The Hellenistic Age (Modern Library Chronicles Series Book 27) by Peter Green

Author:Peter Green [Green, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

The direct impact of all these events upon the lives of those not immediately involved in them is hard to estimate. Economically, as we have seen, unending warfare created a steady employment market for mercenaries. Royal dynasts, of course, hired on a far wider scale than local rulers such as Cleomenes, who still depended largely on their loyal citizen militia; but even Cleomenes opted for mercenaries insofar as he could afford them. Outside the cities, near-universal subsistence agriculture and herding suffered more from exigent tax collectors and the urban drift of failed smallholders than from forced conscription or actual warfare—except, that is, for those unlucky enough to occupy territory that was regularly fought over by rival armies. In such cases, the destruction of property (including vines and olives, which took long years to mature), the disruption of planting and harvesting, the commandeering of livestock and enforced billeting, all took a fearful toll on local communities. From the Peloponnesian conflict on, such agricultural chaos had become a staple feature of Greek life.

In some cases, the result was depopulation. This, Polybius claims,3 was exacerbated by a falling birthrate due to the increasing preference for luxury over the responsibilities of marriage and procreation. Though one catches a whiff here of our old friend moral economics (Chapter 3), the social phenomenon is not unfamiliar and may well have been encouraged by the ever-increasing use of slaves. Why waste money raising children to run your estate when the job can be done just as well, and far cheaper (they thought), by servile labor? As so often with our evidence, it applies here primarily to the upper classes, the moneyed conservatives who supported oligarchic government in Greek cities and formed the backbone of the colonialist minority busy reaping the fruits of empire abroad.

The wars of the Successors produced a vast number of slaves (one obvious source of quick profits), and thus not only did the gap between rich and poor steadily widen, but the attitude of haves to have-nots hardened at the same time. If a slave was no more, in Aristotle’s notorious formulation (EN 1161b, 4), than a “living tool,” then he—or, worse, she—could in theory be handled like a tool: worked to the maximum and trashed when worn out, without those considerations applicable to a normal human being. Relatively humane treatment during the early Hellenistic period worsened considerably after Roman intervention: it is only then that we find those eschatological fantasies foreseeing eternal hellfire (or the equivalent) for oppressors in the afterlife. Many of these new slaves, moreover, were educated and responsible citizens, including Greeks, who, while they had nothing against “necessary slavery” per se, violently objected to being treated as slaves themselves.

There were several highly significant results. First, the enormous resentment thus generated created among the governing classes a widespread, almost hysterical, fear of insurrection. This fear started early. In Macedonian treaties executed by both Alexander and Demetrius the Besieger with cities of the Hellenic League, we already find what seems to have

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