GREEKS.
AUTHORITIES:
Polybius, Grote, O. Muller, Beckh, Curtius, Clinton, Finlay, etc.
At the foot of the Julian Alps, above the head of the Adriatic, the branch of the Aryas which peopled Greece separated from their brethren who wandered into Italy. Keeping to the coast of Adria, the seceders reached the mountainous gorges of Epirus and the plains of Thessaly. From the southern slopes of the Cambunian mountains and of Olympus, they, in course of time, spread over Greece and Peloponnesus. Such at least are the results of the most recent researches concerning the pioneers whose labors prepared that region for the part it afterward played in history. They cleared the forests, drained the marshes, cut canals to let out the stagnant waters in mountain-basins so common in Greece; they regulated the currents of rivers and streams, made the soil arable, and the region fit for man and for further culture. These primitive cultivators of the valleys of Greece, and builders of the Cyclopean structures, called themselves, or were called by others, Pelasgi (that is, those issuing from black soil, etc.), and are regarded as the earliest occupants of Hellenic soil. They were the first settlers, and most probably offshoots of the same original stem whose successive branches mingled with the Pelasgi, or crowded them out and took their place in history as Achives, Hellenes, and Ionians—the last being considered been ancient as well as by modern writers as having been the autochthones of Attica and of other neighboring regions. To these Pelasgi and other primitive occupants, to their laborious pursuits and occupations, to their simple social structure, as well as to the essentially primitive social life of the Greeks, Herodotus refers—asserting that at the outset slavery was unknown in Greece, and especially in Attica.
The Pelasgian epoch was succeeded by what is commonly called the legendary or heroic age. In this Homeric epoch free yeomen or agriculturists own and till the soil; all the handicrafts and professions are free. Carpenters, smiths, leather-dressers, etc., were all freemen, and so also were the bards and "the leeches" (a highly esteemed class in primitive Greece). But wealth already began to accumulate, and the farms of the more fortunate were tilled by poor hired freemen called Thetes.
The geographical conformation of Greece furnished, as it still does, a natural incitement to war and piracy. Both formed prominent characteristics of the heroic times. Phœnician vessels visited the shores, and Phœnician settlements and factories were built at various points. These traffickers, perhaps, taught the Greeks that the feeble may be profitably enslaved by the strong, or at any rate they were the customers of the Greek pirate.
The general Greek word for slave explains the origin of slavery. Dmoos and dmoe, slave, go back to dmao or damao, to subdue, to subjugate, and so bear witness of war and violence either between individuals, or between clans, tribes, and districts, and then of incursions into distant lands. Slavery became an object of luxury, but not of social and economical necessity. It was confined to the dwelling of the chiefs and the sovereign; but did not invade the whole community. Leaders of freebooting expeditions seized every kind of booty, taking as many prisoners as they could on sea and on land. If the expedition or foray failed, the chief and his followers became, in their turn, prisoners and slaves. The prisoners were employed for domestic use within the precincts of the dwelling, as servants, shepherds, etc., or were sold or exchanged for others. The Phœnicians sold Asiatics or Libyans to Greeks and to Pontian barbarians, and received in exchange the prey made by Greeks in Greece or in Pontus. The Phœnicians occasionally kidnapped women and boys and sold them to Asiatics, Africans, and Celt-Iberians. Then, as everywhere throughout remotest and classical antiquity, many of the enslaved had previously belonged to the higher and even the highest conditions in their respective tribes, nations, or communities. So Eumæus, the swineherd of Ulysses immortalized by Homer, was the son of a chief of some island or district, who, having been kidnapped by Phœnicians, was sold to Laertes. In mediæval times, likewise, the prisoner taken on the battle-field and kept for ransom, if not for service, often was superior in birth and station to his keeper. No such social classifications, however, are intrinsic or normal, but only conditional, relative, and conventional, even when inherited. Logically they have the same signification and value in a well-graduated society, with its castles, palaces, charters and other privileges, as on plantations or among roving nomads and savage tribes. And thus, among the Southern slaves, descending from prisoners of war or from kidnapped Africans, there may be several of a purer aristocratic lineage than many of their drivers, even if the latter were F.F.V.