CHAPTER XVI[ToC]
THE LAST YEARS OF GREECE
DECADENCE OF THE GREEK CITIES
Rich and Poor.—In almost all the Greek cities the domains, the shops of trade, the merchant ships, in short, all the sources of financial profit were in the hands of certain rich families. The other families, that is to say, the majority of the citizens,[102] had neither lands nor money. What, then, could a poor citizen do to gain a livelihood? Hire himself as a farmer, an artisan, or a sailor? But the proprietors already had their estates, their workshops, their merchantmen manned by slaves who served them much more cheaply than free laborers, for they fed them ill and did not pay them. Could he work on his own account? But money was very scarce; he could not borrow, since interest was at the rate of ten per cent. Then, too, custom did not permit a citizen to become an artisan. "Trade," said the philosophers, "injures the body, enfeebles the soul and leaves no leisure to engage in public affairs." "And so," says Aristotle, "a well-constituted city ought not to receive the artisan into citizenship." The citizens in Greece constituted a noble class whose only honorable functions, like the nobles of ancient France, were to govern and go to war; working with the hands was degrading. Thus by the competition of slaves and their exalted situation the greater part of the citizens were reduced to extreme misery.
Social Strife.—The poor governed the cities and had no means of living. The idea occurred to them to despoil the rich, and the latter, to resist them, organized associations. Then every Greek city was divided into two parties: the rich, called the minority, and the poor, called the majority or the people. Rich and poor hated one another and fought one another. When the poor got the upper hand, they exiled the rich and confiscated their goods; often they even adopted these two radical measures:
1. The abolition of debts;
2. A new partition of lands.
The rich, when they returned to power, exiled the poor. In many cities they took this oath among themselves: "I swear always to be an enemy to the people and to do them all the injury I can."