself and family out of a little patch of ground. It is farming for profit; and, though not designed for a big latifundium, it is on a considerable scale. He contemplates[669] an oliveyard of 240 iugera and a vineyard of 100 iugera, not to mention all the other departments, and the rigid precepts for preventing waste and getting the most out of everything are the most striking feature of his book. The first business[670] of an owner, he says, is not to buy but to sell. Fifthly, it is important to notice that he does not suggest letting all or part of the estate to tenants. He starts by giving good advice as to the pains and caution[671] needed in buying a landed property. But, once bought, he assumes that the buyer will keep it in hand and farm it for his own account. It has been said on high authority[672] that the plan of letting farms to tenant coloni was ‘as old as Italy.’ I do not venture to deny this. But my inquiry leads me to the conviction that in early times such an arrangement was extremely rare: the granting of a plot of land during pleasure (precario) by a patron to a client was a very different thing. Cato only uses the word[673] colonus in the general sense of cultivator, and so far as he is concerned we should never guess that free tenant farmers were known in Italy. Sixthly, whereas in Varro and Columella we find the influence of later Greek thought shewn in a desire to treat even rustic slaves as human and to appeal to the lure of reward rather than the fear of punishment, to Cato the human chattel seems on the level of the ox. When past work, both ox and slave are to be sold[674] for what they will fetch. This he himself says, and his doctrine was duly recorded by Plutarch as a mark of his hard character. It is therefore not surprising that he makes no reference to slaves having any quasi-property (peculium) of their own, though the custom of allowing this privilege was surely well known to him, and was probably very ancient. If the final fate of the slave was to be sold as rubbish in order to save his keep, there was not much point in letting him keep a few fowls or grow a few vegetables in some waste corner of the farm. But another characteristic story raises some doubt in this matter. We are told that, having remarked that sexual passion was generally the cause of slaves getting into mischief, he allowed them[675] to have intercourse with the female slaves at a fixed tariff. Now, to afford himself this indulgence, a slave must have had a peculium. But Cato did not think it worth mentioning,—unless of course we assume that a reference has dropped out of the text. Nor does he refer to manumission: but we hear of his having a freedman—probably not a farm-slave at all.

Cato’s position, taken as a whole, shews no sign of a reactionary aim, no uncompromising desire of reversion to a vanished past. Nor does he fall in with the latest fashion, and treat the huge latifundium as the last word in landowning. His precepts have in view a fairly large estate, and perhaps we may infer that he thought this about as much as a noble landlord, with other calls upon his energies, could farm through a steward without losing effective control. He does not, like the Carthaginian Mago, insist on the landlord residing[676] permanently on the estate. In truth he writes as an opportunist. For this man, who won his fame as the severest critic of his own times, knew very well that contemporary Romans of good station and property would never consent to abdicate their part in public life and settle down to merely rustic interests. Nor indeed would such retirement have been consistent with Roman traditions. But conditions had greatly changed since the days of the farmer-nobles who could easily attend the Senate or Assembly at short notice. The far greater extent of territory over which modern estates were spread made it impossible to assume that they all lay near the city. And yet the attraction of Rome was greater than ever. It was the centre and head of a dominion already great, and in Cato’s day ever growing. The great critic might declaim against the methods and effects of this or that particular conquest and denounce the iniquities of Roman officials: but he himself bore no light hand in advancing the power of Rome, and thereby in making Rome the focus of the intrigues and ambitions of the Mediterranean world. So he accepted the land-system of the new age, and with it the great extension of slave-labour and slave-management, and tried to shew by what devotion and under what conditions it could be made to pay. It must be borne in mind that slave-labour on the land was no new thing. It was there from time immemorial, ready for organization on a large scale; and it was this extension of an existing institution that was new. Agriculture had once been to the ordinary Roman citizen the means of livelihood. It was now, in great part of the most strictly Roman districts of Italy, becoming industrialized as a field for investment of capital by the senatorial class, who practically controlled the government and were debarred from openly engaging in commerce. The exploitation of rustic properties as income-producing securities was merely a new phase of the grasping hard-fisted greed characteristic of the average Roman. Polybius, observing Roman life in this very age with Greek eyes, was deeply impressed[677] by this almost universal quality. And Cato himself was a Roman of Romans. Plutarch[678] has preserved for us the tradition of his economic career. As a young man of small means he led the hard life of a farmer, as he was not shy of boasting[679] in later years, and was a strict master of slaves. But he did not find farming sufficiently remunerative, so he embarked on other enterprises. Farming remained rather as a pastime than a source of income: but he took to safe and steady investments, such as rights over lakes, hot springs, fullers’ premises, and land that could be turned to profit[680] through the presence of natural pasture and woodland. From these properties he drew large returns not dependent on the weather. By employing a freedman as his agent, he lent money on bottomry, eluding the legal restriction on senators; and by combining with partners in the transaction he distributed and so minimized the risks of a most profitable business. And all through life he dealt in slaves[681], buying them young, training them, and selling at an enhanced price any that he did not want himself. He bred some on his estate, probably not many. It is said that, in addition to her own children, his wife would suckle[682] slave-babies, as a means of promoting good feeling in the household towards her son.

In these details, of the general truth of which there is no reasonable doubt, we have a picture of a man of astounding versatility and force: for of his political and military activities I have said nothing. But as a writer on agriculture how are we to regard him? Surely not as a thoroughgoing reformer. His experience had taught him that, if you must have a good income (a point on which he and his contemporaries were agreed), you had better not look to get it from farming. But if for land-pride or other reasons you must needs farm, Cato is ready to give you the best practical advice. That many (if indeed any) men of property would take the infinite trouble and pains that his system requires from a landlord, he was probably too wise to believe. But that was their business. He spoke[683] as an oracle; as in public life ‘take it or leave it’ was the spirit of his utterances. The evidence of his life and of his book, taken together, is more clear as shewing the unsatisfactory position of rustic enterprise than from any other point of view.

A few details relative to the staff employed on the estate are worthy of a brief notice. Cato is keenly alive to the importance of the labour-question. In choosing an estate you must ascertain that there is a sufficient local supply[684] of labour. On the face of it this seems to mean free wage-earning labour, though the word operarius is neutral. But in a notable passage, in which he sets forth the advantage of being on friendly terms with neighbours (neighbouring landlords), he says ‘Don’t let your household (familiam) do damage: if you are in favour with the neighbourhood, you will find it easier to sell your stock, easier[685] to get employment for your own staff at a wage, easier to hire hands: and if you are engaged in building they (the vicini) will give you help in the way of human and animal labour and timber.’ Here we seem to come upon the hiring, not of free labourers, but of a neighbour’s slave hands on payment of a rent to their owner. The case would arise only when some special rough job called for a temporary supply of more labour. It would be the landlord’s interest to keep his neighbours inclined to oblige him. Thus by mutual accommodation in times of pressure it was possible to do with a less total of slaves than if each farm had had to be provided with enough labour for emergencies. We may also remark that it made the slaveowner less dependent on free wage-earners, who would probably have raised their demands when they saw the landlord at their mercy. It must always be borne in mind that Cato is writing solely from the landlord’s point of view.

The leading fact relative to the staff is that the steward or head man (vilicus) under whom the various workers, slave or free, are employed is himself a slave. So too the vilica, usually his consort. Their position is made quite clear by liability to punishment and by their disqualification[686] from performance of all save the most ordinary and trivial religious ceremonies. Their duties are defined by jealous regulations. But in order to keep the steward up to the mark the master must often visit the estate. It is significant that he is advised on arrival to make a round of the place[687] without delay, and not to question his steward until he has thus formed his own impressions independently. Then he can audit accounts, check stores, listen to excuses, give orders, and reprimand failure or neglect. That the master needed to be a man of knowledge and energy in order to make his estate a source of profit when in charge of a steward, is evident. It may well be that Cato insists so strongly on the need of these qualities because they were becoming rare among the nobles of his day. But, though he knew that the efficiency of a slave steward could only be maintained by constant and expert watching, he never suggests the employment of a free man in that capacity. The truth seems to be that the ‘Manager,’ a man paid by salary or percentage and kept up to the mark by fear of ‘losing his place,’ is a comparatively modern figure. In antiquity the employment of Freedmen in positions of trust was a move in that direction, though patrons kept a considerable hold, beyond the purely economic one, on their freedmen. But for charge of a farm Cato does not suggest employment of a freedman.

The blending of free and slave labour might well have been brought out more clearly than it is: but to the author writing for his own contemporaries it would seem needless to enlarge upon a condition which everyone took for granted. Yet there are passages where it is indicated plainly enough. Thus in the olive-press room a bed is provided[688] for two free custodes (apparently foremen) out of three: the third, a slave, is put to sleep with the factores, who seem to be the hands employed[689] to work the press, probably slaves, whose labour is merely bodily exertion. The leguli who gather up the olives are probably free, for they are interested[690] in making the amount so gathered as large as possible. Strippers, strictores, who pluck the olives from the tree, are also mentioned[691] in the chapter dealing with the harvesting of a hanging crop by a contractor. As the need of care to avoid damaging the trees is insisted on, and all the workers are to take a solemn oath[692] that they have stolen none of the crop, we may fairly infer that they are freemen. When the process of manufacture is let to a contractor, his factores are to take a similar oath, and are probably free. So too when a crop is sold hanging: if the buyer neglects to pay[693] his leguli and factores (which would cause delay) the landlord may pay them himself and recover the amount from the buyer. On the other hand in the grazing department the underlings are slaves. In case of the sale of winter grazing, provision is made[694] for an arbitration for settlement of damages done by the emptor aut pastores aut pecus emptoris to the dominus, or by the dominus aut familia aut pecus to the emptor. And, until the compensation awarded is paid, the pecus aut familia on the ground is to be held in pledge by the party to whom compensation is due. This would generally be the landlord, and the familia of the emptor would be his pastores. Even so, when a speculator buys the season’s lambs, he provides a pastor for two months, and the man is held in pledge[695] by the landlord until the account is finally settled.