GLIMPSES OF ANCIENT GREEK LIFE.
Selected from J. P. Mahaffy’s “Old Greek Life.”
CHAPTER II.—THE GREEK—HIS PROPERTY.
All Greek property was divided both according to its use, and also according to its nature. If it was such as merely produced enjoyment to the owner it was called idle; if it was directly profitable, it was called useful or fruitful. But this distinction is less often mentioned than that into visible and invisible property, which nearly corresponded to our division into real and personal property. But the Greeks included ready money, lodged at a banker’s, as a part of real property. Its principal kind, however, was of course landed property, as well as town houses, country farms, and sometimes mining property held under perpetual lease from the state. Of all these public accounts were kept, and when special taxes were required they were paid on this kind of property and according to this estimate. Personal or invisible property consisted of all movables, such as furniture, factories, changes of raiment, cattle, and above all slaves, who were employed in trades as well as in household work. In days of war and of heavy taxing it was common for the Greeks to “make away with” their property, which then meant, not to spend it, but to make it invisible property, that is, invisible to the state, and therefore not taxable.
At every epoch of Greek history land was considered the best and the most important kind of wealth, and the landholder enjoyed privileges and rights not allowed to other men, however rich. This arose from the early form of Greek society. It is clear in Homer that the nobles possess the greater part of the land as their private property, and much of even the kings’ wealth was made up of estates. These were also presented to public benefactors and other distinguished persons. What land was possessed by the common people can only be judged from Hesiod, who describes what we should call tenant farming—the occupying of small pieces of land in poverty, without telling us whether it was freehold or rented from the nobles. It was probably the former, at least in Bœotia, where we can imagine the rough slopes unoccupied of old as they now are, or covered with trees. These farms could be held by any one who had the perseverance to clear and till them. In later days, when aristocracies prevailed, they also took for themselves the lands, so much so that at Syracuse and elsewhere they were called “the land-sharers” as opposed to laborers and tradespeople. In some states, such as Sparta, it was said that the nobles, or conquering race, divided the land so as to leave the greater portion in equal lots for themselves to be worked by their slaves or dependants, and a smaller portion to the former owners, who were obliged to pay a rent to the state. But of course no such equality of lots, if ever carried out, could last. In all states we find the perpetual complaint that property had come into the hands of a few, while the many were starving. The Athenians met this complaint by allotting the lands of islands and coasts which they conquered among their poorer citizens, who retained their rights at Athens while holding their foreign possessions.
Land was either bare or arable land, or planted with trees. There were also stony mountain pastures. In historical days, all these lands were either let by the state on leases, usually for ever (as was especially the case with mines), or were similarly let by political and religious corporations, or were worked by private owners for their own benefit by means of stewards and slaves. Such country farms are often mentioned in lists of property by the orators. The main produce has already been described. We have no means of fixing the value of landed property in Greece, as we generally hear of prices without being told of the amount of land in question. But the low average of the actual prices mentioned in Attica points to a great subdivision of such property.
As was before observed, the older Greek houses built in narrow irregular streets were of little value, being very plain and without any ornament. Leotychides, who was king of Sparta in B. C. 500, could not contain his wonder at a ceiling paneled in wood, which he saw at Corinth, and Demosthenes tells us that the houses of the most celebrated Athenians at the same period were so modest as to be in no way different from those of their neighbors. Such houses, which remained the ordinary fashion all through Greek history, were of course not very valuable, and we hear of one worth only three minæ (about $60 of our money), of another at Eleusis worth five, and Demosthenes speaks of what he calls a little house worth seven (about $140). But we know that Alcibiades and other fashionable men of his time began to decorate their houses with paintings—a fashion which became quite common at Tanagra later on; this and other improvements raised the price of some houses to forty or fifty minæ, and the rich banker, Pasion, possessed one which was let in lodgings and which was rated at one hundred.