Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/295

 PERRILEBIAXS - MAGXETES. 279 had a permanent tenure in the soil, and that they maintained among one another the relations of family and village. This last mention- ed order of men, in Thessaly called the Penesta?, is assimilated by all ancient authors to the Helots of Laconia, and in both cases the danger attending such a social arrangement is noticed by Plato and Aristotle. For the Helots as well as the Penestae had their own common language and mutual sympathies, a separate residence, arms, and courage ; to a certain extent, also, they pos- sessed the means of acquiring property, since we are told that some of the Penestag were richer than their masters. 1 So many means of action, combined with a degraded social position, gave rise to frequent revolt and incessant apprehensions. As a general rule, indeed, the cultivation of the soil by slaves, or dependents, for the benefit of proprietors in the cities, prevailed throughout most parts of Greece. The rich men of Thebes, Argos, Athens, or Elis, must have derived their incomes in the same manner ; but it seems that there was often, in other places, a larger in termixture of bought foreign slaves, and also that the number, fellow-feeling, and courage of the degraded village population was nowhere so great as in Thessaly and Laconia. Now the origin of the Penestae, in Thessaly, is ascribed to the conquest of tronized and his muse invoked by both of them ; see JElian, V. H. xii. 1 ; Ovid, Ibis, 512; Quintilian, xi. 2, 15. Pindar also boasts of his friendship with Thorax the Aleuad (Pyth. x. 99). The Thessalian uvdpa-odiaTat, alluded to in Aristophanes (Plutus, 521), must have sold men out of the country for slaves, either refractory Penes- tie, or Perrhtebian, Magnetic, and Achaean freemen, seized by violence : the Athenian comic poet Mnesimachus, in jesting on the voracity of the Pharsa- lians, exclaims, ap. Athenae. x. p. 418 upa irov IITTTIJV Kareadiovai Tro/Uv 'A^ai'/c^v , Pagasas was celebrated as a place of export for slaves (Hermippus ap. Athena;, i. 49). Menon of Pharsalus assisted the Athenians against Amphipolis with 200, pr 300 " Penestae, on horseback, of his own." (IltveoTatf idiotf) Demos- then. Trept 2wraf. c. 9, p. 173. cont. Aristokrat. c. 51, p. 687. 1 Archemachus ap. Athense. vi. p. 264; Plato, Legg. vi. p. 777; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 3 ; vii. 9, 9 ; Dionys. Halic. A. R. ii. 84. Both Plato and Aristotle insist on the extreme danger of having numer- ous slaves, fellow-countrymen and of one language - (ope pvtot, ouo narpiurai u/