τώ οἱ ἔσαν κήρυκε καὶ ὀτρηρὼ θεράποντε.
We may infer from the poems, that each independent family furnished one or more of its members, drawn by lot, to serve in the expedition[163]. Such is the declaration of the pseudo-Myrmidon to Priam: and again, in the Odyssey we find Ægyptius[164] of Ithaca had sent one son to Troy, while he kept three at home. The inference is strengthened[165] by the negative evidence of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey. There[166] Dolius the slave appears with no less than six sons: but no mention is made of any member of his family as having attended Ulysses to Troy, although, if there had been such a person, some reference to him here, in the presence of Ulysses just returned, would have been most appropriate. Indeed, the six are introduced as ‘the sons’ of Dolius, which of itself almost excludes the idea of his having sent any son to the war.
Again, we see that the whole mass of the soldiery attended the assemblies, and were there addressed by kings and chiefs in terms which seemed to imply a brotherhood. They are ‘friends, Danaan heroes, satellites of Mars[167],’ and it is hard to suppose such words could be addressed to persons held in slavery, however mild, familiar, or favourable. The employment of these terms may suggest a comparison with our own modes of public address, according to which the word ‘Gentlemen’ would be commonly used, though the audience should be composed in great part of the humbler class. But all these words are so many proofs of that political freedom, pervading the community and the spirit of its institutions as a whole, which exacts this kind of homage from the great and wealthy on public occasions.
It was a natural and healthful sign of the state of political society, that slavery was held to be odious. But it was odious on account of its effects on the mind, and not because it entailed cruelty or oppression. There is not, I think, a single passage in the poems which in any degree conveys the impression either of hardship endured, or of resentment felt, by any slave of the period.
As to a peasant proprietary.
Neither, as has been said, is there any thing in Homer, which clearly exhibits to us a peasant-proprietary; or entitles us positively to assert that the land was cultivated to a great extent by small proprietors, each acting independently for himself. On the one hand, as has been remarked, we do not find large numbers of personal retainers and servants about the great men: but, on the other hand, Homer does not paint for us a single picture of the independent peasant. In the similes, in the legends, on the Shield of Achilles, in Ithaca, we hear much of large flocks and herds, of great proprietors, of their harvest-fields and their vineyards, but nothing of the small freeman, with property in land sufficient for his family, and no more. The rural labour, which he shows us in action, is organized on a large scale.
The question, what after all was the actual condition of the Greek people in the age of the Troica, is thus left in great obscurity. It is indeed at once the capital point, and the one of which history, chronicle, and poem commonly take the least notice. Upon the whole it would appear most reasonable, while abstaining from too confident assertion, to suppose,
1. That, as respected primogeniture and the disposition of landed property, society was aristocratically organized.