1 1 6 Rustic characters and attributes 



Herodas, which illustrate, probably with truth, the shadier sides of urban 

 life in cities of the period, which Theocritus ignores. 



It is in a miniature epic 1 of mythological setting that we find the 

 most direct references to tillage of the soil combined with the keeping 

 of live stock general agriculture, in short. We read of the plowman 2 

 in charge of the crops, of the hard-working diggers 3 (^vroa-icd^oi ol 

 7ro\vpjoi), of the herdsmen 4 , of an overseer 6 or steward (ala-v/jLvrjrrj^). 

 The staff seems to consist entirely of slaves. But it is not easy to say 

 how far the picture is meant as a reproduction of the primitive labour- 

 conditions of the traditional Heroic age, how far the details may be 

 coloured by the conditions of Theocritus' own day. In the Idylls we 

 find a shepherd, free presumably, in charge of a flock the property 6 of 

 his father. On the other hand epiOaicls in one passage 7 seems not to 

 be a wage-earner, but a black slave. The epyaTijs of the tenth idyll 8 is 

 probably a free man, but he is enamoured of a slave girl. No con- 

 clusion can be drawn from a reference 9 to coarse but filling food meant 

 for labourers. Roughness and a certain squalor are conventional rustic 

 attributes: a town-bred girl repulses the advances of a herdsman 10 with 

 the remark ' I'm not used to kiss rustics, but to press town-bred lips/ 

 and adds further detail. Nor is the mention of Thessalian 11 serfs 

 (neveo-rat,) in the panegyric of Hiero anything more than a part of the 

 poet's apparatus. And the reference 12 to the visit of Augeas to his 

 estate, followed by a comment on the value of the master's personal 

 attention to his own interests, is a touch of truism common to all 

 peoples in every age. To Theocritus, the one poet of learned Alex- 

 andria who had high poetic genius, the life and labour of farmers was 

 evidently a matter of little or no concern. He could hardly idealize 

 the Egyptian fellah. And the one passage 13 in which he directly illus- 

 trates the position of the Greek contemporary farmer is significant. 

 Discontented owing to a disappointment in love, the man is encouraged 

 by his friend to enter the service of the generous Ptolemy as a mer- 

 cenary soldier. 



One or two small references may be gleaned from the Characters 

 of Aristotle's successor Theophrastus. That the bulk of these typical 

 portraits are drawn from town-folk is only to be expected, but this 

 point is not to be pressed overmuch, for philosophers did not frequent 

 country districts. The general references to treatment of slaves, the 

 slave-market, and so forth, are merely interesting as illustrative of the 

 general prevalence of slavery, chiefly of course in Athens. But we do 



1 xxv. 2 xxv i, 51. s xxv 27, cf xxiv 137. 



4 xxv 86-152. 5 xxv 47-8. 6 vii 15-6. 



7 in 35, cf xv 80. 8 x 9, cf i, xxi 3. 9 xxiv 136-7. 



10 xx 3, 4. n xvi 34-5. 12 xxv 56 _ 9 . 



13 Xiv 58-9, cf 13, 56, where ffTparubras is a professional soldier. 



