3. Next comes a quotation from Justin out of Trogus Pompeius. This Gaul, trying to describe the remotest ages of Italy, says that there was a time “when slavery and private property were unknown, and everything was undivided.” The quotation is correct; but what is the time referred to? The age before Jupiter, ante Jovem. This is as much as to say, the golden age, or, if you prefer it, the savage state.
4. It is the same with the quotation from Tibullus; it applies “to the time of King Saturn,” that is, to the præ-agricultural age, the golden age of the imagination. If M. Viollet wished to prove that in the golden age private property did not exist, he has succeeded pretty well. But what has this to do with the Greek cities? M. Viollet supposes that legends of this kind represent traditions of an earlier state. This is exceedingly doubtful; and in any case they would be traditions of a time when agriculture was unknown, and when there were neither organised nations nor cities. If there were long ages when mankind did not know how to till the ground, what does that prove in relation to the time when they did cultivate it? We must not lose sight of the proposition our author wishes to establish; it is that men, even after they had entered into city life, cultivated the soil in common instead of appropriating it individually. There is a certain want of caution in thinking that you can prove a system of common cultivation from legends which show the absence of all cultivation.
5. M. Viollet at last comes down to historical times and quotes a passage from Diodorus Siculus. Let us first give his translation as if it were scrupulously exact: “Certain Cnidians and Rhodians colonised the Lipari Isles. As they had much to endure at the hands of Tyrrhenian pirates, they armed some barks wherewith to defend themselves, and divided themselves into two separate classes; one was intrusted with the cultivation of the islands, which they declared common property; to the other was committed the care of the defence. Having thus thrown together all their possessions, and eating together at public meals, they lived in common during several years; but after a time they divided amongst themselves the land of Lipara on which was their town; as to the other islands they continued for some time to be cultivated in common. At last they divided all the islands for a period of twenty years; and at the expiration of this term, they drew lots for them anew.”
Much might be said about this translation, but we wish to be brief.[200] M. Viollet ought, in the first place, to have mentioned the date of this event, since Diodorus gives it: it happened in the fiftieth Olympiad, that is about the year 575. Now, long before this, Cnidus and Rhodes had had a system of private property, and had no trace of common ownership. So these Cnidians and Rhodians may, very likely, have made an experiment of this kind; but it is impossible that their action should illustrate a survival of primitive community as M. Viollet maintains.[201]
The account of the Greek historian also plainly shows the motive which determined these men to leave the land for some time undivided: it was because the Tyrrhenian pirates ravaged the islands to such an extent that the Greeks were obliged to separate into two divisions, the one fighting, the other tilling the ground.[202] But Diodorus goes on to say that this manner of life only lasted a few years. So soon as they had freed themselves from the pirates, the Greeks made a regular settlement in the island of Lipara, that is in the largest and most important island of the little group. They built a town there; and at the same time “they made a partition of the soil.” Now, this partition was never made over again; it was a distribution of shares to be held in perpetuity, that is, as private property. M. Viollet passes over this too hastily; it is of the utmost importance, for it shows us that private property was established directly the Greeks were in anything like a settled condition. The fact that the other islets, more difficult to cultivate and less securely held, remained for some time longer undivided, does not imply that these people lived in a state of agrarian communism. Each of them was a landed proprietor in the main island, and enjoyed certain rights over one of the islets.[203] But even this arrangement did not last long, and the small islands were parcelled out in their turn. There was, it is true, a provisional partition at first, to last for twenty years; there are several very likely explanations for this precautionary measure. Whatever the reason may have been, at the end of twenty years the partition was made over again, and this time it was permanent; for Diodorus never says that a division took place periodically down to his own time.[204]
The whole account of the Greek historian points to the fact that the Greek emigrants established what was customary throughout Greece, a system of private ownership. In order to thoroughly understand it, we must compare this with similar passages in which the same historian shows us Greek colonists dividing the soil amongst themselves from the very first day of their settlement.[205] The settlement of these Cnidians and Rhodians differs from other instances only in this, that it was necessary, for reasons which Diodorus indicates, to postpone the partition for some years. This is what the historian wished to tell us; he never says that these people thought of establishing common ownership: they had no more disposition for it than other Greeks. Whatever communism they may have practised was not an institution, but a temporary condition of things, lasting for a brief period, with no past and no future. Private property was with them, as with all other Greeks, the normal state of things. The account of Diodorus is, we see, the reverse of M. Viollet’s statement; and it is startling to find M. Viollet writing, that “as late as the time of the Emperor Augustus, private property was not yet established amongst these Greeks, at the very gates of Rome” (p. 468).
6. M. Viollet now passes on to Pythagoras. On the evidence of a biography of the philosopher written eight hundred years after his death, he relates that Pythagoras got together as many as two thousand disciples, and induced them to live in common. This may be true; but does the fact that a philosopher succeeded in founding a phalanstery, which did not outlast himself, prove that it was habitual at that time for people to live together in common? It seems to me that it proves exactly the opposite. If the disciples of Pythagoras were forced to leave their towns in order to found a communistic settlement, it was because the life in the towns was not communistic. It is certain that this institution of Pythagoras was something exceptional, which left no trace behind it. The story itself, when we look at it, has no connection with a primitive community in land. But notice M. Viollet’s method of proceeding. Just because he comes across these two thousand (others say six hundred) disciples of Pythagoras, he concludes that “we have here the origin of many of the towns in Greater Greece; this shows that these towns were founded and settled under a system of undivided property.” Nothing of the kind. They were all founded before Pythagoras, and outlived him; and neither before nor after his time did they recognise a system of undivided property.[206]
7. We now come to an instance which would appear to be more historical. “The citizens of Tarentum,” says M. Viollet, “seem to have preserved something of their old community in land down to the time of Aristotle.” And he refers to the Politics vi. 3, 5. You turn to the passage quoted and you read as follows: “It is the duty of an intelligent aristocracy to watch over the poor and to furnish them with employment. We should do well to imitate the men of Tarentum; they have portions of land whereof they leave to the poor the common enjoyment (literally, which they make common to the poor for their enjoyment[207]), and in this way they secure the attachment of the lower people.” We see how far removed the original is from M. Viollet’s interpretation of it. Aristotle says nothing whatever of a communistic system. He places Tarentum amongst aristocratic States, and shows that there were poor people, ἄποροι, in it; only he points out that the rich took care to set apart certain land for the use of these poor, in order to win their attachment.[208] M. Viollet has mistaken a charitable institution for a communistic one, though it is perfectly clear that what Aristotle describes was merely a concession made by the rich to the poor; that is to say, it was precisely the opposite of communism.
8. M. Viollet tells us that there are “other survivals which enable us to travel back in thought to primitive common-ownership: there are the common meals;” and he devotes fully three pages to the common meals of the Greeks. He begins with the meal which the Spartans called Copis; describes it in detail from Athenæus, and concludes (p. 471): “All this is primitive, and we have here the common meal in all its early simplicity.” Now, it unluckily happens that the meal called copis was in no way a common meal. Ancient writers tell us that the Spartans had some private meals;[209] the copis was one of them. Read the page from Athenæus which M. Viollet has translated; read it in the original;[210] and not only will you not find a word which suggests that the copis was a public meal, but you will find clear evidence to the contrary. “Whoever likes gives the copis, κοπιζει ὁ βουλόμενος,” and he who gives it invites to it whomsoever he pleases, “whether Spartan or stranger.” Such are not the characteristics of public meals ordered and arranged by the State. Let us add that the Greek writer lays stress upon the religious character of this meal; it ought to be celebrated before the god παρὰ τὸν θεὸν, i.e., in front of a temple and in presence of the image of the divinity. Ancient rites are observed; a tent must first be built with branches of trees, and the ground strewn with boughs for the company to recline upon; the only meat which may be used is goats’ flesh; and each guest must be presented with a particular kind of loaf, made according to a fixed rule both as to its ingredients and shape. These rites will not surprise anyone who is familiar with early Greek life. Every Spartan could give this repast when he pleased; but the usual custom in the town was to give it “at the festival called Tithenidia, celebrated to secure the health of children;” and the nurses used to bring the little boys to it. The description of Athenæus is perfectly clear. M. Viollet has committed the error of mistaking a private and religious meal for a common meal, and of supposing that he sees in it a sign of community in land.
There still remain the true common meals, which took place daily or almost daily at Sparta, and which were called συσσίτια. M. Viollet says at once that they are evidence of community. It seems reasonable to argue: “If men eat the fruits of the earth in common, it is because in primitive times the earth itself was common;” but we think that M. Viollet ought to have distrusted this apparently logical process of reasoning. If he had studied this institution of common meals at Sparta in the original writers, he could not have failed to notice four circumstances: 1. It does not date from the earliest period of the city; and far from being connected with a time when land may have been common, it is later than the institution at Sparta of private property.[211] 2. These common meals did not constitute a common life; for in the first place the men alone partook of them, not the women nor the children;[212] and in the second place, the men did not take all the meals of the day together, but only one, that of the evening. 3. The expenses of the meal were not defrayed by the community, by the State, but each man had to bring his contribution, which was fixed at a medimnus of flour a month, eight congii of wine, some fruit, and a sum of money for the purchase of meat.[213] This is something very different from citizens being fed in common by the State; they had to eat in common, but each ate at his own expense, because each was the owner of property. 4. The common meals were so far from representing community in goods, that poor Spartans were not admitted to them; a fact which is distinctly mentioned by Aristotle, who goes on to say that these meals were the least democratic things in the world.[214]