Of the state of the poor at Sparta,[[339]] our information is exceedingly scanty. We only know that, when they were unable to contribute their share to the maintenance of the public tables, they lost the privilege of being present, and had to provide for themselves at home in the best manner they were able.[[340]] It would thus appear that their Phiditia differred very little, except in being more general, from the Erani of the Athenians. As Laconia abounded with game, it may be conjectured that the more indigent citizens frequently relied greatly for support on the chase,[[341]] to which may be added the charity of their wealthier neighbours, in whatever way bestowed. In Crete, the citizens being placed more upon an equality, there was little room for extreme poverty.[[342]] The population, moreover, by artificial restraints, was kept within due bounds; consequently, most persons lived plentifully, and possessed wherewith to exercise the most generous hospitality. But even here they multiplied in later times more rapidly than the means of subsistence, so that numbers of Cretans were fain to serve as mercenary archers in the intestine wars of Greece. The same remark will apply to the Arcadians, and several other people whose poorer members earned a subsistence by their hereditary valour.[[343]]

At Athens, when persons in easy circumstances made a feast, as on all occasions of sacrificing they did, the custom was to send some small presents, as parts of the victim, to their friends, more especially when poor.[[344]] But most joyful for the indigent was the period of the Athenian jubilee, the Panathenaia,[[345]] on which occasion the state received presents of oxen from all the colonies founded by Athenians, so that the whole city overflowed with meat and soup, of which every person might take his share. Sometimes, however, if not generally, the meat fell into the hands of those who least needed it, while the poor got nothing but a little soup with a scanty slice of bread.[[346]] In times of great scarcity corn was distributed to the indigent in the Odeion, where, on ordinary occasions, it was sold.[[347]] A similar distribution took place at the Peiræeus in the arsenal, where loaves were given out at an obolos each. On extraordinary occasions, as when a famine raged in the country, the state applied for corn to its foreign allies, and, on receiving any, distributed it equally among the citizens. This was the case when Psammitichos made the Athenians a present of a vast quantity of wheat, of which every citizen received five medimni.[[348]] A peculiar kind of windfall is commemorated by Athenæus, who relates, that when Ion, the dramatic poet of Chios, won the prize of tragedy, he was so overjoyed at his success, that he presented every Athenian with a jar of the best Chian. No doubt, foreign tragedians were not every day winning prizes, or, when they won, so rich and generous as Ion; but advantages of various kinds were enjoyed by the Athenian people not anywhere else known.[[349]]

Sometimes, when generals obtained any remarkable quantity of plunder, instead of laying it up to meet the serious exigencies of the state they lavished it in feasting the people. Thus, Chares is said to have expended more than sixty talents, or near 15,000l. sterling in entertaining his fellow-citizens,[[350]] when the public tables were laid out in the agora; and Conon,[[351]] having obtained a great naval victory over the Lacedæmonians at Cnidos, and surrounded the Peiræeus with fortifications, offered a real hecatomb in sacrifice, and feasted the whole body of people. Of these thoughtless donations the poor, of course, obtained their share. Cimon acted more judiciously and more nobly towards the unfortunate among his countrymen. Looking upon wealth only as a means of recommending himself and obtaining friends, he set no guard upon his lands or gardens, from which every Athenian who chose might freely take what he needed. His house, likewise, in the city was open to all; a plain table being constantly laid for a number of men, so that whosoever was at a loss for a dinner might dine there. He willingly obliged those who came daily to demand some favour of him; and is said always to have gone abroad accompanied by two or three domestics bearing money, who were instructed to give to any citizen who approached him with a request. He contributed also to the interment of many; and, often, if he observed a poor Athenian meanly clad, ordered one of his attendants to change raiment with him. By these means, as may be supposed, he acquired marvellous popularity, and stood first among his rivals in public estimation.[[352]]

But persons thus subsisting on the bounty of the opulent soon lost of necessity the dignity of sentiment which should belong to the citizens of a free state. Many, therefore, when reduced by misfortune, to a choice of evils, preferred the bread obtained by honest labour,[[353]] however mean or ill paid, to so humiliating a dependance on charity; and, unable to obtain more favourable conditions, actually worked for their food.[[354]] To labour for hire they scarcely accounted a hardship. A large class of citizens, including women,[[355]] appear by this means to have gained their livelihood, some as cooks, others as reapers, mowers, or any other description of labour which happened to offer itself.[[356]] Poverty sometimes drove the unprincipled poor to keep houses of ill fame. Others became itinerant flower-sellers, and cried “roses so many bunches the obolos;” or hawked radishes, lupines, or olive-dregs about the streets.[[357]] And, after their death, the daughters of poor men sometimes joined the Hetairæ, not having been able to earn their livelihood by needlework, weaving, and spinning.[[358]]

In many respects the poor of southern climates have the advantage of those of the north.[[359]] The atmosphere itself forms their clothing, and during a great part of the year it is immaterial to them where they sleep. But at Athens, however temperate the climate, a shelter from the cold in winter is desirable, and here, therefore, as in every other part of Greece, the practice was to erect houses where, as in the Caravanserais of the East, any man, native or stranger, might enter and obtain shelter for the night. These buildings were called Leschæ, erected without doors, to intimate that all were welcome; and in them, accordingly, beggars and wanderers of every description congregated round great fires in winter and bad weather, both to sleep and converse.[[360]] Even the citizens, particularly at Sparta, met in the Leschæ, to enjoy the delights of gossiping; whence any idle assemblage was called a Leschè.[[361]] In a fragment of the lost oration of Antiphon against Nicoles, mention is made of these edifices, which served as a refuge for the destitute. They were erected by the state; and, to cast over them an air of sanctity, dedicated to Apollo, who thence obtained the surname of Leschenorios.[[362]] Nowhere were these humane institutions so numerous as at Athens, where, according to Proclus,[[363]] there existed no fewer than three hundred and sixty, in which the indigent, who had no home, might congregate together and keep themselves warm at the nation’s expense.

In addition to these the public baths served as an asylum to such of the poor as had no home, or were unable to provide themselves with fuel in their own dwellings. Here they would seem to have pressed so eagerly about the furnaces as to be sometimes scorched and blistered;[[364]] and the crowd of poor wretches in this necessitous condition would appear to have been occasionally so great as to deteriorate the state of the atmosphere by their breath,[[365]] on which account they were exposed to be driven forth by the bath-keepers.

In Homeric times, beggars and all other sorts of vagrants took refuge from the nightly cold in smiths’ forges,[[366]] just as in former ages they did in the glass-houses of London. These fathers of sacrilege, as Plato[[367]] calls them, when properly equipped for the road, presented a tolerably picturesque aspect with their close Mysian bonnet,[[368]] ragged cloak, and bottle strapped to the thigh,[[369]] and supporting themselves as they walked on a huge staff. To this worshipful society Dionysios, once tyrant of Syracuse, belonged in his old age.[[370]]

There was at Athens, in later times, a class of men who resembled the bone-grubbers and dung-hill scrapers of London and Paris. These were the grain-pickers of the Deigma and Agora, who hovering about where the farmers and corn-chandlers meted their grain, and collecting what dropped from the sacks,[[371]] or was spilled in measuring, thus earned a miserable subsistence. Persons of this description might eke out their livelihood by appropriating to themselves the coarse brown bread which pious and charitable persons placed in the propylæa of temples for their use.[[372]] Here Diogenes, the Cynic, who, carrying about provisions in his wallet, was independent of these offerings, sometimes dined; and, for the sake of uttering a bon mot, threw out the loaves that might have been useful to others; observing, that nothing coarse[[373]] should be allowed to enter the temples of the gods.

Religion has everywhere been favourable to the poor. On the festival of the new moon, when the great and opulent offered up costly sacrifices to the gods, as to Hecatè, for example, on cross-roads,[[374]] their more indigent brethren seized the occasion when their hearts were thus softened, to ask them for something. Thus Homer, according to the legend attributed to Herodotus, went in Samos to the houses of the wealthy, chanting his Eiresione, for which he received a consideration.[[375]]

There was a class of beggars who went about the country begging for the crow,[[376]] holding, apparently, a tame bird of that species like a falcon on their wrist, and chanting the following ditty:—