Life on an upland farm 63 



and it is surely a mere accident that we do not have them in those of 

 the earlier. 



The contrast between life in town and life in the country is forcibly 

 brought out 1 by Menander. The poor man has no chance in town, 

 where he is despised and wronged : in the country he is spared the 

 galling presence of witnesses, and can bear his ill fortune on a lonely 

 farm. The farm then is represented as a sort of refuge from unsatis- 

 factory surroundings in the city. When we remember that in Men- 

 ander's time Athens was a dependency of one or other of Alexander's 

 Successors, a community of servile rich and mean poor, fawning on its 

 patrons and enjoying no real freedom of state-action, we need not 

 wonder at the poet's putting such a view into the mouths of some of 

 his characters. The remains of the play Pecopyo^ are of particular 

 interest. The old master is a tough obstinate old fellow, who persists 

 in working 2 on the land himsejf, and even wounds himself by clumsy 

 use of his mattock. But he has a staff of slaves, barbarians, on whom 

 he is dependent. These paid no attention to the old man in his mis- 

 fortune ; a touch from which we may infer that the relations between 

 master and slaves were not sympathetic. But a young free labourer 

 in his employ comes to the rescue, nurses him, and sets him on his 

 legs again. While laid up, the old man learns by inquiry that this 

 youth is his own son, the fruit of a former amour, whom his mother 

 has reared in struggling poverty. Enough of the play remains to 

 shew that the trials of the free poor were placed in a strong light, 

 and that, as pointed out above, the struggle for existence in the city 

 was felt to be especially severe. In this case whether the old man is 

 rich or not does not appear: at all events he has enough property to 

 make amends for his youthful indiscretions by relieving the necessities 

 of those who have a claim on him. He is probably the character in 

 whose mouth 3 were put the words ' I am a rustic (dypoiicos) ; that I 

 don't deny; and not fully expert in affairs of city life (lawsuits etc?): 

 but I was not born yesterday.' 



The functions of the rustic slaves may give us some notion of the 

 kind of farms that Menander had in mind. In the Tecopyos, the slave 

 Davus, coming in from his day's labour, grumbles 4 at the land on which 

 he has to work : shrubs and flowers of use only for festival decorations 

 grow there as vigorous weeds, but when you sow seed you get back 

 what you sowed with no increase. This savours of the disappointing 

 tillage of an upland farm. In the 'ETrtT/oeTroi/re? 5 , DavUs is a shepherd, 



1 Menandrea pp 159-61 (fragments of Few/yyos). 



2 Menandrea pp 157, 159. 



3 opus cil and Menander 97 Kock. For aypoiicos connoting simplicity cf 794 dypoiKos 

 irpoo"iroit irovrjpbs &v. 



Menandrea p 155, 96 Kock. 6 Menandrea p 15 (lines 26, 40). 



