56 Character of slaves 



The adoption of this suggestion produced the happiest results in every 

 way. Such was the way in which Socrates led his friend. He drew 

 from him the assertion that free people are superior to slaves, and so 

 brought him round to the conviction that superiority could not be 

 shewn by mere incapacity for work. 



In this conversation of Socrates may be detected the germ of a 

 complete revolution in thought on labour-subjects. It avoids the topic 

 of common humanity. That the slave is a man and brother, only the 

 victim of misfortune, had been hinted by Euripides and was to become 

 a theme of comic poets. But Socrates lets this point alone, and argues 

 from natural economic necessity. Elsewhere he denounces 1 idleness 

 and proclaims that useful labour is good for the labourer, taking a 

 moral point of view. Again, he suggests 2 that the shortcomings of 

 slaves are largely due to their masters' slackness or mismanagement. 

 But he accepts slavery as a social and economic fact. All the same he 

 makes play at times with the notion of moral worthJessness, which 

 many people regarded as characteristic of slaves in general. It is the 

 knowledge of the true qualities 3 of conduct, in short of the moral and 

 political virtues, that makes men honourable gentlemen (/ca\ov$ 

 the lack of this knowledge that makes them slavish 

 . But, if the difference between a liberal and an illiberal 

 training, expressed in resulting habits of mind, is thus great, the slavish 

 must surely include many of those legally free. Hence he even goes 

 so far as to say 'Therefore we ought to spare no exertions to escape 

 being slaves (avSpd-jroba)! And he lays stress on the need of moral 

 qualities 4 in slaves as well as freemen: we should never be willing to 

 entrust our cattle or our store-houses or the direction of our works to 

 a slave devoid of self-control. His position suggests two things: first, 

 that the importance of the slave in the economic and social system 

 was a striking fact now recognized: second, that the unavoidable moral 

 degradation generally assumed to accompany the condition of slavery 

 was either wrongfully assumed or largely due to the shortcomings of 

 masters. The conception of the slave as a mere chattel, injury to which 

 is simply a damage to its owner, was proving defective in practice, and 

 the philosopher was inclined to doubt its soundness in principle. 

 Xenophon had been brought into touch with such questionings by his 

 intercourse with Socrates. It remains to see how far he shews traces 

 of their influence when he comes to treat labour-problems in connexion 

 with agriculture. 



References to agriculture 5 are few and unimportant in the Memora- 



1 Memor I i 57, II 7 4-1 1, 8. 2 Memor III 13 4. 



3 Memor I i 16, IV 2 22-31. ^ Memor I 5 2. 



8 Memor ill 7 6, 9 n, 15. 



