Conditions in Euboea 301 



We live mostly by the chase, said the hunter, with very little tillage. 

 This croft (%a>/ot'oi>) does not belong to us either by inheritance or pur- 

 chase. Our fathers, though freemen, were poor like ourselves, just hired 

 herdsmen, in charge of the herds of a rich man who owned wide farm- 

 lands and all these mountains. When he died, his estate was confis- 

 cated : It is said that the emperor 1 made away with him to get his 

 property. Well, they drove off his live-stock for slaughter, and our few 

 oxen with them, and never paid our wages. So we did the best we 

 could, taking advantage of the resources of the neighbourhood in 

 summer and winter. Since childhood I have only once visited the 

 city 2 . A man turned up one day demanding money. We had none, 

 and I told him so on my oath. He bade me come with him to the city. 

 There I was arraigned before the mob as a squatter on the public land, 

 without a grant from the people, and without any payment. It was 

 hinted that we were wreckers, and had put together a fine property 

 through that wicked trade. We were said to have valuable farms and 

 abundance of flocks and herds, beasts of burden, slaves. But a wiser 

 speaker took a different line. He urged that those who turned the 

 public land to good account were public benefactors and deserved en- 

 couragement. He pointed out that two thirds of their territory was 

 lying waste through neglect and lack of population. He was himself 

 a large landowner: whoever was willing to cultivate his land was wel- 

 come to do so free of charge, indeed he would reward him for his 

 pains the improvement would be worth it. He proposed a plan for 

 inducing citizens to reclaim the derelict lands, rent-free for ten years, 

 and after that rented at a moderate share of the crops. To aliens less 

 favourable terms might be offered, but with a prospect of citizenship 

 in case of reclamation on a large scale. By such a policy the evils of 

 idleness and poverty would be got rid of. These considerations he en- 

 forced by pointing to the pitiful state of the city itself. Outside the 

 gates you find, not a suburb but a hideous desert. Within the walls we 

 grow crops and graze beasts on the sites of the gymnasium and the 

 market-place. Statues of gods and heroes are smothered in the grow- 

 ing corn. Yet we are forsooth to expel these hard-working folks and 

 to leave men nothing to do but to rob or steal. 



The rustic, being called upon to state his own case, described the 

 poverty of the squatter families, the innocence of their lives, their ser- 

 vices to shipwrecked seafarers, and so forth. On the last topic he 

 received a dramatic confirmation from a man in the crowd, who had 

 himself been one of a party of castaways hospitably relieved three years 

 before by these very people. So all ended well. The stress laid on the 



1 I think Nero is meant here. 



2 Mahaffy, Silver Age p 329, thinks Carystos is meant, though it might be Chalcis. 



