Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/333

 MISCELLANEOUS CASTES IN EGYPT. 317 however, received from it a fixed proportion, one-fifth of th total produce, leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators. 1 "VYe are told that Sethos, priest of the god Phtha (or Hephzestos) at Memphis, and afterwards named king, oppressed the military caste and deprived them of their lands, in revenge for which they withheld from him their aid when Egypt was invaded by Senna cherib, and also that, in the reign of Psammetichus, a large number (two hundred and forty thousand) of these soldiers mi grated into Ethiopia from a feeling of discontent, leaving then wives and children behind them. 2 It was Psammetichus who first introduced Ionian and Karian mercenaries into the country, and began innovations on the ancient Egyptian constitution ; so that the disaffection towards him, on the part of the native soldiers, no longer permitted to serve as exclusive guards to the king, i? not difficult to explain. The kalasiries and hermotybii were interdicted from every description of art or trade. There can be little doubt that under the Persians their lands were made sub- ject to the tribute, and this may partly explain the frequent revolts which they maintained, with very considerable bravery, against the Persian kings. Herodotus enumerates five other races (so he calls them), or castes, besides priests and soldiers, 3 herdsmen, swineherds, tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots ; an enumeration which per- plexes us, inasmuch as it takes no account of the husbandmen, who must always have constituted the majority of the population. It is. perhaps, for this very reason that they are not comprised in the list, not standing out specially marked or congregated together, like the five above named, and therefore not seeming to constitute a race apart. The distribution of Diodorus, who spec- ifies (over and above priests and soldiers) husbandmen, herdsmen, and artificers, embraces much more completely the whole popula- 1 Besides this general rent or land-tax received by the Egyptian kings, there seem, also, to have been special crown-lands. Strabo mentions an island in the Nile (in the Thebaid) celebrated for the extraordinary excellenca of its date-palms ; the whole of this island belonged to the kings, -without any other proprietor : it yielded a large revenue, and passed into the hands of the Roman government in Strabo's time (xvii, p. 818).
 * Herodot. ii, 30-141. 3 Herodot. i :, 1C4