30 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



ground, the harvest would very often fall to the foe, whereas cattle 

 could on an alarm be driven to a place of safety. We read of kings' 

 sons who were herdsmen and shepherds, such as Paris and Gany- 

 medes and Anchises. In some instances, too, they are represented as 

 engaged in agriculture. In the stately scenes of the Homeric shield, 

 while the reapers cut and bind the corn the master stands by, leaning 

 on his staff and rejoicing in his heart. But the aged Laertes, father 

 of Odysseus, is found by that hero clad in skins labouring in digging 

 his own land. And the story goes that when the chiefs came to fetch 

 Odysseus himself to the war against Troy they found him, like Cin- 

 cinnatus, occupied in ploughing. 



It is probable that the downfall of the Achaean race was followed 

 by a time of greater simplicity, when the aristocracy of the Greek 

 tribes lived on their estates in the midst of slaves and retainers, as did 

 the wealthy inhabitants of Elis even in the time of the Achaean 

 League. But Greek civic life began to develop with irresistible 

 attraction. The rich thronged into cities, and left the work of their 

 farms to bailiffs and slaves. There were in particular two states 

 wherein the country life fell into the background Athens and Sparta. 

 But even at Athens, although the witty and luxurious citizens ridi- 

 culed the yeoman as a lout, they could not deny his solid virtues. 



In the rural life of Greece we find traces of archaic customs which 

 belonged to the entire Aryan race. The house, together with the 

 field surrounding it, which was marked off by terminal stones, was 

 the original domain of the self-contained Aryan family, within which 

 the head of each family was supreme. Hence the possession was long 

 considered necessary for the citizen, and always until the present day 

 property in land has been more highly valued and has conferred 

 greater distinction than any other class of wealth. 



As a whole, Greece is a country by no means favourable to agri- 

 culture. The country is mostly rocky, barren, and uneven, especially 

 unsuited for large farms. The system of farming was that adapted 

 to peasant proprietors or yeomen. There can be no doubt that agri- 

 culture in Attica suffered more and more as time went on, though to 

 a less degree than that of Italy in imperial times, from the competi- 

 tion of richer soils. Great cargoes of corn from Egypt and Sicily and 

 the Black Sea constantly arrived in the Piraeus, and the people of 

 Athens learned the fatal lesson that it was easier to buy agricultural 

 produce with money wrung from the allies or extracted from the mines 

 of Laurium than to grow it on the rugged soil'around Athens. Grass- 



