Views of Philosophers and Statesmen 1 1 



of standing armies, posted on the frontiers, made the settlement of 

 veterans in border-provinces a matter of less difficulty. From the 

 third century AD onwards we find a new plan coming into use. Men 

 were settled with their farcies on lands near the frontiers, holding 

 them by a military tenure which imposed hereditary liability to service 

 in the armies. Thus the difficulty was for a time met by approaching 

 it from the other end. The superiority of the rustic recruit was as 

 fully recognized as ever : at the end of the fourth century it was re- 

 affirmed 1 by Vegetius. 



I pass on to the third point of view, which I may perhaps call 

 It appears in practice as the yifw of ,the statesman, ini 



>ry~~as that of the speculative philosopher. Men whose life and 

 interests are bound up with agriculture are in general a steady class, 

 Httle inclined to wild agitations and rash ventures. On a farm there 

 is always something not to be left undone without risk of loss. The 

 operations of nature go on unceasingly, uncontrolled by man. Man 

 must adapt himself to the conditions of soil and weather: hence he 

 must be ever on the watch to take advantage of his opportunities, and 

 this leaves him scant leisure for politics. We may add that the habit 

 of conforming to nature's laws, and of profiting by not resisting what 

 cannot be successfully resisted, is a perpetual education in patience. 

 Working farmers as a class were not men lightly to embark in revolu- 

 tionary schemes, so long as their condition was at all tolerable. It 

 must be borne in mind that before the invention of representative 

 systems a citizen could only vote by appearing in person at the city, 

 where all the Assemblies were held. Assemblies might be adjourned, 

 and two journeys, to the city and back, were not only time-wasting 

 and tiresome, but might have to be repeated. Accordingly we hear of 

 the encouragement of Attic farmers by Peisistratus 2 as being a policy 

 designed to promote the stability of his government. At Rome we 

 find reformers alarmed at the decay of the farmer-class in a great part 

 of Italy, and straining to revive it as the sound basis of a national life, 

 the only practical means of purifying the corrupted institutions of the 

 state. Selfish opposition on the part of those interested in corruption 

 was too strong for reformers, and the chance of building up a true 

 Italian nation passed away. The working farmer had disappeared 

 from Roman politics. The sword^affti the venal city mob remained, 

 and the later literattrfe was left to deplore the consequences. 



The course of agricultural decline in Greece was different in detail 

 from that in Italy, but its evil effects on political life were early 

 noted, at least in Attica. The rationalist Euripides saw the danger 

 clearly, during the Peloponnesian war; and the sympathy of the 



1 Veget 13. 2 ' A.6rjvaLuv iroXtreia cap 16, with Sandys' notes. 



