84 The labour-question 



object to retain or recover all she could of her island territories, partly 

 no doubt in order to control the cultivable lands in them. In the peace- 

 negotiations of 390 BC the extreme opposition party at Athens were 

 not content 1 with the proposals by which she was to recover the islands 

 of Lemnos Imbros and Scyros: they demanded also the restitution of 

 the Thracian Chersonese and estates and debts elsewhere. So strong 

 was the feeling of dependence on these investments abroad. And 

 Isocrates, in depicting the evil results of imperial ambition, recalls 2 to 

 the citizens that, instead of farming the lands of others, the Pelopon- 

 nesian war had for years prevented them from setting eyes upon their 

 own. 



Thus far I have said nothing of the labour-question. Orators and 

 pamphleteers were not likely to concern themselves much with this 

 topic, for there was nothing in the nature of an Abolitionist controversy 

 to bring them into discussion of the subject. Slavery is in this depart- 

 ment of Greek literature more a fundamental assumption than ever. 

 The frequent arguments on the torture of slave witnesses and the moral 

 value of evidence so extracted are plain proof of this. But what about 

 agricultural labour? In the case of the sacred olive-stump we hear from 

 Lysias 8 that the farm in question several times changed hands by sale. 

 Some of the purchasers let it to tenants. The words used of the persons 

 who actually farmed it from time to time are the usual ones, ejecopyei 

 elpydcraro etc. That these tenants were not merely avrovpyoi, but 

 employers of labour, may fairly be guessed from the case of the 

 present tenant, accused of sacrilege. He at least is an owner of 

 slaves, and argues 4 that he could never have been so mad as to put 

 himself at their mercy. They would have witnessed his sacrilege, 

 and could have won their freedom by informing against their master. 

 Isocrates 5 draws no real distinction between serfs and slaves in the 

 case of Sparta. Here too the slave was dangerous, though in a 

 different way: but he was on the land. A fragment of Isaeus' 

 runs 'he left on the farm old men and cripples.' The context is 

 lost, but the persons referred to must surely be slaves: no one would 

 employ wage-labour of this quality. In another place he casually men- 

 tions 7 the sale of a flock of goats with the goatherd. These little scraps 

 of evidence all serve to strengthen the impression, derived from other 

 sources, of slave-labour as the backbone of Attic agriculture in this 

 period. To free labour there are very few references, and none of these 

 seem to have any connexion with agriculture. This does not prove 



1 Andocides de pace 15 p 25, 36 p 28. 2 Isocr de pace 92 p 177. 



3 Lysias vn especially 4-11 pp 108-9. * Lysias vn 16 p 109. 



6 See especially the Archidamus 8, 28, 87, 88, 96, 97. 



6 Isaeus fragm 3 Scheibe. 1 i saeus V i 33 <rbv 



