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.