The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus Part 71

80. But after flattery, Anaxandrides the comic poet gives the next place to ostentation, in his Apothecary Prophet, speaking thus--

Do you reproach me that I'm ostentatious?

Why should you do so? for this quality Is far beyond all others, only flattery Excepted: that indeed is best of all.

And Antiphanes speaks of what he calls a psomocolax, a flatterer for morsels of bread, in his Gerytades, when he says--

You are call'd a whisperer and psomocolax.

And Sannyrion says--

What will become of you, you cursed psomocolaces.

And Philemon says in his Woman made young again--

The man is a psomocolax.

And Philippides says in his Renovation--

Always contending and ??????a?e???.

But the word ???a? especially applies to these parasitical flatterers; for ????? means food, from which come the words ???????, and d?s?????, which means difficult to be pleased and squeamish. And the word ?????a means that part of the body which receives the food, that is to say, the stomach. Diphilus also uses the word ??????af?? in his Theseus, saying--

They call you a runaway ??????af??.

81. When Democritus had made this speech, and had asked for some drink in a narrow-necked sabrias, Ulpian said, And what is this sabrias? And just as Democritus was beginning to treat us all to a number of interminable stories, in came a troop of servants bringing in everything requisite for eating. Concerning whom Democritus, continuing his discourse, spoke as follows:--I have always, O my friends, marvelled at the race of slaves, considering how abstemious they are, though placed in the middle of such numbers of dainties; for they pa.s.s them by, not only out of fear, but also because they are taught to do so; I do not mean being taught in the Slave-teacher of Pherecrates, but by early habituation; and without its being necessary to utter any express prohibition respecting such matters to them, as in the island of Cos, when the citizens sacrifice to Juno. For Macareus says, in his third book of his treatise on Coan Affairs, that, when the Coans sacrifice to Juno, no slave is allowed to enter the temple, nor does any slave taste any one of the things which are prepared for the sacrifice. And Antiphanes, in his Dyspratus,[411:1] says--

'Tis hard to see around one savoury cakes, And delicate birds half eaten; yet the slaves Are not allow'd to eat the fragments even, As say the women.

And Epicrates, in his Dyspratus, introduces a servant expressing his indignation, and saying--

What can be worse than, while the guests are drinking, To hear the constant cry of, Here, boy, here!

And this that one may bear a chamberpot To some vain beardless youth; and see around Half eaten savoury cakes, and delicate birds, Whose very fragments are forbidden strictly To all the slaves--at least the women say so; And him who drinks a cup men call a belly-G.o.d; And if he tastes a mouthful of solid food They call him greedy glutton:

from the comparison of which iambics, it is very plain that Epicrates borrowed Antiphanes's lines, and transferred them to his own play.

82. And Dieuchidas says, in his history of the Affairs of Megara--"Around the islands called Araeae[412:1] (and they are between Cnidos and Syme) a difference arose, after the death of Triopas, among those who had set out with him on his expedition, and some returned home, and others remained with Phorbas, and came to Ialysus, and others proceeded with Periergus, and occupied the district of Cameris. And on this it is said that Periergus uttered curses against Phorbas, and on this account the islands were called Araeae. But Phorbas having met with shipwreck, he and Parthenia, the sister of Phorbas and Periergus, swam ash.o.r.e to Ialysus, at the point called Schedia. And Thamneus met with them, as he happened to be hunting near Schedia, and took them to his own house, intending to receive them hospitably, and sent on a servant as a messenger to tell his wife to prepare everything necessary, as he was bringing home strangers. But when he came to his house and found nothing prepared, he himself put corn into a mill, and everything else that was requisite, and then ground it himself and feasted them. And Phorbas was so delighted with this hospitality, that when he was dying himself he charged his friends to take care that his funeral rites should be performed by free men. And so this custom continued to prevail in the sacrifice of Phorbas, for none but free men minister at this sacrifice. And it is accounted profanation for any slave to approach it."

83. And since among the different questions proposed by Ulpian, there is this one about the slaves, let us now ourselves recapitulate a few things which we have to say on the subject, remembering what we have in former times read about it. For Pherecrates, in his Boors, says--

For no one then had any Manes,[413:1] no, Nor home-born slaves; but the free women themselves Did work at everything within the house.

And so at morn they ground the corn for bread, Till all the streets resounded with the mills.

And Anaxandrides, in his Anchises, says--

There is not anywhere, my friend, a state Of none but slaves; but fortune regulates And changes at its will th' estates of men.

Many there are who are not free to day, But will to-morrow free-men be of Sunium, And the day after public orators; For so the deity guides each man's helm.

84. And Posidonius, the stoic philosopher, says in the eleventh book of his History, "That many men, who are unable to govern themselves, by reason of the weakness of their intellect, give themselves up to the guidance of those who are wiser than themselves, in order that receiving from them care and advice, and a.s.sistance in necessary matters, they may in their turn requite them with such services as they are able to render. And in this manner the Mariandyni became subject to the people of Heraclea, promising to act as their subjects for ever, if they would supply them with what they stood in need of; having made an agreement beforehand, that none of them would sell anything out of the territory of Heraclea, but that they would sell in that district alone. And perhaps it is on this account that Euphorion the epic poet called the Mariandyni Bringers of Gifts, saying--

And they may well be call'd Bringers of Gifts, Fearing the stern dominion of their kings.

And Callistratus the Aristophanean says that "they called the Mariandyni d???f????, by that appellation taking away whatever there is bitter in the name of servants, just as the Spartans did in respect of the Helots, the Thessalians in the case of the Penestae, and the Cretans with the Clarotae. But the Cretans call those servants, who are in their houses Chrysoneti,[414:1] and those whose work lies in the fields Amphamiotae, being natives of the country, but people who have been enslaved by the chance of war; but they also call the same people Clarotae, because they have been distributed among their masters by lot.

And Ephorus, in the third book of his Histories, "The Cretans call their slaves Clarotae, because lots have been drawn for them; and those slaves have some regularly recurring festivals in Cydonia, during which no freemen enter the city, but the slaves are the masters of everything, and have the right even to scourge the freemen." But Sosicrates, in the second book of his History of Cretan Affairs, says, "The Cretans call public servitude ???a, but the private slaves they call aphamiotae; and the perici, or people who live in the adjacent districts, they call subjects. And Dosiadas gives a very similar account in the fourth book of his history of Cretan Affairs.

85. But the Thessalians call those Penestae who were not born slaves, but who have been taken prisoners in war. And Theopompus the comic poet, misapplying the word, says--

The wrinkled counsellors of a Penestan master.

And Philocrates, in the second book of his history of the Affairs of Thessaly, if at least the work attributed to him is genuine, says that the Penestae are also called Thessalcetae, or servants of the Thessalians. And Archemachus, in the third book of his history of the Affairs of Euba, says, "When the Botians had founded Arnaea, those of them who did not return to Botia, but who took a fancy to their new country, gave themselves up to the Thessalians by agreement, to be their slaves; on condition that they should not take them out of the country, nor put them to death, but that they should cultivate the country for them, and pay them a yearly revenue for it. These men, therefore, abiding by their agreement, and giving themselves up to the Thessalians, were called at that time Menestae; but now they are called Penestae; and many of them are richer than their masters. And Euripides, in his Phrixus, calls them latriae,[415:1] in these words--

??t??? pe??st?? ??? ???a??? d???.

86. And Timaeus of Tauromenium, in the ninth book of his Histories, says, "It was not a national custom among the Greeks in former times to be waited on by purchased slaves;" and he proceeds to say, "And altogether they accused Aristotle of having departed from the Locrian customs; for they said that it was not customary among the Locrians, nor among the Phocians, to use either maid-servants or house-servants till very lately. But the wife of Philomelus, who took Delphi, was the first woman who had two maids to follow her. And in a similar manner Mnason, the companion of Aristotle, was much reproached among the Phocians, for having purchased a thousand slaves; for they said that he was depriving that number of citizens of their necessary subsistence: for that it was a custom in their houses for the younger men to minister to the elder."

87. And Plato, in the sixth book of the Laws, says,--"The whole question about servants is full of difficulty; for of all the Greeks, the system of the Helots among the Lacedaemonians causes the greatest perplexity and dispute, some people affirming that it is a wise inst.i.tution, and some considering it as of a very opposite character. But the system of slavery among the people of Heraclea would cause less dispute than the subject condition of the Mariandyni; and so too would the condition of the Thessalian Penestae. And if we consider all these things, what ought we to do with respect to the acquisition of servants? For there is nothing sound in the feelings of slaves; nor ought a prudent man to trust them in anything of importance. And the wisest of all poets says--

Jove fix'd it certain that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.

And it has been frequently shown by facts, that a slave is an objectionable and perilous possession; especially in the frequent revolts of the Messenians, and in the case of those cities which have many slaves, speaking different languages, in which many evils arise from that circ.u.mstance. And also we may come to the same conclusion from the exploits and sufferings of all sorts of robbers, who infest the Italian coasts as piratical vagabonds. And if any one considers all these circ.u.mstances, he may well doubt what course ought to be pursued with respect to all these people. Two remedies now are left to us--either never to allow, for the future, any person's slaves to be one another's fellow-countrymen, and, as far as possible, to prevent their even speaking the same language: and he should also keep them well, not only for their sake, but still more for his own; and he should behave towards them with as little insolence as possible. But it is right to chastise them with justice; not admonishing them as if they were free men, so as to make them arrogant: and every word which we address to slaves ought to be, in some sort, a command. And a man ought never to play at all with his slaves, or jest with them, whether they be male or female. And as to the very foolish way in which many people treat their slaves, allowing them great indulgence and great licence, they only make everything more difficult for both parties: they make obedience harder for the one to practise, and authority harder for the others to exercise.

88. Now of all the Greeks, I conceive that the Chians were the first people who used slaves purchased with money, as is related by Theopompus, in the seventeenth book of his Histories; where he says,--"The Chians were the first of the Greeks, after the Thessalians and Lacedaemonians, who used slaves. But they did not acquire them in the same manner as those others did; for the Lacedaemonians and the Thessalians will be found to have derived their slaves from Greek tribes, who formerly inhabited the country which they now possess: the one having Achaean slaves, but the Thessalians having Perrhaebian and Magnesian slaves; and the one nation called their slaves Helots, and the others called them Penestae. But the Chians have barbarian slaves, and they have bought them at a price." Theopompus, then, has given this account. But I think that, on this account, the Deity was angry with the Chians; for at a subsequent period they were subdued by their slaves.

Accordingly, Nymphodorus the Syracusan, in his Voyage along the Coast of Asia, gives this account of them:--"The slaves of the Chians deserted them, and escaped to the mountains; and then, collecting in great numbers, ravaged the country-houses about; for the island is very rugged, and much overgrown with trees. But, a little before our time, the Chians themselves relate, that one of their slaves deserted, and took up his habitation in the mountains; and, being a man of great courage and very prosperous in his warlike undertakings, he a.s.sumed the command of the runaway slaves, as a king would take the command of an army; and though the Chians often made expeditions against him, they were able to effect nothing. And when Drimacus (for that was the name of this runaway slave) found that they were being destroyed, without being able to effect anything, he addressed them in this language: 'O Chians!

you who are the masters, this treatment which you are now receiving from your servants will never cease; for how should it cease, when it is G.o.d who causes it, in accordance with the prediction of the oracle? But if you will be guided by me, and if you will leave us in peace, then I will be the originator of much good fortune to you.'

89. "Accordingly, the Chians, having entered into a treaty with him, and having made a truce for a certain time, Drimacus prepares measures and weights, and a private seal for himself; and, throwing it to the Chians, he said, 'Whatever I take from any one of you, I shall take according to these measures and these weights; and when I have taken enough, I will then leave the storehouses, having sealed them up with this seal. And as to all the slaves who desert from you, I will inquire what cause of complaint they have; and if they seem to me to have been really subject to any incurable oppression, which has been the reason of their running away, I will retain them with me; but if they have no sufficient or reasonable ground to allege, I will send them back to their masters.'

Accordingly, the rest of the slaves, seeing that the Chians agreed to this state of things, very good-humouredly did not desert nearly so much for the future, fearing the judgment which Drimacus might pa.s.s upon them. And the runaways who were with him feared him a great deal more than they did their own masters, and did everything that he required, obeying him as their general; for he punished the refractory with great severity: and he permitted no one to ravage the land, nor to commit any other crime of any sort, without his consent. And at the time of festivals, he went about, and took from the fields wine, and such animals for victims as were in good condition, and whatever else the masters were inclined or able to give him; and if he perceived that any one was intriguing against him, or laying any plot to injure him or overthrow his power, he chastised him.

90. "Then (for the city had made a proclamation, that it would give a great reward to any one who took him prisoner, or who brought in his head,) this Drimacus, as he became older, calling one of his most intimate friends into a certain place, says to him, 'You know that I have loved you above all men, and you are to me as my child and my son, and as everything else. I now have lived long enough, but you are young and just in the prime of life. What, then, are we to do? You must show yourself a wise and brave man; for, since the city of the Chians offers a great reward to any one who shall kill me, and also promises him his freedom, you must cut off my head, and carry it to Chios, and receive the money which they offer, and so be prosperous.' But when the young man refused, he at last persuaded him to do so; and so he cut off his head; and took it to the Chians, and received from them the rewards which they had offered by proclamation: and, having buried the corpse of Drimacus, he departed to his own country. And the Chians, being again injured and plundered by their slaves, remembering the moderation of him who was dead, erected a Heroum in their country, and called it the shrine of the GENTLE HERO. And even now the runaway slaves bring to that shrine the first-fruits of all the plunder they get; and they say that Drimacus still appears to many of the Chians in their sleep, and informs them beforehand of the stratagems of their slaves who are plotting against them: and to whomsoever he appears, they come to that place, and sacrifice to him, where this shrine is."

91. Nymphodorus, then, has given this account; but in many copies of his history, I have found that Drimachus is not mentioned by name. But I do not imagine that any one of you is ignorant, either of what the prince of all historians, Herodotus, has related of the Chian Panionium, and of what he justly suffered who castrated free boys and sold them. But Nicolaus the Peripatetic, and Posidonius the Stoic, in their Histories, both state that the Chians were enslaved by Mithridates, the tyrant of Cappadocia; and were given up by him, bound, to their own slaves, for the purpose of being transported into the land of the Colchians,--so really angry with them was the Deity, as being the first people who used purchased slaves, while most other nations provided for themselves by their own industry. And, perhaps, this is what the proverb originated in, "A Chian bought a master," which is used by Eupolis, in his Friends.

92. But the Athenians, having a prudent regard to the condition of their slaves, made a law that there should be a ??af? ??e??, even against men who ill treated their slaves. Accordingly, Hyperides, the orator, in his speech against Mnesitheus, on a charge of a???a, says, "They made these laws not only for the protection of freemen, but they enacted also, that even if any one personally ill treated a slave, there should be a power of preferring an indictment against him who had done so."

And Lycurgus made a similar statement, in his first speech against Lycophron; and so did Demosthenes, in his oration against Midias. And Malacus, in his Annals of the Siphnians, relates that some slaves of the Samians colonized Ephesus, being a thousand men in number; who in the first instance revolted against their masters, and fled to the mountain which is in the island, and from thence did great injury to the Samians.

But, in the sixth year after these occurrences, the Samians, by the advice of an oracle, made a treaty with the slaves, on certain agreements; and the slaves were allowed to depart uninjured from the island; and, sailing away, they occupied Ephesus, and the Ephesians are descended from these ancestors.

93. But Chrysippus says that there is a difference between a d?????

and an ????t??; and he draws the distinction in the second book of his treatise on Similarity of Meaning, because he says that those who have been emanc.i.p.ated are still d?????, but that the term ????t?? is confined to those who are not discharged from servitude; for the ????t??, says he, is a d?????, being actually at the time the property of a master.

And all the following are called d?????, as c.l.i.tarchus says, in his treatise on Dialects: ????,[419:1] and ?e??p??te?,[419:2] and ?????????,[419:3] and d???????,[420:1] and ?p??eta[420:2] and also p????e?

and ??t?e??.[420:3] And Amerias says, that the slaves who are employed about the fields are called ????ta?. And Hermon, in his treatise on the Cretan Dialects, says that slaves of n.o.ble birth are called ??te?. And Seleucus says, that both men and maid servants are called ????; and that a female slave is often called ?p?f??s? and ?????; and that a slave who is the son of a slave is called s??d???; and that ?f?p???? is a name properly belonging to a female slave who is about her mistress's person, and that a p??p???? is one who walks before her mistress.

But Proxenus, in the second book of his treatise on the Lacedaemonian Const.i.tution, says that female servants are called among the Lacedaemonians, Chalcides. But Ion of Chios, in his Laertes, uses the word ????t?? as synonymous with d?????, and says--

Alas, O servant, go on wings and close The house lest any man should enter in.

And Achaeus, in his Omphale, speaking of the Satyr, says--

How rich in slaves (e?d?????) and how well housed he was (e??????);