XVIII. THE LATER ATTIC ORATORS.
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 century BC we 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 405 BC had not 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 322 BC, 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 for Athenian citizens, aliens were debarred from what was sometimes a convenient form[451] of investment. If the possible return on capital so placed was lower than in more speculative ventures, the risk of total loss was certainly much less, of partial loss comparatively small. Moreover it gave the owner a certain importance[452] as a citizen of known substance. It enabled a rich man to vary[453] his investments, as references to mixed estates shew. And he had a choice of policies in dealing with it: he could reside on his own property and superintend the management himself, or entrust the charge to a steward, or let it to a tenant. And, if at any time he wanted ready money for some purpose, he could raise it by a mortgage on favourable terms. If the land lay in a pleasant spot not too far from the city, he was tempted to make himself a ‘place in the country’ for his own occasional retirement and the entertainment of friends. That landowning presented itself to Athenians of the Demosthenic period in the aspects just sketched is manifest from the speeches belonging to the years from 369 to 322 BC. Of the small working farmer there is very little trace. But that some demand for farms existed seems indicated by the cleruchs sent to the Chersonese and Samos. No doubt these were meant to serve as resident garrisons at important points, and it is not to be supposed that they were dependent solely on their own labour for tillage of their lots. Another kind of land-hunger speaks for itself. The wars and wastings of this period placed large areas of land at the disposal of conquerors. Olynthian, Phocian, Boeotian territory was at one time or another confiscated and granted out as reward for this or that service. No reproaches of Demosthenes are more bitter than the references to these cruel and cynical measures of Philip’s corrupting policy. Individuals shared[454] these and other spoils: the estates of Aeschines and Philocrates in Phocis, and later of Aeschines in Boeotia, are held up as the shameful wages of treachery. These estates can only have been worked by slave-labour under stewards, for politicians in Athens could not reside abroad. They are specimens of the large-scale agriculture to which the circumstances of the age were favourable.
A dispute arising out of a case of challenge to exchange properties[455] (ἀντίδοσις), in order to decide which party was liable for performance of burdensome state-services, gives us a glimpse of a large holding in Attica. It belongs to 330 BC or later. The farm is an ἐσχατιά, that is a holding near[456] the frontier. It is stated to have been more than 40 stadia (about 5 miles) in circuit. The farmstead included granaries (οἰκήματα) for storing the barley and wheat which were evidently the chief crops on this particular farm. It included also a considerable vineyard producing a good quantity of wine. Among the by-products was brushwood (ὕλη, not timber ξύλα)[457]. The faggots were carried to market (Athens, I presume) on the backs of asses. The ass-drivers are specially mentioned. The returns from the faggot-wood are stated at over 12 drachms a day. The challenging speaker declares that this estate was wholly unencumbered: not a mortgage-post (ὅρος) was to be seen. He contrasts his own position, a man who has lost most of his property in a mining venture, though he has even toiled with his own[458] hands, with that of the landlord (I presume not an αὐτουργός) enriched by the late rise of the prices of corn and wine. He may be grossly exaggerating the profits of this border-farm: his opponent would probably be able to cite very different facts from years when the yield had been poor or prices low. Still, to impress an Athenian jury, the picture drawn in this speech must at least have seemed a possible one. The labour on the farm would be mainly that of slaves: but to this I shall return below. In another speech[459] we hear of a farmer in the far north, on the SE Crimean coast. The sea-carriage of 80 jars of sour wine is accounted for by his wanting it for his farm-hands (ἐργάται). Slaves are probably meant, but we cannot be sure of it in that slave-exporting part of the world. At any rate he was clearly farming on a large scale. If he was, as I suppose, a Greek settler, the case is an interesting one. For it would seem to confirm the view of Isocrates, that Greek expansion was a feasible solution of a felt need, provided suitable territory for the purpose could be acquired; and that of Xenophon, when he proposed to plant necessitous Greeks in Asiatic lands taken from Persia.
The type of farmer known to us from Aristophanes, who works a holding of moderate size, a man not wealthy but comfortable, a well-to-do peasant proprietor who lives among the slaves whose labour he directs, is hardly referred to directly in the speeches of this period. Demosthenes[460] in 355 BC makes the general remark ‘You cannot deny that farmers who live thrifty lives, and by reason of rearing children and domestic expenses and other public services have fallen into arrear with their property-tax, do the state less wrong than the rogues who embezzle public funds.’ But he does not say that there were many such worthy citizen-farmers, nor does he (I think) imply it. In a similar passage[461] three years later he classes them with merchants, mining speculators, and other men in businesses, as better citizens than the corrupt politicians. Such references are far too indefinite, and too dependent on the rhetorical needs of the moment, to tell us much. In one of the earlier private speeches[462] Demosthenes deals with a dispute of a kind probably common. It is a neighbours’ quarrel over a wall, a watercourse, and right of way. To all appearance the farms interested in the rights and wrongs were not large holdings. They were evidently in a hilly district. The one to protect which from floods the offending wall had been built had at one time belonged to a ‘town-bred[463] man’ who disliked the place, neglected it, and sold it to the father of Demosthenes’ client. There is nothing to shew that this farm was the whole of the present owner’s estate: so that it is hardly possible to classify him economically with any exactitude. We do by chance learn that he had a staff of slaves, and that vines and fig-trees grew on the land.
The author of one of the earlier speeches[464] (between 368 and 365 BC) furnishes much more detail in connexion with estates of what was apparently a more ordinary type. Neighbours are quarrelling as usual, and we have of course only ex parte statements. The farms, worked by slave-labour, produce vines and olives and probably some corn also. The enclosure and tending of valuable plants is represented as kept up to a high standard. Incidentally we learn that the staff used to contract[465] for the gathering of fruit (ὀπώραν) or the reaping and carrying of other crops (θέρος ἐκθερίσαι), clearly on other estates. The contract was always made by a person named, who is thereby proved to have been the real owner of these slaves,—a point in the case. According to his own account, the speaker had for some time been settled (κατῴκουν) on the estate. That is, he had a house there and would sometimes be in residence. The amenities of the place are indicated by the mention of his young rose-garden, which was ravaged by trespassers, as were his olives and vines. The house from which they carried off ‘all the furniture, worth more than 20 minas,’ seems to have been in Athens, and the mention of the lodging-house (συνοικία) that he mortgaged for 16 minas shews that his estate was a mixed one. Country houses were no exceptional thing. A mining speculator speaks of an opponent[466] as coming to his house in the country and intruding into the apartments of his wife and daughters. A party protesting against being struck off the deme-register says[467] that his enemies made a raid on his cottage in the country (οἰκίδιον ἐν ἀγρῷ). He is probably depreciating the house, in order not to have the dangerous appearance of a rich man.
We hear also of farms near Athens, the suburban position of which no doubt enhanced their value. In the large mixed estate inherited and wasted by Timarchus, Aeschines[468] mentions (344 BC) a farm only about a mile and a half from the city wall. The spendthrift’s mother entreated him to keep this property at least: her wish was to be buried there. But even this he sold, for 2000 drachms (less than £80). In the speech against Euergus and Mnesibulus the plaintiff tells[469] how his opponents raided his farm and carried off 50 soft-wooled sheep at graze, and with them the shepherd and all the belongings of the flock, also a domestic slave, etc. This was not enough: they pushed on into the farm and tried to capture the slaves, who fled and escaped. Then they turned to the house, broke down the door that leads to the garden (κῆπον), burst in upon his wife and children, and went off with all the furniture that remained in the house. The speaker particularly points out[470] that he had lived on the place from childhood, and that it was near the race-course (πρὸς τῷ ἱπποδρόμῳ). It must then have been near Athens. The details given suggest that it was a fancy-farm, devoted to the production of stock valued for high quality and so commanding high prices. The garden seems to be a feature of an establishment more elegant than that of a mere peasant farmer. It corresponds to the rose-bed in a case referred to above: Hyperides[471] too mentions a man who had a κῆπος near the Academy, doubtless a pleasant spot. The farm in the plain (ὀ ἐν πεδίῳ ἀγρός)[472] belonging to Timotheus, and mortgaged by him to meet his debts, is only mentioned in passing (362 BC) with no details: we can only suppose it to have been an average holding in the rich lowland.
A few passages require separate consideration in connexion with the labour-question. In the speech on the Crown (330 BC) Demosthenes quotes[473] Aeschines as protesting against being reproached with the friendship (ξενίαν) of Alexander. He retorts ‘I am not so crazy as to call you Philip’s ξένος or Alexander’s φίλος, unless one is to speak of reapers or other wage-earners as the friends of those who hire them ... but on a former occasion I called you the hireling (μισθωτὸν) of Philip, and I now call you the hireling of Alexander.’ Here the reaper (θεριστής) is contemptuously referred to as a mere hireling. Such was the common attitude towards poor freemen who lived by wage-earning labour,—θῆτες in short. But is it clear that the μισθωτὸς is necessarily a freeman? The passage cited above from an earlier speech makes it doubtful. If a gang of slaves could contract to cut and carry a crop (θέρος μισθοῖντο ἐκθερίσαι), their owner acting for them, surely they were strictly μισθωτοὶ from the point of view of the farmer who hired them. They were ἀνδράποδα μισθοφοροῦντα, to use the exact Greek phrase. In the speech against Timotheus an even more notable passage[474] (362 BC) occurs. Speaking of some copper said to have been taken in pledge for a debt, the speaker asks ‘Who were the persons that brought the copper to my father’s house? Were they hired men (μισθωτοί), or slaves (οἰκέται)?’ Here, at first sight, we seem to have the hireling clearly marked off as free. For the argument[475] proceeds ‘or which of my slave-household (τῶν οἰκετῶν τῶν ἐμῶν) took delivery of the copper? If slaves brought it, then the defendant ought to have handed them over (for torture): if hired men, he should have demanded our slave who received and weighed it.’ Strictly speaking, slaves, in status δοῦλοι, are οἰκέται[476] in relation to their owner, of whose οἰκία they form a part. But if A in a transaction with B employed some slaves whom he hired for the purpose from C (C being in no way personally involved in the case), would not these[477] be μισθωτοί, in the sense that they were not his own οἰκέται, but procured by μισθὸς for the job? It is perhaps safer to assume that in the case before us the hirelings meant by the speaker are freemen, but I do not think it can be considered certain. Does not their exemption from liability to torture prove it? I think not, unless we are to assume that the slaves hired from a third person, not a party in the case, could be legally put to question. That this was so, I can find no evidence, nor is it probable. The regular practice was this: either a party offered his slaves for examination under torture, or he did not. If he did not, a challenge (πρόκλησις) was addressed to him by his opponent, demanding their surrender for the purpose. But to demand the slaves of any owner, not a party in the case, was a very different thing, and I cannot discover the existence of any such right. I am not speaking of state trials, in which the claims of the public safety might override private interests, but of private cases, in which the issue lay between clearly defined adversaries. In default of direct and unquestionable authority, I cannot suppose that an Athenian slaveowner could be called upon to surrender his property (even with compensation for any damage thereto) for the purposes of a case in which he was not directly concerned.
Stray references to matters of land-tenure, such as the letting of sacred lands[478] (τεμένη) belonging to a deme, are too little connected with our subject to need further mention here. And a curious story[479] of some hill-lands (ὄρη) in the district of Oropus, divided by lot among the ten Tribes, apparently as tribal property, is very obscure. Such allotments would probably be let to tenants. What is more interesting in connexion with agriculture is the references to farming as a means of getting a livelihood, few and slight though they are. Demosthenes[480] in 349 BC tells the Assembly that their right policy is to attack Philip on his own ground, not to mobilize and then await him in Attica: such mobilization would be ruinous to ‘those of you who are engaged in farming.’ The speech against Phaenippus[481] shews us an establishment producing corn and wine and firewood and alleged to be doing very well owing to the prices then ruling in the market. We have also indications of the presence of dealers who bought up crops, no doubt to resell at a profit. From the expressions[482] ὀπώραν πρίασθαι and ὀπωρώνης it might seem that fruit-crops in particular were disposed of in this way. Naturally a crop of this sort had to be gathered quickly, and a field gang would be employed—slaves or freemen, according to circumstances. For that in these days poverty was driving many a free citizen[483] to mean and servile occupations for a livelihood, is not only a matter of certain inference but directly affirmed by Demosthenes in 345 BC. Aeschines[484] in 344 also denies that the practice of any trade to earn a bare living was any political disqualification to a humble citizen of good repute. From such poor freemen were no doubt drawn casual hands at critical moments of farm life, analogues of the British hop-pickers[485]. But, with every allowance for possible occasions of employing free labour, particularly in special processes where servile apathy was plainly injurious, the farm-picture in general as depicted in these speeches is one of slave-labour. And this suggests to me a question in reference to the disposal of Greek slaves. For the vast majority of slaves[486] in Greece, whether urban or rustic, were certainly Barbarians of several types for several purposes. The sale of the people of captured cities had become quite an ordinary thing. Sparta had sinned thus in her day of power, and the example was followed from time to time by others. The cases of Olynthus in 348 BC and Thebes in 335 fall in the present period. Aeschines mentions[487] some captives working chained in Philip’s vineyard; but these can only have been few. The mass were sold, and a large sum of money realized thereby. At Thebes the captives sold are said to have numbered 30,000. What markets absorbed these unhappy victims? I can only guess that many found their way to Carthage and Etruria.