by Xenophon
CHAPTER 12
1. practical aspects of hunting: Here begins the politico-philosophical epilogue, which some have attributed to a different hand from the preceding practicalities.
2. hunting animals: Actually, hoplite infantry militiamen and a fortiori the even wealthier cavalrymen had slave attendants to carry their equipment for them off the battlefield. This remark would seem to apply with greater force to mercenaries.
3. prime… condition success is never far off: The author is claiming that hunting completed the hoplite warrior’s armoury, by adding extra fitness and flexibility. There were competitions for euexia (‘fitness’) at several local agonistic festivals, apparently akin to the euandria (‘manly excellence’) contest at the Panathenaic Games (Memoirs of Socrates 3.3.12), but what exactly they involved is unclear: D. G. Kyle in J. Neils (ed.), Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 206–7 n. 102.
4. not deprive… of their game: This passage implies a distinction between professional huntsmen and the enthusiastic amateurs to whom the (rest of the) treatise is directed. Among hoplites, the Spartans were unique for their skill in night-movements.
5. undertake any other honourable occupation they like: Provided, that is, they have the leisure to pursue them–which, it is understood, such elite young men will.
6. their own: If the treatise is indeed a fourth-century work, this passage could be seen as a contribution to the important debate over the proper political relationship between the public and the private spheres. Rather than emphasizing the priority of the public over the private, as a democrat would, the author first counters the accusation that hunting involves neglect of private affairs and then affirms the thesis developed at length in The Estate-manager that the private and the public are not only compatible but mutually reinforcing and beneficial.
7. needs protection: The author displays an odd – but perhaps quintessentially Xenophontic – combination of a pre-scientific belief in straightforward retribution for evildoers with a Socratic despisal of all pleasure, especially bodily.
8. qualities a good man should have: Xenophon’s Agesilaus discourses upon the qualities comprising ‘perfect goodness’.
9. as I mentioned: See 1.3.
10. by him: This casual insertion of a reference to a pederastic relationship speaks worlds for the author’s social purview and pedagogic frame of reference. See Hiero chapter 1 note 4. For pederasty’s supposed pedagogic function, see Xenophon, Spartan Society 2 (Penguin Plutarch on Sparta). As noted in the Introduction, a hare was a typical love-gift from pederastic lover to desired beloved.
CHAPTER 13
1. sophists… exactly the opposite: On the sophists, see main Introduction. On this author’s hostile attitude towards them, see Introduction to this treatise; it is interesting that he should think of their teaching as being given in written not oral form. The teachability of virtue was a cardinal point of opposition between Plato’s Socrates and the sophist Protagoras of Abdera as represented in the Platonic dialogue named after him.
2. are offensive: Whether or not this treatise, or this portion of it, is by Xenophon, here is the keynote of Xenophon’s moral pedagogy in all the treatises included in this selection – they are designed to teach serious and socially useful lessons in virtue in a practical way.
3. people who really know… professional deceivers: This may be intended as an allusive plural referring specifically to Socrates, who – at least as he is represented by Plato – claimed to ‘know’ in a special way.
4. men’s fortunes: In addition to all their other crimes, sophists commit the ultimate sin – the abuse of hunting. There may well be an implied contrast here with the pedagogic practice of Socrates, who taught free of formal charge (Memoirs of Socrates 1.2.7–8).
5. of piety: The treatise (or epilogue) climaxes in a fresh exhortation to piety, which leads on to the two concluding paragraphs, which in turn refer the reader back to the introduction: a neat piece of ring-composition.
6. watching it: See chapter 1. For the inspiration allegedly due to being overseen, see 12.20. See also The Estate-manager 12.20 and 21.10–11.
7. Procris: Procris was married to Cephalus (see 1.2) and shared her husband’s enthusiasm for hunting. Atalanta (chapter 1 note 5) was so devoted to hunting that she resolved to remain unmarried, like Artemis, unless a suitor could beat her at the footrace; no one could – until Meilanion slowed her down by dropping golden apples, given him by Aphrodite, to tempt her.
WAYS AND MEANS
CHAPTER 1
1. the allied cities: The allies in question are those of the so-called Second Athenian Sea-League, formed in 378 on the basis of mutual hostility to Sparta; within half a dozen years, the number of allies had reached seventy-five, but within the same span Athens was seen to have broken the anti-imperialist guarantees with which she had encouraged allies to join (see chapter 5 note 7). The Social (Allied) War of 357–355 put an end to the League as a viable alliance – and was a major contributory cause of Athens’ public penury at the time of the treatise’s writing. Some modern scholars are of the view that not only Ways and Means but also A History of My Times, which probably reached its final form around the time that the former was being contemplated or drafted (see chapter 4 note 18 and chapter 5 note 19), were motivated by Xenophon’s determinedly anti-imperialist moral stance, but see chapter 5 notes 4 and 8.
2. anywhere else: Xenophon’s paean here and in 1.5 yields to none in patriotic fervour, but it does conflict rather sharply with the general and not unjustified perception (e.g. Thucydides 2.2; Plato, Critias III) that Attica was not exceptionally blessed by nature, a defect which was compensated for by commerce seconded by imperial power (e.g. Thucydides 2.38). See P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Part III. Praise of ‘the gods’ is partly conventional, partly Xenophontic – and almost superstitious.
3. supply of stone: The most famous and expensive marble, used lavishly on the Acropolis, was from Mount Pentelicum; but Mount Hymettus also yielded fine marble, and workable local limestone (poros) abounded: see R. E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens (Princeton University Press, 1978).
4. silver ore… or sea: On Attic silver, see chapter 4. After Laureium, the nearest substantial deposits of the ore were in the Mount Pangaeum district of Chalcidice (also a source of exotic huntable fauna, see On Hunting 11.1); these constituted a major part of the economic basis of the rise of Philip of Macedon (reigned 359–336).
5. Athens… centre of Greece and… inhabited world: More encomiastic hyperbole, so far as Athens was concerned; Aristotle (Politics 1327b29–30) saw Greece as at the centre of the oecumene, but most Greeks would automatically have identified Delphi, not Athens, as the centre of Greece.
6. pivot of a circle: Cf. Isocrates 4.42 on the economic centrality of Peiraeus. By ‘Greece’ here is meant not just mainland Greece, the southern extension of the Balkan peninsula, but the entire Greek world from Phasis to the Pillars of Heracles (see On Hunting chapter 2 note 3).
7. most states have non-Greeks on their borders… non-Greek lands: ‘Most states’ is numerically accurate – Xenophon is here taking an enlarged view of the Greek world with its well over 1,000 states.
CHAPTER 2
1. into consideration: Xenophon’s primary interest here is in raising revenue and extracting other public services from the perhaps 10,000 or more Greek and non-Greek metics (cf. 4.40–1); but in other contexts (see Cavalry Commander chapter 9 note 4) he could take a more generous view of these otherwise under-privileged residents of Athens and Attica (especially Peiraeus).
2. resident alien’s tax: Metics are attested under a variety of titles in over seventy Greek cities. At Athens adult males were required to pay a metoikion (metic poll tax) of one drachma a month, independent women metics half that amount.
3. and households: Most metics were probably below hoplite status, so Xenophon’s proposal to exemp
t metics from the obligation to serve as hoplites would benefit only a minority. Allowing the wealthiest metics to join the cavalry (see note 5 below) would measurably enhance the social status of only that privileged few. Most Greek metics at Athens were what we would now call ‘economic migrants’, attracted by Athens’ superior economic opportunities, and therefore technically free to return to their places of birth (and, if Greeks, citizenship) at any time; a few, however, were political refugees. For the non-Greek metics, see next note.
4. resident aliens come from: Among the non-Greek metics, some were traders, like the Egyptians and Phoenicians who were given permission to establish religious sanctuaries to Ammon and Astarte respectively in the Peiraeus; others were ex-slaves, including skilled men such as bankers, liberated privately by their Athenian masters but not normally granted Athenian citizenship (see chapter 4 note 10). The latter might be wealthy enough – and sufficiently rooted – to be required to serve as hoplites. Xenophon’s complaint about the non-Athenianness of the Athenian army might have been better addressed to Athens’ increasing reliance on mercenaries.
5. to serve in the cavalry: This had been advocated by Xenophon already in Cavalry Commander 9.6, without effect.
6. live in Athens: Ownership of real estate at Athens was an exclusive right of citizens. Exceptionally, an individual metic might be granted enktesis, that is the privilege of owning land and/or a house. Xenophon’s proposal to extend the privilege more widely was put into effect elsewhere, but the Athenians, jealous of their democratic privileges, resolutely kept the barrier between metic and citizen status high. By ‘Athens’ here Xenophon must mean the city of Athens within the walls (destroyed in 404, rebuilt in the late 390s), which was less densely and less regularly inhabited than Peiraeus (newly laid out in the fifth century to the plan of Hippodamus of Miletus).
7. the custodians of orphans: Orphanophylakes are otherwise unattested: see Ath. Pol., Rhodes, Commentary, p. 633. See also Cavalry Commander chapter 9 note 3.
CHAPTER 3
1. complete safety: The allusive plural refers specifically to the harbour, or rather three harbours, of Peiraeus, of which the specially developed commercial harbour of Cantharus is particularly in Xenophon’s mind (see also note 3 below). Despite its enormous length of coastline, good harbours were in short supply in Aegean Greece, though ancient merchantmen with their shallow draught could be simply beached rather than docked if necessary.
2. purchase price: Ancient coinage was not fiduciary but worth what the metal composing it weighed. All coins were issued by a central validating authority, and Athenian (or Attic) coinage was especially highly valued for its guaranteed purity – so highly indeed that in Egypt in Xenophon’s day Attic coins were both overstruck (and re-used) and imitated. See C. Howgego, Ancient History from Coins (Routledge, 1995).
3. Peiraeus Emporium… resolution of disputes: ‘Emporium’ was the technical term for the commercial, as opposed to the military, part of the Peiraeus. Xenophon’s ‘Controllers’ are probably what Demosthenes and other sources call the ‘Overseers’ of the Emporium. Rather than Xenophon’s favourite system of differential competitive reward, the Athenians introduced special courts on an equal basis for all comers so that commercial lawsuits could be settled with particular dispatch.
4. prospect of prestige… flock to Athens: Xenophon emphasizes moral as well as material incentives, appealing to the honour syndrome that dominated the Greek civic value-system.
5. considerate legislation: See chapter 4 note 19.
6. Hegesileos’ command: The wealthiest one-fifth to one-third of Athenians qualified for payment of ‘war-tax’ (eisphora), a system first introduced in the fifth century, but reorganized at the time of the foundation of the Second Sea-League (see chapter 1 note 1). Lysistratus’ command was in 364/3; Hegesileos’ in 363/2.
7. recover their money… in part: Eisphorai (see previous note) might also be raised exceptionally for naval expeditions, but the Athenian navy was ordinarily financed by means of a different system known as ‘liturgies’, or (literally) ‘public works’: a handful of the richest Athenians, numbering perhaps only 400, were required on a rotating basis to make themselves responsible for the outfitting and upkeep of a trireme war-ship (built at state expense, and docked at Peiraeus) for one year; the trierarch (as the trireme liturgist was known) was technically also in command of the ship, but he might and probably usually would delegate the captaincy; technically, too, the state was supposed to pay the crew’s wages, but in practice the trierarch often found himself making up shortfalls. Nevertheless, a generous and successful trierarch did stand to win great kudos and honour. See generally V. Gabrielsen, Financing the Athenian Fleet (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
8. two minas: There were 60 minas in a talent, and it is estimated that a fortune of 3–4 talents would have put an Athenian into the ‘super-tax’ liturgical bracket (see previous note). ‘Most Athenian citizens’, however, were poor, unable to afford an outlay of even I mina (ioo drachmas), and only too pleased to receive the daily wage of 3 obols (½ drachma) that was paid for serving as a juror in the People’s Court. Xenophon is therefore addressing here only the seriously wealthy, the sort of people who had sufficient spare capital to make ‘bottomry’ loans, that is lend money (at very high rates of interest) to long-distance sea traders. To them, the potential 5+ mina-payers, he must talk in terms of investment and guaranteed return to make his proposed scheme seem attractive.
9. human institutions: Cf. Memoirs of Socrates 1.4.16 (Penguin Conversations of Socrates); also Isocrates 8 (‘On the Peace’).120 (probably written about the same time as Ways and Means).
10. share in this bounty: There was no such ‘register of eternal benefactors’, except in the fertile imagination of Xenophon, who seems to have modelled it on the grant of citizenship to foreigners that was made to the grantee and his legitimate male descendants in perpetuity. In Xenophon’s lifetime such exceptional grants were made to among others Euagoras (a king), Dionysius I (a tyrant) and Orontes (a Persian satrap): see M. Osborne, Naturalization in Athens (Royal Belgian Academy, 1981–3).
11. in general: This idea of instituting a merchant marine is out of the same mould as Xenophon’s later suggestion about Athens’ investing publicly in mine-slaves: neither was taken up in practice, partly for technical reasons but mainly because they offended against the Athenians’ entrenched notions of what it was proper for the state to do economically, and what should be left to private enterprise. The state did, on the other hand, lease out immovable, especially sacred, property, and did farm certain taxes: see 4.19 below; and Ath. Pol. 47.
CHAPTER 4
1. first undertaken: Archaeological evidence from the Laureium district of south-eastern Attica indicates that mining had occurred there as early as the sixteenth century BC, but the period of intense working, which depended on a suitable labour force and sufficient labour supply, did not begin before the sixth century, or even the early fifth. In the final phase ofthe Peloponnesian War (413–404), and for over three decades afterwards, there seems to have been a trough in working the mines, so that Xenophon’s treatise coincided with a rising wave of renewed exploitation (see note 16 below). On this and many other aspects, see R. J. Hopper, Trade and Industry in Classical Greece (Thames & Hudson, 1979), pp. 170–89.
2. for a while: Xenophon would seem to be referring to the period down to 413 (see previous note), ‘before the Deceleian affair’ (4.25); see 4.14–15 for examples of intense investment.
3. new entrepreneurs: Xenophon may have in mind Hesiod’s famous passage in Works and Days about the good Strife that encourages ‘potter to be angry with potter and carpenter with carpenter’ (line 25) in the interests of economic self-improvement. His point would be that so abundant is mining wealth that economic advantage accrues even without expenditure of anger.
4. workers: Such ergatai could in principle be either hired or owned, free or slave, but Xenophon is likely to have had slaves in min
d chiefly here; only very occasionally do we hear of a concession being worked purely with free familial labour.
5. more people turn to this line of work: Mining, that is, contradicts the ‘normal’ laws of supply and demand, as illustrated for instance in 4.36. See also 4.25 for the alleged inexhaustibility of the supply.
6. burying… to use: There is a pun in the Greek, in that one both digs the ground in order to extract the silver and then digs the processed silver (in the form of coins) into the ground in order to hoard it. Such seemingly miserly hoarding was actually quite normal, given the general lack of secure investment outlets apart from landownership and farming.
7. of silver: Ph. Gauthier (whose excellent Commentaire is presumed throughout), p. 131, rightly distinguishes between the generally received idea, which Xenophon shared, that gold varied in value whereas the value of silver remained fixed, and the historical fact that gold on occasion depreciated. So far as the latter goes, it appears that, apart from a few blips caused by the introduction to Greece of Persian gold by mercenaries, the ratio of the price of gold to that of silver at Athens remained pretty constant at 12:1 from the late fifth century down to the time of this treatise.
8. same conditions as citizens: Mining was, legally speaking, a free-for-all, open to all foreigners whether resident or non-resident, as well as to citizens. Contrast land-ownership, where only a handful of specially privileged metic foreigners were granted equality of access with citizens (see chapter 2 note 6).
9. plain… to see even today: Similarly, at The Estate-manager 15.10–11 and elsewhere, Xenophon has Ischomachus claim that even the technical aspects of agriculture are obvious.
10. Sosias… Hipponicus : Sosias was most probably an ex-slave metic; perhaps he had served when a slave as a sort of accountant to a mining entrepreneur like Nicias, or maybe he had even himself worked in the mining area, presumably in the washeries or other ancillary services on the surface rather than in the lethal shafts below ground. Nicias was the famous conservative politician and failed general, who died in Sicily in 413, and of whom Plutarch wrote a Life (see Penguin Plutarch, The Rise and Fall of Athens, pp. 207–43). Hipponicus belonged to a distinguished political family, closely connected with Pericles. Philemonides (15) is not otherwise certainly attested.