330 Brigands. Soldiery 



treachery) of the rich owner's slaves. Murder is to them a mere trifle, 

 and their ingenuity in torturing is fiendish. No doubt their activities 

 are somewhat exaggerated as a convenient part of the machinery of 

 the story, but the lament of Plutarch and the Euboic idyll of Dion 

 forbid us to regard these brigand-scenes as pure fiction. They are 

 another side of the same picture of distressful Greece. Nor is the 

 impression produced thereby at all weakened by a specimen of military 1 

 insolence. Greece was not a Province in which a large army was kept, 

 but all Governors had some armed force to support their authority. 

 The story introduces the ass with his present owner, a gardener, on 

 his back. They are met by a swaggering bully of a soldier, who in- 

 quires where they are going. He asks this in Latin. The gardener 

 makes no reply, not knowing Latin. The angry soldier knocks him 

 off the ass, and repeats his question in Greek. On being told that 

 they are on their way to the nearest town, he seizes the ass on the 

 pretext of being wanted for fatigue duty in the service of the Governor, 

 and will listen to no entreaties. Just as he is preparing to break the 

 gardener's skull, the gardener trips him up and pounds him to some 

 purpose. He shams dead, while the gardener hurries off and takes 

 refuge with a friend in the town. The soldier follows, and stirs up his 

 mates, who induce the local magistrates to take up the matter and 

 give them satisfaction. The gardener's retreat is betrayed by a neigh- 

 bour, and clever concealment nullified by an indiscretion of the ass. 

 The wretched gardener is found and haled off to prison awaiting 

 execution, while the soldier takes possession of the ass. This story 

 again is surely not grotesque and incredible fiction. More likely it is 

 made up from details heard by the African during his sojourn in 

 Greece. If scenes of this kind were possible, the outlook of humble 

 rustics 2 can hardly have been a cheerful one. 



That perils of robbers and military insolence were not the only 

 troubles of the countryside, is shewn by the following anecdote 3 describ- 

 ing the brutal encroachments of a big landlord on poorer neighbours. 

 A landowner, apparently a man of moderate means, had three sons, 

 well-educated and well-behaved youths, who were close friends of a 

 poor man with a little cottage of his own. Bordering on this man's 

 little holding was the large and fertile landed estate belonging to a 

 rich and powerful neighbour in the prime of life. This rich man, 

 turning the fame of his ancestors to bad account, strong in the support 



1 Metam ix 39-42. 



2 It seems certain that the convenience of humble rustics was little regarded by the upper 

 classes. Even Marcus Aurelius (in Fronto p 35 Naber) confesses to the reckless scattering of 

 a flock of sheep and to having been taken for a mounted brigand. 



3 Metam IX 35-8. This is a case of periculum mortis ab hominis potentis crudelitate out 

 odt'o, referred to Digest xxxix 6 3 [Paulus] as a risk like that of war or brigandage. 



