Book IV.
Chap. 8.Agriculture was likewsfe a servile profession, and generally practised by the inhabitants of conquered countries. Such as the Helotes among the Lacedaemonians, the Periecians among the Cretans, the Penestes among the Thessalians, and other conquered[1] people in other republics.
In fine, every kind of low commerce[2] was infamous among the Greeks; as it obliged a citizen to serve and wait on a slave, on a lodger, or a stranger. This was a notion that clashed with the spirit of Greek liberty: hence Plato[3] in his laws orders a citizen to be punished it he attempted to concern himself with trade.
Thus in the Greek republics the magistrates were extremely embarrassed. They would not have the citizens apply themselves to trade, to agriculture, or to the arts; and yet they would not have them idle[4]. They found therefore employment for them in gymnic and military exercises; and none else were allowed by their institution[5]. Hence the Greeks must be considered as a society of wrestlers and boxers. Now these exercises having a natural tendency to render people hardy and fierce, there was a necessity for tempering them with
- ↑ Plato likewise and Aristotle require slaves to till the land, Laws Book 5. Polit. Book 7. c. 10. True it is that agriculture was not every where exercised by slaves: on the contrary, Aristotle observes, the best republics were those in which the citizens themselves tilled the land: but this was brought about by the corruption of the ancient governments, which were become democratical: for in earlier times the cities of Greece were subject to an aristocratic government.
- ↑ Cauponatio.
- ↑ Book 2.
- ↑ Arist. Polit. lib. 10.
- ↑ Ars corporum exercendorum gymnastica, variis certaminibus terendorum paedotribica. Aristot. Polit. 1. 8. c. 3.
