8 Agriculture esteemed 



therewith of civilization) led to division of labour and the growth of 

 larger enterprises. On this follows a time in which the employment 

 of slave-labour becomes more and more common, and ends by being 

 for some centuries the basis of economic and domestic life. In due 

 course comes the period of decline, when for various reasons slaves 

 became less numerous, and the highly-organized civilization of antiquity 

 relapses into the primitive conditions of the early Middle Age. Slavery 

 is not extinct, but reverts generally to various degrees of serfdom, 

 resembling that which meets us in the early traditions of Greek slavery. 

 Things have gone round the full circle, and the world takes a fresh 

 start. 



This version of the process is attractive. It presents to us a spectacle 

 of cyclic movement, pleasing from its simplicity and dignity. But it 

 seems to imply that the old civilization reached its height more or less 

 concurrently with the growth of slavery. One is driven to ask 1 whether 

 the concurrence was purely accidental or not. So far as concerns the 

 manufacture of articles for export by slave-industry, it can hardly have 

 been a mere chance : nor is it denied that in this department it was 

 the demand created by the needs of growing civilization that called 

 forth the supply. Luxury too is merely a name for such needs when 

 they clearly exceed strict necessaries of life: and here too the monstrous 

 extravagancies of domestic slavery were a characteristic feature of the 

 civilization of the Greco-Roman world. That neither of these forms of 

 servile employment could outlive the civilization that had produced 

 them, is surely no wonder. The case of slavery in agriculture is less 

 simple, and several questions may suggest themselves to anyone who 

 considers this subject with an open mind. 



\Agriculture was long regarded, from a social point of view, as 

 superior to other occupations dependent on bodily labou> This 

 opinion dated from very early times when, as traditions agree, the land 

 was owned by privileged nobles who as members of powerful clans 

 formed aristocracies of a more or less military character. War was 

 waged by men fighting hand to hand, and it was natural that hand- 

 work of a kind likely to promote health and strength should be 

 honoured above manual trades of a less invigorating and even sedentary 

 character. The development of cities and urban life, which in many 

 states led to the overthrow of the old clan aristocracies, did not make 

 handicraftsmen the equals of agriculturists in popular esteem. Pressure 

 to win a firm footing on the land was as marked a feature in Athenian 

 Attica as in Roman Latium.<^Agriculture was a profession worthy of 

 the free citizen, and the ownership of a plot of land stamped the 

 citizen as a loyal and responsible member of a free and self-conscious 



1 To this question I return in the concluding chapter. 



