V TRADERS AND CRAFTSMEN 145
times it concerned a small upper class rather than the people as
a whole.1
The sycophant despises trade and craftsmanship as well as
agriculture.2 But this should not be taken as proof of a general
contempt for manual labour; it proves, indeed, the far-reaching
equality which in the eyes of the public existed among all who
earned their living by the work of their hands. The exceptional
position of agriculture, largely due to the greater inde-
pendence of the peasant, was also an inheritance from earlier
aristocratic times, kept alive in later ages chiefly by literature.
In spite of the social and political differences which3 as we
have seen, existed between the farmers and the townsfolk, the
economic situation brought them together on more or less the
same level. These facts are, perhaps, the final reason for be-
lieving in the unity of the social class formed by the pre-
ponderant part of the citizen body, farmers, tradesmen and
artisans, and chiefly characterized by the sale of goods which
they produced themselves, or by overseas trade. We have
stressed the middle-class character of these men, but we must
emphasize that there was among the citizens a class, or at least
the remains of a class, above them, and none below. For the
dregs of the populace, even the paid day-labourers, were — at
least before the general impoverishment after the war — not so
numerous that they could be counted as a distinct class.8 We
have mentioned the poor, and we shall do so again > but it
would distort the facts if we regarded them as a class by them-
selves. We may call the body of -petit 'bourgeois the 'second
estate' which, like the third estate of the French Revolution,
was a unit in spite of all its differences in wealth and education;
economically they were men, great and small, who lived on
their earnings, not on property.4 The advocate Robespierre
1 For that distinction cf, e g, Xen mem. II, 7, 4 oik 4, 2f In general see
Bolkestein, 191$", and above p. 850".
2 PI 901 ff.
3 This seems perhaps a sweeping statement, and I admit that it is open to
misunderstanding It is always a matter of personal opinion where to draw the
line between the poorer people among the lower middle-class and 'the poor* as a
kind of proletariate I believe that it is misleading to speak of a proletariate in
fifth-century Athens But as there is no statistic evidence, full proof seems im-
possible either way. I trj to justify my view not only in the following sentences,
but also in various passages throughout the book, especially in chapter IX.
4 I have been reminded by one reviewer that "earnings' could denve from