46 Little hired labour on farms 



labour calls for no particular attention or remark. The consideration 

 of slave-labour as such, in fact as an economic phenomenon, only 

 appears later. This is, I repeat, significant of the change that had come 

 upon Athens and Attica in consequence of exhaustion. In respect of 

 hired labour it is obvious that pressure of poverty, as stated 1 in the 

 Plutus, directly influences the supply. If the possession of a com- 

 petency will deter men from professional industry in trades, even more 

 will it deter them from the drudgery of rough labour. The hired men 

 (/JUO-QCOTOL) were commonly employed in all departments, for instance 

 in the building trades, to which there is a reference 2 in the Birds. But 

 we may fairly assume that during the great war the number of such 

 * hands' available for civilian services was much reduced. In agriculture 

 there would be little or no demand for them. And any able-bodied 

 citizen could earn good pay from the state. Moreover rough labour 

 was not much to the taste of the average Athenian, above all, digging 3 . 

 ' I cannot dig ' was proverbial. On the other hand there were farm- 

 duties in the performance of which sufficient care and intelligence 

 could only be exacted through the medium of wage-paying. Such was 

 that of olive-pickers, to whom and their wage we have a reference 4 in the 

 Wasps. They are probably free persons, but it is possible that wage- 

 earning slaves, paying rent to their owners, might be thus employed. 

 That in some occupations free and slave-labour were both employed 

 indifferently, is certain. The carriage of burdens 6 is a case in point. 

 But employment in odd jobs would be far more frequent in the city, 

 including Peiraeus, than in country places. I do not think it rash to 

 conclude that hired free labourers were few on the farms of Attica in 

 the time of Aristophanes. 



Turning to citizen agriculturists, it must be mentioned that views 

 differ as to the proportion of large estates held and worked by wealthy 

 owners in this period. Such estates would almost certainly employ 

 .slave-labour. So far as the evidence of Aristophanes goes, I should 

 infer that they were few. No doubt he had reasons for not making 

 much of such cases; still I believe that the comfortable working farmer, 

 homely and independent, the poet's favourite character, was in fact the 

 normal type. They were not paupers, far from it : but their capital 

 consisted in land, buildings, dead and live farm-stock, and the unex- 

 hausted value of previous cultivation. These items could not suddenly 

 be converted into money without ruinous loss : most of them could 

 not be carried away in the flight to Athens. Hence the dislike felt 

 by such men to an adventurous policy, in which their interests were 



1 Plut 510-626. 2 Aves II52> 



3 Aves 1431-2 (cf Vesp 959), fragm of AcurctXets 4 Dind, 221 Kock. 



4 Vesp 712. s Ran 164-77. 



