2. That this aristocratic organization, being founded on military occupation, embraced a rather wide range of greater and of smaller proprietors.
3. That these proprietors, by superior wealth, energy, and influence, led the remainder of the population.
4. That there may have existed a peasant-proprietary class in considerable numbers, neither excluded from political privilege nor exempt from military service, but yet not combined, under ordinary circumstances, by any community of interest or of hardship; led, not unwillingly, by the dominant Achæan race; and by no means forming a social element of such interest or attractiveness, in the view of the Poet, as to claim a marked place or vivid delineation, which it certainly has not received, on his canvass.
5. That the cultivation of the greater estates was carried on by hired labourers and by slaves, between which two classes, for that period, no very broad line of distinction can be drawn.
It is not within the scope of this work to enter largely upon the ‘political economy’ of the Homeric age. But, as being itself an important feature of polity, it cannot be altogether overlooked; and this appears to be the place for referring to it.
Political Economy of the Homeric age.
There has been, of late years, debate and research respecting the name given to the important science, which treats of the creation and distribution of wealth. The phrase ‘political economy,’ which has been established by long usage, cannot be defended on its merits. The name Chrematistic has been devised in its stead; an accurate, but perhaps rather dry definition, which does not, like the names Πολιτικὴ and Ἠθικὴ, and like the exceptionable title it is meant to displace, take the human being, who is the real subject of the science, into view. Homer has provided us beforehand with a word which, as it appears to me, retrenches the phrase ‘economy’ precisely in the point where retrenchment is required. The Ulysses of the Fourteenth Odyssey, in one of his fabulous accounts of himself as a Cretan, states[168],
ἔργον δέ μοι οὐ φίλον ἔσκεν
οὐδ’ οἰκωφελίη, ἥτε τρέφει ἀγλαὰ τέκνα.
And I believe that, were it not too late to change a name, ‘political œcophely’ precisely expresses the idea of the science, which, having its fountain-head in good housekeeping, treats, when it has reached its expansion and maturity, of the ‘Wealth of Nations.’