Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/203

VI which has left such an invaluable legacy to modern civilisation. And indeed the generous and reasonable spirit of Athenian democracy was itself not without influence on the condition and prospects of the slave population. In no ancient State were the slaves so materially comfortable; in none, perhaps, were they so exclusively drawn, not from Greek, but from foreign and semi-civilised peoples. Though their disabilities would form a long list, their discomforts were certainly few, and their prospects of liberation by no means small. If liberated, they would be in the same position as the resident stranger, and might eventually arrive at citizenship; and when, in great stress of war, they had served the State honourably as a citizen might do, they were more than once received into the citizen body by public vote of the Ecclesia.

In Aristotle's view, the raison d'être of slavery was to make a noble life possible for the master; and where the master actually lived such a life, and at the same time did his duty by his slaves, the institution might be justified. Tried by this test, Athens is not to be wholly condemned as a slave-holding State; she may, at least, claim far more indulgence than Sparta or Rome.

Not so justifiable, at least from a Greek point of view, was the other great advantage, without which Athens could hardly have merited the panegyric of Pericles. I just now put aside for the moment the