2O Farm labour 



And the shade of Achilles, repudiating 1 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 

 (dtcXrjpos), presumably occupying on precarious tenure a bit of some 

 lord's estate. After such utterances we cannot wonder that as we saw 

 above, Ofjres and fyitwe? are mentioned 2 in the same breath. 



That slaves are employed on the farm is clear enough. When 

 Penelope sends for old Dolius 3 , 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 4 

 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 5 

 to the garden, in which every plant and tree attests the devoted toil of 

 his gardeners under his own skilled direction. Odysseus, as yet un- 

 recognized 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 6 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 7 

 of Phoenician kidnappers. In romancing about his own past ex- 

 periences Odysseus describes a raid in Egypt, and how the natives 

 rallied 8 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 



1 XI 489-9L 2 IV 644. 3 Iy 735 _ 7> 4 xxly 2o8 - I0 . 



6 XXIV 222-55. 6 XXIV 257. ' XV 412-92. 8 XIV 271-2. 



