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ARISTOCRACY || PEASANTS || UNFREE || CONCLUSION |
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ARISTOCRACY || PEASANTS || UNFREE || CONCLUSION |
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Aristocrats were the most important and wealthy people in Greece. Basically, it meant they had so much money they did not need to work for a living. They made their money from the land, and from the slaves who worked their land. This meant that this upper class could spend its time on more "important" matters: philosophy, horsemanship and politics. Politics was a hobby that only wealthy landowners got involved in.
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These upper class "gentlemen" thought they were very important. Heracleides Ponticus, in his essay On Pleasure, came to the conclusion that pleasure and luxury were for free men and labour was for humble men and slaves whose minds, consequently, would become smaller. Aristotle, one of the most famous characters in history, even thought the only alternative to slave labour was automation. That may sound amazingly wise and what we have today, but the automation to which he referred consisted of statues being brought to life by Daedalus or tripods made by Hephaestus which, according to Homer, wheeled themselves to Olympus. The ancient Greek class structure was completely out of balance. For being respected for their logic, the Greeks lived in an amazingly illogical social and economic environment. The bulk of what is known as "Greek" in the realms of philosophy and literature was produced by people who did not even need to have a job! |
The middle rung in the Greek social ladder was peasants such as artisans and craftsman. This made up a large portion of the free population. The social strata within the peasantry were determined by land ownership. Some peasants bought their land while others gained it as a reward for military service and others inherited it. Not all peasants owned land; many peasants would pay rent to a wealthy landowner, or to their respective government, in money or in goods.
The most important difference between peasants and unfree laborers was that the peasants had freedoms and rights that the unfree labourer never had a hope of possessing. These rights included the ability to vote (in some city-states), the right to bring a lawsuit against someone else, the right to own land, and the right to live where they desired and come and go as they pleased.
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Peasants were not treated with a great deal of respect by the aristocracy. There are many accounts of peasants treated with great harshness by the aristocracy and, more specifically, the tax collectors. Peasantry was considered somewhat contemptible by such important historical figures as Aristotle and his upper class contemporaries: they did not feel that that peasants matterd. The peasants mainly congregated in villages outside the city and if there was a famine, most of the food would be hoarded inside the city walls, leaving the peasants to fend for themselves. It was not uncommon for a peasant to be forced into military service or made to perform tasks that the aristocracy did not want to do. Despite how the upper class treated the peasants, the craftsmen and artisans continued performing their trades with great pride and self-respect. Often their names can be found inscribed on their work and their tombstones engraved with a proud declaration of their profession. |
The "lowest" class of people in ancient Greece was comprised of unfree laborers. The term "unfree", in this case, refers to someone who is not allowed to vote and does not have the freedom to come and go at will. These unfree laborers were not responsible for the majority of production (that was done by the peasants); however, they were responsible for working the land of the powerful land owners while these upper class "gentlemen" relaxed and pursued their hobbies.
Unfree labor can be divided into three categories: slavery, serfdom and debt bondage. The first of these categories, slavery, is the actual ownership of one human being by another. Slaves shared no rights with the free population and were considered property. Except on rare occasions, these people would be slaves for their entire lives with no hope of ever being free.
Serfdom varies from slavery in many ways. Serfs, like slaves, hold little hope of improving their status, but unlike slaves, serfs could actually earn a living. Serfs were considered "bound to the soil". They would live on the landholder's land, often paying rent, bound by law or by contract to the land on which they worked. Serfs were not free to leave the land to which they were bound even if they wanted to.
The third form of unfree labor was debt bondage. In this case, the debtor would pay back a debt through his services if he could not settle it by any other means. This repayment often involved enslavement of the debtee by legal or illegal means. In either case, the debtee would undergo a more or less permanent change in status.
When we talk about the ancient Greeks, we are often talking about the art and the ideas and the lives of the aristrocracy. It is important to remember that they were only a small group, and there were many other ordinary people who lived very different lives.
In particular, we should remember that Greece, like many other societies in those days, relied on a system of slavery. Without the thousands and thousands of slaves in those societies, their civilization would have been very very different.
