Fig. 197.
Cattle-rearing played a very important part in Greek farming. In the time of Homer it even exceeded agriculture in importance; the wealth of great people at that time consisted chiefly in herds; to give cattle as a bridal gift was very common; in calculations of value cattle formed the basis instead of coined money, which was at that time unknown. The kinds especially cultivated in the historic period were horses, asses, mules, and oxen, and also sheep, goats, and swine. Except in a few districts, horse-rearing was of little importance. The mountainous nature of the country made the use of horses for driving difficult, nor do they seem to have been required for carrying burdens; they were chiefly used for riding purposes, for the cavalry, and also for travelling, racing, etc.; and in connection with racing horse-rearing became a favourite occupation of the aristocracy, and almost a mania at Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war, when many young men were ruined by it. Horse-rearing was best developed in Thessaly, where the wide plains were suitable for the purpose. The Thessalian cavalry was always noted for its quantity and excellence. For domestic use mules and asses took the place of horses, especially as beasts of burden. The mules were used for drawing and for the plough, while the asses were chiefly employed for carrying burdens. Cattle-rearing seems to have been more important in the Homeric age than afterwards, when the needs of the population could not be satisfied by the home growth, and importation of foreign cattle from the Black Sea and from Africa was necessary. The small number of herds of cattle was probably due to the fact that in Greek antiquity very little cow’s milk was drunk, but chiefly goat’s milk. Sheep-rearing, however, was very general, and brought to great perfection, since they not only used the flesh and milk of the sheep for food, but in particular required their skin and wool for clothing. Linen was not much worn; the country people wore sheepskins, and the rest of their dress was almost entirely made of sheep’s wool. Excellent qualities of this were produced by Hellas proper, as well as by the Greek colonies in Asia Minor and Lower Italy, and a great deal of it was exported to foreign countries, where the woollen stuffs of Asia Minor, Attica, and Megara, were held in great repute from most ancient times. Goats were chiefly kept for the sake of the milk; the skins were used by the peasants for clothing. The goat’s hair was woven into stuff, not in Greece itself, but probably in Northern Africa and Cilicia, where a kind of coarse cloth was manufactured of it, which however was not often used for clothing. The facility of goat-rearing, which required no special care, and could be carried on even on rocky ground, where but little grass grew, enabled it to become very extensive, and we find it, in fact, throughout almost the whole of Greece in ancient times. Swine-rearing, on the other hand, played a very small part, for it was not sufficiently remunerative. Although the flesh was used for food, yet, in the historic period it was not so popular a dish as in the age of Homer, and they did not understand how to draw a profit in other ways from swine. Cattle-rearing was conducted on tolerably rational principles. They were very careful in the choice of the animals used for breeding, and in very early times attempts were made to improve the race by importing foreign kinds from other countries. The cattle were chiefly fed on pasture; the herds were driven out not only in summer, but even in winter, when the climate permitted it; and in summer they were taken to the mountains and forests, in winter to the plains. The sheep got most attention, because the excellence of the wool depended on the care they received, and Diogenes is supposed to have said that it was better at Megara to be a ram than the son of a citizen, for the sheep were carefully covered up, but the children were allowed to run about naked. This custom of covering the sheep with skins to preserve the wool existed in other places too. As Greece was not rich in pasture land, there was a difficulty occasionally in providing sufficient pasture for the herds; sometimes they had to be sent to very distant parts, it even happened that states made treaties together, which permitted the citizens of one state to use the pasture land of another for a fixed period.
During the Homeric age, handicraftsmen seem to have been in a position which, corresponding to the ideas entertained in ancient times about physical labour, was by no means despised. This is easily comprehensible, since even the gods were represented as undertaking the labour of artisans; Hephaestus working at a forge, Athene weaving; and we find even the heroes, the princes, and nobles sometimes themselves working as carpenters and joiners, and with their own hands constructing some object for their home; nowhere in Homer do we find a trace of contempt for hand-work. Of course, handicrafts were not much developed at that time, and there were only a small number of crafts which could be looked upon as actual trades, such as that of smiths, workers in gold, carpenters, stone masons, etc., while many occupations which afterwards formed a distinct trade were performed at home by the masters and slaves. In later times a very important change took place connected with the political and social revolutions already mentioned. Agriculture and cattle-rearing were still regarded as an occupation which a free citizen might carry on without degrading himself, since the more menial part of the work was performed by slaves or hired labourers, and the master only superintended; but the work of the handicraftsmen was designated by them with the word mechanical (βάναυσος), a word indicating a contempt that cannot be expressed in the translation. This word expressed the full scorn felt by the free citizen living on his own fortune, and devoting all his intellectual and physical powers to the State—of the gentleman, in fact—for the man with the horny hand, who toiled in his workshop to earn his daily bread. This reproach of “mechanical” was never aimed at the rich owner of a number of slaves, who worked for his benefit; a factory owner need not take part in the work himself, but had his overseers to attend to that; it was the little man who had no other hands to work for him, and who wielded the hammer himself, or who worked the cloth in the fuller’s shop, whom they looked down on. In vain wise lawgivers tried to call the attention of the citizens to the blessing of handicraft, and the honourable nature of this occupation; in vain the democrats gave political equality to artisans by permitting them to vote and speak in the Assembly of the people along with the other citizens; while there was even a law forbidding anyone publicly to reproach a citizen with his occupation. There were some states in which an important part of the prosperity depended on handicrafts, and there a more moderate view gradually made way, but, generally speaking, the contempt for handicraft remained and continued, the rather as even philosophers regarded it as but a necessary evil. Doubtless they recognised the usefulness of handicrafts, but still they maintained that work of this kind in the workshop, near the hot furnace or in the gloomy room, was not suited to a free citizen, and that the effort of gaining money which was connected with it was injurious to the mind, and made it coarse and uncultivated, and it was thus that the word banausos came to be synonymous with common, low, and stupid. No wonder that even the artists, whose work depended on handicraft, and who, with few exceptions, worked for pay, were put in the same class with shoemakers, bakers, and smiths! It is strange indeed, that this depreciation of handicraft observed throughout Greek literature in no way prevented the development and perfection of the technical arts of Greece. There were many branches of it which continued for centuries at the same point without making any technical advances; but still trades attained a high degree of perfection in antiquity, though it was chiefly in those where the practical element was not as important as the artistic that the natural sense of beauty of the Greeks made itself felt, so that there are numerous productions of ancient handicraft which even our modern trades cannot rival. In fact, we might almost say that, with the exception of such trades as bakers, butchers, or fullers, Greek handicraft in almost every branch developed into art, while at the present day there are only a few branches which rise above the ordinary craft level.
The handicrafts were partly in the hands of citizens, and partly in those of free settlers (μέτοικοι) and slaves. The proportion in which they were divided among these three classes varied a good deal according to time and the nature of the occupation. At Athens the number of free citizens who carried on handicrafts was not small, in spite of the contempt in which they were held; in Peloponnesus, it was only Sparta where the free citizen kept aloof from all trades, while in the other states the conditions were much the same as at Athens and elsewhere. The resident foreigners formed a very important part of the workmen; at the time when industry flourished most in Attica, trade seems to have been almost entirely in their hands; and it is but natural that in those countries where the free citizens kept aloof from trade, the settlers who performed their labour with the help of slaves should have formed a great part of the working population. Every master workman whose position permitted kept working slaves; rich capitalists invested their money in large undertakings, in which the work was done by a great number of slaves, who either belonged to them or were hired for the purpose. We shall have occasion later on to discuss the conditions under which they worked.
We know very little about the organisation of labour. There were no castes compelled by law to undertake certain trades, though in some places special occupations were hereditary; thus, for instance, at Sparta, the cooks and flute players always belonged to particular families. Otherwise, when we find any occupation hereditary, this is not due to legal compulsion, but to natural causes; thus the sons of sculptors very often became sculptors, or the medical profession was handed down in certain families, and so on. Nor do we meet with the guilds so early developed in Italy; these are not heard of until the Roman period, when we find them in Asia Minor. It is uncertain to what extent the State was concerned with trade and its productions. There do not seem to have been any limitations put upon it except certain police regulations, such as that at Athens, which compelled tanners and cheesemongers to have their workshops and booths outside the denser parts of the city on account of the smell. There do not seem to have been any taxes on trade; at Athens there was a toll on hetaerae; at Byzantium jugglers, soothsayers, etc., paid one; but there is no reason to suppose that handicrafts were taxed in the same way.
