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.