M 



DISCOVERY 



by wireless, ami partly by line. It was in this nuinner 

 that President Wilson when at sea, returning to the 

 United States after the Peace Conference, received 

 telephone messages from his Ministers at Washington, 

 and more recently business conversations have been 

 conducted from this country in the same way with 

 aircraft Hying to Paris. 



A limitation to wireless not mentioned above, as 

 compared with line telephony at present, is that the 

 receiver cannot break in when the sender is speaking — 

 that is to say, the listener must wait until the speaker 

 has finished before he switches over to his speaking 

 apparatus. This point need not, however, be dis- 

 cussed here, as, although it is just now a serious dis- 

 advantage, it will certainly be remedied before very 

 long. 



When consideration is given to the present achieve- 

 ments of wireless telephony in light of the fact that 

 the whole subject is in its infancy, it is easy to foresee 

 very great possibilities, even if we cannot quite reach 

 those heights of technical imagination so easilj- scaled 

 bv the dailv Press. 



Land and Sea in Greek 

 Life 



By W. R. Halliday, B.A., B.Litt. 



Pro/cssor of Ancicnl Ilislorij in lite Uniucrsily <>/ Liverpool 



In theory at least we are accustomed to derive the 

 .city state of the ancient world from an agricultural 

 origin ; and, in fact, the smal' farmer in early Greece 

 and Rome formed the backbone alike of the State and 

 its armies. It was the peasant proprietor who de- 

 feated the Persian at Marathon at the outset of the 

 fifth century B.C., who conquered Italy for Rome and 

 defeated Hannibal in the third. But both in Greece 

 and Rome, as civilisation developed and became more 

 complex, the peasant farmer tended to disappear, and 

 small-holdings were squeezed out by estates owned by 

 capitalists and worked by gangs of slaves. The attrac- 

 tions of city life helped to drain the rural districts ; 

 and sharp-witted townsmen, then as now, affected to 

 despise the country bumpkin." On moral and senti- 

 mental grounds the process was to be regretted. At 

 Rome its attendant evils were aggravated by slavery, 



' "Forgive me; I'm an awkward country fool," says 

 Strcpsiadcs when abused for kicking the door of Socrates" 

 Thinking Shop (Aristophanes' Clouds, 1. 137, trans. Rogers 

 I3i-ll & Sons, igig. 2s.). For the growing contempt of the 

 townsmen for the rustic, se(> Thcophrastus, xiv, with Jebb's 

 notes and references. 



which transformed the peasant ptjpulation into a 

 parasitic proletariat of " mean whites," and its results 

 were disastrous ; it was due, however, to an economic 

 necessity which the tinkering of reformers was power- 

 less to alter. For the development of large grazing 

 istates with their sum Tier and winter pastures, and 

 the cultivation of products other than com which 

 involved capital outlay, were economically sounder 

 than the system of corn-growing peasant holdings in 

 a society which had reached a capitalistic stage. 

 In Greece this development did not operate on so 

 large a scale, nor were its results so severely felt ; but, 

 none the less, in fourth-century .Athens the peasant 

 proprietor was disappearing. Attica had been ruined 

 by the ravages of the Peloponnesian War ; and the 

 agricultural revival preached by Xenophon was to be 

 carried out by men of capital like Ischomachus and 

 his father, who could buy up ruined property cheap 

 and work their estate with an overseer and slaves.* 



The Romans never liked the sea, and it was only 

 the sheer military necessities of the Punic War in the 

 third centurj' B.C. that compelled them for the first 

 time to build a fleet. Indeed, the great Roman poet 

 Lucretius betrays the attitude of his countrymen 

 towards the sea when he opens the second book of his 

 poem on Nature by remarking that it is pleasant to 

 stand safely on the shore and watch less fortunate 

 people on the sea having a bad time. 



The Greeks, on the other hand, took early to the sea 

 and became a race of mariners and merchants. Nations, 

 like individuals, have to pay their way in the world. 

 The financial basis of Rome was the spoils of empire. 

 Successful wars concentrated the capital of the world 

 in her hands, and her conquered provinces had natural 

 resources which her citizens could exploit. Rome 

 came to live by financing and " developing." Greek 

 prosperity, on the other hand, was based upon sea- 

 borne commerce and the command of the carrying 

 trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. Seafaring was 

 congenial to the Greek temperament, and no doubt its 

 practice reacted upon national character. The same 

 adventurous daring as was shown bj' her mariners in 

 exploring unknown regions and uncharted seas was 

 displayed by her thinkers, scientists, and philosophers 

 in intellectual fields. That is why the Greeks came to 

 be the founders of Western civilisation. Agriculture 

 and seafaring, then, form the background of Greek 

 civilisation ; and these are occupations by which a 

 free man can worthily earn his living. For though 

 mining and manufacture play an increasingly impor- 

 tant part in Greek economics, the former was wholly, 

 and the latter mainly, carried out by slaves. The 



' See Xenophon, CEconoynicus. A translation by Dakyns 

 will be found in his Works of Xfiinphon, vol. iii, part I. p 197. 

 (Macmillan, 1897.) 



