Chapter VII: Appendix: Some Byzantine Authorities (6)

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.