XIII. THE COMIC FRAGMENTS.
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 the Odyssey). 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 famous Greek 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.