from various points of view 9 



community.^ The ruin of Attic farmers in the Peloponnesian war, the 

 disastrous changes in Italian agriculture after Rome became imperial, 

 still left the old prepossession. The charm of country life and pursuits 

 remained as an ineffective ideal. Greek philosophers were impressed 

 with the virtues of farmer-folk, virtues social moral and ultimately 

 political. From them Cicero and others learnt to praise-xustic-lifej 

 the Gracchi made vain efforts to revive it : the poets, led by Vergil, 

 pictured the glories of old Italian agriculture : but the aspirations 

 were vain. The 'classical' civilization was urban in its growth, and 

 urban it remained. Writers on agriculture might lament that free 

 men, capable of tilling the land, loitered idly in the city. In practice 

 they had to take facts as they found them, and give elaborate precepts 

 for a farm-system in which slavery was the essential factor. 



It was and is possible to regard agriculturefrom various points of 

 view. Three of these at least deserve a preliminary conslderation<The 

 rraT^dly ecgn^rnicjview^ that the production of food is necessary for 

 any life aoove that of mere savages, and therefore is worthy of respect, 

 can never have been wholly absent from men's minds in any age. It 

 was common property, and found frequent expression. /> Even when 

 various causes led to much dependence on imported corn, the senti- 

 ment still survived, and its soundness was recognized by philosophers. 

 The^ military view, that the hardy peasant makes the best soldier, was 

 generally accepted in principle, but its relation to agriculture in the 

 strict sense of tillage was not always a direct one. The technical 

 training of skilled combatants began early in Greece. It was not only 

 in the Spartan or Cretan systems that such training was normal : the 

 citizen armies of Athens consisted of men who had passed through a 

 long course of gymnastic exercises and drill. During their training 

 these young men can hardly have devoted much labour to the tillage 

 of farms, even those of them who were of country birth. What per- 

 centage of them settled down in their later years to farm-life, is just 

 what one vainly wishes to know. The helot-system supplied the tillage 

 that fed the warrior-caste of Sparta. It would seem that the toils of 

 hunting played a great part in producing the military fitness required 

 of the young Spartiate. We may be pretty sure that the Thessalian 

 cavalry wealthy lords ruling dependent cultivators were not tillers 

 of the soil. Boeotia and Arcadia were both lands in which there was 

 a large farmer class. Boeotian infantry were notable for their steadi- 

 ness in the shock of battle. But they were not untrained, far from it. 

 United action was ever difficult in Arcadia, where small cities lay 

 scattered in the folds of mountains. Hence no Arcadian League ever 

 played a leading part in Greece. But the rustics of these country towns 

 and villages were man for man as good material for war-work as 



