yo Politics and agriculture 



rival interests of commercial Corinth saw to it that the enslavement, 

 not of Greeks but of Greek states, should be continually borne in mind. 

 The contrast between the two leading powers was striking. But, if 

 many Greek states feared in Athens a menace to their several indepen- 

 dence, on the other hand they shrank from copying the rigid discipline 

 of Sparta. No wonder that some of the more imaginative minds had 

 dreams of a system more congenial to Greek aspirations. But the land- 

 question was a stumbling-block. That a citizen should take an active 

 personal share in politics was assumed, and that he should do this 

 tended to make him depute non-political duties to others. Thus the 

 notion that all citizens should be equal in the eye of the law and share 

 in government democracy in short was not favourable to personal 

 labour on the land. No distribution of land-lots could convert the city 

 politician into a real working farmer. Therefore either there must be 

 a decline in agriculture or an increase of slave-labour, or both. From 

 these alternatives there was no escape: but ingenious schemers long 

 strove to find a way. And from those days to these no one has suc- 

 ceeded in constructing a sound and lasting civilization on a basis of 

 slavery. 



XV. PLATO. 



An Athenian who died in 347 BC at the age of 80 or 82 years had 

 witnessed extraordinary changes in the Hellenic world, more par- 

 ticularly in the position of Athens. With the political changes we are 

 not here directly concerned. But they were closely connected with 

 economic changes, both as cause and as effect. The loss of empire 1 

 entailed loss of revenue. The amounts available as state-pay being 

 reduced, the poorer citizens lost a steady source of income: that their 

 imperial pride had departed did not tend to make them less sensitive 

 to the pinch of poverty. Athens, thrown back upon her own limited 

 resources, had to produce what she could in order to buy what she 

 needed, and capital, employing slave-labour, found its opportunity. 

 In this atmosphere discontent and jealousy grew fast: conflicting in- 

 terests of rich and poor were at the back of all the disputes of political 

 life. Athens it is true avoided the crude revolutionary methods adopted 

 in some less civilized states. The Demos did not massacre or banish 

 the wealthy Few, and share out their lands and other properties among 

 the poor Many. But they consistently regarded the estates of the rich 

 as the source from which the public outlay should as far as possible be 

 drawn. They left the capitalist free to make money in his own way, 

 and squeezed him when he had made it. Whether he were citizen or 



1 Cf Isocr depace 69 p 173, 129-131 p 185. 



