50 Peloponnesian agriculture 



as a land of free labour, in contrast with slave-holding Athens. To this 

 view I cannot assent. I am convinced that the Attic farmer who worked 

 with his own hands did often, if not always, employ slave-labour also. 

 He would not have a large gang of slaves, like the large-scale cultivator: 

 he could not afford to keep an overseer. But it might pay him to keep 

 one or two slaves, not more than he could oversee himself. If the contrast 

 be clearly limited, so as to compare the wealth of Athens, now largely in- 

 dustrial and commercial, with the wealth of a purely agricultural popu- 

 lation, scattered over a wide area, and having little ready money, it is 

 reasonable and true. But this does not raise the question of the Attic 

 farmer at all. A little below 1 Pericles is made to urge that class to 

 submit quietly to invasion and serious loss. They are not the people 

 on whose resources he relies to wear out the enemy. That enemy finds 

 it hard to combine for common action or to raise money by war-taxes. 

 Athens is a compact community, able to act quickly, and has at dis- 

 posal the forces and tribute of her subjects, secured by naval supremacy. 

 To the other question, that of Peloponnesian agriculture, I see no 

 simple answer. All the southern parts, the region of Spartan helotry, 

 can hardly be called a land of free labour in any rational sense. Nor 

 does it appear that Argolis, in spite of the various revolutions in local 

 politics, could rightly be described thus. Elis and Achaia were hardly 

 of sufficient importance to justify such a general description, even if it 

 were certain that it would apply to them locally. Arcadia, mostly 

 mountainous and backward, is the district to which the description 

 would be most applicable. But that there were slaves in Arcadia is 

 not only probable but attested by evidence, later in date but referring 

 to an established 2 state of things. At festivals, we are told, slaves and 

 masters shared the same table. This does not exclude rustic slaves : it 

 rather seems to suggest them. The working farmer entertaining his 

 slaves on a rural holiday is even a conventional tradition of ancient 

 country life. Arcadia, a land of peasant farmers, where a living had to 

 be won by hard work, a land whence already in the fifth century (an< 

 still more in the fourth) came numbers of mercenary soldiers, a lam 

 whence Sparta raised no small part of her 'Peloponnesian' armies, ii 

 what Pericles has chiefly in mind. And that Arcadians were normally 

 avTovpyol did not imply that they had no slaves. 



So far as Attica is concerned, Thucydides himself incidentally 

 attests the presence of rustic slaves. He would probably have been 

 surprised to hear such an obvious fact questioned. In refusing to repeal 

 the 'Megarian decree' the Athenians charged 3 the Megarians with 

 various offences, one of which was the reception of their runaway slaves. 

 In the winter 415-460 Alcibiades, urging the Spartans to occupy 



1 I 143- 2 Theopompus in Athenaeus 149 d. 3 I 139 2. 



