towards a

only from

towards their slaves, it may be found in a passage in Elian.' He has preserved a tradition, that when an earthquake damaged their city, popular opinion in Greece esteemed it a direct judgment from heaven, in consequence of this very inhumanity. Now, independent of the truth or the reasonableness of this opinion, its very existence is a curious fact. The treatment of slaves must have been very bad to have been noticed at all; but to have excited such a strong and general feeling of condemnation, it must have been monstrous. For in general, the deliberate sentiments of the more educated minds combined with the prejudices of the vulgar; they agreed, that this despised race had forfeited the rights of man. Philosophy made her speculations, and Any legislation her enactments, as if they had ceased to be rational beings. humanity Accordingly, the very tender mercies of Grecian law towards them slave shown were cruel. The favour which public opinion extended to them was self-interest. conveyed in the language of insult: the very privileges it conceded became an additional mark of degradation. The legislator, who protected them from certain acts of violence, was careful to add, that he did it not for their sakes, but for their master's: if he advises the citizen to abstain from insulting his slaves, it is because such selfcommand proves his genuine love of justice, and promotes the cultivation of his own moral virtue. Still the slave was to be managed, not by advice, like a freeman, but by castigation, because Zeus was supposed to have taken away half his understanding. Again, he was a sort of living tool; his work, like the work of a shuttle, consisted in production; the exercise of reason is beyond his power, but he is competent to obey it, and herein, chiefly, he differs from tame animals; but he performs the same labours, and for his own advantage becomes the property of his superiors. It is clear, that in the eye of a Grecian legislator, a cast-iron image which could have worked by steam, would have been thought more valuable property than a slave; for it would have eaten less, and lasted longer.

Athens

The number of these wretched beings in Attica was immense; Slaves at they bore to the free inhabitants the proportion of about three to one.7 employed in The greater part were imported, for it was found more economical to handicraft. buy than to breed; a capitation tax of three oboli a year was levied on them by the state. Even many of the poorer citizens had one. A little higher in the scale of society, several were employed in domestic purposes, in trades, and as mechanics. At Rome, slaves

"I would kill thee," said Charillus to a Helot, "were I not in a passion." (Plut. Apoph. St. John, vol. iii. p. 40.) Sceledrus, a slave in Plautus, says— Pray, spare your threats, I know the gallows waits me

A sepulchre where all my ancestors

Have gone before me, father, grandfather.

Braggard Captain, Act. 2, Sc. 8.-Thornton.

Slaves at
Athens.

Their

condition, therefore,

more

tolerable.

were a luxury and the outward sign of wealth: in Greece, they were the investment of capital and returned interest. Trade of any kind was at no time much respected. The Athenians would advance money to others for carrying on mercantile concerns, but it was held dishonourable to take part in them personally. Demosthenes inherited fifty-two slaves from his father, some of whom were swordmakers and chairmakers. Nicias had a thousand, of whom many worked in the mines; these he farmed out at an obolus apiece per day; he who hired them, undertaking to provide them food, and keep up their number. The interest on their value, including the rent of the mines, is computed at about 47 per cent. The price of a slave, skilled in handicraft, might be about five minæ, while an ordinary one would cost two; and a female player on the harp, twenty or thirty. Still, slavery appeared at Athens in a milder form than elsewhere; insomuch, that Demosthenes makes it the groundwork of a glowing panegyric upon his country; having cited a law which forbade the striking a slave, he adds, "You hear, Athenians, the humanity of the law, which prevents the offering insult even to a slave. What in the name of the gods, do you think would be the sentiments of those nations, from whom slaves are purchased into Greece, should they be told that there were certain Greeks, men so gentle and humane, that, notwithstanding the accumulated injuries received from barbarians, and a natural and hereditary enmity to their race, yet did not allow these enemies to be ill-treated, even in servitude. The account, however, of this philanthropy, which the orator apparently thought so wonderful, must be received with caution. The state hai not the power to protect the slave altogether from the caprice and cruelty of individuals; and in judicial proceedings, where it had the power, it had not the will. "Take the slave," says one of the characters in a comedy of Aristophanēs, “put him in the stocks, harg him up, flog him with a scourge of hog's bristles, flay him, put him on the rack, pour vinegar into his nose.' "I might as well," says a landed proprietor, in one of the letters of Alciphron, “I might s well keep a wolf as that accursed slave; he kills all my goats; some he sells, some he eats, consuming them until his inordinate appetite is quite oppressed by indigestion. The fold is neglected while he is playing the lute and the pipe, and indulging himself at the perfumer's If I can catch him, his hands shall be tied; he shall be heavily clogged, and the spade, the rake, and the prong shall drive out his luxurio notions, and teach him what rustic temperance is." The law did, indeed, forbid an Athenian to strike the slaves of another (just as it forbade him to drive or kill his neighbour's cattle); but, if evidence was wanted in court, torture was unsparingly applied. "Let my adversary," says Demosthenes," "prove this point in question between

974

Bekker's Charicles, Excursus, Scene 4, p. 221. 2 Boeckh, vol. i, 53, et seq.

4

Ranæ, 620.

Gillies, Arist. Pol, vol. ii, 37, note. 5 Lib. iii. Ep. 23. Dem, in Near.

us, by submitting his female slaves to the torment; and if they are damaged, I will pay for the injury done." The refusal of this reasonable request, the speaker seems to consider equivalent to a confession of guilt. Such circumstances are common in the Greek orators, and the insight they give us into the scenes of domestic life may diminish our admiration of these men, so gentle and humane." It must, however, be allowed, that the sufferings of servitude were worse in other states. At Athens, the slaves, as a body constituted an Slaves served important part of society; their services were valuable in the business in the fleet, and the battles of a commercial and naval republic. Those who fought at the engagement of Arginusæ received their enfranchisement as the reward of their valour; the same gift had also been bestowed on others, who had deserved it by the same exertions at an earlier period of the Peloponnesian war. Besides, their treatment at home was less degrading; no particular dress distinguished them from and had some political citizens. Under oppression, the temple of Theseus was their refuge; rights. they had the right of appeal to the local authorities, and those who could acquire property might purchase their freedom. The sense of their own importance to the state made them impertinent as a body, while to their own masters, they were by turns servile or insolent; at one time threatened with the lash, or crucifixion, for their dishonesty; at another time, courted for those arts of cunning and intrigue which made them useful in ministering to the vices, or promoting the interests, of their owners. Such, at least, is the character of the Greek slave in the dramas of Plautus; and, as these are a transcript of the old Greek comedy, the representatation is probably

correct.

Domestic

manners of the Greeks,

SECTION V.

THE view which we, who have descended so far down the stream of time, are enabled to take of the structure of Grecian society, may be compared to that distant prospect of a country which a mariter enjoys, while he navigates along its coasts. Occasionally a valley or bay may lay open the interior, and his view may be extensive and distinct: bright lights falling on particular objects, may bring them into strong relief, and mark their outline with exactness. Much, however, is altogether concealed, and of that which is seen, much is necessarily indistinct. Researches into Grecian manners are attended with similar disadvantages; information on the subject is scanty and scantily illus- unconnected; for there are not, and it is probable there never were, their litera- any portions of Grecian literature which correspond with those departments from whence the domestic manners of modern times may be so copiously illustrated. This species of composition presupposes a reading public, which had no existence in Athens: even as late as the time of Plato the trade in books was small; those also who were willing to undertake the labour of writing, when circulation was slow and limited, profits inconsiderable, and reputation remote, commonly chose graver subjects. The most spirited general sketch of the morals of the age, namely, the account of the Corcyrian sedition, is intro

trated by

ture.

66

994

political.

duced as part of the history of the Peloponnesian war; the most minute details we possess respecting the family of an Athenian gentleman are connected with a philosophical discussion on the use of property. Neither the one subject nor the other would have been treated on its own account. The Athenians had no biographical memoirs, essays, novels, nor journals, for they were not a reading people; though the tender sentiment expressed itself by kaλòs, or Kaln, with the name of the loved one on the walls and pillars of the market and Cerameicus'; but, as they were a seeing, hearing, and play-frequenting nation, they had comedies in abundance. The character of these compositions, as they were more or less offensively The old personal and political, has suggested an arrangement of them, under comedy, three heads, the old comedy, the middle, and the new. In each department, authors were numerous.3 Though the new comedy developed itself and flourished only in the short interval between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the first successors of Alexander The new comedy, the Great, yet the stock of pieces amounted to thousands." The cha- domestic. racters of social life at Athens at that time, as it is reflected to us in the theatrical mirror, are the austere and stingy, or the mild and easy father, the latter not unfrequently afraid of his wife, and making common cause with the son against her; the housewife either loving or domineering-the young man giddy and extravagant, yet frank and amiable the courtesan the simple or cunning slave who assists his young master to deceive the father: the flatterer, the sycophant who stirs up lawsuits and offers to conduct them-the gasconading soldier boasting his exploits in foreign wars— -the dealer in female slaves-the buffoon, jesting on himself and others. Such were the characters :5 the plot was occasionally something of this sort-a young man, citizen of Athens, falls in love with a young woman whom he must not E marry because she is apparently not free-born: as the action of the 1 comedy is unfolded, it turns out that she was exposed in infancy by her parents, and is by birth an Athenian citizen-thereupon the parties marry.

The genius of some comic authors must have been wonderfully Numerous productions prolific. Antiphanes has the credit of 290 dramas; Alexis of 245; of the comic Philemon, who was second only to Menander, of 97. The titles writers. which remain of these, and others, sufficient indicate the nature and extent of our loss. Such comedies as the Gamesters, the Nuptials, Sappho, the Parasite, the Glutton, the Poor Men, the Pædagogues, Woman's Love and Woman's Tyranny, the Philosopher's Cloak, I would have shed a light upon domestic manners, which it is vain to 1 Bekker, Scene 11.

Of the old comedy, 52; of the middle, 34; of the new, 20. Int. Fast. Hell. 3 Plays of the old comedy were 365; of the middle, 617; nay, Athenæus says that he himself had read above 800 plays of the middle comedy.-Bentley.