Rustic slaves 45 



carry the phallus in the procession. In the Clouds^ old Strepsiades says 

 that he lives in the heart of the country, and his preference for the easy 

 and rather squalid life on a farm is plainly expressed. And the play 

 opens with his complaint that in war-time a man has not a free hand 

 to punish his slaves. It is however not clear that he is supposed to be 

 at the time living on the farm. In the Wasps the chorus of old dicasts 

 are indignant 2 that their old comrade Philocleon should be dragged 

 off by his own slaves at the order of his son. The old man himself, 

 struggling and protesting, reminds the leading slave of the time when 

 he caught the rogue stealing grapes (obviously in his vineyard) and 

 thrashed him soundly. In the Peace a rustic scene 3 is described. The 

 weather being unfavourable for work on the land, but excellent for the 

 seed just sown, it is proposed to make merry indoors. Country fare is 

 made ready, and the female slave Syra is told to call in the man slave 

 Manes from the farm. A little below Trygaeus is mocking the workers 

 in war-trades. To the trumpet-maker he says, fit up your trumpet 

 differently 4 and you can turn it into a weighing-machine: 'it will then 

 do for serving out rations of figs to your slaves on the farm.' In the 

 Lysistrata the chorus, being aware that an interval of distress will 

 follow the conclusion of peace, offers 6 to tide over the crisis by helping 

 the fathers of large families and owners of hungry slaves by doles of 

 food. 'Let them bring their bags and wallets for wheat: my Manes 

 shall fill them.' After these passages the announcement of the working 

 of the communistic scheme 6 in the Ecclesiazusae carries us into a very 

 different atmosphere. * But who is to till the soil under the new order?' 

 asks Blepyrus. 'Our slaves,' replies Praxagora, his typical better-half. 

 We see that this amounts to basing society on a serf-system, for the 

 slaves will be common property like the rest. In the Plutus old Chre- 

 mylus is a farmer, apparently a working 7 farmer, but he has a slave, 

 indeed more than one. Age has probably led him to do most of his 

 work by deputy. When Poverty, in the course of her economic lecture, 

 explains to him 8 that wealth for all means slaves for none and that 

 he will have to plough and dig for his own proper sustenance, he is indig- 

 nant. The weak points of the argument do not concern us here. The 

 solution offered in the play, the cure of the Wealth-god's blindness, 

 enabling him to enrich only the deserving, is a mere piece of sportive 

 nonsense, meant to amuse an audience, not to hold out a serious hope 

 of better things. 



Enough has been said to shew that the slave had a place in farm 

 life as depicted by Aristophanes. It will be observed that in the earlier 

 plays the references are all of a casual kind : that is to say, that slave- 



1 Nub 43 foil, 138. 2 Vesp 442-52. 3 Pax 1140 foil. 4 Pax 1248-9. 



5 Lys 1203-14. 6 Eccl6^i. 7 Plut 26-7, 253. 8 Plut 517-20, 525-6. 



