i io Wage-earners, free or slave 



is contemptuously referred to as a mere hireling. Such was 

 the common attitude towards poor freemen who lived by wage-earning 

 labour, 6rjre<; in short. But is it clear that the /uo-flwro? is necessarily 

 a freeman ? The passage cited above from an earlier speech makes it 

 doubtful. If a gang of slaves could contract to cut and carry a crop 

 (Bepos fuo-QoivTo K0pL<rai\ their owner acting for them, surely they 

 were strictly pia-Q&Tol from the point of view of the farmer who hired 

 them. They were avSpaTro&a /jLia-Oofapovvra, to use the exact Greek 

 phrase. In the speech against Timotheus an even more notable passage 1 

 (362 BC) occurs. Speaking of some copper said to have been taken in 

 pledge for a debt, the speaker asks 'Who were the persons that brought 

 the copper to my father's house ? Were they hired men (fjuo-Qcoroi), 

 or slaves (oltcercu)?' Here, at first sight, we seem to have the hireling 

 clearly marked off as free. For the argument 2 proceeds 'or which of 

 my slave-household (r&v oltcer&v rwv ep&v) took delivery of the 

 copper? If slaves brought it, then the defendant ought to have handed 

 them over (for torture) : if hired men, he should have demanded our 

 slave who received and weighed it.' Strictly speaking, slaves, in status 

 SovXoi, are olicerai? in relation to their owner, of whose olicLa they form 

 a part. But if A in a transaction with B employed some slaves whom 

 he hired for the purpose from C (C being in no way personally 

 involved in the case), would not these 4 be fjuo-Qcoroi, in the sense that 

 they were not his own ol/cerai, but procured by /uo-005 for the job? It 

 is perhaps safer to assume that in the case before us the hirelings 

 meant by the speaker are freemen, but I do not think it can be con- 

 sidered certain. Does not their exemption from liability to torture 

 prove it ? I think not, unless we are to assume that the slaves hired 

 from a third person, not a party in the case, could be legally put to 

 question. That this was so, I can find no evidence, nor is it probable. 

 The regular practice was this: either a party offered his slaves for ex- 

 amination under torture, or he did not. If he did not, a challenge 

 (7rpoK\7)a-L<i) was addressed to him by his opponent, demanding their 

 surrender for the purpose. But to demand the slaves of any owner, 

 not a party in the case, was a very different thing, and I cannot dis- 

 cover the existence of any such right. I am not speaking of state 

 trials, in which the claims of the public safety might override private 



1 [Dem] c Timoth 51 p 1199. 2 Ibid 5 2 - 



3 Of course ol^rijs is often loosely used as merely 'slave.' But here the antithesis seems 

 to gain point from strict use. 



4 I have not found this question distinctly stated anywhere. Beauchet Droit prive iv 222 

 treats the /uo-0wroJ of this passage as freemen. But in II 443 he says that slaves hired from 

 their owners were generally designated /wo-flwrof. Nor do I find the point touched in Meier- 

 Schomann-Lipsius (edition 1883-7, pp 889 foil), or any evidence that the 7r/)6/c\7;<rts could be 

 addressed to others than parties in a case. Wallon I 322 foil also gives no help. 



