24 Strict attention to business 



the need of constant watchfulness, to see that they are not lazy and 

 are properly fed housed and rested, is insisted on. The feeding of 

 cattle and slaves is regulated according to their requirements in different 

 seasons of the year: efficiency is the object, and evidently experience 

 is the guide. Of female slaves there is no certain 1 mention : indeed 

 there could be little demand for domestic attendants in the farmer's 

 simple home. Such work as weaving 2 is to be done by his wife. For 

 the farmer is to marry, though the risks 3 of that venture are not hidden 

 from the poet, who gives plain warnings as to the exercise of extreme 

 care in making a suitable choice. The operations of agriculture are 

 the usual ploughing sowing reaping threshing and the processes of the 

 vineyard and the winepress. Oxen sheep and mules form the livestock. 

 Corn is the staple 4 diet, with hay as fodder for beasts. 



Looking on the picture as a whole, we see that the Hesiodic farmer 

 is to be a model of industry and thrift. Business, not sentiment, is the 

 note of his character. His function is to survive in his actual circum- 

 stances; that is, in a social and economic environment of normal sel- 

 fishness. If his world is not a very noble one, it is at least eminently 

 practical. He is a true avrovpyos, setting his own hand to the plough, 

 toiling for himself on his own land, with slaves and other cattle obedient 

 to his will. It is perhaps not too much to say that he illustrates a great 

 truth bearing on the labour-question, that successful exploitation of 

 other men's labour is, at least in semi-primitive societies, only to be 

 achieved by the man who shares the labour himself. And it is to be 

 noted that he attests the existence of wage-earning hands as well as 

 slaves. I take this to mean that there were in his rustic world a number 

 of landless freemen compelled to make a living as mere farm labourers. 

 That we hear so much less of this class in later times is probably to 

 be accounted for by the growth of cities and the absorption of such 

 persons in urban occupations and trades. 



V. STRAY NOTES FROM EARLY POETS. 



A few fragments may be cited as of interest, bearing on our subject. 

 The most important are found in the remains 5 of Solon, illustrating the 

 land-question as he saw and faced it at the beginning of the sixth 

 century BC. The poets of the seventh and sixth centuries reflect the 



1 406 is reasonably suspected. 2 4O5> ^^ 8oa 3 695-705. 



4 3 2 > 597. 606-7. 



in full 



5 Solon the Athenian, by Ivan M. Linforth of the University of California (1919) discusses 

 full the conditions of Solon's time and his actual policy, with an edition of his poetic 



