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.