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.