io6 Large landed estates 



Athenian citizens, aliens were debarred from what was sometimes a 

 convenient form 1 of investment. If the possible return on capital sa 

 placed was lower than in more speculative ventures, the risk of total 

 loss was certainly much less, of partial loss comparatively small.. 

 Moreover it gave the owner a certain importance 2 as a citizen of known 

 substance. It enabled a rich man to vary 3 his investments, as references 

 to mixed estates shew. And he had a choice of policies in dealing 

 with it: he could reside on his own property and superintend the 

 management himself, or entrust the charge to a steward, or let it to a 

 tenant. And, if at any time he wanted ready money for some purpose, 

 he could raise it by a mortgage on favourable terms. If the land lay 

 in a pleasant spot not too far from the city, he was tempted to make 

 himself a 'place in the country' for his own occasional retirement and 

 the entertainment of friends. That landowning presented itself to- 

 Athenians of the Demosthenic period in the aspects just sketched is 

 manifest from the speeches belonging to the years from 369 to 322 BC. 

 Of the small working farmer there is very little trace. But that some 

 demand for farms existed seems indicated by the cleruchs sent to the 

 Chersonese and Samos. No doubt these were meant to serve as resident 

 garrisons at important points, and it is not to be supposed that they 

 were dependent solely on their own labour for tillage of their lots. 

 Another kind of land-hunger speaks for itself. The wars and wastings 

 of this period placed large areas of land at the disposal of conquerors. 

 Olynthian, Phocian, Boeotian territory was at one time or another 

 confiscated and granted out as reward for this or that service. No 

 reproaches of Demosthenes are more bitter than the references to these 

 cruel and cynical measures of Philip's corrupting policy. Individuals 

 shared 4 these and other spoils: the estates of Aeschines and Philocrates 

 in Phocis, and later of Aeschines in Boeotia, are held up as the shame- 

 ful wages of treachery. These estates can only have been worked by 

 slave-labour under stewards, for politicians in Athens could not reside 

 abroad. They are specimens of the large-scale agriculture to which the 

 circumstances of the age were favourable. 



A dispute arising out of a case of challenge to exchange properties* 

 (avriSoo-i*:), in order to decide which party was liable for performance 

 of burdensome state-services, gives us a glimpse of a large holding in 

 Attica. It belongs to 330 BC or later. The farm is an eczema, that is 



1 A good case of such investment by guardians is Dem Nausim 7 p 986. 



2 Dem F Leg 314 p 442, elra yeupyeis tic TOIJTUV Kal <rfj.vbs ytyova.*. 



3 See cases in Aeschines Timarch 97 p 13, Dem pro Phorm 4, 5 p 945. The 

 inheritance of Demosthenes himself included no landed property, c Aphob I 9-11 

 p8i6. 



4 Dem F Leg 146 p 386, cf 114 p 376, 265 p 426, de cor 41 p 239. 



5 [Dem] c Phaenipp 5-7 pp 1040-1. 



