64 Slaves on small farms 



Syriscus a charcoal-burner, occupations also proper to the hill districts. 

 We must not venture to infer that Attic agriculture was mainly of this 

 type in the poet's day. The favourite motive of plots in the later 

 Comedy, the exposure of infants in remote spots, their rescue by casual 

 herdsmen or other slaves, and their eventual identification as the very 

 person wanted in each case to make all end happily, would of itself 

 suggest that lonely hill-farms, rather than big estates in the fat lowland, 

 should be the scene. From my point of view the fact of chief interest is 

 that slave-labour appears as normal in such an establishment. Rustic 

 clothing 1 and food served out in rations 8 are minor details of the 

 picture, and the arrangement by which a slave can work as wage- 

 earner 3 for another employer, paying over a share to his own master 

 (the dirofapd), surely indicates that there was nothing exceptional 

 about it. There are one or two other fragments directly bearing on 

 agricultural labour. One of uncertain age 4 speaks of a tiresome hand 

 who annoys his employer by chattering about some public news from 

 the city, when he should be digging. I doubt whether a slave is meant: 

 at least he is surely a hired one, but why not a poor freeman, reduced 

 to wage-earning? Such is the position of Timon 5 in Lucian piaOov 

 yecopyel a passage in which adaptations from Comedy are reasonably 

 suspected. That rustic labour has a better side to it, that 'the bitter of 

 agriculture has a touch of sweet in it,' is admitted 6 by one of Menander's 

 characters, but the passage which seems the most genuine expression 

 of the prevalent opinion 7 is that in which we read that a man's true 

 part is to excel in war, ' for agriculture is a bondman's task ' (TO yap 

 yecopyelv epyov earlv oltcerov). 



The nature and condition of the evidence must be my excuse for 

 the unsatisfactory appearance of this section. The number of passages 

 bearing on slavery in general, and the social and moral questions con- 

 nected therewith, is large and remote from my subject. They are of 

 great interest as illustrating the movement of thought on these matters, 

 but their bearing on agricultural labour is very slight. To the virtues 

 of agriculture as a pursuit tending to promote a sound and manly 

 character Menander 8 bears witness. 'A farm is for all men a trainer in 

 virtue and a freeman's life.' Many a town-bred man has thought and 

 said the same, but praise is not always followed by imitation. Even 

 more striking is another 9 remark, ' farms that yield but a poor living 

 make brave men.' For it was the hard-living rustics from the back- 

 country parts of Greece that succeeded as soldiers of fortune, the famous 



1 Menandrea p 13 (line 12, cf in). 2 Menandrea p 5. 



3 Menandrea p 25. * Kock III p 473 (adespota 347). 



5 Lucian, Timon 7, 8. Kock adesp 1434, note. 



6 Menander 795. 7 Menander 64-2. 8 Menander 408. 

 9 Menander 63, T& KO.KWS rptyovra. %w/3i' dvdpttovs Troiet. 



