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CHARITY

AND

CHARITIES

and loafer are sketched in the Odyssey—the vagrant who stance The charitable method of Homeric and Hesiodic days still lies glibly that he may get entertainment, and the loafer continued. who prefers begging to work on a farm. These and the winter idlers, whom Hesiod pictures—a group known Part II.—Charity among the Greeks. to modern life—prefer at that season to spend their time Society in a Greek state was divided into two parts, in the warmth of the village smithy, or at a house of common resort (lesche)—-a common lodging-house, we might citizens and slaves. The citizens required leisure for say—where they would pass the night. Apparently, as in education, war, and government. The slaves TbeQreek ree modern times, the vagrants had organized their own system were their ministers and servants to enable st°te of entertainment, and, supported by the public, were a them to secure this leisure. We have thereclass for whom it was worth while to cater. The local or fore to consider, on the one hand, the position of the family public beggars formed a still more definite class. Their and the clan-family, and the maintenance of the citizen begging was recognized as their means of maintenance 5 it from public funds and by public and private charities; was a part of the method of poor relief. Thus of Penelope and on the other hand the condition of the slaves, and the it was said that, if Ulysses’ tale were true, she would relation between slavery and charity. The slaves formed the larger part of the population. The give him better clothes, and then he might beg his bread throughout the country-side. Feasts too and almsgiving census of Attica made between 317 and 307 b.c. gives were nearly allied, and feasts have always been one resource their numbers at 400,000 out of a population of about for the relief of the poor. Thus naturally the beggars 500,000 ; and even if this be considered excessive, the frequented feasts, and were apparently a recognized and proportion of slaves to citizens would certainly be very yet inevitable nuisance. They wore, as part of their large. The citizens with their wives and children formed dress, scrips or wallets in which they carried away the food some 12 per cent, of the community. Thus, apart from they received (as later the Roman clients carried away the resident aliens, returned in the census at 10,000, portions of food in baskets (sportula) from their patron’s and their wives and children, we have two divisions of dinner). Ulysses, when he dresses up as a beggar, puts on society: the citizens, with their own organization of a wallet as part of his costume. Thus we find a system of relief and charities; and the slaves, permanently mainvoluntary relief in force based on a recognition of the tained by reason of their dependence on individual duty of almsgiving as complete and peremptory as that members of the civic class. Thus, the only poverty which we shall notice later among the Jews and the is that of the poor citizens. Poverty is limited to them. early Christians. We are concerned with country districts, The slaves—that is to say, the bulk of the labouring and not with towns, and, as social conditions that are population—are provided for. From times relatively near to Hesiod’s we may trace similar produce similar methods of administration, so we find here a general plan of relief similar to that which was the growth and influence of the clan-family as the centre in vogue in Scotland till the Scottish Poor Law Act of of customary charity within the community, the gradual increase of a class of poor either outside the clan-family 1845. In Hesiod the fundamental conceptions of charity or eventually independent of it, and the development are more clearly expressed. He has, if not his ten, of a new organization of relief introduced by the at least his four commandments, for disobedience to state to meet newer demands. We picture the early which Zeus will punish the offender. They are : state as a group of families, each of which tends to Thou shalt do no evil to suppliant or guest; thou shalt form in time a separate group or clan. At each exnot dishonour any woman of the family; thou shalt not pansion from the family to the clan the members of sin against the orphan • thou shalt not be unkind to aged the clan retain rights and have to fulfil duties which are the same as, or similar to, those which prevailed in the parents. family. Thus, in Attica the clan-families (genos) and the The laws of social life are thus duty to one s guest and duty brotherhoods (phratria) were “the only basis of legal rights to one’s family ; and chastity has its true place in that relation, as the later Greeks, who so often quote Hesiod (cf. the so-called and obligations over and above the natural family,’’ The Economics of Aristotle), fully realized. Also the family charities due clan-family was “ a natural guild,” consisting of rich and to the orphan, whose lot is deplored in the Iliad (xxih 490), and poor members—the well-born or noble and the craftsman to the aged are now clearly enunciated. But there is also in alike. Originally it would seem that the land was divided Hesiod the duty to one’s neighbour, not according to the ‘ ‘ perfection” of “ Cristes lore,” but according to a law of honourable among the families of the clan by lot and was inalienable. reciprocity in act and intent. ‘ ‘ Love him who loves thee, and cleave Thus with the family was combined the means of supportto him who cleaveth to thee : to him who would have given, give ; ing the family. On the other hand, every youth was to him who would not have given, give not.” The groundwork registered in his phratry, and the phratry remained till of Hesiod’s charity outside the family is neighbourly help (such the reforms of Cleisthenes (509 b.c.) a political, and even as formed no small part of old Scottish charity in the country districts) ; and he put his argument thus : Competition, which is after that time a social, organization of importance. a kind of strife, “lies in the roots of the world and in men.” It First, as to the family—the mother and wife, and the is good, and rouses the idle “handless ” man to work. On one father. Already before the age of Plato and Xenophon side are social duty (dike) and work, done briskly at the right season (450-350 b.c.) we find that the family has suffered a slow of the year, which brings a full barn. On the other side are unthrift and hunger, and relief with the disgrace of begging ; and decline. The wife, according to later Greek usage, was the relief, when the family can do no more, must come from married as a child, hardly educated, and confined to the neighbours, to whose house the beggar has to go with his wife and house, except at some festival or funeral. But with the children to ask for victual. Once they may be helped, or twice, decline came criticism and a nobler conception of family 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, life. “ First, then, come laws regarding the wife,” writes 391, &c., and elsewhere). Here indeed is a problem of to-day as the author of the so-called Economics of Aristotle, and the it appeared to an early Greek. The alternatives before the idler law, “ thou shalt do no wrong ; for, if we do no wrong, —so far as his own community is concerned—are labour with we shall not be wronged.” This is the “ common law,’ as neighbourly help to a limited extent, or hunger. Hesiod was a farmer in Bceotia. Some 530 years afterwards a the Pythagoreans say, “ and it implies that we must not pupil of Aristotle thus describes the district and its community of wrong the wife in the least, but treat her with the farmers. “They are,” he says, “well to do, but simple in their reverence due to a suppliant, or one taken from the altar. way of life. They practise justice, good faith, and hospitality. The sanctity of marriage is thus placed among the “ comTo needy townsmen and vagabonds they give freely of their sub-
 * for meanness and covetousness are unknown to them.