Thus far I have said nothing of the labour-question. Orators and pamphleteers were not likely to concern themselves much with this topic, for there was nothing in the nature of an Abolitionist controversy to bring them into discussion of the subject. Slavery is in this department of Greek literature more a fundamental assumption than ever. The frequent arguments on the torture of slave witnesses and the moral value of evidence so extracted are plain proof of this. But what about agricultural labour? In the case of the sacred olive-stump we hear fromLysias[368]that the farm in question several times changed hands by sale. Some of the purchasers let it to tenants. The words used of the persons who actually farmed it from time to time are the usual ones, ἐγεώργει, εἰργάσατο etc. That these tenants were not merely αὐτουργοί, but employers of labour, may fairly be guessed from the case of the present tenant, accused of sacrilege. He at least is an owner of slaves, and argues[369]that he could never have been so mad as to put himself at their mercy. They would have witnessed his sacrilege, and could have won their freedom by informing against their master. Isocrates[370]draws no real distinction between serfs and slaves in the case of Sparta. Here too the slave was dangerous, though in a different way: but he was on the land. A fragment ofIsaeus[371]runs ‘he left on the farm old men and cripples.’ The context is lost, but the persons referred to must surely be slaves: no one would employ wage-labour of this quality. In another place he casually mentions[372]the sale of a flock of goats with the goatherd. These little scraps of evidence all serve to strengthen the impression, derived from other sources, of slave-labour as the backbone of Attic agriculture in this period. To free labour there are very few references, and none of these seem to have any connexion with agriculture. This does not provethat no hired freemen were employed on farms. For special jobs, as we shall see later, they were called in: but this was only temporary employment. The μισθτοὶ or θῆτες were a despised[373]class: some of them were freedmen. The competition with slave-labour doubtless had something to do with this, and to be driven by necessity to such labour was galling to a citizen, as we have already learnt from Xenophon.
The great founder of the philosophy of experience is a witness[374]of exceptional value. He collected and recorded the facts and traditions of the past, judging them from the point of view of his own day. Stimulated by the theories of his master Plato, he also strove, by sketching the fabric of a model state, to indicate the lines on which Greek political development might be conducted with advantage. Inasmuch as ideal circumstances were rather to be desired than expected, he did not restrict his interest in the future to the mere designing of an ideal: taking states as he found them, conditioned by their situation and past history, he sought for the causes of their growth and decay, and aimed at discovering cures for their various maladies. But throughout, whether looking to the past or the future, he was guided by a characteristic moral purpose. For him ‘good living’ (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) is the aim and object of political institutions. It is in the state that man finds the possibility of reaching his full development: for he is by nature a ‘political animal.’ That is, he cannot live alone. Each step in association (household, village,) brings him nearer to that final union of the city. In this he attains the highest degree of manhood of which he (as Man, differentiated from other animals by reason and speech,) is capable. This completion of his potentialities is the proof of his true nature; that he realizes his best self in the πόλις shews that he is a πολιτικὸν ζῷον. The animal needs met in the more primitive associations are of course met in the city also. But there is something more, and this something more is a moral element, from which is derived the possibility of ‘good living,’ as contrasted with existence of a more predominantly animal character. Therefore, though in point of time the man comes before the state, in logical order the state comes first: for the man can only exist in the fulness of his nature when he is a citizen. He is by the law of his nature part of a state, potentially: as such a part he is to beregarded. As states vary, so do the several types of citizens. In the best state the qualities of good man and good citizen are identical and complete.
The aim of political science (πολιτική) is to frame and employ the machinery of states so as to promote the perfection of human excellence (ἀρετή), and to train the citizens on such principles as will insure the effective working and permanence of their institutions. We may call it Aristotle’s response to the Greek yearning after a stability which was in practice never attained. To design a model state was one way of approaching the problem. But Aristotle was surely not the man to believe that such an ideal could be practically realised. To make the best of existing systems was a more promising enterprise. Now in either procedure it was evident that material equipment[375]could not be left out of account. Without food clothing and shelter men cannot live at all, and therefore cannot live well. Experience also shewed that the means of defence against enemies could not safely be neglected. It is under the head of equipment (χορηγία) that we get the philosopher’s view of the proper position of agriculture in the life of a state. We must bear in mind the general Greek conception of citizenship common to statesmen and theorists, present to Plato and Aristotle no less than to Cleisthenes or Pericles. Residence gave no claim to it. Either it was hereditary, passing from father to son on proof of citizen descent and certain religious qualifications; or it was deliberately conferred on a person or persons as a privilege. That beside the citizens there should be resident within the state[376]a number of persons, not citizens or likely to become citizens, was a necessity generally admitted. They might be free aliens, more or less legally connected with the state, or slaves public or private. These alien persons were very numerous in some states, such as Athens or Corinth. Subject or serf populations of Greek origin, as in Laconia or Thessaly, are not to be distinguished from them for the present purpose. One common mark of citizenship was the right of owning land within the territory of the state. We know that the Attic landowner must be an Athenian citizen, and such was the general rule. Who did the actual work of cultivation, or tended the flocks and herds, is another question. We have seen reason for believing that personal labour[377]of the owner on his farm had at one time been usual, and that the practice still in the fourth century BC prevailed in those parts of Greece where there had been little development of urban life. And that slave-labour was employed by farmerson a greater or less scale, according to the size of their estates, seems as certain as certain can be. In Attica the slave overseer, entrusted with the direction of a gang of slave labourers, had become[378]a well-recognized figure, and farming by deputy, as well as labouring by deputy, was an ordinary thing. Citizens resided in the city more than ever. Rich men visited their country estates to keep an eye on their overseers, or paid the penalty of their neglect. Poor citizens, resident and able to attend meetings of the Assembly, had to be kept quiet by systematic provision of fees for performance of civic functions. It may be too strong to say that squeezing the wealthy was the leading fact of politics: but there was too much of that sort of thing, and the scramble for state pay was demoralizing. Immediate personal interest tended to deaden patriotism in a state that within human memory had, whatever its faults, been the most public-spirited community among the leading states of Greece.
In treating of politics, and therewith in assigning a position to agriculture, Aristotle was affected by three main influences. First, the historical; the experience of Greek states, and more particularly of Athens. Secondly, the theoretical; the various attempts of earlier philosophers, particularly of Plato, to find a solution of political problems on speculative lines. Thirdly, his own firm conviction that the lasting success of state life depended on devotion to a moral end. It will be the simplest and best plan to consider his utterances on agriculture from these three points of view.
The supply of food being the first of necessities, and being in fact (as we have seen) an ever-pressing problem in Greece, it is no wonder that land-hunger, leading to wars for territory, and land-grabbing, a fertile cause of internal dissension and seditions in states, were normal phenomena of Greek history. And what happened in old Hellas was reproduced abroad, as the Greek colonists overflowed into lands beyond the seas. Once the possession of territory was secured by war, and the means of its defence organized, two problems soon presented themselves for solution. It was at once necessary to decide by what labour the land was to be cultivated. Greek colonists, desirous no doubt of an easier life than they had led in the old country, generally contrived to devolve this labour upon others at a very early stage of their establishment. Either they reduced natives to the condition of serfs, or they employed slaves, whom the profits of growing trade and commerce enabled them to procure in larger and larger numbers. Meanwhile in the mother country various systems went on side by side. There were large districts of agricultural serfage, in which a race of conquerors were supported by the labour of the conquered. In otherparts independent peoples, backward in civilization, lived a free rustic life of a largely pastoral character. Others again devoted themselves more to the tillage of the soil, with or without the help of slaves. It was known that in earlier times a population of this kind in Attica had long existed, and that after the unification of Attica and the reforms of Solon it had for a time been the backbone of the Athenian state. But in fertile lowland districts there was a not unnatural tendency towards larger estates, worked by hireling or slave-labour. It seems fairly certain that in Attica before the time of Aristotle the supply of free wage-earners for farm-work was failing: the development of the city and the Peiraeus, and the growing number of those in receipt of civil and military pay, had drawn the poor citizen away from rustic labour. Nor is there reason to think that after the loss of empire there was any marked movement back to the land on the part of free labourers or even small farmers. It would rather seem that Attic land was passing into fewer hands, and that the employment of stewards or overseers, free or slave, was one of the features of a change by which the farming of land was becoming a symptom of considerable wealth.
But beside the decision as to labour there was the question as to a means of checking land-monopoly. Such monopoly, resulting in the formation of a discontented urban mob, was a serious menace to the stability of a constitution. For all poor citizens to get a living by handicrafts was perhaps hardly possible; nor would the life of an artisan suit the tastes and wishes of all. Nature does (or seems to do) more for the farmer on his holding than for the artisan in his workshop, and the claim to a share of the land within the boundaries of their states had led to seditions and revolutions, ruinous and bloody, followed by ill feeling, and ever liable to recur. Colonial states, in which the first settlers usually allotted the land (or most of it) among themselves and handed down their allotments to their children, were particularly exposed to troubles of this kind. The various fortunes of families, and the coming of new settlers, early raised the land-question there in an acute form, as notoriously at Syracuse. No wonder that practical and theoretical statesmen tried to find remedies for a manifest political evil. Stability was only to be assured by internal peace. To this end two main lines of policy[379]found favour. Security of tenure was promoted by forbidding the sale of land-lots or making it difficult to encumber them by mortgages: while the prohibition of excessive acquisition[380]was a means of checking land-grabbers and interesting a larger number of citizens in the maintenance of the land-system. Butthere is no reason to think that measures of this kind had much success. Nor were vague traditions[381]of the equality of original land-lots in some Greek states of any great importance. Some theoretical reformers might aim at such an arrangement, but it was a vain aspiration. Indeed, regarded from the food-producing point of view, nothing like a true equality was possible in practice. Confiscation and redistribution were only to be effected at the cost of civil war, and the revered wisdom of Solon[382]had rejected such a proceeding. Communistic schemes had little attraction for the average Greek, so far as his own labour or interests might be involved: even the dream of Plato was far from a thoroughgoing communism.
Of the farmer in his character of citizen[383]Aristotle had a favourable impression formed from the experience of the past. The restless activity of Assemblies frequently meeting, and with fees for attendance, was both a cause and an effect of the degeneration of democracies in his day. It meant that political issues were now at the mercy of the ignorant and fickle city-dwellers, a rabble swayed by the flattery of self-seeking demagogues. Athens was the notable instance. Yet tradition alleged (and it can hardly be doubted) that in earlier times, when a larger part of the civic body lived and worked in the country, a soberer and steadier policy[384]prevailed. The farmers, never free from responsibilities and cares, were opposed to frequent Assemblies, to attend which involved no small sacrifice of valuable time. For this sacrifice a small fee would have been no adequate compensation, and in fact they had none at all. Naturally enough Aristotle, admitting[385]that in the states of his day democratic governments were mostly inevitable, insists on the merits of the farmer-democracies of the good old times, and would welcome their revival. But the day for this was gone by, never to return. Another important point arises in connexion with the capacity of the state for war, a point seldom overlooked in Greek political speculation. In discussing the several classes out of which the state is made up, Aristotle observes[386]that individuals may and will unite in their own persons the qualifications of more than one class. So the same individuals may perform various functions: but this does not affect his argument, for the same persons may be, and often are, both hoplites and cultivators, who yet are functionally distinct parts of the state. Just below, speaking of the necessity of ‘virtue’ (ἀρετὴ) for the discharge of certain public duties (deliberative and judicial), headds ‘The other faculties may exist combined in many separate individuals; for instance, the same man may be a soldier a cultivator and a craftsman, or even a counsellor of state or a judge; but all men claim to possess virtue, and think they are qualified to hold most offices. But the same men cannot be at once rich and poor. The common view therefore is that Rich and Poor are the truepartsof a state.’ That is to say, practical analysis can go no further. In another passage[387], discussing the formation of the best kind of democracy, he says ‘for the best Demos is that of farmers (ὁ γεωργικός): so it is possible to form (a corresponding?) democracy where the mass of the citizens gets its living from tillage or pasturage (ἀπὸ γεωργίας ἢ νομῆς).’ After considering the political merits of the cultivators, busy and moderate men, he goes[388]on ‘And after the Demos of cultivators the next best is that where the citizens are graziers (νομεῖς) and get their living from flocks and herds (βοσκημάτων): for the life in many respects resembles that of the tillers of the soil, and for the purposes of military campaigning these men are peculiarly hardened[389]by training, fit for active service, and able to rough it in the open.’ The adaptability of the rustic worker is further admitted[390]in a remark let fall in a part of his treatise where he is engaged in designing a model state. It is to the effect that, so long as the state has a plentiful supply of farm-labourers, it must also have plenty of seamen (ναυτῶν). Having just admitted that a certain amount of maritime commerce will be necessary, and also a certain naval power, he is touching on the manning of the fleet. The marine soldiers will be freemen, but the seamen (oarsmen) can be taken from unfree classes working on the land. Their social status does not at this stage concern us: that such labourers could readily be made into effective oarsmen is an admission to be noted. To the philosopher himself it is a comfort to believe that he has found out a way of doing without the turbulent ‘seafaring rabble’ (ναυτικὸς ὄχλος) that usually throngs seaport towns and embarrasses orderly governments. In other words, it is a relief to find that in a model state touching the sea it will not be necessary to reproduce the Peiraeus.
In considering the proposals of earlier theorists for the remedy of political defects it is hardly possible and nowise needful to exhaust all the indications of dissatisfaction with existing systems. Of Euripides and Socrates, the two great questioners, enough has been said above. The reactionary Isocrates was for many years a contemporary of Aristotle. What we can no longer reproduce is the talk of active-mindedcritics in the social circles of Athens. It happens that Xenophon has left us a sketch of the ordinary conversations of Socrates. No doubt these were the most important examples of their kind, and his method a powerful, if sometimes irritating, stimulus to thought. But we are not to assume a lack of other questioners, acute and even sincere, more especially among men of oligarchic leanings. That Aristotle came into touch with such persons is probable from his connexion with Plato. Certain passages in theConstitution of Athens, in which he is reasonably suspected[391]of giving a partisan view of historical events, point to the same conclusion. We shall never know all the criticisms and suggestions of others that this watchful collector heard and noted. But it is both possible and desirable to recall those to which his own record proves him to have paid attention.
Both Hippodamus and Plato based their schemes on a class-system, in which the farmer-class form a distinct body: but the former made them citizens with voting rights. Being unarmed, and so at the mercy of the military class, Aristotle held that their political rights were nugatory. In theRepublic, Plato gave them no voice in state-affairs, but in theLawshe admitted them to the franchise. While these two reformers made provision for a military force, Phaleas, ignoring relations with other states, made none. To Phaleas, equality in landed estate seemed the best means of promoting harmony and wellbeing in the community; and he would effect this equality by legal restrictions. This proposition Aristotle rejected as neither adequate nor suited to its purpose. Moral[392]influences, hard work, discretion, even intellectual activity, can alone produce the temper of moderation that promotes concord and happiness. In short, if you are to effect any real improvement, you must start from the doctrine of the Mean[393]and not trust to material equalizing. The several tenure of land-lots was generally recognized, with variations in detail; Plato in theLawsabandoned the impracticable land-system of theRepublic, and not only assigned a κλῆρος to each citizen household, but arranged it in two[394]sections, for reasons given above. The attempt to ensure the permanence of the number of land-lots and households by strict legal regulation, as some legislators had tried to do, is also a general feature of these speculations. Plato in theLawseven went further, and would place rigid restrictions on acquisition of property of all kinds. All agree in the usual Greek contempt for those engaged in manual or sedentary trades. Such ‘mechanical’ (βάναυσοι) workers were held to be debased in both body and mind below the standard of ‘virtue’ required of the good soldier or citizen. Phaleas made these ‘artisans’ public slavesde iure:Hippodamus placed them, with the farmers, in nominal citizenship butde factobondage. Plato tolerates them because he cannot do without them. In the matter of hard bodily labour, free or slave, the position of Plato is clear. He would devolve it upon slaves; in agriculture, with a coexisting alternative system of serf-tenants. But both classes are to be Barbarians. It seems that Hippodamus meant the public, if not the private, land of his model state to be worked by slaves. Most striking is the fact that Plato in his later years combined the aim of self-sufficiency with dependence on servile labour. Commerce is, for the moral health of the state, to be strictly limited. The supply of necessary food-stuffs is to be a domestic industry, carried on by alien serfs or slaves for the most part. Such communism as exists among the Guardians in theRepublicis a communism of consumers who take no part in material production: and it is abandoned in theLaws.
The above outlines must suffice as a sketch of the situation both in practice and in theory when Aristotle took the matter in hand. The working defects of Greek constitutions were obvious to many, and the incapacity of the ignorant masses in democracies was especially evident to thoughtful but irresponsible critics. Yet the selfishness of the rich in oligarchies was not ignored, and the instability of governments supported by only a minority of the citizens was an indisputable fact. The mass of citizens (that is, full members of the state according to the qualification-rules in force) had to come in somewhere, to give numerical strength to a government. How was governing capacity to be placed in power under such conditions? Experience suggested that things had been better for Athens when a larger part of her citizens lived on the land. Use could no doubt be made of this experience in case an opening for increasing the number of peasant farmers[395]should occur. But it was precisely in states where such a policy was most needed that an opening was least likely to occur. It would seem then that the only chance of improving government lay in persuading the average citizen to entrust wider powers to a specially selected body of competent men, in short to carry into politics the specializing principle[396]already developed by the advance of civilization in other departments. Now the average citizen was certain to test the plans of reformers by considering how their operation would affect cases like his own. It was therefore necessary to offer him a reassuring picture of projects of this kind, if they were to receive any hearing at all. To own a plot of land, inalienable and hereditary, was a security against indigence. To have the labour of cultivating it performed as a matter of course by others was a welcome corollary. To be relieved of mechanical drudgeryby aliens and slaves was a proposal sure to conciliate Greek pride. And the resulting leisure for the enlightened discharge of the peculiarly civic functions of war and government was an appeal to self-esteem and ambition. But that the creation of a ruling class of Guardians with absolute power, such as those of Plato’sRepublic, would commend itself to democratic Greeks, was more than any practical man could believe. Nor would the communism of those Guardians appear attractive to the favourers of oligarchy. Therefore Plato himself had to recast his scheme, and try to bring it out of dreamland by concessions to facts of Greek life. Not much was gained thereby, and the great difficulty, how to make a start, still remained. That much could be done by direct legislative action was a tradition in Greek thought fostered by tales of the achievements of early lawgivers. But to remodel the whole fabric of a state so thoroughly that an entire change should be effected in the political atmosphere in which the citizens must live and act, while the citizens themselves would be the same persons, reared in old conditions and ideas, was a project far beyond the scope of ordinary legislation. To Aristotle it seemed that the problem must be approached differently.
This is not the place to discuss the two distinct lines taken by him; first, that the character of the state depends on that of its members, and secondly, that the individual only finds his true self as member of a state. The subject has been fully[397]treated, better than I could treat it; and in constructing a model there remains the inevitable difficulty, where to begin. The highest development of the individual is only attainable under the training provided by the model state, and this state is only possible as an association of model citizens. If we may conjecture Aristotle’s answer from a rule[398]laid down in theEthics, he would say ‘first learn by doing, and then you can do what you have learnt to do.’ That is, effort (at first imperfect) will improve faculty, and by creating habit will develope full capacity. But even so it would remain uncertain whether the individual, starting on a career of self-improvement, is to work up to the making of a model state, or the imperfect state to start training its present citizens to perfection. The practical difficulty is there still. Nor is it removed by putting the first beginnings of training so early[399]that they even precede the infant citizen’s birth, in the form of rules for eugenic breeding. Aristotle’s procedure is to postulate favourable equipment, geographical and climatic, a population of high qualities (that is, Greek,) and then to consider how he would organize the state and train its members—if the postulated conditions were realized and he had a free hand. Inthis new Utopia it is most significant to observe what he adopts from historical experience and the proposals of earlier theorists, and in what respects he departs from them. It is in particular his attitude towards ownership and tillage of land, and labour in general, that is our present concern.
As it follows from his doctrine of the Mean that the virtue of the state and its several members must be based on the avoidance of extremes, so it follows[400]from the moral aim of the state that its component elements are not all ‘parts’ of the state in the same strict sense. Economically, those who provide food clothing etc are parts, necessary to the existence of the community. Politically (for politics have a moral end) they are below the standard of excellence required for a share in the government of a perfect state. They cannot have the leisure or the training to fit them for so responsible a charge. Therefore they cannot be citizens. To maintain secure independence and internal order the citizens, and the citizens only, must bear arms. And, since the land must belong to the possessors of arms, none but citizens can own land. This does not imply communism. There will have to be public[401]land, from the produce of which provision will be made for the service of religion and for the common tables at which citizens will mess. To maintain these last by individual contributions would be burdensome to the poor and tend to exclude them. For rich and poor there will be. But the evil of extreme poverty will be avoided. There will be private land, out of which each citizen (that is evidently each citizen-household) will have an allotment of land. This κλῆρος will be in two[402]parcels, one near the city and the other near the state-frontier, so that issues of peace and war may not be affected by the bias of local interests. The cultivation of these allotments will be the work of subjects, either inhabitants of the district (περίοικοι) or slaves; in any case aliens, not Greeks; and in the case of slaves care must be taken not to employ too many of the same race together or such as are high-spirited. He is concerned to secure the greatest efficiency and to leave the least possible facilities for rebellion. The labourers will belong to the state or to individual citizens according to the proprietorship of the land on which they are severally employed. By these arrangements he has provided for the sustenance of those who in the true political sense are ‘parts’ of the state (πόλις), and for their enjoyment of sufficient leisure[403]to enable them to conduct its government in the paths of virtue and promote the good life (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) which is the final cause of state existence.
The citizens then have the arms and the land and all political power. Among themselves they are on an equal footing, only divided functionally according to age: deliberative and judicial duties belonging to the elder men, military activities to the younger. It is impossible to overlook the influence of the Spartan system on the speculations of Aristotle as well as those of Plato. The equality of Spartan citizens was regarded as evidence[404]of a democratic element in their constitution, and we find this same theoretical equality among the full citizens at any given moment in the developing constitution of Rome. It is significant that Aristotle felt the necessity of such an equality. He remarks[405]that the permanence of a constitution depends on the will of the possessors of arms. We may observe that he seldom refers to the mercenaries so commonly employed in his day, save as his bodyguard of usurping tyrants. But in one passage[406]he speaks of oligarchies being driven to employ them at a pinch for their own security against the Demos, and of their own overthrow in consequence. Therefore he did not ignore the risk run by relying on hirelings: naturally he would prefer to keep the military service of his model state in the hands of his model citizens. But he had no belief[407]in the blind devotion of Sparta to mere preparation for warfare. Peace is the end of war, not war of peace. If you do not learn to make a proper use of peace, in the long run you will fail in war also: hence the attainment of empire was the ruin of Sparta: she had not developed the moral qualities needed for ruling in time of peace. But in his model state he seems not to make adequate provision for the numbers required in war. His agricultural labourers are not to be employed in warfare, as the Laconian Helots regularly were. He only admits them to the service of the oar, controlled by the presence of marine soldiers, who are free citizens like the poorer class of Athenians who generally served in that capacity. The servile character of rustic labour on his plan is thus reasserted, and with it the superior standing of land forces as compared with maritime. The days were past when Athenians readily served at the oar in their own triremes, cruising among the subject states and certain of an obsequious reception in every port. Hired rowers had always been employed to some extent, even by Athens: in this later period the motive power of war-gallies of naval states was more and more obtained from slaves. There was an economic analogy between farm-labour and oar-labour. The slave was forced to toil for practically no more[408]than his food: the profits of the farm and the profits of war-booty fell to be shared in either case by few.
Aristotle, who was well aware of the merits of the working farmer, the peasant citizen, and recognized that such men had been a sound and stable element in the Athens of former days, would surely not have treated agriculture as a work reserved for servile hands, had he not been convinced that the old rural economy was gone and could never be revived. For, if suggestions from Sparta influenced him when designing Utopian institutions, it is no less clear that the Utopian setting—territory, city, port-town,—are merely modifications of Attica, Athens, Peiraeus. In Greece there was no state so favoured geographically, so well equipped by nature for independence prosperity and power. If a Greek community was ever to realize an artistic ideal, and live in peaceful and secure moderation a model life of dignity and virtue, it could hardly have a better chance of success than in some such advantageous position as that enjoyed by Athens. Her defects lay in her institutions, such as he viewed them at their present stage of development. These could not be approved as they stood: they needed both political and economic reform. Into the former we need not enter here: the later democracy could not but disgust one who judged merit from the standpoint of his doctrine of the Mean. Economically, we may infer from his own model project that two great changes would be required. Citizens must all have an interest in the land, though farmed by slave labour. The port-town must no longer be a centre of promiscuous commerce, thronged with a cosmopolitan population of merchants seamen dock-labourers etc and the various purveyors who catered for their various appetites. In truth the Peiraeus was a stumbling-block to him as to Plato, and probably to most men[409]who did not themselves draw income from its trade or its iniquities, or who did not derive political power from the support of its democratic citizens. To have a state ‘self-sufficing’ so far as to get its necessary food from its own territory, and to limit commerce to a moderate traffic sufficient to procure by exchange such things as the citizens wanted but could not produce (for instance[410]timber), was a philosopher’s aspiration.
While proposing to restrict commercial activity as being injurious in 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 thepopulation. 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 theEconomics, 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 thefleet, 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 thePoliticshe 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 doubtlessenable 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 promotemanly 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 theRepublic; 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 theRepublic, 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 soonhave 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 thePolitics. TheRhetoricfurnishes 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 treatisede 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 aself-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. Sucha fortioriis the government of God.
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 centuryBCwe 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 405BChadnot 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 322BC, 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.
The right of owning real estate in Attica being reserved forAthenian 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 322BC. 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 330BCor later. The farm is an ἐσχατιά, that isa 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 355BCmakes 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 arrearwith 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.