IF the Greeks were able in a few centuries to achieve unequalled progress in every branch of human activity, it was because they settled in lands which had long been under the influence of an advanced civilization. From Crete to Mycenae the Bronze age had shone with a brilliant lustre and had sent abroad masterpieces made by the artists and craftsmen of a pre-Hellenic people.
In the four hundred years which pass before our eyes in the Iliad and the Odyssey memories of Mycenæan glory still abound, and yet all is beneath the sway of the warriors of the Northern hordes. The Achaeans of the poet wield swords and spears of bronze, but they know iron and forge it into pointed tools and even weapons. So at the beginning of the Homeric period two civilizations exist side by side, and among the last manifestations of a highly developed culture all kinds of primitive manners reveal themselves. But that happened which always happens when a rude society establishes itself by force in the midst of a higher society; we can say for the first time, in speaking of Greece, that the vanquished race conquered its savage conqueror. The invaders adapted themselves to new conditions of life. The pastoral folk, once settled, appreciated the advantages of agriculture. The families, hitherto grouped in tribes, took their place in cities, and without abandoning their old organization they had to modify it. From the XIIth century to the end of the VIIIth the Homeric poems show this transformation enacted before us. They show us the Greeks passing from an economic system, which was essentially that of the family, to that of the city.
The family (genos), as the Greeks first knew it, is an extensive group. All who own the same hero for ancestor remain united round the same hearth. Although they are married, the fifty sons and the twelve daughters of Priam dwell together under the paternal roof. While the family group has obligations towards the city, the individuals composing it depend on it alone. It keeps its autonomy, and has its own chief, its own worship, its own administration, and its own justice.
This political independence was only possible with economic independence. At first economy is, by the very etymology of the word, the management of the house. The family tries to be self-sufficient, to make its autonomy complete by autarkeia.1 Forests and pastures are open to all, but the family must have lands of its very own. Those who dwell under the same roof and eat at the same board possess a collective patrimony. The property of all belongs to each, and therefore to no one. For this very reason it is inalienable and indivisible, and the question of the succession does not arise. Whoever lives on the common property is strictly bound to contribute to the common work; if he refuses he is banned by the community. Since every piece of work is of general use, none is degrading. If the family takes on a few slaves, or occasionally engages outside labourers or craftsmen, the reason is that its members are not sufficiently numerous, or that certain tasks require a special capacity; but no occupation is despised as servile or mercenary.
Family economy is almost exclusively pastoral and agricultural. Where the land is good the family is rich; it harvests enough corn and owns enough live-stock to obtain the slaves which it needs and to induce craftsmen or traders to make or bring it valuable articles. Rich or poor, it can always add to the resources of its domain the profits of war, piracy and brigandage.
But the system of family economy cannot exist in all its purity; it is always contaminated by the need for seeking from elsewhere, in addition to supplementary labour, materials which the sub-soil does not yield everywhere. In Greece the system was destined to rapid transformation through the existence of the city. From Homeric times the genos begins to disintegrate and tends to split up into small families. On all sides ties are loosened. Younger sons and bastards protest against a vexatious inequality; young men of adventurous spirit cannot resign themselves to dull work; criminals are driven out* All these are individuals who come out of the traditional framework. Even when the breach has not yet taken place it is preparing; all have less inclination for the work and want a greater share of the returns, and all acquire a taste for comfort and luxury. So individualism is born, while the power of the city increases. Then it is inevitable that the economic system should be altered.
In the very bosom of collective property private property is formed. At first it is confined to acquests—movables* beasts, slaves, ships, ingots of metal, precious vases, arms, and clothing. But the man who means to live apart needs a house, and house property becomes individual. Finally appropriation is extended to the essential property, the soil. The city sets the example. In new settlements the allotment of lands takes no account of the family groups. When Nausithoos led the Phgeacians to the isle of Seheria, “he built the houses of the citizens and shared out the fields.” The peoples reward the chiefs by giving them a highly productive estate (a temenos). The public powers authorize or tolerate the clearings made by individuals on the waste land of the collective reservation (eschatie). The collective ownership of the family is also affected. The typical case in which a family dares for the first time to cut a part out of its undivided land is that in which the family of a guilty man gives him a portion, and thus clears itself from the responsibility for his acts which would otherwise fall on them all. But distribution is too much in conformity with the new ideas to be thus exceptional for long. In many families the collective system is abandoned joyfully, each receiving his portion or kleros by lot. A share can be split up again on every new succession. The heirs maintain their rights fiercely. “With measure in hand they contest the place of the landmarks which shall divide a common field, and dispute over the smallest plots of land, that the shares may be equal.” Everywhere the land becomes covered with signs of seizure by individuals—landmarks, ditches, fences, and hedges.
But appropriation is not yet complete or permanent. In the eschatie individuals have taken possession only of the most fertile portions. Most of the great gene obstinately maintain the rule of substitution. In certain countries public law extends to the property of the small family the prohibitions which custom formerly imposed upon the domain of the genos; the kleros, though transmissible on death, is indivisible and inalienable. Elsewhere the genos maintains an eminent domain over the lands of its members; each part may be split up indefinitely but must never leave the genos. Thus the system of collective family ownership persists to a great extent, whether it maintains its rigid principles within reduced limits or is reconciled with the system of individual property.
In any case the appropriation of the soil results in unequal distribution of landed property. Certain heads of families take advantage of the situation to declare themselves owners of the estates which their ancestors merely administered. The kings even come to regard themselves as absolute lords of the territory which they govern. At the head of the agrarian aristocracy the “kings of tribes” place themselves. We see the “king of a field” as he stands on a furrow and looks on at the harvest, leaning on his sceptre and surrounded by his heralds. By the side of these great lords the proprietors of a simple Icleros are very small folk. When an estate has been too much split up by a division on death the peasant painfully works a minute plot of land. And already there is a herd of unfortunates who no longer have a right to any portion of ground; they lead a wretched existence on the wages which they earn on the land of others or on the alms which they beg from door to door.
The growing importance of movable property at least gave these landless men a prospect of compensation. The craftsmen, the Demiourgoi, place their services at the disposal of the public and make an honest living. But these professionals are not very numerous* Furthermore certain adventurers go as pirates and bring home rich spoils. But there are not many of these forerunners of overseas trade, and they hasten to enter the landed aristocracy by marrying some “daughter of wealthy men.” In a society in which natural economy prevails movable property automatically goes to the families who own the land.
Wealth is already for the heroes of Homer a great power and a matter of pride* No doubt the chief pride of their heart is that they are sons of gods; but fortune also constitutes a social qualification. To assert his importance a man displays his family tree and the list of his goods. Diomede, after enumerating his ancestors to the fourth generation, declares that his father “owned a broad house, rich in treasures, and round about it fertile fields of wheat, orchards planted with trees, and countless herds.”
Livestock above all is desired, The rich man has numbers of oxen, horses, and sheep; a fertile land is the mother of many ewes. The herdsman Eumæos wishes to give an idea of the boundless resources of his master Odysseus, so he enumerates his flocks and herds and byres. As in all pastoral societies, war becomes reiving, and cattle form the usual means of exchange. Yet movable property already appears in the shape of treasure. In the great houses a large part of the ground-floor is arranged as a walled magazine, the thalamos. The palace of Odysseus contains one, which is high and broad. “There stand in rows against the wall the jars of old sweet wine,” and the vases which containu much scented oil”; there too are heaps of gold, bronze, and iron, rich stuffs crammed in coffers, rare arms, and fine chased cups. But such stores are not formed by trade or for trade. They show that the owner has brought from distant lands large shares of booty and splendid gifts from hospitable friends. Wealth is hoarded but not capitalized, for it sleeps and does not breed of itself.
We are therefore in a time when groups of the patriarchal type, smaller families, and isolated individuals all exist together, when collective ownership continues to exist by the side of personal ownership, when vast estates are surrounded by medium-sized fields and small plots, and when movable wealth allows industry to put in a timid appearance. What social and economic unity can exist then? Since the gene no longer comprise all the interests present, there is only one framework which suits all equally—the city. Formerly it was only a political association of tribes and gene; hence-forward it will possess a centre where all can meet for the mutual satisfaction of their needs. City economy is commencing.
An acropolis rises to ensure defence; it is-situated a little way from the shore, so as to be in touch with a port but out of reach of the sea-rovers. Below lies the agora, which is thronged on certain days by all who wish to exchange produce or services. These are the essential elements of the city. At an early date the institution is greatly extended. Crete is still the isle “of the hundred cities.” Agamemnon reserves for his daughter seven towns, all in the neighbourhood of Pylos. Menelaos owns enough cities in Argolis to think of offering one to Odysseus, exclusive of the transport elsewhere of the evicted inhabitants. The very fact that cities are so numerous, and can be given away or moved about so easily, proves that they are not as a rule agglomerations of any size. We must imagine them chiefly as small country towns. Farmers and herdsmen come to market to exchange their surplus for what they need.
Towards the end of the Homeric period the development of the towns already takes on very different dimensions at certain places. Great crowds seethe on the market-place of Ithaca. New classes come into being. Domestic industry now hardly suffices for any but the simplest operations; for more finished work more perfect tools and more constant practice are necessary, and so the craftsmen earn their living by working for others. At the same time the Greeks are visited with increasing frequency by foreign traders, always ready to transform themselves into pirates, while they themselves go to foreign lands to win by piracy the fortune which they will one day win by trade. Such is the progress of an urban economic system which is still impregnated with the family system but already shows the signs which forebode an international system.
Such is the reality which the poet adorns with magical colours when he depicts the life led by the Phseacians in Scheria. The city rises in the midst of fields, orchards, meadows, and copses crossed by a carriage road. The harbour is surrounded by slips. On a market-place hard by there are stores of rigging, masts, and oars. The palace has a marvellous appearance with its high porticoes and majestic halls; everywhere there are walls plated with brass and adorned with lapis lazuli, doors encrusted with gold and silver, statues of natural size, chased candelabras, and seats covered with purple. Beside the palace the garden yields vegetables and fruit in profusion. With the king Alcinoos dwell his wife Arete, his daughter Nausicaa, and his five sons, of whom two are married. Fifty captives do the work of the house. But the king’s family work too: Arete spends the whole day beside the hearth, turning the spindle with her women, Nausicaa goes to the washing-place with the servant-women, and her brothers load the waggon. As for the king, he gives orders, and goes and sits on his throne “to drink wine like an immortal.” For his palace serves both for the meetings of the Council and for the reception of strangers; every sitting is accompanied by a feast at which the “wine of honour” flows, and every ceremony is the occasion of a gorgeous banquet which ends with songs, gymnastic contests, and dances. A refined aristocracy seeks out delicate pleasures and savours the joy of living. This élite, whom the gods cherish, require that slaves should ensure leisure for them, that craftsmen should surround them with conveniences and luxuries which must always be new, and that bold free-lances should “furrow the broad sea” in quest of riches. The 44self-sufficiency” of the city, supplementing that of the family and supplemented by certain products from outside—that was the economic ideal of the Greeks in the VHIth century.
1 The Greek avrápketa is best translated by the English “self-sufficiency.” It is what the economists call “close household economy.”