The 'Old Oligarch' 37 



warning or protesting, I do not venture to say : that he grasped the 

 significance of a movement beginning under his very eyes, is surely a 

 probable conjecture. 



That we should hear little of the employment of slaves in the 

 hard work of agriculture, even if the practice were common, is not to 

 be wondered at. Assuming the existence of slavery, there was no 

 need for any writer other than a specialist to refer to them. But we 

 have in the Rhesus a passage 1 in which Hector forecasts the result of 

 an attack on the Greeks while embarking : some of them will be 

 slain, and the rest, captured and made fast in bonds, will be taught 

 to cultivate ('yaTrweo') the fields of the Phrygians. That this use of 

 captives is nothing extraordinary appears below, when Dolon the spy 

 is bargaining for a reward in case of success. To a suggestion that 

 one of the Greek chiefs should be assigned to him he replies * No, 

 hands gently nurtured (e re^/oa^yLtez/ai) 2 are unfit for farm-work 

 (yewpyelv).' The notion of captive Greeks slaving on the land for 

 Asiatic lords is a touch meant to be provocative of patriotic indigna- 

 tion. And the remark of Dolon would surely fall more meaningly on 

 the ears of men acquainted with the presence of rustic slavery in their 

 own country. To serfage we have a reference 3 in the Heraclidae, but 

 the retainer (irevecmis) is under arms, ' mobilized/ not at the time 

 working on the land. His reward, when he brings the news of victory, 

 is to be freedom. 



IX. THE 'CONSTITUTION OF ATHENS' 

 OR <OLD OLIGARCH; 



One of the most remarkable documents that have come down to 

 us bearing upon Athenian politics is the 'Constitution 4 of Athens' 

 wrongly assigned to Xenophon. It is certainly the work of an earlier 

 writer, and the date of its composition can be fixed as between 430 

 and 424 BC. Thus it refers to the first years of the Peloponnesian 

 war, during which Attica was repeatedly invaded, its rural economy 

 upset, and the manifold consequences of overcrowding in the city of 

 refuge were beginning to shew themselves. Not a few of the ' better 

 classes ' of Athenian citizens (ol fiekriaroi) were dissatisfied with the 

 readiness of the Demos, under the guidance of Pericles, to carry out 

 a maritime and aggressive policy abroad at the cost of sacrificing 



1 Rhesus 74-5. 2 Rhesus 176. 



3 Heracl 639, 788-9, 890, cf fragm 827 Dind. 



4 Die pseudoxenophontische ' AByvalbiv iro\iTeLa...von Ernst Kalinka (Teubner 1913). A 

 great work. 



