William Gladstone - Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

The reciprocal obligations of father and son are beautifully shown by Andromache in her lament over Hector, when she speaks of her child 144 144 Il. xxii. 485. Od. xxiv. 434. :

The relation of sovereign and subject free.

As to the relation between the subject and the sovereign authority, it seems everywhere to be taken for granted. In the Twenty-fourth Odyssey, the object of those who march against Ulysses is not to put down authority, but to avenge the deaths of their sons and brothers. But there appears nowhere in Homer the idea that in this relation could be involved a difference of interest, or even of opinion, between class and class, between governors and governed. The king or chief was uplifted to set a high example, to lead the common counsels to common ends, to conduct the public and common intercourse with heaven, to decide the strifes of individuals, to defend the borders of the territory from invasion. That the community at home, or any regularly subsisting class of it, could require repression or restraint from the government, was an idea happily unknown to the Homeric times.

Those classes, indeed, were few and simple. There was, first of all, the king; and round him his family and his κήρυκες, the serjeants or heralds, who were his immediate, and apparently his only immediate, agents. They conveyed his orders; they assisted him in the Assembly, in sacrifice, and in banquets. They appear to be the only executive officers that are found in Homer. With these was the Bard, apparently also an indispensable member of royal households. Both were recognised among the established professions.

Next to the kings and other sovereigns, we must place the chief proprietors of the country. In the Odyssey, we find the members of the aristocracy having their own estates and functions, and sustaining the part of γέροντες, or leaders in the Assembly. The judicial office, as we have seen from the Shield and otherwise, was in their hands, probably by delegation. But it would appear, that the distinction between them and the sovereign family was rather a broad one; since, in almost every case, we seem to find the prince contracting a marriage beyond his own borders. Laertes brings Anticlea 145 145 Od. xi. 85. from the neighbourhood of Parnassus; Theseus marries Ariadne from Crete; Agamemnon and Menelaus, belonging to Mycenæ, are united to the daughters of the king of Sparta; of the two daughters of Icarius, Ulysses in Ithaca married Penelope, and Eumelus in Pheræ married Iphthime (Od. iv. 797); one of the two, at least, and perhaps both, must have married from a considerable distance; Menelaus sends his beautiful daughter Hermione to be the wife of Neoptolemus in Thessaly: and the only instance, even apparently in the opposite sense, seems to be that of his son Megapenthes, who married a Spartan damsel, the daughter of Alector. But then Megapenthes was not legitimate; he was born of a slave-mother, and therefore he was not a prince 146 146 Od. iv. 10-12. . All these facts seem to show us that the royal houses formed a network among themselves, spread over Greece, and keeping pretty distinct from the aristocracy: a circumstance which may, in some degree, help to explain the wonderful patience and constancy of Penelope.

Other classes of the community.

Next to the nobles, and in the third place, we may class what we should now call trades and professions: observing, however, that, in Homer’s time, both the useful arts and the fine arts had a social dignity, as compared with that of wealth and station, which the former have long ago lost, and which the later have not retained in as full manner as perhaps might be desired, not for their own advantage merely, but to secure due honour for labour, and the humanizing effect of this kind of labour in particular for society at large. I draw the proof of their estimation in the heroic age, first, from the manner in which they are combined under the common designation of δημιοεργοὶ, and arranged in a mixed order, the preference being only given by a more emphatic description to the bard 147 147 Od. xvii. 383. :

Here I take τέκτονα δούρων to represent the entire class of artificers, of whom many are named in Homer; in a poor country like Ithaca, depending very much on the use of boats for fishing and for its communications, the carpenters might naturally represent the whole.

And next, from the manner in which these arts were practised by princes, it seems plain that there was nothing in the pursuit of them inconsistent with high rank. The physicians, or surgeons rather, of the Greek army, Podaleirius and Machaon, were themselves princes and commanders of a contingent: and even Paris, who was not the man to demean himself by employments beneath his station, seems to have taken the chief share in the erection of his own palace 148 148 Il. vi. 314. :

Again, the bard of Agamemnon was appointed quasi-guardian 149 149 Od. iii. 267. to Clytemnestra in her husband’s absence: and Phemius, the bard of Ulysses 150 150 Od. xvii. 263. xxiv. 439. , proceeded to the Assembly of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey in order to prevent any tumult, together with Medon the herald, who addressed the people accordingly. The heralds, or serjeants, are also recognised as δημιοεργοί 151 151 Od. xix. 135. . Again, Alitherses, being the μάντις or seer of the island, and apparently the only one, takes part in the debates both of the Second and of the Twenty-fourth Books.

The professions, then, thus far are five:

1. Seers.

2. Surgeons.

3. Artificers.

4. Bards.

5. Heralds.

We may remark the absence of priests and merchants. Not that merchants were unknown: we find them mentioned by Euryalus the Phæacian, as πρηκτῆρες, but their business was esteemed sordid; it too much resembled that of the kidnapper or swindler, and it is the reproach of seeming to belong to this class that smartly stings Ulysses 152 152 Od. viii. 161. . And even the merchant Mentes, whose form was assumed by Pallas, belonged to the Taphians, a tribe of pirates 153 153 Od. i. 183. . As yet, neither the order of priests would seem to have been completely taken over from the Pelasgians, nor the class of merchants formed in imitation of the Phœnicians.

Slaves in the Homeric age.

After the classes we have named, come the great mass of the population, who till the ground and tend the live stock for themselves or their employers, if free, and for their lords if slaves. The fisherman, too, is distinctly noticed 154 154 Od. xxiv. in Ithaca. Mr. Grote classes with the free husbandmen the artisans 155 155 Hist. Greece ii. p. 84. , and separates both of them from the θῆτες, or hired labourers, and the slaves. It appears to me, however, that we ought to distinguish the artisans from the mere husbandmen, as having been in a higher station. On the other hand, I see no passage in Homer which clearly gives to the husbandmen as a class a condition superior to that of the hired servants, or even, perhaps, the slaves. The evidence of the poems is not clear as to the existence or extent of a peasant proprietary. We must beware of confounding those conceptions of a slavery maintained wholesale for the purposes of commerce, which our experience supplies, with its earliest form, in which the number of slaves would seem to have been small, and their ranks to have been recruited principally by war, with slight and casual aid from kidnapping. In those times, the liability to captivity would seem to have affected all men alike, independently of all distinctions whether in rank or in blood. The sons of Priam were sold into slavery like any one else: the only difference was, that, in proportion to the wealth of the parents, there was a better chance of ransom. It would appear that the slaves of Homer were properly, even when not indoor, yet domestic. The women discharged the indoor and household offices: except that a few men performed strictly personal services about their masters, as δρηστῆρες and as carvers 156 156 Od. xvi. 248, 253, also δαιτρὸς, Od. i. 141. There were likewise in Scheria nine αἰσυμνῆται, who made arrangements for the dance. These were public officers (δήμιοι) and may fairly be rendered ‘masters of the ceremonies.’ (Od. viii. 258.) (θεράποντε δαήμονε δαιτροσυνάων). But the men-slaves were more largely employed out of doors in the care of flocks and herds, fields and vineyards. Thus, the slaves were in a different position apparently from the freemen, for they seem to have been gathered as servants and attendants round the rich. It would appear, however, from the case of Eumæus, who had a slave of his own, Mesaulios 157 157 Od. xiv. 449-52. , that they might hold property for themselves. Again, not Eumæus only, but in the Twenty-fourth Odyssey Dolius and his six sons, sit down to table together with Ulysses, and fondly clasp his hands. They bear arms too; and this could not have been very strange, for Homer describes the arming of the sons without remark, while he calls both the father and Laertes, on account of their old age 158 158 Od. xxiv. 498. , ἀναγκαῖοι πολεμισταί. The moral deterioration of slaves is noticed very strongly by Eumæus himself 159 159 Od. xvii. 320-3. , though not with reference to himself. We have, however, no reason to suppose that their outward condition was inferior to that of the free labouring population in any thing, except that we must presume they did not take part in the assemblies or in war. When Achilles 160 160 Od. xi. 489-91. in the infernal regions compares the highest condition there with the lowest on earth, he does not choose the slave, but the labourer for hire (θητεύεμεν is his expression), as the type of a depressed condition upon earth. The state of the hired servant probably resembled that of the slave in being dependent upon others, and fell beneath it in the point of security. This is the more likely, because the point of the passage turns on the poverty of the employer,