Peloponnesian population 129 



served by Plutarch lies in the discovery that, compared with athletes, 

 husbandmen are better military material. 



The conclusions of Beloch 1 as to the population of Peloponnesus in 

 this period call for serious consideration. His opinion is that the number 

 capable of bearing arms declined somewhat since the middle of the 

 fourth century, though the wholesale emancipation of Spartan Helots 

 must be reckoned as an addition. But on the whole the free population 

 was at the beginning of the second century about equal to the joint 

 total of free and Helot population at the end of the fifth century. On 

 the other hand, the slave population had in the interval greatly in- 

 creased. He points to the importance of a slave corps 2 in the defence 

 of Megalopolis when besieged in 3i8BC: to the Roman and Italian 3 

 slaves (prisoners sold by Hannibal) in Achaean territory, found and 

 released in 19460, some 1200 in number: and to the levy 4 of manu- 

 mitted home-born slaves in 'the last struggle of the League against 

 Rome. I must say that this evidence, taken by itself, hardly seems 

 enough to sustain the great historian's broad conclusion. But many of 

 the passages cited in preceding sections lend it support, and I am 

 therefore not disposed to challenge its general probability. It may be 

 added that increase in the number of slaves suggests an increase of large 

 holdings cultivated by slave labour ; and that the breeding of home- 

 born (olicoyeveis) slaves could be more easily practised by owners of a 

 large staff than on a small scale. Moreover the loss of slaves levied 

 for war purposes would fall chiefly on their wealthy owners. The men 

 of property were rightly or wrongly suspected of leaning to Rome, and 

 were not likely to be spared by the demagogues who presided over the 

 last frantic efforts of 'freedom' in Greece. The truth seems to be that 

 circumstances were more and more unfavourable to the existence of 

 free husbandmen on small farms, the very class of whose solid merits 

 statesmen and philosophers had shewn warm appreciation. The division 

 between the Rich, who wanted to keep what they had and get more, 

 and the Poor, who wanted to take the property of the Rich, was the 

 one ever-significant fact. And the establishment of Roman supremacy 

 settled the question for centuries to come. Roman capitalism, hastening 

 to exploit the world for its own ends, had no mercy for the small in- 

 dependent worker in any department of life. In Greece under the sway 

 of Rome there is no doubt that free population declined, and the state 

 of agriculture went from bad to worse. 



At this point, when the Greek world passes under the sway of Rome, 

 it is necessary to pause and turn back to consider the fragmentary 



1 Bevolkerung der Gnechisch-Romischen Welt pp 156-8. 



2 Diodorus xvni 70 i. 3 Livy xxxiv 50, Plut Flamininus 13. 

 4 Polyb xxxix 8 1-5. 



H. A. Q 



