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Title: Agricola
A study of agriculture and rustic life in the Greco-Roman
world from the point of view of labour

Author: William Emerton Heitland

Release date: August 9, 2024 [eBook #74220]

Language: English

Original publication: Cambridge: University Press, 1921

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AGRICOLA

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

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY }
CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
MADRAS }
TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

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
PAGES

INTRODUCTORY
I. Evidence 1-7
II. Land and labour 7-15
AUTHORITIES IN DETAIL—GREEK
III. The Iliad and Odyssey 16-22
IV. Hesiod, Works and Days 22-24
V. Stray notes from early poets 24-26
VI. Traces of serfdom in Greek states 26-28
VII. Herodotus 28-30
VIII. The Tragedians
Aeschylus and Sophocles 31-33
Euripides 33-37
IX. The ‘Constitution of Athens’ or ‘Old Oligarch’ 37-40
X. Aristophanes 40-48
XI. Thucydides 48-52
XII. Xenophon 53-61
XIII. The Comic fragments 61-65
XIV. Early Lawgivers and Theorists 65-70
XV. Plato 70-80
XVI. The earlier Attic Orators 80-85
XVII. Aristotle 85-103
XVIII. The later Attic Orators 103-112
XIX. The Macedonian period and the Leagues 112-130
Polybius etc—Theocritus—Plautus and Terence—Inscriptions—
Letter of Philip V to Larisa—Evidence preserved by Plutarch,
Diodorus, Livy, etc

ROME—EARLY PERIOD TO 200 bc

XX. The traditions combined and discussed 131-149
[No contemporary authors]
XXI. Abstract of conclusions 149-150
ROME—MIDDLE PERIOD
XXII. Introductory general view of period 200 bc-180 ad 151-164
Growth of slavery—Slave risings, etc
XXIII. Cato 164-173
XXIV. Agriculture in the revolutionary period 174-177
XXV. Varro 178-187
XXVI. Cicero 187-199
XXVII. Sallust etc 199-202
ROME—THE EMPIRE
XXVIII. Agriculture and agricultural labour under the
Roman Empire. General introduction 203-212
ROME—AUGUSTUS TO NERO
XXIX. Horace and Vergil 213-241
XXX. The elder Seneca etc 241-243
XXXI. Seneca the younger 244-248
XXXII. Lucan, Petronius, etc 248-250
XXXIII. Columella 250-269
AGE OF THE FLAVIAN AND ANTONINE EMPERORS
XXXIV. General introduction 270-274
Note on emigration from Italy 274-275
XXXV. Musonius 275-280
XXXVI. Pliny the elder 281-287
XXXVII. Tacitus 287-292
Note on an African inscription 293
XXXVIII. Frontinus 294-296
XXXIX. Inscriptions relative to alimenta 296-300
XL. Dion Chrysostom 300-303
XLI. New Testament writers 303-305

XLII. Martial and Juvenal 305-317
XLIII. Pliny the younger 317-325
XLIV. Suetonius etc 325-328
XLV. Apuleius 328-335
COMMODUS TO DIOCLETIAN
XLVI. General introduction 336-342
XLVII. The African inscriptions 342-353
XLVIII. Discussion of the same 353-361
XLIX. The Jurists of the Digest 361-378
L. The later Colonate, its place in Roman history 378-384
Additional notes 385
FROM DIOCLETIAN
LI. General introduction 386-399
LII. Libanius 399-402
LIII. Symmachus 402-409
LIV. Ammianus 409-415
LV. Claudian 415-417
LVI. Vegetius 417-419
Christian Writers
LVII. Lactantius 420-422
LVIII. Sulpicius Severus 422-423
LIX. Salvian 423-426
LX. Apollinaris Sidonius 426-432
LXI. Concluding Chapter 432-459
APPENDIX

Some Byzantine authorities
A. The Geoponica 460-462
B. The ‘Farmer’s Law’ 462-464
C. Modern books, a few interesting extracts and
references 465-46

D. List of some of the works found useful in this inquiry 468-471
INDICES
I. General 472-479
II. Words and phrases 479-482
III. Passages cited 483-489
IV. Modern authorities 489-490
V. Countries, places and peoples 490-492

INTRODUCTORY
I. EVIDENCE.

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

by the side of recent achievements, for instance the building of the
Pyramids compared with the Panama canal. Machinery, transport, and
scientific discovery in general, have made it possible to carry out colossal
undertakings with comparative ease and without wholesale destruction of
human life. The greatest works of the ancients are for the most part silent
witnesses to the ruthless employment of forced labour, either that of
captives or bought slaves or that of the impressed subjects of an autocrat.
Mere brute force, applied in unlimited quantity[1] with callous indifference
to the sufferings of the toilers, was the chief means at disposal: mechanical
invention had got so far as to render possible some tasks that without it
could not have been performed at all. It gave extended effect to the mass of
forced labour, and there it stopped, for we have no reason to think that it
improved the labourer’s lot. The surviving evidence as to the condition[2] of
slaves in mines and factories enables us to form some faint notion of the
human wastage resulting from the cruel forced-labour system. We may then
state the position briefly thus: to attempt great enterprises was only possible
through the crude employment of labour in great masses: the supply of this
labour was, or appeared to be, procurable only by compulsion: and
compulsion was operative through the institution of slavery or the passive
submission of cowed populations to the will of despots. But if slavery
promoted large-scale enterprise, surely large-scale enterprise tended to
establish slavery in the form of forced labour more firmly than ever. In the
modern world the necessity of employing free labour has stimulated
scientific invention, in mechanical and other departments, the tendency of
which is to require greater intellectual[3] development in the labourer, and in
the long run to furnish him with effective means of asserting his own
freedom.
Under modern conditions, the gradual displacement of small
handicraftsmen by the growth of great capitalistic combinations is going on,
perhaps not always for good. The public accept this result as fate. And, if
economy in production and prime-cost cheapness are the only things worth
considering, it is not easy to condemn the process. But events are steadily
demonstrating the fear once entertained, that handworkers in general would
find their position weakened thereby, to be groundless. If the independent
craftsman has lost ground, the wage-earning journeyman has gained. We
need not follow out this topic in detail, but note the contrast presented by

the ancient world. The ‘small man’ in crafts and trades was able to hold his
own, for without steam-power the capitalist was not strong enough to
suppress him. In a small way he was something of a capitalist himself, and
commonly owned slave-apprentices. His part in ancient civilization was
undoubtedly far more important than it appears in literature: for he
ministered to the ordinary needs of every day, while literature, then as now
and more than now, chiefly recorded the exceptional. When we turn to the
wage-earner, who earns a living by hiring out his bodily powers to an
employer, we are dealing with a wholly different class. These are the free
men who in a slave-holding society have to compete with the slave. In the
course of the present inquiry we must keep a sharp look-out for every
reference or allusion to such persons in the department of agriculture, and in
particular note numerous passages in which the status of labourers cannot
be inferred with certainty from the language. But the importance of this
special point is of course not confined to agriculture.
I have chosen to limit my inquiry to the case of agriculture for these
reasons. First, because it was and is the industry on which human life, and
therefore all other industries and all progress, did and do rest. Secondly,
because its economic importance in the ancient world, so far from
declining, manifestly increased. The problem of food-supply was always
there. And it was never more pressing than in the later ages of Rome, when
imperial efforts to enforce production, if successful, fed her barbarian
armies, at the same time attracting the attention of barbarian invaders to
lands that promised the food-crops which they themselves were too lazy to
produce. Thirdly, because the importance of agriculture was and is not
merely economic. Its moral value, as a nursery of steady citizens and, at
need, of hardy soldiers, was and still should be recognized by thoughtful
men. Therefore its conditions and its relative prosperity or decay deserve
the attention of all historians of all periods. Unluckily statistical record of a
scientific character is not available for the times that we call ancient, and
numbers are notoriously liable to corruption in manuscripts. Therefore I
have only ventured to give figures seldom and with reserve. For agriculture
we have nothing on the scale of the inscriptions that record wages, for
instance on public works at Athens. On the other hand we have for certain
periods the evidence of specialists such as Cato, Varro and Columella, to
whom we owe much information as to the actual or possible conditions of
rustic enterprise and labour. The relation of agriculture and agricultural

labour to the state as a whole is a subject illustrated by great theorists such
as Plato and Aristotle. The practical problems of landowning and farming
meet us now and then in the contemporary evidence of such men as
Xenophon and the younger Pliny. Even orators, though necessarily partisan
witnesses, at times give valuable help: they may distort facts, but it is not
their interest to lessen their own power of persuasion by asserting what is
manifestly incredible. The ancient historians tell us very little, even of the
past; contemporary evidence from them is especially rare. They are
preoccupied with public affairs, and the conditions of rustic life and labour
only concern them at moments when serious distress or disorder compels
attention. Rhetoricians and poets are doubtful witnesses. Like the orators,
they use their matter freely and with much colouring for their immediate
purposes. But they are not, like forensic orators, in direct contact with
practical emergencies. The questions arising out of Vergil’s Georgics are
problems to be discussed by themselves.
The contribution of encyclopaedic or occasional writers is in some cases
of value. I will here only name the elder Pliny and Apuleius. Books of
travel and geography, for instance Herodotus and Strabo, give stray details,
but generally in reference to distant countries, mostly in the East and so
hardly within my subject, save for purposes of comparison. There are
however two topics with which I am not directly concerned, but which it is
impossible wholly to ignore in speaking of ancient agriculture. First, the
relation of military duty to landholding [the farmer as citizen soldier], and
mercenary service [the rustic as volunteer for pay]. This has been so fully
treated in modern handbooks that I need say little about it. Secondly, the
various conditions of tenure of land. That rustic life and therewith rustic
labour were directly and deeply affected by varieties of tenure, needs no
proof. The cited opinions of Roman lawyers in the Digest are the main
authority on points of this kind, and stray references elsewhere serve to
illustrate them. In conclusion I have only to insist again on the fact that we
have no direct witness of the labourer’s, or even the working farmer’s, point
of view. The evidence all comes from above; and therefore generally gives
us a picture of conditions as the law meant them to be and presumed them
normally to be. How far the practical working corresponded to the legal
position, is only to be guessed with caution from the admissions involved in
the elaboration of legal remedies; and, in the case of imperial coloni, from
the unique evidence of the notable African inscriptions.

It is I trust after the above considerations not unreasonable to devote no
special chapters to certain writers whom nevertheless it is often necessary to
cite in notes. Diodorus, Livy, Athenaeus, Macrobius, Gellius, Palladius, are
cases of the kind. Stray references in their works are valuable, but there is
nothing to require a treatment of them as several wholes. Even Livy is
chiefly useful as handing down remains of past tradition: hence he (and
Dionysius and Plutarch with him) have a leading place in the introductory
chapter on early Rome. So too the writers of the so-called historia Augusta
and the laws of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes find their place in the
notes to certain chapters. On the other hand (to omit obvious cases)
Euripides, Xenophon, the younger Seneca, Martial, the younger Pliny,
Apuleius, Ammianus, Symmachus, Apollinaris Sidonius, need careful
treatment with full regard to the periods and circumstances by which their
evidential values are severally qualified. And in order to place each witness
in his proper setting it is sometimes necessary to pause and group a number
of circumstances together in a special chapter. This arises from the
endeavour to preserve so far as possible the thread of continuity, which is
always really there, though at times very thin, owing to the loss of many
works in the course of ages. In such chapters one has to look both backward
and forward, and often to digress for a moment on topics only connected
indirectly with the main object.
I have tried to avoid needless repetitions, but some repetitions are
unavoidable, since the same point often serves to illustrate different parts of
the argument. To make a system of cross-references from chapter to chapter
quite complete is hardly possible, and would add immensely to the bulk of
footnotes. It has seemed better to attempt completeness by elaboration of
the Index. A few details from a period later than that with which I am
concerned are given in the Appendix, as being of interest. Also the names of
some books from which in a course of miscellaneous reading I have derived
more or less help, particularly in noting modern survivals or analogies. For
significant matter occurs in quite unexpected quarters. And the observers
who record facts of rustic life and labour in Italy or France, in North or
Central or South America, without attempting to manipulate them in
connexion with a theory, deserve much gratitude.
It is evident that in the handling of evidence there is room for some
variety of method. And it seems reasonable to hold that the choice of

method should be mainly guided by two leading considerations, the nature
of the evidence available and the aim of the inquiry pursued. In the present
case the inquiry deals with a part, a somewhat neglected part, of Greco-
Roman history: and the subject is one that can by no means be strictly
confined to ascertaining the bare facts of farm life and labour. That the
conditions of agriculture were not only important in connexion with food-
supply, but had an extensive moral and political bearing, is surely beyond
dispute. And the nature of the surviving evidence favours, or rather
requires, the taking of a correspondingly wide view. Outside the circle of
technical writings, the literary evidence almost always has an eye to the
position of agriculture as related to the common weal; nor is this point of
view ignored even by the technical writers. Therefore, in treating the
subject as I have tried to treat it, it is very necessary to take each witness
separately so far as possible, and not to appraise the value of his testimony
without a fair consideration of his condition and environment. This
necessity is peculiarly obvious in the case of the theorists, whose witness is
instructive in a very high degree, but only when we bear in mind the
existing state of things from observation of which their conclusions were
derived. And the changes of attitude in philosophic thought are sometimes
highly instructive. Take farm life and labour as it appears to Plato and
Aristotle and later to Musonius: a whole volume of history, economic moral
and political, lies in the interval of some 400 years. Inscriptions furnish
little to the student of this subject, but that little is worth having. To
conclude this paragraph, I do not apologize for putting my authorities in the
witness-box and questioning them one by one. For only thus do I see a
possibility of giving a true picture of the conditions with which I am
concerned. It is a long method, but perhaps not uninteresting, and I see no
other.
It may seem necessary to explain why I have not devoted special chapters
to rustic life and labour in Oriental countries, some of which eventually
became parts of the Roman empire. Such countries are for instance Egypt,
Palestine and Syria. One reason is that I could do nothing more than
compile conclusions of the inquirers who have lately rescued a vast mass of
detail, chiefly from the Egyptian papyri. Age forbade me to undertake this
task unless it seemed clear that my inquiry really depended on it. But,
inasmuch as I have not been trying to produce a technical treatise upon
ancient agriculture, I do not think it necessary. That there is room for such a

treatise, I have no doubt: nor that its writer will need to have many years at
his disposal and a good knowledge of several sciences at his back. With
regard to eastern countries other than Egypt, practically the Seleucid
empire, knowledge is at present very scanty, as Rostowzew has to confess.
Ancient India lies quite beyond my range, as having never been a part of the
Roman empire: but there is evidently much of interest to be gathered in this
field. From these extensive and promising researches my limited effort is
divided by a clearly marked line. I am concerned with agriculture and
agricultural labour not as the occupation of passive populations merely
producing so much food year by year, peoples over whom centuries might
pass without ascertainable change of a moral social or political character.
Such peoples, in short, as do not get beyond the conception of ruler and
ruled to that of state and citizen, or at least have not yet done so. For of all
conclusions to be drawn from the history of the Greco-Roman world none
seems to me more certain than the fact that, while political social and moral
movements affected the conditions of agriculture, agricultural changes
reacted upon political social and moral conditions. Thus the general history
of the peoples, comprising the rise and fall of ancient efforts towards self-
government, must always be kept in view: the fluctuations of what I may
call civic values, and the position of farmers as labourers or employers of
labour cannot be treated in separate compartments and their reciprocal
effect ignored. That in the later stages of my inquiry Oriental influences
begin to dominate Roman imperial policy, is evident, and I have not left this
factor out of account. But this phenomenon announces the end of the old
world. The long struggle of the Empire in the East and its final overthrow
by the forces of Islam, its break-up in the West and the foundation of new
nation-states, are beyond my range. In the Appendix I have put some
remarks on two documents of the Byzantine period, from which we get
glimpses of changes that were proceeding in the eastern empire while it still
held its ground and was indeed the most highly organized of existing
powers. To these I have subjoined a list of some of the books I have
consulted and found helpful in various degrees, particularly such as have
furnished modern illustrations in the way of analogy or survival. A few
special quotations from some of these may serve to shew how very striking
such illustrations can be.

II. LAND AND LABOUR.

Of the many difficult questions connected with the past history of the
human race few have evoked such a difference of opinion as the practical
importance of slavery. By some inquirers it has been held that the so-called
‘classical’ civilization of the Greco-Roman world rested upon a slavery
basis, in short that slavery alone enabled that civilization to follow the lines
of its actual development. In reply to this doctrine it is urged[4] that its
holders have been led astray by an unhistorical method. They have been
deeply impressed by the all-pervading evils of the economic and domestic
slave-system during the period (say 200 bc-200 ad roughly) when it was in
full extension and vigour. The prepossession thus created has led them to
misinterpret the phenomena of earlier ages, and to ignore the significance of
the later period of decline. Prejudiced eyes have detected slavery where it
was not, and have seen in it where existent an importance greater than
impartial inquiry will justify. Moreover the discussion of slavery-questions
in modern times, conducted with the intemperate warmth of partisan
controversy, have had an influence unfavourable to the statement of facts in
their true relations, and therefore to the exercise of cool judgment.
According to this view the facts of our record shew that, while slave-labour
had its four centuries or so of predominance, free-labour never ceased, and
on it, and not on slavery, the civilization of the ‘classical’ world was built
up. It is argued that in primitive conditions there was little slavery, that
growth of trade and exchange (and therewith of civilization) led to division
of labour and the growth of larger enterprises. On this follows a time in
which the employment of slave-labour becomes more and more common,
and ends by being for some centuries the basis of economic and domestic
life. In due course comes the period of decline, when for various reasons
slaves became less numerous, and the highly-organized civilization of
antiquity relapses into the primitive conditions of the early Middle Age.
Slavery is not extinct, but reverts generally to various degrees of serfdom,
resembling that which meets us in the early traditions of Greek slavery.
Things have gone round the full circle, and the world takes a fresh start.
This version of the process is attractive. It presents to us a spectacle of
cyclic movement, pleasing from its simplicity and dignity. But it seems to
imply that the old civilization reached its height more or less concurrently
with the growth of slavery. One is driven to ask[5] whether the concurrence
was purely accidental or not. So far as concerns the manufacture of articles

for export by slave-industry, it can hardly have been a mere chance: nor is it
denied that in this department it was the demand created by the needs of
growing civilization that called forth the supply. Luxury too is merely a
name for such needs when they clearly exceed strict necessaries of life: and
here too the monstrous extravagancies of domestic slavery were a
characteristic feature of the civilization of the Greco-Roman world. That
neither of these forms of servile employment could outlive the civilization
that had produced them, is surely no wonder. The case of slavery in
agriculture is less simple, and several questions may suggest themselves to
anyone who considers this subject with an open mind.
Agriculture was long regarded, from a social point of view, as superior to
other occupations dependent on bodily labour. This opinion dated from very
early times when, as traditions agree, the land was owned by privileged
nobles who as members of powerful clans formed aristocracies of a more or
less military character. War was waged by men fighting hand to hand, and it
was natural that handwork of a kind likely to promote health and strength
should be honoured above manual trades of a less invigorating and even
sedentary character. The development of cities and urban life, which in
many states led to the overthrow of the old clan aristocracies, did not make
handicraftsmen the equals of agriculturists in popular esteem. Pressure to
win a firm footing on the land was as marked a feature in Athenian Attica as
in Roman Latium. Agriculture was a profession worthy of the free citizen,
and the ownership of a plot of land stamped the citizen as a loyal and
responsible member of a free and self-conscious community. The ruin of
Attic farmers in the Peloponnesian war, the disastrous changes in Italian
agriculture after Rome became imperial, still left the old prepossession. The
charm of country life and pursuits remained as an ineffective ideal. Greek
philosophers were impressed with the virtues of farmer-folk, virtues social
moral and ultimately political. From them Cicero and others learnt to praise
rustic life: the Gracchi made vain efforts to revive it: the poets, led by
Vergil, pictured the glories of old Italian agriculture: but the aspirations
were vain. The ‘classical’ civilization was urban in its growth, and urban it
remained. Writers on agriculture might lament that free men, capable of
tilling the land, loitered idly in the city. In practice they had to take facts as
they found them, and give elaborate precepts for a farm-system in which
slavery was the essential factor.

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

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

as fully recognized as ever: at the end of the fourth century it was
reaffirmed[7] by Vegetius.
I pass on to the third point of view, which I may perhaps call philosophic.
It appears in practice as the view of the statesman, in theory as that of the
speculative philosopher. Men whose life and interests are bound up with
agriculture are in general a steady class, little inclined to wild agitations and
rash ventures. On a farm there is always something not to be left undone
without risk of loss. The operations of nature go on unceasingly,
uncontrolled by man. Man must adapt himself to the conditions of soil and
weather: hence he must be ever on the watch to take advantage of his
opportunities, and this leaves him scant leisure for politics. We may add that
the habit of conforming to nature’s laws, and of profiting by not resisting
what cannot be successfully resisted, is a perpetual education in patience.
Working farmers as a class were not men lightly to embark in revolutionary
schemes, so long as their condition was at all tolerable. It must be borne in
mind that before the invention of representative systems a citizen could
only vote by appearing in person at the city, where all the Assemblies were
held. Assemblies might be adjourned, and two journeys, to the city and
back, were not only time-wasting and tiresome, but might have to be
repeated. Accordingly we hear of the encouragement of Attic farmers by
Peisistratus[8] as being a policy designed to promote the stability of his
government. At Rome we find reformers alarmed at the decay of the
farmer-class in a great part of Italy, and straining to revive it as the sound
basis of a national life, the only practical means of purifying the corrupted
institutions of the state. Selfish opposition on the part of those interested in
corruption was too strong for reformers, and the chance of building up a
true Italian nation passed away. The working farmer had disappeared from
Roman politics. The swords and the venal city mob remained, and the later
literature was left to deplore the consequences.
The course of agricultural decline in Greece was different in detail from
that in Italy, but its evil effects on political life were early noted, at least in
Attica. The rationalist Euripides saw the danger clearly, during the
Peloponnesian war; and the sympathy of the conservative Aristophanes with
the suffering farmers was plainly marked. The merits of the farmer-class as
‘safe’ citizens, the backbone of a wise and durable state-life, became almost
a commonplace of Greek political theory. Plato and Aristotle might dream

of ideal states, governed by skilled specialists professionally trained for
their career from boyhood. In their more practical moments, turning from
aspirations to facts of the world around them, they confessed the political
value of the farmer-class. To Aristotle the best hope of making democracy a
wholesome and tolerable form of government lay in the strengthening of
this element: the best Demos is the γεωργικὸς δῆμος, and it is a pity that it
so often becomes superseded by the growing population devoted to trades
and commerce. I need not carry further these brief and imperfect outlines of
the honourable opinion held of agriculture in the Greco-Roman world. As
producing necessary food, as rearing hardy soldiers, as favouring the
growth and maintenance of civic virtues, it was the subject of general
praise. Some might confess that they shrank from personal labour on the
land. Yet even in Caesarian Rome it is somewhat startling when Sallust[9]
dismisses farming in a few words of cynical contempt.
It is clear that the respect felt for agriculture was largely due to the
opinion that valuable qualities of body and mind were closely connected
with its practice and strengthened thereby. So long as it was on the
primitive footing, each household finding labour for its own maintenance,
the separation of handwork and direction could hardly arise. This primitive
state of things, assumed by theorists ancient and modern, and depicted in
tradition, had ceased to be normal in the time of our earliest records. And
the employment of persons, not members of the household, as hired
labourers, or of bondmen only connected with the house as dependents, at
once differentiated these ‘hands’ from the master and his family. The master
could not habitually hire day-labourers or keep a slave unless he found it
paid him to do so. For a man to work for his own profit or for that of
another were very different things. This simple truism, however, does not
end the matter from my present point of view. It is necessary to ask whether
the respect felt for agriculture was so extended as to include the hired
labourer and the slave as well as the working master. We shall see that it
was not. The house-master, holding and cultivating a plot of land on a
secure tenure, is the figure glorified in traditions and legendary scenes. The
Greek term αὐτουργός, the man who does his own work, is specially
applied to him as a man that works with his own hands. It crops up in
literature often, from Euripides to Polybius and Dion Chrysostom; and
sometimes, when the word is not used, it is represented by equivalents. But
both the hired labourer and the slave were employed for the express

purpose of working with their own hands. And yet, so far as agriculture is
concerned, I cannot find that they were credited with αὐτουργία, the
connotation[10] of which is generally favourable, seldom neutral, never (I
think) unfavourable. It seems then that the figure present to the mind was
one who not only worked with his own hands, but worked for his own profit
—that is, on his own farm. And with this interpretation the traditions of
early Rome fully agree.
To admit this does not however imply that the working house-master
employed neither hired labourer nor slave. So long as he took a hand in the
farm-work, he was a working cultivator for his own profit. The larger the
scale of his holding, the more he would need extra labour. If prosperous, he
would be able to increase his holding or supplement his farming[11] by other
enterprises. More and more he would be tempted to drop handwork and
devote himself to direction. If still successful, he might move on a stage
further, living in the city and carrying on his farms by deputy, employing
stewards, hired freemen or slaves, or freedmen, his former slaves. If he
found in the city more remunerative pursuits than agriculture, he might sell
his land and the live and dead stock thereon, and become simply an urban
capitalist. So far as I know, this last step was very seldom taken; and I
believe the restraining influence to have been the prestige attached to the
ownership of land, even when civic franchises had ceased to depend on the
possession of that form of property alone. If this view be correct, the fact is
notable: for the system of great landed estates, managed by stewards[12] on
behalf of wealthy owners who lived in the city, was the ruin of the peasant
farmer class, in whose qualities statesmen and philosophers saw the
guarantee for the state’s lasting vigour. No longer were αὐτουργοὶ a force in
politics: in military service the professional soldier, idling in the intervals of
wars, superseded the rustic, levied for a campaign and looking forward to
the hour of returning to his plough. It was in Italy that the consummation of
this change was most marked, for Rome alone provided a centre in which
the great landlord could reside and influence political action in his own
interest. To Rome the wealth extorted from tributary subjects flowed in an
ever-swelling stream. No small part of the spoils served to enrich the noble
landlords, directly or indirectly, and to supply them with the funds needed
for corrupting the city mob and so controlling politics. Many could afford to
hold their lands even when it was doubtful whether estates managed by

slaves or hirelings were in fact a remunerative investment. If we may
believe Cicero, it was financial inability[13] to continue this extravagant
policy that drove some men of apparent wealth to favour revolutionary
schemes. The old-fashioned farmstead, the villa, was modernized into a
luxurious country seat, in which the owner might now and then pass a brief
recess, attended by his domestic slaves from Town, and perhaps
ostentatiously entertaining a party of fashionable friends.
We have followed the sinister progress of what I will call the Agricultural
Interest, from the ‘horny-handed’ peasant[14] farmer to the land-proud
capitalist. No doubt the picture is a highly coloured one, but in its general
outlines we are not entitled to question its truth. Exceptions there certainly
were. In hilly parts of Italy a rustic population[15] of freemen survived, and
it was from them that the jobbing gangs of wage-earners of whom we read
were drawn. And in the great plain of the Po agricultural conditions
remained far more satisfactory than in such districts as Etruria or Lucania,
where great estates were common. A genuine farming population seems
there to have held most of the land, and rustic slavery appeared in less
revolting form. But these exceptions did not avail to stay the decline of
rural Italy. True, as the supply of slave-labour gradually shrank in the
empire, the working farmer reappeared on the land. But he reappeared as a
tenant gradually becoming bound[16] to the soil, worried by the exactions of
officials, or liable to a blood-tax in the shape of military service. He was
becoming not a free citizen of a free state, but a half-free serf helplessly
involved in a great mechanical system. Such a person bore little
resemblance to the free farmer working with his own hands for himself on
his own land, the rustic figure from whom we started. On the military side,
he was, if a soldier, now soldier first and farmer afterwards: on the civic
side, he was a mere subject-unit, whose virtues were of no political
importance and commanded no respect. In the final stage we find the
government recruiting its armies from barbarians and concerned to keep the
farmer on the land. So cogent then was the necessity of insuring the supply
of food for the empire and its armies.
At this point we must return to our first question, how far the agriculture
of the Greco-Roman world depended on free or slave labour. It is clear that,
while the presence of the slave presupposes the freeman to control him, the
presence of the freeman does not necessarily imply that of the slave. Dion

Chrysostom[17] was logically justified in saying that freedom comes before
slavery in order of time. And no doubt this is true so long as we only
contemplate the primitive condition of households each providing for its
own vital needs by the labour of its members. But the growth of what we
call civilization springs from the extension of needs beyond the limits of
what is absolutely necessary for human existence. By what steps the
advantages of division of labour were actually discovered is a subject for
the reconstructive theorist. But it must have been observed at a very early
stage that one man’s labour might be to another man’s profit. Those who
tamed and employed other animals were not likely to ignore the
possibilities offered by the extension of the system to their brother men. It
would seem the most natural thing in the world. It might be on a very small
scale, and any reluctance on the bondsman’s part might be lessened by the
compensations of food and protection. A powerful master might gather
round him a number of such dependent beings, and he had nothing to gain
by treating them cruelly. On them he could devolve the labour of producing
food, and so set free his own kinsmen to assert the power of their house. In
an age of conflict stronger units tended to absorb weaker, and the formation
of larger societies would tend to create fresh needs, to encourage the
division of labour, and to promote civilization by the process of exchange.
Labour under assured control was likely to prove an economic asset of
increasing value. In agriculture it would be of special importance as
providing food for warriors busied with serving the community in war.
This imaginative sketch may serve to remind us that there are two
questions open to discussion in relation to the subject. First, the purely
speculative one, whether the early stages of progress in civilization could
have been passed without the help of slavery. Second, the question of fact,
whether they were so passed or not. It is the latter with which I am
concerned. The defects of the evidence on which we have to form an
opinion are manifest. Much of it is not at first hand, and it will often be
necessary to comment on its unsatisfactory character. In proceeding to set it
out in detail, I must again repeat that two classes of free handworkers must
be clearly kept distinct—those who work for themselves, and those who
work for others. It is the latter class only that properly come into
comparison with slaves. A man habitually working for himself may of
course work occasionally for others as a wage-earner. But here, as in the
case of the farmer-soldier, we have one person in two capacities.

AUTHORITIES IN DETAIL—GREEK
III. THE HOMERIC POEMS.

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

indeed the ox is a normal standard of value. But the herdsmen are mean
freemen. Achilles is disgusted[27] at the prospect of being drowned by
Scamander ‘like a young swineherd swept away by a stream in flood.’ For
the heroes of the poem are warrior-lords: the humble toilers of daily life are
of no account beside them.
And yet the fact of slavery stands out clearly, and also its connexion with
the fact of capture in war. The normal way of dealing with enemies is to
slay the men and enslave the women. The wife of a great warrior has many
handmaidens, captives of her lord’s prowess. A slave-trade exists, and we
hear of males being spared[28] and ‘sold abroad’: for they are sent ‘to
islands far away’ or ‘beyond the salt sea.’ We do not find male slaves with
the army: perhaps we may guess that they were not wanted. A single
reference to δμῶες (properly slave-captives) appears in xix 333, where
Achilles, speaking of his property at home in Phthia, says κτῆσιν ἐμὴν
δμῶάς τε. But we cannot be certain that these slaves are farm-hands. We
can only reflect that a slave bought and paid for was not likely to be fed in
idleness or put to the lightest work. In general it seems that what weighed
upon the slave, male or female, was the pressure of constraint, the loss of
freedom, not the fear of cruel treatment. What Hector keeps from the
Trojans[29] is the ‘day of constraint,’ ἦμαρ ἀναγκαῖον, also expressed by
δούλιον ἦμαρ. Viewed from the other side we find enslavement consisting
in a taking away[30] the ‘day of freedom,’ ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ. The words
δούλην iii 409 and ἀνδραπόδεσσι vii 475 are isolated cases of substantives
in passages the genuineness of which has been questioned. On the whole it
is I think not an unfair guess that, if the poet had been depicting the life of
this same Greek society in their homeland, and not under conditions of
present war, we should have found more references to slavery as a working
institution. As it is, we get a momentary glimpse[31] of neighbour
landowners, evidently on a small scale, engaged in a dispute concerning
their boundaries, measuring-rod in hand; and nothing to shew whether such
persons supplied the whole of their own labour in tillage or supplemented it
by employing hired men or slaves.
The Odyssey is generally held to be of later date than the Iliad. A far
more important distinction is that its scenes are not episodes of war. A
curious difference of terms[32] is seen in the case of the word οἰκῆες, which
in the Iliad seems to mean ‘house-folk’ including both free and slave, in the

Odyssey to mean slaves only. But as to the condition of slaves there is
practically no difference. A conquered foe was spared on the battlefield by
grace of the conqueror, whose ownership of his slave was unlimited: and
this unlimited right could be conveyed by sale[33] to a third party. We find
Odysseus ready to consign offending slaves[34] to torture mutilation or
death. In the story of his visit to Troy[35] as a spy we hear that he passed for
a slave, and that part of his disguise consisted in the marks of flogging. Yet
the relations of master and mistress to their slaves are most kindly in
ordinary circumstances. The faithful slave is a type glorified in the
Odyssey: loyalty is the first virtue of a slave, and it is disloyalty, however
shewn, that justifies the master’s vengeance. For they live on intimate
terms[36] with their master and mistress and are trusted to a wonderful
degree. In short we may say that the social atmosphere of the Odyssey is
full of mild slavery, but that in the background there is always the grim
possibility of atrocities committed by absolute power. And we have a trace
even of secondary[37] slavery: for the swineherd, himself a slave, has an
under-slave of his own, bought with his own goods from slave-dealers
while his own master was abroad. Naturally enough we find slaves classed
as a part of the lord’s estate. Odysseus hopes[38] that before he dies he may
set eyes on his property, his slaves and his lofty mansion. But another and
perhaps socially more marked distinction seems implied in the suitors’
question[39] about Telemachus—‘who were the lads that went with him on
his journey? were they young nobles of Ithaca, or his own hired men and
slaves (θῆτές τε δμῶές τε)?’ The answer is that they were ‘the pick of the
community, present company excepted.’ The wage-earner and the slave do
not seem to be parted by any broad social line. Indeed civilization had a
long road yet to travel before levelling movement among the free classes
drew a vital distinction between them on the one side and slaves on the
other.
Free workers of various kinds are often referred to, and we are, owing to
the circumstances of the story, brought more into touch with them than in
the Iliad. Handicraftsmen[40] are a part of the life of the time, and we must
assume the smith the carpenter and the rest of the males to be free: female
slaves skilled in working wool do not justify us in supposing that the
corresponding men are slaves. Beside these are other men who practise a
trade useful to the community, ‘public-workers’ (δημιοεργοί)[41], but not

necessarily handworkers. Thus we find the seer, the leech, the bard, classed
with the carpenter as persons whom all men would readily entertain as
guests; the wandering beggar none would invite. The last is a type of ‘mean
freeman,’ evidently common in that society. He is too much akin to the
suppliant, whom religion[42] protects, to be roughly shewn the door: he is
αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης[43], and trades on the reverence felt for one who appeals as
stranger to hospitable custom. Thus he picks up a living[44] from the scraps
and offals of great houses. But he is despised, and, what concerns us here,
despised[45] not only for his abject poverty but for his aversion to honest
work. That the poet admires industry is clear, and is curiously illustrated by
his contrasted pictures of civilization and barbarism. In Phaeacia are the
fenced-in gardens[46] that supply Alcinous and his people with never-failing
fruits: the excellence of their naval craftsmen is expressed in the ‘yarn’ of
ships that navigate themselves. In the land of the Cyclopes, nature
provides[47] them with corn and wine, but they neither sow nor plough.
They have flocks of sheep and goats. They have no ships or men to build
them. They live in caves, isolated savages with no rudiments of civil life. It
is not too much to say that the poet is a believer in work and a contemner of
idleness: the presence of slaves does not suggest that the free man is to be
lazy. Odysseus boasts of his activities (δρηστοσύνη)[48]. He is ready to split
wood and lay a fire, to prepare and serve a meal, and in short to wait on the
insolent suitors as inferiors do on nobles. Of course he is still the unknown
wanderer: but the contrast[49] between him and the genuine beggar Irus is an
effective piece of by-play in the poem.
Turning to agriculture, we may note that it fills no small place. Wheat
and barley, pounded or ground to meal, seem to furnish the basis of
civilized diet. The Cyclops[50] does not look like a ‘bread-eating man,’ and
wine completely upsets him to his ruin. Evidently the bounty of nature has
been wasted on such a savage. But the cultivation of cereal crops is rather
assumed than emphasized in the pictures of Greek life. We hear of tilled
lands (ἔργα)[51], and farm-labour (ἔργον)[52] is mentioned as too wearisome
for a high-spirited warrior noble. The tired and hungry plowman[53] appears
in a simile. But the favourite culture is that of the vine and olive and other
fruits in orchards carefully fenced and tended. One of the suitors makes a
jesting offer[54] to the unknown Odysseus ‘Stranger, would you be willing

to serve for hire (θητευέμεν), if I took you on, in an outlying field—you
shall have a sufficient wage—gathering stuff for fences and planting tall
trees? I would see that you were regularly fed clothed and shod. No, you are
a ne’er-do-weel (ἔργα κάκ’ ἔμμαθες) and will not do farm-work (ἔργον):
you prefer to go round cringing for food to fill your insatiate belly.’ This
scornful proposal sets the noble’s contempt for wage-earning labour in a
clear light. And the shade of Achilles, repudiating[55] the suggestion that it
is a great thing to be a ruler among the dead in the ghostly world, says ‘I
had rather be one bound to the soil, serving another for hire, employed by
some landless man of little property, than be king of all the dead.’ He is
speaking strongly: to work for hire, a mean destiny at best, is at its meanest
when the employer is a man with no land-lot of his own (ἄκληρος),
presumably occupying on precarious tenure a bit of some lord’s estate.
After such utterances we cannot wonder that as we saw above, θῆτες and
δμῶες are mentioned[56] in the same breath.
That slaves are employed on the farm is clear enough. When Penelope
sends for old Dolius[57], a servus dotalis of hers (to use the Roman
expression) she adds ‘who is in charge of my fruit-garden,’ So too the aged
Laertes, living a hard life on his farm, has a staff of slaves[58] to do his will,
and their quarters and farm duties are a marked detail of the picture. The old
man, in dirty rags like a slave, is a contrast[59] to the garden, in which every
plant and tree attests the devoted toil of his gardeners under his own skilled
direction. Odysseus, as yet unrecognized by his father, asks him how he
comes to be in such a mean attire, though under it he has the look of a king.
Then he drops this tone and says ‘but tell me, whose slave[60] are you, and
who owns the orchard you are tending?’ The hero knows his father, but to
preserve for the present his own incognito he addresses him as the slave that
he appears to be. Now if garden work was done by slaves, surely the
rougher operations of corn-growing were not confined to free labour, and
slaves pass unmentioned as a matter of course. Or are we to suppose that
free labour had been found more economical in the long run, and so was
employed for the production of a staple food? I can hardly venture to
attribute so mature a view to the society of the Odyssey. We must not forget
that animal food, flesh and milk, was an important element of diet, and that
the management of flocks and herds was therefore a great part of rustic
economy. But the herdsmen in charge are slaves, such as Eumaeus, bought

in his youth by Laertes[61] of Phoenician kidnappers. In romancing about
his own past experiences Odysseus describes a raid in Egypt, and how the
natives rallied[62] and took their revenge. ‘Many of our company they slew:
others they took alive into the country, to serve them in forced labour.’ As
the ravaging of their ‘beautiful farms’ was a chief part of the raiders’
offence, the labour exacted from these captives seems most probably
agricultural.
An interesting question arises in reference to the faithful slaves, the
swineherd and the goatherd. When Odysseus promises them rewards in the
event of his destroying the suitors with their help, does this include an offer
of freedom? Have we here, as some have thought, a case of manumission—
of course in primitive form, without the legal refinements of later times?
The promise is made[63] so to speak in the character of a father-in-law: ‘I
will provide you both with wives and give you possessions and well-built
houses near to me, and you shall in future be to me comrades and brothers
of Telemachus.’ The ‘brotherhood’ suggested sounds as if it must imply
freedom. But does it? Eumaeus had been brought up[64] by Laertes as the
playmate of his daughter Ctimene; yet he remained nevertheless a slave.
Earlier in the poem Eumaeus, excusing the poor entertainment that he can
offer the stranger (Odysseus), laments the absence[65] of his lord, ‘who’ he
says ‘would have shewn me hearty affection and given me possessions such
as a kindly lord gives his slave (οἰκῆι), a house and a land-lot (κλῆρον) and
a wife of recognized worth (πολυμνήστην), as a reward for laborious and
profitable service.’ Here also there is no direct reference to an expected
grant of freedom: nor do I think that it is indirectly implied. It is no doubt
tempting to detect in these passages the germ of the later manumission. But
it is not easy to say why, in a world of little groups ruled by noble chiefs,
the gift of freedom should have been a longed-for boon. However high-born
the slave might have been in his native land, in Ithaca he was simply a
slave. If by belonging to a lord he got material comfort and protection, what
had he to gain by becoming a mere wage-earner? surely nothing. I can see
no ground for believing that in the society of the ‘heroic’ age the bare name
of freedom was greatly coveted. It was high birth that really mattered, but
the effect of this would be local: nothing would make Eumaeus, though son
of a king, noble in Ithaca. No doubt the slave might be at the mercy of a
cruel lord. Such a slave would long for freedom, but such a lord was not

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

IV. HESIOD.

Hesiod, Works and Days. Whether this curious poem belongs in its
present shape to the seventh century bc, or not, I need not attempt to decide.
It seems certain that it is later than the great Homeric poems, but is an early
work, perhaps somewhat recast and interpolated, yet in its main features
representing conditions and views of a society rural, half-primitive,

aristocratic. I see no reason to doubt that it may fairly be cited in evidence
for my present purpose. The scene of the ‘Works’ is in Boeotia: the works
(ἔργα) are operations of farming, and the precepts chiefly saws of rustic
wisdom. Poverty[67] is the grim spectre that haunts the writer, conscious of
the oppressions of the proud and the hardness of a greedy world. Debt,
want, beggary, must be avoided at all costs. They can only be avoided[68] by
thrift, forethought, watchfulness, promptitude that never procrastinates, and
toil that never ceases. And the mere appeal to self-interest is reinforced by
recognizing the stimulus of competition (ἔρις)[69] which in the form of
honest rivalry is a good influence. The poet represents himself as owner of a
land-lot (κλῆρος)[70], part of a larger estate, the joint patrimony of his
brother Perses and himself: this estate has already been divided, but points
of dispute still remain. Hesiod suggests that Perses has been wronging him
with the help of bribed ‘kings.’ But wrongdoing is not the true road to
wellbeing. A dinner of herbs and a clear conscience are the better way. As
the proverb says ‘half is more than the whole.’ Perses is treated to much
good advice, the gist of which is first and foremost an exhortation[71] to
work (ἐργάζευ), that is, work on the land, in which is the source of
honourable wealth. Personal labour is clearly meant: it is in the sweat[72] of
his brow that the farmer is to thrive. Such is the ordinance of the gods. Man
is meant to resemble[73] the worker bee, not the worthless drone. It is not
ἔργον but idleness (ἀεργίη) that is a reproach. Get wealth[74] by working,
and the idler will want to rival you: honour and glory attend on wealth.
Avoid delays[75] and vain talk: the procrastinator is never sure of a living;
for he is always hoping, when he should act. Whether sowing or ploughing
or mowing, off with your outer[76] garment, if you mean to get your farm-
duties done in due season. The farmer must rise early, and never get
behindhand with his work: to be in time, and never caught napping by
changes of weather, is his duty.
Here is a picture of humble and strenuous life, very different from the
scenes portrayed in the ‘heroic’ epics. It seems to belong to a later and less
warlike age. But the economic and social side of life is in many respects
little changed. The free handicraftsmen seem much the same. Jealousy of
rivals[77] in the same trade—potter, carpenter, beggar, or bard—is a touch
that attests their freedom. The smith, the weaver, the shoemaker, and the

shipwright, are mentioned[78] also. Seafaring[79] for purposes of gain
illustrates what men will dare in quest of wealth. You should not cast a
man’s poverty[80] in his teeth: but do not fancy that men will give you[81] of
their store, if you and your family fall into poverty. Clearly the beggar is not
more welcome than he was in the world of the Odyssey. Suppliant and
stranger are protected[82] by religion, and a man should honour his aged
father, if he would see good days. A motive suggested for careful service of
the gods is ‘that you may buy another’s estate[83] and not another buy
yours’—that is, that the gods may give you increase. Just so you should
keep a watch-dog, that thieves[84] may not steal your goods by night.
Hesiod’s farmer is to keep the social and religious rules and usages—but he
is before all things a keen man of business, no Roman more so.
The labour employed by this close-fisted countryman is partly free partly
slave. In a passage[85] of which the exact rendering is disputed the hired
man (θῆτα) and woman (ἔριθον) are mentioned as a matter of course. For a
helper (ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ)[86] his wage must be secure (ἄρκιος) as stipulated.
References to slaves (δμῶες)[87] are more frequent, and the need of constant
watchfulness, to see that they are not lazy and are properly fed housed and
rested, is insisted on. The feeding of cattle and slaves is regulated according
to their requirements in different seasons of the year: efficiency is the
object, and evidently experience is the guide. Of female slaves there is no
certain[88] mention: indeed there could be little demand for domestic
attendants in the farmer’s simple home. Such work as weaving[89] is to be
done by his wife. For the farmer is to marry, though the risks[90] of that
venture are not hidden from the poet, who gives plain warnings as to the
exercise of extreme care in making a suitable choice. The operations of
agriculture are the usual ploughing sowing reaping threshing and the
processes of the vineyard and the winepress. Oxen sheep and mules form
the live-stock. Corn is the staple[91] diet, with hay as fodder for beasts.
Looking on the picture as a whole, we see that the Hesiodic farmer is to
be a model of industry and thrift. Business, not sentiment, is the note of his
character. His function is to survive in his actual circumstances; that is, in a
social and economic environment of normal selfishness. If his world is not a
very noble one, it is at least eminently practical. He is a true αὐτουργός,
setting his own hand to the plough, toiling for himself on his own land, with

slaves and other cattle obedient to his will. It is perhaps not too much to say
that he illustrates a great truth bearing on the labour-question,—that
successful exploitation of other men’s labour is, at least in semi-primitive
societies, only to be achieved by the man who shares the labour himself.
And it is to be noted that he attests the existence of wage-earning hands as
well as slaves. I take this to mean that there were in his rustic world a
number of landless freemen compelled to make a living as mere farm
labourers. That we hear so much less of this class in later times is probably
to be accounted for by the growth of cities and the absorption of such
persons in urban occupations and trades.

V. STRAY NOTES FROM EARLY POETS.

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

farmers were mostly confined to the rocky uplands. Evidently it is not
manual labour that is the hardship, but the dependent position of the hired
man working on another’s land. The hard-working independent peasant,
willing to till stony land for his own support, is the type that Solon
encouraged and Peisistratus[95] approved.
The life of such peasant farmers was at best a hard one, and little desired
by men living under easier conditions. Two fragments from Ionia express
views of dwellers in that rich and genial land. Phocylides of Miletus in one
of his wise counsels says ‘if you desire wealth, devote your care to a fat
farm (πίονος ἀγροῦ), for the saying is that a farm is a horn of plenty.’ The
bitter Hipponax of Ephesus describes a man as having lived a gluttonous
life and so eaten up his estate (τὸν κλῆρον): the result is that he is driven to
dig a rocky hillside and live on common figs and barley bread—mere
slave’s fodder (δούλιον χόρτον). Surely the ‘fat farm’ was not meant to be
worked by the owner singlehanded; and the ‘slave’s fodder’ suggests the
employment of slaves. Ionia was a home of luxury and ease.
The oft-quoted scolion of the Cretan Hybrias illustrates the point of view
of the warrior class in more military communities. His wealth is in sword
spear and buckler. It is with these tools that he does his ploughing reaping
or vintage. That is, he has command of the labour of others, and enjoys their
produce. We shall speak below of the well-known lords and serfs of Crete.

VI. TRACES OF SERFDOM IN GREEK STATES.

Before passing on to the times in which the merits of a free farmer-class,
from military and political points of view, became a matter of general and
conscious consideration, it is desirable to refer briefly to the recorded cases
of agricultural serfdom in Greek states. For the rustic serf is a type quite
distinct from the free farmer, the hired labourer, or the slave; though the
language of some writers is loose, and does not clearly mark the distinction.
Six well-known cases present themselves, in connexion with Sparta, Crete,
Argos, Thessaly, Syracuse, and Heraclea on the Pontus. Into the details of
these systems it is not necessary to enter, interesting though many of them
are. The important feature common to them all is the delegation of
agricultural labour. A stronger or better-organized people become masters of
a weaker population, conquering their country by force of arms, and sparing

the conquered on certain terms. The normal effect of the compact is that the
conquerors are established as a ruling warrior class, whose subsistence is
provided by the labour of the subject people. These subjects remain on the
land as farmers, paying a fixed quota of their produce to their masters.
Some are serfs of the state, and pay their dues to the state authorities: some
are serfs of individuals, and pay to their lords. In either case they are strictly
attached to the land, and cannot be sold out of the country. This clearly
marks off the serf from the slave held in personal bondage. In some cases
certainly, probably in all, the warrior class (at least the wealthier of them)
had also slaves for their own personal service. The serf-system differs from
a caste-system. Both, it is true, are hereditary systems, or have a strong
tendency to become so. The ruling class do not easily admit deserving
subjects into their own ranks. And they take precautions to hinder the
degradation of their equals into lower conditions through poverty. The
warrior’s land-lot (κλᾶρος), the sale of which is forbidden, is a favourite
institution for the purpose. That such warrior aristocracies could not be kept
up in vigour for an indefinite time, was to be proved by experience. Their
duration depended on external as well as internal conditions. Hostile
invasion might destroy the efficiency of state regulations, however well
adapted to keep the serfs under control. Sparta always feared her Helots,
and it was essential to keep an enemy out of Laconia. Early in the history of
Syracuse the unprivileged masses were supported by the serfs in their rising
against the squatter-lords, the γαμόροι whose great estates represented the
allotments of the original settlers. In Crete and Thessaly matters were
complicated by lack of a central authority. There were a number of cities:
subordination and cooperation were alike hard to secure, and the history of
both groups is a story of jealousy, collisions, and weakness. The Thessalian
Penestae often rebelled. The two classes of Cretan[96] serfs (public and
private) were kept quiet partly by rigid exclusion from all training of a
military kind, partly by their more favourable condition: but the insular
position of Crete was perhaps a factor of equal importance. The long
control of indigenous barbarian serfs by the city of Heraclea was probably
the result of similar causes.
But in all these cases it is conquest that produces the relation between the
tiller of the soil and his overlord. Whether the serf is regarded as a weaker
Greek or as a Barbarian (non-Greek) is not at present the main question
from my point of view. The notion of castes, belonging to the same society

and influenced by the same racial and religious traditions, but each
performing a distinct function—priestly military agricultural etc.—as in
ancient India, is another thing altogether. Caste separates functions, but the
division is in essence collateral. Serfdom is a delegation of functions, and is
a compulsory subordination. That the Greeks of the seventh and sixth
centuries bc were already becoming conscious of a vital difference between
other races and themselves, is fairly certain. It was soon to express itself in
the common language. Contact with Persia was soon to crystallize this
feeling into a moral antipathy, a disgust and contempt that found voice in
the arrogant claim that while nature’s law justifies the ruling of servile
Barbarians by free Greeks, a reversal of the relation is an unnatural
monstrosity. Yet I cannot discover that Greeks ever gave up enslaving
brother Greeks. Callicratidas in the field and Plato in his school might
protest against the practice; it still remained the custom in war to sell as
slaves those, Greek or Barbarian, whom the sword had spared. We shall also
find cases in which the remnant of the conquered were left in their homes
but reduced to the condition of cultivating serfs.
Among the little that is known of the ancient Etruscans, whose power
was once widely extended in Italy, is the fact that they dwelt in cities and
ruled a serf population who lived chiefly in the country. The ruling race
were apparently invaders not akin to any of the Italian stocks: their subjects
probably belonged to the old Ligurian race, in early times spread over a
large part of the peninsula. That the Etruscan cities recognized a common
interest, but in practice did not support each other consistently, was the
chief cause of their gradual weakening and final fall. Noble lords with
warlike traditions had little bent for farm life or sympathy with the serfs
who tilled the soil. The two classes seem to have kept to their own[97]
languages, and the Etruscan gradually died out under the supremacy of
Rome.

VII. HERODOTUS.

Herodotus, writing in the first half of the fifth century bc, partly
recording the results of his own travels, partly dependent on the work of his
predecessors, is a witness of great value. In him we find the contrast and
antipathy[98] of Greek and Barbarian an acknowledged fact, guiding and

dominating Greek sentiment. Unhappily he yields us very little evidence
bearing on the present subject. To slavery and slave-trade he often refers
without comment: these are matters of course. The servile character of
oriental peoples subject to Persia is contemptuously described[99] through
the mouth of the Greek queen of Halicarnassus. Nor does he spare the
Ionian Greeks, whose jealousies and consequent inefficiency made them the
unworthy tools of Persian ambition; a sad contrast to those patriotic Greeks
of old Hellas who, fired by the grand example of Athens, fought for their
freedom and won it in the face of terrible odds. The disgust—a sort of
physical loathing—with which the free Greek, proud of training his body to
perfection, regarded corporal mutilation as practised in the East, is
illustrated by such passages[100] as that in which the Persians are astounded
at the Greek athletic competitions for a wreath of olive leaves, and that in
which he coolly tells the story of the eunuch’s revenge. But all this,
interesting as giving us his point of view, does not help us in clearing up the
relations of free and slave labour. As for handicrafts, it is enough to refer to
the well-known passage[101] in which, while speaking of Egypt, he will not
decide whether the Greeks got their contempt for manual trades from the
Egyptians or not. That the Greeks, above all the Spartans, do despise
χειρωναξίαι, is certain; but least true of the Corinthians. Barbarians in
general respect the warrior class among their own folk and regard manual
trades as ignoble. So the source of Greek prejudice is doubtful. That the
craftsmen are free is clear from the whole context. It is remarkable that in
enumerating seven classes of the Egyptian population he mentions no
class[102] as devoted to the tillage of the soil, but two of herdsmen, in charge
of cattle and swine. Later authorities mention[103] the γεωργοί, and connect
them with the military class, rightly, it would seem: for Herodotus[104]
refers to the farms granted by the kings to this class. They are farmer-
soldiers. It would seem that they were free, so far as any Egyptian could be
called free, and worked their land themselves. If this inference be just, we
may observe that a Greek thought it a fact worth noting. Was this owing to
the contrast[105] offered by systems of serfage in the Greek world?
It is curious that wage-labour is hardly ever directly mentioned. In
describing[106] the origin of the Macedonian kings, who claimed descent
from an Argive stock, he says that three brothers, exiles from Argos, came
to Macedon. There they served the king for wages as herdsmen in charge of

his horses cattle sheep and goats. The simplicity of the royal household is
emphasized as illustrating the humble scale of ancient monarchies. Alarmed
by a prodigy, the king calls his servants (τοὺς θῆτας) and tells them to leave
his country. The sequel does not concern us here: we need only note that
work for wages is referred to as a matter of course. The same relation is
probably meant in the case of the Arcadian deserters[107] who came to
Xerxes after Thermopylae, in need of sustenance (βίου) and wishing to get
work (ἐνεργοὶ εἶναι). But the term θητεύειν is not used. And the few
Athenians who stayed behind[108] in the Acropolis when Athens was
evacuated, partly through sheer poverty (ὑπ’ ἀσθενείης βίου), would seem
to be θῆτες. It is fair to infer that hired labour is assumed as a normal fact in
Greek life. For the insistence on poverty[109] as naturally endemic
(σύντροφος) in Hellas, only overcome by the manly qualities (ἀρετὴ)
developed in the conquest of hard conditions by human resourcefulness
(σοφίη), shews us the background of the picture present to the writer’s
mind. It is his way of telling us that the question of food-supply was a
serious one. Out of her own soil Hellas was only able to support a thin
population. Hence Greek forces were absurdly small compared with the
myriads of Persia: but the struggle for existence had strung them up to such
efficiency and resolute love of freedom that they were ready to face fearful
odds.
The passage occurs in the reply of Demaratus the Spartan to a question of
Xerxes, and refers more particularly to Sparta. In respect of courage and
military efficiency the claim is appropriate: but poverty was surely
characteristic of nearly all the European Hellas, and the language on that
point is strictly correct, probably representing the writer’s own view. It is
also quite consistent with the statement[110] that in early times, before the
Athenians had as yet driven all the indigenous population out of Attica,
neither the Athenians nor the Greeks generally had slaves (οἰκέτας). The
context seems to indicate that domestic slaves are specially meant. I do not
lay much stress on this allegation, urged as it is in support of a case by one
party to the dispute: but it is a genuine tradition, which appears again in the
later literature. In the time of Herodotus there were plenty of domestic
slaves. Accordingly he finds it worth while to mention[111] that Scythian
kings are attended by persons of their own race, there being no bought
servants employed.

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

VIII. THE TRAGEDIANS.

The lives of Aeschylus (died 456 bc) Sophocles and Euripides (both
died 406 bc) cover a period of stirring events in the history of Greece,
particularly of Athens. Aeschylus had borne his part in the Persian wars: he
was a fighting man when Herodotus was born, and Sophocles a boy.
Euripides saw the rise of Athenian power to its greatest height, and died
with Sophocles on the eve of its fall. These men had seen strange and
terrible things. Hellas had only beaten off the Persian to ruin herself by her
own internecine conflicts. While the hatred and contempt for ‘barbarians’
grew from sentiment into something very like a moral principle, Greeks

butchered or enslaved brother Greeks on an unprecedented scale. Greek
lands were laid waste by Greek armies: the devastation of Attica in
particular had serious effects on the politics and policy of Athens. Athens at
length lost her control of the Euxine corn trade and was starved out. For the
moment a decision was reached: the reactionary rural powers, backed by
the commercial jealousy of Corinth, had triumphed. No thoughtful man in
Athens during the time when the rustic population were crowded into the
city, idle and plagued with sickness, could be indifferent to the strain on
democratic institutions. This spectacle suggested reflexions that
permanently influenced Greek thought on political subjects. The tendency
was to accept democracy in some form and degree as inevitable in most
states, and to seek salvation in means of checking the foolish
extravagancies of mob-rule. The best of these means was the
encouragement of farmer-citizens: but the circumstances of Greek history
made practical success on these lines impossible. In practice, oligarchy
meant privilege, to which a scattered farming population would submit;
democracy meant mob-rule sooner or later, and the dominance of urban
interests. The problem which Plato and Aristotle could not solve was
already present in the latter part of the Peloponnesian war. Aristophanes
might ridicule Euripides, but on the country-and-town issue the two were
agreed.
Aeschylus indeed furnishes very little to my purpose directly. The Greek
antipathy to the Barbarian is very clearly marked; but the only points worth
noting are that in the Persae[114] he makes Persian speakers refer to their
own people as βάρβαροι, and that in a bitter passage of the Eumenides he
expresses[115] his loathing of mutilations and tortures, referring no doubt to
Persian cruelties. Agriculture can hardly be said to be mentioned at all, for
the gift of weather-wisdom[116] is useful to others than the farmer, and the
Scythian steppes are untilled land. A fragment, telling of a happy land[117]
where all things grow in plenty unsown without ploughing or digging,
reminds us of the Odyssey, minus the savages: another, referring to the
advance made in domestication of beasts to relieve men of toil, make up the
meagre list. All are in connexion with Prometheus. There are two
interesting passages[118] in which the word γαμόρος (landholder) occurs,
but merely as an expression for a man with the rights and responsibilities of
a citizen. There is nothing of tillage. It was natural for the champion of the

power of the Areopagus to view the citizen from the landholding side. He is
a respecter of authority, but at the same time lays great stress on the duty
and importance of deference to public opinion. This tone runs through the
surviving plays, wherever the scene of a particular drama may be laid.
Athenian conditions are always in his mind, and his final judgment appears
in the Eumenides as an appeal to all true citizens to combine freedom with
order. Ties of blood, community of religious observances, the relation
between citizens and aliens, are topics on which he dwells again and again.
In general it is fair to conclude that, while he cheerfully accepted the free
constitution of Athens as it stood since the democratic reform of
Cleisthenes, he thought that it was quite democratic enough, and regarded
more recent tendencies with some alarm. Now these tendencies, in
particular the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles, were certainly in the
direction of lessening the influence of the Attic farmers and increasing that
of the urban citizens, who were on the spot to take advantage of them. To
put it in the briefest form, Aeschylus must be reckoned an admirer of the
solid and responsible citizens of the old school, men with a stake in the
country.
Sophocles also supplies very little. The antipathy of Greeks to Barbarians
appears in a milder form: Aeschylus was naturally more bitter, having
fought against the Persian invader. The doctrine that public opinion (of
citizens) ought to be respected, that obedience to constituted authorities is a
duty, in short the principle that freedom should be combined with order, is
set forth in various passages of dramatic debate. Yet the scenes of the plays,
as those of Aeschylus, are laid in legendary ages that knew not democracy.
The awful potency of ties of blood, and the relations of citizen and alien,
are topics common to both. But I think it may fairly be said that political
feeling is less evident in Sophocles. This is consistent with his traditional
character. In their attitude towards slavery there is no striking difference:
both treat it as a matter of course. But in Sophocles there are already
signs[119] of the questioning that was soon to become outspoken, as to the
justice of the relation of master and slave. Agriculture is hardly mentioned.
The words γεωργός, γεωργεῖν, γεωργία, are (as in Aeschylus) not used. A
reference to ploughing occurs in a famous passage[120] celebrating the
resourcefulness of Man. The herdsman, usually a slave, is once[121] spoken
of as perhaps a hired servant. One curious passage[122] calls for notice. In

the Trachiniae the indifference of Heracles to his children is compared by
his wife Deianira to the conduct of a farmer (γῄτης) who has got a farm at a
distance (ἄρουραν ἔκτοπον) and only visits it at seed-time and harvest. The
man is apparently a non-resident landowner, living presumably in the city
(surely Athens is in the poet’s mind) and working his farm by deputy—a
steward—and only inspecting it at important seasons. Whether the labour
employed is slave or free, there is nothing to shew. It is of interest to find
the situation sufficiently real to be used in a simile. But I infer that the
situation, like the conduct of Heracles, is regarded as exceptional.
Euripides takes us into a very different atmosphere. An age of movement
was also an age of criticism and inquiry, social religious political ethical.
The intellectual leaders came from various parts of the Greek world, but the
intellectual centre of ‘obstinate questionings’ was Athens, and their poet
Euripides. The use of drama, with plots drawn from ancient legend, as a
vehicle for reflexions on human problems, addressed to a contemporary
audience and certain to evoke assent and dissent, is the regular practice of
Euripides. His plays give us a mass of information as to the questions
exercising the minds of thoughtful men in a stirring period. The point of
view is that of the new school, the enlightened ‘thinkers’ who claimed the
right to challenge traditional principles, opinions, prejudices, and
institutions, testing them by the canons of human reason fearlessly applied.
This attitude was naturally resented by men of the old school, averse to any
disturbing influence tending to undermine the traditional morality, and
certain to react upon politics. Their opposition can still be traced in the
comedies of Aristophanes and in various political movements during the
Peloponnesian war. Among the topics to which the new school turned their
attention were two of special interest to Euripides. The power of wealth was
shewing itself in the growth of capitalistic enterprise, an illustration of
which is seen in the case of the rich slaveowner Nicias. Poverty[123] and its
disadvantages, sometimes amounting to sheer degradation, was as ever a
subject of discontent: and this was closely connected with the position of
free wage-earning labour. At Athens political action took a strong line in the
direction of utilizing the wealth of the rich in the service of the state: for the
poor, its dominant tendency was to provide opportunities of drawing state
pay (μισθός), generally a bare living wage, for the performance of various
public duties. The other topic, that of slavery, had as yet hardly reached the
stage of questioning the right or wrong of that institution as such. But the

consciousness that the slave, like his master, was a blend of human virtues
and human vices,—was a man, in short,—was evidently becoming clearer,
and suggesting the conclusion that he must be judged as a man and not as a
mere chattel. Otherwise Euripides would hardly have ventured to bring
slaves on the stage[124] in so sympathetic a spirit, or to utter numerous
sayings, bearing on their merits and failings, in a tone of broad humanity.
In such circumstances how came it that there was no sign of a movement
analogous to modern Abolitionism? If the slave was confessedly a man, had
he not the rights of a man? The answer is plain. That a man, simply as a
man, had any rights, was a doctrine not yet formulated or clearly conceived.
The antipathy[125] between Greek and Barbarian was a practical bar to its
recognition. The Persian was not likely to moderate his treatment of Greeks
in his power from any such consideration: superior force, nothing less,
would induce him to conform to Greek notions of humanity. While force
was recognized as the sole foundation of right as against free enemies, there
could not be much serious doubt as to the right of holding aliens in slavery.
But in this questioning age another theoretical basis of discussion had been
found. Men were testing institutions by asking in reference to each ‘is it a
natural[126] growth? does it exist by nature (φύσει)? or is it a conventional
status? does it exist by law (νόμῳ)?’ Here was one of the most unsettling
inquiries of the period. In reference to slavery we find two conflicting
doctrines beginning to emerge. One is[127] that all men are born free (φύσει)
and that slavery is therefore a creation of man’s device (νόμῳ). The other is
that superior strength is a gift of nature, and therefore the rule of the
weaker[128] by the stronger is according to nature. The conflict between
these two views was destined to engage some of the greatest minds of
Greece in later years, when the political failure of the Greek states had
diverted men’s thoughts to problems concerning the individual. For the
present slavery was taken for granted, but it is evident that the seeds of
future doubt had been sown. Among the stray utterances betraying
uneasiness is the oft-quoted saying[129] of the sophist Alcidamas ‘god leaves
all men free: nature makes no man a slave.’ The speaker was contemporary
with Euripides, whose sayings are often in much the same tone, if less
direct. A remarkable passage is that in which he makes Heracles
repudiate[130] the myths that represent slavery as existing among the gods.
No god that is a real god has any needs, and such tales are rubbish—an

argument that was destined to reappear later as bearing upon slavery among
men, particularly in connexion with the principles of the Cynic school.
I have said enough as to the point of view from which the questioners,
such as Euripides, regarded slavery. It is somewhat surprising that the poet’s
references to hired labour[131] are very few, and all of a depressing kind,
treating θητεύειν as almost or quite equivalent to δουλεύειν. The references
or allusions to handicrafts are hardly to the point: such men are doubtless
conceived as θῆτες, but they would generally direct themselves in virtue of
their trade-skill: they are not hired ‘hands.’ Herdsmen often appear, but
generally if not always they seem to be slaves or serfs. Nor is it clear that
the digger (σκαφεύς) is free; he is referred to[132] as a specimen of the
meanest class of labourer. But in three of the plays there occur passages
directly descriptive of the poor working farmer, the αὐτουργὸς of whom I
have spoken above. In the Electra, the prologue is put in the mouth of the
poor but well-born αὐτουργὸς to whom the crafty Aegisthus has given
Electra in marriage. The scene between husband and wife is one of peculiar
delicacy and interest. The points that concern us here are these. The
princess has been united[133] to a poor and powerless freeman. He is fully
occupied[134] with the hard labour of his farm, which he apparently
cultivates singlehanded. He understands the motive of Aegisthus, and shews
his respect for Electra by refraining from conjugal rights. She in turn
respects his nobility, and shews her appreciation by cheerfully
performing[135] the humble duties of a cottar’s wife. When the breadwinner
(ἐργάτης) comes home from toil, he should find all ready for his comfort.
He is shocked to see her, a lady of gentle breeding (εὖ τεθραμμένη) fetch
water from the spring and wait upon his needs. But he has to accept the
situation: the morrow’s dawn[136] shall see him at his labour on the land: it
is all very well to pray for divine aid, but to get a living the first thing
needful is to work. Now here we have a picture of the free farmer on a
small scale, who lives in a hovel and depends on the labour of his own
hands. He is the ancient analogue of the French peasant, who works harder
than any slave, and whose views are apt to be limited by the circumstances
of his daily life. He has no slaves[137]. Again, the Theban herald in the
Supplices[138], speaking of the incapacity of a Demos for the function of
government, says ‘but a poor husbandman (γαπόνος ἀνὴρ πένης), even if
not stupid, will be too busy to attend to state affairs.’ Here is our toiling

rustic, the ideal citizen of statesmen who desire to keep free from popular
control. The same character appears again in the Orestes, on the occasion of
a debate in the Argive Assembly (modelled on Athens), as defender of
Orestes. He is described[139] as ‘not of graceful mien, but a manly fellow,
one who seldom visits the city and the market-place, a toiler with his hands
(αὐτουργός), of the class on whom alone the safety of the country depends;
but intelligent and prepared to face the conflict of debate, a guileless being
of blameless life.’ So vivid is this portrait, that the sympathy of the poet
with the rustic type of citizen can hardly be ignored. Now, why did
Euripides take pains to shew this sympathy? I take it to be a sign that he
saw with regret the declining influence of the farmer class in Attic politics.
Can we go a step further, and detect in these passages any sort of protest
against a decline in the number of small working farmers, and a growth of
exploitation-farming, carried on by stewards directing the labour of slaves
or hired hands? In the next generation we find this system in use, as indeed
it most likely always had been to some extent on the richer soils of lowland
Attica. The concentration of the country folk in the city during the great war
would tend to promote agriculture by deputy after the return of peace.
Deaths, and the diversion of some farmers to other pursuits, were likely to
leave vacancies in the rural demes. Speculators who took advantage of such
chances to buy land would not as a rule do so with intent to live on the land
and work it themselves; and aliens were not allowed to hold real estate. It
seems fairly certain that landlords resident in Athens, to whom land was
only one of many forms of investment, and who either let their land to
tenant-farmers or exploited its cultivation under stewards, were a class
increased considerably by the effects of the war. We shall see further
reasons below for believing this. Whether Euripides in the passages cited
above is actually warning or protesting, I do not venture to say: that he
grasped the significance of a movement beginning under his very eyes, is
surely a probable conjecture.
That we should hear little of the employment of slaves in the hard work
of agriculture, even if the practice were common, is not to be wondered at.
Assuming the existence of slavery, there was no need for any writer other
than a specialist to refer to them. But we have in the Rhesus a passage[140]
in which Hector forecasts the result of an attack on the Greeks while
embarking: some of them will be slain, and the rest, captured and made fast

in bonds, will be taught to cultivate (γαπονεῖν) the fields of the Phrygians.
That this use of captives is nothing extraordinary appears below, when
Dolon the spy is bargaining for a reward in case of success. To a suggestion
that one of the Greek chiefs should be assigned to him he replies ‘No, hands
gently nurtured (εὖ ’τεθραμμέναι)[141] are unfit for farm-work (γεωργεῖν).’
The notion of captive Greeks slaving on the land for Asiatic lords is a touch
meant to be provocative of patriotic indignation. And the remark of Dolon
would surely fall more meaningly on the ears of men acquainted with the
presence of rustic slavery in their own country. To serfage we have a
reference[142] in the Heraclidae, but the retainer (πενέστης) is under arms,
‘mobilized,’ not at the time working on the land. His reward, when he
brings the news of victory, is to be freedom.

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

One of the most remarkable documents that have come down to us
bearing upon Athenian politics is the ‘Constitution[143] of Athens’ wrongly
assigned to Xenophon. It is certainly the work of an earlier writer, and the
date of its composition can be fixed as between 430 and 424 bc. Thus it
refers to the first years of the Peloponnesian war, during which Attica was
repeatedly invaded, its rural economy upset, and the manifold consequences
of overcrowding in the city of refuge were beginning to shew themselves.
Not a few of the ‘better classes’ of Athenian citizens (οἱ βέλτιστοι) were
dissatisfied with the readiness of the Demos, under the guidance of Pericles,
to carry out a maritime and aggressive policy abroad at the cost of
sacrificing rural interests at home. For the sacrifice fell on the landowners,
more particularly on the larger owners: the compensations[144] of state-pay
and chances of plunder might suffice for the peasant farmer driven into
Athens. At the same time it was undeniable that the astounding energy
displayed by democratic Athens had surprised the Greek world; and the
most discontented Athenian could hardly suppress an emotion of patriotic
pride. The writer of the pamphlet before us—for a pamphlet it is—was
under the influence of these conflicting feelings. Whether it is right to
describe him as an Oligarch depends on what that term is taken to connote.
That he would greatly prefer a system[145] under which the educated orderly

and honest citizens should enjoy greater consideration and power, is
evident: also that in his view these qualities are normal attributes of the
wealthier classes. For he finds in poverty the main cause[146] of democratic
misdeeds. That the masses are ill-informed and lack judgment and self-
control, is the result of their preoccupation with necessities of daily life. But
from this conviction to aiming at a serious oligarchic revolution is a long
step. The democracy in its less aggressive form, before the recent
developments owing to the presence of an idle refugee population, might
conceivably have sufficed for his requirements. He is a prejudiced
contemporary witness, frank and cynical in the extreme, praising the Demos
for doing the very things that he hates and despises, because those things
are in the interest of the democracy such as it appears to him: they would be
fools to act otherwise. For convenience sake I follow Mr Zimmern[147] in
calling him the Old Oligarch.
His disgust at the lack of discipline in the slaves at Athens, and his
ingenious explanation[148] of the causes that have led to toleration of the
nuisance, are very characteristic of his whole attitude. But the slaves of
whom he speaks are those labourers whom their owners allowed to work
for hire in the city and Peiraeus, taking a share of their pay as rent for their
services. Perhaps the state slaves are meant also. He admits that you have to
put up with the airs of these fellows, who often become men of substance
(πλούσιοι δοῦλοι) and think themselves as good as the citizens. Truth is, the
master depends on the return he gets from his investment: if the rent comes
in regularly, he asks no questions and the slave is given[149] a free hand. No
wonder the bondman jostles his betters in the public streets, a state of things
inconceivable in orderly Sparta. Now on the face of it this picture has
nothing to do with the agricultural situation. But let us look further. The
stress of the great war had increased the city population. The increased
demand for imported food-stuffs and for materials of war (such as ship-
timber) had undoubtedly increased the demand for dock-labourers,
boatmen, porters, carters, and other ‘hands.’ Male citizens had enough to do
in services by land and sea. From what source was the extra force of rough
able-bodied labour recruited? Is it likely that a number of raw barbarian
slaves were imported for the purpose? I think not; time would be needed to
make them efficient, and the available shipping had already a difficult task
to keep up the supply of indispensable goods. Is it not much more likely

that rustic slaves, brought into Athens by their owners, were turned to
account[150] in another department of labour, thus earning wages for
themselves while they maintained their masters? The probability of this
view will depend largely on proof that rustic slaves were employed in Attica
under normal conditions at this time. We shall presently see how the
evidence of Aristophanes bears on the point.
Meanwhile let us see what references to agriculture are to be found in
this pamphlet. In speaking of the nautical skill[151] now a common
accomplishment among Athenians, the writer remarks that the possession of
estates abroad, and the duties of offices concerned with external affairs,
have something to do with it. Men have to cross the water: they and their
attendants (ἀκόλουθοι) thus pick up skill by experience without intending
it: for it happens time and again that both master and slave (καὶ αὐτὸν καὶ
τὸν οἰκέτην) have to take a turn at the oar. The estates referred to are chiefly
state-lands allotted to Athenian cleruchs in confiscated districts, but also
private properties. The voyages to and fro are nothing exceptional. Whether
a man resided on his estate and had need to visit Athens, or whether he
resided in Athens and had to visit his estate from time to time, he must go to
sea. It is to be borne in mind that allottees in cleruchies often let their lands
to the former owners as tenants. In another passage[152] he points out the
disadvantage to Athens, as a maritime power, of not being on an island and
so secure from invasion. ‘As things are, those Athenians who farm land or
are wealthy (οἱ γεωργοῦντες καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι) are more inclined to conciliate
the enemy (ὑπέρχονται = cringe to), while the Demos, well aware that their
own belongings are in no danger of destruction, is unconcerned and
defiant.’ A notable admission, confirmed by other evidence, as we shall see.
It is to be observed that farmers and wealthy men are coupled together. The
class more especially meant are probably those represented in Aristophanes
by the substantial farmers of the Peace. But capitalists with investments in
land are also included, and small-holders or tenants; these last working the
land themselves, but not necessarily without employing hired or slave
labour.

X. ARISTOPHANES.

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

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

politics. The fall of Athens had changed all this: the profits of empire had
departed, and with them the buoyancy of an imperial pride. No wonder if
there were signs of unwillingness to follow a hard rustic life. So the
Informer in the Plutus[158], when asked ‘are you a husbandman?’ replies ‘do
you take me for a madman?’ Earlier in the play[159] Chremylus, wishing to
share with old cronies the profits of having captured the god of wealth, says
to his slave ‘invite my fellow farmers: I fancy you’ll find them working
themselves (αὐτοὺς) on their farms.’
I have taken this later picture first, in order to bring out more clearly the
contrast presented by that given in the earlier plays. Naturally enough,
many details are the same in both, but the general character of the farmers is
different. The farmer class makes an important figure. They are sturdy
rustics[160], old-fashioned and independent, rough in manners, fond of
simple country life, and inclined (perhaps justly) to mistrust the city folk,
who cheat them in business whenever they can, and take advantage of them
in other ways, such as liability to military service at short notice. When
driven to take refuge in Athens, their hearts are in their farms, and they have
to make up their minds whether to support the war-party in hope of
regaining their homes and property by force of arms, or to press for peace in
order to end what is from their point of view an unnecessary war, kept
going in the interest of demagogues and others who are profiting by the
opportunities of offices and campaigns abroad. The issue appears in our
earliest play, the Acharnians (425 bc). The farmers of the deme Acharnae,
one of whose occupations was wood-cutting and charcoal-burning, at first
come on as stubborn rustics, all for war and revenge on the enemy. But
Dicaeopolis the chief character of the play, himself a farmer, and a sufferer
in the same kind by the Spartan raids, succeeds in persuading[161] them that
Athenian policy, provocative and grasping, is really to blame for their
losses. In the end they come over to his views, and the play serves as a
manifesto of the peace-party. Of course we are not to take it as history. But
the conflict between the two sections of opinion is probably real enough.
When Dicaeopolis describes[162] himself as ‘with my eyes ever turned to
my farm, a lover of peace, detesting the city and hankering after my own
deme, that never yet bade me buy charcoal or rough wine or olive oil,’ he is
giving us a portrait of the rustic who is resolved not to part with cash for
what can be produced on the farm.

But, whatever policy may seem best adapted to achieve their purpose, the
purpose itself is clearly and consistently marked. The desire of the war-time
farmers is simply to return to their farms[163] and to resume the life of toil
and plenty, varied by occasional festivals, that had been interrupted by the
war. They long to escape from the abominations of the crowding and
unhealthiness prevailing in the city. Once they get back to their old
surroundings, all will be well. Time and labour will even repair the damages
caused by the enemy. No misgivings suggest that a change of circumstances
may be found to have robbed Attic country life of some of its charm.
Nothing like the loss of the empire, the fall of Athens, and the deadly
depression of economic and political life, is foreboded: they face the sequel
with undisturbed faith in the stability of the existing system. Nor indeed
until the Sicilian disaster (413 bc) was there much to cause uneasiness. So
we find the same spirit illustrated in the Peace (421 bc), which may be
regarded as driving home the lesson of the Acharnians. The agricultural
interests are now represented as solidly in favour of the peace of Nicias,
unsatisfactory though it soon proved to be. While other interests are slack,
indifferent or even hostile, farmers are whole-hearted[164] in determination
to end the war and go home. Trygaeus their leader, according to the Greek
sketch of the plot an elderly rustic, describes himself[165] as a ‘skilled vine-
dresser, one who is no informer or fomenter of troubles (lawsuits).’
Needless to say, he carries his point, and the farmers march off
triumphant[166] to their farms, eager to take up the old easygoing life once
more. We must not take our comic poet too literally, but we have no reason
to doubt that feelings such as he depicts in this play did prevail, and perhaps
widely. And, though the peace was insincere, and warfare never really
ceased, the immunity of Attica from invasion for several years gave time for
agriculture to revive. When Agis occupied Deceleia in the winter of 413, his
marauders would find on the Attic farms all manner of improvements and
new plantations to destroy. And the destruction of the fruits of a laborious
revival is to be reckoned among the depressing influences that weighed
upon falling and desperate Athens. It was surely at work in the year 411,
when Aristophanes was preaching a policy of concord at home and
sympathetic treatment of the Allies in order to save the shaken empire. In
the Lysistrata he represents the mad war-fury of the Greek states as due to
the misguided men, whom the women coerce by privation into willingness

for peace. This is strung up into a passionate longing, so that neither[167] of
the principal parties is disposed to haggle over details. The Athenian breaks
out ‘I want to strip and work my land at once.’ The Spartan rejoins ‘and I
want to be carting manure.’ There is still no misgiving expressed, and the
poet is probably true to facts. The struggles of the time were a fearful strain
on Athenian resources, but it still seemed possible that the empire would
weather the storm.
This brief sketch leads on to the inquiry, what do we gather as to the
labour employed on the farms? We have to consider three possibilities (a)
the farmer, including his family, (b) hired labourers, (c) slaves. It is well to
begin by remarking that frequency of reference to one of these does not
necessarily imply the same proportion in actual employment. Slavery being
assumed as a fact in all departments of life (as it is by all writers of the
period), and the slave being an economic or domestic appliance rather than
a person, there was no need to call special attention to his presence. Hence
it is natural that the rustic slave should, as such, be seldom referred to in the
plays. He is in fact mentioned several times, rather more often than the yoke
of oxen. Nor was it necessary to mention the wage-earner, the man
employed for the job under a temporary contract, and in connexion with
agriculture he hardly appears at all. But the working farmers were a class of
citizens. They had votes, and they were on political grounds a class to
whose sympathies the poet was anxious to appeal. Therefore he had no
choice but to lay stress upon their virtues and magnify their importance.
Any careful reader of Aristophanes will I think admit that he does this
consistently. In doing this with political aims he was subject to the
temptation of passing lightly over any considerations that might, whether
justly or unjustly, be turned against his case. This may serve to explain why
he refers almost solely to the small working farmer, who himself labours on
the land. We are not to infer that there were no large estates worked by
deputy, though probably there were not many: to lay stress on the interested
views of large landowners was not likely to please the jealous Demos. Nor
are we to infer that the small farmer used no slaves: that he laboured
himself is no proof, for no man could get more out of a slave’s labour than
the working owner, on whom the burden of making good his slave’s neglect
must fall. I turn now to the passages from which the various details may be
gleaned.

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

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

doubt he had reasons for not making much of such cases; still I believe that
the comfortable working farmer, homely and independent, the poet’s
favourite character, was in fact the normal type. They were not paupers,—
far from it: but their capital consisted in land, buildings, dead and live farm-
stock, and the unexhausted value of previous cultivation. These items could
not suddenly be converted into money without ruinous loss: most of them
could not be carried away in the flight to Athens. Hence the dislike felt by
such men to an adventurous policy, in which their interests were sacrificed.
The passages in which agriculture is connected[183] with large property
occur in a play produced 392 bc, at which time great changes had happened.
It is highly probable that, among these changes, much Attic land had passed
from the hands of ruined yeomen into those of rich men possessed of ready
money and able to buy in a glutted market. In a later period we shall find
γεωργεῖν used in the sense of acting the country landowner. To illustrate the
life and ways of the peasant farmers of this period Aristophanes supplies
endless references descriptive and allusive. The chief of these have been
cited above. A few more may be added here. In the Clouds Strepsiades,
urging his son to a rustic life, hopes to see him dressed in a leathern jerkin,
like his father before him, driving in the goats[184] from the waste (φελλέως,
the rocky hill-pasture). Here is a good instance of husbandry in the Attic
highlands, in short a case of crofters. What a refugee might hope to save in
his flight and take back to his farm on the return of peace—it amounts to a
few implements[185]—is set out in the Peace. Loss of oxen, a yoke of two,
driven off by Boeotian raiders, is pitifully bewailed[186] by a farmer in the
Acharnians. But in general the farmers of the earlier plays are represented
as tough elderly men. They are the ‘elder generation,’ and the poet
genuinely admires them. For the younger generation he has a profound
contempt. Evidently he thought that the soundest breed of Athenian citizens
was dying out; and I am not sure that he was wrong.
I conclude that the evidence of Aristophanes on the whole points to an
agriculture mainly carried on by working farmers with the help of slaves.
This system was subjected to a very severe strain by the war-conditions
prevailing for many years, and I do not think that it was possible to revive it
on the same footing as before, even when Attica was no longer exposed to
frequent raids. It was not merely the loss of fixed capital that told on the
farmer class. Importation of corn was so developed and organized to meet

the necessities of the crowded city, that it completely dominated the market,
and in the production of cereals the home agriculture could now no longer
compete with foreign harvests. There remained the culture of the olive and
vine: but it needed years to restore plantations of these and other fruit-trees,
and to wait for revival needed a capital possessed by few. The loss of
imperial revenues impoverished Athens, and the struggle with financial
difficulties runs through all her later history. It did not take the poorer
citizens long to see that how to get daily bread was the coming problem.
State-pay was no longer plentiful, and one aim of jealous franchise-
regulations was to keep down the number of claimants. Had Aristophanes
any inkling of the evil days to come? At all events he was aware that
poverty works in two[187] ways: if it leads one man to practise a trade for his
living, it tempts another to evildoing, perhaps to crime.

XI. THUCYDIDES.

Thucydides is a writer from whom it is extremely difficult to extract any
evidence on the subject of agricultural labour. The preeminent importance
of the problem of food-supply in the Greece of his day may be amply
illustrated from his work; but mainly in casual utterances, the full
significance of which is only to be gathered by thorough examination such
as has been made[188] by Dr Grundy. The economic revolution in Attica that
followed the reforms of Solon, the extended culture of the vine and olive,
the reduced growth of cereal crops, the development of manufactures and
sea-borne trade, the growing dependence on imported corn, and the
influence of these changes on the public policy of Athens, are now seen
more clearly as a whole than ever before. But to the great historian these
things were part of the background of his picture. They are parts of a
movement taken for granted rather than understood. And the same is true of
the existence and application of slave-labour. In the time of Thucydides
slavery was an economic and social fact, unchallenged. It may be that it
affected unfavourably the position of the free handworker in the long run,
and gave opportunities to slaveowning capitalists. But this effect came
about slowly, and freeman and slave could and did labour[189] side by side,
for instance in the great public works promoted by Pericles. How far slave-
labour was really cheaper than free is a question beyond my subject. But it
is important to note the attitude of the poor citizen towards the question of

what we call a living wage. Once the great outlay on public works began to
fall off, and industries on a larger scale to compete with the individual
craftsman, how was the poor citizen to live? Directly or indirectly, the
profits of empire supplied the answer. Now it was obvious that the fewer
the beneficiaries the larger would be the average dividend of each. So the
policy favoured by the poorer classes was a jealous restriction of the
franchise. It was not the slave as labour-competitor against whom
protection was desired, but the resident freeman of doubtful origin as a
potential profit-sharer.
During nearly the whole of the period covered by the history of
Thucydides the public policy of Athens was controlled by urban influences.
Even before the rustic citizens were cooped up in the city, it was no doubt
city residents that formed the normal majority in the Assembly, and to
whom most of the paid offices and functions fell. Even allowing for the
recent growth of ‘seafaring rabble’ in Peiraeus, these Athenians were not at
all a mere necessitous mob. But it must be remembered that the commercial
and industrial capitalists were interested in foreign trade. As Mr
Cornford[190] points out, even metics of this class must have had
considerable influence owing to wealth and connexions. Thus the urban rich
as well as the urban poor were tempted to favour a policy of adventure,
contrary to the wishes and interests of the Attic farmers. Now these latter
were the truest representatives of the old Attic stock. Once they were
crowded into the city and many of them diverted to state service, any
sobering influence that they might at first exercise would become less and
less marked, and they would tend to be lost in the mass. Therefore we hear
only of the rustic life[191] from which they unwillingly tore themselves in
431 bc: we do not get any detailed picture of it, for the historian’s attention
was otherwise occupied. In the passage[192] accounting for the unpopularity
of Pericles in 430 bc we read that the Demos was irritated because ‘having
less (than the rich) to start with, it had been deprived of that little,’ while the
upper class (δυνατοὶ) had lost their fine establishments. Here the context
seems to imply that the δῆμος referred to is especially the small farmers,
still dwelling on their losses and not yet otherwise employed.
One passage is so important that it must be discussed by itself. Pericles is
made to encourage[193] the Athenians in resistance to the Spartan demands
by pointing out the superiority of their resources compared with those of the

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

an established[196] state of things. At festivals, we are told, slaves and
masters shared the same table. This does not exclude rustic slaves: it rather
seems to suggest them. The working farmer entertaining his slaves on a
rural holiday is even a conventional tradition of ancient country life.
Arcadia, a land of peasant farmers, where a living had to be won by hard
work, a land whence already in the fifth century (and still more in the
fourth) came numbers of mercenary soldiers, a land whence Sparta raised
no small part of her ‘Peloponnesian’ armies, is what Pericles has chiefly in
mind. And that Arcadians were normally αὐτουργοὶ did not imply that they
had no slaves.
So far as Attica is concerned, Thucydides himself incidentally attests the
presence of rustic slaves. He would probably have been, surprised to hear
such an obvious fact questioned. In refusing to repeal the ‘Megarian decree’
the Athenians charged[197] the Megarians with various offences, one of
which was the reception of their runaway slaves. In the winter 415-4 bc
Alcibiades, urging the Spartans to occupy Deceleia, is made to state[198] the
advantages of that move thus ‘For of all the farm-stock in the country the
bulk will at once come into your possession, some by capture, and the rest
of its own accord (αὐτόματα).’ I take the last words to refer especially to
slaves,—rustic slaves. In recording the success of the plan, the historian
tells[199] us that more than 20000 slaves, a large part of whom were artisans
(χειροτέχναι), deserted to the enemy. We may guess that many or most of
the artisan slaves had escaped from Athens. Their loss would be felt in the
reduction of manufacturing output, so far as such enterprise was still
possible at the time, and perhaps in the dockyards. But the rest would be
rustic slaves, many of them (to judge by the map) from a district[200] in
which there were probably many small farms. On the other hand, the slaves
welcomed by the Megarians were probably from larger estates in the
Thriasian plain. Turning from Attica, we find references to rustic slaves[201]
in Corcyra (427 bc) and Chios (412 bc), where they were numerous and
important in their effect on operations. And in other passages where the
slaves belonging to the people of this or that place are mentioned we are not
to assume that only urban slaves are meant. For to live in a town, and go out
for the day’s work on the land, was and is a common usage in
Mediterranean countries. An extreme case[202] is where people live on an
island and cross water to cultivate farms elsewhere. It is perhaps hardly

necessary to remark that rich slaveowners, who could afford overseers, did
not need to reside permanently on their estates. Such a man might have
more than one farm, and in more than one district, not necessarily in Attica
at all, as Thucydides himself exploited a mining concession in Thrace. In
any case a well-equipped ‘country place’ was a luxury, and is characterized
as such[203] in words put into the mouth of Pericles, who as the democratic
statesman was concerned to stifle discontent by insinuating that it was a
mere expression of the selfishness of the rich.
The settlement of Athenians in colonies (ἀποικίαι) or on allotments of
conquered land (κληρουχίαι), in the islands or on the seaboard has been
fully treated[204] by Dr Grundy. He shews that this movement had two aims,
the occupation of strategic points as an imperial measure of security, and
the provision of land-lots for poorer citizens as a measure of economic
relief. The latter purpose is part of a general plan for reducing the financial
liabilities of the state with respect to its citizen population, the necessity for
which Dr Grundy explains. By these settlements abroad some surplus
population was removed and provided with means of livelihood. If the
assumption of a surplus citizen population be sound (and I am not in a
position to challenge it), we must also assume a certain degree of genuine
land-hunger, at least more than the Attic territory could satisfy. If there was
such land-hunger, it is perhaps not unreasonable to connect it with the
survival of old Attic traditions of country life. And it would seem that the
settlers, cleruchs or colonists, did as a rule[205] stay and live in their
settlements. They would probably work their lands on much the same
general plan as their brethren in Attica, and their labour-arrangements
would be much the same. But in 427 bc, when Pericles was dead and there
was surely no surplus population, at least of able-bodied men, owing to the
war, we find a curious record. Reconquered Lesbos[206] had to be dealt
with. It was not subjected to an assessed tribute (φόρος), but parcelled into
3000 allotments, 2700 of which were reserved for 2700 Athenian citizens,
those who drew the lucky lots (τοὺς λαχόντας), and these 2700 were sent
out. But they did not stay[207] there. They let their shares to the old
inhabitants as cultivating tenants, at a rent of two minae per share per
annum, and evidently returned to Athens. By this arrangement a sum of
about £21000 a year would come in to the shareholders in Athens, who
would have a personal interest in seeing that it was punctually paid.

Whether these non-resident landlords were chosen by lot from all citizens,
rich or poor, is not stated. We know that in some cases[208] at least the
choice of settlers was confined to members of the 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.
There are casual references to other persons employed on the estate
whose condition has to be inferred from various indications with more or
less certainty. Thus the capulator, who draws off the oil from the press into
vessels, is connected with the custos[696] and is not clearly distinct from
him. He may be a slave, but the call for strict cleanliness and care at this
stage of the operations rather suggests the free wage-earner. An epistates is
mentioned[697] in a chapter on food-rations (familiae cibaria), and grouped
with the vilicus and vilica and the opilio. They receive less food than the
common hands engaged in rough manual labour. They are probably all
slaves, the epistates being a foreman of some sort, and the opilio the head
shepherd, the magister pecoris of whom we often hear later. In the
estimates[698] of the equipment required for a farm with oliveyard or

vineyard the human staff is included with the other live and dead stock. The
operarii mentioned in this connexion are evidently slave hands, and the
bubulcus[699] subulcus asinarius opilio and salictarius are the same, only
specialized in function. For an oliveyard of 240 iugera the human staff is
put at 13 (summa homines xiii), for a vineyard of 100 iugera it is 16, and
the operarii in particular are 10 as against 5. The greater amount of
digging[700] needed on a farm chiefly devoted to vines is the reason of the
difference. These estimates are for the permanent staff, the familia, owned
by the landlords in the same way as the oxen asses mules sheep goats or
pigs. So far as common daily labour is concerned, this staff should make the
farm self-sufficing.
But there were many operations, connected with the life of the farm, for
performing which it was either not desirable or not possible to rely on the
regular staff. It would never have paid to maintain men skilled in the work
of special trades only needed on rare occasions. Thus for erecting buildings
the faber[701] is called in: the landlord finds materials, the builder uses them
and is paid for his work. Lime is needed for various purposes, and it may be
worth while[702] to have a kiln on the estate and do the burning there. But
even so it is well to employ a regular limeburner (calcarius) for the job. The
landlord finds limestone and fuel, and a way of payment is to work on
shares (partiario) each party taking his share of the lime. The same share-
system (according to Keil’s text) is proposed for the operation known as
politio, which seems to include[703] weeding and ‘cleaning’ of the land, at
least for cereal crops, and also is prescribed for the skilled tending of a
vineyard. For such works as these it is fairly certain that the persons
employed were assumed to be living in the neighbourhood. In the case of
the blacksmith[704] (faber ferrarius) there can be no doubt, for his forge is
spoken of as a fit place for drying grapes, hung presumably in the smoke of
his wood fire. Now all these skilled men are evidently free, and work on
agreed terms. Some of them are certainly not singlehanded, but whether
their underlings are freemen or slaves or both we are left to guess. In all
cases their work is such as calls not only for skill and industry but also for
good faith, which cannot be expected from slaves. It is in short contract-
work, whether the bargain be made in a formal agreement or not.
The employment of contractors, each with his own staff, at times of
pressure such as the getting in and disposal of crops, has been referred to

above, and it has been remarked that some at least of this emergency-labour
was performed by freemen. We must therefore conclude that in Cato’s time
there was a considerable supply of casual labourers in country districts, on
whose services landlords could rely. The contractor would seem to have
been either a ‘ganger’ who bargained for terms with the landlord on behalf
of his work-party, or a capitalist owning a gang of slaves. What made the
difference would be the nature of the job in hand, according as skill or mere
brute strength was chiefly required. But that slave labour was the essential
factor, on which Catonian agriculture normally depended, is beyond all
doubt. The slave steward is not only responsible[705] for the control of the
slave staff (familia) and their wellbeing and profitable employment. He is
authorized to employ other labour, even free labour, at need; only he must
not keep such persons hanging about the place. He is to pay them off and
discharge them without delay, no doubt in order to prevent them from
unsettling the slaves by their presence. And slaves must never be idle. When
a master calls his steward to account for insufficient results on the farm, the
latter is expected to plead in excuse not only the weather but shortage of
hands; slaves have been sick or have run away; or they have been
employed[706] on state-work (opus publicum effecisse),—probably in
mending the roads, for this is recognized below.

XXIV. AGRICULTURE IN THE REVOLUTIONARY
PERIOD.

From the death of Cato in 149 bc to the date of Varro’s book de re rustica
(about 37 bc) is a space of more than a century. The one great fact of this
momentous period in relation to agriculture is the public recognition of the
decay of the small farmers over a large part of Italy, and the vain attempt to
revive a class well known to have been the backbone of Roman strength.
But the absorption of small holdings in large estates had already gone so far
in the affected districts that there was practically only one direction in
which land-reformers could move. To confiscate private property was
forbidden by Roman respect for legal rights: it appears in Roman history
only after the failure of the Gracchan movement, and as a phenomenon of
civil war. There were however great areas of land of which the state was
still in law proprietor, held by individuals (often in very large blocks) under
a system of recognized occupation known as possessio. Tradition alleged

that in Rome’s early days this ager publicus had been a cause of quarrels
between the needy Commons who hungered for land and the rich nobles
who strove to monopolize the land annexed by war and now state-property.
It was known that one of the effects produced by the political equalization
of the Orders in the fourth century bc had been legislation to restrain land-
monopoly. But the Licinian laws of 367 bc had not made an end of the evil.
Soon evaded, they had become in course of time wholly inoperative. The
new Patricio-Plebeian nobility quieted the claims of the poor by colonial
foundations and allotments of land in newly-conquered districts, while they
continued to enrich themselves by ‘possession’ of the public land.
Undisturbed possession gradually obscured the distinction between such
holdings and the estates held in full ownership as ager privatus. Boundaries
were confused: mixed estates changed hands by inheritance or sale without
recognition of a legal difference in the tenure of different portions: where
improvements had been carried out, they applied indistinguishably to lands
owned or possessed. The greater part of these possessiones was probably
not arable but pasture, grazed by numerous flocks and herds in charge of
slave herdsmen. Now in Cato’s time the imports of foreign corn were
already rendering the growth of cereal crops for the market an
unremunerative enterprise in the most accessible parts of Italy. Grazing paid
better. It required fewer hands, but considerable capital and wide areas of
pasturage. It could be combined with the culture of the vine and olive; for
the live-stock, brought down to the farmstead in the winter months,
supplied plentiful manure. Moreover, the wholesale employment of slaves
enabled a landlord to rely on a regular supply of labour. The slave was not
liable to military service: so the master was not liable to have his staff
called up at short notice. In short, economic influences, aided by selfish or
corrupt administration of the laws under the rule of the nobility, gave every
advantage to the rich landlords. No wonder that patriotic reformers viewed
the prospect with alarm, and sought some way of promoting a revival of the
peasant farmers.
The story of the Gracchan movement and the causes of its failure are set
forth from various points of view in histories[707] of Rome and special
monographs. What concerns us here is to remark that its remedial
legislation dealt solely with land belonging to the state and occupied by
individuals. Power was taken to ascertain its boundaries, to resume
possession on behalf of the state, and to parcel it out in allotments among

needy citizens. How far success in the aim of restoring a free citizen
population in the denuded districts was ever possible, we cannot tell. But
we know that it did not in fact succeed. By 111 bc whatever had been
achieved[708] was finally annulled. The bulk of the ager publicus had
disappeared. The sale of land-allotments, at first forbidden, had been
permitted, and the process of buying out the newly created peasantry went
on freely. But large estates formed under the new conditions were subject to
no defect of title. They were strictly private property, though the term
possessiones still remained in use. Slave-labour on such estates was normal
as before. Indeed rustic slavery was now at its height. This short period of
attempted land-reform comes between the two great Sicilian slave-wars
(135-2 and 103-99 bc), in the events of which the horrors of contemporary
agriculture were most vividly expressed. It was also a time of great wars
abroad, in Gaul, in Africa, and against the barbarian invaders from the
North. Roman armies suffered many defeats, and the prestige of Roman
power was only restored by the military remodelling under Marius. When
Marius finally threw over the principle that military service was a duty
required of propertied citizens, and raised legions from the poorest classes,
volunteering with an eye to profit, he in effect founded the Empire. We can
hardly help asking[709] from what quarters he was able to draw these
recruits. Some no doubt were idlers already living in Rome attracted by the
distributions of cheap corn provided by the Government in order to keep
quiet the city mob. But these can hardly have been a majority of the recruits
of this class. Probably a number came in from rural districts, hearing that
Marius was calling for volunteers and prepared to disregard altogether the
obsolete rules which had on occasion been evaded by others before him. It
is perhaps not too bold a conjecture to suggest that the casual wage-earners,
the mercennarii referred to by Cato, were an important element in the New
Model army of Marius. This landless class, living from hand to mouth, may
have been declining in numbers, but they were by no means extinct. We
meet them later in Varro and elsewhere. And no man knew better than
Marius the military value of men hardened by field-labour, particularly
when led to volunteer by hopes of earning a higher reward in a career of
more perils and less monotony.
It can hardly be supposed that agriculture throve under the conditions
prevailing in these troubled years. The tendency must have been to reduce

the number of free rustic wage-earners, while each war would bring
captives to the slave-market. We can only guess at these economic effects.
The following period of civil wars, from the Italian rising in 90 bc to the
death of Sulla in 78, led to a further and more serious disturbance of the
land-system. The dictator had to reward his soldiery, and that promptly. The
debt was discharged by grants of land, private land, the owners of which
were either ejected for the purpose or had been put to death. Of the results
of this wholesale confiscation and allotment we have abundant evidence,
chiefly from Cicero. Making full allowance for exaggeration and partisan
feeling, it remains sufficient to shew that Sulla’s military colonists were
economically a disastrous failure, while both they and the men dispossessed
to make room for them soon became a grave political danger. The
discharged soldiers desired an easy life as proprietors, and the excitements
of warfare had unfitted them for the patient economy of farming. They
bought slaves; but slaves cost money, and the profitable direction of slave-
labour was an art calling for a degree of watchfulness and skill that few
landlords of any class were willing or able to exert. So this substitution of
new landowners for old was an unmixed evil: the new men failed as
farmers, and we hardly need to be told that the feeling of insecurity
produced by the confiscations was a check on agricultural improvements
for the time. Those of the ‘Sullan men’ who sold their allotments (evading
the law) would certainly not get a good price, and the money would soon
melt away.
It will be seen that the old Roman system, under which the ordinary
citizen was a peasant farmer who served the state as a soldier when needed,
was practically at an end. Compulsory levies were on certain occasions
resorted to, for no abolition of the old liability to service had taken place:
but voluntary enlistment of young men, and their conversion into
professional soldiers by technical training, was henceforth the normal
method of forming Roman armies. Armies were kept on foot for long
campaigns, and the problem of their peaceful disbandment was one of the
most serious difficulties of the revolutionary age. The treasury had no large
income to spend on money-pensions, so the demand for allotments of land
became a regular accompaniment of demobilization. Meanwhile the
desperate condition of landlords in important districts, and the danger from
the slave-gangs, were forcibly illustrated in the rising under Spartacus (73-1
bc) and the Catilinarian conspiracy. It is unfortunate that the scope of the

land-bill of Rullus[710] in 63, defeated by Cicero, is uncertain, and the effect
of Caesar’s land-law of 59 hardly less so. But one thing seems clear. In
default of sufficient lands suitable for allotment, legislators were driven to
propose the resumption of the rich Campanian domain. This public estate
had long been let to tenants, real farmers, in small holdings; and the rents
therefrom were one of the safest sources of public income. To disturb good
tenants, and give the best land in Italy to untried men as owners, was surely
a bad business. It shews to what straits rulers were driven to find land for
distribution. To enter into the details of the various land-allotments between
the abortive proposal of Rullus and the final settlement of Octavian would
be out of place here. But it is well to note that the plan of purchasing private
land for pension-allotments, proposed in the bill of Rullus, was actually
carried out by the new Emperor and proudly recorded[711] by him in his
famous record of the achievements of his life. The violent transfer of landed
properties from present holders to discharged soldiers of the triumviral
armies had evidently been both an economic failure and a political evil. To
pay for estates taken for purpose of distribution was a notable step towards
restoration of legality and public confidence. Whether it immediately
brought about a revival of agriculture on a sound footing is a question on
which opinions may justifiably differ. Much will depend on the view taken
by this or that inquirer of the evidence of Varro and the Augustan poets
Horace and Vergil.

Note—In Prendergast’s Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (ed 2,
1870), chapter iv a, much interesting matter may be found. Cruel
expulsions, corrupt influences, and the sale of their lots by soldiers
to officers, their frequent failure as cultivators, etc, stand out clearly.
The analogy to the Roman cases must of course not be too closely
pressed, as the conditions were not identical.

XXV. VARRO.

M Terentius Varro wrote his treatise de re rustica in 37-6 bc at the age
of 80. The subject was only one of an immense number to which he devoted
his talents and wide learning when not actively engaged in public duties.
The last republican rally under Brutus and Cassius had failed at Philippi in

42, and the Roman world was shared out between the Triumvirs. In 36 the
suppression of Lepidus declared what was already obvious, that Antony and
Octavian were the real holders of power and probable rivals. Proscriptions,
confiscations, land-allotments to soldiers, the wars with Antony’s brother
Lucius and the great Pompey’s son Sextus, had added to the unsettlement
and exhaustion of Italy. If it appeared to Varro that a treatise on farming
would be opportune (and we may fairly conjecture that it did), there was
surely much to justify his opinion in the distressful state of many parts of
the country. But at this point we are met by a passage[712] in the work itself
which seems to prove that he took a very different view of present
agricultural conditions in Italy. Some of the speakers (the book is in form a
dialogue) declare that no country is better cultivated than Italy, that no other
country is so fully cultivated all through (tota), that Italian crops are in
general the best of their several kinds, and in particular that Italy is one
great orchard. Instances in point are given. That Varro, like Cicero, took
great care[713] to avoid anachronisms and improbabilities, that his characters
are real persons, and that he tries hard to fit the several topics to the several
characters, is not to be denied. But it is perhaps too much to assume that
such general remarks as those just cited are meant to represent the known
personal opinions of the speakers. If we could be sure of the date at which
the dialogue is supposed to be held, we might have a more satisfactory
standard for estimating the significance and historical value of these
utterances. Unluckily we have no convincing evidence as to the intended
date. The scene of the second book can be laid in 67 bc with reasonable
certainty, and that of the third in 54 bc. But no passage occurs in the first
book sufficient to furnish material for a like inference. When Stolo
refers[714] to Varro’s presence with the fleet and army at Corcyra, some have
thought that he has in mind the time of the civil war in 49 bc. It is much
more likely that the reference is to Varro’s service[715] as one of Pompey’s
lieutenants in the pirate war of 67 bc. The dialogue of Book i would then be
placed after the summer of that year, probably not much later. The boast of
the speakers as to the splendid cultivation of Italy in general would refer to
the time when the disturbance caused by the confiscations and assignations
of Sulla was dying down and the rising of Spartacus had lately been
suppressed. It would be placed before the later disturbances caused by
measures designed to satisfy the claims of Pompeian Caesarian and
Triumviral armies. Vergil had not yet been driven from his Cisalpine farm.

Whether by placing Book i in this interval, and by supposing that the
circumstances of that time would fit the utterances of Varro’s characters, I
am exceeding the limits of sober guesswork, I cannot judge. But I am
convinced that in any case upland pastures and forest-lands[716] accounted
for a very large part of the surface of Italy then, as they do still. Indeed
Varro recognizes this in his references to the migration of flocks and herds
according to the seasons, and particularly when he notes not only the great
stretches of rough land to be traversed but also the need of active and sturdy
pastores able to beat off the assaults of wild beasts and robbers. Surely the
complete cultivation of Italy, compared as it is with that of other countries,
is a description not to be taken literally, but as a natural exaggeration in the
mouth of a self-complacent Roman agriculturist. Be this as it may, the
treatise marks a great advance on that of Cato in some respects. Many
details are common to both writers, in particular the repeated insistence on
the main principle that whatever the farmer does must be made to pay.
Profit, not sentiment or fancy, was their common and truly Roman aim. But
in the century or more that had elapsed since Cato wrote other authors (such
as Saserna) had treated of farming, and much had been learnt from Greek
and Punic authorities. Knowledge of the products and practices of foreign
lands had greatly increased, and Varro, who had himself added to this store,
made free use of the wider range of facts now at the service of inquirers.
And the enlarged outlook called for a systematic method. Accordingly
Varro’s work is clearly divided into three discussions, of tillage (Book i),
grazing and stock-breeding (ii), and keeping fancy animals (iii) chiefly to
supply the market for table-luxuries. And he goes into detail in a spirit
different from that of Cato. Cato jerked out dogmatic precepts when he
thought fit, for instance his wonderful list of farm-requisites. Varro is more
concerned with the principles, the reasons for preferring this or that method,
derived from the theories and experience of the past. For instance, in
estimating the staff required, he insists[717] on its being proportioned to the
scale of the work to be done: as the average day’s work (opera) varies in
efficiency according to the soil, it is not possible to assign a definite number
of hands to a farm of definite area. Nor is he content simply to take slave-
labour, supplemented by hired free labour and contract-work, for granted. In
a short but important passage he discusses the labour-question, with reasons
for the preference of this or that class of labour for this or that purpose, of

course preferring whichever is likely to give the maximum of profit with
the minimum of loss.
It is this passage[718] that is chiefly of interest from my present point of
view, and I will therefore translate it in full.
‘So much for the four conditions[719] of the farm that are connected with
the soil, and the second four external to the farm but bearing on its
cultivation. Now for the appliances used in tillage. Some classify these
under two heads (a) men (b) the implements necessary for their work.
Others under three[720] heads (a) the possessed of true speech (b) the
possessed of inarticulate speech (c) the speechless. In these classes
respectively are included[721] (a) slaves (b) oxen (c) waggons, and such are
the three kinds of equipment. The men employed in all tillage are either
slaves or freemen or both. Free labour is seen in the case of those who till
their[722] land themselves, as poor peasants[723] with the help of their
families mostly do: or in that of wage-earners[724], as when a farmer hires
free hands to carry out the more important operations on his farm, vintage
or hay-harvest and the like: such also are those who were called “tied
men”[725] in Italy, a class still numerous in Asia Egypt and Illyricum.
Speaking of these[726] as a class, I maintain that in the tillage of malarious
land[727] it pays better to employ free wage-earners than slaves; even in a
healthy spot the more important operations, such as getting in vintage or
harvest, are best so managed. As to their qualities, Cassius writes thus: in
buying[728] labourers you are to choose men fit for heavy work, not less
than 22 years of age and ready to learn farm-duties. This you can infer from
giving them other tasks and seeing how they perform them, or by
questioning[729] new slaves as to the work they used to do under their
former owner. Slaves should be neither timid nor high-spirited. Their
overseers[730] should be men able to read and write, in fact with a touch of
education, honest fellows, somewhat older than the mere labourers just
mentioned. For these are more willing to obey their elders. Above all things
the one indispensable quality in overseers is practical knowledge of
farming. For the overseer is not only to give orders, but to take part in
carrying them out; so that the slave may do as he sees the overseer do, and
note the reasonableness of his own subordination to one his superior in
knowledge. On the other hand the overseer should not be allowed to enforce

obedience by the lash rather than by reprimand,—of course supposing that
the same effect[731] is produced. Again, you should not buy too many slaves
of the same race, for nothing breeds trouble in the household[732] more than
this. For the overseers there should be rewards to make them keen in their
work: care should be taken to allow them a private store[733] and slave
concubines to bear them children, a tie which steadies them and binds them
more closely to the estate. It is these family ties that distinguish the slave-
gangs from Epirus and give them a high market-value. You should grant
favours to overseers to gain their goodwill, and also to the most efficient of
the common hands; with these it is also well to talk over the work that is to
be undertaken, for it makes them think that their owner takes some account
of them and does not utterly despise them. They can be given more interest
in their work by more generous treatment in the way of food or clothing, or
by a holiday or by leave to keep a beast or so of their own at grass on the
estate, or other privileges: thus any who have been overtasked or punished
may find some comfort[734] and recover their ready goodwill towards their
owner.’
This passage well illustrates the advance in scientific treatment of the
subject since the time of Cato. The analysis and classification may not be
very profound, but it tends to orderly method, not to oracles. The influence
of Greek writings is to be traced, for instance in the rules for the choice and
treatment of slaves. The writings of Aristotle and his school had been
studied in Rome since the great collection had been brought by Sulla from
the East. How far Varro actually borrows from Aristotle or Plato or
Xenophon is not always easy to say. The advice to avoid getting too many
slaves of one race or too spirited, and to use sexual relations as a restraining
tie, were by this time common-places of slave-management, and appear
under Cato in somewhat cruder practical forms. But Varro is involved in the
difficulties that have ever beset those who try to work on double principles,
to treat the slave as at once the chattel of an owner and a partner in common
humanity. So he tells his reader ‘manage your slaves as men, if you can get
them to obey you on those terms; if not,—well, you must make them obey
—flog them.’ Humanitarian principles have not gone far in the system of
Varro, who looks solely from the master’s point of view. The master gets
rather more out of his slaves when they work to gain privileges than when
they work merely to escape immediate punishment. So he is willing to offer

privileges, and the prospect of promotion to the higher ranks of the staff.
Overseers and the best of the common hands may form a little quasi-
property of their own by the master’s leave. But these peculia do not seem
to be a step on the road to manumission, of which we hear nothing in this
treatise. We are left to infer that rustic slaves on estates generally remained
there when past active work, tolerated hangers-on, living on what they
could pick up, and that to have acquired some peculium was a comfortable
resource in old age. In short, the hopes of the worn-out rustic bondman
were limited indeed.
When we note Varro’s attitude towards free labour we cannot wonder that
humanitarianism is not conspicuous in his treatment of slavery. Hired men
are more to be trusted than slaves, so you will employ them, as Cato
advised, for jobs that need care and honesty and that cannot wait. But he
adds a sinister hint as to employing them on work dangerous to health. Your
own slaves for whom you have paid good money are too valuable to be
exposed to such risks. The great merit of the mercennarius is that, when the
job is done and his wage paid, you have done with him and have no further
responsibility. This brutally industrial view is closely connected with the
legal atmosphere of Roman civilization, in which Varro lived and moved.
The debtor discharging his debt by serving his creditor as a farm-hand, once
an ordinary figure in Italy, was now only found abroad: Varro mentions this
unhappy class, for he is not thinking of Italy alone. It is interesting to hear
from him that peasant-farmers were not extinct in Italy. But we are not told
whether they were still numerous or whether they were mostly to be found
in certain districts, as from other authorities we are tempted to infer. Nor do
we learn whether men with small farms of their own often went out as
wage-earners; nor again whether landless mercennarii were in his time a
numerous class. These omissions make it very difficult for us to form any
clear and trustworthy picture of rural conditions as they presented
themselves to Varro. It would seem that they were in general much the same
as in Cato’s time, but that Varro is more inclined to discuss openly some
details that Cato took for granted. So in his turn Varro takes some things for
granted, passing lightly over details that we cannot but wish to know.
There is however one important matter, ignored by Cato (at least in his
text as we have it), to which reference is found in Varro. It is the presence of
the free tenant farmer (colonus) in the agricultural system of Italy. He tells

us that the formal lease[735] of a farm usually contained a clause by which
the colonus was forbidden to graze a she-goat’s offspring on the farm. In
another passage[736] the same prohibition is mentioned, but with this
limitation, that it applies only to land planted with immature saplings. So
poisonous were the teeth of nibbling goats thought to be. The restriction
imposed on the tenant suggests that the landlord was bargaining at an
advantage; the lessor could dictate his terms to the lessee. That the tenant
farmers of this period were at least in some cases humble dependants of
their landlords is clearly shewn by a passage[737] of Caesar. In order to hold
Massalia for Pompey in 49 bc, Domitius raised a squadron of seven ships,
the crews for which he made up from his own[738] slaves freedmen and
tenants. Soon after he refers to this force[739] as the tenants and herdsmen
brought by Domitius. These herdsmen are no doubt some of the slaves
before mentioned. It is evident that the free retainers called tenants are not
conceived as having much choice in the matter when their noble lord called
them out for service. Probably their effective freedom consisted in the right
to own property (if they could get it), to make wills, to rear children of their
own, and other like privileges. But their landlord would have so great a
hold[740] on them that, though in theory freemen, they were in practice
compelled to do his bidding. In later times we shall find the tenant farmer a
common figure in rural life, but very dependent on his landlord; and it is by
no means clear that his position had ever been a strong and independent
one. Of Varro all we can say is that he does refer to farm-tenancy as a
business-relation, and infer from his words that in that relation the
landowner had the upper hand.
Beside what we may call the legal sense of ‘tenant,’ Varro also uses
colonus in its older sense of ‘cultivator.’ In discussing the convenience of
being able to supply farm needs, and dispose of farm surplus, in the
neighbourhood, he points out that the presence or absence of this advantage
may make all the difference whether a farm can be made to pay or not. For
instance, it is seldom worth while to keep skilled craftsmen[741] of your
own: the death of one such specialist sweeps away the (year’s) profit of the
farm. Only rich landowners can provide for such services in their regular
staff. So the usual practice of coloni is to rely on local men for such
services, paying a yearly fee and having a right to their attendance at call.
The coloni here are simply ‘farmers,’ and there is nothing to shew that they

do not own their farms. The connexion with the verb colere appears even
more strongly where pastor is contrasted[742] with colonus, grazier with
tiller: and in that passage the colonus is apparently identical with the
dominus fundi just below. The coloni of these passages can hardly be mere
tenants, but on the other hand they are certainly not great landowners. They
seem to be men farming their own land, but in a small way[743] of business.
Whether there were many such people in Varro’s Italy, he does not tell us.
Nor do we find any indication to shew whether they would normally take
part in farm work with their own hands. When he deplores[744] the modern
tendency to crowd into the city, where men use their hands for applauding
shows, having abandoned the sickle and the plough, he is merely repeating
the common lament of reformers. There is no sign of any hope of serious
reaction against this tendency: the importation and cheap distribution of
foreign corn is a degenerate and ruinous policy, but there it is. Varro
admired the small holdings and peasant farmers of yore, but no man knew
better that independent rustic citizens of that type had passed away from the
chief arable districts of Italy never to return.
That small undertakings were still carried on in the neighbourhood of
Rome and other urban centres, is evident from the market-gardens of the
Imperial age. A notable case[745] is that of the bee-farm of a single iugerum
worked at a good profit by two brothers about 30 miles north of Rome.
Varro expressly notes that they were able to bide their time so as not to sell
on a bad market. He had first-hand knowledge of these men, who had
served under him in Spain. Clearly they were citizens. They can hardly have
kept slaves. It seems to have been a very exceptional case, and to be cited as
such: it is very different from that of the peasant farmer of early Rome,
concerned first of all to grow food for himself and his family. Agriculture as
treated by Varro is based on slave labour, and no small part of his work
deals with the quarters, feeding, clothing, discipline, sanitation, and mating,
of the slave staff. True to his legal bent, he is careful to safeguard the rights
of the slaveowner by explaining[746] the formal details necessary to effect a
valid purchase, with guarantee of bodily soundness, freedom from vice, and
flawless title. Again, to keep slaves profitably it was urgently necessary to
keep them constantly employed, so that the capital sunk in them should not
lie idle and the hands lose the habit of industry. Therefore, while relying on
local craftsmen for special skilled services occasionally needed, he insists

that a number of rustic articles should be manufactured on the farm. ‘One
ought not to buy anything that can be produced on the estate[747] and made
up by the staff (domesticis = familia), such as wicker work and things made
of rough wood.’ Moreover, the organization of the staff in departments is an
elaborate slave-hierarchy. Under the general direction of the vilicus, each
separate function of tillage or grazing, or keeping and fattening fancy-stock
has its proper foreman. Such posts carried little privileges, and were of
course tenable during good behaviour. Some foremen would have several
common hands under them: none would wish to be degraded back to the
ranks. It seems that some wealthy men kept[748] birdcatchers huntsmen or
fishermen of their own, but Varro, writing for the average landlord, seems
to regard these as being properly free professionals. As for the common
hands, the ‘labourers’ (operarii), on whose bone and sinew the whole
economic structure rested, their condition was much the same as in Cato’s
time, but apparently somewhat less wretched. Varro does not propose to sell
off worn-out slaves; this let us credit to humaner feelings. He shews a
marked regard for the health and comfort of slaves; this may be partly
humanity, but that it is also due to an enlightened perception of the owner’s
interest is certain. He does not provide for an ergastulum, though those
horrible prisons were well known in his day. Why is this? Perhaps partly
because slave-labour was no longer normally employed on estates in the
extremely crude and brutal fashion that was customary in the second
century bc. And partly perhaps owing to the great disturbances of land-
tenure since the measures of the Gracchi and the confiscations of Sulla. The
earlier latifundia had been in their glory when the wealthy nobles sat
securely in power, and this security was for the present at an end. But, if the
slave operarii were somewhat better treated, their actual field labour was
probably no less hard. Many pieces of land could not be worked with the
clumsy and superficial plough then in use. Either the slope of the ground
forbade it, or a deeper turning of the soil was needed, as for growing[749]
vines. This meant wholesale digging, and the slave was in effect a navvy
without pay or respite. No wonder that fossor became a proverbial term for
mere animal strength and dull unadaptability. An interesting estimate of the
capability of an average digger is quoted[750] from Saserna. One man can
dig over 8 iugera in 45 days. But 4 day’s work is enough for one iugerum
(about ⅝ of an acre). The 13 spare days allowed are set to the account[751]

of sickness, bad weather, awkwardness, and slackness. Truly a liberal
margin to allow for waste. It cannot have been easy to farm at a profit with
slave-labour on such terms; for the slave’s necessary upkeep was, however
meagre, a continual charge.
And yet we do not find Varro suggesting that free wage-earning labour
might in the long run prove more economical than slave-labour even for
rough work. Nay more, he does not refer to the employment of contractors
with their several gangs, each interested in getting his particular job done
quickly and the price paid. He only refers to mercennarii in general terms,
as we saw above. Nor does he speak[752] of politio as a special process, as
Cato does. It may be that he did not think it worth while to enter into these
topics. But it is more probable that the results of agrarian legislation and
civil warfare in the revolutionary period had affected the problems of rustic
labour. The attempt to revive by law the class of small cultivating owners
had been a failure. Military service as a career had competed with rustic
wage-earning. Men waiting to be hired as farm hands were probably scarce.
Otherwise, how can we account for the great armies raised in those days?
To refer once more to a point mentioned above, Varro does not suggest that
the charge of an estate might with advantage be entrusted to a freeman as
vilicus. That we can discover all the reasons for the preference of slaves as
stewards is too much to hope for. That it seemed to be a guarantee of
honesty and devotion to duty, the manager being wholly in his master’s
power, is a fairly certain guess. And yet Varro like others saw the
advisability of employing free labour for occasional work of importance.
Perhaps the permanent nature of a steward’s responsibilities had something
to do with the preference. It may well have been difficult to keep a hold on
a free manager. In management of a slave staff no small tact and
intelligence were needed as well as a thorough knowledge of farming.
General experience needed to be supplemented by an intimate
knowledge[753] of the conditions of the neighbourhood and the capacities of
the particular estate. And a free citizen, whose abilities and energy might
qualify him for management of a big landed estate, had endless
opportunities of turning his qualities to his own profit elsewhere. Whether
as individuals or in companies, enterprising Romans found lucrative
openings in the farming of revenues, in state-contracts, in commerce, or in
money-lending, both in Italy and in the Provinces. Such employments,

compared with a possible estate-stewardship, would offer greater personal
independence and a prospect of larger gains. And freemen of a baser and
less effective type would have been worse than useless: certainly far
inferior to well-chosen slaves.

XXVI. CICERO.

It is hardly possible to avoid devoting a special section to the evidence of
Cicero, though it must consist mainly of noting a number of isolated
references to particular points. With all his many country-houses, his
interest in agriculture was slight. But his active part in public life of all
kinds makes him a necessary witness in any inquiry into the facts and
feelings of his time; though there are few witnesses whose evidence needs
to be received with more caution, particularly in matters that offer
opportunity for partisanship. For our present purpose this defect does not
matter very much. It is chiefly as confirming the statements of others that
his utterances will be cited.
When we reflect that Cicero was himself a man of generous instincts, and
that he was well read in the later Greek philosophies, we are tempted to
expect from him a cosmopolitan attitude on all questions affecting
individuals. He might well look at human rights from the point of view of
common humanity, differentiated solely by personal virtues and vices and
unaffected by the accident of freedom or servitude. But we do not find him
doing this. He might, and did, feel attracted by the lofty nobility of the Stoic
system; but he could not become a Stoic. No doubt that system could be
more or less adapted to the conditions of Roman life: it was not necessary
to make the Stoic principles ridiculous by carrying[754] priggishness to the
verge of caricature. But the notion that no fundamental difference existed
between races and classes, that for instance the Wise Man, human nature’s
masterpiece, might be found among slaves, was more than Cicero or indeed
any level-headed Roman could digest. The imperial pride of a great people,
conscious of present predominance through past merit, could not sincerely
accept such views. To a Roman the corollary of accepting them would be
the endeavour (more or less successful) to act upon them. This he had no
intention of doing, and a mere theoretical assent[755] to them as
philosophical speculations was a detail of no serious importance. Taking

this as a rough sketch of the position occupied by Romans of social and
political standing, we must add to it something more to cover the case of
Cicero. He was a ‘new man.’ He was not a great soldier. He was not a
revolutionary demagogue. He was ambitious. In order to rise and take his
place among the Roman nobles he had to fall in with the sentiments
prevailing among them: the newly-risen man could not afford to leave the
smallest doubt as to his devotion to the privileges of his race and class.
Thus, if there was a man in Rome peculiarly tied to principles of human
inequality, it was Cicero.
Therefore we need not be surprised to find that this quick-witted and
warm-hearted man looked upon those engaged in handwork with a genial
contempt[756] sometimes touched with pity. To him, as to the society in
which he moved, bodily labour seemed to deaden interest[757] in higher
things, in fact to produce a moral and mental degradation. In the case of
slaves, whose compulsory toil secured to their owners the wealth and
leisure needed (and by some employed) for politics or self-cultivation, the
sacrifice of one human being for the benefit of another was an appliance of
civilization accepted and approved from time immemorial. But the position
of the freeman working for wages, particularly of the man who lived by
letting out his bodily strength[758] to an employer for money, was hardly
less degrading in the eyes of Roman society, and therefore in those of
Cicero. We have no description of the Roman mob by one of themselves.
That the rough element[759] was considerable, and ready to bear a hand in
political disorder, is certain. But they were what circumstances had made
them, and it is probable that the riotous party gangs of Cicero’s time were
not usually recruited among the best of the wage-earners. It is clear that
many slaves took part in riots, and no doubt a number of freedmen also. In
many rural districts disputes between neighbours easily developed into acts
of force and the slaves of rival claimants did battle for their several owners.
Moreover, slaves might belong, not to an individual, but to a company[760]
exploiting some state concession of mineral or other rights. In such cases
‘regrettable incidents’ were always possible. And the wild herdsmen
(pastores) roaming armed in the lonely hill-country were a ready-made
soldiery ever inclined to brigandage or servile rebellions, a notorious
danger. It was an age of violence in city and country. Rich politicians at last
took to keeping private bands[761] of swordsmen (gladiatores). And it is to

be borne in mind that, while a citizen might be unwilling to risk the life of a
costly[762] slave, his own property, a slave would feel no economic restraint
to deter him from killing his master’s citizen enemy.
The employment of slaves in the affrays that took place in country
districts over questions of disputed right is fully illustrated in the
speeches[763] delivered in cases of private law. The fact was openly
recognized in the legal remedies provided, for instance in the various
interdicta framed to facilitate the trial and settlement of disputes as to
possessio. The forms contemplated the probability of slaves being engaged
in assailing or defending possession on behalf of their masters, and the
wording even varied according as the force in question had been used by
men armed or unarmed. Counsel of course made much or little of the
happenings in each case according to the interest of their clients. But that
bloodshed occurred at times in these fights is certain. And there was no
regular police force to keep order in remote corners of the land. When
slaves were once armed and set to fight, they would soon get out of hand,
and a slaveowner might easily lose valuable men. Nay more, an epidemic of
local brigandage might result, particularly in a time of civil war and general
unrest, and none could tell where the mischief would end. We can only form
some slight notion of the effect of such conditions as these on the prospects
of peaceful agriculture. The speech pro Quinctio belongs to 81 bc, the pro
Tullio to 71, the pro Caecina to 69. When we reflect that the slave rising
under Spartacus lasted from 73 to 71, and swept over a large part of Italy,
we may fairly conclude that this period was a bad one for farming.
The most striking picture of the violence sometimes used in the disputes
of rustic life meets us in the mutilated speech pro Tullio, of which enough
remains to make clear all that concerns us. First, the form of action
employed in the case was one of recent[764] origin, devised to check the
outrages committed by bands of armed slaves, which had increased since
the disturbances of the first civil war. The need for such a legal remedy
must have been peculiarly obvious at the time of the trial, for the rising of
Spartacus had only just been suppressed. Cicero refers to the notorious
scandal of murders committed by these armed bands, a danger to
individuals and even to the state, that had led to the creation of the new
form of action at law. In stating the facts of the case, of course from his
client’s point of view, he gives us details[765] which, true or not, were at

least such as would not seem incredible to a Roman court. Tullius owned an
estate in southern Italy. That his title to it was good is taken for granted. But
in it was reckoned a certain parcel of land which had been in undisputed
possession of his father. This strip, which was so situated as to form a
convenient adjunct to a neighbouring estate, was the cause of trouble. The
neighbouring estate had been bought by two partners, who had paid a fancy
price for it. The bargain was a bad one, for the land proved to be derelict
and the farmsteads all burnt down. One of the partners induced the other to
buy him out. In stating the area of the property he included the border strip
of land claimed by Tullius as his own. In the process of settlement of
boundaries for the transfer to the new sole owner he would have included
the disputed ground, but Tullius instructed[766] his attorney and his steward
to prevent this: they evidently did so, and thus the ownership of the border
strip was left to be determined by process of law. The sequel was
characteristic of the times. The thwarted claimant armed a band of slaves
and took possession[767] of the land by force, killing the slaves who were in
occupation on behalf of Tullius, and committing other murders and acts of
brigandage by the way. We need not follow the case into the law-court.
What concerns us is the evidence of unfortunate land speculation, of land-
grabbing, of boundary-disputes, and of the prompt use of violence to
supersede or hamper the legal determination of rights. The colouring and
exaggeration of counsel is to be allowed for; but we can hardly reject the
main outlines of the picture of armed slave-bands and bloodshed as a rural
phenomenon of the sorely tried South of Italy.
The speech pro Caecina shews us the same state of things existing in
Etruria. The armed violence alleged in this case is milder in form: at least
the one party fled, and nobody was killed. Proceedings were taken under a
possessory interdict issued by a praetor, and Cicero’s artful pleading is
largely occupied with discussion of the bearing and effect of the particular
formula employed. Several interesting transactions[768] are referred to. A
man invests his wife’s dowry in a farm, land being cheap, owing to bad
times, probably the result of the Sullan civil war. Some time after, he
bought some adjoining land for himself. After his death and that of his
direct heir, the estate had to be liquidated for purpose of division among
legatees. His widow, advised to buy in the parcel of land adjoining her own
farm, employed as agent a man who had ingratiated himself with her. Under

this commission the land was bought. Cicero declares that it was bought for
the widow, who paid the price, took possession, let it to a tenant, and held it
till her death. She left her second husband Caecina heir to nearly all her
property, and it was between him and the agent Aebutius that troubles now
arose. For Aebutius declared that the land had been bought by him for
himself, and that the lady had only enjoyed the profits of it for life in
usufruct under her first husband’s will. This was legally quite possible. At
the same time he suggested that Caecina had lost the legal capacity of
taking the succession at all. For Sulla had degraded the citizens belonging
to Volaterrae, of whom Caecina was one. Cicero is more successful in
dealing with this side-issue than in establishing his client’s claim to the
land. The dispute arising out of that claim, the armed violence used by
Aebutius to defeat Caecina’s attempt to assert possession, and the interdict
granted to Caecina, were the stages by which the case came into court. Its
merits are not certain. But the greedy characters on both sides, the trickery
employed by one side or other (perhaps both), and the artful handling of the
depositions of witnesses, may incline the reader to believe that the great
orator had but a poor case. At all events farming in Etruria appears as bound
up with slave labour and as liable to be disturbed by the violence of slaves
in arms.
In the above cases it suited Cicero’s purpose to lay stress on the perils
that beset defenceless persons who were interested in farms in out-of-the-
way[769] places. Yet the use of armed force was probably most habitual on
the waste uplands, and his references to the lawless doings of the brigand
slave-bands fully confirm the warnings of Varro. His tone varies according
to the requirements of his client’s case, but he has to admit[770] that
wayfarers were murdered and bloody affrays between rival bands ever
liable to occur. He can on occasion[771] boldly charge a political opponent
with deliberate reliance on such forces for revolutionary ends. Thus of C
Antonius he asserts ‘he has sold all his live stock and as good as parted with
his open pastures, but he is keeping his herdsmen; and he boasts that he can
mobilize these and start a slave-rebellion whenever he chooses.’ There was
no point in saying this if it had been absurdly incredible. Another glimpse
of the utter lawlessness prevalent in the wilds appears in the story[772] of
murders committed in Bruttium. Suspicion rested on the slaves employed
by the company who were exploiting the pitch-works in the great forest of

Sila under lease from the state. Even some of the free agents of the
company were suspected. The case, which was dealt with by a special
criminal tribunal, belongs to the year 138 bc, and attests the long standing
of such disorders. And it is suggestive of guilty complicity on the part of the
lessees that, though they eventually secured an acquittal, it was only after
extraordinary exertions on the part of their counsel.
Indeed these great gangs of slaves in the service of publicani were in
many parts of Italy and the Provinces a serious nuisance. Wherever the
exploitation of state properties or the collection of dues was farmed out to
contractors, a number of underlings would be needed. The lower grades
were slaves: a few rose to higher posts as freedmen of the various
companies. Now some of the enterprises, such as mines quarries woodlands
and the collection of grazing dues on the public pastures, were generally in
direct contact with rural life, and employed large staffs of slaves. The
managers of a company were concerned to produce a high dividend for
their shareholders: so long as this resulted from the labours of their men, it
was a matter of indifference to them whether neighbouring farmers were
robbed or otherwise annoyed. That we hear little or nothing of such
annoyances is probably owing to the practice of locking up slave-labourers
at night in an ergastulum, for fear of their running away, not to keep them
from doing damage. Runaways do not appear singly as a rustic pest. But in
bands there was no limit to the harm that fugitivi might do; witness the
horrors of the slave-wars. In short, wherever slaves were employed in large
numbers, the possibility of violence was never remote. Their masters had
always at hand a force of men, selected for bodily strength and hardened by
labour, men with nothing but hopeless lives to lose, and nothing loth to
exchange dreary toil for the dangers of a fight in which something to their
advantage might turn up. No doubt the instances of slaves called to arms in
rustic disputes were far more numerous than those referred to by Cicero: he
only speaks of those with which he was at the moment concerned.
Is it then true that in the revolutionary period farming depended on slave-
labour while its security was ever menaced by dangers that arose directly
out of the slave-system? I fear it is true, absurd though the situation may
seem to us. Between the great crises of disturbance were spells of
comparative quiet, in which men could and did farm profitably in the chief
agricultural districts of Italy. But it must be remembered that many an estate

changed hands in consequence of civil war, and that many new landlords
profited economically by appropriating the capital sunk in farms by their
predecessors. The case of Sextus Roscius of Ameria gives us some light on
this point. The picture drawn[773] by Cicero of the large landed estate of the
elder Roscius, of his wealth and interest in agriculture, of his jealous and
malignant relatives, of the reasons why he kept his son Sextus tied to a
rustic life, is undoubtedly full of colouring and subtle perversions of fact.
Let it go for what it may be worth. The accused was acquitted of the crime
laid to his charge (parricide), but there is no sign that he was ever able to
recover the estate and the home from which his persecutors had driven him.
They had shared the plunder with Chrysogonus the favoured freedman of
Sulla, who himself bought the bulk of the property at a mere fraction of its
market value, and it is practically certain that the rogues kept what they got.
It was easy to make agriculture pay on such terms. But what of the former
owners of such properties, on whose ruin the new men’s prosperity was
built? Can we believe that genuine agricultural enterprise was encouraged
by a state of things in which the fruits of long patience and skill were liable
to sudden confiscation?
In Cicero, as in other writers, we find evidence of a wage-earning class
living by bodily labour alongside of the slave-population. But in passages
where he speaks[774] of mercennarii it is often uncertain whether freemen
serving for hire, or slaves hired from another owner, are meant. In his
language the associations[775] of the word are mean. It is true that you may
buy for money not only the day’s-work (operae) of unskilled labourers but
the skill (artes) of craftsmen. In the latter case even Roman self-
complacency will admit a certain dignity; for men of a certain social
status[776] such professions are all very well. But the mere ‘hand’ is the
normal instance; and for the time of his employment he is not easily
distinguished from a slave. Therefore Cicero approves[777] a Stoic precept,
that justice bids you to treat slaves as you would hirelings—don’t stint their
allowances (food etc), but get your day’s-work out of them. In passages[778]
where the word mercennarius is not used, but implied, there is the same
tone of contempt, and it is not always clear whether the workers are free or
slaves. In short the word is not as neutral as operarius, which connotes
mere manual labour, whether the labourer be free or not, and is figuratively

used[779] to connote a merely mechanical proficiency in any art. Our
‘journeyman’ is sometimes similarly used.
There are other terms in connexion with land-management the use of
which by Cicero is worth noting. Thus a landlord may have some order to
give in reference to the cultivation of a farm. If he gives it to his
procurator[780], it is as an instruction, a commission authorizing him to act;
if to his vilicus, it is simply a command. For the former is a free attorney,
able at need to represent his principal even in a court of law: the latter is a
slave steward, the property of his master. The procurator is hardly a
‘manager’: he seldom occurs in connexion with agriculture, and seems then
to be only required when the principal is a very ‘big man,’ owning land on a
large scale, and probably in scattered blocks. In such cases it would be
convenient for (say) a senator to give a sort of ‘power of attorney’ to an
agent and let him supervise the direction of a number of farms, each
managed by a steward. I take this policy to be just that against which the
writers on agriculture warn their readers. It sins against the golden rule, that
nothing is a substitute for the Master’s eye. Whether the agent referred to in
the speech pro Tullio, who as well as the steward received[781] written
instructions from Tullius, was guilty of any neglect or blunder, we cannot
tell. That any act done to a procurator or by him was legally equivalent to
the same done to or by his principal, is a point pressed in the pro Caecina,
no doubt because it was safe ground and an excuse for not dwelling on
weak points in a doubtful case.
The colonus as a tenant[782] farmer, whom we find mentioned in Varro
but not in Cato, appears in Cicero. In the pro Caecina we read[783] that the
widow lady took possession of the farm and let it (locavit); also that the
tenant was after her death still occupying the farm, and that a visit of
Caecina, in which he audited the accounts of the tenant, is a proof that
Caecina himself was now in possession. That is, by asserting control of the
sitting tenant Caecina made the man his agent so far as to retain possession
through the presence of his representative. If the facts were as Cicero states
them, the contention would be legally sound. For, as he points out in
another passage, any representative[784] will serve for these purposes of
keeping or losing possession. If the interdict-formula only says ‘attorney’
(procurator), this does not mean that only an attorney in the technical sense,
a plenipotentiary agent appointed by an absentee principal with full legal

formalities, is contemplated. No, the brief formula covers agency of any
kind: it will apply to your tenant your neighbour your client or your
freedman, in short to any person acting on your behalf. In the great
indictment of Verres[785] we find a good instance of tenancy in Sicily, where
it seems to have been customary for large blocks of land to be held on lease
from the state by tenants-in-chief (aratores) who sometimes sublet parcels
to coloni. In this case the trouble arose out of the tithe to which the land was
liable. Verres, in order to squeeze an iniquitous amount out of a certain
farm, appointed a corrupt court charged to inquire whether the (arable)
acreage had been correctly returned by the colonus. Of course they were
instructed to find that the area had been fraudulently understated. But the
person against whom judgment was to be given was not the colonus, but
Xeno, who was not the owner of the farm. He pleaded that it belonged to
his wife, who managed her own affairs; also that he had not been
responsible for the cultivation (non arasse). Nevertheless he was not only
compelled to pay a large sum of money to meet the unfair damages exacted,
but subjected to further extortion under threat of corporal punishment. The
returns on which the tithes were assessed would seem to have been required
from the actual cultivators, and the lessees of the year’s tithe to have had a
right of action against the owners or chief-tenants of the land, if the tenant
farmer defaulted in any particular. So far we are able to gather that tenant
farmers were no exception at this time, though perhaps not a numerous
class; and that they were not persons of much social importance. That they
were to a considerable extent dependent on their landlords is probable,
though not actually attested by Cicero, for we have seen evidence of it in a
passage of Caesar. Cicero’s reference[786] to the case of a lady who
committed adultery with a colonus is couched in such terms as to imply the
man’s social inferiority. In another passage[787] we hear of a man in the
Order of equites equo publico being disgraced by a censor taking away his
state-horse, and of his friends crying out in protest that he was optimus
colonus, thrifty and unassuming. Here we have a person of higher social
quality, no doubt: but I conceive colonus to be used in the original sense of
‘cultivator.’ To say ‘he is a good farmer’ does not imply that he is a mere
tenant, any more than it does in the notable passage of Cato.
The vilicus generally appears in Cicero as the slave steward familiar to us
from other writers. In one place[788] he is contrasted with the dispensator,

who seems to be a sort of slave clerk charged with registering stores and
serving out rations clothing etc. As this functionary seldom meets us in the
rustic system of the period, we may perhaps infer that only large estates,
where the vilicus had no time to spare from purely agricultural duties,
required such extra service. In saying that he can read and write (litteras
scit) Cicero may seem to imply that this is not to be expected from the
vilicus: but the inference is not certain, for the agricultural writers require
stewards to read at least. In another passage[789] we read that in choosing a
slave for the post of steward the one thing to be kept in view is not technical
skill but the moral qualities, honesty industry alertness. Here it is plain that
the orator is warping the truth in order to suit his argument: Varro would
never have disregarded technical skill. For Cicero’s point is that what the
state needs most in its ‘stewards’ (that is, magistrates) is good moral
qualities. On the same lines he had some 16 years before compared[790]
Verres to a bad steward, who has ruined his master’s farm by dishonest and
wasteful management, and is in a fair way to be severely punished for his
offence. The tone of this passage is exactly that of old Cato, put in the
rhetorical manner of an advocate.
A few words must be said on the subject of manumission. In his defence
of Rabirius, accused of high treason, Cicero launches[791] out into a burst of
indignation at the attempted revival of an obsolete barbarous procedure
designed for his client’s destruction. The cruel method of execution to
which it points, long disused, is repugnant to Roman sentiment, utterly
inconsistent with the rights of free humanity. Such a prospect[792] would be
quite unendurable even to slaves, unless they had before them the hope of
freedom. For, as he adds below, when we manumit a slave, he is at once
freed thereby from fear of any such penalties as these. Taken by itself, this
passage is better evidence of the liability of slaves to cruel punishment than
of the frequent use of manumission. But we know from Cicero’s letters and
from other sources that freedmen were numerous. And from a sentence[793]
in one of the Philippics we may gather that it was not unusual for masters to
grant freedom to slaves after six years of honest and painstaking service. I
suspect that this utterance, in the context in which it occurs, should not be
taken too literally. That Romans of wealth and position liked to surround
themselves with retainers, humble and loyal, bound to their patron by ties of
gratitude and interest, is certain: and early manumissions were naturally

promoted by this motive. But the most pleasing instances were of course
those in which a community of pursuits developed a real sympathy, even
affection between owner and owned, as in the case of Tiro, on whose
manumission[794] Quintus Cicero wrote to congratulate his brother. In all
these passages, however, there is one thing to be noted. They do not look to
the conditions of rustic life; and, so far as the evidence of Cicero goes, they
do not shake my conviction that manumission was a very rare event on
country estates.
A topic of special interest is the evidence of the existence of farmers
who, whether employing slaves or not, worked on the land in person. What
does Cicero say as to αὐτουργία, in his time? It has been pointed out above
that, when it suits his present purpose, he not only enlarges on the homely
virtues of country folk but refers to the old Roman tradition of farmer-
citizens called from the plough to guide and save the state in hours of
danger. He made full use of this topic in his defence of Sextus Roscius, and
represented his client as a simple rustic, reeking of the farmyard,—how far
truly, is doubtful. But he does not go so far as to depict him ploughing or
digging or carting manure. It is reasonable to suppose that the slaves to
whom he refers[795] did the rough farm-work under his orders. When he can
make capital out of the wrongs of the humble labouring farmer, the orator
does not shrink from doing so. One of the iniquities laid to the charge[796] of
Verres is that he shifted the burden of taking legal proceedings from the
lessees of the Sicilian tithes (decumani) to the tithe-liable lessees of the land
(the aratores). Instead of the tithe-farmer having to prove that his demand
was just, the land-farmer had to prove that it was unjust. Now this was too
much even for those farming on a large scale: it meant in practice that they
had to leave their farms and go off to make their appeals at Syracuse. But
the hardship was far greater in the case of small farmers (probably sub-
tenants), of whom he speaks thus: ‘And what of those whose means of
tillage[797] consist of one yoke of oxen, who labour on their farms with their
own hands—in the days before your governorship such men were a very
numerous class in Sicily—when they have satisfied the demands of
Apronius, what are they to do next? Are they to leave their tillages, leave
their house and home, and come to Syracuse, in the hope of reasserting their
rights at law against an Apronius[798] under the impartial government of a
Verres?’ No doubt the most is made of these poor men and their wrongs.

But we need not doubt that there were still some small working farmers in
Sicily. In the half-century or so before the time of Verres we hear[799] of free
Sicilians who were sorely disturbed by the great servile rebellions and even
driven to make common cause with the insurgent slaves. Some such ‘small
men’ were evidently still to be found wedged in among the big plantations.
Another important passage occurs in the artful speech against the
agrarian bill of Rullus. It refers to the ager Campanus, on the value of
which as a public asset[800] Cicero insists. This exceptionally fertile district
was, and had long been, let by the state to cultivating tenants, whose
regularly-paid rents were one of the safest items in the Roman budget.
These farms were no latifundia, but apparently of moderate size, such that
thrifty farmers could make a good living in this favoured land. With the
various political[801] changes, carrying with them disturbances of
occupancy, caused by wars in the past, we are not here concerned. Cicero
declares that one aim of the bill was the assignation of this district to new
freeholders, which meant that the state treasury would lose a sure source of
revenue. This, in the interest of the aristocratic party, he was opposing, and
undoubtedly misrepresented facts whenever it suited his purpose. In matters
of this kind, he says, the cry is often raised[802] that it is not right for lands
to lie depopulated with no freemen left to till them. This no doubt refers to
the Gracchan programme for revival of the peasant farmers. Cicero declares
that such a cry is irrelevant to the present issue, for the effect of the bill will
be to turn out the excellent sitting tenants[803] only to make room for new
men, the dependants and tools of a political clique. The reason why, after
the fall of Capua in the second Punic war, that city was deprived of all
corporate existence, and yet the houses were left standing, was this: the
menace of a disloyal Capua had to be removed, but a town-centre of some
sort could not be dispensed with. For marketing, for storage[804] of produce,
the farmers must have some place of common resort: and when weary with
working on their farms they would find the town homesteads a welcome
accommodation. Allowing for rhetorical colouring in the interests of his
case, perhaps we may take it from Cicero that a fair number of practical
working farmers were settled on the Campanian plain. His prediction[805]
that, if this district were to be distributed in freehold allotments, it would
presently pass into the hands of a few wealthy proprietors (as the Sullan
allotments had been doing) suggests a certain degree of sincerity. But taken

as a whole the utterances of Cicero are too general, and too obviously
meant to serve a temporary purpose, to furnish trustworthy data for
estimating the numerical strength and importance of the working farmers in
the Italy of his day.

XXVII. SALLUST AND OTHERS.

In the writings of Cicero’s contemporaries other than Varro there is very
little to be found bearing upon rustic life and labour as it went on in their
time. Literature was occupied with other themes appropriate to the political
conflicts or social scandals or philosophic questionings that chiefly
interested various individuals and the circles in which they moved. The
origins of civilization formed a fascinating problem for some, for instance
the Epicurean Lucretius: but his theory of the development of agriculture
deals with matters outside of our subject. The one helpful passage of
Caesar[806] has been noticed already. So too has the contemptuous
reference[807] of Sallust to agriculture as slaves’ work. This writer in a few
places touches on points of interest. For instance, in speaking[808] of the
various classes of men who were ripe for revolution, he says ‘moreover
there were the able-bodied men who had been used to earn a hard living as
hired labourers on farms; the attraction of private and public bounties had
drawn them into Rome, where they found idle leisure preferable to
thankless toil.’ Such statements, unsupported by statistics, must be received
with caution, but this assertion is so far backed up by what we learn from
other sources, that we can accept it as evidence. How many such rustic
immigrants of this class there were at any given moment, is what we want
to know, and do not. Again, in a passage[809] describing the popularity of
Marius in 108 bc, he says ‘in short, the commons were fired with such
enthusiasm that the handworkers and the rustics of all sorts, men whose
means and credit consisted in the labour of their hands, struck work and
attended Marius in crowds, putting his election before their own daily
needs.’ In this there is perhaps some exaggeration, but the picture is
probably true in the main. The agrestes may include both small farmers and
labourers. But they can hardly have come from great distances, and so were
probably not very numerous. The description is as loose as passages of the
kind were in ancient writers, and are still. The references to rustic slave-

gangs, and Catiline’s refusal to arm them in support of his rising, have been
cited above.
We now pass into the period in which the last acts of the Roman
Republican drama were played and the great senatorial aristocrats, in whose
hands was a great share of the best lands in Italy, lost the power to exploit
the subject world. Not only by official extortion in provincial
governorships, but by money-lending at usurious interest[810] to client
princes or provincial cities, these greedy nobles amassed great sums of
money, some of which was employed in political corruption to secure
control of government at home. Civil wars and proscriptions now thinned
their ranks, and confiscations threw many estates into the market. The fall
of Antony in 31 bc left Octavian master of the whole empire of Rome, an
emperor ruling under republican disguises. Now it was naturally and
properly his aim to neutralize the effects of past disorders and remove their
causes. He looked back to the traditions of Roman growth and glory, and
hoped by using the lessons thus learnt to revive Roman prosperity and find
a sound basis for imperial strength. He worked on many lines: that which
concerns us here is his policy towards rustic life and agriculture. As he
persuaded and pressed the rich to be less selfish[811] and more public-
spirited, to spend less on ostentation and the adornment of their mansions
and parks, and to contribute liberally to works of public magnificence or
utility, a duty now long neglected; even so he strove to rebuild Italian
farming, to make it what it had been of yore, the seed-bed of simple civic
and military virtues. But ancient civilization, in the course of its
development in the Roman empire, had now gone too far for any ruler,
however well-meaning and powerful, to turn the tide. Socially it was too
concentrated and urban, economically too individualistic and too dependent
on the manipulation of masses of capital. In many directions the policy of
the judicious emperor was marvellously successful: but he did not succeed
in reviving agriculture on the old traditional footing as a nursery of peasant
farmers. He sought to bring back a traditional golden age, and court-poets
were willing to assert[812] that the golden age had indeed returned. This was
not true. The ever-repeated praises of country life are unreal. Even when
sincere, they are the voice of town-bred men, weary of the fuss and follies
of urban life, to which nevertheless they would presently come back
refreshed but bored[813] with their rural holiday. That the science and art of