ace, as fair and perhaps as handsome as their masters, and
not subjected to especial ignominy or hardship. These slaves, of whom
there were at least one hundred thousand adult males, relieved the
twenty-five thousand freemen of nearly all the severe drudgery of life;
and the result was an amount of leisure perhaps never since known on an
equal scale in history.

[67] See Herod. V. 97; Aristoph. Ekkl. 432; Thukyd. II. 13;
Plutarch, Perikl. 37.

The relations of master and slave in ancient Athens constituted, of
course, a very different phenomenon from anything which the history of
our own Southern States has to offer us. Our Southern slaveholders lived
in an age of industrial development; they were money-makers: they had
their full share of business in managing the operations for which their
labourers supplied the crude physical force. It was not so in Athens.
The era of civilization founded upon organized industry had not begun;
money-making had not come to be, with the Greeks, the one all-important
end of life; and mere subsistence, which is now difficult, was then
easy. The Athenian lived in a mild, genial, healthy climate, in a
country which has always been notable for the activity and longevity
of its inhabitants. He was frugal in his habits,--a wine-drinker and
an eater of meat, but rarely addicted to gluttony or intemperance. His
dress was inexpensive, for the Greek climate made but little protection
necessary, and the gymnastic habits of the Greeks led them to esteem
more highly the beauty of the body than that of its covering. His house
was simple, not being intended for social purposes, while of what we
should call home-life the Greeks had none. The house was a shelter at
night, a place where the frugal meal might be taken, a place where the
wife might stay, and look after the household slaves or attend to the
children. And this brings us to another notable feature of Athenian
life. The wife having no position in society, being nothing, indeed,
but a sort of household utensil, how greatly was life simplified! What a
door for expenditure was there, as yet securely closed, and which no one
had thought of opening! No milliner's or dressmaker's bills, no evening
parties, no Protean fashions, no elegant furniture, no imperious
necessity for Kleanthes to outshine Kleon, no coaches, no Chateau
Margaux, no journeys to Arkadia in the summer! In such a state of
society, as one may easily see, the labour of one man wo