Manumission query 2 1 



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 1 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 * brother- 

 hood' suggested sounds as if it must imply freedom. But does it? 

 Eumaeus had been brought up 2 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 3 of his lord, 'who' he says 

 ' would have shewn me hearty affection and given me possessions such 

 as a kindly lord gives his slave (ol/crji), a house and a land-lot (fc\ijpov) 

 and a wife of recognized worth (-TroXu/^cr'n/z/), 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' agie 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 

 1 xxi 213-6. 2 xv 363-5. 3 xiv 62-5. 



