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Some Athenian presuppositions about ‘The Poor’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Vincent J. Rosivach
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Extract

What did Athenians think about when they talked about ‘the poor’? The question is worth asking for two reasons: first, if we are to judge from our texts, the Athenians talked a good deal about ‘the poor’, and it will help our understanding of these texts to know something about the presuppositions which author and audience had about ‘the poor’; and second, since the way a society stereotypes its members tells us something about that society, a study of Athenian presuppositions about ‘the poor’ should provide a further insight into Athenian social relations. In what follows I do not mean to suggest that all Athenians shared these presuppositions, any more than we share the stereotypes of poverty common today. Whatever individual Athenians may have believed, however, the assumptions to be considered here were a part of the landscape of Athenian public discourse, as it were, and so had to be taken into account when Athenians talked about ‘the poor’. Finally by way of preface I should also add that the present study deals, as its title says, with only some Athenian presuppositions about ‘the poor’. In particular, I do not consider here the large group of texts which, making a virtue of necessity, praise the poor for not succumbing to the vices (especially hubris) typical of the rich.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , October 1991 , pp. 189 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

Notes

1. The standard work on Athenian attitudes concerning poverty is Hemelrijk, J., Penia enploulos (Amsterdam, 1925)Google Scholar. More recently see the relevant chapters in Bolkestein, H., Wohltätigkeit und Armenpflege in vorchristlichen Altertum (Utrecht, 1939), pp. 181–99Google Scholar; den Boer, W., Private Morality in Greece and Rome: Some Historical Aspects – Mnemosyne, supp.57 (Leiden, 1979), pp. 151–78Google Scholar; and Dover, K. J., Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974), pp. 109–12Google Scholar. In what follows I have cited passages from classical authors exempli gratia with no attempt at exhaustive documentation.

2. For the praise of poverty see Hemelrijk, op. cit., pp. 90–5, 145Google Scholar.

3. Cf. e.g. Plato, , Symp. 203B–CGoogle Scholar, where Eros is described as a child of Penia (Poverty) and hence ‘always poor’ himself, shoeless and homeless, always lying down on the ground without bedding, sleeping in doorways and streets in the open air, always ‘dwelling together with need’.

4. Membership in one class or the other did not depend on a fixed amount of wealth, but was rather a matter of perceptions, how one perceived oneself and how one was perceived by others in relation to society as a whole. Thus the same person or group of persons (e.g. the lower strata of the hoplites) could be called ‘rich’ in some contexts and ‘poor’ in others.

5. The passage from Wealth quoted above is taken by Hemelrijk, , op. cit., pp. 25–6Google Scholar, and others to show that beggars (ptôkhoi) were a distinct under-class, as it were, beneath the penêtes, but this is not quite correct since, properly speaking, all non-wealthy, including beggars, were penêtes. The word ptôkhos is rarely used to describe actual real beggars. Rather it is used most often in two contexts, first to elicit sympathy in describing people who have lost everything (e.g. Soph. O.T. 455,1506: Antiphon, Tetr. 1.2.9; Dem. 19.310), and second as an exaggerated synonym for penês, particularly as a term of abuse (so e.g. Lys. 30.27, Dem. 18.131; for ptôkhos as a term of abuse, cf. Dem. 21.185, 198, 211; note also Bekk., Anec. 112.24Google Scholar: ‘to be a beggar: not to ask of others, but to be poor …’). It should also be noted that there was no ‘middle class’, but in any given context whoever was not ‘rich’ was ‘poor’, and whoever was not ‘poor’ was ‘rich’; when authors speak of ‘those in the middle’ (hoi mesoi), they are merely describing the moderately wealthy (or moderately poor) who are free from the ills which any extreme brings, and not a separate class, with its own distinct character, between rich and poor. See further Hemelrijk, , op. cit, pp. 52–3, 140Google Scholar.

6. The problem was not limited to the poor; cf. Dem.22.65 (= 24.172), where Demosthenes is talking about the liturgic class. Merely having children (and thus dividing one's estate) can lead to poverty (cf. Arist., Pol. 1270b4–6)Google Scholar.

7. Plato, , Laws 632AGoogle Scholar. Cf. Gorg. 477B–C: poverty is the ‘bad condition’ (ponêria) of money as illness is the ‘bad condition’ of the body and injustice the ‘bad condition’ of the soul. Aristotle, (E.N. 1115a10–11)Google Scholar similarly lists ‘lack of reputation, poverty, illness, friendlessness, death’ as the evils men fear; cf. 'in poverty and in the other misfortunes (E.N. 1155all); ‘poverty and illness and other kinds of bad luck’ (Pol. 1332a19–20); ‘poverty is distinguished from disgrace, since lack of means for the most part demonstrates no moral badness but the bad judgement of luck’ ([Demades] de xii arm. 8). Note also the use of words dealing with good luck (makarios, eutukhês, etc.) and their opposites to describe rich and poor, on which see Hemelrijk, , op. cit, pp. 55–9Google Scholar.

8. E.g. ‘no one who is poor seems to be impious, but rather always ill’, Soph., F 354Google Scholar; ‘the weak man’ (ho asthenês) contrasted with the wealthy men, Eur., Supp. 433–4Google Scholar; poor people described as ‘weak’ (asthenountas), Aristoph, . Peace 636Google Scholar; ‘weakness neither of bodies nor of money’, Xen., R.L. 10.7Google Scholar; ‘for the poor and those disabled (adunatois) in body’, Lys., 31.11Google Scholar; ‘most poor and most weak’, (asthenestatoi), Dem., 21.123Google Scholar; ‘poor men and weak’ (astheneis), Dem., 40.3Google Scholar, ‘poor and disabled’ (adunatous), 40.28.

9. Cf. Arist., E.N. 1115a17–18Google Scholar: ‘perhaps one ought not to fear poverty or illness or in general anything which does not come from a bad character or because of one's own actions.’

10. Indeed, when someone is said to have gone from being poor to being wealthy the usual implication is that he has done so dishonestly (e.g. Aristoph., Clouds 920–1Google Scholar; Lys.25.26, 30.27; Dem.23.209); the cliché reenforces the assumption that the poor will always be poor by implying that the only way to escape poverty is through criminal acts. By contrast, there is little to suggest that poor people could ever escape their poverty simply by working hard (Thuc.2.40.1, from the Funeral Oration, is a notable exception).

11. Cf. the Old Oligarch's comments on comedy which, according to the Oligarch, usually attacks the wealthy or the well-born or the powerful, but also attacks the few poor and ordinary folk who seek to rise above their station ([Xen., ] A. P. 2.18)Google Scholar.

12. If the examples are rare enough they are unlikely to affect ideological beliefs. Note also that rising from the thetic to the zeugite class was not the same as going from poor to rich.

13. For an extensive list of passages on this theme see Dover, , op. cit., pp. 109–10Google Scholar.

14. Allegations of bribe-taking especially in juries but also in assemblies deserve a study of their own. I would only note here that the sheer number of people involved made bribing the ekklesia highly improbable.

15. Dover, , op. cit., pp. 34–5Google Scholar, and Jones, A. H. M., Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1966), pp. 36–7Google Scholar are probably correct in saying that the poorest citizens were usually not to be found on juries in the fourth century, but we should not conclude from this that juries were composed even primarily of wealthy citizens. Remember that the penêtes were not simply the destitute, but included all the non-rich.

16. Xen., Hell. 2.3.48Google Scholar; cf. Aen. Tact.5.1 on the unreliability of the poor in a city under siege.

17. On this point see further Dover, , op. cit., pp. 5–6, 13–14Google Scholar. Aristotle's Rhetoric is a valuable source for the same reason.

18. On the usefulness of wealth see the chapter on ‘Property-Power’ in Davies, J. K., Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens (Salem NH, 1984), pp. 88–131Google Scholar.

19. Cf. e.g. Xen., Oik. 4.2–3Google Scholar; Plato, Rep. 495D; Arist., Pol. 1258b35–9, 1337b8–17Google Scholar; [Arist., ] Oik. 1343b3–4Google Scholar.

20. Among ta kala is ‘to work at no banausos tekhnê, for it is the mark of a free man not to live dependent upon another', Arist., Rhel. 1367a32—3Google Scholar.

21. Note that at Dem.57.41 there is no suggestion that there is anything wrong with a poor man (penês) divorcing his present, poorer wife to marry a rich epiklêros – though in this case the poor man did see to his first wife's remarriage.

22. Plaut., Asin. 87Google Scholar; cf. Plaut., Men. 766–7Google Scholar; Anaxandrides, frag.52.4–6 K, Antiphanes, frag.329 K, Men. frag.579 K2. By contrast, at Men., Epitr. 134–5Google Scholar Chairisios does not consider himself his wife's ‘servant’ (oiketês) despite the large dowry which she brought. Strepsiades in Aristophanes' Clouds is a slightly different case, a man who is being ruined by his son's expensive tastes which he inherited from his aristocratic mother (cf. Megadorus' diatribe at Plaut, . Aul. 165–7)Google Scholar. One also thinks again mutatis mutandis of the poor independent farmer married to Euripides' domineering Elektra.

23. Plato, , Laws 936B–CGoogle Scholar is a notable exception. According to Plato here, one who suffers from hunger or something similar is not a legitimate object of pity. Only a good man who has fallen into misfortune deserves pity. In a well-ordered state, Plato reasons, such a one would certainly be helped by others, and so would never be reduced to utter beggary; thus, if anyone is reduced to beggary, he must necessarily be unworthy of being helped, and so should rightly be expelled from the city.

24. So e.g. Isaios 5.35; Isok.18.35, 62. Cf. in contrast Dem.27.57: claiming that one's opponent has more money than he really has lessens the jury's pity for him. Of course when someone has squandered his wealth he is not a legitimate object of pity even if he is poor (Isaios 5.43).

25. This private charity should be distinguished from mutual assistance among friends, for which Athens' élite felt a real moral obligation. Given the social pressures discouraging class-transcending friendships in a class-structured society (on which see Hutter, H., Politics as Friendship: the Origins of Classical Notions of Politics in the Theory and Practice of Friendship [Waterloo, Ont., 1978], p. 10)Google Scholar, mutual assistance among friends is, by and large, ultimately a manifestation of class solidarity (cf. ibid. 20), while the charity discussed here operates between classes.

26. For their poverty cf. 31.19.

27. Dem.18.268; the prisoners of war are called penêtes at 19.170. For ransoming captives as a conspicuous public expenditure similar to trierarchies or horse-raising see Isaios 5.43.

28. Dem.19.169–70. Philip eventually freed the other prisoners he had captured without requiring ransom, at which point it is easy to imagine the prisoners who had borrowed money from Demosthenes feeling that they had borrowed unnecessarily and being reluctant to repay. Note that later in this same speech he refers to these transactions as freeing the prisoners ‘from his private funds’ (229) and ‘wishing to spend, to ransom, and not to overlook one citizen in misfortune through need’ (230).

29. Lys.26.24 may also refer to a ransom that freed prisoners had to repay to their ransomer, but the text is polemical and obscure.

30. The thrust of Isokrates' argument here is that the contracts into which the poor enter with the wealthy should be respected, and that jurymen should not be misled by a false sense of equality to nullify these contracts in order to benefit the poor (7.33–4). The implication of the argument is that jurymen are currently so misled, which could only happen if such loans are still being made. Cf. also Plato, , Laws 736D–EGoogle Scholar which places the issue of debt within the context of relations between rich and poor.

31. See further Hands, A. R.' chapter ‘Giving for a Return’ in his Charities and Social Aid in Greece and Rome (London, 1968) pp. 26–48Google Scholar; Hands properly places charity within the more general framework of gift-giving, an action which usually anticipated some return for the favour granted.

32. Whitehead, D., ‘Competitive Outlay and Community Profit: Philotimia in Classical Athens’, C&M 34 (1983), 55–74Google Scholar. More generally see Veyne, P., Lepain et le cirque (Paris, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Cf. Arist., Rhet. 1378b35–1379a38Google Scholar: the rich man thinks it is fitting that he is ‘esteemed’ by the poor man he has what the latter wants. Esteem of the wealthy easily shades into envy of their possessions (cf. e.g. Arist., Pol. 1295b30–2)Google Scholar.

34. The spirit of resentment is well caught in the Oligarchic Man's complaint ‘thankless are (the masses and a slave always) of the one who distributes and gives’ (akhariston esti <to plêthos kai doulon aei> tou nemontos kai didontos, Theophrast. Char. 26.5), whatever the correct supplement of the lacuna may be.

35. Arist., Rhet. 1372a21–3Google Scholar. I follow here the mss., on which see Grimaldi, W. M. A., , S.J.Aristotle, Rhetoric I: A Commentary (New York, 1980), pp. 272–3Google Scholar, ad loc.

36. Rhet. 1391a14–19, on the newly-rich who have not yet learned to resist the temptations of wealth. Coincidentally assault-and-battery committed by a weak man is paired together with adultery committed by an ugly man and a poor one at Rhet. 1272a21–3, suggesting that they may have been stock exempla.

37. Dover, , op. cit., pp. 110–11Google Scholar, with examples.

38. Arist., Pol. 1295b6–11;Google Scholar for a somewhat similar contrast cf. Arist., Rhet. 1391a19–20Google Scholar.