42 Views of the old school of farmers 



rocky land? The generation of small farmers before and during the 

 great war had some outlook for themselves and their sons, serving in 

 victorious armies or fleets, getting booty or allotments abroad. Hence 

 they took a keen interest in politics. The fall of Athens had changed 

 all this: the profits of empire had departed, and with them the buoy- 

 ancy of an imperial pride. No wonder if there were signs of unwilling- 

 ness to follow a hard rustic life. So the Informer in the Plutus 1 , when 

 asked 'are you a husbandman?' replies 'do you take me for a madman?* 

 Earlier in the play 2 Chremylus, wishing to share with old cronies 

 the profits of having captured the god of wealth, says to his slave 

 'invite my fellow farmers: I fancy you'll find them working themselves 

 (avTovs) on their farms.' 



I have taken this later picture first, in order to bring out more 

 clearly the contrast presented by that given in the earlier plays. Natur- 

 ally enough, many details are the same in both, but the general character 

 of the farmers is different. The farmer class makes an important figure. 

 They are sturdy rustics 3 , old-fashioned and independent, rough in 

 manners, fond of simple country life, and inclined (perhaps justly) to 

 mistrust the city folk, who cheat them in business whenever they can, 

 and take advantage of them in other ways, such as liability to mili- 

 tary service at short notice. When driven to take refuge in Athens, 

 their hearts are in their farms, and they have to make up their minds 

 whether to support the war-party in hope of regaining their homes and 

 property by force of arms, or to press for peace in order to end what 

 is from their point of view an unnecessary war, kept going in the in- 

 terest of demagogues and others who are profiting by the opportunities 

 of offices and campaigns abroad. The issue appears in our earliest play, 

 the Acharnians (425 BC). The farmers of the deme Acharnae, one of 

 whose occupations was wood-cutting and charcoal-burning, at first 

 come on as stubborn rustics, all for war and revenge on the enemy. 

 But Dicaeopolis the chief character of the play, himself a farmer, and 

 a sufferer in the same kind by the Spartan raids, succeeds in persuading* 

 them that Athenian policy, provocative and grasping, is really to blame 

 for their losses. In the end they come over to his views, and the play 

 serves as a manifesto of the peace-party. Of course we are not to take 

 it as history. But the conflict between the two sections of opinion is 

 probably real enough. When Dicaeopolis describes 5 himself as 'with 

 my eyes ever turned to my farm, a lover of peace, detesting the city 

 and hankering after my own deme, that never yet bade me buy char- 

 coal or rough wine or olive oil,' he is giving us a portrait of the rustic 



1 Plut 903. 2 Plut 223 _ 4 



3 Ach 180, 211, Pax 570, 1185-6, Eq 316-7, Nub 43 foil. 



4 The gradual conversion is seen in Ach 557 foil, 626 foil. 6 Ach 32-4. 



