In pursuing our subject from period to period, and keeping so far as possible to chronological order, it may seem inconsistent to take this collection[252]of scraps as a group. For Attic Comedy covers nearly two centuries, from the age of Cratinus to the age of Menander. Many changes happened in this time, and the evidence of the fragments must not be cited as though it were that of a single witness. But the relevant passages are few; for the writers, such as Athenaeus and Stobaeus, in whose works most of the extracts are preserved, seldom had their attention fixed on agriculture. The longer fragments[253]of Menander recently discovered are somewhat more helpful. The adaptations of Plautus and Terence must be dealt with separately.
That country life and pursuits had their share of notice on the comic stage is indicated by the fact that Aristophanes produced a play[254]named Γεωργοί, and Menander a Γεωργός. That the slave-market was active is attested by references in all periods. So too is wage-earning labour of various kinds: but some of these passages certainly refer to wage-earning by slaves paying a rent (ἀποφορά) to their owners. Also the problems arising out of the relation between master and slave, with recognition of the necessity of wise management. The difference between the man who does know how to control slaves[255]and the man who does not (εὔδουλος and κακόδουλος) was early expressed, and indirectly alluded to throughout. The good and bad side of slaves, loyalty treachery honesty cheating etc, is a topic constantly handled. But these passages nearly always have in view the close relation of domestic slavery. I think we are justified in inferring that the general tone steadily becomes more humane.Common humanity gains recognition as a guide of conduct. Many of the fragments have been handed down as being neatly put moral sentences, and of these not a few[256]recognize the debt that a slave owes to a good master. These are utterances of slaves, for the slave as a character became more and more a regular figure of comedy, as comedy became more and more a drama of private life. Side by side with this tone is the frank recognition of the part played by chance[257]in the destinies of master and slave; a very natural reflexion in a state of things under which you had but to be captured and sold out of your own country, out of the protection of your own laws, to pass from the former condition to the latter. A few references to manumission also occur, and the Roman adaptations suggest that in the later Comedy they were frequent. On the other hand several fragments seem to imply that circumstances were working unfavourably to the individual free craftsmen, at least in some trades. The wisdom of learning a craft (τέχνη), as a resource[258]that cannot be lost like external possessions, is insisted on. But in other passages a more despairing view[259]appears; death is better than the painful struggle for life. No doubt different characters were made to speak from different points of view.
It is to be noted that two fragments of the earlier Comedy refer to the old tradition[260]of a golden age long past, in which there were no slaves (see under Herodotus), and in which the bounty of nature[261]provided an ample supply of food and all good things (see the passages cited from theOdyssey). 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 famousGreek 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.
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 arePheidonof Corinth andPhilolaus, 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]areHippodamusof Miletus, whose birth is placed about 475BC, andPhaleasof 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 aninternal 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 territoryhad 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 hispoint 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 citizensde iurewho arede factoas 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 sametraining, on the same principle as he gives equal land-lots. To Aristotle this seems crude nonsense: the problem to him is the discovery of the appropriate training, whether the same for all or not. This insistence on training as the main thing in citizen-making is, as we shall see, a common feature of Greek political speculation. But in the artistic desire to produce the ‘complete citizen,’ and thereby make possible a model state, the specializing mania outruns the humbler considerations of everyday human society, and agriculture, for all its confessed importance, is apt to be treated with something very like contempt. The tendency to regard farmer and warrior as distinct classes is unmistakeable. The peasant-soldier of Roman tradition is not an ordinary Greek figure. How far the small scale of Greek states may have favoured this differentiation is very hard to say. But Greek admiration for the athlete type had probably something to do with the growth of military professionalism.
The recognition of a land-question and attempts to find a solution were probably stimulated by observation of contemporary phenomena, especially in the two leading states of the fifth century. Sparta had long held the first place, and even the rise of Athens had not utterly destroyed her ancient prestige. That her military system was effective, seemed proved by the inviolability of Laconian territory and the successes of her armies in external wars. That it was supported by the labour of a Greek population reduced to serfdom, was perhaps a weak point in her institutions; but that Greek opinion was seriously shocked by the fact can hardly be maintained. It was now and then convenient to use it as a passing reproach, but even Athens did not refuse to aid in putting down Helot rebellions. And this weak point was set off by a strong one. Whatever the reasons[293]for her policy, she interfered very little in the internal affairs of her allies and did not tax them. To be content with the leadership of confederates, and not to convert it into an empire of subjects, assured to her a certain amount of respectful sympathy in the jealous Greek world. Thus she afforded an object-lesson in the advantages of rigid specialization. She provided her own food in time of peace, and took her opponents’ food in time of war. The disadvantages of her system were yet to appear. Athens on the other hand was becoming more and more dependent on imported food. She was the leader of the maritime states and islands: she had become their imperial mistress. However easy her yoke might be in practice, it left no room for independent action on the part of her subject allies: what had been contributions from members of a league had become virtually imperial taxation, and to Greek prejudices such taxation appeared tyranny. Nor was this prejudice allowed to die out. Therival interests of commercial Corinth saw to it that the enslavement, not of Greeks but of Greek states, should be continually borne in mind. The contrast between the two leading powers was striking. But, if many Greek states feared in Athens a menace to their several independence, on the other hand they shrank from copying the rigid discipline of Sparta. No wonder that some of the more imaginative minds had dreams of a system more congenial to Greek aspirations. But the land-question was a stumbling-block. That a citizen should take an active personal share in politics was assumed, and that he should do this tended to make him depute non-political duties to others. Thus the notion that all citizens should be equal in the eye of the law and share in government—democracy in short—was not favourable to personal labour on the land. No distribution of land-lots could convert the city politician into a real working farmer. Therefore either there must be a decline in agriculture or an increase of slave-labour, or both. From these alternatives there was no escape: but ingenious schemers long strove to find a way. And from those days to these no one has succeeded in constructing a sound and lasting civilization on a basis of slavery.
An Athenian who died in 347BCat the age of 80 or 82 years had witnessed extraordinary changes in the Hellenic world, more particularly in the position of Athens. With the political changes we are not here directly concerned. But they were closely connected with economic changes, both as cause and as effect. The loss of empire[294]entailed loss of revenue. The amounts available as state-pay being reduced, the poorer citizens lost a steady source of income: that their imperial pride had departed did not tend to make them less sensitive to the pinch of poverty. Athens, thrown back upon her own limited resources, had to produce what she could in order to buy what she needed, and capital, employing slave-labour, found its opportunity. In this atmosphere discontent and jealousy grew fast: conflicting interests of rich and poor were at the back of all the disputes of political life. Athens it is true avoided the crude revolutionary methods adopted in some less civilized states. The Demos did not massacre or banish the wealthy Few, and share out their lands and other properties among the poor Many. But they consistently regarded the estates of the rich as the source from which the public outlay should as far as possible be drawn. They left the capitalist free to make money in his own way, and squeezed him when he had made it. Whether he were citizen ormetic[295]mattered not from the economic point of view. Capitalistic industry was really slave-industry. The ‘small man’ had the choice of either competing, perhaps vainly, with the ‘big man’ on the land or in the workshop, or of giving up the struggle and using his political power to make the ‘big man’ disgorge some of his profits. Moreover military life no longer offered the prospects of conquest and gain that had made it attractive. The tendency was to treat the citizen army as a defensive force, and to employ professional mercenaries (of whom there was now[296]no lack) on foreign service. To a thoughtful observer these phenomena suggested uneasy reflexions. Demos in Assembly was a dispiriting spectacle. Selfish[297]and shortsighted, he cared more for his own belly and his amusements than for permanent interests of state. Perhaps this was no new story. But times had changed, and the wealthy imperial Athens, able to support the burden of her own defects, had passed away. Bad government in reduced circumstances might well be productive of fatal results.
It was not Athens alone that had failed. Fifteen years before Plato’s death the failure of both Sparta and Thebes had left Hellas exhausted[298]and without a leading state to give some sort of unity to Greek policy. There was still a common Hellenic feeling, but it was weak compared with separatist jealousy. Antipathy to the Barbarian remained: but the Persian power had been called in by Greeks to aid them against other Greeks, and this was a serious danger to the Greek world. Things were even worse in the West. How anarchic democracy had paved the way for military tyranny at Syracuse, how the tyranny had lowered the standard of Greek civilization in Sicily and Italy, and had been the ruin of Greek cities, no man of that age knew better than Plato. Plato was not singular in his distrust of democracy: that attitude was common enough. Among the companions of Socrates I need only refer to Xenophon and Critias. Socrates had insisted that government is a difficult art, for success in which a thorough training is required. Now, whatever might be the case in respect of tyrannies or oligarchies, democracy was manifestly an assertion of the principle that all citizens were alike qualified for a share in the work of government. Yet no craftsman would dream of submitting the work of his own trade to the direction of amateurs. Why then should the amateur element, led by amateurs, dominate in the sphere of politics? It was easy to findinstances of the evil effects of amateurism in public affairs. It is true that this line of argument contained a fallacy, as arguments from analogy very often do. But it had a profound influence on Plato, and it underlay all his political speculations. It was reinforced by an influence that affected many of his contemporaries, admiration of Sparta on the score of the permanence[299]of her system of government. That this admiration was misguided, and the permanence more apparent than real, matters not: to a Greek thinker it was necessarily attractive, seeking for some possibly permanent principle of government, and disgusted with the everlasting flux of Hellenic politics. Nor was there anything strange in imagining an ideal state in which sound principles might be carried into effect. The foundation of colonies, in which the settlers made a fresh start as new communities, was traditionally a Greek custom. Such was the foundation, logical and apparently consistent with experience, on which Plato designed to build an Utopia. Avoiding the unscientificlaisser-faireof democratic politics, functions were to be divided on a rational system, and government placed in the hands of trained specialists.
It is well to note some of the defects of Greek civilization as Plato saw it, particularly in Athens. The confusion and weakness of democratic government, largely the fruit of ignorance haste and prejudice, has been referred to above. In most states the free citizen population were born and bred at the will of their fathers under no scientific state-regulation, not sifted out in youth by scientific selection, and only trained up to the average standard locally approved. Something better was needed, if more was to be got out of human capacity. But it seems certain that Plato found the chief and most deep-seated source of social and political evils in the economic situation. The unequal distribution of wealth and the ceaseless struggle between rich and poor lay at the root of that lack of harmonious unity in which he saw the cause of the weakness and unhappiness of states. To get rid of the plutocrat and the beggar[300]was a prime object. Confiscation and redistribution[301]offered no lasting remedy, so long as men remained what they were. A complete moral change was necessary, and this could only be effected by an education that should train all citizens cheerfully and automatically to bear their several parts in promoting the happiness of all. There must be no more party-strivings after the advantage of this or that section: the guiding principle must be diversity of individual functions combined with unity of aim. An ideal state must be the Happy Landof the Expert, and each specialist must mind his own business. Thus each will enjoy his own proper happiness: friction competition and jealousy will pass away. There will be no more hindrance to the efficiency of craftsmen: we shall not see one tempted by wealth[302]to neglect his trade, while another is too poor to buy the appliances needed for turning out good work. The expert governors or Guardians must be supplied with all necessaries[303]by the classes engaged in the various forms of production. Thus only can they be removed from the corruptions that now pervert politicians. To them at least all private property must be denied. And, in order that they may be as expert in their own function of government as other craftsmen are in their several trades, they must be bred selected and educated on a strictly scientific system the very opposite of the haphazard methods now in vogue.
This brief sketch of the critical and constructive scope of theRepublicmust suffice for my purpose. Plato laid his finger on grave defects, but his remedies seem fantastic in the light of our longer and more varied experience. Any reform of society had to be carried out by human agency, and for the difficulty of adapting this no adequate allowance is made. He recognizes the difficulty of starting an ideal community on his model. Old prejudices will be hard to overcome. So he suggests[304]that it will be necessary for the philosophical rulers to clear the ground by sending all the adult inhabitants out into the country, keeping in the city only the children of ten years and under: these they will train up on their system. He implies that with the younger generation growing up under properly regulated conditions the problems of establishment will solve themselves by the effect of time. This grotesque proposal may indicate that Plato did not mean his constructive design to be taken very seriously. But a more notable weakness appears in the narrowness of outlook. It was natural that a Greek should think and write as a Greek for Greeks, and seek lessons in Greek experience. But the blight of disunion and failure was already on the little Greek states; and their experience, not likely to recur, has in fact never really recurred. Hence the practical value of Plato’s stimulating criticism and construction is small. In the labour-question we find no advance. Slavery is assumed as usual, but against the enslavement of Greeks, of which recent warfare supplied many examples, he makes[305]a vigorous protest. Euripides had gone further than this, and questionings of slavery had not been lacking. Another very Greek limitation of view comes out in the contempt[306]for βαναυσία, the assumedphysical and moral inferiority of persons occupied in sedentary trades. That such men were unfitted for the rough work of war, and therefore unfitted to take part in ruling an independent Greek state, was an opinion not peculiar to Plato. But this objection could not well be raised against the working farmer. Why then does Plato exclude the farmer-class from a share in the government of his ideal state? I think we may detect three reasons. First, the husbandman, though necessary to the state’s existence, has not the special training required for government, nor the leisure to acquire it. Second, it is his intense occupation that alone secures to the ruling class the leisure needful for their responsible duties. Third, the belief[307]that a man cannot be at the same time a good husbandman and a good soldier. These three may be regarded as one: the philosopher would get rid of haphazard amateurism by making the expert specialist dominant in all departments of civil and military life. The influence of the Spartan system (much idealized), and the growth of professional soldiering, on his theories is too obvious to need further comment.
Reading theRepublicfrom the labour-question point of view, one is struck by the lack of detail as to the condition of the classes whose labour feeds and clothes the whole community. We must remember that the dialogue starts with an attempt to define Justice, in the course of which a wider field of inquiry is opened up by assuming an analogy[308]between the individual and the state. As the dominance of his nobler element over his baser elements is the one sure means of ensuring the individual’s lasting happiness, so the dominance of the nobler element in the state alone offers a like guarantee. On these lines the argument proceeds, using an arbitrary psychology, and a fanciful political criticism to correspond. The construction of a model state is rather incidental than essential to the discussion. No wonder that, while we have much detail as to the bodily and mental equipment of the ‘Guardians’ (both the governing elders and the warrior youths) we get no information as to the training of husbandmen and craftsmen. Like slaves, they are assumed to exist: how they become and remain what they are assumed to be, we are not told. We are driven to guess that at this stage of his speculations Plato was content to take over these classes just as he found them in the civilization of his day. But he can hardly have imagined that they would acquiesce in any system by which they would be excluded from all political power. The hopeless inferiority of the husbandman is most clearly marked when contrasted with the young warriors of the ‘Guardian’ class. Duties are so highly specialized that men are differentiated for life. The γεωργὸς cannot be a good soldier. But if a soldier shews cowardice he is to be punished[309]by being madea γεωργὸς or δημιουργός—a degradation in itself, and accompanied by no suggestion of a special training being required to fit him for his new function. It is unnecessary to enlarge on such points: constructors of Utopias cannot avoid some inconsistencies and omissions. The simple fact is that the arrangements for differentiation of classes in the model state are not fully worked out in detail.
Plato’s Guardians are to have no private property; for it is private property[310]that seems to him the cause of sectional and personal interests which divide and weaken the state and lead to unhappiness. But the other classes are not so restricted. They can own land and houses etc; on exactly what tenure, is less clear. Meanwhile, what is it that the Guardians have in common? It is the sustenance (τροφὴ) provided as pay (μισθὸς) for their services by the mass of workers over whom they rule. It is expressly stated[311]that in the model state the Demos will call the Rulers their Preservers and Protectors, and the Rulers call the Demos their Paymasters and Sustainers. In existing states other than democracies their mutual relation is too often expressed as that of Masters and Slaves. I cannot refrain from noting that, if the pay of the Guardians consists in their sustenance, this is so far exactly the case of slaves. That power and honour should be reserved for men maintained thus, without private emoluments, is remarkable. The Spartiates, however much an idealizing of their system may have suggested the arrangement, were maintained by the sulky labour of Helot serfs. Are the husbandmen in Plato’s scheme really any better than Helots? In describing the origin of states in general, Plato finds the cause[312]of that development in the insufficiency of individuals to meet their own needs. But in tracing the process of the division of labour, and increasing complexity of civilization, he ignores slavery, though slavery is often referred to in various parts of the book. Now, if the husbandman has under him no slaves, and is charged with the food-supply of his rulers, he comes very near to the economic status of a serf. He works with his own hands, but not entirely at his own will or for his own profit. And in one respect he would, to Greek critics, seem inferior to a Spartan[313]Helot: he is, by the extreme specializing system, denied all share in military service, and so can hardly be reckoned a citizen at all. How came Plato to imagine for a single moment that a free Greek would acquiesce in such a position? I can only guess that the present position of working farmers and craftsmen in trades seemed to him an intolerable one. If, as I believefrom the indications in Xenophon and other authorities, agriculture and the various industries of Attica were now steadily passing into the hands of slaveowning capitalists, and small men going to the wall, there would be much to set a philosopher thinking and seeking some way of establishing a wholesomer state of things. On this supposition speculations, however fantastic and incapable of realization in fact, might call attention to practical evils and at least prepare men’s minds for practical remedies. In admitting the difficulty of making a fresh start, and the certainty that even his model state would in time lose its purity[314]and pass through successive phases of decay, Plato surely warns us not to take his constructive scheme seriously. But whether he really believed that free handworkers could (save in an oligarchy, which[315]he detests,) be induced to submit to a ruling class, and be themselves excluded on principle from political interests of any kind, is more than I can divine.
That the scheme outlined in theRepublicwas not a practical one was confessed by Plato in his old age by producing theLaws, a work in which the actual circumstances of Greek life were not so completely disregarded. The main points that concern us are these. Government is to be vested in a detailed code of laws, administered by magistrates elected by the citizens. There is a Council and an Assembly. Pressure is put upon voters, especially[316]on the wealthier voters, to make them vote. The influence of the Solonian model is obvious. Provision is made[317]for getting over the difficulties of the first start, while the people are still under old traditions which the new educational system will in due course supersede. But, so far from depending on perfect Guardians with absolute power, and treating law as a general pattern[318]modifiable in application by the Guardians at their discretion, we have law supreme and Guardians dependent on the people’s will. It is a kind of democracy, but Demos is to be carefully trained, and protected from his own vagaries by minute regulations. The number of citizens[319]is by law fixed at 5040. Each one has an allotment of land, a sacred κλῆρος that cannot be sold. This passes by inheritance from father to son as an undivided whole. Extinction of a family may be prevented by adoptions under strict rules. Excess of citizen population may be relieved by colonies. Poverty is excluded[320]by the minimum guaranteed in the inalienable land-lot, excessive wealth by laws fixing a maximum. It is evident that in this detailed scheme of theLawsagriculture must have its position more clearly defined than in theRepublic.
So indeed it has. In order that all may have a fair share, each citizen’s land-lot[321]is in two parts, one near the city, the other near the frontier. Thus we see that all citizens will be interested in cultivating the land. We see also that this will be absolutely necessary: for it is intended[322]that the model state shall not be dependent on imported food (like Athens), but produce its own supply. Indeed commerce is to be severely restricted. What the country cannot produce must if necessary be bought, and for this purpose only[323]will a recognized Greek currency be employed: internal transactions will be conducted with a local coinage. The evil effects[324]seen to result from excessive commercial dealings will thus be avoided. When we turn to the agricultural labour-question, we find that wholesale employment of slaves[325]or serfs is the foundation of the system. For Plato, holding fast to the principle of specialization, holds also that leisure[326]is necessary for the citizens if they are to bear their part in politics with intelligent judgment. As, in this second-best Utopia, the citizens are the landowners, and cannot divest themselves of their civic responsibilities, they must do their cultivating by deputy. And this practically amounts to building the fabric of civilization on a basis of slavery—nothing less. In the matter of agriculture, the industry on which this self-sufficing community really rests, this dependence on slave-labour is most striking. It even includes a system[327]of serf-tenants (probably for the borderland farms) who are to be left to cultivate the land, paying a rent or quota of produce (ἀπαρχὴ) to the owners. The importance of not having too large a proportion[328]of the slaves in a gang drawn from any one race is insisted on as a means of preventing combinations and risings. At the same time careful management is enjoined, sympathetic[329]but firm: a master should be kind, but never forget that he is a master: no slave must be allowed to take liberties. To implant a sound tradition of morality is recognized as a means of promoting good order in the community, and this influence should be brought to bear[330]on slaves as well as on freemen. Yet the intrinsic chattelhood of the slave appears clearly in many ways; for instance, the damage to a slave is made good by compensating[331]his owner. The carelessness of ill-qualified practitioners[332]who treat slaves, contrasted with the zeal of competent doctors in treating freemen, is another significant touch.
It seems then that Plato, the more he adapts his speculations to the facts of existing civilization, the more positively he accepts slave-labouras a necessary basis. The conception of government as an art is surely the chief cause of this attitude. The extreme specialization of theRepublicis moderated in theLaws, but there is not much less demand for leisure, if the civic artists are to be unhampered in the practice of their art. Of the dangers[333]of servile labour on a large scale he was well aware, and he had evidently studied with attention[334]the awkward features of serfdom, not only in the old Hellas, but in the Greek colonial states of the East and West. Nevertheless he would found his economy on the forced labour of human chattels. A system that had grown up in the course of events, extending or contracting according to changes of economic circumstance, was thus presented as the deliberate result of independent thought. But the only theory at the back of traditional slavery was the law[335]of superior force—originally the conqueror’s will. Plato was therefore driven to accept this law as a principle of human society. To accept it was to bring his speculations more into touch with Greek notions; for no people have surpassed the Greeks in readiness to devolve upon others the necessary but monotonous drudgery of life. This attitude of his involves the conclusion that the Barbarian is to serve the Greek, a position hardly consistent with his earlier[336]doctrine, that no true line could be drawn distinguishing Greek and Barbarian. Such a flux of speculative opinion surely weakens our respect for Plato’s judgment in these matters. We can hardly say that he offers any effective solution of the great state-problems of his age. But that these problems were serious and disquieting his repeated efforts bear witness. And one of the most serious was certainly that of placing the agricultural interest on a sound footing. Its importance he saw: but neither of his schemes, neither passive free farmers nor slave-holding landlords, was likely to produce the desired result. To say this is not to blame a great man’s failure. Centuries have passed, and experience has been gained, without a complete solution being reached: the end is not yet.
A few details remain to be touched on separately. The employment of hired labourers is referred to as normal[337]in thePoliticusRepublicandLaws. They are regarded simply as so much physical strength at disposal. They are free, and so able to transfer their labour from job to job according to demand. Intellectually and politically they do not count. But the μισθωτὸς is neither a chattel like the slave, nor bound to the soil like the serf. I have found no suggestion of the employment of this class in agriculture; and, as I have said above, I believe that they were in fact almost confined to the towns, especiallysuch as the Peiraeus. It is also worth noticing that we find favourable mention of apprenticeship[338]as a method of learning a trade. But this principle also seems not applied to agriculture. Again, we are told[339]in theLawsthat one who has never served (δουλεύσας) will never turn out a creditable master (δεσπότης). From the context this would seem to refer only to the wardens of the country (ἀγρονόμοι), who must be kept under strict discipline in order to perform very responsible duties. It does not apply to farmers. Another curious rule[340]is that kidnapping of men is not to be allowed. Yet there are bought slaves, and therefore a market. That the dealer in human flesh should be despised[341]by his customers is a feeling probably older than Plato, and it lasted down to the days ofUncle Tom’s Cabin. In view of Plato’s acceptance of the sharp line drawn between Greek and Barbarian (and this does touch rustic slavery) it is interesting to note that he observed[342]with care the different characters of alien peoples. He also refers[343]to them without contempt in various contexts side by side with Greeks, and cites[344]their common belief as a proof of the existence of the gods.
If I may venture to make a general comment on Plato’s position in relation to the labour-question, I would remark that he is already in the same difficulty which proved embarrassing to Aristotle, and which has always beset those who seek to find a theoretical justification for slavery. True, he is less definite and positive than Aristotle, but the attempt to regard a human being as both a man and a chattel is a failure. This point need not be further pressed here. But it is well to observe that agriculture is the department in which the absurdity most strikingly appears. Heavy farm-labour without prospect of personal advantage was recognized as a function that no man would willingly perform. Hence to be sent to labour on a farm was one of the punishments that awaited the offending domestic slave. Hence overseers were employed to exact from rustic slaves their daily task under the menace of severe and often cruel punishments. Hence the humaner masters (as Xenophon shews us) tried to secure more cheerful and effective service by a system of little rewards for good work. In short there was in practical life a miserable attempt to treat the slave both as a brute beast and as a moral being capable of weighing consequences and acting accordingly. One form of reward, manumission, was apparently not at this time common[345]in Greece: and it was one noteasy to apply in agriculture. It was not easy to know what to do with a worn-out farm-hand, unless he was transferred to lighter duties on the farm; for he would be useless elsewhere. Sooner or later a time would come when he could no longer do anything of any value. What then? Was he charitably fed by the master[346]whom he had served, or was he cast adrift in nominal freedom? From the fragments of Comedy one may perhaps guess that the humaner practice generally prevailed. But the silence of Plato seems to suggest that to him, and indeed to Greeks generally, the point was not an important one. Even for a citizen, if destitute in old age, the state-relief was very small. We must therefore not wonder at the silence generally maintained as to the treatment of the worn-out rustic slave. Slave artisans, and those whose services were let out to other employers with reservation of a rent to their own masters, could scrape together the means of sustenance in their old age. It is possible that manumission of rustic slaves may have occasionally taken place, and that they too may have scraped together some small savings: but I can find no ground for thinking that such cases were normal or even frequent. In theLawsPlato allows for the presence of freedmen[347], and frames regulations for their control, probably suggested by experience of the Attic laws and their defects. Manumission by the state[348]as reward of slave-informers is also mentioned. But there is nothing in these passages to weaken the natural inference that town slaves, and chiefly domestics, are the class to whom in practice such rules would apply. In short, we must not look to a philosopher reared in a civilization under which manual labour tended to become the burden of the unfree and the destitute, and to be despised as mean and unworthy of the free citizen, for a wholesome solution of the problem of farm-labour.
It is convenient to take the speeches and pamphlets of the masters of Attic oratory in two sections, though there can be no exact chronological division between the two. The political background is different in the two cases. To Isocrates the urgent problem is how to compose Greek jealousies by uniting in an attack on the common enemy, Persia: to Demosthenes it is how to save the separate independence of the weary Greek states from the control of the encroaching king of Macedon. True, the disunion of Greece was not to be ended by eithereffort. But the difficulties of Isocrates lay largely outside Athens: the states did not want to have a leader; Philip, to whom he turned in his old age, was no more welcome to them than the rest of his proposed leaders. Demosthenes had to face the fact of a Macedonian party in Athens itself, as well as to overcome the apathy and inertia which had been growing continually since the fall of the Athenian empire. His opponents were not all mere corrupt partisans of the Macedonian king. Athens was now no longer a great power, and they knew it: Demosthenes is forgiven by historians for his splendid defiance of facts. Naturally enough, in the conflicts of political opinion from the time of the revolution of the Four Hundred to the death of Demosthenes (411-322BC) we have few references to agriculture. Yet we know that the question of food-supply was still a pressing one for many Greek states, above all for Athens. Some of the references have a value as being contemporary. But a large part of these are references to litigation, and deal not with conditions of cultivation but with claims to property. Among the most significant facts are the importance attached to the control of the Hellespontine trade-route and the careful regulations affecting the import and distribution[349]of corn.
The period on which we get some little light from passages in the earlier orators is roughly about 410-350BC. It includes the general abandonment of agricultural enterprises abroad, owing to the loss of empire and therewith of cleruchic properties. By this shrinkage the relative importance of home agriculture must surely have been increased. Yet I cannot find a single direct statement or reference to this effect. It seems reasonable to suppose that it was not necessary to assert what was only too obvious. Corn had to be imported, and imported it was from various[350]sources of supply. To guard against failure of this supply was a chief preoccupation of the Athenian government. But that some corn was still grown in Attica is clear. Isocrates says[351]that one act of hostility to the Thirty was the destruction of corn in the country by the democrats. And in another place[352]he lays stress upon the mythical legend of the earliest introduction of corn-growing, the civilizing gift of Demeter to her favoured Attica. Yet there are signs that the culture of the olive and vine was more and more displacing cereal crops: the fig tree, often a sacred thing, was, and had long been, a regular feature of the countryside. Live stock, goats sheep and cattle, were probably abundant, though there was seldom need for an orator to mention them. If we judge by the remaining references,it would seem that land was not generally cultivated by its owners. Letting to tenant farmers[353]was the plan adopted by the state in dealing with public lands, and the collection of the rents was farmed out in its turn to capitalist speculators by public auction. We have several specimens[354]of mixed estates, described by an orator in connexion with some litigation. From these we may fairly infer that the policy of not putting all their eggs into one basket found favour with Athenian capitalists. Landed estate is in such cases but one item, side by side with house-property, mortgages and money at interest on other securities, slaves and other stock employed or leased to employers, stock in hand, specie and other valuables, mentioned in more or less detail. Consistently with this picture of landlord and tenant is the statement[355]that formerly, in the good old times before Athens entered upon her ill-starred career of imperialism, the country houses and establishments of citizens were superior to those within the city walls; so much so, that even the attraction of festivals could not draw them to town from their comfortable country-seats. Evidently a great change had come over rural Attica, if the writer is to be trusted. We are not to suppose that personal direction of a farm by the owner of the land was altogether a thing of the past. Suburban farms at least were, as we learn from Xenophon, sometimes managed by men living in the city and riding out to superintend operations and give orders. The injured husband[356]defended byLysiasmay even have gone to and fro on foot. He does not seem to have been a wealthy man, and he may have been a αὐτουργός, taking part in the labours of his farm: that he earned his night’s rest and slept sound seems suggested by the context of his curious story.
That there was no lack of interest in the prospects of agriculture generally may be inferred from various references to the different qualities of soils not only in Attica but in other parts of Greece and abroad. The smallness of the cultivable area in rocky Samothrace[357]was noted byAntiphon.Isocratesremarked[358]that in Laconia the Dorian conquerors appropriated not only the greater part of the land but the most fertile. The results of their greed and oppression had not been wholly satisfactory in the long run: adversity carried with it the peril[359]of Helot risings. No fertility of soil can compensate for the ill effects of bad policy and lack of moderation: the independence and wellbeing of cramped rocky Megara, contrasted[360]with the embarrassments of widefruitful Thessaly, is an object-lesson. The Greek race needs to expand[361], as it did of old, when Athens led the colonization of the Asiatic seaboard. It is monstrous to try and wring contributions from (δασμολογεῖν)[362]the islanders, who have to till mountain sides for lack of room. It is in Asia that the new Greece must find relief, at the expense of Persia, whose subjects let vast areas lie idle, while the parts that they do cultivate keep them in great plenty; so fertile is the land. Attica itself was once a prosperous farming country. In the good old days, before the unhappy dissension between selfish rich and grudging poor, agriculture was one of the chief means[363]used to avert poverty and distress. Farms let at fair rents kept the people profitably employed, and so out of mischief. Men could and did[364]live well in the country: they were not jostling each other in the city to earn a bare subsistence by pitiful state-fees—beggars all—as they are doing now. The great pamphleteer may be overdrawing his picture, but that it contains much truth is certain, and it seems pretty clear that he saw no prospect of a local revival. Athens had run her course of ambitious imperialism, and the old country life, developed in long security, could not be restored. Any man who felt inclined to live a farmer’s life would, if I read the situation aright, prefer some cheap and profitable venture abroad to the heavy and unremunerative struggles of a crofter in upland Attica. Small farms in the rich lowland were I take it very seldom to be had. And, if he had the capital to work a large farm, he was under strong temptation to employ his capital in urban industries, state-contracts, loans at interest, etc, and so to distribute his risks while increasing his returns. For his main object was to make money, not to provide himself and his family with a healthy and comfortable home. The land-question in Attica is illustrated by a passage ofIsaeusin which he refers to the fraud of a guardian. The scoundrel, he says, has robbed his nephew of the estate: he is sticking to the farm (τὸν ἀγρόν) and has given him a hill pasture[365](φελλέα).
Farming enterprise abroad had been a product of the Athenian empire with its cleruchies and colonies, and probably private ventures of individuals, unofficial but practically resting on imperial protection. The collapse of this system would ruin some settlers and speculators, and impoverish more. Even those who returned to Athens still possessed of considerable capital would not in all cases take to Attic farming, even supposing that they were willing to face its risks and that suitable farms were available. It was to Athens a most importantobject to retain or recover all she could of her island territories, partly no doubt in order to control the cultivable lands in them. In the peace-negotiations of 390BCthe extreme opposition party at Athens were not content[366]with the proposals by which she was to recover the islands of Lemnos Imbros and Scyros: they demanded also the restitution of the Thracian Chersonese and estates and debts elsewhere. So strong was the feeling of dependence on these investments abroad. AndIsocrates, in depicting the evil results of imperial ambition, recalls[367]to the citizens that, instead of farming the lands of others, the Peloponnesian war had for years prevented them from setting eyes upon their own.