men." It is good, and rouses the idle "handless" man
to work. On one side are social duty ([Greek: dike]) and work, done
briskly at the right season of the year, which brings a full barn. On
the other side are unthrift and hunger, and relief with the disgrace
of begging; and the relief, when the family can do no more, must come
from neighbours, to whose house the beggar has to go with his wife and
children to ask for victual. Once they may be helped, or twice, and
then they will be refused. It is better, Hesiod tells his brother, to
work and so pay off his debts and avoid hunger (see _Erga_, 391, &c.,
and elsewhere). Here indeed is a problem of to-day as it appeared to
an early Greek. The alternatives before the idler--so far as his own
community is concerned--are labour with neighbourly help to a limited
extent, or hunger.

Hesiod was a farmer in Boeotia. Some 530 years afterwards a pupil of
Aristotle thus describes the district and its community of farmers.
"They are," he says, "well to do, but simple in their way of life.
They practise justice, good faith, and hospitality. To needy townsmen
and vagabonds they give freely of their substance; for meanness and
covetousness are unknown to them." The charitable method of Homeric
and Hesiodic days still continued.

PART II.--CHARITY AMONG THE GREEKS

The Greek state.

Society in a Greek state was divided into two parts, citizens and
slaves. The citizens required leisure for education, war and government.
The slaves were their ministers and servants to enable them to secure
this leisure. We have therefore to consider, on the one hand, the
position of the family and the clan-family, and the maintenance of the
citizen from public funds and by public and private charities; and on
the other hand the condition of the slaves, and the relation between
slavery and charity.

The slaves formed the larger part of the population. The census of
Attica, made between 317 and 307 B.C., gives their numbers at 400,000
out of a population of about 500,000; and even if this be considered
excessive, the proportion of slaves to citizens would certainly be very
large. The citizens with their wives and children formed some 12% of the
community. Thus, apart from the resident aliens, returned in the census
at 10,000, and their wives and children, we have two divisions of
society: the citizens, with their own organization of relief and
charities; and t