CHAP. VI. THE CLIENTS BECOME FREE. 851 during a series of four or five generations. It was hardly possible that men of the lower class could re- main in this unstable and anomalous position towards which an insensible progress had conducted them. One of two things was sure to follow : either, losing this- position, they must relapse into the bonds of an oner- ous clientship, or, completely freed by a still farther progress, they must rise to the rank of landed proprie- tors and free men. We can imagine all the efforts on the part of the la- borer, the former client, and all the resistance on the part of the proprietor, the former patron. It was not a civil war. The Athenian annals have not preserved the record of a single combat. It was a domestic war in each hamlet, in each house, from father to son. These struggles appear to have had various fortunes, according to the nature of the soil in different cantons in Altica. In the plain where the Eupatrid had his principal domain, and where he was always present, his authority over the little group of servants who were always under his eye remained almost intact; the Pedieis — or men of . the plain — therefore, generally showed themselves faithful to the old regime. But the Diacrii, — those who cultivated the sides of the moun- tain with severe toil, — being farther from the master, more habituated to an independent life, more hardy and more courageous, laid up in tlieir hearts a violent ha- tred for the Eupatrid, and a firm resolve to be free. These especially were the men who were indignant to see about the fields the "sacred bounds" of the mas- ter, and to feel that "their soil was enslaved." ' As to the inhabitants of the cantons near the sea, — the ' Solon, Ed. Bach, pp. 104, 105.
