WHETHER large or small, rich or poor, the family of the Homeric period tried to be self-sufficient with the help of a household staff of varying size. Each owed his share of the work to all In these communities of kinsfolk and servants, continually brought together by their common labour, no occupation is degrading. None is so low as to detract from the dignity of the noblest men and women, or even of the gods.
Kings and princes do agricultural and pastoral work. They are proud of excelling in it. Listen to the challenge cast by Odysseus at a suitor: “If we should vie, which of us could do the more work in the meadows in spring, in the long days, I should have my well-curved sickle and you would have yours, and we should mow without eating till the dusk, so long as there was any grass. If we had to drive a good pair of oxen … to plough a field of four acres, you would see how straight I drive a furrow.” The sons of kings are shepherds of their free will; so was Apollo. But only the men are employed in agriculture and stock-breeding; the women do not even milk the ewes or make cheese. There is only one rustic occupation in which we see the girls working with the young men—the vintage.
The men still ply all kinds of crafts at home. The nobles do not disdain the craftsman’s tool any more than the plough. Every task is fit for them. They are saddlers and shoemakers; Odysseus cuts straps from a cow’s hide, just as the herd Eumaeos makes himself sandals. They are masons; Odysseus builds himself a house all alone, just as Eumæos builds a pigsty. They are cart-wrights, carpenters, cabinet-makers, boat-builders, and, to begin with, they are woodmen. Eumæos surrounds his sties with a stout fence of heart of oak, As for Odysseus, when he has built his house he makes doors for it and then he furnishes it, taking a great olive-tree and constructing a bed from it, which he plates with gold, silver, and ivory. If he needs a boat he fells, squares, fits, and nails until the mast and yards are up with the rigging and sails. If the king of Ithaca shows pre-eminence it is only by his technical skill; all work with their hands like him. Every farmer knows the length and the species of the wood which he should choose for his grinder and mortar, the wheels of his waggon, and the mould-board, pole, and stock of his plough. The apparatus of a farm even includes a block of iron, for the ordinary staff are able to make the simpler tools and implements.
The women work as hard as the men. They go for water, sometimes a long distance. They prepare the food. Baking is their duty, and even grinding. Among smaller folk the grain is simply pounded, but in the big houses mills are used to produce fine flour. The size of the quern-stones makes this labour very hard, so it is left to the servant-women, especially to the slaves. In days when food is extremely simple the time of the women is chiefly taken up with clothing. The whole process of manufacture of a garment is done at home. The wife hands out the wool to the servants to card or comb, arranges the hanks which have been prepared in baskets, and spins and weaves with all her women. In the palace of Alcinoos the dawn overtakes Arete “seated at the hearth with her women, turning the spindle laden with purple wool/’ and the evening finds her there still, leaning against a column rather wearily. The loom was fatiguing, for the warp hung vertically from a beam, and to pass the woof through on the shuttle you had to stand close to the warp. To pass the time they sang. But embroidery is the art over which the great ladies, Helen as well as Andromache, spend their days for choice. They have a heavenly patroness; Athene weaves and figures the wonderful peploi which are the pride of the coquettes and bucks of Olympos. Washing too is done by the women, even in the palaces. Near Troy “there were fair broad washing-places of stone where the wives and daughters of the Trojans washed their rich clothing.’ Nausicaa knows that her brothers want clean clothes for the dance, so she gets into a carriage with her maidservants, whips up the mules, and drives to the washing-place. However proud her lineage, woman must be ever at work. The ideal wife is she who combines beauty, fortune, and intelligence with clever hands. The distaff is her sceptre. To remind her of it is no insult. When Telemachos sends Penelope back to her web and her distaff his mother marvels at the wisdom of her son.
Thus the palaces of kings and the humblest huts presented the same spectacle; in every family men and women alike were accustomed to hard work. The genos which owned large herds and broad lands could exist on its estate and hardly ever needed to call upon resources from outside. Even when the patriarchal system had lost the rigidity of its first constitution these old manners did not disappear. For many centuries there was family autonomy in Greece.
One condition of such a system was slavery. But this institution was not yet largely developed. Trade and industry hardly required slave labour, and the domestic, agricultural, and pastoral occupations needed but little. It is true that Odysseus owns a fair number of slaves. His palace contains fifty women, his flocks and herds are guarded by thirty herdsmen, and his father Laertes, who has retired to the country, keeps by him an old Sicel woman to look after him, and Dolios, who works the farm with six of his sons and some other labourers. Altogether there are about a hundred slaves, and the men in the fields are not so many as the women in the house. But the fortune of Odysseus is represented as quite exceptional, and belongs almost to the realm of fairy-tales. As a general rule one had to be rich to own slaves, and one had to be a prince to own a few dozen.
In the Homeric period the slaves are seldom children of slaves. Certainly there are in the epics captured or purchased women who share the bed of their master, but the son of the free man is free. We find almost only one instance of a slave with children. Dolios has a daughter, whom the queen Penelope has taken with her for the house-work, and seven sons, of whom one is a goatherd and the six others work in the orchards with their father.
The most usual source of slavery is war. Prisoners are taken on the battle-field and still more in captured cities. Some of these captives are able to obtain their repurchase, but a large ransom is necessary, “unbounded gifts.” The rest are sold by their master, unless he keeps them in his own service, as he usually does with skilful and beautiful women. The tents of Achilles contain many servant-women “conquered by the arm.” Hector knows what fate is in store for Andromache if he falls. “You will go to Argos to weave cloth for another and to draw water at the well, with bitterness in your heart, under the burden of hard necessity.” And when Andromache hears of the death of her husband she is quite clear about the future of her son. “You will follow me; over there you will do base tasks, toiling beneath the eye of a cruel master.” Enslavement by the spear is the normal origin of slavery.
But the laws of war allowed piracy, and, from barbarians to Greeks and from Greeks to barbarians, the rovers of the seas were constantly at work. The Phoenicians and Taphians were especially feared. Eumaeos tells us how he became a slave. His father had bought a girl of Sidon from Taphian pirates. This girl escaped on a Phoenician ship, carrying off the son of her master, a childu good to sell among far-away peoples and already of great value.” Some days later the young Eumæos was landed in Ithaca and became the property of Laertes. In those days of violence no one was ever sure that he would not see <c the day of slavery.” The adventure was almost commonplace. One easy method by which sailors could procure slaves was to lay hands on their passengers. Odysseus tells how he left Egypt on the ship of a Phoenician, who wished to sell him in Libya, and how immediately afterwards the Thesprotians who should have set him down in Ithaca prepared to rob him of his liberty. But the Achseans, too, practised piracy and kidnapping. The Greek epic when speaking of the Phoenicians and Taphians never utters such doleful plaints as the Egyptian stele which mentions the Akaiwasha who penetrated into every arm of the river, “numerous as reptiles which one cannot drive away.” On two occasions Odysseus has been to the banks of the river Ægyptosu to pillage the splendid fields, to carry off the women and little children, and to kill the men.” Another time it is on the coast of Asia that he gathers “women and wealth.” There was nothing discreditable about these adventures—quite the contrary, since they were profitable. Certain rules of customary law, the same for piracy as for war, laid down the manner in which the booty was shared.
Violence in every form is the means by which slaves are recruited. When a slave is asked how he came down to that condition there are only two possible suppositions—war and piracy. But, since everything is permitted in respect of strangers, they are not only seized in their own land. In the towns there is growing up a mob of poor men whose origin is not known. Since they have no rights the liberty which they enjoy is a precarious blessing. If a hired man asks for the pay which has been promised him he is told that he will be sold in a distant island. Whoever is unable to defend himself is liable to be carried off by the slave-trade.
In whatever way a man or a woman may have been reduced to slavery, his first master generally gets rid of him as soon as possible. The warrior keeps some servant-women and a concubine, and trades in the rest. Transactions are sometimes effected at great distances. Naturally no one goes and looks for a purchaser in the slave’s own homeland. But those who have made a slave never sell him in their own country either. What was the reason for all this transport to distant markets, when the pirates, once they had secured their prize, needed only to return to their own port? This apparent anomaly is explained by the economic situation of the period. A man who wishes to exchange a movable commodity would get in his own country only goods of which he already has a sufficiency; barter is only profitable abroad.
So a “good profit” is always expected from the slave whom “one sends among men who speak another tongue.” A human body is an article of value. It may reach an “infinite 99 value in the case of a prisoner who boasts membership of a great family, a woman 44of fair form” or “skilful at the works of her sex,” a Lydian or Carian woman who can paint on ivory or one of Sidon accomplished in embroidery. Prices therefore vary. An average slave-woman can be had for four oxen, and as many as twenty are paid in exceptional cases.
The slave is an article which can be transferred, not only by sale and purchase but by any other transaction. A woman may be offered as a prize at the games. The father who gives his daughter in marriage sends with her a slave who forms part of the dowry. Captives commonly appear among the gifts of hospitality or reconciliation.
Most of the slaves are employed on domestic work. The word generally used for them (dmos, dmoe) means 44house-ling,” like oikeus and famulus later. Already the practice of having a personal servant is so habitual that a slave spends his first savings on the purchase of another slave.
The work of the house itself is chiefly done by women* In the humble house from which Laertes supervises his orchards an old woman prepares the food of the labourers and looks after the master. The palaces contain as many as fifty girls. The hardest of their tasks is the grinding of the corn; they start at night, and sometimes the dawn finds them still at work, u their knees broken with weariness.” But the greater part of their time is given to the multifarious work connected with clothing. From morning to night they comb, spin, weave, sew, and embroider. Their room is a workshop which is never idle* House-work therefore does not as a rule entail a true division of labour; the fifty women can all work wool, but as need arises twelve are called to the mill and twenty to the spring. When Helen appears before Telemachos she is surrounded by three women. One brings a chair, the second a cushion and the third her work-basket. But we must not infer from this little ceremony that the domestic staff is generally used in a wasteful way and that the organization of the royal household is on a sumptuous scale; as soon as the reception is over the attendants and their mistress resume their interrupted work. It is only exceptionally that certain slave-women, like the Sidonian embroiderers offered to Hecuba, confine themselves to their special art, or that an old nurse, treated with particular respect, is attached as personal maid to the daughter of her masters. However, in the palaces the queen hands over a certain amount of supervision to a trustworthy person, and she may choose a slave-woman for this. She who is thus raised to the position of housekeeper or manageress teaches the novices their duty and commands the free and slave staff; she has the keys of the stores and knows their most secret hiding-places.
We find also male slaves employed inside the house. Alcinoos orders menservants to harness the waggon for Nausicaa. In the palace of Ithaca the maidservants are assisted by a bath-boy. When a feast is preparing the men chop the wood and serve and cut up the meat. But we must not imagine that there was a large staff of grooms and carvers. Slaves from the land have just brought in beasts for slaughter; they are asked to lend a hand. One day the swineherd Eumaeos distributes the cups, a cowherd takes round the bread, and a goatherd acts as cup-bearer. It is the same for the slaves employed as rowers—the master takes his crew from among the men on his land.
Guarding the cattle and agriculture are the usual occupations of the male slaves. Moreover it does not seem that the family has many workers in addition to its own members for these tasks. Let us look at the estate of Odysseus, which is a typical large property. Thirty men are enough to look after the beasts, and a dozen, or a score at the most, are employed on the corn, vines, and fruit-trees. If only about fifty men were needed for an estate of this size, rural slavery cannot have been very much developed. We see why in war the conqueror spared so few men in comparison with the women.
The position of the slave was not bad. The savage manners which so often shock us in the Iliad and the Odyssey exist almost entirely as between individuals of different families. Now the slave is part of a family. Once he has been taken into a house by a kind of inferior adoption, there is established between him and his masters a reciprocity of obligations which, reinforced by common labour, easily leads to reciprocal affection. So the slave is not considered as a beast of burden. He has his own personality. No doubt the master has the right of life and death over his slave, but no more so than the husband over his wife or the father over his children, as head of the family. The legal position of the slave, under the law of the family, raises his moral condition considerably. The little Eumaeos is treated as a son by his mistress Anticleia, and is brought up with the daughter of the house. When he grows up he continues to feel “a mother’s affection” watching over him from afar. Anticleia dies, and her daughter-in-law Penelope takes on this duty of protection as an inheritance. She also takes the daughter of the slave Dolios to be with her, 44tends and cherishes her like her own child, and puts joy in her heart by her indulgence.” What Eumaeos deplores most of all in the misfortunes which the usurpation of the suitors brings upon him is the rupture of relations which are like blood-ties. “Now,” he groans, “I lose all that. The gods have given increase to the work I do, and I have enough to eat and drink and can even entertain guests, but it is no longer given to me to hear the sweet words of my mistress or to receive marks of friendship from her. Yet slaves sorely need to see their mistress, to speak to her, to ask her advice on everything, to eat and drink in her house, and then to bring back to the fields one of the gifts which ever delight the heart of slaves.”
Benevolent authority is met by devoted obedience, kindness by respect. Grateful for the security which he enjoys, and sensitive to consideration, the slave forgets his birth little by little and tries to deserve an improvement of his lot and an old age free from care. In a house which has lost its master discipline is necessarily relaxed, “for, in casting a man into slavery, Zeus takes from him half his virtue.” Yet the long absence of Odysseus has not weakened the sense of duty of the country slaves. His flocks and herds and his vineyard are still well tended. When he comes back and makes himself known to the swineherd Eumæos and the cowherd Philoetios, and later to Dolios and his six sons, they give vent to touching expressions of feeling and declare themselves ready to support the good cause. The women, it is true, have more easily allowed themselves to become demoralized by the state of anarchy. But only twelve out of fifty, the light-headed ones, have failed after ten long years. The other women remain firmly attached to the family which has become their own, and they take part in its sorrows and its joys. When they see their master once more 44they surround him, greet him, embrace him, cover his head and shoulders with kisses, seize his hands. And he feels a sweet desire to weep, for in his heart he recognizes them all.”
By being given a position in the family the slave found that his material condition was tolerable. Patriarchal slavery does not appear in such very dark colours. No doubt Eumæos, the 44godlike swineherd,” is a particularly successful slave; he lives in a retired corner of the estate in complete independence. But many other slaves were employed thus in distant fields and pastures, and the house-slaves were no worse off than those of the country. It is so easy to make life endurable in days when wants are so limited!
The slave gives his whole time and his whole labour to the master; the master therefore must ensure his living. In the good houses he is well fed. Eumaeos has barley-meal, bread, and wine ad lib., and he is not forbidden to kill now and again one of the beasts under his care. When the subordinate swineherds return from the pasture they expect a “plentiful meal.” The masters do not look too closely into these things; the labourers must be kept in good condition.
Dress was not at all an expensive matter. Before he is sent to the fields Eumæos is given a cloak of a she-goat’s skin, a fine chiton, and good shoes* Later he owns a great cloak of wild-goat’s skin for going out at night and another, longer and thicker, against the rain. He cuts himself sandals, from a cow’s hide. He has even enough goats’ and sheep’s skins to cover an extra bed when a guest comes. But it costs an owner of live-stock hardly anything to allow a few skins in this way to his herdsmen. As a rule there is nothing brilliant about the dress of the slaves, “We have,” Eumæos says himself, “neither many cloaks nor a spare tunic; only one for each of us.” Homer also describes for us the rags of the country slave— a dirty patched tunic, leggings and gloves of cow-hide to protect him from scratches, and a goatskin cap.
The quarters vary according to the place. Laertes’ men shelter in a shed, lying in all their clothes on the ashes of the hearth. But the palaces are provided with servants’ quarters for the female staff. The slaves who are scattered about the land can build themselves comfortable cabins. Eumæos has built himself on high ground a big stone house with a fore-hall and a gallery. The furniture, even in the house of Eumæos, is primitive in its simplicity—a trough, a table, and a bed consisting of a board covered with skins. There is no chair; to give a seat to a guest he gets a faggot and spreads a skin from the bed over it. There are a few utensils— dishes, baskets, pots, a little urn of ivy-wood, and a goblet—and a few tools—an axe and a club for killing the pigs. There is as much wood as could be wanted, for the forest is close by.
How does a slave come to make any savings? The generosity of the master is his usual resource, but he may collect a little property by his own efforts. Eumæos has acquired a slave “alone, without the help of anyone,” paying for him “out of his own possessions.”
But how much happier he would have been if Odysseus had been there! “He would have given me a house, land, and a comely wife, all the good things which a kind master gives to the slave who has toiled hard for him and whose work has been made fruitful by a god.” All these wishes are fulfilled by Odysseus on his return, and he promises to treat his faithful herdsmen “as comrades and brothers of Telemachos/* The right to form a family of his own, with the use, if not the ownership, of a bit of landed property—* that is the supreme reward to which the slave with a good record aspires. The position which he can obtain in this way remains fairly obscure. Is it a very easy form of serfdom, or is it gratuitous manumission, including settlement on land which the freedman retains near the patron? It seems that it is both at the same time, or rather that it is neither, since it does not include the cessation of slavery by a formal deed. We are going ahead of the time if we see in the Odyssey those two intermediate conditions between slavery and liberty— serfdom and freedman-ship—but if we deny that they existed in embryo we are refusing to perceive institutions before their full development.