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 Praise for The Radium Girls

“Kate Moore vividly depicts the female factory workers whose

courage led to a revolution in industrial safety standards. In describ-
ing their heart-wrenching struggles and bittersweet triumphs,
Moore delivers an intimate portrait of these pioneers. Uplifting and
beautifully written, The Radium Girls is a tribute to the strength of
women everywhere.”
—Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling
author of Rise of the Rocket Girls

“Kate Moore’s gripping narrative about the betrayal of the radium

girls—gracefully told and exhaustively researched—makes this a
nonfiction classic. I particularly admire Moore’s compassion for
her subjects and her storytelling prowess, which brings alive a
shameful era in America’s industrial history.”
—Rinker Buck, author of The Oregon Trail and Flight of Passage

“Moore’s well-researched narrative is written with clarity and a

sympathetic voice that brings these figures and their struggles to
life. A must-read for anyone interested in American and women’s
history, as well as topics of law, health, and industrial safety.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review

“Current nonfiction obsession! The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

is powerful, disturbing, important history.”
—Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author

“Like Dava Sobel’s The Glass Universe and Margot Lee Shetterly’s
Hidden Figures, Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls tells the story of a
cohort of women who made history by entering the workforce at
the dawn of a new scientific era. But the young women—many of
them just teenagers—who learned the skill of painting glow-in-
the-dark numbers on clock faces and aeronautical gauges early in
the twentieth century paid a stiff price for their part in this break-
through involving the deadly element radium. Moore sheds new
light on a dark chapter in American labor history; the radium girls,
martyrs to an unholy alliance of commerce and science, live again
in her telling.”
—Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author
of Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Bishop

“The Radium Girls was a wonderful and sad read about amazingly
brave women. Kate Moore tells their incredible true story of
tragedy and bravery in the face of corporate greed. We all should
know the stories of these women who suffered through radium
poisoning and refused to be silenced. This isn’t just an important
part of history, but a page-turner that will leave you heartbroken
and emboldened. It is a must-read.”
—Rachel Ignotofsky, author of Women in Science

“Heartbreaking… What this book illustrates brilliantly is that

battling for justice against big corporations isn’t easy… [The
radium girls’ story is] a terrible example of appalling injustice.”
—BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour

“In this thrilling and carefully crafted book, Kate Moore tells the
shocking story of how early twentieth-century corporate and legal
America set about silencing dozens of working-class women who
had been systematically poisoned by radiation… Moore [writes]
so lyrically.”
—Mail on Sunday
“[A] fascinating social history—one that significantly reflects on
the class and gender of those involved… The importance of the
brave and blighted dial-painters cannot be overstated.”
—Sunday Times

“The Radium Girls is a shocking, heartbreaking story of corporate

greed and denial, and the strength of the human spirit in the face
of it. To read it is to honor these women who unwittingly sacri-
ficed their lives but whose courage to stand up and be heard speaks
to us from the grave. It is a tale for our times.”
—Peter Stark, author of Astoria: John Jacob Astor
and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire
THE DARK STORY
O F A M E R I C AÕ S
SHINING WOMEN

KATE MOORE
Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Kate Moore
Cover and internal design © 2017, 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by The Book Designers
Cover Image © Health Effects of Exposure to Internally Deposited Radioactivity Projects Case
Files. Center for Human Radiobiology, Argonne National Laboratory. General Records of the
Department of Energy, Record Group 434. National Archives at Chicago.

The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-­ holders for
permission and apologize for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may
be made to future printings.

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Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

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Originally published in 2016 in the United Kingdom by Simon & Schuster UK.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moore, Kate (Writer and editor), author.

Title: The radium girls : the dark story of America’s shining women / Kate
Moore.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks, Inc., [2017] | “Originally
published as: The Radium Girls : they paid with their lives, their final
fight was for justice, in 2016 in the United Kingdom by Simon & Schuster
UK.” | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016040681 | (paperback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Watch dial painters--Diseases--United States--History. |
Radium paint--Toxicology. | Consumers’ leagues--United States--History. |
Industrial hygiene--United States--History--20th century. | World War,
1914-1918--Women--United States. | World War, 1914-1918--War work--United
States.
Classification: LCC HD6067.2.U6 M66 2017 | DDC 363.17/990820973--dc23 LC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040681

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

BVG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 For all the dial-­painters
And those who loved them
I shall never forget you…
Hearts that know you love you
And lips that have given you laughter
Have gone to their lifetime of grief and of roses
Searching for dreams that they lost
In the world, far away from your walls.
—­Ottawa High School yearbook, 1925
 CO N TE N TS

List of Key Characters xiii

Prologuexvii

Part One: Knowledge 1

Part Two: Power 145
Part Three: Justice 281
Epilogue378
Postscript398

AuthorÕs Note 401

Acknowledgments406
Reading Group Guide 410
Picture Acknowledgments 412
Abbreviations414
Notes416
Select Bibliography 462
Index468
About the Author 478
 LI ST O F KEY C H A RAC TE RS

NEWARK AND ORANGE, NEW JERSEY

The Dial-­Painters
Albina Maggia Larice
Amelia “Mollie” Maggia, Albina Maggia Larice’s sister
Edna Bolz Hussman
Eleanor “Ella” Eckert
Genevieve Smith, Josephine Smith’s sister
Grace Fryer
Hazel Vincent Kuser
Helen Quinlan
Irene Corby La Porte
Irene Rudolph, Katherine Schaub’s cousin
Jane “Jennie” Stocker
Josephine Smith, Genevieve Smith’s sister
Katherine Schaub, Irene Rudolph’s cousin
Mae Cubberley Canfield, instructress
Marguerite Carlough, Sarah Carlough Maillefer’s sister
Quinta Maggia McDonald, Albina and Amelia’s sister
Sarah Carlough Maillefer, Marguerite Carlough’s sister
 xiv / K AT E M O O R E

The United States Radium Corporation

Anna Rooney, forelady
Arthur Roeder, treasurer
Clarence B. Lee, vice president
Edwin Leman, chief chemist
George Willis, cofounder with Sabin von Sochocky
Harold Viedt, vice president
Howard Barker, chemist and vice president
Sabin von Sochocky, founder and inventor of the paint
Mr. Savoy, studio manager

Doctors
Dr. Francis McCaffrey, New York specialist, treating Grace Fryer
Dr. Frederick Flinn, company doctor
Dr. Harrison Martland, Newark doctor
Dr. James Ewing, Dr. Lloyd Craver, Dr. Edward Krumbhaar,
committee doctors
Dr. Joseph Knef, Dr. Walter Barry, Dr. James Davidson, local
dentists
Dr. Robert Humphries, doctor at the Orange Orthopedic Hospital
Dr. Theodore Blum, New York dentist

Investigators
Dr. Alice Hamilton, Harvard School of Public Health, Katherine
Wiley’s ally, and colleague of Cecil K. Drinker
Andrew McBride, commissioner of the Department of Labor
Dr. Cecil K. Drinker, professor of physiology at the Harvard School
of Public Health, husband of Katherine Drinker
Ethelbert Stewart, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Washington, DC
Dr. Frederick Hoffman, investigating statistician, Prudential
Insurance Company
 THE RADIUM GIRLS \ xv

John Roach, deputy commissioner of the Department of Labor

Dr. Katherine Drinker, Harvard School of Public Health, wife of
Cecil K. Drinker
Katherine Wiley, executive secretary of the Consumers League, New
Jersey
Lenore Young, Orange health officer
Swen Kjaer, national investigator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Washington, DC
Dr. Martin Szamatolski, consulting chemist for the Department of
Labor

OTTAWA, ILLINOIS

The Dial-Painters
Catherine Wolfe Donohue
Charlotte Nevins Purcell
Frances Glacinski O’Connell, Marguerite Glacinski’s sister
Helen Munch
Inez Corcoran Vallat
Margaret “Peg” Looney
Marguerite Glacinski, Frances Glacinski O’Connell’s sister
Marie Becker Rossiter
Mary Duffy Robinson
Mary Ellen “Ella” Cruse
Mary Vicini Tonielli
Olive West Witt
Pearl Payne

The Radium Dial Company

Joseph Kelly, president
Lottie Murray, superintendent
Mercedes Reed, instructress, wife of Rufus Reed
 xvi / K AT E M O O R E

Rufus Fordyce, vice president

Rufus Reed, assistant superintendent, husband of Mercedes Reed
William Ganley, executive

Doctors
Dr. Charles Loffler, Chicago doctor
Dr. Lawrence Dunn, physician of Catherine Donohue
Dr. Sidney Weiner, x-­ray specialist
Dr. Walter Dalitsch, specialist dentist
 PROLOGUE
PA R I S , F RA N C E
1901

THE SCIENTIST HAD FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THE RADIUM.

It was tucked discreetly within the folds of his waistcoat pocket,
enclosed in a slim glass tube in such a small quantity that he could
not feel its weight. He had a lecture to deliver in London, England,
and the vial of radium stayed within that shadowy pocket for the
entirety of his journey across the sea.
He was one of the few people in the world to possess it.
Discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie late in December 1898,
radium was so difficult to extract from its source that there were
only a few grams available anywhere in the world. He was fortu-
nate indeed to have been given a tiny quantity by the Curies
to use in his lectures, for they barely had enough themselves to
continue experiments.
Yet this constraint did not affect the Curies’ progress. Every
day they discovered something new about their element: “it made
an impression on photographic plates through black paper,” the
Curies’ daughter later wrote, “[I]t corroded and, little by little,
reduced to powder the paper or the cotton wool in which it was
wrapped…What could it not do?” Marie called it “my beautiful
radium”—­and it truly was. Deep in the dark pocket of the scien-
tist, the radium broke the gloom with an unending, eerie glow.
 xviii / K AT E M O O R E

“These gleamings,” Marie wrote of its luminous effect, “seemed

suspended in the darkness [and] stirred us with ever-­new emotion
and enchantment.”
Enchantment… It implies a kind of sorcery, almost supernatu-
ral power. No wonder the U.S. surgeon general said of radium that
“it reminds one of a mythological super-­being.” An English physi-
cian would call its enormous radioactivity “the unknown god.”
Gods can be kind. Loving. Benevolent. Yet as the playwright
George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “The gods of old are constantly
demanding human sacrifices.” Enchantment—­in the tales of the
past, and present—­can also mean a curse.
And so, although the scientist had forgotten about the radium,
the radium had not forgotten him. As he traveled to that foreign
shore, through every second of his journey, the radium shot out
its powerful rays toward his pale, soft skin. Days later, he would
peer in confusion at the red mark blooming mysteriously on his
stomach. It looked like a burn, but he had no memory of coming
near any flame that could produce such an effect. Hour by hour,
it grew more painful. It didn’t get bigger, but it seemed, somehow,
to get deeper, as though his body was still exposed to the source of
the wound and the flame was burning him still. It blistered into
an agonizing flesh burn that grew in intensity until the pain made
him suck in his breath sharply and rack his brains for what on earth
could have inflicted such damage without his being aware.
And it was then that he remembered the radium.
 PA RT O N E

KNOWLEDGE
 1
N EWA R K, N EW J E RS EY
U N I TE D STATE S O F A ME RI CA
1917

KATHERINE SCHAUB HAD A JAUNTY SPRING IN HER STEP

as she walked the brief four blocks to work. It was February 1,
1917, but the cold didn’t bother her one bit; she had always loved
the winter snows of her hometown. The frosty weather wasn’t the
reason for her high spirits on that particular icy morning, though:
today, she was starting a brand-new job at the watch-dial factory
of the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, based on Third
Street in Newark, New Jersey.
It was one of her close pals who had told her about the
vacancy; Katherine was a lively, sociable girl with many friends.
As she herself later recalled, “A friend of mine told me about
the ‘watch studio’ where watch-dial numerals and hands were
painted with a luminous substance that made them visible in
the dark. The work, she explained, was interesting and of far
higher type than the usual factory job.” It sounded so glamor-
ous, even in that brief description—after all, it wasn’t even a
factory, but a “studio.” For Katherine, a girl who had “a very
imaginative temperament,” it sounded like a place where
anything could happen. It certainly beat the job she’d had before,
wrapping parcels in Bamberger’s department store; Katherine
had ambitions far beyond that shop floor.
 4 / K AT E M O O R E

She was an attractive girl of just fourteen; her fifteenth birthday

was in five weeks’ time. Standing just under five foot four, she was
“a very pretty little blonde” with twinkling blue eyes, fashionably
bobbed hair, and delicate features. Although she had received only
a grammar-­school education before she left school—­which was
“about all the education that girls of her working-­class background
received in those days”—­she was nevertheless fiercely intelligent.
“All her life,” Popular Science later wrote, “[Katherine] Schaub…
had cherished [the] desire…to pursue a literary career.” She was
certainly go-­getting: she later wrote that, after her friend had given
her word of the opportunities at the watch studio, “I went to the
man in charge—­a Mr. Savoy—­and asked for a job.”
And that was how she found herself outside the factory on
Third Street, knocking on the door and gaining admittance to
the place where so many young women wanted to work. She felt
almost a little star-­struck as she was ushered through the studio
to meet the forewoman, Anna Rooney, and saw the dial-­painters
turning diligently to their tasks.The girls sat in rows, dressed in their
ordinary clothes and painting dials at top speed, their hands almost
a blur to Katherine’s uninitiated eyes. Each had a flat wooden tray
of dials beside her—­the paper dials were preprinted on a black
background, leaving the numerals white, ready for painting—­but
it wasn’t the dials that caught Katherine’s eye; it was the material
they were using. It was the radium.
Radium. It was a wonder element; everyone knew that.
Katherine had read all about it in magazines and newspapers,
which were forever extolling its virtues and advertising new radium
products for sale—­but they were all far too expensive for a girl of
Katherine’s humble origins. She had never seen it up close before.
It was the most valuable substance on earth, selling for $120,000
for a single gram ($2.2 million in today’s values). To her delight, it
was even more beautiful than she had imagined.
Each dial-­painter had her own supply. She mixed her own
 THE RADIUM GIRLS \ 5

paint, dabbing a little radium powder into a small white crucible

and adding a dash of water and a gum ­arabic adhesive: a combi-
nation that created a greenish-­white luminous paint, which went
under the name “Undark.” The fine yellow powder contained
only a minuscule amount of radium; it was mixed with zinc
sulfide, with which the radium reacted to give a brilliant glow.
The effect was breathtaking.
Katherine could see that the powder got everywhere; there
was dust all over the studio. Even as she watched, little puffs of it
seemed to hover in the air before settling on the shoulders or hair
of a dial-­painter at work. To her astonishment, it made the girls
themselves gleam.
Katherine, like many before her, was entranced by it. It wasn’t
just the glow—­it was radium’s all-­powerful reputation. Almost
from the start, the new element had been championed as “the
greatest find of history.” When scientists had discovered, at the
turn of the century, that radium could destroy human tissue, it was
quickly put to use to battle cancerous tumors, with remarkable
results. Consequently—­as a life-­saving and thus, it was assumed,
health-­giving element—­other uses had sprung up around it. All
of Katherine’s life, radium had been a magnificent cure-­all, treat-
ing not just cancer, but hay fever, gout, constipation…anything
you could think of. Pharmacists sold radioactive dressings and pills;
there were also radium clinics and spas for those who could afford
them. People hailed its coming as predicted in the Bible: “The sun
of righteousness [shall] arise with healing in his wings, and ye shall
go forth and gambol as calves of the stall.”
For another claim of radium was that it could restore vital-
ity to the elderly, making “old men young.” One aficionado
wrote: “Sometimes I am halfway persuaded that I can feel the
sparkles inside my anatomy.” Radium shone “like a good deed in
a naughty world.”
Its appeal was quickly exploited by entrepreneurs. Katherine
 6 / K AT E M O O R E

had seen advertisements for one of the most successful products, a

radium-­lined jar to which water could be added to make it radio-
active: wealthy customers drank it as a tonic; the recommended
dose was five to seven glasses a day. But as some of the models
retailed for $200 ($3,700), it was a product far out of Katherine’s
reach. Radium water was drunk by the rich and famous, not
working-­class girls from Newark.
What she did feel part of, though, was radium’s all-­pervasive
entry into American life. It was a craze, no other word for it. The
element was dubbed “liquid sunshine,” and it lit up not just the
hospitals and drawing rooms of America, but its theaters, music
halls, grocery stores, and bookshelves. It was breathlessly featured
in cartoons and novels, and Katherine—­who loved to sing and
play piano—­ was probably familiar with the song “Radium
Dance,” which had become a huge hit after being featured in the
Broadway musical Piff! Paff! Pouf! On sale were radium jockstraps
and lingerie, radium butter, radium milk, radium toothpaste
(guaranteeing a brighter smile with every brushing) and even
a range of Radior cosmetics, which offered radium-­laced face
creams, soap, rouge, and compact powders. Other products were
more prosaic: “The Radium Eclipse Sprayer,” trumpeted one ad,
“quickly kills all flies, mosquitoes, roaches. [It] has no equal as a
cleaner of furniture, porcelain, tile. It is harmless to humans and
easy to use.”
Not all of these products actually contained radium—­it was
far too costly and rare for that—­but manufacturers from all kinds
of industries declared it part of their range, for everyone wanted a
slice of the radium pie.
And now, to Katherine’s excitement, thanks to her job, she
would have a prime seat at the table. Her eyes drank in the dazzling
scene before her. But then, to her disappointment, Miss Rooney
ushered her into a room that was separate from the main studio,
away from the radium and the shining girls. Katherine would not
 THE RADIUM GIRLS \ 7

be dial-­painting that day—­nor the day after, as much as she longed

to join the glamorous artists in the other room.
Instead, she would be serving an apprenticeship as an inspec-
tor, checking the work of those luminous girls who were busy
painting dials.
It was an important job, Miss Rooney explained. Although
the company specialized in watch faces, it also had a lucrative
government contract to supply luminous airplane instruments.
Given there was a war raging in Europe, business was booming; the
company also used its paint to make gunsights, ships’ compasses,
and more shine brightly in the dark. And when lives were hanging
in the balance, the dials had to be perfect. “[I was] to see that the
number outlines were even and [thorough] and to correct minor
defects,” Katherine recalled.
Miss Rooney introduced her to her trainer, Mae Cubberley,
and then left the girls to it, resuming her slow march up and
down the rows of painting girls, casting a watchful eye over
their shoulders.
Mae smiled at Katherine as she said hello. A twenty-­six-­year-­
old dial-­painter, Mae had been with the company since the previ-
ous fall. Although she was new to the industry when she joined,
she already had a reputation as a brilliant painter, regularly turning
in eight to ten trays of dials daily (there were either twenty-­four
or forty-­eight dials in each tray, depending on the dial size). She
had quickly been promoted to training other girls in the hope that
they would match her productivity. Now, in the little side room,
she picked up a paintbrush to instruct Katherine in the technique
that all the dial-­painters and inspectors were taught.
They were using slim camel-­hair brushes with narrow wooden
handles. One dial-­painter recalled: “I had never seen a brush as
fine as that. I would say it possibly had about thirty hairs in it; it
was exceptionally fine.” Yet as fine as the brushes were, the bristles
had a tendency to spread, hampering the girls’ work. The smallest
 8 / K AT E M O O R E

pocket watch they painted measured only three-­and-­a-­half centi-

meters across its face, meaning the tiniest element for painting was
a single millimeter in width. The girls could not go over the edges
of these delicate parameters or there would be hell to pay. They
had to make the brushes even finer—­and there was only one way
they knew of to do that.
“We put the brushes in our mouths,” Katherine said, quite
simply. It was a technique called lip-­pointing, inherited from the
first girls who had worked in the industry, who came from china-­
painting factories.
Unbeknownst to the girls, it wasn’t the way things were done
in Europe, where dial-­painting had been in operation for over a
decade. Different countries had different techniques, but in none
was lip-­pointing used.Very likely this was because brushes weren’t
used either: in Switzerland, there were solid glass rods; in France,
small sticks with cotton wadding on the ends; other European
studios employed a sharpened wooden stylus or metal needle.
However, American girls did not take up the lip-­pointing
technique with blind faith. Mae said that when she first started, not
long after the studio had opened in 1916, she and her colleagues
had questioned it, being “a little bit leery” about swallowing the
radium. “The first thing we asked,” she remembered, “[was] ‘Does
this stuff hurt you?’ And they said, ‘No.’ Mr. Savoy said that it wasn’t
dangerous, that we didn’t need to be afraid.” After all, radium was
the wonder drug; the girls, if anything, should benefit from their
exposure. They soon grew so used to the brushes in their mouths
that they stopped even thinking about it.
But for Katherine it felt peculiar, that first day, as she lip-­pointed
over and over, correcting defective dials.Yet it was worth persever-
ing: she was constantly reminded why she wanted to work there.
Her job involved two types of inspection, daylight and darkroom,
and it was in the darkroom that the magic really happened. She
would call the girls in to discuss their work and observed, “Here
 THE RADIUM GIRLS \ 9

in the room—­daylight barred—­one could see evidences of the

luminous paint everywhere on the worker. There was a dab here
and there on her clothes, on the face and lips, on her hands. As
some of them stood there, they fairly shone in the dark.” They
looked glorious, like otherworldly angels.
As time went on, she got to know her colleagues better.
One was Josephine Smith, a sixteen-­year-­old girl with a round
face, brown bobbed hair, and a snub nose. She had worked at
Bamberger’s too, as a saleslady, but left to earn the much higher
wage of a dial-­painter. Although the girls weren’t salaried—­they
were paid piecework, for the number of dials they painted, at an
average rate of 1.5 cents a watch—­the most talented workers could
walk away with an astonishing pay package. Some earned more
than three times the average factory-­ floor worker; some even
earned more than their fathers. They were ranked in the top 5
percent of female wage-­earners and on average took home $20
($370) a week, though the fastest painters could easily earn more,
sometimes as much as double, giving the top earners an annual
salary of $2,080 (almost $40,000). The girls lucky enough to gain
a position felt blessed.
Josephine, Katherine learned as they talked, was of German
heritage, just like Katherine herself. In fact, most dial-­painters were
the daughters or granddaughters of immigrants. Newark was full
of migrants, hailing from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere;
it was one of the reasons the company had opened the studio in
the city in the first place, for the large immigrant communities
provided a workforce for all sorts of factories. New Jersey was
nicknamed the Garden State for its high agricultural production,
but in truth it was just as productive industrially. At the turn of the
century, the business leadership of Newark had labeled it the City
of Opportunity and—­as the girls themselves were finding out—­it
lived up to its name.
It all made for a thriving metropolis. The nightlife after the
 10 / K AT E M O O R E

factories closed was vibrant; Newark was a beer town, with more
saloons per capita than any other American city, and the workers
made their downtime count.The dial-­painters embraced the social
bonhomie: they sat together to eat lunch in the workroom at the
Newark plant, sharing sandwiches and gossip over the dusty tables.
As the weeks passed, Katherine observed the challenges as well
as the attractions of dial-­painting: Miss Rooney’s constant obser-
vation as she walked up and down the studio, and the ever-­present
dread of being called into the darkroom to be reprimanded for
poor work. Above all else, the girls feared being accused of wasting
the expensive paint, which could ultimately be a dismissible offense.
But although Katherine could see that there were downsides, she
still longed to join the women in the main room. She wanted to
be one of the shining girls.
A quick learner, Katherine soon excelled at her inspecting,
not only perfecting the art of correcting defective dials with her
lip-­pointed brush, but also becoming adept at brushing off the dust
with her bare hand or removing excess paint with her fingernail;
the technique taught her. She worked as hard as she could, longing
for promotion.
Finally, toward the end of March, her perseverance paid off. “I
was asked to paint dials,” she wrote excitedly; “I said I would like
to try it.”
Katherine had achieved her ambition through merit—­ but
there were also wider forces at work in that spring of 1917. Dial-­
painters were about to be in demand as never before: the company
now needed all the women it could get.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
needs, to encourage the division of labour, and to promote
civilization by the process of exchange. Labour under assured control
was likely to prove an economic asset of increasing value. In
agriculture it would be of special importance as providing food for
warriors busied with serving the community in war.
This imaginative sketch may serve to remind us that there are two
questions open to discussion in relation to the subject. First, the
purely speculative one, whether the early stages of progress in
civilization could have been passed without the help of slavery.
Second, the question of fact, whether they were so passed or not. It
is the latter with which I am concerned. The defects of the evidence
on which we have to form an opinion are manifest. Much of it is not
at first hand, and it will often be necessary to comment on its
unsatisfactory character. In proceeding to set it out in detail, I must
again repeat that two classes of free handworkers must be clearly
kept distinct—those who work for themselves, and those who work
for others. It is the latter class only that properly come into
comparison with slaves. A man habitually working for himself may of
course work occasionally for others as a wage-earner. But here, as in
the case of the farmer-soldier, we have one person in two capacities.
 AUTHORITIES IN DETAIL—GREEK
III. THE HOMERIC POEMS.
The Iliad. In a great war-poem we can hardly expect to find
many references to the economic labours of peace. And an army
fighting far from home in a foreign land would naturally be out of
touch with the rustic life of Greece. Nor was the poet concerned to
offer us the details of supply-service, though he represents the
commissariat as efficient. Free labour appears[18] in various forms of
handicraft, and the mention of pay (μισθός)[19] shews wage-earning
as a recognized fact. We hear of serving for hire (θητεύειν)[20], and
the ἔριθοι or farm-labourers[21] seem to be θῆτες under a special
name. That labour is not viewed as a great degradation may fairly
be inferred from the case of Hephaestus the smith-god, from the
wage-service of Poseidon and Apollo under Laomedon, and from the
herdsman-service of Apollo under Admetus. Agriculture is assumed,
and in the Catalogue ‘works’ (ἔργα)[22] occurs in the sense of ‘tilled
lands.’ But it is chiefly in similes or idyllic scenes that we get
glimpses of farming[23] operations. Thus we have ploughing,
reaping, binding, threshing, winnowing. Most striking of all is the
passage in which the work of irrigation[24] is graphically described.
There is no reason to suppose that any of the workers in these
scenes are slaves: they would seem to be wage-earners. But I must
admit that, if slaves were employed under the free workers, the poet
would very likely not mention such a detail: that is, if slavery were a
normal institution taken for granted. For the present I assume only
free labour in these cases. We are made aware of a clear social
difference between the rich and powerful employer and the
employed labourer. The mowers are at work in the field of some rich
man[25] (ἀνδρὸς μάκαρος κατ’ ἄρουραν), who does not appear to
lend a hand himself. Or again in the close of a ruler (τέμενος
βασιλήιον)[26], with binders following them, a busy scene. The
βασιλεὺς himself stands watching them in dignified silence, staff in
hand. There is nothing here to suggest that the small working
farmer was a typical figure in the portraiture of rural life. Flocks and
herds are of great importance, indeed the ox is a normal standard of
value. But the herdsmen are mean freemen. Achilles is disgusted[27]
at the prospect of being drowned by Scamander ‘like a young
swineherd swept away by a stream in flood.’ For the heroes of the
poem are warrior-lords: the humble toilers of daily life are of no
account beside them.
And yet the fact of slavery stands out clearly, and also its
connexion with the fact of capture in war. The normal way of dealing
with enemies is to slay the men and enslave the women. The wife of
a great warrior has many handmaidens, captives of her lord’s
prowess. A slave-trade exists, and we hear of males being spared[28]
and ‘sold abroad’: for they are sent ‘to islands far away’ or ‘beyond
the salt sea.’ We do not find male slaves with the army: perhaps we
may guess that they were not wanted. A single reference to δμῶες
(properly slave-captives) appears in xix 333, where Achilles, speaking
of his property at home in Phthia, says κτῆσιν ἐμὴν δμῶάς τε. But
we cannot be certain that these slaves are farm-hands. We can only
reflect that a slave bought and paid for was not likely to be fed in
idleness or put to the lightest work. In general it seems that what
weighed upon the slave, male or female, was the pressure of
constraint, the loss of freedom, not the fear of cruel treatment. What
Hector keeps from the Trojans[29] is the ‘day of constraint,’ ἦμαρ
ἀναγκαῖον, also expressed by δούλιον ἦμαρ. Viewed from the other
side we find enslavement consisting in a taking away[30] the ‘day of
freedom,’ ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ. The words δούλην iii 409 and
ἀνδραπόδεσσι vii 475 are isolated cases of substantives in passages
the genuineness of which has been questioned. On the whole it is I
think not an unfair guess that, if the poet had been depicting the life
of this same Greek society in their homeland, and not under
conditions of present war, we should have found more references to
slavery as a working institution. As it is, we get a momentary
glimpse[31] of neighbour landowners, evidently on a small scale,
engaged in a dispute concerning their boundaries, measuring-rod in
hand; and nothing to shew whether such persons supplied the whole
of their own labour in tillage or supplemented it by employing hired
men or slaves.
The Odyssey is generally held to be of later date than the Iliad. A
far more important distinction is that its scenes are not episodes of
war. A curious difference of terms[32] is seen in the case of the word
οἰκῆες, which in the Iliad seems to mean ‘house-folk’ including both
free and slave, in the Odyssey to mean slaves only. But as to the
condition of slaves there is practically no difference. A conquered foe
was spared on the battlefield by grace of the conqueror, whose
ownership of his slave was unlimited: and this unlimited right could
be conveyed by sale[33] to a third party. We find Odysseus ready to
consign offending slaves[34] to torture mutilation or death. In the
story of his visit to Troy[35] as a spy we hear that he passed for a
slave, and that part of his disguise consisted in the marks of
flogging. Yet the relations of master and mistress to their slaves are
most kindly in ordinary circumstances. The faithful slave is a type
glorified in the Odyssey: loyalty is the first virtue of a slave, and it is
disloyalty, however shewn, that justifies the master’s vengeance. For
they live on intimate terms[36] with their master and mistress and
are trusted to a wonderful degree. In short we may say that the
social atmosphere of the Odyssey is full of mild slavery, but that in
the background there is always the grim possibility of atrocities
committed by absolute power. And we have a trace even of
secondary[37] slavery: for the swineherd, himself a slave, has an
under-slave of his own, bought with his own goods from slave-
dealers while his own master was abroad. Naturally enough we find
slaves classed as a part of the lord’s estate. Odysseus hopes[38] that
before he dies he may set eyes on his property, his slaves and his
lofty mansion. But another and perhaps socially more marked
distinction seems implied in the suitors’ question[39] about
Telemachus—‘who were the lads that went with him on his journey?
were they young nobles of Ithaca, or his own hired men and slaves
(θῆτές τε δμῶές τε)?’ The answer is that they were ‘the pick of the
community, present company excepted.’ The wage-earner and the
slave do not seem to be parted by any broad social line. Indeed
civilization had a long road yet to travel before levelling movement
among the free classes drew a vital distinction between them on the
one side and slaves on the other.
Free workers of various kinds are often referred to, and we are,
owing to the circumstances of the story, brought more into touch
with them than in the Iliad. Handicraftsmen[40] are a part of the life
of the time, and we must assume the smith the carpenter and the
rest of the males to be free: female slaves skilled in working wool do
not justify us in supposing that the corresponding men are slaves.
Beside these are other men who practise a trade useful to the
community, ‘public-workers’ (δημιοεργοί)[41], but not necessarily
handworkers. Thus we find the seer, the leech, the bard, classed
with the carpenter as persons whom all men would readily entertain
as guests; the wandering beggar none would invite. The last is a
type of ‘mean freeman,’ evidently common in that society. He is too
much akin to the suppliant, whom religion[42] protects, to be roughly
shewn the door: he is αἰδοῖος ἀλήτης[43], and trades on the
reverence felt for one who appeals as stranger to hospitable custom.
Thus he picks up a living[44] from the scraps and offals of great
houses. But he is despised, and, what concerns us here,
despised[45] not only for his abject poverty but for his aversion to
honest work. That the poet admires industry is clear, and is curiously
illustrated by his contrasted pictures of civilization and barbarism. In
Phaeacia are the fenced-in gardens[46] that supply Alcinous and his
people with never-failing fruits: the excellence of their naval
craftsmen is expressed in the ‘yarn’ of ships that navigate
themselves. In the land of the Cyclopes, nature provides[47] them
with corn and wine, but they neither sow nor plough. They have
flocks of sheep and goats. They have no ships or men to build them.
They live in caves, isolated savages with no rudiments of civil life. It
is not too much to say that the poet is a believer in work and a
contemner of idleness: the presence of slaves does not suggest that
the free man is to be lazy. Odysseus boasts of his activities
(δρηστοσύνη)[48]. He is ready to split wood and lay a fire, to
prepare and serve a meal, and in short to wait on the insolent
suitors as inferiors do on nobles. Of course he is still the unknown
wanderer: but the contrast[49] between him and the genuine beggar
Irus is an effective piece of by-play in the poem.
Turning to agriculture, we may note that it fills no small place.
Wheat and barley, pounded or ground to meal, seem to furnish the
basis of civilized diet. The Cyclops[50] does not look like a ‘bread-
eating man,’ and wine completely upsets him to his ruin. Evidently
the bounty of nature has been wasted on such a savage. But the
cultivation of cereal crops is rather assumed than emphasized in the
pictures of Greek life. We hear of tilled lands (ἔργα)[51], and farm-
labour (ἔργον)[52] is mentioned as too wearisome for a high-spirited
warrior noble. The tired and hungry plowman[53] appears in a simile.
But the favourite culture is that of the vine and olive and other fruits
in orchards carefully fenced and tended. One of the suitors makes a
jesting offer[54] to the unknown Odysseus ‘Stranger, would you be
willing to serve for hire (θητευέμεν), if I took you on, in an outlying
field—you shall have a sufficient wage—gathering stuff for fences
and planting tall trees? I would see that you were regularly fed
clothed and shod. No, you are a ne’er-do-weel (ἔργα κάκ’ ἔμμαθες)
and will not do farm-work (ἔργον): you prefer to go round cringing
for food to fill your insatiate belly.’ This scornful proposal sets the
noble’s contempt for wage-earning labour in a clear light. And the
shade of Achilles, repudiating[55] the suggestion that it is a great
thing to be a ruler among the dead in the ghostly world, says ‘I had
rather be one bound to the soil, serving another for hire, employed
by some landless man of little property, than be king of all the dead.’
He is speaking strongly: to work for hire, a mean destiny at best, is
at its meanest when the employer is a man with no land-lot of his
own (ἄκληρος), presumably occupying on precarious tenure a bit of
some lord’s estate. After such utterances we cannot wonder that as
we saw above, θῆτες and δμῶες are mentioned[56] in the same
breath.
That slaves are employed on the farm is clear enough. When
Penelope sends for old Dolius[57], a servus dotalis of hers (to use the
Roman expression) she adds ‘who is in charge of my fruit-garden,’
So too the aged Laertes, living a hard life on his farm, has a staff of
slaves[58] to do his will, and their quarters and farm duties are a
marked detail of the picture. The old man, in dirty rags like a slave,
is a contrast[59] to the garden, in which every plant and tree attests
the devoted toil of his gardeners under his own skilled direction.
Odysseus, as yet unrecognized by his father, asks him how he comes
to be in such a mean attire, though under it he has the look of a
king. Then he drops this tone and says ‘but tell me, whose slave[60]
are you, and who owns the orchard you are tending?’ The hero
knows his father, but to preserve for the present his own incognito
he addresses him as the slave that he appears to be. Now if garden
work was done by slaves, surely the rougher operations of corn-
growing were not confined to free labour, and slaves pass
unmentioned as a matter of course. Or are we to suppose that free
labour had been found more economical in the long run, and so was
employed for the production of a staple food? I can hardly venture
to attribute so mature a view to the society of the Odyssey. We must
not forget that animal food, flesh and milk, was an important
element of diet, and that the management of flocks and herds was
therefore a great part of rustic economy. But the herdsmen in charge
are slaves, such as Eumaeus, bought in his youth by Laertes[61] of
Phoenician kidnappers. In romancing about his own past
experiences Odysseus describes a raid in Egypt, and how the natives
rallied[62] and took their revenge. ‘Many of our company they slew:
others they took alive into the country, to serve them in forced
labour.’ As the ravaging of their ‘beautiful farms’ was a chief part of
the raiders’ offence, the labour exacted from these captives seems
most probably agricultural.
An interesting question arises in reference to the faithful slaves,
the swineherd and the goatherd. When Odysseus promises them
rewards in the event of his destroying the suitors with their help,
does this include an offer of freedom? Have we here, as some have
thought, a case of manumission—of course in primitive form,
without the legal refinements of later times? The promise is
made[63] so to speak in the character of a father-in-law: ‘I will
provide you both with wives and give you possessions and well-built
houses near to me, and you shall in future be to me comrades and
brothers of Telemachus.’ The ‘brotherhood’ suggested sounds as if it
must imply freedom. But does it? Eumaeus had been brought up[64]
by Laertes as the playmate of his daughter Ctimene; yet he
remained nevertheless a slave. Earlier in the poem Eumaeus,
excusing the poor entertainment that he can offer the stranger
(Odysseus), laments the absence[65] of his lord, ‘who’ he says
‘would have shewn me hearty affection and given me possessions
such as a kindly lord gives his slave (οἰκῆι), a house and a land-lot
(κλῆρον) and a wife of recognized worth (πολυμνήστην), as a
reward for laborious and profitable service.’ Here also there is no
direct reference to an expected grant of freedom: nor do I think that
it is indirectly implied. It is no doubt tempting to detect in these
passages the germ of the later manumission. But it is not easy to
say why, in a world of little groups ruled by noble chiefs, the gift of
freedom should have been a longed-for boon. However high-born
the slave might have been in his native land, in Ithaca he was simply
a slave. If by belonging to a lord he got material comfort and
protection, what had he to gain by becoming a mere wage-earner?
surely nothing. I can see no ground for believing that in the society
of the ‘heroic’ age the bare name of freedom was greatly coveted. It
was high birth that really mattered, but the effect of this would be
local: nothing would make Eumaeus, though son of a king, noble in
Ithaca. No doubt the slave might be at the mercy of a cruel lord.
Such a slave would long for freedom, but such a lord was not likely
to grant it. On the whole, it is rash to read manumission into the
poet’s words.
Reviewing the evidence presented by these ‘Homeric’ poems, it
may be well to insist on the obvious truism that we are not dealing
with formal treatises, charged with precise definitions and accurate
statistics. The information given by the poet drops out incidentally
while he is telling his tale and making his characters live. It is all the
more genuine because it is not furnished in support of a particular
argument: but it is at the same time all the less complete. And it is
not possible to say how far this or that detail may have been
coloured by imagination. Still, allowing freely for the difficulty
suggested by these considerations, I think we are justified in
drawing a general inference as to the position of handworkers,
particularly on the land, in Greek ‘heroic’ society as conceived by the
poet. If the men who practise handicrafts are freemen, and their
presence welcome, this does not exalt them to anything like equality
with the warrior nobles and chiefs. And in agriculture the labourer is
either a slave or a wage-earner of a very dependent kind. The lord
shews no inclination to set his own hand to the plough. When one of
the suitors derisively invites the supposed beggar to abandon his idle
vagrancy for a wage-earning ‘job on the land,’ the disguised
Odysseus retorts[66] ‘Ah, if only you and I could compete in a match
as reapers hard at work fasting from dawn to dark, or at ploughing a
big field with a pair of full-fed spirited oxen,—you would soon see
what I could do.’ He adds that, if it came to war, his prowess would
soon silence the sneer at his begging for food instead of working.
Now, does the hero imply that he would really be willing to reap or
plough? I do not think so: what he means is that he is conscious of
that reserve of bodily strength which appears later in the poem,
dramatically shewn in the bending of the famous bow.
 IV. HESIOD.
Hesiod, Works and Days. Whether this curious poem belongs in
its present shape to the seventh century bc, or not, I need not
attempt to decide. It seems certain that it is later than the great
Homeric poems, but is an early work, perhaps somewhat recast and
interpolated, yet in its main features representing conditions and
views of a society rural, half-primitive, aristocratic. I see no reason
to doubt that it may fairly be cited in evidence for my present
purpose. The scene of the ‘Works’ is in Boeotia: the works (ἔργα)
are operations of farming, and the precepts chiefly saws of rustic
wisdom. Poverty[67] is the grim spectre that haunts the writer,
conscious of the oppressions of the proud and the hardness of a
greedy world. Debt, want, beggary, must be avoided at all costs.
They can only be avoided[68] by thrift, forethought, watchfulness,
promptitude that never procrastinates, and toil that never ceases.
And the mere appeal to self-interest is reinforced by recognizing the
stimulus of competition (ἔρις)[69] which in the form of honest rivalry
is a good influence. The poet represents himself as owner of a land-
lot (κλῆρος)[70], part of a larger estate, the joint patrimony of his
brother Perses and himself: this estate has already been divided, but
points of dispute still remain. Hesiod suggests that Perses has been
wronging him with the help of bribed ‘kings.’ But wrongdoing is not
the true road to wellbeing. A dinner of herbs and a clear conscience
are the better way. As the proverb says ‘half is more than the whole.’
Perses is treated to much good advice, the gist of which is first and
foremost an exhortation[71] to work (ἐργάζευ), that is, work on the
land, in which is the source of honourable wealth. Personal labour is
clearly meant: it is in the sweat[72] of his brow that the farmer is to
thrive. Such is the ordinance of the gods. Man is meant to
resemble[73] the worker bee, not the worthless drone. It is not
ἔργον but idleness (ἀεργίη) that is a reproach. Get wealth[74] by
working, and the idler will want to rival you: honour and glory attend
on wealth. Avoid delays[75] and vain talk: the procrastinator is never
sure of a living; for he is always hoping, when he should act.
Whether sowing or ploughing or mowing, off with your outer[76]
garment, if you mean to get your farm-duties done in due season.
The farmer must rise early, and never get behindhand with his work:
to be in time, and never caught napping by changes of weather, is
his duty.
Here is a picture of humble and strenuous life, very different from
the scenes portrayed in the ‘heroic’ epics. It seems to belong to a
later and less warlike age. But the economic and social side of life is
in many respects little changed. The free handicraftsmen seem much
the same. Jealousy of rivals[77] in the same trade—potter, carpenter,
beggar, or bard—is a touch that attests their freedom. The smith,
the weaver, the shoemaker, and the shipwright, are mentioned[78]
also. Seafaring[79] for purposes of gain illustrates what men will dare
in quest of wealth. You should not cast a man’s poverty[80] in his
teeth: but do not fancy that men will give you[81] of their store, if
you and your family fall into poverty. Clearly the beggar is not more
welcome than he was in the world of the Odyssey. Suppliant and
stranger are protected[82] by religion, and a man should honour his
aged father, if he would see good days. A motive suggested for
careful service of the gods is ‘that you may buy another’s estate[83]
and not another buy yours’—that is, that the gods may give you
increase. Just so you should keep a watch-dog, that thieves[84] may
not steal your goods by night. Hesiod’s farmer is to keep the social
and religious rules and usages—but he is before all things a keen
man of business, no Roman more so.
The labour employed by this close-fisted countryman is partly free
partly slave. In a passage[85] of which the exact rendering is
disputed the hired man (θῆτα) and woman (ἔριθον) are mentioned
as a matter of course. For a helper (ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ)[86] his wage must
be secure (ἄρκιος) as stipulated. References to slaves (δμῶες)[87]
are more frequent, and the need of constant watchfulness, to see
that they are not lazy and are properly fed housed and rested, is
insisted on. The feeding of cattle and slaves is regulated according
to their requirements in different seasons of the year: efficiency is
the object, and evidently experience is the guide. Of female slaves
there is no certain[88] mention: indeed there could be little demand
for domestic attendants in the farmer’s simple home. Such work as
weaving[89] is to be done by his wife. For the farmer is to marry,
though the risks[90] of that venture are not hidden from the poet,
who gives plain warnings as to the exercise of extreme care in
making a suitable choice. The operations of agriculture are the usual
ploughing sowing reaping threshing and the processes of the
vineyard and the winepress. Oxen sheep and mules form the live-
stock. Corn is the staple[91] diet, with hay as fodder for beasts.
Looking on the picture as a whole, we see that the Hesiodic
farmer is to be a model of industry and thrift. Business, not
sentiment, is the note of his character. His function is to survive in
his actual circumstances; that is, in a social and economic
environment of normal selfishness. If his world is not a very noble
one, it is at least eminently practical. He is a true αὐτουργός, setting
his own hand to the plough, toiling for himself on his own land, with
slaves and other cattle obedient to his will. It is perhaps not too
much to say that he illustrates a great truth bearing on the labour-
question,—that successful exploitation of other men’s labour is, at
least in semi-primitive societies, only to be achieved by the man who
shares the labour himself. And it is to be noted that he attests the
existence of wage-earning hands as well as slaves. I take this to
mean that there were in his rustic world a number of landless
freemen compelled to make a living as mere farm labourers. That
we hear so much less of this class in later times is probably to be
accounted for by the growth of cities and the absorption of such
persons in urban occupations and trades.

V. STRAY NOTES FROM EARLY POETS.

 A few fragments may be cited as of interest, bearing on our
subject. The most important are found in the remains[92] of Solon,
illustrating the land-question as he saw and faced it at the beginning
of the sixth century bc. The poets of the seventh and sixth centuries
reflect the problems of an age of unrest, among the causes of which
the introduction of metallic coinage, susceptible of hoarding and
unaffected by weather, played a great part. Poverty, debt and slavery
of debtors, hardship, begging, the insolence and oppression of rich
and greedy creditors, are common topics. The sale of free men into
slavery abroad is lamented by Solon, who claims to have restored
many such victims by his measures of reform. In particular, he
removed encumbrances on land, thus setting free the small farmers
who were in desperate plight owing to debt. The exact nature and
scope of his famous reform is a matter of dispute. Whether he
relieved freeholders from a burden of debt, or emancipated the
clients[93] of landowning nobles from dependence closely akin to
serfdom, cannot be discussed here, and does not really bear on the
matter in hand. In either case the persons relieved were a class of
working farmers, and the economic reform was the main thing:
political reform was of value as tending to secure the economic
boon. It is remarkable that Solon, enumerating a number of trades
(practically the old Homeric and Hesiodic list), speaks of them
merely as means of escaping the pressure of poverty, adding ‘and
another man[94] is yearly servant to those interested in ploughing,
and furrows land planted with fruit-trees.’ This man seems to be a
wage-earner (θὴς) working for a large farmer, probably the owner of
a landed estate in the rich lowland (πεδιάς) of Attica. The small
farmers were mostly confined to the rocky uplands. Evidently it is
not manual labour that is the hardship, but the dependent position
of the hired man working on another’s land. The hard-working
independent peasant, willing to till stony land for his own support, is
the type that Solon encouraged and Peisistratus[95] approved.
The life of such peasant farmers was at best a hard one, and little
desired by men living under easier conditions. Two fragments from
Ionia express views of dwellers in that rich and genial land.
Phocylides of Miletus in one of his wise counsels says ‘if you desire
wealth, devote your care to a fat farm (πίονος ἀγροῦ), for the saying
is that a farm is a horn of plenty.’ The bitter Hipponax of Ephesus
describes a man as having lived a gluttonous life and so eaten up his
estate (τὸν κλῆρον): the result is that he is driven to dig a rocky
hillside and live on common figs and barley bread—mere slave’s
fodder (δούλιον χόρτον). Surely the ‘fat farm’ was not meant to be
worked by the owner singlehanded; and the ‘slave’s fodder’ suggests
the employment of slaves. Ionia was a home of luxury and ease.
The oft-quoted scolion of the Cretan Hybrias illustrates the point
of view of the warrior class in more military communities. His wealth
is in sword spear and buckler. It is with these tools that he does his
ploughing reaping or vintage. That is, he has command of the labour
of others, and enjoys their produce. We shall speak below of the
well-known lords and serfs of Crete.

VI. TRACES OF SERFDOM IN GREEK STATES.

Before passing on to the times in which the merits of a free
farmer-class, from military and political points of view, became a
matter of general and conscious consideration, it is desirable to refer
briefly to the recorded cases of agricultural serfdom in Greek states.
For the rustic serf is a type quite distinct from the free farmer, the
hired labourer, or the slave; though the language of some writers is
loose, and does not clearly mark the distinction. Six well-known
cases present themselves, in connexion with Sparta, Crete, Argos,
Thessaly, Syracuse, and Heraclea on the Pontus. Into the details of
these systems it is not necessary to enter, interesting though many
of them are. The important feature common to them all is the
delegation of agricultural labour. A stronger or better-organized
people become masters of a weaker population, conquering their
country by force of arms, and sparing the conquered on certain
terms. The normal effect of the compact is that the conquerors are
established as a ruling warrior class, whose subsistence is provided
by the labour of the subject people. These subjects remain on the
land as farmers, paying a fixed quota of their produce to their
masters. Some are serfs of the state, and pay their dues to the state
authorities: some are serfs of individuals, and pay to their lords. In
either case they are strictly attached to the land, and cannot be sold
out of the country. This clearly marks off the serf from the slave held
in personal bondage. In some cases certainly, probably in all, the
warrior class (at least the wealthier of them) had also slaves for their
own personal service. The serf-system differs from a caste-system.
Both, it is true, are hereditary systems, or have a strong tendency to
become so. The ruling class do not easily admit deserving subjects
into their own ranks. And they take precautions to hinder the
degradation of their equals into lower conditions through poverty.
The warrior’s land-lot (κλᾶρος), the sale of which is forbidden, is a
favourite institution for the purpose. That such warrior aristocracies
could not be kept up in vigour for an indefinite time, was to be
proved by experience. Their duration depended on external as well
as internal conditions. Hostile invasion might destroy the efficiency
of state regulations, however well adapted to keep the serfs under
control. Sparta always feared her Helots, and it was essential to
keep an enemy out of Laconia. Early in the history of Syracuse the
unprivileged masses were supported by the serfs in their rising
against the squatter-lords, the γαμόροι whose great estates
represented the allotments of the original settlers. In Crete and
Thessaly matters were complicated by lack of a central authority.
There were a number of cities: subordination and cooperation were
alike hard to secure, and the history of both groups is a story of
jealousy, collisions, and weakness. The Thessalian Penestae often
rebelled. The two classes of Cretan[96] serfs (public and private)
were kept quiet partly by rigid exclusion from all training of a military
kind, partly by their more favourable condition: but the insular
position of Crete was perhaps a factor of equal importance. The long
control of indigenous barbarian serfs by the city of Heraclea was
probably the result of similar causes.
 But in all these cases it is conquest that produces the relation
between the tiller of the soil and his overlord. Whether the serf is
regarded as a weaker Greek or as a Barbarian (non-Greek) is not at
present the main question from my point of view. The notion of
castes, belonging to the same society and influenced by the same
racial and religious traditions, but each performing a distinct function
—priestly military agricultural etc.—as in ancient India, is another
thing altogether. Caste separates functions, but the division is in
essence collateral. Serfdom is a delegation of functions, and is a
compulsory subordination. That the Greeks of the seventh and sixth
centuries bc were already becoming conscious of a vital difference
between other races and themselves, is fairly certain. It was soon to
express itself in the common language. Contact with Persia was soon
to crystallize this feeling into a moral antipathy, a disgust and
contempt that found voice in the arrogant claim that while nature’s
law justifies the ruling of servile Barbarians by free Greeks, a
reversal of the relation is an unnatural monstrosity. Yet I cannot
discover that Greeks ever gave up enslaving brother Greeks.
Callicratidas in the field and Plato in his school might protest against
the practice; it still remained the custom in war to sell as slaves
those, Greek or Barbarian, whom the sword had spared. We shall
also find cases in which the remnant of the conquered were left in
their homes but reduced to the condition of cultivating serfs.
Among the little that is known of the ancient Etruscans, whose
power was once widely extended in Italy, is the fact that they dwelt
in cities and ruled a serf population who lived chiefly in the country.
The ruling race were apparently invaders not akin to any of the
Italian stocks: their subjects probably belonged to the old Ligurian
race, in early times spread over a large part of the peninsula. That
the Etruscan cities recognized a common interest, but in practice did
not support each other consistently, was the chief cause of their
gradual weakening and final fall. Noble lords with warlike traditions
had little bent for farm life or sympathy with the serfs who tilled the
soil. The two classes seem to have kept to their own[97] languages,
and the Etruscan gradually died out under the supremacy of Rome.
 VII. HERODOTUS.
Herodotus, writing in the first half of the fifth century bc, partly
recording the results of his own travels, partly dependent on the
work of his predecessors, is a witness of great value. In him we find
the contrast and antipathy[98] of Greek and Barbarian an
acknowledged fact, guiding and dominating Greek sentiment.
Unhappily he yields us very little evidence bearing on the present
subject. To slavery and slave-trade he often refers without comment:
these are matters of course. The servile character of oriental peoples
subject to Persia is contemptuously described[99] through the mouth
of the Greek queen of Halicarnassus. Nor does he spare the Ionian
Greeks, whose jealousies and consequent inefficiency made them
the unworthy tools of Persian ambition; a sad contrast to those
patriotic Greeks of old Hellas who, fired by the grand example of
Athens, fought for their freedom and won it in the face of terrible
odds. The disgust—a sort of physical loathing—with which the free
Greek, proud of training his body to perfection, regarded corporal
mutilation as practised in the East, is illustrated by such
passages[100] as that in which the Persians are astounded at the
Greek athletic competitions for a wreath of olive leaves, and that in
which he coolly tells the story of the eunuch’s revenge. But all this,
interesting as giving us his point of view, does not help us in clearing
up the relations of free and slave labour. As for handicrafts, it is
enough to refer to the well-known passage[101] in which, while
speaking of Egypt, he will not decide whether the Greeks got their
contempt for manual trades from the Egyptians or not. That the
Greeks, above all the Spartans, do despise χειρωναξίαι, is certain;
but least true of the Corinthians. Barbarians in general respect the
warrior class among their own folk and regard manual trades as
ignoble. So the source of Greek prejudice is doubtful. That the
craftsmen are free is clear from the whole context. It is remarkable
that in enumerating seven classes of the Egyptian population he
mentions no class[102] as devoted to the tillage of the soil, but two
of herdsmen, in charge of cattle and swine. Later authorities
mention[103] the γεωργοί, and connect them with the military class,
rightly, it would seem: for Herodotus[104] refers to the farms granted
by the kings to this class. They are farmer-soldiers. It would seem
that they were free, so far as any Egyptian could be called free, and
worked their land themselves. If this inference be just, we may
observe that a Greek thought it a fact worth noting. Was this owing
to the contrast[105] offered by systems of serfage in the Greek
world?
It is curious that wage-labour is hardly ever directly mentioned. In
describing[106] the origin of the Macedonian kings, who claimed
descent from an Argive stock, he says that three brothers, exiles
from Argos, came to Macedon. There they served the king for wages
as herdsmen in charge of his horses cattle sheep and goats. The
simplicity of the royal household is emphasized as illustrating the
humble scale of ancient monarchies. Alarmed by a prodigy, the king
calls his servants (τοὺς θῆτας) and tells them to leave his country.
The sequel does not concern us here: we need only note that work
for wages is referred to as a matter of course. The same relation is
probably meant in the case of the Arcadian deserters[107] who came
to Xerxes after Thermopylae, in need of sustenance (βίου) and
wishing to get work (ἐνεργοὶ εἶναι). But the term θητεύειν is not
used. And the few Athenians who stayed behind[108] in the Acropolis
when Athens was evacuated, partly through sheer poverty (ὑπ’
ἀσθενείης βίου), would seem to be θῆτες. It is fair to infer that hired
labour is assumed as a normal fact in Greek life. For the insistence
on poverty[109] as naturally endemic (σύντροφος) in Hellas, only
overcome by the manly qualities (ἀρετὴ) developed in the conquest
of hard conditions by human resourcefulness (σοφίη), shews us the
background of the picture present to the writer’s mind. It is his way
of telling us that the question of food-supply was a serious one. Out
of her own soil Hellas was only able to support a thin population.
Hence Greek forces were absurdly small compared with the myriads
of Persia: but the struggle for existence had strung them up to such
efficiency and resolute love of freedom that they were ready to face
fearful odds.
The passage occurs in the reply of Demaratus the Spartan to a
question of Xerxes, and refers more particularly to Sparta. In respect
of courage and military efficiency the claim is appropriate: but
poverty was surely characteristic of nearly all the European Hellas,
and the language on that point is strictly correct, probably
representing the writer’s own view. It is also quite consistent with
the statement[110] that in early times, before the Athenians had as
yet driven all the indigenous population out of Attica, neither the
Athenians nor the Greeks generally had slaves (οἰκέτας). The context
seems to indicate that domestic slaves are specially meant. I do not
lay much stress on this allegation, urged as it is in support of a case
by one party to the dispute: but it is a genuine tradition, which
appears again in the later literature. In the time of Herodotus there
were plenty of domestic slaves. Accordingly he finds it worth while to
mention[111] that Scythian kings are attended by persons of their
own race, there being no bought servants employed.
Herodotus is a difficult witness to appraise justly, partly from the
occasional uncertainty as to whether he is really pledging his own
authority on a point, partly because the value of his authority varies
greatly on different points. But on the whole I take his evidence to
suggest that agriculture was carried on in Greece either by free
labouring farmers employing hired men when needed, or by serfs. I
do not see any evidence to shew that no slaves were employed. The
subject of his book placed him under no necessity of mentioning
them: and I can hardly believe that farm-slavery on a small scale
had died out all over Greece since the days of Hesiod. Nor do I feel
convinced on his authority that the poverty of Greece was, so far as
mere food is concerned, as extreme as he makes Demaratus
represent it. When the Spartans heard that Xerxes was offering the
Athenians a separate peace, they were uneasy, and sent a counter-
offer[112] on their own behalf. Not content with appealing to the
Hellenic patriotism of Athens, they said ‘We feel for you in your loss
of two crops and the distress that will last some while yet. But you
shall have all this made good. We, Spartans and confederates, will
find food for your wives and your helpless families[113] so long as
this war lasts.’ Supposing this offer to have been actually made, and
to have been capable of execution, surely it implies that there were
food-stuffs to spare in the Peloponnese. It may be that I am making
too much of this passage, and of the one about poverty. The
dramatic touch of Herodotus is present in both, and I must leave the
apparent inconsistency between them as it stands. The question of
Peloponnesian agriculture will come up again in connexion with a
passage of Thucydides.

VIII. THE TRAGEDIANS.

The lives of Aeschylus (died 456 bc) Sophocles and Euripides
(both died 406 bc) cover a period of stirring events in the history of
Greece, particularly of Athens. Aeschylus had borne his part in the
Persian wars: he was a fighting man when Herodotus was born, and
Sophocles a boy. Euripides saw the rise of Athenian power to its
greatest height, and died with Sophocles on the eve of its fall. These
men had seen strange and terrible things. Hellas had only beaten off
the Persian to ruin herself by her own internecine conflicts. While the
hatred and contempt for ‘barbarians’ grew from sentiment into
something very like a moral principle, Greeks butchered or enslaved
brother Greeks on an unprecedented scale. Greek lands were laid
waste by Greek armies: the devastation of Attica in particular had
serious effects on the politics and policy of Athens. Athens at length
lost her control of the Euxine corn trade and was starved out. For
the moment a decision was reached: the reactionary rural powers,
backed by the commercial jealousy of Corinth, had triumphed. No
thoughtful man in Athens during the time when the rustic population
were crowded into the city, idle and plagued with sickness, could be
indifferent to the strain on democratic institutions. This spectacle
suggested reflexions that permanently influenced Greek thought on
political subjects. The tendency was to accept democracy in some
form and degree as inevitable in most states, and to seek salvation
in means of checking the foolish extravagancies of mob-rule. The
best of these means was the encouragement of farmer-citizens: but
the circumstances of Greek history made practical success on these
lines impossible. In practice, oligarchy meant privilege, to which a
scattered farming population would submit; democracy meant mob-
rule sooner or later, and the dominance of urban interests. The
problem which Plato and Aristotle could not solve was already
present in the latter part of the Peloponnesian war. Aristophanes
might ridicule Euripides, but on the country-and-town issue the two
were agreed.
Aeschylus indeed furnishes very little to my purpose directly. The
Greek antipathy to the Barbarian is very clearly marked; but the only
points worth noting are that in the Persae[114] he makes Persian
speakers refer to their own people as βάρβαροι, and that in a bitter
passage of the Eumenides he expresses[115] his loathing of
mutilations and tortures, referring no doubt to Persian cruelties.
Agriculture can hardly be said to be mentioned at all, for the gift of
weather-wisdom[116] is useful to others than the farmer, and the
Scythian steppes are untilled land. A fragment, telling of a happy
land[117] where all things grow in plenty unsown without ploughing
or digging, reminds us of the Odyssey, minus the savages: another,
referring to the advance made in domestication of beasts to relieve
men of toil, make up the meagre list. All are in connexion with
Prometheus. There are two interesting passages[118] in which the
word γαμόρος (landholder) occurs, but merely as an expression for a
man with the rights and responsibilities of a citizen. There is nothing
of tillage. It was natural for the champion of the power of the
Areopagus to view the citizen from the landholding side. He is a
respecter of authority, but at the same time lays great stress on the
duty and importance of deference to public opinion. This tone runs
through the surviving plays, wherever the scene of a particular
drama may be laid. Athenian conditions are always in his mind, and
his final judgment appears in the Eumenides as an appeal to all true
citizens to combine freedom with order. Ties of blood, community of
religious observances, the relation between citizens and aliens, are
topics on which he dwells again and again. In general it is fair to
conclude that, while he cheerfully accepted the free constitution of
Athens as it stood since the democratic reform of Cleisthenes, he
thought that it was quite democratic enough, and regarded more
recent tendencies with some alarm. Now these tendencies, in
particular the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles, were certainly in the
direction of lessening the influence of the Attic farmers and
increasing that of the urban citizens, who were on the spot to take
advantage of them. To put it in the briefest form, Aeschylus must be
reckoned an admirer of the solid and responsible citizens of the old
school, men with a stake in the country.
Sophocles also supplies very little. The antipathy of Greeks to
Barbarians appears in a milder form: Aeschylus was naturally more
bitter, having fought against the Persian invader. The doctrine that
public opinion (of citizens) ought to be respected, that obedience to
constituted authorities is a duty, in short the principle that freedom
should be combined with order, is set forth in various passages of
dramatic debate. Yet the scenes of the plays, as those of Aeschylus,
are laid in legendary ages that knew not democracy. The awful
potency of ties of blood, and the relations of citizen and alien, are
topics common to both. But I think it may fairly be said that political
feeling is less evident in Sophocles. This is consistent with his
traditional character. In their attitude towards slavery there is no
striking difference: both treat it as a matter of course. But in
Sophocles there are already signs[119] of the questioning that was
soon to become outspoken, as to the justice of the relation of
master and slave. Agriculture is hardly mentioned. The words
γεωργός, γεωργεῖν, γεωργία, are (as in Aeschylus) not used. A
reference to ploughing occurs in a famous passage[120] celebrating
the resourcefulness of Man. The herdsman, usually a slave, is
once[121] spoken of as perhaps a hired servant. One curious
passage[122] calls for notice. In the Trachiniae the indifference of
Heracles to his children is compared by his wife Deianira to the
conduct of a farmer (γῄτης) who has got a farm at a distance
(ἄρουραν ἔκτοπον) and only visits it at seed-time and harvest. The
man is apparently a non-resident landowner, living presumably in the
city (surely Athens is in the poet’s mind) and working his farm by
deputy—a steward—and only inspecting it at important seasons.
Whether the labour employed is slave or free, there is nothing to
shew. It is of interest to find the situation sufficiently real to be used
in a simile. But I infer that the situation, like the conduct of Heracles,
is regarded as exceptional.
Euripides takes us into a very different atmosphere. An age of
movement was also an age of criticism and inquiry, social religious
political ethical. The intellectual leaders came from various parts of
the Greek world, but the intellectual centre of ‘obstinate
questionings’ was Athens, and their poet Euripides. The use of
drama, with plots drawn from ancient legend, as a vehicle for
reflexions on human problems, addressed to a contemporary
audience and certain to evoke assent and dissent, is the regular
practice of Euripides. His plays give us a mass of information as to
the questions exercising the minds of thoughtful men in a stirring
period. The point of view is that of the new school, the enlightened
‘thinkers’ who claimed the right to challenge traditional principles,
opinions, prejudices, and institutions, testing them by the canons of
human reason fearlessly applied. This attitude was naturally
resented by men of the old school, averse to any disturbing
influence tending to undermine the traditional morality, and certain
to react upon politics. Their opposition can still be traced in the
comedies of Aristophanes and in various political movements during
the Peloponnesian war. Among the topics to which the new school
turned their attention were two of special interest to Euripides. The
power of wealth was shewing itself in the growth of capitalistic
enterprise, an illustration of which is seen in the case of the rich
slaveowner Nicias. Poverty[123] and its disadvantages, sometimes
amounting to sheer degradation, was as ever a subject of
discontent: and this was closely connected with the position of free
wage-earning labour. At Athens political action took a strong line in
the direction of utilizing the wealth of the rich in the service of the
state: for the poor, its dominant tendency was to provide
opportunities of drawing state pay (μισθός), generally a bare living
wage, for the performance of various public duties. The other topic,
that of slavery, had as yet hardly reached the stage of questioning
the right or wrong of that institution as such. But the consciousness
that the slave, like his master, was a blend of human virtues and
human vices,—was a man, in short,—was evidently becoming
clearer, and suggesting the conclusion that he must be judged as a
man and not as a mere chattel. Otherwise Euripides would hardly
have ventured to bring slaves on the stage[124] in so sympathetic a
spirit, or to utter numerous sayings, bearing on their merits and
failings, in a tone of broad humanity.
In such circumstances how came it that there was no sign of a
movement analogous to modern Abolitionism? If the slave was
confessedly a man, had he not the rights of a man? The answer is
plain. That a man, simply as a man, had any rights, was a doctrine
not yet formulated or clearly conceived. The antipathy[125] between
Greek and Barbarian was a practical bar to its recognition. The
Persian was not likely to moderate his treatment of Greeks in his
power from any such consideration: superior force, nothing less,
would induce him to conform to Greek notions of humanity. While
force was recognized as the sole foundation of right as against free
enemies, there could not be much serious doubt as to the right of
holding aliens in slavery. But in this questioning age another
theoretical basis of discussion had been found. Men were testing
institutions by asking in reference to each ‘is it a natural[126]
growth? does it exist by nature (φύσει)? or is it a conventional
status? does it exist by law (νόμῳ)?’ Here was one of the most
unsettling inquiries of the period. In reference to slavery we find two
conflicting doctrines beginning to emerge. One is[127] that all men
are born free (φύσει) and that slavery is therefore a creation of
man’s device (νόμῳ). The other is that superior strength is a gift of
nature, and therefore the rule of the weaker[128] by the stronger is
according to nature. The conflict between these two views was
destined to engage some of the greatest minds of Greece in later
years, when the political failure of the Greek states had diverted
men’s thoughts to problems concerning the individual. For the
present slavery was taken for granted, but it is evident that the
seeds of future doubt had been sown. Among the stray utterances
betraying uneasiness is the oft-quoted saying[129] of the sophist
Alcidamas ‘god leaves all men free: nature makes no man a slave.’
The speaker was contemporary with Euripides, whose sayings are
often in much the same tone, if less direct. A remarkable passage is
that in which he makes Heracles repudiate[130] the myths that
represent slavery as existing among the gods. No god that is a real
god has any needs, and such tales are rubbish—an argument that
was destined to reappear later as bearing upon slavery among men,
particularly in connexion with the principles of the Cynic school.
I have said enough as to the point of view from which the
questioners, such as Euripides, regarded slavery. It is somewhat
surprising that the poet’s references to hired labour[131] are very
few, and all of a depressing kind, treating θητεύειν as almost or
quite equivalent to δουλεύειν. The references or allusions to
handicrafts are hardly to the point: such men are doubtless
conceived as θῆτες, but they would generally direct themselves in
virtue of their trade-skill: they are not hired ‘hands.’ Herdsmen often
appear, but generally if not always they seem to be slaves or serfs.
Nor is it clear that the digger (σκαφεύς) is free; he is referred to[132]
as a specimen of the meanest class of labourer. But in three of the
plays there occur passages directly descriptive of the poor working
farmer, the αὐτουργὸς of whom I have spoken above. In the Electra,
the prologue is put in the mouth of the poor but well-born
αὐτουργὸς to whom the crafty Aegisthus has given Electra in
marriage. The scene between husband and wife is one of peculiar
delicacy and interest. The points that concern us here are these. The
princess has been united[133] to a poor and powerless freeman. He
is fully occupied[134] with the hard labour of his farm, which he
apparently cultivates singlehanded. He understands the motive of
Aegisthus, and shews his respect for Electra by refraining from
conjugal rights. She in turn respects his nobility, and shews her
appreciation by cheerfully performing[135] the humble duties of a
cottar’s wife. When the breadwinner (ἐργάτης) comes home from
toil, he should find all ready for his comfort. He is shocked to see
her, a lady of gentle breeding (εὖ τεθραμμένη) fetch water from the
spring and wait upon his needs. But he has to accept the situation:
the morrow’s dawn[136] shall see him at his labour on the land: it is
all very well to pray for divine aid, but to get a living the first thing
needful is to work. Now here we have a picture of the free farmer on
a small scale, who lives in a hovel and depends on the labour of his
own hands. He is the ancient analogue of the French peasant, who
works harder than any slave, and whose views are apt to be limited
by the circumstances of his daily life. He has no slaves[137]. Again,
the Theban herald in the Supplices[138], speaking of the incapacity
of a Demos for the function of government, says ‘but a poor
husbandman (γαπόνος ἀνὴρ πένης), even if not stupid, will be too
busy to attend to state affairs.’ Here is our toiling rustic, the ideal
citizen of statesmen who desire to keep free from popular control.
The same character appears again in the Orestes, on the occasion of
a debate in the Argive Assembly (modelled on Athens), as defender
of Orestes. He is described[139] as ‘not of graceful mien, but a manly
fellow, one who seldom visits the city and the market-place, a toiler
with his hands (αὐτουργός), of the class on whom alone the safety
of the country depends; but intelligent and prepared to face the
conflict of debate, a guileless being of blameless life.’ So vivid is this
portrait, that the sympathy of the poet with the rustic type of citizen
can hardly be ignored. Now, why did Euripides take pains to shew
this sympathy? I take it to be a sign that he saw with regret the
declining influence of the farmer class in Attic politics.
Can we go a step further, and detect in these passages any sort of
protest against a decline in the number of small working farmers,
and a growth of exploitation-farming, carried on by stewards
directing the labour of slaves or hired hands? In the next generation
we find this system in use, as indeed it most likely always had been
to some extent on the richer soils of lowland Attica. The
concentration of the country folk in the city during the great war
would tend to promote agriculture by deputy after the return of
peace. Deaths, and the diversion of some farmers to other pursuits,
were likely to leave vacancies in the rural demes. Speculators who
took advantage of such chances to buy land would not as a rule do
so with intent to live on the land and work it themselves; and aliens
were not allowed to hold real estate. It seems fairly certain that
landlords resident in Athens, to whom land was only one of many
forms of investment, and who either let their land to tenant-farmers
or exploited its cultivation under stewards, were a class increased
considerably by the effects of the war. We shall see further reasons
below for believing this. Whether Euripides in the passages cited
above is actually warning or protesting, I do not venture to say: that
he grasped the significance of a movement beginning under his very
eyes, is surely a probable conjecture.
That we should hear little of the employment of slaves in the hard
work of agriculture, even if the practice were common, is not to be
wondered at. Assuming the existence of slavery, there was no need
for any writer other than a specialist to refer to them. But we have
in the Rhesus a passage[140] in which Hector forecasts the result of
an attack on the Greeks while embarking: some of them will be
slain, and the rest, captured and made fast in bonds, will be taught
to cultivate (γαπονεῖν) the fields of the Phrygians. That this use of
captives is nothing extraordinary appears below, when Dolon the spy
is bargaining for a reward in case of success. To a suggestion that
one of the Greek chiefs should be assigned to him he replies ‘No,
hands gently nurtured (εὖ ’τεθραμμέναι)[141] are unfit for farm-work
(γεωργεῖν).’ The notion of captive Greeks slaving on the land for
Asiatic lords is a touch meant to be provocative of patriotic
indignation. And the remark of Dolon would surely fall more
meaningly on the ears of men acquainted with the presence of rustic
slavery in their own country. To serfage we have a reference[142] in
the Heraclidae, but the retainer (πενέστης) is under arms,
‘mobilized,’ not at the time working on the land. His reward, when he
brings the news of victory, is to be freedom.

IX. THE ‘CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS’ OR ‘OLD

OLIGARCH.’
One of the most remarkable documents that have come down to
us bearing upon Athenian politics is the ‘Constitution[143] of Athens’
wrongly assigned to Xenophon. It is certainly the work of an earlier
writer, and the date of its composition can be fixed as between 430
and 424 bc. Thus it refers to the first years of the Peloponnesian war,
during which Attica was repeatedly invaded, its rural economy upset,
and the manifold consequences of overcrowding in the city of refuge
were beginning to shew themselves. Not a few of the ‘better classes’
of Athenian citizens (οἱ βέλτιστοι) were dissatisfied with the
readiness of the Demos, under the guidance of Pericles, to carry out
a maritime and aggressive policy abroad at the cost of sacrificing
rural interests at home. For the sacrifice fell on the landowners,
more particularly on the larger owners: the compensations[144] of
state-pay and chances of plunder might suffice for the peasant
farmer driven into Athens. At the same time it was undeniable that
the astounding energy displayed by democratic Athens had surprised
the Greek world; and the most discontented Athenian could hardly
suppress an emotion of patriotic pride. The writer of the pamphlet
before us—for a pamphlet it is—was under the influence of these
conflicting feelings. Whether it is right to describe him as an Oligarch
depends on what that term is taken to connote. That he would
greatly prefer a system[145] under which the educated orderly and
honest citizens should enjoy greater consideration and power, is
evident: also that in his view these qualities are normal attributes of
the wealthier classes. For he finds in poverty the main cause[146] of
democratic misdeeds. That the masses are ill-informed and lack
judgment and self-control, is the result of their preoccupation with
necessities of daily life. But from this conviction to aiming at a
serious oligarchic revolution is a long step. The democracy in its less
aggressive form, before the recent developments owing to the
presence of an idle refugee population, might conceivably have
sufficed for his requirements. He is a prejudiced contemporary
witness, frank and cynical in the extreme, praising the Demos for
doing the very things that he hates and despises, because those
things are in the interest of the democracy such as it appears to
him: they would be fools to act otherwise. For convenience sake I
follow Mr Zimmern[147] in calling him the Old Oligarch.
His disgust at the lack of discipline in the slaves at Athens, and his
ingenious explanation[148] of the causes that have led to toleration
of the nuisance, are very characteristic of his whole attitude. But the
slaves of whom he speaks are those labourers whom their owners
allowed to work for hire in the city and Peiraeus, taking a share of
their pay as rent for their services. Perhaps the state slaves are
meant also. He admits that you have to put up with the airs of these
fellows, who often become men of substance (πλούσιοι δοῦλοι) and
think themselves as good as the citizens. Truth is, the master
depends on the return he gets from his investment: if the rent
comes in regularly, he asks no questions and the slave is given[149] a
free hand. No wonder the bondman jostles his betters in the public
streets, a state of things inconceivable in orderly Sparta. Now on the
face of it this picture has nothing to do with the agricultural
situation. But let us look further. The stress of the great war had
increased the city population. The increased demand for imported
food-stuffs and for materials of war (such as ship-timber) had
undoubtedly increased the demand for dock-labourers, boatmen,
porters, carters, and other ‘hands.’ Male citizens had enough to do in
services by land and sea. From what source was the extra force of
rough able-bodied labour recruited? Is it likely that a number of raw
barbarian slaves were imported for the purpose? I think not; time
would be needed to make them efficient, and the available shipping
had already a difficult task to keep up the supply of indispensable
goods. Is it not much more likely that rustic slaves, brought into
Athens by their owners, were turned to account[150] in another
department of labour, thus earning wages for themselves while they
maintained their masters? The probability of this view will depend
largely on proof that rustic slaves were employed in Attica under
normal conditions at this time. We shall presently see how the
evidence of Aristophanes bears on the point.
Meanwhile let us see what references to agriculture are to be
found in this pamphlet. In speaking of the nautical skill[151] now a
common accomplishment among Athenians, the writer remarks that
the possession of estates abroad, and the duties of offices
concerned with external affairs, have something to do with it. Men
have to cross the water: they and their attendants (ἀκόλουθοι) thus
pick up skill by experience without intending it: for it happens time
and again that both master and slave (καὶ αὐτὸν καὶ τὸν οἰκέτην)
have to take a turn at the oar. The estates referred to are chiefly
state-lands allotted to Athenian cleruchs in confiscated districts, but
also private properties. The voyages to and fro are nothing
exceptional. Whether a man resided on his estate and had need to
visit Athens, or whether he resided in Athens and had to visit his
estate from time to time, he must go to sea. It is to be borne in
mind that allottees in cleruchies often let their lands to the former
owners as tenants. In another passage[152] he points out the
disadvantage to Athens, as a maritime power, of not being on an
island and so secure from invasion. ‘As things are, those Athenians
who farm land or are wealthy (οἱ γεωργοῦντες καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι) are
more inclined to conciliate the enemy (ὑπέρχονται = cringe to),
while the Demos, well aware that their own belongings are in no
danger of destruction, is unconcerned and defiant.’ A notable
admission, confirmed by other evidence, as we shall see. It is to be
observed that farmers and wealthy men are coupled together. The
class more especially meant are probably those represented in
Aristophanes by the substantial farmers of the Peace. But capitalists
with investments in land are also included, and small-holders or
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