The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks

by Hugo Blümner

The Ancient Greek Prejudice Against Labour—Cultivation of the Soil—Agricultural Implements—Cattle Rearing—Handicrafts—The Organisation of Labour—Various Trades—Wholesale and Retail—Bankers and Money-Changers.

The domains on which the activity of the ancients was chiefly concentrated were agriculture and cattle rearing, trade, and handicraft. Intellectual or artistic labour, which at the present day plays a very important part as a means of earning a livelihood, was hardly considered at all in Ancient Greece, and the artist, if he worked for pay, was put on the same footing as the artisan; in fact there were very few intellectual professions connected with money. These circumstances changed somewhat in the Hellenistic period; but even there the intellectual labour of teachers, physicians, etc., would be placed in the same class with other occupations, though gradually, as the payment of this labour increased, so did also the estimation in which it was held.

As to the statistical relation in which agriculture, industry, and trade stood to one another, there were naturally many changes as civilisation advanced; and again, local circumstances in every part of Greece, in every district, and perhaps even every city, as well as the geographical position, the nature of the land, the adaptability of the soil for cultivation, etc., were of importance for these branches; and again, peculiarities of race, national prejudices, were often of great weight in the choice of a profession. It was an idea not peculiar to the Doric races, though most strongly developed among them, that in reality every kind of work done for pay was unsuitable for a citizen, and that his whole activity should be given without reward to the State; but this theory—though the main features of it are defended even by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, and it rests on the assumption that every citizen must have sufficient possessions for himself and his family, and obtain what he requires by the labour of slaves—was only gradually developed, and was quite foreign to the Homeric age, as well as to the period immediately following, in which Hesiod could venture to say that not work but idleness was disgraceful. Changes in political conditions produced other changes as well. When the old Monarchy was succeeded by the rule of the Oligarchs, and the privileged class being in possession of landed property and numerous slaves, devoted its whole activity to military and political matters, the prejudice originated that only such occupations were worthy of a free and noble citizen, and that all work was low and servile; and it is natural that this opinion should have been obstinately maintained at Sparta, because the constitution there kept the character of the Oligarchy most rigidly. In other places a healthier conception of work gradually prevailed, and, in particular, the tyrants of the older period tried to combat the disinclination of the citizens for professional activity; in their case, however, it was not only reasons of political economy, but also political expediency that influenced them, since they did not wish to see their rule threatened by an unoccupied warlike population longing for a share in the government. But these efforts were only partially crowned with success, and though in the time of absolute democracy many citizens practised occupations connected with money, yet the old idea still prevailed that those really stood on a higher footing whose fortune permitted them to live without any definite occupation, and we constantly meet with traces of it even in a philosopher like Socrates, whose statement that idleness was the sister of freedom reflects the opinion of the majority with particular emphasis.

The prejudice against many professions was not equally directed against all. Agriculture was least liable to it. In the heroic period, agriculture was the chief occupation, not only of the lower classes, but even of the nobles and princes, who regarded it as no disgrace to perform with their own hands, or superintend, many duties connected with farming. It was natural that a change should be gradually introduced in these patriarchal conditions, and this was due not only to political revolutions, but also to the advance of civilisation, and the growth of industrial and commercial life in Greece; yet agriculture always remained one of the most respected occupations, especially in those states whose geographical position cut them off from trade, and the nature of whose soil was suited for agriculture and cattle-rearing; in these places the citizens too took part in these occupations, though in other places, especially at Sparta, any work performed with the hands was regarded as unsuitable for citizens, and was assigned to slaves or free subjects. In the large towns, such as Athens, where trade and industry attained a great height, and democracy, growing freer and freer, tended to advance idleness by official gifts to citizens, such as the show-money and public meals, agriculture lost in general estimation, and the citizen of a large town regarded the industrious countryman as a creature of a lower rank. This was but natural, and we find analogy for it in many of our modern conditions. Local circumstances naturally had a good deal to do in determining the position occupied by an agricultural population. Where the land was good and the profits considerable, the farmer occupied a better position than in those places where but a poor harvest rewarded his toil. The soil of Greece was not everywhere suited for agriculture, and in many places it required the most careful labour to win any fruits from it. In Hellas, the mountainous districts are more extensive than the plains suitable for cultivation; consequently in many places they had to construct artificial terraces, because the stony ground would not otherwise have borne any fruit. In other places too, want of water, which in the hot season of the year often amounted to actual drought, necessitated artificial irrigation by means of canals and drainage, and again, the mountain brooks, which often overflowed their banks in the rainy season and threatened destruction to the fields, had to be regulated by means of dykes. Descriptions of such structures have come down to us, and many traces of them may still be found in Greece, some of them even pointing to very considerable technical knowledge; the State, too, sometimes undertook work of this kind, as is proved by the office of water-superintendent, who, in many places, had the control of the natural and artificial watercourses, and whose duty it was to prevent undue use, and to inflict fines in such cases.

We know very little about the management of farms and the arrangements for dividing land among large landowners or small cultivators, in the separate districts of Greece. Greek antiquity shows no traces of latifundia, such as gradually made way in Italy; there were some large estates with numerous slave-workers, but small farms were commonest. In some districts, as for instance in Arcadia, a small peasantry were the chief part of the population, and it is not surprising, therefore, that even the leaders of the State did not shrink from taking part in agricultural labour, though the larger landowners left this to their slaves and overseers. The Athenians, however, regarded the rough manners of these smaller farmers as coarse, and the citizens of the larger towns, accustomed to the refinements of ordinary life, mocked at their rustic manners; we scarcely ever find any recognition of the fact that a strong and healthy race of peasants together with an industrious middle-class is the best means for maintaining the life of a state.

In its technical aspects, ancient agriculture remained in much the same state throughout the whole of antiquity as it occupied in the heroic age, and probably this was the common inheritance of the Indo-Germanic race. In Homer, we find the custom, which always prevailed afterwards, of alternating only between harvest and fallow; even the succeeding ages seem to have known nothing of the rotation of crops. The implements used for the necessary farming occupations were of the simplest kind, in particular the primitive plough, which was not sufficient to tear up the earth, so that they had to use the mattock in addition; they had no harrow or scythe, in place of which they used the sickle, and their threshing arrangements were most unsatisfactory, since they simply drove oxen, horses, or mules over the threshing floor, and beat out the ears with their hoofs, by which means a great part of the harvest was lost. It was only the large number of labourers at the disposal of the farmers, in consequence of the numerous slaves, to which at times, when there was a press of work, they added hired labourers, and the great care taken in manuring and improving the ground, etc., that enabled them to earn a living at all. Great wealth was never attained in ancient Greece by agriculture, certainly not by growing corn; vines and olives supplied better profits, though here too the instruments used were of the simplest, but the ground was especially favourable to their cultivation. Oil, in particular, could be supplied by Greece to foreign countries, but corn did not grow in a quantity sufficient to provide their own population, and consequently they had to import a great deal from foreign countries, especially from the Black Sea, and afterwards too from Egypt.

Fig. 196.

Greek writers give us very little information about the life of the country people; a few simple pictures taken from vase paintings afford some little notion of it. Fig. [196] represents three countrymen surrounded by a variety of animals: deer, lizards, a tortoise, a strange bird, and another creature, perhaps meant to represent a locust; each of the men is directing a plough drawn by two oxen, holding the handle in one hand, and in the other the goad-stick for urging on the beasts. Behind one of the ploughmen walks a man with a large basket on his left arm, in which, no doubt, there are supposed to be seeds, which he is about to strew with his right hand. Fig. [197] represents a scene from the olive harvest. On the right and left of an olive tree sit two men, before them on the ground stand jars; one of them holds a little flask in his left hand, and appears to be squeezing the juice of an olive into it through a funnel, in order to test the quality of the harvest. The inscription on the picture is, “O, Father Zeus, would that I might grow rich!” The reverse side of the vessel, not represented here, shows the fulfilment of this simple prayer in the picture and inscription.