io8 Quarrels of neighbours 



with their property-tax, do the state less wrong than the rogues who 

 embezzle public funds.' But he does not say that there were many 

 such worthy citizen-farmers, nor does he (I think) imply it. In a 

 similar passage 1 three years later he classes them with merchants, 

 mining speculators, and other men in businesses, as better citizens than 

 the corrupt politicians. Such references are far too indefinite, and too 

 dependent on the rhetorical needs of the moment, to tell us much. In 

 one of the earlier private speeches 2 Demosthenes deals with a dispute 

 of a kind probably common. It is a neighbours' quarrel over a wall, 

 a watercourse, and right of way. To all appearance the farms interested 

 in the rights and wrongs were not large holdings. They were evidently 

 in a hilly district. The one to protect which from floods the offending 

 wall had been built had at one time belonged to a ' town-bred 3 man ' 

 who disliked the place, neglected it, and sold it to the father of 

 Demosthenes' client. There is nothing to shew that this farm was the 

 whole of the present owner's estate : so that it is hardly possible to 

 classify him economically with any exactitude. We do by chance learn 

 that he had a staff of slaves, and that vines and fig-trees grew on the 

 land. 



The author of one of the earlier speeches 4 (between 368 and 365 

 Be) furnishes much more detail in connexion with estates of what was 

 apparently a more ordinary type. Neighbours are quarrelling as usual, 

 and we have of course only ex parte statements. The farms, worked 

 by slave-labour, produce vines and olives and probably some corn also. 

 The enclosure and tending of valuable plants is represented as kept 

 up to a high standard. Incidentally we learn that the staff used to 

 contract 5 for the gathering of fruit (oircopav) or the reaping and carry- 

 ing of other crops (Oepos ctcdepio-ai,), clearly on other estates. The 

 contract was always made by a person named, who is thereby proved 

 to have been the real owner of these slaves, a point in the case. Accord- 

 ing to his own account, the speaker had for some time been settled 

 (fcarwtcovv) on the estate. That is, he had a house there and would 

 sometimes be in residence. The amenities of the place are indicated 

 by the mention of his young rose-garden, which was ravaged by tres- 

 passers, as were his olives and vines. The house from which they 

 carried off 'all the furniture, worth more than 20 minas,' seems to have 

 been in Athens, and the mention of the lodging-house (o-vvoi/cia) that 

 he mortgaged for 16 minas shews that his estate was a mixed one. 

 Country houses were no exceptional thing. A mining speculator speaks 

 of an opponent 6 as coming to his house in the country and intruding 



1 Dem Aristocr 146 p 668. 2 Dem c Callicl passim. 



3 farriKov, Dem Callicl % n p 1274. 4 [Dem] Nicostr passim. 



5 [Dem] Nicostr 21 p 1253. 6 Dem Pantaen 45 p 979. 



