CHAPTER IV.—PUBLIC LIFE OF THE GREEK CITIZEN.
The aristocracy of the older Greek society was one based on the exclusive owning of land, and of civic rights, and was not marked by titles, but by the name of the clan. Thus at Athens an Alcmæonid[1] was respected much as the member of an old Scottish clan is now by his fellows. But poverty injured the position of the old Greek more than that of the Scotchman. In the aristocratic days all work in the way of trade or business was despised by the landed gentry, and idleness was called the sister of freedom. The pursuit of a trade often disqualified a man for political rights, and in any case deprived him of all public influence. This feeling did not die out even in the complete democracies of later days, and there was always a prejudice in the Greek mind against trades and handicrafts, because they compelled men to sit at home and neglect the proper training of the body by sports, and the mind by society. Mercantile pursuits were also objected to by Greek gentlemen, but on different grounds. It was considered that the making of profits by retail trading was of the nature of cheating, and the life of a merchant in any Greek city not his own was always one of dependence and fear, for nowhere were aliens treated with real justice and liberality. Thus even the poor citizen of Athens, living by the small pay (nine cents daily) given him for sitting on juries, and performing other public duties, looked down with contempt upon the rich tradesman, who was confined all day to a close dark shop, or still worse, did his work in the hot atmosphere of a furnace. Consequently the greater part of the shops in Athens, and most of the trades were in the hands of licensed aliens who paid certain taxes to the state, and by making large profits recouped[2] themselves for the risk of being persecuted and plundered by the citizens in days of danger and distress. These people may be compared, as to their social and political position, with the Jews in the middle ages, who lived all through the cities of Europe without civic rights, or landed property, merely by trade and usury. They were despised and persecuted, but still tolerated as useful, and even necessary, by the governments of those days. Rich capitalists, on the contrary, who were able to manage a large business through an overseer and a number of slaves, were not at all despised, even though their ways of making profits were sometimes very shameful. But any free man who was compelled by poverty to perform this manual labor was held little better than a slave. There were certain privileged classes in Homer’s day, such as the leech,[3] the seer, the bard, and the cunning worker of brass. So in later days the sculptor and the sophist were in some respects considered good society, but still the gaining of money by giving up their time to others told very seriously against them.
A great part of the ordinary clothing and breadstuffs was prepared by the slave within the Greek house. The principal tradesmen who supplied the other necessaries of life were the architect, who was often a great and important person—indeed, the only tradesman very honorably mentioned; under him masons, carpenters, and cabinet-makers. There were potters, who must have been a very large body, considering the great demand for their wares, as neither glass nor wooden vessels were much used. So there were separate makers of lamps, jewelry, weapons of war, musical instruments. There were a few weavers, and hardly any tailors—as the forms of dress were perfectly simple, and the fashions did not change—but many bleachers and dyers of clothes. The making of shoes was even subdivided among several tradesmen. There were in the market, cooks (hired by the day), ropemakers, tanners, and also many perfumers and druggists. Tanners were generally compelled to have their workshops outside the city. We may also, without doubt, consider military service by sea or land one of the ordinary trades of Greece, practiced from very early times in Asia, and all through Greek history by the Arcadians, who were the Swiss of the old world. The usual pay for a mercenary soldier or sailor was four obols, which was often raised in times of difficulty. When the former outlet which enterprising young men had found in new colonies throughout Asia Minor, Pontus, and Magna Græcia, was closed by the rise of new races and new empires, this trade, disreputable as it was, became very common indeed. The celebrated 10,000 whom Xenophon brought safely from the heart of the Persian empire, were an army made up of these adventurers, who had followed the younger Cyrus merely for the sake of pay and plunder. Thus Agesilaus[4] and Cleomenes, kings of Sparta, were not ashamed to serve in Egypt as mercenaries.
MERCANTILE PURSUITS.
We may first notice the lower sort, the retail merchants, who were employed in buying the husbandman’s and the tradesman’s goods, and selling them in the markets or through the towns at a profit. It was indeed much in fashion among the Greeks, to sell one’s own produce in the market, but of course such people as fishermen or shepherds could not leave their business to journey often a long way to a market town. Thus we find in large places like Athens, many butchers, fishmongers, vegetable and other grocers, and particularly wine sellers, who went about with their wine in carts. All these people were accused of extortion and insolence, the fishmongers of selling stale fish, the vintners of watering their wine (a very harmless adulteration). There were street cries, and often even the buyer going into the market called out what he wanted.
The wholesale merchant was of course a more important person, and the rise of this larger trade was in fact what raised up a wealthy city class in opposition to the landed aristocracy, and was generally the cause of overthrowing oligarchies.[5] Many respectable citizens (except in Sparta) thought it no disgrace to follow this sort of business, and none of them scorned to invest money in it as a speculation. As the land traffic in Greece is unusually difficult and roundabout, almost all commerce was carried on by sea, so that a merchant was often called a skipper. We are fully informed about Athenian commerce only.
We must imagine the Greek waters not as they are now, lonely and desolate, with often not a single boat to give life to a great bay or reach of water, but rather covered in the summer with traffic and with life, so much so that a Greek poet speaks of sailors as the “ants of the sea,” hurrying in all directions with ceaseless industry. There were public wharves and warehouses close to the quays, where the skipper brought samples of his cargo. With the exception of the corn and slave factors, the Greek merchants did not confine themselves to trading in one kind of goods, but conveyed anything according as they saw chances of profit. Pottery from Samos and Athens, fine woolen stuffs and Assyrian carpets from Miletus, paper, unguents, and glass from Egypt, salt fish, skins and corn from the Black Sea, ship timber and slaves from Thrace and Macedonia, ivory and spices from Cyrene[6]—these were among the usual articles imported and exported through the Greek waters. Merchants were in some places treated with peculiar favor, had their taxes and military duty forgiven, and above all, were granted a speedy trial, and in the idle winter months, in case of disputes about contracts, or other lawsuits.
WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND COINAGE.
All these great helps to trade were originally imported from the Babylonians, through the Phœnicians into Greece, but with so many variations that the computing of values according to the different standards is very intricate.
As to measures of length, it seems that the Olympic stadium or furlong was generally received through Greece. It was the one-fortieth of our geographical mile, and was divided into six plethra of one hundred feet each. Each foot, which was nearly equal to our English foot, was divided into four hands, and each of these into four inches.
Cubic measures started from the half pint, and were used for both fluids and solids.
In these measures the Æginetan,[7] Attic, and Olympic standards varied. The latter, though originally brought from Babylon, was somewhat smaller, the cubic foot being only two-thirds of the Babylonian. To this Olympic cubic foot the Attic was as twenty-seven to twenty, the Æginetan as nine to four. Similarly as to weight, the Babylonians had fixed a cubic foot of rain water as the standard weight of their talent. The Attic talent was much smaller.
All the various talents, however, agreed in having sixty minæ; each mina one hundred drachmæ; each drachme six obols. The terms Æginetan and Eubœic point to the fact that the early Greek trade was chiefly in the hands of these people, where the weights and coinage were first fixed, just as the Attic standard became almost universal afterward. The Attic talent was about $1,180; the mina accordingly about $19.50; the drachme nineteen cents; the obolus three cents. This Attic drachme was of silver, which was the only metal habitually coined for a long time in Greece, as gold was very scarce. The Macedonian mines first produced gold enough for ordinary coinage. So also copper coinage came in from Sicily and Magna Græcia, where the talent was regarded as a weight of copper, and only equal to six (or even less) Attic drachmæ. There were at Athens silver pieces of four and eight drachmæ, and even half and quarter obols. This shows how much scarcer money was then than now, and how the public treasures and private fortunes, which seem to us so small, were really large in proportion to the prices paid even for the luxuries of life.
Debasing the coinage, and using alloy, were common devices among the Greeks, whose local coins seem seldom to have had any general currency. It was specially noted of the Attic money, that it passed everywhere, on account of its excellence.
POLITICS.
The general principle of Greek states was to consider high political office as both a duty and an honor, but not a profession, so that no salaries were attached to such duties. It is certain, however, that the indirect profits were very great, inasmuch as the bribery of that day was applied, not to the electors, but to the holders of even very high office. This form of corruption is said to exist even now in Greece, where bribery of electors is very rare. The lower state officials, such as secretaries and heralds, were paid moderate salaries.
When Athens became an imperial city, the sovereign people were paid sundry emoluments from the taxes of their subjects. For example, those Athenian citizens who were employed as dicasts,[8] or judges in court, received three obols per day—an income on which most of the poorer citizens lived. They were also paid by public distribution a sufficient sum for their entrance to the theater, and to enjoy themselves at the great festivals of the city. These profits were the direct result of political privileges.
As mercenary warfare was common, so that of mercenary general was practiced, even by distinguished Greeks, such as Agesilaus and Cleomenes, in later days. As the pay was only four times that of the common soldier, it is evident that extortion and plunder must have been presupposed as an additional means of gain, and this was the case with many of the older citizen generals of whom we read in history, such as Pausanias, Themistocles, and others. The profession of military engineer was not common, but was practiced with success and fame by a few remarkable men, such as Artemon,[9] whose mechanical genius made them very valuable.
LAW.
As men pleaded their own case among the Greeks, the legal profession, as far as we know, could only give friendly advice, or compose speeches for litigants, and this was an extended and lucrative profession at Athens. In some cases friends or supporters were allowed to speak in addition to the actual litigants, but paid counsel were not directly recognized. When the state retained what we should call a public prosecutor, he was only paid one drachma (nineteen cents) for a speech, which reminds us of a mediæval entry quoted by Hallam, where eight cents and his dinner was a lawyer’s fee. But distinguished orators like Demosthenes obtained large private fees. There was also in almost all democracies special encouragement, in the absence of state lawyers, for any citizen to denounce any violation of the laws which he could detect. This gave rise to a profession called sycophancy, which usually degenerated into that of a spy or informer; and such men constantly extracted money from rich people and from politicians by threats of accusation.
LITERATURE.
In addition to the schoolmasters, who were not in high repute, and were rather considered a trade than a profession, there were the sophists, who were both rhetoricians and philosophers, and who performed exactly the functions now expected from universities, as distinguished from schools. People spoke of a pupil of Isocrates as they now do of “a Harvard man.” These men taught politics, rhetoric, literary criticism, and higher science in a practical way, and made large incomes in spite of their great unpopularity with the old-fashioned side of both political and social Greece. At first they obtained enormous fees, but by competition these were reduced to an average of from five to ten minæ for a course of instruction. Their course lasted about three years.
We do not hear of any authors making a livelihood by their work, except poets, who were largely paid for occasional poems by both states and kings, and whose dramatic works were a source of profit as well as honor. Copies of books were easily multiplied by means of slave labor, so that we hear of Anaxagoras’[10] treatise being sold for one drachma, then very dear. This was at a regular bookstall in Athens, from whence books were actually an article of exportation as far as the Black Sea. Still, collections of books were rare till after the time of Euripides, and we know of no fortunes made by writing books. Anaxagoras himself, though so popular with the rising generation, is said to have died in poverty.
The profession of architects was esteemed far the greatest among artists, and was the most richly paid. They were no doubt men of culture, and were literary men, as, for example, Ictinus,[11] one of the architects of the Parthenon, who wrote a special work about the great temple. The professions of sculptor and painter were not so at first, the sculptor being hardly more than a skillful workman, and this seems to be the case in most great art epochs. Men like Pheidias and Polygnotus,[12] who were of a higher level, often worked without accepting any pay, but the sculptors who adorned the Erectheum at Athens, one of the most beautiful of Greek temples, were either paid by the day from one to two drachmæ, or by the job, receiving two hundred to two hundred and forty drachmæ (under $50) for each figure or small group of figures. This was in Pericles’ time, when art had reached its highest perfection.
Similarly in music, though amateur singing and playing were very common, it was not thought gentlemanly to live by them, and professional musicians were ranked with actors and jugglers, and the other classes who lived by amusing the rich. At later periods, however, both celebrated musicians and celebrated actors became important personages, and were courted by a society which had abandoned higher and more serious pursuits.
The medical profession had always a high position in Greek life, from the days of Machaon Podalirius,[13] in Homer, down to the doctors of Plato’s day, who sometimes brought an orator with them to persuade the patient to take their remedies. This was done because it was the fashion to discuss everything in Greece, and people were not satisfied to submit silently to anybody’s prescriptions.
There was of course a great deal of superstitious quackery, which dealt in amulets and charms, and there were slave assistants, who visited slave patients, but the higher members of the profession were not only well paid, but appointed publicly by the various cities as official physicians.
The most famous schools for medicine were at Croton, Cnidus, Rhodes, and Cos, where the name of Hippocrates is celebrated as the founder. These schools were guilds or trade unions, into which the apprentice entered with a very remarkable and solemn oath. Such accredited physicians were specially exempted by law, in some cities, from prosecution for manslaughter, if their patients died. The descriptions of the symptoms and the treatment of various diseases still preserved in the works attributed to Hippocrates, are so striking for their good sense and acute observation, that the most competent judges consider them the foundation of all rational medicine in Europe.
In all the larger Greek towns the art collections were always the main object of curiosity, which every one went to see. There were the temples either venerable for age, or remarkable for architectural splendor, and in them the statues of the gods, and the portraits of heroes and victors which were the work of famous sculptors. The inner walls of both temples and porticoes were often covered with frescoes, and had even separate pictures hung upon them. In fact, just as we now-a-days go to see in such a town as Antwerp or Rouen the churches, the pictures, the statues and carvings, and the antiquities, so every educated Greek enjoyed the arts, and thought his life incomplete without having seen their highest products. Crowds went to see the Pheidian statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Eros of Praxiteles at Thespiæ, the cow of Myron at Athens. Such great works were constantly copied, and to this practice we owe the inestimable benefit of finding in Roman galleries close imitations of the Greek masterpieces brought from Greece itself.
Each important state was indeed represented in considerable cities by a proxenus, who corresponds to our modern consuls, but of course he could not be expected to offer hospitality to all travelers, though he did so to official visitors. Every distinguished family had accordingly family friends in foreign cities, to whom they were bound by mutual ties of hospitality. These friendships were handed down from generation to generation, and when the traveler had never seen his host he often brought with him a token formerly given to his family by the family he went to visit. On his arrival the host gave him a separate set of apartments, and supplied him with light, fuel and salt; he also sent him his dinner the first day, and invited him to dine afterward, but for the rest the guest was attended by his own servants, and supplied himself. As to the actual traveling, so much of it was done by sea that there seems to have been but indifferent means of journeying on land. To Delphi, Olympia, and such public resorts there were good roads, which could be traveled in carriages, but elsewhere pack mules and riding, or even walking was, as it now is, the only way of crossing the country.
Athletic contests were always held conjointly with festivals, so that we must separate two phases in the greatest and most complex enjoyment of Greek society. In fact, the Greeks always combined religion with sport. The greatest of these meetings was undoubtedly that held at Olympia every five years, and at which the victors were recorded since 776 B. C. It was gradually thrown open to all Peloponnesians, then to all European Greeks, and finally to all the colonies, in 620 B. C. This extension was followed by the founding in rapid succession of the public contests at Delphi (586), the Isthmos of Corinth (582), and Nemea (576 B. C.). They were celebrated in honor of the peculiar god honored at the place—Apollo at Delphi, Poseidon at the Isthmus, Zeus at Nemea and Olympia. There was a solemn truce declared throughout Greece during the Olympic games, and all the world flocked thither to enjoy the sports, meet their friends, transact mercantile or even political business, and publish or advertise new works and new inventions. At Delphi musical and poetical contests predominated, but at the others the athletic elements.
In addition to athletic games, many musical and poetical contests were encouraged at the festivals, as, for example, at the Pythian games, held at Delphi, and at the Dionysia, held at Athens. So much did these competitions come into fashion, that the best advertisement and publication of a new poem, or of a novelty in music, was its production on one of these occasions. The great tragedies handed down to us were all composed in this way, and brought out at Athens in honor of the god Dionysus. For a fee of two obols, granted him by the state, every citizen and his wife, at some contests even resident strangers, could go and sit at the theater, and hear four plays of Æschylus pitted against four plays of Sophocles, and four of Euripides. The endurance of an audience not given to reading, and not fond of staying at home, is of course much greater than that of our modern play-going people.
FESTIVALS.
As the games and dramatic shows were in honor of the gods, or sometimes in honor of deceased heroes, the real celebration consisted in sacrifices, prayers, and solemn processions. These sacrifices were combined with public feasts, as a great many victims were slain. In all processions the military, or citizens in armor, and on horseback, formed, as they now do, an important and imposing part. But we are bound to add that in addition to all the splendor of the festivals and athletic contests, there was the usual collection of mountebanks, jugglers, thimble-riggers, and other bad characters, who now frequent horse races. This was so much the case in later days, that Cicero indignantly denies the report that he had gone to the Olympic games. On the other hand, we must regard the home festivals in each Greek city among the most humane and kindly institutions in their life. They corresponded to our Sundays and holidays, when the hard-worked and inferior classes are permitted to meet and enjoy themselves. This was particularly the case with the slaves, who enjoyed many indulgences on these special days. The women also in such cities as usually insisted upon their seclusion, were allowed to join in processions, and see something of the world; and “the stranger that was within their gates,” or who came to worship at the feast, was received with kindness and hospitality. No executions or punishments were allowed; prisoners were let out on bail, and the sentences of the law for debts or fines were postponed in honor of the gods, who were worshiped not in sadness, but with joy.