The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick
making of the entire city. They were the tailors and the carpenters
and the jewelers and the school-teachers and the bookkeepers
and they tended the store and looked after the factory
while the master went to the public meeting to discuss questions
of war and peace or visited the theatre to see the latest
play of AEschylus or hear a discussion of the revolutionary ideas
of Euripides, who had dared to express certain doubts upon
the omnipotence of the great god Zeus.
Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modem club. All the
freeborn citizens were hereditary members and all the slaves
were hereditary servants, and waited upon the needs of their
masters, and it was very pleasant to be a member of the
organisation.
But when we talk about slaves. we do not mean the sort of
people about whom you have read in the pages of ``Uncle
Tom's Cabin.'' It is true that the position of those slaves who
tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one, but the average
freeman who had come down in the world and who had been
obliged to hire himself out as a farm hand led just as miserable
a life. In the cities, furthermore, many of the slaves were
more prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen. For
the Greeks, who loved moderation in all things, did not like to
treat their slaves after the fashion which afterward was so
common in Rome, where a slave had as few rights as an engine
in a modern factory and could be thrown to the wild animals
upon the smallest pretext.
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