Social struggles in antiquity

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SOCIAL STRUGGLES
IN ANTIQUITY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A HISTORY OF BRITISH SOCIALISM

THB LIFE AND TEACHING OP KARL MARX

SOCIAL STRUGGLES
IN ANTIQUITY

M.

BY

BEER

TRANSLATED BY

H. J. STENNING

AND

REVISED BV THE AUTHOR

LONDON

LEONARD PARSONS

DEVONSHIRE STREET

First Published ig22

Leonard Parscns, Ltd.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION ...... 7

CHAPTER I

PALESTINE ....... 20

CHAPTER II

GREECE ........ 51

CHAPTER III

THE PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA . . 61

CHAPTER IV

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS . . . 8I

CHAPTER V

ROME ........ 128

CHAPTER VI

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 166

CHAPTER VII

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY ..... 182

INDEX ... ..... 219

SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN
ANTIQUITY

INTRODUCTION

I. The Meaning of the Term " Antiquity.'*

From the purely chronological standpoint,
world history is commonly divided into
antiquity, the middle ages, the modern times
and most modern times. ^ When looked at
closely, this historical division proves to be
inadequate, as it tells us practically nothing.
When we speak of antiquity, we think of
the empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and
of the old Hebrews, Greeks and Romans.
But had the Kelts, Teutons and Slavs no
antiquity? And had the ancient peoples
no middle ages, and no modern times?
World history is not the record of a homo-

* Antiquity, from the earliest times to the dissolution
of the Roman Empire; middle ages, from the fourth
century to the discovery of America; modern times,
from the fifteenth century to the French Revolution;
most modern times, from the eighteenth century onwards.

7

8 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

geneous humanity, which had remained in
the period of antiquity until the time of the
migration of races, and then entered upon the
consecutive stages of the middle ages, and
modern times. It treats rather of different
States, Empires, Races and Peoples, all of
which passed through their own stages of
development at different periods, without
waiting for others to reach the same level.
It does not inform us, for instance, how it
could come about that modern ideas may be
discovered in antiquity, or that the beginnings
of the Renaissance in Europe were mentally
connected with ancient Greece, and that we
moderns must often revert to ideas and
opinions which were enunciated by the
ancients more than two thousand years ago.
Were these thinkers superior to time and
space, and did they receive their wisdom
through inspiration ?

We shall get nearer the truth if we assume
that " antiquity " did not form a mental
and historical unity. Even the old Hebrews,
Greeks and Romans had their period of
antiquity, their middle ages, and their
modern times. It was only that they
appeared on the stage of human history
earlier than the Teutons and Slavs, and they

INTRODUCTION 9

likewise passed through their different periods,
evolved certain institutions and ideas, which
everywhere corresponded more or less to
these periods. Thus the various peoples
follow each other in the order of time, but
their social and mental development follows
a parallel course, with the exception of the
most modern period which the ancients did
not pass through, having been unable to
produce the Industrial Revolution on the *
application of science to industry. If, there-
fore, the Latins and Teutons in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries had mental affinities
with the Greeks of the sixth and fifth centuries
B.C., this happened only because the Greeks
of that time, having left their antiquity and
their middle ages behind them, were living in
the epoch of their renaissance, and this period
brought forth corresponding mental products.
Each of these periods has its specific social,
economic and intellectual features. In an-
tiquity, or more correctly in the youth of
peoples, men are everywhere linked together «
by blood relationship in the clan and the
tribe, and live in common, on the basis of
equality, knowing neither private property
in land, nor monogamy, nor towns; mental
Hfe is very primitive; custom and habits

10 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

dominate the simple life, which is mostly
nomadic, and in any case not bound up
with specific territories. Chiefs, judges or
" kings " are at the head of the people.
The art of writing is unknown, and the tribes
in question do not themselves describe their
..social institutions. For our knowledge of
this period we either have to thank travellers
from a country on a higher level of civilisation
who visit the district of the primitive tribes,
such as, for example, Caesar and Tacitus in
respect to the old Teutons, the discoverers
of America in respect to the Indian tribes,
or we moderns reconstruct the original insti-
tutions from the old legends and traditions
as well as from the remains of the old insti-
tutions which have survived into the time of
recorded history. And as we have discovered
that there is a certain regularity in the
development of peoples, we are justified in
making a generaUsation or devising a theory
that all peoples in the primitive social stage
were unacquainted with individual property
y^< in land, lived on the basis of equality, and
were organised in tribes.

The primitive period ends when the tribes
become settled, and are gradually organised
on a territorial basis (in communities, villages,

INTRODUCTION 11

towns, provinces and countries), devoting
themselves to agriculture. The settlers en-
deavour to continue the old social form, as
they do not know of any other, but the new
economic conditions require a new order,
and soon the former homogeneous society
begins to disintegrate into class divisions.
Towns are built ; trade and commerce begins
to develop; and common ownership is re-
placed by private property.

Adaptation to the new conditions does not
proceed smoothly. Those who suffer injury
and oppression, and those who are dispossessed
or loaded with debts, cling to the old and
vanishing equality, hold it fast in their
memories and idealise it, partly as Paradise,
partly as the Golden Age. The biblical
account of the Garden of Eden, and the
expulsion from it of the first human beings
(second and third chapters of Genesis), and
the verses of the Greek poet Hesiod (Works
and Days, verses 108-170) upon the Golden
Age and its disappearance are the oldest
recorded expressions of this sentiment which
penetrated the whole of antiquity. Internal
conflicts arise early; the old tribal chiefs —
the so-called " kings " or " judges " — yield
to the aristocracy, and dominion passes to

12 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

the great landowners. At this point we are
well into the " middle ages." Writing and
religious dogma first arise at this stage; a
■ mythology or a theology makes its appearance ;
laws are written down; the ten command-
ments of Israel, the laws of Draco in Greece,
and in Rome the twelve tables of laws. The
" middle ages " of the Israelites commenced
in the tenth century B.C. ; at that time the
Israelites still had kings, but the real power
was vested in the landowners — except per-
haps at the time of David and Solomon.
The middle ages of the Greeks began about
the year looo, and in the eighth century in
the case of the Romans.

In the course of the middle ages trade and
industry developed, and was carried on by
the town burghers — the bourgeoisie. When
the latter was sufficiently strengthened, the
middle ages were nearing their close. The
nobles either assimilated themselves to the
bourgeoisie, or suffered extinction; the old
systems of mythological and theological
dogma are shaken, and new religious and
philosophical ideas make headway; natural
science comes into its own ; art acquires more
freedom and variety; the feudal bonds are
dissolved — the Renaissance has begun. It

INTRODUCTION 13

commenced in Greece in the sixth century;
in Rome in the second century; in Israel
this socio-economic development was inter-
rupted by the national disasters : in the year
722 Israel (the northern Hebrew kingdom with
Samaria as its capital) was vanquished and
destroyed by Assyria; in the year 586 the
same fate befell Judea (the southern Hebrew
kingdom with Jerusalem as its centre) ; it
was destroyed by the Babylonians; but the
religious evolution was not only not inter-
rupted, it was reinforced. In accordance
with the spirit of the new time the Jews slowly
attained to a conception of ethical mono-
theism; the Greeks to moral philosophy,
and their leading thinkers to monotheism
and social ethics (Socrates, Plato and the
Stoics) . The social struggles which broke out
in the middle ages became more acute in
the modern times; in Israel the poor against
the rich; in Greece the popular masses (the
Demos) against the usurers and expropriators,
later the Proletariat against Capital; in
Rome the Plebeians against the Patricians,
the destitute against the rich, the slave
multitudes against their oppressors. The
chief demands were : the cancellation of
debts and redistribution of the land.

14 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Social reforms were introduced, probably
at the beginning of the seventh century in
Sparta; in 621 in Judea; 594 (Solon) in
Athens; 367 and 133 in Rome. In Sparta
the class struggle was suspended for several
centuries; on the other hand, it raged ever
more furiously in Athens, and produced the
greatest social philosopher of ancient times :
Plato (born 427, died 347) ; likewise it brought
forth a theory of Communism and of Natural
Right. The social struggles of Rome exer-
cised little intellectual influence of a revolu-
tionary nature, as generally speaking the
Romans were not an intellectual people, and
contributed nothing to the advance of religion,
philosophy and social ideas; Roman culture
was a pale and belated imitation of Greek
culture. The Romans appeared to have ex-
pended their entire mental energy upon war
and the subjection of foreign peoples, as well as
upon the establishment of the right of private
J property. In any history of intellectual
S achievements (jurisprudence excepted) the
Romans occupy a quite subordinate position.

A glance at the economics and politics of

antiquity reveals the great difference between

■^ that time and to-day. First we notice the

complete absence of machinery and fine

INTRODUCTION 15

tools, and in their stead we find multitudes
of slaves; in the beginning debtors were
enslaved by their creditors, and then slaves
were recruited from prisoners of war and
conquered natives, or from men who were
captured by slave-dealers, and bought whole-
sale in the markets of Greece and Rome, to
be subjected to the most ruthless exploitation.
Among the Jews there were few slaves. The
general aspect of the State also appears to be
quite different. \ For centuries the State con-
noted only one town and its immediate
surroundings, the most famous examples
being Athens, Sparta and Rome. Such a
city-state was called by the Greeks Polis
(from whence " pohtics ") and in Latin civitas
(from whence " civihsation "). These city-
states were therefore small territories con-
taining about 30,000 to 40,000 free citizens.
In Greece there were several city-states of
this type, and likewise in Italy. _.Partly
through war, partly through treaties of
aUiance, they united to form a great State.
Each free citizen was a soldier at the same
time, and productive labour devolved on the
slave multitudes. First the Romans gradually
created an empire (Imperium) with ruling
classes and subjugated peoples. Later the

t

16 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Romans developed feudalism and villanage,
when slave labour had proved to be unprofit-
able or inexpedient.

2. Ancient Communistic Theory : Natural
Rights.

We have already seen how the expropriated
sections of the people at the beginning of the
middle ages clung to the traditions of the old
state of equality, and idealised the past.
The condition of nature or the primitive
society became an ideal to which mankind
must return. In his work on " Laws "
(Third Book, second and third chapters),
Plato wrote as follows about the men of
primitive society :

Hence in those days mankind were not very poor,
nor was poverty the cause of difference among them;
and rich they could not have been, having neither gold
nor silver — such at that time was their condition. And
the community which has neither poverty nor riches
will always have the noblest principles; in it there is
no insults or injustice, nor again are there any conten-
tions or envpngs. And therefore they were good, and
also because they were what is called simple-minded.
Would not many generations living on in a simple
manner, although ruder perhaps and more ignorant of
the arts generally, although inferior to the men of our
day in these respects, be simpler and more manly, and
also more temperate and altogether more just? They

INTRODUCTION 17

could hardly have wanted lawgivers, for they had no
laws at this early period; they lived by habit and the
customs of their ancestors.

The doctrine of equality of natural con-
dition was then developed further, for at the
time of Aristotle (the disciple of Plato and
tutor of Alexander the Great) the opinion was
already widespread " that the dominion of
masters over slaves is against nature, and that
the distinction between bond and free has
not been made by nature, but only by human
laws; and as this signifies an interference
with the operations of nature it is therefore^
an injustice " (Aristotle's Politics, i. 3).

Both these quotations from Plato and
Aristotle contain a good fragment of natural
rights. The perfecting and diffusion of this
conception was, however, the work of the
Stoa in the third century. The founder of
the Stoic school of thought was Zeno, who
flourished about the year 300. Since the
second century B.C. the disciples of this school
have exercised a very considerable influence
in Greek cultured circles, upon the thinkers
of the Roman Empire, and upon the whole
of civihsed and Christian Europe until the
present day. All the thinkers of Utopian
Communism and of Anarchist Communism

t

f

18 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

have, in great measure, come under this
influence.

The doctrine of natural rights is a protest
against the civil and legal institutions of the
State which have arisen on the basis of
private property. It is an ideaHsation of
the democratic conditions of equaUty which
characterised primitive communism. The
appeal to nature, the cry, " Back to nature,"
is a condemnation of civilisation, and likewise
a summons, either to revert to the old con-
ditions, or to adopt them as the ideal for the
legal and social transformation of the new
conditions. The new age, which gave an
impulse to the growth of towns, and the
development of trade and industry, and which
destroyed the remains of common property
in land, represented a revolt against nature,
agriculture and the simple manners of country
life, and a turning towards an unnatural,
artificial life, involving luxury, manifold
activity, and a labyrinth of legal enactments
and State regulations. In the primitive
society there were no man-made laws, no
State, no external coercive institutions.
Nature, penetrated and filled with the divine
spirit, was regulated by innate laws, which
enjoined goodness, justice and righteousness.

INTRODUCTION 19

The ethics of natural laws were plainly valid,
and were dictated by human reason. They
were above human edicts, or what is called
positive law. They held good for all beings
who bore the stamp of humanity; all men
were free and equal.

In the primitive state of mankind, in the
Golden Age, and in the epoch before the Fall,
the laws of nature or reason prevailed; men
Uved together without the State, without
external coercion, without legal regulations
and tutelage, and followed the natural in-
junctions to do good and be righteous. But
the succeeding generations were corrupted;
greed, discontent and internal strife appeared,
and men created the State, private property,
and the multitudinous laws, without thereby
attaining to the old happiness. Human
society became sick and suffered. The only
remedy was to abandon the artificial institu-
tions, and return to the natural, and live in
harmony with nature.

The Stoa were anarchist-communists and
their outlook was international. In this they
resembled the Jewish prophets, but the latter
looked only to Jahveh for guidance, while the
former found their lawgiver in divine nature.
Both tendencies met in primitive Christianity.

CHAPTER I

PALESTINE

I. Social Conditions,

As hordes of nomads from the north Arabian
and east Egyptian deserts the Hebrews in-
vaded Canaan in the twelfth century B.C.
Organised in tribes and clans on the principle
of blood relationship, their leaders brought
them to conquer new fruitful territory, and to
settle down. Bold and easily excited, but
hardened by the privations of their life in the
wilderness, and welded together by their age-
long tribal discipline, they overcame, in the
course of protracted struggles, the resistance
of the Canaanites, who were superior to them
in civilisation, and took possession of their
country. The victorious barbarians divided
the land by lot among their tribes, and the
latter among their families. Individual pro-
perty in land was at first unknown to them;
the tribes regarded the partitioned land as
a common possession, and the families held

PALESTINE 21

their lands for the benefit of the tribe (Num.
XXX vi.).

A special term for property is unknown
in Hebrew. The word which corresponds
nearest to this idea is " nachlah " (hereditary
portion). A property owner is called *' lord,"
or " baal " in Hebrew, a common Semitic
word which signifies man or generator. Partly
as a result of uninterrupted possession and of
individual cultivation and enjoyment, and
partly as a result of the influence of Canaanite
civilisation, the Hebrew families became
accustomed to regard their possession as
absolute property, and to dispose of it arbi-
trarily. In the course of time sales and ^
mortgages undermined the old economic 7%
equality, and class divisions were introduced
into the former homogeneous society.

The highest god of the Hebrews, who accom-
panied them into Canaan, was JHWH (Jahweh
or Jehovah), a god of the desert, of the scorch-
ing heat, of the consuming fire and of the
thunderstorm, a war hero abroad and the
protector of tribal cohesion at home, a just
legislator, who commanded men to lead a strict,
austere life. To the Jews Jahweh appeared as
the symbol of the physical characteristics of
the desert, as well as of the economic and

22 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

moral conditions of life of hordes of tough
nomads. The sacrifice which they offered to
him was scanty, some meal and a lamb. But
what else could nomads of the wilderness offer ?
Frugal and temperate, like their lives, was the
god whom they worshipped and feared. In
the likeness of their physiographic environ-
ment and social organisation the Hebrews
created their god.

The Canaanite god Baal was of a different
character ; like the Greek Dionysos or
Bacchus, he was the religious symbol of the
germinating powers of nature, the god of a
country flowing with milk and honey, and
corn and wine. He made men, animals, and
plants fruitful; he represented the mystery
of generation ; his consecrated mountain tops
and altars became noisy public places, his
sacrifices became luxurious banquets, his
sacred groves became sheltered nooks for the
sensual embraces of the sexes. In the eyes of
the prophets the service of Baal was vain
fornication and whoredom. The civilisation
j^of Canaan had left the stage of tribal organ-
iiisation far behind, commerce and trade were
carried on in towns, and private property
existed in all things.
The Hebrews (or Israelites), transplanted to

PALESTINE 28

the new environment, made agriculture the
basis of their society, and quickly succumbed
to the influence of Canaanite civiHsation.
The religious life of the nomads proved
inadequate for the new needs of agricultural
life : Jahweh could not fructify the field, the
vineyard and the olive tree — being a desert
god, he lacked this quahty — and the newly
emerging social divisions could not be harmon-
ised with the commands of Jahweh. Life
proved to be stronger than an idea. Apostasy
from Jahweh set in, either by investing him
with qualities which belonged to Baal, and
modelling the service of Jahweh on the cult of
Baal, or by the Hebrews abandoning their old
god and going over to Baal. From the ninth
century onwards the people were convulsed
by a religious crisis, which assumed an acute
or mild form according to circumstances and
the outstanding personalities. Between the
supporters of Jahweh and those of Baal a
conflict arose, in which the prophets, clothed
as desert beduins, took their stand at the
head of the supporters of Jahweh, first Elijah
and Elisha, in whom the pure traditional
feeling of religion predominated, and later
such powerful preachers as Amos, Isaiah and
Jeremiah, who led the class struggle of the

24 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

dispossessed, plainly demanded social justice,
and hailed Jahweh as the Judge of the world.
Then the crisis was sharpened by the economic
development of Israel, and the class division
of society to which it gave rise. The con-
ception of Jahweh acquired a meaning which,
as we shall see, carried with it a revolution
in the religious sphere.

The dissolution and transformation of the
primitive conditions was furthered by the
numerous wars, which were undertaken partly
to defend and partly to extend the country.
The wars and their vicissitudes aroused (in
the tenth century B.C.) among the agricultural
tribes the desire to form a central govern-
ment, and have a king, who could undertake
jf- the defence of their borders against hostile
attacks, and take care of their interests as
against the foreigner. The new institution
appeared to commend itself. If previously
the tribes of Israel had to wage a desperate
struggle for their existence, now they soon
succeeded in winning a position which com-
pelled respect. Neighbouring nations no
longer dared to attack Israel, and the peace
seemed to be a durable one (2 Sam. vii. i;
I Kings V. 4).

The tribute of precious metals was con-

PALESTINE 25

siderable; agriculture prospered, and as the
Israelites, after subduing the Canaanites,
became possessed of the caravan roads and
a portion of the sea-coast, they entered into
relations with the seafaring and industrious
Phoenicians. The monarchy gave a powerful
impulse to trade. The wars with Edom in the
ninth and eighth centuries were trade wars;
Elath (Eziongeber) , the Red Sea port, must
be conquered, so that gold may be brought
from Ophir and colonial goods from India.
The kings Jehoshaphat, Joram, Amaziah and
Azariah all fought near the bay of Akaba, and
when the Syrian King Rezin captured the port
of Elath, he "drove out the Jews " (2 Kings
xvi. 6). In the north it was the tribe of
Zebulun " which dwelt at the haven of the
sea, at the haven of ships, whose border was
Sidon " (Gen. xlix. 13). In agriculture and
trade Israel attained to the level of Canaanite
civilisation, and consequently surrendered to
the religion of Baal, and danced before the
golden calf.

2. Class Antagonisms and Prophets.
The days when Israel sat beneath the grape
vine and fig tree, with internal concord and
freedom, each one doing what seemed to him

t

26 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

right, vanished never to return. Economic
inequality increased, and with it the conflict
jibetween the opposing classes : the poor and
/Vhe rich, the rulers and the ruled, the oppressed
and the oppressors. The possessing class ad-
hered, in conformity with the needs of their
material and spiritual life, to Baal, the god
of fertility, of enjoyment, and of gain; the
disinherited class clung to Jahweh, whom they
were accustomed to regard as the god of tribal
solidarit}^ of common ownership, of goodness
and mercy. How good was Israel when its
tribes were encamped in the desert ! How
beautiful were its tents ! Israel loved Jahweh,
and Jahweh loved Israel. To the disin-
herited the nomadic time and the old tribal
organisation appeared in the light of the Golden
Age. How gentle and loving are the tones in
which the prophets, otherwise so ruthless and
severe, speak of the youth of Israel !

As we have seen, the conflict between
^Jahweh and Baal was a class struggle brought
about by the alteration in the economic con-
ditions, worked out under religious forms.

To Jahweh and his prophets the disin-
herited turned in their need. " Thy servant,
my husband, is dead," complained a woman to
the prophet Elisha, " and thou knowest that

PALESTINE 27

thy servant did fear Jahweh : and the creditor
is come to take unto him my two sons to be
bondmen " (2 Kings iv. i). Semitic capital in
Canaan assumed the same harshness and shape
as Arian capital in Greece and Rome, that is,
it was usurer's and merchant's capital. The
anger which the usurer aroused in Israel is
shown by the Hebrew expression for usurer,
" neshech," which means literally " to bite."
The increasing use of money and the develop-
ment of private property disintegrated the old
economic order and the old customs. Opu-
lence and luxury in the circles of the wealthy,
want, oppression and enslavement for debt in
the circles of the dispossessed. The inevitable
result was a class antagonism, of which it may
be said — so far as historical evidence goes —
that it did not lead to the revolts and butchery
which shook social life to its foundations in
Greece and Rome, but it created a singular
socio-religious ferment, of which the prophets
were the exponents.

These ethical heroes, who threw into the
struggle for social justice the unquenchable
ardour of their fiery souls, were gradually
constrained to recognise social ethics as the
most important element of religion. When
this process of religious transformation had in

^'

28 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

some degree been completed, Jahweh ceased
to be a tribal and local god, and became a
general god of righteousness. Thus the
prophets elevated the primitive social idol of
the nomadic Hebrew tribes to the position of
universal god of truth and humanity.

They gathered strength from their efforts,
and grew from national leaders into universal
seers, thanks also to the political condition
and geographical position of Palestine, which
plunged them into the whirlpool of world
politics. For, owing to its position and physi-
cal characteristics, Palestine formed the bridge-
head between Asia Minor and Egypt, and was
therefore a connecting link between the two
rival world empires of that time. It was
exposed to invasions, it became the cockpit of
the struggles of Asiatic or Egyptian Empires,
but these historic vicissitudes made the intel-
lect of its Jewish inhabitants alert, and turned
their mind to problems of foreign politics.
The leading spirits of the nation, the prophets,
cast their eyes over the great empires which
strove with each other for mastery; they
weighed the worth of men and things, of
governments and countries, in the scales of
social righteousness ; Assyrians, Babylonians,
Egyptians and Persians became instruments in

PALESTINE 29

the hand of Jahweh, and the world was
penetrated by His will and His plan. The
tempest raged through the wide domains of
histor}'-, bringing down the pride of empires,
humiliating the vain and shattering the
haughty. In the collapse of all earthly power,
a moral world order manifested itself, majestic
and unassailable, the centre of which Israel
occupied. The prophets became the fore-
tellers of the disasters which would overtake
Israel and Judah, and of their final purifica-
tion, as also of the redemption of mankind —
the redemption from wars and strife, from
struggles at home and abroad, by the triumph
of the spirit, by the dominion of justice and
right, which Jahweh, through the medium of
the Jews, would spread over the whole of
mankind. Elemental power was the life force
of these men, it must have been a physically
and intellectually strong race which could
produce such powerful personalities. They
began with purely local struggles for the
oppressed, and closed their imperishable
careers with a moral world mission.

3. Social Righteousness.

Amos, the shepherd of Tekoa, lifted up his
voice against the whole of the inhabitants of

30 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Syria and Palestine, and announced the woe
that would befall them on account of their
sins. " Publish in the palaces at Ashdod,
and in the palaces in the land of Egypt, and
say, Assemble yourselves upon the mountains
of Samaria, and behold what great tumults are
in the midst thereof. For they know not to
do right, who store up violence and robbery "
(iii. 9, 10). They believed they could fulfil
the will of Jahweh by sacrifices and prayers.
But Jahweh said : "I hate, I despise your
feast days, and I will take no delight in your
solemn assemblies. Take thou away from
me the noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear
the melody of thy viols. But let judgment
roll down as waters, and righteousness as a
mighty stream. Did ye bring unto me sacri-
fices and offerings in the wilderness forty
years, O house of Israel? " (v. 21-25). Jahweh
demanded not sacrifices and prayers, but
justice and righteousness. The judges are not
to decide in favour of the rich ; the privileged
and possessing classes are not to oppress the
poor and needy; the corn-dealers must cease
deceiving the hungry. Amos censured the
princes and the mighty ones, the wealthy and
the upstarts, who lived in stone palaces, and
laid upon beds of ivory and stretched them-

PALESTINE 31

selves upon their couches, and ate the lambs
out of the flock and the calves out of the midst
of the stall, and sang idle songs to the sound
of the viol, and drank wine out of bowls,
and anointed themselves with ointment, but
grieved not for the ill condition of the people.
The chastisement would not be withheld.
" Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel
shall surely be led away captive out of their
own land " (vii. ii). Therefore, " Seek good
and not evil, that ye may live. Hate the evil
and love the good, and establish judgment in
the gate; it may be that the Lord of Hosts
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph "

(v. i4> 15)-

Hosea reminded the children of Israel that
Jahweh had cause to be dissatisfied with them,
" because there is no truth nor mercy nor
knowledge of God in the land. There is
nought but swearing and lying, and killing
and stealing and committing adultery; they
break out and blood touches blood " (iv. i, 2)
Israel has become proud of its riches. " The
merchant has the balances of deceit in his
hand; he loveth to oppress. And Ephraim
said, I am become rich, I have found me
wealth " (ii. 8, 9). In matters of external
poHcy too Israel forsook Jahweh. Like a

32 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

straying dove, Israel ran here and there, form-
ing alternate alliances with Egypt and Assyria,
to secure protection against hostile invasions.
Therefore, the country suffers, and the people
are ruined. How different was Israel when
young, and living in the desert (xi. i, 2). But
now ** Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have
reaped iniquity, ye have eaten the fruit of
lies " (x. 13). There is no escape from the
punishment. Therefore, " Sow to yourselves
in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up
your fallow ground (x. 12) . . . keep mercy
and judgment, and wait on thy God con-
tinuaUy."

Then will Jahweh " heal their backsliding,
and love them," and make a covenant with
them, and will break the bow and the sword
and the battle out of the land, for the covenant
will rest on righteousness and judgment, on
lovingkindness and on mercy " (ii. 18, 19).

Micah's righteous anger was directed against
the rich and the mighty of the country :
" Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house
of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel,
that abhor judgment and pervert all equity.
They build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem
with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for
reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire,

PALESTINE 38

and the prophets thereof divine for money.
. . . Therefore shall Zion for your sake be
plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become
heaps, and the mountain of the Lord's house
as the high places of a forest " (iii. 9-12).
The people are divided by mistrust, dissension
and mutual strife. Jahweh is not to be
placated by sacrifices. " Will the Lord be
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten
thousands of rivers of oil? He hath shewed
thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the
Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God? " (vi. 7-8).

The eloquent Isaiah, of whom Micah was
the potent echo, subjected the whole social life
of Palestine to a ruthless examination, and
found nothing good in it. Justice and right-
eousness had disappeared, and pure morals
had been supplanted by luxury, corrupting
fashions, unbridled seeking for enjoyment,
and the pursuit of wealth and glory. The
poor, the widow and the orphan were op-
pressed and exploited, the small peasant was x..
expropriated, and large estates were formed : /^
" Woe unto them that join house to house,
that lay field to field, till there be no room,
and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of

84 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

the land" (v. 8). The prophet cried out
against the legal attempts to sanction this state
of things : " Woe unto them that decree
unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that
write perverseness : to turn aside the needy
from judgment, and to take away the right
of the poor of my people, that widows may
be their spoil, and that they may make the
fatherless their prey " (x. 1-2). Therefore
has Jahweh turned his countenance from the
prayers and sacrifices : " Bring no more vain
oblations; incense is an abomination unto
me. Your new moons and your appointed
feasts my soul hateth, And when ye spread
forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from
you ; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will
not hear : your hands are full of blood "
(i. 13-15). The judgment of Jahweh will fall
upon all that is lofty and proud, and they
will be brought low ; and upon all the cedars
of Lebanon, and upon all the oaks of
Bashan, and upon all the ships of Tarshish,
and upon all pleasant imagery (ii. 11-16).
Jahweh " will smite with a scab the crown of
the head of the daughters of Zion, and he will
take away the bravery of their anklets, and
their cauls, and their crescents, their pendants
and their bracelets, and their mufflers, the

PALESTINE 35

head tires and the ankle chains, the sashes
and the perfume boxes, the amulets, the rings
and the nose jewels, the festival robes and the
mantles. . . . Thy men shall fall by the sword
and thy mighty in the war " (iii. 17-24). And
Israel will be led into captivity, its honourable
men will be famished, and the multitude
parched with thirst, and the mighty men shall
be humbled (v. 13-15). Then " the meek also
shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the
poor among men shall rejoice in the holy one
of Israel, for the terrible one is brought to
nought and the scomer is consumed" (xxix.
19, 20). But Israel may still be saved if it
turns back to Jahweh, and obeys his com-
mands : "Wash you, make you clean; put
away the evil of your doings from before mine
eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well;
seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge
the fatherless, plead for the widow " (i. 16).

Jeremiah (circa 600 B.C.), as man and
thinker probably the greatest among the
prophets, in the name of Jahweh, reminded
the house of Jacob and the tribes of Israel
of the wilderness period : "I remember thee,
the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine
espousals, how thou wentest after me in the
wilderness in a land that was not sown.

36 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Israel was holiness unto the Lord. And I
brought you into a plentiful land, to eat the
fruit thereof and the goodness thereof. But
when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made
mine heritage an abomination " (ii. 2-7). The
prophet predicted in passionate but inexor-
able words the captivity of Judah and the
destruction of Jerusalem. This was the
burden of his visions, and he sought to inter-
cede with Jahweh on Judah's behalf; man
is not free in his acts, he has no freedom of
will : " O Lord, I know that the way of man
is not in himself : it is not in man that walketh
to direct his steps " (x. 23). But social justice
is the breath of the people's life, and the moral
system of the world must be instituted. For
their neglect of Jahweh the Jews must suffer,
and they must become fit for their historic
mission.

Zephaniah, an older contemporary of Jere-
miah, described the entire struggle in a few
chapters, and announced the approach of
Jahweh's day — the impending punishment of
Judah. ** There shall be the noise of a cry
from the Fish gate (in Jerusalem) and an
howling from the second quarter, and a great
crashing from the hills. Howl, ye inhabitants
of Maktesh, for all the merchant people are

PALESTINE 37

cut down; all they that bear silver are cut
off. . . . Neither their silver nor their gold
shall be able to deliver them in the day of the
Lord's wrath, but the whole land shall be
devoured by the fire of his jealousy " (i, lo,
II, i8).

With less prophetic frenzy, but with greater
learning and more extensive knowledge,
Ezekiel handled the problem at the time of the
Babylonian exile (about 560 B.C.). " Woe
unto the shepherds of Israel that do feed them-
selves. Should not the shepherds feed the
flocks ? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with
the wool. Ye kill the fatlings, but ye feed
not the sheep. The diseased have ye not
strengthened, neither have ye healed that
which was sick, neither have ye bound up that
which was broken, neither have ye brought
again that which was driven away, neither
have ye sought that which was lost, but with
force and with rigour have ye ruled over them.
. . . O my flock, thus saith the Lord, I judge
between the rams and the he-goats, between
the fat cattle and the lean cattle, Because
ye thrust with side and with shoulder, and
pushed all the diseased with your horns, till
ye have scattered them away, therefore will
I save my flock, and they shall be no more a

38 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

prey " (xxxiv. 2-22). Each man is responsible
for his actions, and to do evil or good is within
the choice of everyone. Therefore, Israel
must be converted, and shall fulfil the com-
mandments of Jahweh.

Interwoven with the censorious preaching
and the foretelling of disaster we find among
all the prophets a message of salvation to
Israel, and a firmly rooted belief in the final
redemption of mankind. The prophecies
reach their highest point with the Second Book
of Isaiah (from chapter xl. to the end), the
period being about the year 540 B.C. The
Jews are to be the evangels of social righteous-
ness. " The spirit of the Lord God is upon
me, because the Lord hath anointed me to
preach good tidings unto the meek ; he hath
sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to pro-
claim liberty to the captives, and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound " (Ixi. i).
If it will take this mission on itself, this people
will become the centre of mankind. Long
despised and held to be unworthy, it will
become the jewel of the world. " Arise,
shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of
the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold,
darkness shall cover the earth, and gross
darkness the peoples, but the Lord shall arise

PALESTINE 89

upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon
thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy
light, and kings to the brightness of thy
rising. ... I will also make thy officers
peace, and thine exactors righteousness. . . .
Thy people also shall be all righteous; they
shall inherit the land for ever " (Ix. 1-21).

His contemporary, Ezekiel, drew a picture
of a Jewish kingdom of God, in which equality
of men and of possessions was made the chief
condition. " Ye shall divide the land for
inheritance, one as well as another. . . . And
it shall come to pass that ye shall divide it
by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the
aliens that sojourn among you; they shall be
unto you as the homeborn among the children
of Israel; they shall have inheritance among
you with the tribes of Israel " (xlvii. 14-22).

With the ideal of justice and righteousness
that of everlasting peace was closely bound
up : " And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ;
and the calf and the young lion and the
fatling together, and a little child shall lead
them. . . . They shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruning-
hooks : nation shall not lift up sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war any

40 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

more " (Isaiah ii. 4-1 1). Zechariah foresees
the time when Jehovah " will cut off the
chariot from Ephraim and the horse from
Israel, and the battle bow shall be cut off;
and he shall speak peace unto the nations;
and his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
even to the ends of the earth. . . . Not by
might, nor by power, but by the spirit shall
the kingdom of God be established " (iv. 6).

And one of the last prophets, Malachi, asks
the human question : " Have we not all one
father ? hath not one God created us ? Why
do we deal treacherously, every man against
his brother? " (ii. 10).

4. Efforts at Reform.

In the last quarter of the seventh century
(621 B.C.) an attempt was made to enact
reform laws which would mitigate to some
extent the evils. These reform laws are laid
down in Deuteronomy and Leviticus : they
comprise the essentials of the two chief
demands of the dispossessed throughout
antiquity (even those of Hellas and Rome) :
•^ relief of debtors and redistribution of the land.
They proclaimed that the land belonged to
Jahweh, in other words, that the land is the

PALESTINE 41

common possession of the whole people.
" And the land shall not be sold for ever." A
return to freedom and equality is to take place
every fifty years. " And ye shall hallow the
fiftieth year, and it shall be a jubilee unto you,
and ye shall return every man unto his
possession, and ye shall return every man unto
his family." Meanwhile the lot of the debtor
is to be alleviated : "If thy brother be waxen
poor with thee, and sell himself unto thee,
thou shaft not make him to serve as a bond-
servant, but as a hired servant and as a
sojourner he shall serve with thee unto the
year of jubilee. And then shall he depart
from thee, both he and his children with him,
and shall return unto his own family, and unto
the possession of his brothers " (Lev. xxv.).
A year of release is to take place every seven
years, in which debts will be cancelled.
" Every creditor shall release that which he
hath lent unto his neighbour; he shall not
exact it of his neighbour, because the Lord's
release hath been proclaimed. Howbeit, there
shall be no poor among you. ... If there be
among you a poor man of one of the brethren,
thou shaft not harden thy heart, nor shut thy
hand from thy poor brother. Beware there
be not a base thought in thine heart, saying.

42 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

The year of release is at hand (and my money
will be lost). Thou shalt surely open thy
hand unto thy brother, to thy needy, and to
thy poor in the land. And if thy brother, an
Hebrew man or an Hebrew woman, be sold
unto thee, then in the seventh year thou shalt
let them go free from thee" (Deut. xv.).
Mortgage rights are to be restricted. " When
thou dost lend thy neighbour any manner of
loan, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch
his pledge. Thou shalt stand without, and
the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring
out the pledge unto thee. And if he be a poor
man, thou shalt surely restore to him the
pledge when the sun goeth down, that he
may sleep in his own raiment " (Deut. xxiv.
10-13). Widows and orphans especially may
not be distrained upon. The wages of labour
are to be paid daily (xxiv. 14-15). Indicative
of the still strong influence of the traditions of
common property is the permission to pluck
the ears of the neighbour's corn (xxiii. 25) as
well as the injunctions as to forgotten sheaves,
the gleanings, and the leavings behind of a
portion of the harvest for the dispossessed.
There is, however, evidence to the effect that
the social reform laws were not entirely
effective.

PALESTINE 43

The injunction regarding jubilee year was
never put into force, and the law of the year
of release was abolished in the post-exilian
epoch during the commercial prosperity. The
prophet Jeremiah lamented the apathy to-
wards this law, and in Nehemiah we again
hear the people complaining of the usury
practised by their own countrymen, of debts,
bondage and the mortgaging of fields and vine-
yards (about 500 B.C.).

The Talmud, which in its juridical section is
a codification of the laws which had grown up
on the basis of private property and com-
mercial intercourse, has transmitted to us the
legal formula in w^hich the repeal of the law of
release was couched. The reason of this repeal
was of a purely economic nature. The Tal-
mud states in this connection : "If the fear
of release is to be maintained the door would
have to be closed to the borrowers." It goes
on to say that as the law relating to the year
of release also enjoins that " no evil thoughts
should be allowed to arise in the heart, so
that help would be refused on account of the
proximity of the year of release," and that
as such thoughts could not be avoided, the
Rabbis therefore decided to declare the whole
law null and void. In other words, the

44 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

economic development proved to be stronger
than the social legislation.

Of the entire social legislation there re-
mained only an extensive Poor Law code.

The communal traditions, however, still
persisted among the poorer classes. Even in
the time of Jesus we find the following remark-
able indications as to the property divisions
which prevailed among the Jews (Pirke Ahoth,
v. 13) : " There are four classes among men :
one says, What is mine is mine, and what is
thine is thine; that is a sort of middle class
(the bourgeoisie), or, as many say, Sodom; —
another says. What is mine is thine, and what
is thine is mine, common people; — another
class says. What is mine is thine, and what is
thine is also thine — that is the pious class ; —
again, another says. What is mine is mine,
and what is thine is also mine — that is the
class of evildooers. ' ' This information regard-
ing the four categories of citizens which
existed at that time in Palestine, is extremely
instructive. We perceive the bourgeoisie at
the head, with their strict ideas of property;
and it is observed mordantly that these are a
Sodomite class. Then come the Communists,
who recognise neither mine nor thine; they
are simply described as the common people,

PALESTINE 45

as the 'am ha-arez. Further, there are the
pious, who renounce all property, and thus
embrace apostolic poverty, the paupertas
evangelica, which attained such great signifi-
cance in primitive Christianity and in the
twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The fourth category requires no explanation :
they are the exploiters, thieves and murderers.

5. The Jewish Communists — the Essenes.

It was not merely the common people who
had no sense of private property. Several
thousands of the noblest men among the Jews
of Palestine made the attempt to introduce
Communism into practical life.

These were the Essenes, who first appeared
in the second century B.C. and passed as a
special sect. They were mentioned with high
esteem and admiration by all contemporary
writers who made any reference to them. The
Jewish intellectuals, like Philo and Josephus,
who were familiar with Greek philosophy and
generally with the intellectual life of the
Roman Empire, spoke of the communal
principle as the quintessence of virtue.
Josephus regarded Cain, the fratricide, as the
founder of private property {Jewish Antiqui-
ties, chap. ii). It is a notable fact that Cain

46 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

was also the first to establish a city-state.
With great satisfaction, Philo narrates :
** There lived in Palestine 4000 virtuous men,
called Essenes ; they dwelt in the villages and
avoided the towns on account of the licenti-
ousness which was customary among the
inhabitants. Many of them carried on agricul-
ture, others pursued peaceful avocations, and
in this wise employed themselves and their
neighbours. They accumulated neither silver
nor gold, nor did they acquire lands in order
to procure large incomes for themselves ; but
they toiled merely to secure the necessary
means for supporting life. Thus they are
practically the only men who possess no
property, not because of the mischance of
fortune, but because they do not strive after
riches, and yet they are, in truth, the richest
of all, as they count as riches the absence of
needs and contentment. You will not find
among them artificers of arrows, javelins,
swords, helmets, breastplates and shields, nor
any who are engaged in the construction of
implements of war, or generally anything
which pertains to war. Commerce, liquor
manufacturing, and seafaring have never
entered their heads, for they desire to avoid
all things that give rise to covetousness. There

PALESTINE 47

are also no slaves among them. All are free
and work for each other. They despise rulers
and governors not only because the latter are
unjust in violating equality, but also because
they are ungodly in abolishing an institution
of nature, which, like a mother, creates andA.
nourishes all as true and loving brothers, a
relationship which is destroyed by triumphant
cunning and avarice, which have put aliena-
tion in place of trustfulness and hatred in
place of love. The Essenes are taught the
principles of godliness, holiness and right-
eousness in the government of the house and
the community, in the knowledge of what is
good and what is evil, and they accept as their
three moral conceptions or principles, love of
God, of virtue and of mankind. The mani-
festations of love of mankind are benevo-
lence, equity and community in goods, which
cannot be praised too highly. We may add
something about the latter. First of all, none
has a house which does not belong to all. In
addition to the fact that they dwell together
socially, every house is open to comrades who
come from a distance. Also the storehouse
and the provisions contained therein belong to
aU, as weU as the articles of clothing; like-
wise the eatables are available to those who

48 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

do not observe the common meal-times. And
generally the condition of dwelling, eating and
living together socially has, among no other
race, been carried to such a high degree of
perfection as among these men. For they do
not keep for themselves what they have earned
during the day, but put it together and offer
it for general consumption. The sick and
aged are treated with the greatest care and
gentleness."

Philo states further that the Essenes were
everywhere held in the greatest esteem.
" Even the most cruel rulers and proconsuls
were unable to do them harm. On the con-
trary, they quailed before the unsullied virtue
of these men, met them in a friendly spirit,
as such as had the right to make their own
laws and were free by nature; they com-
mended their meals in common and their most
praiseworthy institution of holding goods in
common, which was the most striking proof
of a full and happy life."

Josephus, too, was pleased to refer to the
Essenes and wrote : " They despise wealth,
and the common life they practise is marvel-
lous. Thus, it is impossible to find among
them any one who wishes to distinguish him-
self by property. For it is a law that those

PALESTINE 49

who are admitted into this sect transfer their
property to the order. Consequently there is
neither privation and poverty, nor super-
fluity and luxury."

In regard to marriage, it is stated by some
that the Essenes preferred celibacy, while
others assert they married. It would appear
that in this respect they thought as the
Apostle Paul, who gave the preference to
celibacy, but did not forbid marriage. With
the quotations we have given from Pirke
Ahoth and the institutions of the Essenes, we
have already penetrated into the intellectual
life of primitive Christianity.

The anti-political tendency among the
Essenes is noteworthy; they turned aside
from the State, and held social ethics and
social economy to be the essential things.
This feature was characteristic throughout
the entire history of the Israelites in Pales-
tine. In contrast to the Greeks, who were >^
engaged so vigorously with constitutional/^
questions and investigated the most various
forms of government, the Jews passed through
only a solitary political crisis, about the year
1000 B.C., when they progressed from tribal
organisation to State organisation and founded
a kingship. Gradually there developed among

50 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

the Jews a strong antipathy to all State organ-
isation involving compulsion. This antipathy
found its first expression in a condemnation of
the monarchy, in i Samuel viii., which is
of later origin. The conduct of the great
imperial Powers which dominated Palestine —
the whole history of the great ancient empires
whose waves overflowed into Palestine — was,
in fact, not calculated to make State politicians
of a people which so earnestly sought after
righteousness. A strong sidelight on the atti-
tude of the Jews towards the State is thrown
by the following passage which is preserved in
the Talmud : "No person here below (on
earth) becomes a State ofQcial, but is con-
demned above (in heaven) as an evil-doer."
God is the sole ruler, and his commandments
are the principles and guides of mankind.

CHAPTER II

GREECE

I. Economic and Social Development.

The Dorian, Ionian and ^olian tribes,
which came originally from the North, and
which made themselves masters of the south of
the Balkan peninsula, and became celebrated
in history as Hellenes or Greeks, w^ere organ-
ised, on the basis of blood relationships, into
gentes, phratries and phylens.

Of these tribes, the Dorian conquerors of
Laconia (Sparta) and the Ionian conquerors
of Attica (Athenians) specially distinguished
themselves by military deeds, by social insti-
tutions, or by philosophical, artistic and
political achievements. In the annals of
Socialism both peoples have played a con-
spicuous part.

The Spartans, and the Dorians generally,
practised communism, whilst the lonians
were the theorists and provided them with
a philosophical basis.

51

f

52 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

jOriginally, the Hellenes raised cattle and
tilled the land, and knew neither private
property nor towns. We do not know how
long this condition may have lasted, nor in
what manner it came to an end. In the last
half of the ninth century, when the oldest

^ Hellenic poetry — the Iliad and the Odyssey
— was composed, a division of classes and a-
disintegration of society had already set in.
Hellas had entered upon the period of its
middle ages. As Plato relates in his book

^ On Laws (Book III. chap. 4), in Hellas, at
the time of the Trojan War, described by
Homer in the above-mentioned poems, towns
were already in existence, and rebellions broke
out in them against the old archaic ruling
caste; banishments, murders and executions
were often occurring.

The primitive conditions of Hellas were
apparently undermined by war, trading and
J sea-faring. War was reckoned a profession
"^ in Hellas, like hunting and fishing. It was
held in high estimation; even the greatest
Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, were
unable to conceive of eternal peace. The
quest of the Golden Fleece, and the protracted
struggles waged against Troy and to secure
access to the Black Sea point to the con-

GREECE 58

elusion that the Hellenes found themselves
at that time in the conditions proper to the
middle ages.

Colonisation had made a start, and with it
trade and sea-faring. The Dorians founded
colonies in Crete, Rhodes and Kos, in addition
to Knidos and Halikarnossos (to the south
of the western coast of Asia Minor). Be-
tween 750 and 600 B.C. the Hellenes pushed
forward their colonial settlements; they
became the successors of the Phenicians.
Ionian settlements appeared on the coasts of
the Black Sea, in Sicily, Lower Italy, and
North Africa. In conjunction with colonising 1^
activity, trade received an impetus, and soori'^
invigorated industrial activity. The lonians
manufactured pottery, ornaments, wine, linen,
cloth and weapons. Money economy replaced ^
natural economy and local barter. Even m^
Homeric times cattle served as a measure of I
value and medium of exchange ; later, copper \
and iron coins were minted, and gold and
silver money appeared in the eighth century.
The thirst for wealth which had revealed
itself even in the Homeric period — Ulysses
{Odyssey) collected property and goods
during his wanderings — became henceforth a
passion with the possessing class. The_first

54 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

to suffer from this cause were the peasants^
who were sold up or expropriated. About a
century after the composition of the Iliad and
the Odyssey, we hear the first individual poet,
Hesiod, of Askra in Bcetia, whom tradition
says was a small peasant, give utterance to
complaints at the oppression of the small
property owners, at the growing injustices,
and the excessive power of the rich. In
moving words he bewails the disappearance
of the Golden Age, when " work was still
done for its own sake, and its results were
blessed "; the second, third and fourth ages
had also disappeared, which were followed
by the iron age of painful and harmful
toil :

" Would that then I had not mingled with
the fifth race of men, but had either died
before or been born afterwards. For now in
truth is the iron race, neither will they ever
cease by day nor at all by night from toil and
wretchedness, corrupt as they are, but the
gods will give them severe cares.

" Nor will sire be like-minded to sons, nor
sons at all to parent, nor will brother be dear,
even as it was aforetime to brother.

"Might is right; and one will sack the
city of another ; nor will there be any favour

GREECE 55

to the trusty nor the just nor the good, but
rather they will honour a man that doeth evil
and_is overbearing. But the baneful griefs
shall remain behind, and against evil there
shall be no resource " (Hesiod, Works and
Days) .

The strong fall upon the good like birds of
prey. Following the above-quoted verses
Hesiod relates the fable of the hawk and the
nightingale :

" Thus the hawk addressed the nightingale
of variegated throat, as he carried her in his
talons, when he had caught her very high in
the clouds.

" She then, pierced on all sides by his
crooked talons, was wailing piteously, whilst
he victoriously addressed his speech to her :
* Wretch, wherefore criest thou ? 'tis a much
stronger that holds thee. Thou wilt go that
way by which I may lead thee, songstress
though thou art ; and my supper, if I choose,
I shall make, or shall let go. But senseless
is he who chooses to contend against them
that are stronger, and he is robbed of victory,
and suffers griefs in addition to indignities.'
So spake the fleet-flying hawk, broad-
pinioned bird."

Hesiod is, however, no rebel. He exhorts

56 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

his people to return to honest labour, and
thereby attain to prosperity :

" Now, work is no disgrace, but sloth is a
disgrace. And if thou shouldst work, quickly
will the sluggard envy thee growing rich, for
esteem and glory accompany wealth."

He is not a prophet of doom, or foreteller
of disaster, but a mild moral preacher, quite
in the spirit of the Proverbs of Solomon.

2. Economic Antagonisms.

The moralists, however, were not able to
retard the disintegrating process. The mone^
^system, trade and industry, divided Hellenic
SQciety_-into rich and poor. The small land-
worker fell into debt, interest was high, the
I usurer harsh and legislation implacable, as it
was made in the interest of the possessing
classes — which is always the case when the
community develops into the class state.
Plato's observations upon this subject are
excellent. In his work The Laws (Fourth
Book) he asserts in his truly philosophic
manner : " Now you must regard this as a
matter of first-rate importance (questions of
law and constitution). For what is to be
the standard of just and unjust is once more

GREECE 67

the point at issue. Men say that the law
ought not to regard either mihtary virtue or
virtue in general, but only the interests and
power and preservation of the established form
of government. This is thought by them to
be the best way of expressing the natural
definition of justice . . . and do you suppose
that the tyranny or democracy, or any other
conquering power, does not make the con-
tinuance of the power which is possessed by
them the first or principal object of their
laws? And whoever transgresses this law is
punished as an evildoer by the legislator who
calls the laws just." Thus speaks the sup-
porter of the class state. " Now according
to our view," declares Plato, " laws are not
right which are not passed for the good of the
whole state." In the iron age, however, class
government prevailed, and the small people
had much to suffer. The debtors who were
not able to pay, fell, with their families, into
servitude, the handicraftsmen lost their
independence, as also the small business
people. By the side of the noble class of
large landowners arose a rich bourgeoisie,
which soon intermarried, and grew into a
homogeneous ruling class. " The base inter-
marries with the noble, and classes are

58 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

confused," complains a poet. Wealth created
honour and power. At the end of the sixth
century Hellas reached the beginning of
modern times. Theognis of Megara, a proud
but impoverished squire, who despised the
plutocracy as much as the lower classes,
sketched a picture of the manners of this
epoch. He flourished in the third quarter of
the sixth century in Megara, which lay
between Corinth and Athens. At this place
about the year 649 the enraged masses had
fallen on the flocks of the large landowners,
and slaughtered them, as the increased sheep-
raising had led to the breaking up of numerous
farmsteads, similar to the state of England
at the time of Thomas More. In his Elegies
and Proverbs Theognis laments :

" It is not for nothing, Plutus, that mortals
do honour thee most, for of truth thou bearest
distress with ease. For, verily, it is fitting
for the bettermost to have wealth indeed, but
poverty is proper for a mean man to bear.
Many dunces have riches, but others seek
what is noble though harassed by severe
poverty, but impossibilities of working lie
beside both. The one class want of riches
impedes — of intellect the other. For to the
multitude of men there is this virtue only,

GREECE 59

namely, to be rich, but of the rest I wot there
is no use. Nay, then 'tis right that all
should lay up this maxim, that wealth has the
most power among all."

And now another poet's voice from the
second half of the sixth century, the drink-
loving and life-loving Anacreon :

" What avails ingenuous worth.
Sprightly wit or noble birth ?
All these virtues useless prove,
Gold alone engages love.
_ May he be completely cursed

Who the sleeping mischief first
Wak'd to hfe :

Gold creates in brethren strife,
Gold destroys the parent's hfe ;
Gold produces civil jars,
Murders, massacres and wars.
But the worst effect of gold.
Love, alas, is bought and sold."

The social ferment which set in at the end
of the eighth century became stronger during
the following century. The mass of the
people, or the Demos, to use the Greek
expression, which consisted of enslaved
peasants, handicraftsmen, tradespeople and
sailors, had not yet forgotten the old equahty,
which the poets had celebrated as the Golden
Age. In periods of great dearth they revolted

60 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

against the land and money lords; struggles
of classes and parties broke out, which closely
occupied the statesmen and thinkers of the
lonians and Dorians. While in Athens much
preliminary discussion and philosophising
was taking place, and some moderate reforms
were carried out, the Spartans went to
work early, and accomplished a communist
revolution.

CHAPTER III

THE PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA

(i) The Lycurgian Legislation.

The conception of primitive equality per-
sisted in a far stronger form and for a much
longer period amongst the Dorians than
amongst the lonians. The cause of this
difference may be sought in the fact that the
Dorian settlements were of an agricultural
nature, and neglected trade and sea-faring.
Thus, in their case there were lacking two
important factors, which hastened everywhere
the process of dissolution of primitive
conditions.

The first legislator, to whom tradition has
ascribed the work of the communistic revolu- ^
tion, was Lycurgus. He is a legendary '^
figure, somewhat like Moses among the
Hebrews. Plutarch (born a.d. 50), to whom
the whole of the literary sources of Greek and
Roman history was accessible, wrote as
follows : " Generally speaking, nothing can

61

62 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

be said with certainty respecting the legislator
Lycurgus, as the historians differ considerably
among themselves as to his origin, his journeys
and his death ; there is least unanimity as to
the period in which this man lived. ' ' Lycurgus
was remembered by the Spartans as a wise,
gentle and unselfish lawgiver, who transformed
the whole economic order by a political
reform, and firmly established communism.

'' The second and boldest innovation of
Lycurgus," says Plutarch, " was a new division
of the lands. For he found a prodigious
inequality, the city overcharged with many
indigent persons who had no land, and the
wealth centred in the hands of a few. Deter-
mined, therefore, to root out the evils of
insolence, envy, avarice and luxury, and those
distempers of a State still more inveterate
and fatal — I mean poverty and riches — he
persuaded the citizens to cancel all former
divisions of land and to make new ones, in
such a manner that they might be perfectly
equal in their possessions and way of living.
Hence, if they were impatient of distinction,
they might seek it in virtue, as no other
difference was left between them but that
which arises from the dishonour of base
actions and the praise of good ones."

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 63

It is . hardly credible that the owners
acquiesced in the surrender of their lands only
and solely through the persuasion of Lycurgus.
A more potent influence was the fact that the
poor and needy comprised a great multitude,
whilst wealth was concentrated in a few
hands, and the Spartans were really Spartans,
who knew the use of arms. Anyhow, the
rich were constrained to assent to the institu-
tion of communism. The proposal was put
into practice. Lycurgus made 9000 lots for
the territory of Sparta, which he distributed
among so many citizens, and 30,000 for the
inhabitants of the rest of Laconia.

A story goes of our legislator that some time
after, returning from a journey through the
fields just harvested, and seeing the shooks
standing parallel and equal, he smiled and said
to some that were by, " How like is Laconia
to an estate newly divided among many
brothers." After this, he attempted to divide
also the movables, but he soon perceived that
the people could not bear to have their goods
directly taken from them, and therefore took
another method, counteracting their avarice
by a stratagem. First, he stopped the
currency of the gold and silver coin, and
ordered that they should make use of iron

64 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

money only, then to a great quantity and
heavy weight of this he assigned but a small
value, so that to lay up lo minse {£^1 los.)
a whole room was required, and to remove
it nothing less than a yoke of oxen. When
this became current, many kinds of injustices
ceased in Laconia. Who would steal or
take a bribe, who would defraud or rob
when he could not conceal the booty, or
be dignified by the possession of it ? In

^ the next place he excluded unprofitable
and superfluous arts. Trade and shipping
ceased. Meals were simple and taken in
common; they consisted of the famous
black soup, bread, cheese, wine, figs and
vegetables, sometimes of game or other
meat. Eating in common was the strict
obligation of every citizen. Even the children
were admitted to these meals, in order to
learn from the talk of the adults.

u, "As for the education of youth," says
Plutarch, '* Lycurgus began with it at the very
source, taking into consideration their con-
ception and birth by regulating the marriages.
He ordered the virgins to exercise themselves
in running, wrestling, and throwing quoits
and darts. In order to take away the exces-
sive tenderness and delicacy of the sex, he

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 65

accustomed the virgins occasionally to be seen
naked as well as the young men, and to dance
and sing in their presence on certain festivals.
As for the virgins appearing naked, there was
nothing disgraceful in it, because everything
was conducted with modesty and without one
indecent word or action. Nay, it caused a
simplicity of manners and an emulation for the
best development of the body, since the fem.ale
sex was not excluded from sharing, with the
male sex, the deeds of bravery and honour.
Lycurgus established a proper regard to
modesty and decorum with respect to mar-
riage, but he was equally studious to drive
from that state the vain and womanish passion
of jealousy by making it quite respectable to
have children in common with persons of
merit." The healthy children were designed
for nurture and education, but the sickly
ones were cast aside. The chief aim of
education was to furnish the State with
strong, active and fearless fighters, to imbue
the latter with an unshakable sense of their
solidarity — in short, to produce men of action,
and not chatterers. " In general, Lycurgus so-
regulated his citizens that they neither knew
nor desired a separate private life, but, like
bees, they acted with one impulse for the

66 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

public good, and always assembled about
their chief. They were possessed with a
thirst of honour, an enthusiasm which made
them forget their individual feelings, and had
no wish but for their country."

This communistic and military constitution
enabled the Spartans to retain their supremacy
in Peloponnesia, and, finally, to defeat even
the Athenians (404 B.C.) and compel them to
capitulate. The Spartan State appeared even
to the greatest minds of Greece, such as Plato
and Antisthenes, as the fixed pole in the whirl-
pool of the Hellenic States. Antisthenes, a
disciple of Socrates, said, " Sparta is far above
all other States, and, in comparison with
Athens, it is like a meeting of men contrasted
with a chattering of women in a boudoir."
The Lycurgian constitution was generally
famous throughout antiquity as far as the
sphere of Hellenic civilisation extended. It
became the ideal of many thinkers, including
perhaps the leaders of the slave revolts in the
Roman Empire.

But we, who possess to-day such immeasur-
ably richer experience of political questions,
must consider the Lycurgian State to have
been very one-sided. It was aristocratic and

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 67

warlike; it was based on the productive
labour of the helots — a multitude of enslaved
people who formed the means for production,
and belonged as common property to the
entire State. In this respect the Spartans
deprived themselves of one of the most
fruitful elements of human growth — pro-
ductive labour. Their communism consisted
only in having and enjoying goods in common,
and not in communist production. Strictly
speaking, it was not an educational force, but
a discipline imposed by the ruler and the
warrior.

The entire absence of democracy, which
might, to some degree, have curbed the rulers,
as well as the neglect of philosophy and the
arts, which might have elevated the intellectual
life, and finally the constant pre-occupation
with gymnastic and military exercises, made
the Spartans aggressive and warlike as
neighbours, and heartless as rulers of the
wealth-creating helots. In order to protect
themselves from the revolts of the oppressed
and exploited class, such as the rebellion
which broke out in the year 464, the Spartans
organised massacres among the helots, from
time to time, with the object of removing

68 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

the most courageous and capable of them.
The moraUty which Lycurgus had impressed
upon his fellow- citizens was a purely local
and State morality, and in no sense spiritual
and humanitarian. In any case, these con-
ditions were bound to create a splendid race
of men and women; and they would have
produced intellectually outstanding men, if
the mind and the character had been developed
as much as the body. When, in the third
century, many Spartan nobles came under the
influence of the Ionian philosophy and the
social ethics of the Stoics, their intellectual
natures grew to heroic proportions. The
first martyr of communism was a Spartan.

(2) Agis, the first Communist Martyr.

In the course of centuries war and exploita-
tion undermined the Spartan communism.
The victorious participation of Sparta in the
liberation wars of the lonians against the
Persians (494-479), as well as the struggle for
supremacy in Greece, which ensued forty
years later, followed by the Peloponnesian
War (431-404) and succeeding wars up to
the year 371, brought to the Spartans much

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 69

glory, much gold and silver, but also catastro-
phic defeats and internal disruption, and swept
away all the institutions that were bound up
with the Lycurgian legislation.

Plutarch relates : " The first symptoms
of corruption and distempers in their common-
wealth appeared at the time when the
Spartans had entirely destroyed the Athenian
power, and begun to bring gold and silver
into Lacedemonia. When the love of money
made its way into Sparta, and brought
avarice and meanness in its train, on the one
hand, on the other profusion, effeminacy and
luxury, that State soon deviated from its
original virtue, and sank into contempt
till the reign of Agis and Leonidas. Men of
fortune now extended their landed estates
without bounds, not scrupling to exclude the
right heirs, and property quickly coming into
a few hands, the rest of the people were poor
and miserable. There remained not above
700 of the old Spartan families, of which
perhaps 100 had estates in land. The rest
of the city was filled with an insignificant
rabble without property or honour, who had
neither heart nor spirit to defend their
country against wars abroad, and who were

70 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

always watching an opportunity for changes
and revokitions at home."

Agis was of the royal house, and belonged
to one of the richest families in Sparta. By all
indications he was familiar with the Stoic philo-
sophy, and was distinguished by great intel-
lectual gifts and high-mindedness. Although
at that time he was not yet twenty years
old, and had been pampered and nurtured
in luxury by his mother, Agistrata, and his
grandmother, Archidamia, he renounced all
enjoyment and returned to the old Spartan
simplicity, or, as the Stoics said, to nature.
Agis also declared that the kingly dignity
mattered nothing to him, if it would not
permit him to restore the old laws and the
primitive institutions. The young people
welcomed his ideas, while the old men and the
women opposed him. Even his own family
were against the proposed reform, but he
gained their support by convincing his mother
that the proposal was practicable, and would
prove to be to the advantage of the State.
He states, " It is impossible for me ever to
vie with other kings in point of opulence. But
if by sobriety, by simplicity of provisions for
the body, and by greatness of mind I can do

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 71

something which shall far exceed all their
pomp and luxury— I mean the making an
equal partition of property among all the
citizens — I shall really become a great king,
and have all the honour that such actions
demand." His mother and his grandmother
were won over to the plan of reform. Agis
then proceeded to put it into practice. Accord-
ing to the Spartan constitution, two kings
stood at the head of the country, and were
controlled by five Ephors (supervisory officials,
chosen by the noblest families), having the
decisive voice in the case of difference of
opinion between the two kings. Projects
of law were laid before the Senate, and then
remitted to the People's Assembly, which
decided their fate. Agis expounded his
legislative proposals before the Senate, namely W
that all debts should be forgiven the debtors
and the whole of the land be divided afresh
into 19,500 equal portions : 4,500 among the
native Spartans, men and women, and 15,000
among the Periokia (descendants of the pre-
Dorian population) and such foreigners as
were fitted by their physical and mental
qualities to be assimilated into the polity of
Sparta. All the people were to be divided

72 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

into groups for common meals, and to revert
to the modes of life of old Sparta.

The Senate was unable to agree upon this
legislative proposal, whereupon one of the
Ephors, who was in accord with Agis, brought
the matter before the People's Assembly,
and spoke against the unwilling Senators.
After some discussion, Agis himself spoke
and informed the People's representatives that
he would contribute largely to the institution
which he recommended. He would first give
up to the community his own great estate,
consisting of arable and pasture land, and of
600 talents in money. Then his mother and
grandmother and all his relations and friends,
who were the richest persons in Sparta, would
follow his example. The People's representa-
tives were delighted with the magnanimity
of Agis, but his co-regent Leonidas spoke
against the plan, especially as regards the
release from debts and the admittance of
foreigners. Agis replied, and the people
declared for his proposed law, but there was
considerable opposition among the Ephors
and in the Senate, which found a determined
leader in Leonidas. The latter, however,
could await his opportunity. In order to be

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 73

safe from attack, Agis sought refuge in the
temple of Neptune, which he left only to
bathe. Leonidas, who had surrounded him-
self with a posse of soldiers, organised the
attack on Agis. When the latter chanced to
find himself outside the temple, three warriors
approached him, overpowered him and cast
him into prison. Leonidas immediately ap-
peared with a troop of soldiers and occupied
the building. The Ephors and some Senators
then entered the prison, formed a tribunal,
and endeavoured by various means to induce
Agis to abandon his plans. When, however,
he assured them that he felt no repentance
and could retract nothing, as the Lycurgian
constitution was the best, they condemned
him to death by hanging. The request of
his mother and grandmother, to bring him
before a proper tribunal, and to conduct the
proceedings in public, was refused by the
Ephors, as they were aware of the popularity
of the prisoner. On the same grounds they ^K"^
hastened the execution. Immediately after
sentence had been pronounced, Agis was
conducted to the place of execution. On the
way he noticed one of the servants who was
weeping and lamenting, and said to him,

74 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

" My friend, dry up your tears, for as I suffer
innocently, I am in a better condition than
those who condemn me, contrary to law and
justice." So saying, he cheerfully offered his
neck to the executioner. Afterwards, both
his grandmother and mother, Agistrata, were
executed. When Agistrata, on reaching the
place of execution, saw her son lying dead on
the ground, and her mother hanging from the
rope, with the help of an attendant she took
down the latter and laid her by the side of
Agis. Then she threw herself on her son, and
kissed his face, saying, " Thy too great
gentleness, my son, thy mercy and humanity
have brought misfortune on thee and us."
Then she placed herself on the gallows, and
cried, " May this but promote the welfare
of Sparta." These events took place 240 B.C.

3. The Reforms of Cleomenes.

Five years after the execution of Agis,
Cleomenes (235-222 B.C.), the son of Leonidas,
became ruler. He had married the widow
of Agis, and had thoroughly mastered the
reform proposals of the latter. He then
decided to put them into practice. But he

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 75

was more warlike than Agis, being a genuine
Spartan, who perceived in the might of his
army, in battle and victory, the best means to
his end. He believed that only as a victorious
captain could he obtain sufficient authority
in the State to be able to remove the anti-
communists, the Ephors, and the rich. An
opportunity soon offered itself to invade a
neighbouring State, and to win a triumph,
which, however, developed into a series of
wars. After his first victory, Cleomenes
interfered with the Spartan constitution, and
abolished the position of Ephors; then he
banished eighty citizens who were hostile to
reform, and convoked a general assembly of
the people, before which he justified his
conduct. He accused the Ephors of usurping
an ever larger measure of power, contrary to
the spirit of the constitution, and of secretly
setting up their own tribunal. Further, they
had banished or executed those kings who
desired to see the excellent and admirable
institutions of Lycurgus restored. It had
therefore become necessary to put the Ephors
out of the way. Cleomenes then continued :
" Had I been able, without bloodshed, to
banish from Lacedemonia the diseases and

76 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

crimes, luxury, love of splendour, debts and
usury, and the far more considerable evils of
riches and poverty, which have insinuated
themselves into our State, I should have
considered myself the most fortunate of all
kings. I have, however, made the most
temperate use of the force at my disposal,
by merely removing those who stood in the
way of the welfare of Lacedemonia. Among
all the rest I will now divide equally the whole
of the land ; the debtors will be forgiven their
debts, a selection will be made of the foreigners
so that only the bravest shall become Spartans
and help to defend the town, that we may no
longer see Lacedemonia fall a prey to the
^tolians and the Illyrians for lack of
defenders." Having said this, he placed his
possessions at the disposal of the people. His
example was followed by his kinsmen and
friends, and then by all the remainder of the
citizens. The land was partitioned, a portion
even being allotted to the banished citizens,
and Cleomenes promised that they would all
be permitted to return as soon as the State
settled down again. He restored the old
Spartan simplicity of life, and proceeded him-
self to set a good example.

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 77

Had the foreign policy of Cleomenes hence-
forth been of a peaceful character, Sparta
would once more have become a model, and
the other Hellenic States would have been
obliged to introduce the Spartan social reforms.
But the warlike policy which he pursued made
enemies of his neighbours.

Instead of love, the social reforms of Sparta
inspired fear. In their need, the neighbouring
States appealed to the Macedonians, in order
to be able to ward off the Spartan attack.
For several years Cleomenes, with his trusty
army, was able, single-handed, to hold the
coalition at bay, and to defeat it, but finally
he succumbed.

Plutarch gives the following account of the
course of the war :

" Cleomenes not only inspired in his citizens
courage and confidence, but even by the
enemy he was considered an excellent general.
With the force of a single town to withstand
both the might of the Macedonians and the
united Peloponnesians, and not only to
protect Lacedemonia against every attack, but
also to overrun the country of the enemy,
and to capture such large towns — these deeds
seemed to betray unusual skilfulness and

78 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

magnanimity. Whoever first called money
the nerve of all things in the world may well
have said this in special reference to the
war. ... As the Macedonians were amply
provided with all requisite accessories to carry
on the war permanently, they were bound
eventually to be victorious and to humble
Cleomenes, who could only, with great efforts,
pay his soldiers and provide support for his
citizens."

When Cleomenes was at length defeated
(222 B.C., at Sellasia) he advised the citizens
of Sparta to open the door to Antigonus, the
king of Macedonia. The latter took possession
of the town, but treated the Lacedemonians
with great clemency and humanity. Without
injuring or insulting the dignity of Sparta,
he gave them back their laws and constitution,
that is, the old laws which were in force
before the reigns of Agis and Cleomenes, the
non-communist laws.

4. Communistic Settlement in Lipara.

It is related by the Sicilian author, Diodorus,
that about the year 580 several Knidians and
Rhodians decided to leave their homes, as

PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM IN SPARTA 79

they were discontented with the oppressive
rule of the Lydian kings. They sailed towards
the west, and when they landed at Lipara
(an island near Sicily) they were received in a
friendly manner by the inhabitants, and were
persuaded by the latter to join them in forming
a commxunity. Later on, when they were
hard pressed by pirates from Tyre, they con-
structed a fleet and divided themselves in
such a way that a number of them tilled the
other island, as a common undertaking,
whilst the others protected them from the
pirates. All property was declared to be
held in common, and the settlers also practised
the eating of meals in common. This com-
munal mode of living lasted for some time.
Afterwards, the settlers divided the island of
Lipara, on which the town was situated,
among themselves, and cultivated the other
island on the communal principle. At length
both the islands were partitioned for a period
of twenty years, and at the expiration of this
term property was divided again.

The institution of communal meals was
also to be found in Crete. Numerous citizens
of Crete were provided with repasts out
of public funds. Plato believed that the

80 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

communal meals were established with the
object of keeping the citizens in military trim,
or to protect them from want. He considered
the practice to be a divine necessity (Laws,
Book VI. chap. 21), and an institution of the
ideal State.

CHAPTER IV

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS

I. Solon's Middle-Class Reforms.

At the time when Sparta became a com-
munistic State, the nobles ruled in Attica,
and gradually deprived the peasants of their
rights and property, enslaving them by the
operation of usury. The priests and the
judges were recruited from the ranks of the
ruling nobility. The producing class there-
fore became discontented. The economic,
political and judicial iniquities led to conspira-
cies which were suppressed with bloodshed.
In response to the demand of the people for
a code of laws, the nobles charged the juris-
consult, Draco, to compile a code of laws,
which have become proverbial for their
severity. Since that time a Draconian law
has signified a harsh, unpopular measure.
It goes without saying that this was not the
way to promote internal peace. The people
became ever more clamorous in their demands
for emancipation from the burden of debts

82 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

and a fresh partition of the soil. As Attica,
at the beginning of the sixth century, was
on the eve of a popular rising, in the year
594 the nobles ordered Solon, who was known
to be a friend of the people, " to establish
peace between the nobles and the people,
and to take all legal measures that might
be necessary to this end." Thereupon, Solon

. carried out an economic and political reform.

fflk All debts secured upon land (mortgages) were
cancelled, and enslavement was forbidden.
This reform is known by the name of Seisach-
teia (throwing-off of debts). The political
constitution was a timocracy; it was based
upon a census which divided the citizens into
four classes, according to the revenue from
their landed property : (i) large landowners,
(2) knights, (3) peasants, (4) day labourers.
The members of the first class were eligible
to hold the highest offices ; those of the second
and third classes were eligible for the rest of
the State positions, while those of the fourth
class could only participate in the popular
assembles and the juries. On the other hand,
they were excused the payment of State
taxes.

Solon's constitution, however, satisfied

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 83

neither the nobles nor the people. The former

thought it too revolutionary; the latter

deemed it to be inadequate. After a long

period of internal and external confusion

political equality or " democracy " was cA-V'k.

founded by Cleisthenes at the end of the

sixth century (509), but it was also based

on slavery. There could be no thought of

a real democracy, in which all the citizens had

equal rights. Soon after this Athens entered

upon the period of the Persian War (500 to

431), in the course of which it developed

a victorious navy, and gained great commercial

prosperity. In conjunction with the land

power of Sparta, it defeated the Persians,

and, from a small State, grew into a league

of States, in which industry, trade, maritime

commerce, mental culture, poetry and art

flourished. But hard upon Capitalism fol-^

lowed Imperialism (the contest for supremacy A

in the Hellenic world), the struggle of classes,

and the dissolution of Attic society into

individuals striving against each other.

2. Capitalism and Disintegration.

The Attic Empire, with its sea power, its
foreign trade, and its industrial undertakings.

)t

84 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

was quite different from the small State for
which the reforming laws of Solon had been
enacted. Agriculture, which even at the
beginning of the sixth century had not sufficed
to sustain the population, was transformed
in accordance with the mercantile point of
,view. Wide tracts of land were given over
to the culture of olives, as oil had become a
profitable commodity for export. The popu-
lation became dependent upon foreign corn,
which was brought by ships from the northern
coasts of the Black Sea into the Attic harbours,
especially to Piraeus. From that district
cattle, fish, wood, flax, hemp and salt were
also imported. The handicraftsmen were
transferred to the factories, and worked for
the export trade. In this way they fell into
dependence upon trading capital. And in
the degree that commodities lost their local
origin, and were to be got only through the
large trader and the shipper, the shopkeepers
and the small business people forfeited their
independence. It goes without saying that
capital secured the lion's share of the profits.
" Aristocratic persons consequently became
great merchants and shippers, the landowners
became capitalists, and lived on their rents,

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 85

transferring their agricultural undertakings to
managers, who carried them on with the help
of slaves " (E. Mayer, History of Antiquity) .

Henceforth, the free workers had to struggle
against both the domination of capital and
the tendency of slave-labour to depress wages ;
the small middle-class fell ever more into
subjection. Consequently, the Demos waged
desperate and bitter struggle against the rich,
and in the interval the life of Attica was severely
shaken, and statesmen watched with growing
anxiety the disruption of their country.
The social and moral crisis was accentuated
by the Peloponnesian War, which broke out
in the year 431, partly in consequence of the
maritime competition between Corinth and
Athens, and partly because of the struggle
between Attica and Sparta for supremacy
in Hellas, and ended with the collapse and
surrender of Athens in the year 404.

3. Plato.

Plato had these conditions in mind when
he constructed the theoretical basis of a just
State. He was born three years after the
outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, and^

86 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

sprang from one of the noblest families of
Athens. One of his ancestors in the female
line was Solon. After he had been taught
by Socrates, he proceeded to Egypt and Italy
in order to continue his studies. By tem-
perament and inclination he would have
devoted himself to public work, but the times
were anything but favourable for statesmen
of the mental calibre of Plato. He turned
to philosophy, and became the most famous
teacher of the Hellenic world and one of the
greatest thinkers of all time.

Plato was no supporter of Democracy.
An out-and-out intellectual aristocrat, the
thoughtless multitude, the prey of demagogues,
was as obnoxious to him as the plutocracy
and every kind of forcible rule. His most
important sociological works are the Republic
and the Laws. The first book is the more
ideal in its proposals, but it is not nearly as
well constructed as the Laws, which in many
respects is more readable than the Republic,
of whose ten books only the fifth, sixth and
eighth are valuable. Both works are w^ritten
in conversational style; the dialogues are
by no means ingenious, but mechanical and
often pedantic.

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 87

(i) The Republic is not the description
of an Utopia. It contains no picture of a
future State, and certainly not the economic
basis of a socialist society. It is rather
an investigation into the justice and the short- ,
comings of the various constitutions known ^'
to history, and the most important remedies
for a diseased body poHtic. Plato's concept
of righteousness had almost nothing in common
with that of the Jewish prophets. The Hellene
is above all a statesman — cool and cautious —
a clear-headed patriot. He would not be
Hkely to lead in a class struggle the poor and
disinherited, and obtain justice for them,
or to elevate the poor and overthrow the rich.
He does not reveal a trace of prophetical
vehemence, nor any hint of internationalism.
He is rather anxious to bring healing to his
disrupted country, and to make of it a State
in which social peace and concord shall
prevail, and in which every citizen shall go
about his own business without interfering
with the concerns of his neighbour.

Plato takes as his starting-point the notion
that an ideal State originally existed. He
does not describe it in the Republic, but refers
to the testimony of Hesiod.

88 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

In a somewhat mystical manner he argues
that mankind from generation to generation
has deteriorated in excellence and fallen into
dissensions. Many have striven after the
acquisition of money and the possession of
land, houses, gold and silver coins. A war of all
against all arose, and at length men reached
an agreement to distribute the land and houses
among themselves. Private property was
introduced, and the population was divided
into rulers and menials (Book VIII. chap. 3).
In another place Plato proceeds on psycho-
logical lines, and seeks to explain the origin
and development of the State according to
the nature of the human mind and the needs
of men (Book II. chaps. 10, 11). As an
isolated individual man requires help, he can
satisfy his physical needs only in co-operation
with others. Therefore, men associate with
one another and form a State. Each citizen
has his occupation — many are tillers of the
soil, others are handworkers, and they barter
their products with one another. Thus trade
and money come into existence. Soon men
cease to be contented with the satisfaction
of their mere necessities, and require articles
of luxury. Ostentation and debauchery

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 89

appear, and lead to covetousness and to wars
of conquest, which involve the creation of
military power. The State becomes more
complex. Riches and poverty come into
being. The inner harmony disappears; the
State splits into two hostile groups. " Even
the smallest town is divided into two; one
part is the city of the poor, the other the city
of the rich, both at war with each other "
(Book IV, chap. 2). With the growth of
riches and poverty the State becomes impo-
tent. The rich neglect their duties, and the
poor perform inferior work, and where riches
are honoured the citizens forget all virtue
and strive after wealth. The rich become
licentious, the poor servile and rebellious,
and the interest of the State is neglected by
all. The State goes under. For, finally,
things go so far that one half of the population
rejoices over incidents that plunge the other
half into sorrow. These evils are to be found
in a timocracy (Solon's four-class constitution) r-
and in an oligarchy (rule by a small number llh
of property owners), in a democracy and in ai
tyranny (Book VIII. chaps. 3-12). All these
constitutions are based on private property. --^
The timocracy contained, however, many

t

90 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

vestiges of the ideal State, such as good rulers
and the communal meals of the citizens.
It is succeeded by an oligarchy, in which the
quest of profit and the acquisition of money
get the upper hand, so that wealth becomes
the measure of citizenship. Such a State
despises the love of wisdom, and all virtues
are supplanted by the greed for money. And
if the insatiability of the rich has for its con-
sequence the poverty of the mass, the struggle
of parties — on the slightest outside pressure —
leads to the triumph of the disinherited, and
to democracy, in which both groups lose
their sense of duty to the State. Finally,
things come to a tyranny, or the forcible
rule of an individual, who begins by flattering
the masses in order to subjugate them.

These constitutions and laws do not admit
of any amendment. Most amusing are those
people who are always setting up legal restric-
tions and putting forward amendments, under
the delusion that they can control the march
of events, and such trifles as we have just
described, not once suspecting that they
are really trying to cut off the heads of a
hydra (Book IV. chaps. 4, 5).

Thus the State cannot be reformed unless

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 91

it strikes out in a new direction, and adopts
another constitution under other rulers — that
is, renews itself.

How is the State to be renewed ? How is
national poHcy to be based on righteousness ?
To these questions Plato makes the famous
answer :

" Until either the philosophers shall be
made kings in States, or those who are now
called kings and potentates shall attain to
the fulness of true philosophy, and until
this union of political power in the same person
is effected, no relief will be possible for cities,
nor for the entire human race " (Book V.
chap. i8).

The philosopher kings are to guide the
people; they v/ill be the guardians of the
State. They are to be assisted by officials
and warriors, who likewise will be superior
intellectually and morally to the multitude.

Thorough-going communism is equally
important, or, as Plato says : '' It is then a
matter upon which we are all agreed, that in a
State which aims at perfection wives and chil-
dren must be in common, and that all educa-
tion, and in hke manner the pursuits of war
and peace, are to be common, and those of

92 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

the citizens are to be kings who have proved
themselves best as philosophers and warriors "
(Book VIII. chap. i). Communism will put
an end to dissensions within the State.
" Does not community of pleasure and pain
tend to unite a State, when all the citizens,
as far as possible, rejoice and grieve equally
at the same events, happy or untoward ?
On the other hand, does not isolation in this
matter tend to divide a State? Whence
then does this division come about, unless
it be when the citizens do not, on the same
occasion, unite in saying : * This is mine,
this is not mine, this is foreign to me' ? "

The chief thing, however, is education.
General compulsory instruction will result
in a careful selection. The future rulers
(guardians), officials and assistants are to
be carefully trained in gymnastics and music.
Above all the supreme guardians, the philo-
sopher kings. The most promising scholars,
who by their activity and achievements
shall seem to be worthy stations, are to con-
tinue learning until they reach the age of
fifty years, and distinguish themselves in
every branch of knowledge and all political
actions. Only then will they be enabled

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 93

to lift up their eyes and behold the idea of
the good. In the Platonic sense the idea is
not an intellectual, logical concept, but some
lofty reality, an eternal, heavenly pattern,
which only the most spiritual vision can per-
ceive and reconstruct on earth. " Our State
will then be perfectly ordered when it has a
ruler who possesses all this knowledge "
(Book VI. chap. 17).

The children of handworkers, labourers, etc.,
are not capable of reaching this plane of
spirituality. For the great multitude enjoy-
ment consists in the pleasures of the senses,
and not of the mind. The multitude is
broken in body as well as crushed in soul by
its exhausting industrial occupations. Plato
is avowedly of opinion that only the most
considerable families, with political, scientific
and aesthetic culture, will be likely to produce
traits which, after careful cultivation, will
qualify them for the highest posts.

(2) The Laws are not so idealistic as the
Republic. They were written at a later date
than the latter. The criticism of the property
relations is indeed as acute as formerly,
but the definite communist proposals are more
tentative. It may be said that the Republic

94 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

is revolutionary, and that the Laws are
reformist. Plato says (Laws, Book V.) :
" The first and highest form of the State and
of the government and of the law is that in
which there prevails most widely the ancient
saying that ^friends have all things common.'
Whether there is anywhere now or will ever
be this communism of women and children
and of property, in which the private and
individual is altogether banished from life,
and things which are by nature private,
such as eyes and ears and hands, have become
common, and all men express praise and
blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same
occasions, and whatever laws there are unite
the city to the utmost, happy are the men who
living after this manner dwell there. And
therefore to this we are to look for the pattern
State, and to cling to this, and to seek with
all our might for one which is like this.
The State which we have now in mind will
be nearest to immortality, and the only one
which takes the second place." How can
such a constitution be established? "Let
the citizens at once distribute their land and
houses and not till the land in common, since
a community of goods goes beyond their

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 95

proposed origin and culture and education.
But in making the distribution let the several
possessors feel that their particular lots
belong to the whole city."

The division of the land shall be equal,
as far as possible. The number of original
lots of land is not to be reduced, that is,
care must be taken that neither large land-
owners nor landless persons are created. In
general the defects of the old government
could only be avoided by " eradicating the
lust for ownership, accompanied by righteous-
ness " (Book v.). The possession of gold,
or even of silver, is forbidden ; there is to be
only as much minted money as is required
for daily exchange. In the case of marriage,
dowries shall neither be given nor accepted.
The reasonable statesman will not bother
himself about the pohtical ideas of the mob.
The mob demands a State which shall be as
great and rich as possible, have gold and
silver in abundance, and possess the most
extensive dominion over land and sea. They
will perhaps demand, at the same time, that
the State shall also be virtuous and happy.
But both these demands together cannot
be complied with. One can have either

96 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

wealth and power, or virtue and happiness.
Wealth and virtue are never to be found
together. " I can never assent to the doctrine
that the rich man will be happy. A man who
spends on noble objects and acquires wealth
by just means only, can hardly be remarkable
for riches, any more than he could be very
poor. Our statement then is true that the
very rich are not good" (Book V.). If the
government be good, then no excessively
rich people will exist in the State, and where
there is no foolish wealth there will be no
mean poverty, for the former creates the
latter (Book V.).

Plato's legislation and proposals for reform
relate to the Hellenes in general, and, so far
as the formation of a ruling caste is concerned*
to the noble class of Hellas. With Plato one
may really speak of a Hellenist nation. This
nation is to be as united and solid as possible
in regard to property relations. On the other
hand, it is to be classified in respect to intel-
lectual and moral capacities. The intellectual
and cultured nobles are to rule, to lead, and
to make laws; the farmers and handworkers
are to foUow their pursuits dutifully, to avoid
all pre-occupation, so that each of them

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 97

confines himself to his own caUing, in which he
can be proficient. Moreover, the Hellenes are
not to undertake any heavy tasks of manual
labour, or any mean services, but to leave
these to immigrant foreigners and slaves.
The Hellenes are to devote themselves to
their duties as citizens, and the higher pursuits.
In the Laws Plato lays the chief emphasis
on the removal of the sharp economic antagon-
isms ; in the Republic he is principally occupied
with the education and mode of living of
the philosopher kings, the officials and the
warriors. A superficial reading of the Republic
gives the impression — which is, in fact, shared
by many writers — that Plato recommends
communism solely for these upper sections,
and leaves the remaining class of the people
in the old conditions. This interpretation,
however, is wholly erroneous. From the
quotations we have given above it is quite
clear that Plato advocated communism for
all Hellenes. Otherwise, there would be no
point in the entire social criticism which he
levels, in both his works, against the economic,
political and moral conditions of his country.
Plato was an inspired Lycurgus ; the latter
was concerned only with his local State

98 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

(Sparta), whereas the former was for the
Hellenic nation. The rest of the Hellenic
States were as foreign to Lycurgus as any
community in Asia or Africa. For Plato
the Hellenic States collectively were only a
constituent part of the Hellenic nation ; in his
eyes the Peloponnesian War was a civil war.
Both legislators, however, were unable to
conceive of a state of humanity without war,
or an international brotherhood. For Plato
those who were not Hellenes were barbarians,
a lower species of mankind, for whom it
were an honour and advantage to be ruled
by the Hellenes. The Stoics were the first
to spread among the Hellenes the idea of
the equality of the human race.

4. Aristotle versus Plato and Phaleas.

Aristotle was anti-communist and an
opponent of the natural rights theory. His
Politics is the work of an unusually prudent
thinker, experienced in statecraft, a man who
was averse from all revolutions, all extreme
reforms, and even all violent party struggles.
He regarded the establishment and mainten-
ance of a balance of power in the State as the
chief task of a statesman. The citizens in

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 99

the State must be neither too rich and power-
ful, nor too poor and weak, for the State is
endangered by every disproportionate increase
of riches and poverty, of influence and impo-
tence (Politics, Book V., where revolutions
and their causes are dealt with). Great
inequality moves those who suffer from it
to strive for an alteration of government,
and demagogues quickly appear to give the
watchword of rebellion to the discontented
masses. Likewise, it causes the anti-social
oligarchs to arrogate all the power to them-
selves, and consequently to alter the con-
stitution. Legislators, therefore, should aim
at preventing the accumulation of excessive
wealth in a few hands, as well as the ascen-
dancy of single persons. He did not believe
that slavery was against nature, or that
government was the consequence of the
corruption of human nature.

From this description of the second greatest
Greek philosopher it will easily be understood
that he was an opponent of Plato, whose
Republic and Laws, while not being prudent,
contained much wisdom and idealism. Aris-
totle (Politics, Book II.) argues at great
length against the communistic ideas of his

100 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

teacher, and displays great acuteness, but
he indulges at times in mere hair-splitting
and pedantic word-catching. None the less
it is remarkable that Aristotle urged all the
objections that have been raised against
Socialism in all ages. In his opinion, com-
munism was against human nature. It would
be detrimental to the production of wealth,
as each man only looks after himself, and
furthers his own interest. The prospect of
acquiring wealth is thus an incentive to
creative labour. Likewise, communism
ignores the increase of population ; that which
is a common concern does not promote con-
cord, but leads to contention. Finally : the
real source of evil is not private property,
but the inferiority of human nature.

" Indeed we see that there is much more
quarrelling among those who have all things
in common, though there are not many of
them when compared with the vast numbers
who have private property."

But eventually Aristotle comes to the
conclusion : " The present arrangement
(society based on private property), if im-
proved as it might be by good customs and
laws, would be far better and would have the

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 101

advantages of both systems. Property should
be in a certain sense common, but as a general
rule, private, for, when everyone has a distinct
interest, men will not complain of one another,
and they will make more progress, because
everyone will be attending to his own busi-
ness. And yet among the good, and in respect
of use, * Friends,' as the proverb says, ' will
have all things common.' Even now there
are traces of such a principle, showing that
it is not impracticable, but, in well-ordered
States, exists already to a certain extent,
and may be carried further. For, although
every man has his own property, some things
he will place at the disposal of his friends,
while of others he shares the use with them.
The Lacedemonians, for example, use one
another's slaves, and horses, and dogs, as
if they were their own ; and when they happen
to be in the country, they appropriate in the
fields whatever provisions they want. It is
clearly better that property should be private,
but the use of it common; and the special
business of the legislator is to create in men
this benevolent disposition" (II. 5).

This concession to communism on the
part of Aristotle was without any special

102 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

significance. It merely constituted one of the
measures for putting down excessive egoism.

There is httle force in the example which
he gives from Sparta, as in that country the
citizens had become accustomed to a certain
extent to communistic sentiments, through
the Lycurgian legislation, whereas Aristotle
rejected the principle underlying this
legislation.

After attacking Plato, Aristotle proceeds
to a criticism of the socialistic proposals of
the otherwise unknown Phaleas, of whom
he says :

" In the opinion of some, the regulation
of property is the chief point of all, that being
the question upon which all revolutions turn.
This danger was recognised by Phaleas of
Chalcedon, who was the first to affirm that
the citizens of a State ought to have equal
possessions. He thought that in a new colony
the equalisation might be accomplished with-
out difficulty, not so easily when a State was
already established ; and that then the shortest
way of compassing the desired end would be
for the rich to give and not to receive marriage
portions, and for the poor not to give but to
receive them " (II. 7).

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 103

Aristotle objects :

"It is not the possessions but the desires
of mankind which require to be equaHsed,
and this is impossible, unless a sufficient
education is provided by the State. But
Phaleas will probably reply that this is
precisely what he means and that, in his
opinion, there ought to be in States, not only
equal property, but equal education. There
are crimes of which the motive is want;
and for these Phaleas expects to find a cure
in the equalisation of property, which will
take away from a man the temptation to be
a highwayman because he is hungry or cold.
But want is not the sole incentive to crime;
men desire to gratify some passion which
preys on them, or they are eager to enjoy
the pleasures which are unaccompanied by
pain, and therefore they commit crimes.
Now what is the cure of these three disorders ?
Of the first, moderate possessions and occupa-
tion; of the second, habits of temperance;
as to the third, if any desire pleasures which
depend on themselves, they will find the satis-
faction of their desires nowhere but in philo-
sophy. The fact is that the greatest crimes
are caused by excess and not by necessity.

104 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Men do not become tyrants in order that they
may not suffer cold; and hence great is the
honour bestowed, not on him who kills a
thief, but on him who kills a tyrant. Thus
we see that the institutions of Phaleas avail
only against petty crimes. . . . The beginning
of reform — declares Aristotle further — is not
so much to equalise property as to train the
nobler sort of natures not to desire more,
and to prevent the lower from getting more ;
that is to say, they must be kept down, but
not ill-treated. Besides, the equalisation pro-
posed by Phaleas is imperfect; for he only
equalises land, whereas a man may be rich
also in slaves and cattle and money, and in
the abundance of what are called his movables.
Now either all these things must be equalised,
or some limit must be imposed on them, or
they must all be let alone. It would appear
that Phaleas is legislating for a small city
only, if, as he supposes, all the artisans are
to be public slaves and not to form a part of
the population of the city " (II. 7).

It is apparent from this criticism that
Phaleas' equality of possession in land tended
towards general State education and the
nationalisation of the handworkers. As it is

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 105

also said that he was the first who wrote upon
equahty of possessions, he must have Hved
even before Plato.

5. The Poets of Social Comedy.

Wit, irony and satire were among the most
characteristic gifts of the lonians, who were so
richly endowed mentally. All these qualities
were united in Aristophanes, a dramatic poet
of magical power of form. He lived through
the Peloponesian War, and witnessed its
tragic end. He was familiar with the com-
munistic sentiments which seized hold of the
dispossessed classes during this war, and even
after its termination. The Athenian catas-
trophe shook all authority, and all national
cohesion. The Athenian Demos, feverishly
groping after all that was new, yearned pas-
sionately for some communist transformation
of society. This moral condition was prepared
by the old traditions of the Golden Age,
and by the social struggles since the eighth
century. For these facts no direct evidence
is forthcoming from the dispossessed classes,
but there is plenty of indirect evidence, which
is handed down to us in the social comedies
of Phereakrates, Telekleides, Eupolis, and

106 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

especially Aristophanes. Of the works of the
three first-named authors only fragments
remain, but the best comedies of Aristophanes,
the most famous of all, are preserved intact,
and stand incomparably higher than the
former. But they are still comedies; their
purpose is to pour good-humoured mockery
upon the communistic aspirations, by means
of exaggeration and caricature, and also to
chastise the plutocratic and imperialistic
appetites. Their authors were conservative
in their outlook, and ridiculed or deplored
subversive movements. It should be added
that antique communism regarded productive
labour as a curse. Its aim was not the
establishment of an empire of creative labour,
as at that time labour was synonymous with
slavery. Tools were extremely primitive;
mechanical power did not yet exist ; the hard
work was performed by the unfree, and was
consequently held to be degrading.

War and politics were regarded as the special
functions of the free citizens. This signified
that the free citizens formed a ruling class,
and not a democracy. We saw this to be the
case when we dealt with the Platonic State.
Free and impoverished citizens conceived their

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 107

salvation to be found in the emancipation from
physical labour. Consequently, their com-
munism often took the shape of desires for a
sluggard's paradise. The more I have studied
the life of antiquity, the clearer it has become
to me that the moral and political collapse of
the old world was due chiefly to slavery — in
short, to unfree labour, to the despising of
productive activity, and the resultant stagna-
tion of the technology of labour. The social
comedies which we are to deal with now are
directed against the dreams of idleness, the
desires for an opulent life without toil, which
the Athenians cherished, and which became
more urgent with the relaxation which fol-
lowed upon the catastrophic defeat of Athens
in the year 404.

Let us take first Phereakrates, Telekleides
and Eupolis, as they preceded Aristophanes
in point of time, and were also less important.
These authors attacked the sluggard dreams
of the discontented Athenians, hungering for
innovations, as well as the exaggerated
accounts of the Golden Age. The most
typical of the comedies of Phereakrates was
the Persians. The Greeks looked upon Persia
as a land of golden mountains, the possession

108 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

of which would facilitate the realisation of
their sluggard's ideal. Two figures appear :
riches and poverty. The latter exhorts man-
kind to labour and self-control as the sources
of all blessings. The embodiment of riches
makes reply :

" What do we want with all your science
of yoked oxen and ploughs, of sowing and
mowing and hedging? You have already
heard that steaming broth flows through the
streets, and lard and fine dumplings are con-
veyed to us from the sources of wealth. Who
likes may fill his dish to the brim. And all
the trees on the hillsides will not bear leaves,
but sausages and tender baked thrushes,"

Eupolis describes in the Golden Age the
restoration of the old vanished happiness.
The theme is similar to the Persians of
Phereakrates. Two speakers appear; one
defends the utility of poverty and abstinence
as incentive and means to the attainment of
happiness, while the other defends the beauty
of wealthy idleness :

" Listen now to me : I will, on the con-
trary, introduce into the warm baths of my
friends water from the sea, by means of con-
duits supported on pillars. Thus it will flow

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 109

into everyone's tub. When it is full, he will
say, ' Stop.' "

In a similar fashion Telekleides, in his
comedy, A mphyktyonen, ridiculed the sluggard's
dreams of the Hellenic proletariat and slaves.
Amphyktyon, an ancient legendary king of
Athens, comes back to the upper world, and
brings peace and happiness to his fellow-
citizens :

" Above all, peace reigned in the land every
day, like air and water. The earth did not
yield fear nor sorrow, but good things in abun-
dance. Purple wine foamed in the brooks.
Fishes followed men into their houses, fried
themselves on the pans, and laid themselves
on the table, and mounted the splendid plates.
Soup streamed through the town, and roasted
legs of mutton danced; sauce trickles down
from the eaves ; the hungry may tarry awhile
and fill themselves with good things. Lard
cakes are despised. And the men were a
strong race, like giants sprung from the
earth."

6. Aristophanes.

Aristophanes was of quite a different calibre.
With a sure touch he penetrated into the entire

110 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

life of Athens, showed us meetings, pohtical
struggles, economic aspirations, plutocratic
ambition, and a women's parliament manu-
facturing Utopias. The whole dimensions of
the almost unique Ionian genius, but also the
defects of ancient civilisation, appear before
our eyes, sketched by one who was an intel-
lectual aristocrat, who had no sympathy at
all, either for the turbulent economic and cos-
mopolitan activity of the plutocracy, or for
the strivings of the dispossessed for extreme
equality. The ideal of Aristophanes seems to
have been similar to that of Aristotle. From
this opposition to his age arose the satire,
the deliberate mockery, the graceful irony
which characterise his comedies. Of all the
comedies of Aristophanes, which treat satiri-
cally the cosmopolitan capitalist politicians,
the Sophists, the mania for law-suits, the
cloud cuckoo town, and the communists, we
are here only concerned with the Ecclesiazuses
(the Parliament of Women, played 393) and
Plutos (played 388).

The contents of the first may be summarised
as follows : the politics of the men has led
to the collapse of the flourishing Athenian
Republic : the Peloponnesian War ended (404)

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 111

with the complete capitulation of Athens.
The women had suffered much during the long
war, and their lot was rendered worse by the
deplorable consequences of the collapse. They
resolved therefore to depose the men as the
ruling sex, and to take the reins of government
into their own hands.

In the night the women steal away from
their husbands, dress themselves as men and
summon a Parliament where female orators
appear and make proposals for the complete
reform of the country. Women, they say, are
economically more efficient and circumspect
than men, and will be able to steer the State
into the proper course and to maintain it.
The leader of this revolution was named
Praxagora and her husband's name was
Blepyros. A debate arose between the two.
The woman said : "I beg for order and
attention. Nobody is to interrupt me until
I have finished my speech. I have weighed
and considered the trend of my scheme. The
principle which I want to see applied is : all
ought to be equal, all ought to enjoy wealth
and pleasures on an equal footing. It should
no longer be tolerated that one is rich, and
another poor ; that one possesses broad lands.

112 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

and another not sufficient to enable him to
have his own tomb; that one has a hundred
servants, and another none at all. I intend
to improve and reform all this. All ought to
participate freely and equally in the blessings ;
one mode of life, one system for all mankind.
Blepyros : And how will you make all this
come to pass ? Praxagora : First of all, steps
are to be taken to transfer to the possession
of the whole of society all silver, all pieces of
land and other kinds of property; this will
constitute a public fund ; out of this fund we
will, as good housewives, feed you men, clothe
and look after you. Blepyros : As far as the
land is concerned, I understand your proposal,
as land cannot be concealed. But how are
you going to socialise gold and silver?
Praxagora : Everybody will be obliged to
bring their property into the treasury house.
Blepyros : Suppose the rich should hold things
back; they cannot be made to comply by
means of an oath, for they will even perjure
themselves and deceive the State. How
otherwise have they acquired their wealth?
Praxagora : Agreed ; but their property will
immediately become useless on their hands,
for want will exist no longer ; everybody will

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 118

be able to have what he may desire, even
without money : nuts, chestnuts, bread, cloth-
ing, wine, flowers, fish. All these things may
be taken from the public stores. What would
be the object, then, of accumulating money
in private hands ? Why should the rich want
to retain any longer the property acquired by
fraud ? Blepyros : Do you know that the
people who own the most property are the
greatest rascals and cannot refrain from steal-
ing and lying ? Praxagora : All this is quite
true when we look at the past ; under the old
order, which we are now abolishing, this was
really the case. But what is the use of private
property now that everything is common?
Blepyros : Suppose a young man courts a
maiden, or desires a woman, he will have to
bring presents ? Praxagora : Not at all : all
women and men will be free and in common ;
marriage or other compulsion will not exist.
Blepyros : But what will happen when a
beautiful girl is courted by several men, some
handsome and some ugly ? Praxagora : Of
course, a beautiful girl will have many suitors,
some handsome and some ugly, but before
one is justified in courting a beautiful girl he
will have to sleep with an ugly girl. Blepyros :

114 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Good. The girls will no longer have to fear
that they will remain old maidens all their
lives ? But what will happen to the men ?
It may be assumed that the maidens will
grant their favours only to the handsome men.
How will the ugly men get on ? Praxagora :
The State will regulate the amorous lives of
the maidens. By the side of the young,
handsome and well-developed men will be
ranged the small, misshapen and undersized
men. And before the maidens receive per-
mission to pair off with their lovers, they will
be obliged to grant their love to the men who
have been treated by nature in a step-motherly
manner. All prostitution will be abolished;
the degraded women will be left to the slaves,
so that the most vigorous men shall be reserved
for the citizenesses. Blepyros : How shall we
be able to know our children ? Praxagora :
They will never be recognised. All children
will belong to all adults. Blepyros : And who
will do the work of the community ? Praxa-
gora : The slaves will attend to this work."

The debate is continued, and Praxagora
sketches the future State, in which all things
will be in common, and all will be free and
equal and independent; in which all private

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 115

undertakings will be amalgamated into one
great single property, in which all class dis-
tinctions, all restrictions and all measures of
constraint will be abolished for ever. Like-
wise there will be no more courts of justice
and election halls. These will be transformed
into dining halls, where the finest dainties may
be had. In alphabetical order the citizens will
be assigned their dining numbers, and their
dining halls. Common meals will be invested
with solemnity ; in an elevated frame of mind
each person will leave them, with torch in
hand, and a floral crown in the hair, and when
they then wander through the streets, girls
and women will invite the men to themselves,
and solicit them to enjoy their beauty.

These debates, carried on in flowery, witty
and extravagant language, outline an attrac-
tive earthly paradise. It goes without saying
that Aristophanes shows that this sluggard's
paradise will fail ludicrously. The tragi-
comical developments which accompany the
regulation of amorous life and the neglect of
public affairs render existence in the future
State impossible. The young people are not
able to approach their beloved maidens, as
they are made wholly unhappy by the sexual

116 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

tribute which they are obhged first to pay to
the old ladies and the faded spinsters. And
the citizens, who, attracted by the festive
dining halls, proceed to their meals with
highly raised expectations, are only able to
satisfy their hunger when they take with
them something from home.

In the Ecclesiazuses Aristophanes ridicules
the communistic enthusiasts. In Plutos, his
last comedy, he scourges the insatiable rich,
the unbridled lust for wealth. The problem
dealt with here is an old yet ever new one;
why are the evildoers rich and the virtuous
poor? The discussions are extraordinarily
copious. The underlying idea is : Plutos, the
god of wealth, is blind and does not know
what he does. To the question of the poor
but virtuous Chremylos, as to why he dis-
tributes his favours so unequally, Plutos
answers : " Zeus has made me blind. The
supreme god is jealous of mankind; when I
was very young, I used to boast that I would
visit only the wise and good. Consequently,
he made me blind, so that I should not
know whom I would be visiting. Chremylos :
Wouldst thou avoid the wicked if thou couldst
see ? Plutos : Yes, that I would. I would

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 117

only visit the good. All say to me that they
are good, but when I go to them and make
them rich, there is no end to their wickedness.
Chremylos : Thus it is. Men can have enough
of everything — bread, sweetmeats, figs — but
never sufficient wealth. If a man have thirteen
talents, he wants sixteen; let him have six-
teen, and he desires twenty, otherwise he says
life is miserable. Wealth is the most cowardly
thing."

Chremylos advises Plutos to betake himself
to the temple of ^sculapius (the healing god)
and to pass a night there; in this temple
he would be cured of his blindness. Plutos
follows this advice, and is able to see. Now
poverty is to be driven out of Hellas. The
personification of poverty appears at this
juncture, and desires to prove that its exist-
ence is necessary. It contends with Chremylos
and exclaims : " Thou wilt drive me out of
Hellas? Thou believest that by this means
thou wilt bring the greatest blessings to man-
kind ? In reality, thou wilt inflict great harm
upon mankind, if thou wilt make the good
rich." Chremylos contests this assertion in a
long speech, and shows how just it would be
if the wicked were poor and the good were

118 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

rich. To which Poverty makes reply : "If
all were rich, who would then take the trouble
to acquire science and knowledge of the arts ?
And if these disappeared, who would build
our ships, till the soil, and carry on industry ?
Chremylos : You talk nonsense, for our ser-
vants shall toil at all these things for us.
Poverty : Whence then will you have ser-
vants ? Chremylos : There would be sufficient
people who would bring us slaves from abroad,
if we paid them well for doing so. Poverty :
But who would expose themselves to the
dangers of kidnapping, if without this they
could be rich enough ? Do you imagine that
when all have plenty of money, they will still
be obliged to work themselves, in order to
create the amenities of existence? your gold
and silver will not even help them. To-day,
the rich can procure everything because there
are the poor, who produce the various com-
modities which render life possible and agree-
able for you. You must not confuse poverty
with misery ; mankind are not to be miserable,
neither are they to live in superfluity and
lose the incentive to vigorous labour. You
say yourself that the poor are better men than
the rich."

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 119

Chremylos and his friends are disconcerted
by these arguments. Then Plutos appears
cured of his bhndness. He greets the Sun,
the beautiful Attic country, and exclaims :
" I am ashamed of my past, and I blush for
the company I have kept for so long, while
I was avoiding the men who deserved my
friendship. Henceforth I will follow the
opposite road, and show mankind that when
I tarried with knaves and rogues it was
against my wishes."

The result of this change is extremely
remarkable. The wicked lose their wealth.
Now all begin to visit Plutos, but the way to
him lies through honesty and wisdom. And
the finest witticism comes at the end of the
comedy. The priests complain that hence-
forth they will be obliged to starve. One
priest laments, " Since Plutos has been able
to see, I have been exposed to hunger,
although I am a priest of Zeus. Before this,
when all men were rich, they used to come to
the temple and sacrifice. If a merchant was
saved from any danger, from the risks of
travel, or from penal laws he betook himself
to the temple, and brought presents ; or when
people made vows, they called in the priests.

120 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Now nobody comes. I am thinking of leaving
the service of Zeus. All are good, wise and
rich."

The meaning of this comedy can only be
expressed in the words of Goethe : " Let us
only improve ourselves, and everything will
soon be better." And this is also the funda-
mental idea of Aristotle.

7. Zeno — Communistic Descriptions. Egypt
under the Ptolemies.

The communist idea, or at least the idea
of equality, must have been very strong in
Hellas when an intellect of so individualist
and middle-class a type as that of Aristotle
was obliged to make concessions to it. Then
comes the Stoic school, who, as already ex-
plained in our introduction, propagated the
principles of Anarchist communism and of
international brotherhood. Of their founder
Zeno little is known. His writings are lost,
save for a few fragments from which it appears
that he regarded natural law as the sole valid
guiding principle of life. Thus : no political
government, no courts of justice, no man-made
laws, but goods in common, equality of the
sexes, brotherhood of all mankind.

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 121

Two politico-geographical events contributed
to the spread of Platonic ideas by the Stoa.
First, the expedition of Alexander the Great
to anterior Asia and India (334-323), which,
while it did not lead to the estabhshment of
a permanent world empire, opened up to the
Hellenic language and culture the lands from
the Adria to the Indus, and from the Danube
to the Nile. Secondly, the subsequent ap-
pearance of the Roman Empire, which added
still further territory in the west and north,
and which permitted the growth of uniform
and universal mental tendencies. In the
Roman Empire the universal intellectual force
was Hellenism, in which the philosophy of
Plato and the social ethics of the Stoa pre-
dominated. To hold property in common
was esteemed the highest social virtue, and
pleasure was found in delineating social-reform
legislators and kings, as well as communist
thinkers and settlements. We find these ten-
dencies with Philo and Josephus touching the
Essenes, and with Plutarch respecting the
Spartan legislators and reformers.

There was a similar readiness to describe
unknown communistic colonies. Diodorus
(about the middle of the first century before

122 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Christ) collected several of these accounts in
his Historical Library (Book II. chaps. 55-60,
Book V. chaps. 41-46). We read there of
some peculiar men who were discovered upon
an island in the Indian Ocean by a certain
Yambulos and his friend, while on a voyage
of business to the spice lands. " The inhabit-
ants (of admirable physical proportions) live
united according to kinship, in families and
tribes, but never more than 400 in one
community. They dwell on pastures and
meadows, as the country provides them with
abundant sustenance; the soil of the island
is excellent, the air being of the finest. Cereal
plants grow of themselves in greater abun-
dance than they are required. There are also
rich springs, partly warm for bathing, which
quickly cure every fatigue, partly cold, of
great sweetness and healing power. They
devote much attention to science, especially
to astronom}^ Marriage is not known there,
and the children who are born are brought
up in common, and loved by all equally.
While they are small, it often happens that
the nurses exchange their charges so that
mothers do not know their own children.
Consequently, there is no ambition among

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 123

these people, and they hve without internal
unrest and rebellions, and put concord above
everything else. Everybody observes a tem-
perate mode of living, and only consume
as much food as their needs require. The
cookery is simple; special arts of cookery
and of making sauces and varieties of sausages
are unknown to them." Here we find the
ideal state of Plato realised.

Another account of Diodorus relates to State
socialism. It is taken from the Greek writer
Euhomeros, a contemporary of Zeno, who in
his Sacred Records seeks to demonstrate that
the gods were not supernatural beings, but
heroic men, who were deified by mankind.
Euhomeros professes to have obtained this
knowledge from inscriptions in the island of
Hiera (either off the Southern Arabian or the
Southern Egyptian coast). Next he describes
the institutions of this island, which corre-
spond to the ideal of Egyptian State socialism.
The soil of the country is divided among the
inhabitants, and the most fertile tract is the
share of the king. The people who dwell on
the island are called Panchaens. The whole
of the citizens are divided into three classes :
the first class are the priests, to which class the

124 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

handworkers also belong; the second are the
tillers of the soil; the third are the warriors
and shepherds. The priests have the supreme
direction of all things ; the peasants cultivate
the soil, and bring in the produce to the
common store ; in a similar fashion the shep-
herds supply the sacrificial animals and the
other fruits of the flock to the community,
everything being most exact as to number
and weight. For it is a law that nobody may
himself own more than one house and one
garden; all the products and returns are
received by the priests, who equitably allot
to each person his share; they themselves,
however, receive a twofold share " (Book V.
chaps. 41-46).

This description of the Panchaens seems to
be an idealisation of the condition of Egypt
under the Hellenic administration. Alexander
the Great also conquered Egypt and besieged
the capital, Alexandria, which had become a
chief centre of Hellenic culture. After his
death (323) the Macedonian world empire
dissolved into numerous small States, and
into three great States : Macedonia (with
Greece), Syria (anterior Asia) and Egypt,
where Alexander's leading generals founded

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 125

dynasties. In Egypt the Ptolemies reigned
in the place of the old Pharaohs. In the
Ptolemaic period, the property relations de-
veloped on the following lines : the king or
the State was the sole proprietor of the land
and soil. Private property existed only in
houses, gardens and vineyards, while the whole
of the cornfields were royal or State property,
and leased to the peasants; the lease was
hereditary or for a term, but was in any
case accompanied by certain conditions. The
Ptolemies confiscated the priestly and feudal
possessions, which had survived from former
times, and the priests and feudal lords thence-
forth became part of the order of officials who
administered the system of leasing taxation.
The legal position of the peasant was a good
one, but the more urgent the fiscal exigencies
became, the more arbitrary became the atti-
tude of the State towards the agricultural
population, until they were eventually de-
graded into a state of servitude. (Rostowzew,
Studien zur Geschichte des rotnischen Kolonats,
pp. II, 15, 58, 61.)

126 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

8. The Downfall of Greece.

The Peloponnesian War and the consequent
struggles of the separate States (Sparta,
Athens and Thebes) for supremacy (404-362)
resulted in the destruction of all the national
independence of this poetic, philosophical and
experimenting community. Its misfortune
was its inability to establish a uniform
Hellenic empire. It fell under the dominion
of the Macedonians, and about the middle of
the second century B.C., together with the
latter, under the sway of the Romans.

During all these external wars, vigorous
social struggles broke out at home between
the haves and the have-nots, between social
democrats and plutocratic oligarchies; redis-
tribution of the soil, relief of debtors, banish-
ments and massacres were frequent occur-
rences in periods of acute crisis. The hatred
between the two classes was inextinguish-
able. A glimpse of it may be obtained
from Aristotle's indication that there were
ohgarchies in Hellas, in which the supreme
authorities swore the following oath upon
entering into office : "I will be an enemy of
the people, and will contrive to inflict as much

COMMUNISTIC THEORIES IN ATHENS 127

damage upon them as possible " {Politics,
5, 9, 11). Isocrates testifies that the senti-
ments of the rich were so bitter that they
would sooner throw their belongings into the
sea than give them to the poor. What the
ideas of the Demos were we have seen from
Plato, Aristophanes and the other social poets,
for all these thinkers and poets have their
roots not only in the economic and political
conditions of their time, but also in the
moral condition and in the complaints of
the struggling dispossessed sections of the
population. The Hellenes were plain-spoken,
and they were endowed in rich measure with
speech which expressed their thoughts and
emotions. They were remarkably free from
hypocrisy. This was one of the impediments
which unfitted them to pursue an imperialist
policy, to found a great empire or to pre-
serve it.

CHAPTER V

ROME

I. Character of Roman Historical Writing.

Roman history until 300 B.C. is for the
greater part fabulous; it is based on oral
traditions, and the Roman archives were
destroyed in the year 390 B.C. by the invasion
of the Celtic races. It was not until the
second century B.C. that Roman annalists
appeared, under the literary influence of the
Greeks, and a century later, Roman historians
who wrote the history of their country, first
in the Greek, and then in the Latin languages,
but always with a conservative, patriotic and
anti-revolutionary bias. Even the Greek
writers like Polybius,^ Plutarch ^ and Appian,^

^ PoP.'bius wrote at the end of the second century B.C.

2 Plutarch composed in the second century a.d. a
series of comparative Greek and Roman biographies of
great men of both peoples. His works are very readable.

3 Appian, a younger contemporary of Plutarch, is
specially notable for his description of the Roman

civil wars.

128

ROME 129

who wrote Roman history in their mother
tongue, were swayed by Roman influence.
The Roman historians, hke Sallust,^ Livy ^
and Tacitus,^ were seldom just to reformers.
To revolutionary movements they were simply
hostile and regarded their instigators and
leaders as mere criminals. In national
matters, in struggles against revolutionaries
and external enemies the Romans were in-
spired by ruthless egoism and self-righteous-
ness, in their eyes all adversaries of Rome were
perjurers, traitors, violators of treaties and
disturbers of the peace. And this was also
the opinion of their Latin historians, who now
constitute the source upon which we must
draw for our judgment of the reformers,
revolutionaries and rebels who challenged
Roman traditions. The Greek writers we
have previously mentioned were, it is true, less
disposed to condemn in the lump all opponents
of Rome, but still they wrote for the Latins,
and were certainly not immune from flattery,

^ Sallust, a contemporary and disciple of Julius
Caesar, born 86, died 35 B.C., is known for his account
of the rebelHon of Catihna.

2 Livy, born 59, died 17 B.C.

3 Tacitus, born about 55, died about 120 a.d.

130 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

or they allowed themselves to be influenced
too often by Roman prejudices. The rebels
who suffered most from this were Cataline
and Spartacus, who became really dangerous
to the Romans as leaders of revolution and
rebellion. Moreover, the Romans were not
an intellectual people who could have found
pure joy in great movements and ideas when
such went counter to Roman interests.
Among the Romans we find no Plato, no
Aristophanes and no Sophocles. Men like
the Hebrew prophets were quite inconceivable
with the Romans. It is consequently a very
difficult task to write a revolutionary history
of Rome.

2. Patricians and Plebeians.

The traditions and institutions of the
Romans imply that they were originally
organised into gentes and tribes, and were
unacquainted with individual property. At
the head of the community, which originally
did not extend beyond the town of Rome,
were " kings," that is, chieftains, who were
at the same time captains in the field, high
priests and judges. According to the legend,
the founder of the town of Rome was Romulus,

ROME 131

who, like Cain, was a fratricide. In very-
early times we find two classes there, the
Patricians and the Plebeians, which were
engaged in mutual struggle.

The Patricians were substantial peasants,
who occupied all important positions, and
grew into the dominant class. The Plebeians
were small peasants, who, although free,
were excluded from political power. This
antagonism was not a class struggle; the
Plebeians aspired to no other kind of econo-
mic order, and represented no more ideal
philosophy than the Patricians. Both classes
were always ready to enslave and exploit
other tribes. The Plebeians demanded from
the Patricians merely equal opportunities
of economic and political exploitation. Sup-
ported by their political power, the Patricians
expropriated the greater part of the State
domains {agar puhUcus) ; the Plebeians lapsed
into servitude, and gradually became the
debtors of the Patricians ; the debt laws were
harsh, and interest was high. The Plebeians
demanded a share in pohtical power, and
especially in the State domains. The latter
seem to have been originally a vestige of
common property; later it consisted of

132 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

conquered territory, which was transformed
into pubhc lands.

At the beginning of the sixth century the
old Gentile conditions were so far disin-
tegrated that, the Patricians abolished the
" kings," and founded a republic of nobles,
in which the most prominent Patricians
arrogated to themselves all the power which
still remained to the kings. At the head of
the republic were two consuls, who appointed
two subordinate officials (Quastoria) as
directors of the finances and the records.
In times of necessity and danger one of the
consuls appointed a dictator for a maximum
period of six months, and invested with
absolute powers.

The antagonism of interests between the
two sections, which had softened to some
extent during the epoch of the " kings,"
then became more acute, as, in the meantime,
Rome had made w^ar upon its neighbours,
and acquired new State domains, which
mostly fell to the Patricians. In the year
494 B.C. the Plebs had sunk so low that they
turned their backs on their native city and
withdrew to the holy mountain, in order to
found their own community. The Patricians,

ROME 133

having constant need of soldiers for their war
poHcy, were impelled to make concessions,
and they allowed the Plebs to appoint two
tribunes, whose duties would consist in pro-
tecting the small peasants frorn the arbitrary
rule of the Patrician officials, and in convening
meetings of Plebeians to pass resolutions
(Plebiscites). The Plebiscites, however, had
merely the value of resolutions passed by
meetings. They remained pious wishes, with-
out legal effect. The struggle went on, not
unaccompanied b}^ bloodshed. But in the
degree in which the Patricians developed their
foreign war policy, and enriched themselves,
they became more complaisant towards the
Plebeians at home, as, without the co-
operation of the latter, they could not carry
out their foreign policy. In the fourth
century the Plebs made important political
and economic progress. In the year 367 the
legislative projects of Licinius were adopted.
They considerably relieved the debt burdens of
the Plebeians ; fixed the maximum appropria-
tion of the State domains at 500 acres, which
would enable the Plebs to receive the share
of the conquered territories; and appointed
one Plebeian as consul. Further pohtical

134 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

concessions were made from time to time, and
in the year 287 the Plebs were admitted to
complete equahty of rights. Henceforth they
were able to participate in all the economic
advantages of conquest, for, during this en-
tire period, the Patricians did not cease to
subjugate the Italian tribes, one after another,
and to extend the domination of Rome over
all Italy.

This was in itself a first-class political
achievement, and it was chiefly the work
of the Roman Patricians. These tenacious,
superstitious, common-sense and militarily
efficient peasants completed in Italy a work
which the intellectual, highly cultivated and
philosophical class of nobles in Hellas could
never have accomplished.

Soon after the unity of classes had been
effected, a new nobility arose out of the richer
Patricians and Plebeians, which seized all
the positions for its adherents. Hence-
forth foreign policy overstepped national
boundaries; it became world policy, which
at that time signified the mastery of the
Mediterranean and its coasts.

ROME 135

3. World Policy and Dissolution.

The years 264 to 133 B.C. witnessed the rise
of Rome to the position of greatest world
power. This progress was accompanied by
a transformation of the economic bases of
Rome. Money economy and speculation sup-
planted the peasant economy which had
hitherto been prevalent. In the year 269
silver coinage was introduced; five years
later the first Punic War broke out : the war
against Carthage, at that time the greatest
commercial power in the Mediterranean.
Carthage dominated the North African coast,
Southern Spain, Sardinia and West Sicily.
In this war, which lasted from 264 to
241, Sicily and Sardinia were conquered by
Rome, and the Romans realised the import-
ance of mastery of the sea; consequently
they built a great fleet, which partly served
the purposes of war, and partly the interests
of commerce. Ship-builders and trading
companies came into existence. The second
Punic War (218 to 201), in which the Semitic
general, Hannibal, one of the greatest military
geniuses of all time, became the terror of
Rome, might have put an end to Roman

136 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

conquests if the Carthaginian plutocracy had
been more statesmanhke, or the Roman
Senate less determined, or the Roman people
less patriotic. These circumstances nullified
the miUtary achievements of Hannibal.^

Carthage was overthrown and completely
destroyed in the third Punic War (149 to
146), with all the brutal and hypocritical
cruelty of which the Romans were capable.
In the meantime, the Romans had subjugated
Greece, Asia Minor and Spain. A stream of
precious metals and slaves had flowed to
Rome and undermined the old and vigorous
peasant State.

The work of destruction was all the easier
as the wars, especially the second Punic War,
had destroyed the greater part of the old
classes of Patricians and Plebeians. From
this draining of strength Rome never re-
covered. When at the summit of its material
power, Rome was already at the beginning
of its moral downfall. The descent was slow
but sure, and in the first century B.C. its
symptoms became clearly defined.

^ The Roman historian, Livy, expresses this opinion
still more strongly : " Not the Roman people, but the
disfavour of the Carthaginian Senate defeated Hannibal "
{Roman History, XXX. 20).

ROME 137

Or, as the Roman historian Sallust narrates :
" The victors knew neither measure nor hmit.
Riches became a means of distinction and
glory, power and influence followed their
possession. As a result, the edge of virtue
was dulled and poverty was accounted a
disgrace. But the passion for defilement,
gluttony and all other kinds of indulgence had
kept pace with that for wealth. Each sex
alike trampled on their modesty."

The war favoured the growth of capitalist
merchants and trading companies, which
made loans to the State and supplied ships,
provisions and war materials at exorbitant
prices. They leased the State domains and
mines in the conquered countries, collected
the taxes, and supplied slaves for large-scale
agriculture. Roman capital was not in-
dustrially productive, like modern European
capital, in the period of the industrial
revolution. It resembled the hyaenas of the
Roman battlefields; it gorged itself with
the spoils of the Roman legions and squeezed
the conquered countries. The senatorial
families and officials were drawn into the
business; the highest State officials became
corruptible, and from i6o even the Senate

138 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

was reputed to be bribable. The peasantry,
which had been decimated during the long
wars, gradually disappeared, partly in con-
sequence of the competition of the cheap corn,
which was imported from the provinces
(conquered territories), partly as a result of
being bought out by the new rich, who wished
to attach to themselves a noble appendage
in the shape of landed property. The old
peasant farms were superseded by the lati-
fundia, large-scale agricultural undertakings,
with much vine culture and pasturage.

Productive labour was carried on more and
more by slaves, while the free rural and urban
workers fell into unemployment, drifted to
Rome, where they lived as vagabonds upon
the public supplies of corn, and were kept in
a good humour by the public games, and
were used as voting cattle. Wealth was
concentrated in a few hands; in the year
104 B.C. a tribune complained that scarcely
2000 rich persons existed in the whole State.
The causes of violent social unrest were there-
fore operative. They manifested themselves
in two ways : (i) the reform movements for
the restoration of the peasants (Gracchi),
or for the redistribution of property (Catiline) ;

ROME 139

(2) slave insurrections, of which that of
Spartacus was the most famous.

4. Reform Struggles — Gracchus, Catiline and
Cicero.

The attempt to restore the status of the
peasant was undertaken by the brothers
Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, who sprang
from the old Roman nobility. Tiberius was
the people's tribune in the year 134 B.C., and
was summoned by the poor citizens to secure
for them the enjoyment of the State domains.
One year later he made the proposal to limit
the appropriation of the State domains, and
to create unalienable homesteads on hereditary
leases of twenty acres out of the land thus liber-
ated. It appears that the former owners of
the surrendered land were to be compensated,
and the small peasant was likewise to receive
State assistance in procuring stock. As the
nobles offered opposition, Tiberius set on foot
a comprehensive agitation, and in a descrip-
tion of the privations of the people he said :
" The wild beasts of Italy have their caves to
retire to, but the brave men who spill their
blood in her cause have nothing left but air
and light. Without houses, without any

140 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

settled habitation, they wander from place
to place with their wives and children, and
their generals do but mock them when, at
the head of their armies, they exhort them
to fight for their sepulchres and household
gods, for among such numbers there is not
perhaps one Roman who has an altar that
belonged to his ancestors or a sepulchre in
which their ashes rest. The private soldiers
fight and die to advance the wealth and
luxury of the great; and they are called
masters of the world, while they have not a
foot of ground in their possession " (Plutarch,
"T. S. Gracchus").

As the time approached when the Popular
Assembly would vote upon the proposed
legislation, Tiberius, as Appian reports (Civil
Wars, Book i, chap, ii), delivered a long
speech and asked "if it were not just that
communal goods should be communally
shared; if the citizen was not always better
than the slave, the warrior more useful than
those unfit for war? " After the Romans,
so he continued, had already conquered most
countries by force of arms, and had also
directed their hopes upon the remaining
inhabited countries, they were confronted

ROME 141

with the alternative of either conquering the
remaining countries by their hosts of warhke
men, or of losing even their present possessions
through their weakness and envy.

He warned the wealthy, in view of these
circumstances, to abandon their lands, as a
voluntary offering, and upon their own
initiative, to those who brought up children
for the State, and not to overlook the most
important things while disputing about trifles.
According to Appian, then, Gracchus was
chiefly influenced by the desire to furnish
numerous and warlike citizens for the Roman
State, to afford it the opportunity of main-
taining its conquests and extending them.
In any case, the proposed reform was a social
conservative measure.

The enthusiasm of the people for Tiberius
Gracchus was so overpowering that the Senate
finally accepted the proposal, but great
difficulties arose in its execution. Tiberius
was therefore obliged to offer himself as a
candidate for the tribunate of the year 132,
and held election meetings. In one of these
meetings, the supporters of the Senate's
party appeared with cudgels and sticks and
slew Tiberius and many of his supporters.

142 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Nevertheless the Agrarian Law was not
inoperative; about 80,000 small peasant
homesteads were created.

The work of Tiberius was resumed by his
brother Caius in the year 123. Elected as a
people's tribune, he carried through a measure
that a certain quantity of corn should be
served out to the people every month at the
expense of the State. He reformed the
judiciary, caused long roads to be constructed
throughout Italy, in order to give employment
to the workless, and also tried to democratise
the franchise and to take in hand a compre-
hensive internal colonisation. Eventually,
Caius shared the fate of his brother; he was
slain in 121.

It accords perfectly with Roman hypocrisy
that a Temple of Concord was built upon the
spot where the murder of the Gracchi and
their supporters took place.

In spite of the concord extremely mur-
derous slave insurrections and civil wars soon
broke out. In the year 100 the so-called
democrat Marius was instrumental in mur-
dering 50 senators and 1000 knights, his
opponent Sulla (82), 40 senators and 1600
knights.

ROME 143

Their property was confiscated; the pro-
ceeds of the confiscation of Sulla's property
amounted to about four milhon pounds
sterling ; usury and mercantile capital bought
up the sequestrated goods, which were worth
four times the purchase price. In the year
73 the Spartacus rebellion broke out, which
we will deal with presently. These con-
ditions furnished the inflammable materials
for the conspiracy of Catiline, in the year
63 B.C. The Roman historian Sallust, who
wrote of the events from his social conserva-
tive standpoint, thought that the Roman
people at that time found themselves in a
lamentable state of mind : " From the setting
to the rising of the sun its arms had subdued
every land to obedience; at home there was
tranquillity and wealth in abundance, and
yet there were found citizens with minds
hardened to undertake their own and their
country's destruction. Two decrees of the
Senate had been passed, but of all that host
not one was enticed by the reward offered to
betray the conspiracy, not one deserted the
camp of Catiline ; so virulent was the disease
that had settled like a plague on the minds of
many citizens. Nor was this mental disorder

144 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

confined to those who had been admitted to
the conspiracy ; it may be said that the whole
of the common people, in their eagerness for
revolution, approved the designs of Catiline "
(Catiline's Conspiracy, chaps. 36, 37).

Thus the sentiments of the masses were
revolutionary. However, the historian repre-
sents Catiline, the leader of this movement,
as the most horrible monster of world history.
In his biography of Theseus, Plutarch says
a very wise thing : "It appears to be danger-
ous, in fact, to make oneself hated by a State
in which eloquence and poetry flourish/'
The same thing applies to individual cases.
Catiline had the misfortune to have for his
political and personal enemy, Cicero, one of
the greatest orators of all times. Two
characters more opposed to each other could
not exist. Catiline sprang from the highest
nobility of Rome; Cicero was a provincial
upstart. The former was an officer, always
ready to represent the cause of the oppressed
in the State with the highest courage; the
latter was a lawyer and the type of an anxious,
moralising lower middle-class man, careful of
his property. Both confronted each other
in the year 63 as candidates for the Consular

ROME 145

dignity, Cicero as representative of the
property interests, Catiline as leader of the
dispossessed and as a reformer, whose pro-
posals aimed at securing a share in the land
to all the dispossessed, relieving them of their
burden of debts, introducing a stricter super-
vision over the State finances, and generally
at promoting the welfare of the masses of the
people by social and political measures ; like-
wise, he seems to have stood for an alleviation
of the lot of the peoples subjugated by Rome.
What Cicero thought about these questions
may be clearly seen from the opinions which
he expressed in his book the Duties (Book II.
chaps. 22-24) • " B^t they who wish to be
popular, and upon that account either attempt
the agrarian affair that the owners may be
driven out of their possessions, or they that
borrowed money should be released to the
debtors, sap the foundations of the con-
stitution; for this is the peculiar concern of
a State and city, that every person's custody
of his own property be free and undisturbed.
Now what justice is it that lands which have
been preoccupied for many years or for
several ages, he who was possessed of none
should get, but he who was in possession should

146 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IX ANTIQUITY

lose? And on account of this kind of in-
justice, the Lacedemonians expelled their
Ephorus Lysander, and put to death their
king Agis, a thing which never before had been
among them. And from that time such
great dissensions ensued that a constitution
admirably established fell to pieces. Nor
did it fall alone, but also overthrew the rest
of Greece by the contagion of evil principles,
which, having sprung from the Lacedemonians,
flowed far and wide. Was it not the agrarian
contentions that destroyed our own Gracchi ?
Should any dwell free of expense in another
man's house? Why so? Is it that when I
shall have bought, built, repaired, expended,
you, without my will, should enjoy what is
mine? What else is this but to take from
some what is theirs, and give to some what is
another man's ? But what is the meaning of
the abolition of debts unless that you should
buy an estate with my money, that you should
have the estate and I should not have my
money? "

Holding these opinions, Cicero was obliged,
when chosen Consul in opposition to Catiline,
to take up the struggle for law, order and
property. And, in doing so, he made use of

ROME 147

his best weapons : eloquence, demagogic
special pleading, the branding of his opponents
as men bereft of all morality, all propriety,
and all honour. This caricature of Catiline
by Cicero has been transmitted to posterity.
The Roman historian Sallust, a social con-
servative patriot, who wrote two decades
later, followed Cicero, and even the historians
of Rome who wrote in Greek, like Plutarch
and Appian, made no attempt to do justice
to Catihne. Plutarch even repeats quite
uncritically the most absurd stories about
Catiline and his friends. This much, how-
ever, is certain, that Catiline identified himself
with all the dispossessed and oppressed, and
was venerated unreservedly by the masses.
The spirit which animated the Catilinarians
is evident from the letter which their military
leader, Manlius, sent to the Roman general
Marcius : " We do not demand dominion or
wealth, which are the sources of all the wars
and quarrels in the world; we ask only for
freedom."

Catiline offered himself twice as a can-
didate for the Consular dignity, in order to
obtain the legal power " to draw the teeth
of the few potentates who possessed the

148 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

State as their exclusive property, and restore
to the people their liberty and rights." In
the elections the party of order triumphed.
Catiline was defeated. As the legal way
was closed to him, he proceeded to make
preparations for an insurrection, and to
organise the masses of the discontented.
Cicero, the victorious opponent of Catiline,
had his spies everywhere, who were able to
perform their work all the more easily, as
Catiline had departed to the country, in
order to get into touch with the Roman army
there.

The preparations for the rebellion were
discovered in Rome on the 5th December,
63 B.C., and the ringleaders were executed.
Catiline and his troops were defeated by
the superior forces of the Romans, in open
battle, not far from Florence, in the year 62.
Catiline and Manlius were among the slain.
The stubborn character of the fighting may
be inferred from the description in Sallust's
concluding chapter : "It was only after the
battle was decided that it could be fully seen
with what daring and resolution Catiline's
army had been inspired. Almost the exact
position which each had taken up while living

ROME 149

he now in death covered with his body.
Catihne, however, was found at a distance
from his own men among the enemies' dead.
He continued to breathe for a short time and
retained on his countenance that savage
courage that had marked him in hfe."

The corrupt and oligarchical repubhc was
rapidly approaching its end. Two years after
the death of Catihne Rome saw the military
triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus and Julius
Caesar. The military monarchy was knocking
at the doors of the Roman world empire.

5. Slave Insurrections.

Since the conclusion of the second Punic
War (201 B.C.), and since the victorious wars
against the Macedonians and Syrians, there
had been an increase in the cultivation of the
large estates by multitudes of slaves. And as
national economy was operated on capitalist
hues, and the Romans, as masters of the
world, despised labour and the disinherited
class, the lot of the unfree worker became
more and more arduous. Likewise, almost
all industry and all domestic labours were
performed by slaves. Innumerable unfree
workers were employed in luxurious building

150 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

and the construction of villas. Mountains
were demolished, lakes were formed, according
to the whims of the plutocrats.

The everlasting wars in all parts of the
world furnished hundreds of thousands of
prisoners, who were put into the slave yoke,
but could not, however, satisfy the needs
of the Roman masters. Consequently, man-
hunts were organised, and kidnapping was
practised, in order to fill the slave markets.
Rome became the tyrant of three-quarters
of the world. The treatment of the slaves
became ever harsher. The measure of the
severity is shown by the conduct of the elder
Cato, a Roman famed for his great virtues,
who simply sold his old slaves, after they
had exhausted all their labour-power in his
service. No wonder the slaves began to
murmur, or inclined towards rebellion, or
seized every opportunity for flight. To pre-
vent them from absconding, slaves working
on the land were branded with glowing irons,
like cattle, and chained to their work. Flight
was punished with death by crucifixion. The
deepest degradation, however, was reserved
for those slaves who, being distinguished by
physical strength, were trained as gladiators

ROME 151

in order to furnish the spectacle of human
slaughter in the arena to the Roman mob,
the Patrician nobles and Plebeian populace.

Educated prisoners of war and hostages,
like the Greeks, or slaves who were otherwise
adept in business, hke the Syrians, found
positions as domestic teachers or adminis-
trators, and were gradually emancipated.
One of these released hostages was the Greek
historian Polybius, whose books are among
the best works on Roman history. The
Roman nobility and plutocracy had nothing
but contempt for the Greeks, and lamented
their influence on Roman civilisation. There
were, indeed, exceptions, but generally speak-
ing the dominant Romans despised Hellenism.

The concentration of slaves, these masses
of men filled with the bitterest hatred, was
certain sooner or later to lead to conspiracies
and rebellions, and then it only depended on
the presence of energetic leaders to bring the
rebellions to a head. The first Italian slave
insurrection broke out in Apulia, 187 B.C.
It was soon put down ; 7000 slaves were
crucified. Incomparably more bloody and
more protracted were the two great slave
insurrections in Sicily (134-132, 104-101).

152 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

This fertile island offered an extensive field
for slave labour. The State domains there
were latifundia, broad cornfields, olive plan-
tations and sheep walks. Masses of slaves
cultivated the soil, tended the trees, guarded
the flocks of sheep, and made Sicily the
granary of Rome. The rebellion which broke
out there in 134 developed into a protracted
war. The leaders of the rebels were the
Syrian Eunus and the Macedonian Kleon,
who gathered around them 70,000 men
capable of bearing arms, and the island came
almost completely into their power. For
several years they maintained their position
against the Roman armies, but eventually
they were defeated, partly by starvation and
partly by force of arms. This took place at
the same time as Gracchus was agitating
Rome. The other Sicilian rebellion was like-
wise led by a Syrian named Salvius, and a
Macedonian named Athenion. The Romans
only succeeded in mastering the rebellion
after the leaders had been slain in battle.

The years of the Gracchian agitation were
generally a period of insurrections. Even in
Asia Minor both the possessing class and the
slaves rebelled against the extension of the

ROME 153

Roman domination. In the year 133, King
Attalos III died in Pergamon. He was a
mentally deficient and degenerate monarch,
who had succumbed to the Roman influence.
Either by force or by fraud the Romans
received from him a testament, in which
Attalos bequeathed to Rome his very con-
siderable property, in addition to his land.
At the same time, Pergamon was trans-
formed into a complete poHtical democracy;
the whole of the inhabitants, native and
foreign, property-owning and disinherited,
received the franchise and the independent
administration of their State.

Now, when the Romans entered into their
heritage and sought to extend their dominion
over the country, a rebellion broke out, the
leadership being assumed by Aristonikos, a
half-brother of Attalos. He hved in Leuka,
a small port between Smyrna and Pdokea.
Several towns declared in his favour, but
others, like Ephesus, ranged themselves on
the side of the Romans. A war broke out,
in which Aristonikos was at first defeated.
Soon, however, he reappeared as a liberator
of the slaves, and summoned aU unfree
workers to take part in the struggle against

154 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

the Romans. Multitudes of slaves answered
his appeal, and, with them, he founded a
Sun town or a Sun State [heliopolis). What
this foundation implied is not clear; the
historical records leave us here quite in the
dark.

It might, however, be mentioned that this
is conjectured to have been a communist
society. At the close of antiquity, as well as
in the middle ages, a Sun State was under-
stood to mean a communist establishment.
The citizens of the Sun State, who were led
by Aristonikos, that is, the freed slaves,
organised themselves rapidly and made a
victorious progress through the Pergamonic
country. The Romans, who rather feared
the loss of their rich heritage, sent troops to
Pergamon, in the year 131, and placed them
under the chief command of a Consul. It
must therefore have been an army of con-
siderable size ; nevertheless, it was constantly
defeated by Aristonikos. But the war was
continued until the year 129, and the sun-
dwellers were finally defeated. Aristonikos
was taken prisoner, brought to Rome, and
executed.

ROME 155

6. Spartacus.

The innumerable sacrifices to Roman
covetousness were to find in Spartacus such
an avenger as Rome had never known. The
rebellion of the exploited and oppressed under
the leadership of this man (from the year 73
to 71 B.C.) was the only affair that terrified
the masters of the world, and prepared for
them humiliations and defeats which covered
them with ridicule and shame. It was slaves
of the lowest order, gladiators, who measured
their strength with the consular armies of
Rome, victoriously opposed them, and fre-
quently inflicted crushing defeats upon them
in open battle. The depth of degradation
into which Rome was plunged by this rebel-
lion is shown by the observation of the
Roman historian Florus (Roman History,
Book in. chap. 20) :

" The shame of a slave war is still to be
borne. Slaves, however degraded by fate,
stiU belong to the second order of humanity,
and are able to demand the privileges of
freedom. But I do not know how to describe
the war with Spartacus. Here slaves were
warriors, and gladiators were generals. The

156 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

former from the lowest class, the latter from
the most despised class, added the element of
ridicule to the element of danger."

Spartacus was a general and organiser of
the greatness of Hannibal. With sufficient
numbers of properly equipped forces he could
have overthrown the dominion of Rome.
Plutarch (Life of Crassus) describes him as
'* extremely strong and earnest, wise and
humane above his station, more like a true
Greek than a barbarian." Coming from a
Hellene like Plutarch, this is very great praise.

Extremely little is known of his youth, and
of his life generally up till 73 B.C. He was a
Thracian, and was born in a nomadic tribe.
He came to Rome as a prisoner of war, and
was sold as a slave. He escaped, became a
hired soldier, and was eventually sold to the
proprietor of a fencing school in Capua, in
order to be trained as a gladiator. Spartacus
found himself with about 200 other slaves,
Thracians and Gauls, who conspired to break
loose on the first favourable opportunity, and
to win freedom. The conspiracy was be-
trayed, but Spartacus and some 70 with him
managed to break through. On their way,
they plundered a waggon containing arms.

ROME 157

which they soon used with success against
the pursuers, who had been despatched by
their owner. This success quickly became
known in the district, and brought them fresh
supporters and fighters. Henceforth they
numbered 200 men, who behaved towards
the proprietors without ceremony. At first
they were regarded as a dangerous band of
robbers, against which the Roman authorities
sent the Praetor, Cladius Pulcher, with 3000
men, in order to put a stop to the depreda-
tions. Spartacus took up a position on the
summit of Vesuvius, at that time inactive,
and totally defeated his enemies. Camp,
baggage and arms fell into his hands. From
this moment Spartacus was a famous man.
His name was known throughout Italy. He
declared himself openly to be an enemy of
Rome, and called upon all who were slaves
or oppressed to rally round him, and to engage
in the struggle for emancipation. Multitudes
of slaves and dispossessed, foreigners and
Itahans, responded to his appeal. Country
people left their holdings, shepherds their
sheep, slaves their masters, prisoners broke
their bars, conscripted workers broke their
chains — all flocked to him, the chastiser of

158 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Rome. Out of the hordes which came to-
gether Spartacus formed an army, which gave
a good account of itself in battle, but even his
genius did not succeed in inducing these
bitter and hate-breathing men to observe
proper behaviour towards non-combatants.
Plundering and burning, they marched
through the country, devastated the blooming
campania, their light troops even penetrating
into the districts which bordered on Rome,
everywhere spreading f rightfulness. The lust
of the troops for plunder was one of the
causes which sometimes prevented Spartacus
from utilising his victories or attacking the
enemy at an opportune moment. Likewise,
he found it very difficult to maintain in a state
of permanent unity the various ethnical
elements, Thracians, Syrians, Gauls, Ger-
mans, Italians, etc., of which his army was
composed.

The news of the defeat of the Praetor,
Claudius Pulcher, was received in Rome with
incredulity and astonishment. An army of
8000 to 10,000 men was quickly raised — the
proper Roman legions were not used in such
expeditions; moreover, at that time, they
were engaged in Spain and on the Lower

ROME 159

Danube, under the great generals Pompey
and Lucullus — and placed under two Praetors.
Spartacus was circumspect, and did not
venture to offer open battle to his enemies.
But his subordinate generals, especially the
Gauls, regarded his foresight as timidity,
attacked the Romans with 3000 men, and
were beaten. Only then did the remainder
recognise the wisdom of their leader, sub-
mitted themselves to his orders, and con-
sented to the retreat, which was carried out
without loss. Spartacus, however, soon found
an opportunity to retrieve the defeat. After
several successful skirmishes and raids, it
came to a battle, which ended in a brilliant
victory for Spartacus. All Lower Italy fell
as booty to the gladiators.

The slave army rejoiced and plundered,
while Spartacus became more and more
serious. Having a good knowledge of the
Roman power, he knew that the campaign
up to the present had signified merely a small
outpost fight, and had scarcely touched the
power of Rome. His mind was, above all,
bent upon the liberation of the slaves, and he
believed he could perform this work to a
large extent. The slaves of Lower Italy

160 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

were already free. His idea now was to
march rapidly northwards, range through
the whole of Italy, and beat down all the
obstacles that stood in the way of his work
of Hberation, before the Romans gained time
to recover from their fright, and recalled
their great generals, Pompey and Lucullus,
with their legions. This train of thought
revealed great statesmanlike insight. But
his subordinate generals, and also the troops,
who had tasted Roman blood, offered violent
and stubborn opposition to this plan. In vain
Spartacus reminded them that they had not
yet measured their strength with the real
legions of Rome, in vain he described to them
the whole extent of the power of this world
empire. It might, indeed, be surprised for
a time, but it was scarcely likely to be over-
come when it collected together all its
resources. The army was divided in opinion :
the Gauls and the Germans, under the leader-
ship of the subordinate general Crixius, were
for a march upon the city of Rome; the
Thracians and the southern Italians adhered
to Spartacus. Meanwhile Rome made com-
prehensive preparations to meet the gladia-
torial army with all its strength. The original

ROME 161

disparagement had given place to caution.
Three powerful armies were soon sent into
the field, two under Consuls, and therefore
under the highest officials of Rome, and one
under a Praetor. In face of this Roman
armament, Spartacus and Crixius patched
up their differences, but a real union was not
effected. Henceforth they marched separ-
ately; Spartacus with 40,000 men, Crixius
with 30,000 men. Soon Crixius met the
Roman Praetorian army, which fell into
disorder and took to flight upon being
attacked by the Gauls and Germans. As the
pursuit was dilatory, the Praetorian army
collected itself on the following day, fell
upon the unsuspecting Gauls and over-
powered them. Crixius himself was killed
in battle. About 10,000 men were able to
save themselves by flight, and forced their
way to Spartacus. The victorious Praetorian
army then made a junction with one of the
two Consular armies, which, divided into two
columns, sought out Spartacus. The latter
did not keep them waiting. With the greater
part of his army — the smaller part he ordered
to hold the other Consular army in check —
he hurled himself upon the first Consular

162 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

army, and completely defeated it. He
speedily joined the remaining section of his
army, attacked the same day the second
Consular army, and also obtained a complete
victory over the latter. The baggage and a
great multitude of prisoners fell into the
hands of Spartacus. Unwearied he con-
tinued his march northwards, defeating the
troops which were hastily thrown against him
by the Roman Praetors and Pro-consuls.
He seemed invincible. His next enterprise
was something that was felt in Rome to be
the most painful humiliation. He arranged
a solemn funeral for Crixius, and, on this
occasion, compelled 300 Roman prisoners to
appear as gladiators and engage in mortal
combat, in the sight of the entire Spartacist
army. The despised slaves were now the
spectators — the proud Romans were the prize-
fighters in the arena. Of all the news con-
cerning the losses which had hitherto been
suffered in this gladiatorial war, not any
wounded the Romans so deeply, so bitterly as
this. The death as gladiators of 300 Roman
warriors inflicted the most ignominious insult
upon the majesty of Rome, and made an
indelible stigma upon its honour.

ROME 163

To treat kings and princes, taken as
prisoners, with cold, calculated cruelty, to
let them starve, be tortured, and die the
most painful death in prison; to dispose of
entire peoples as if they were herds of cattle —
all this seemed to the citizens of Rome, the
so-called first and noblest people on earth,
as their proper prerogative. But that their
captured citizens should also be compelled
to engage in mutual slaughter, such an
outrage, or even its bare possibility, had
never entered a Roman's head. And who
shamed them in this fashion? A man upon
whose life and death only a few months
before the outstretched or closed thumbs of
some Plebeians could have decided. A man
who, together with fifty or sixty of his kind,
would have been compelled to die if it had
pleased the whim of a young Roman Patrician
to make a sacrifice to his deceased aunt.

Spartacus was now at the height of his
power. It was possible for him to execute
his original design, to liberate a multitude
of slaves, to dissolve his army, and live
in the consciousness of having humiliated
Rome, the oppressor of the world. But he
suddenly altered his plans. Instead of cross-

164 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

ing the Po, he turned back and made for
the south. In Italy it was assumed that he
intended to march against the city of Rome.
To obstruct the road thither, a new Praetorian
army was hurled at him; in the Picenian
territory a great battle was fought, from which
Spartacus once more emerged as victor.
Rome now fell into a state of consternation.
Spartacus, however, marched by Rome, and
led his army into Lower Italy, occupied
Thuria, declared it to be a free port, and
promulgated benevolent laws. There are
indications that Spartacus conceived the plan
of establishing in Lower Italy a State upon
the model of Lycurgian Sparta. He abolished
the use of gold and silver, fixed low prices
for all the means of life, encouraged the simple
Spartan mode of Hving, welded into a brother-
hood the refugees from the various nations
who lived under his protection, and educated
them to a state of military efficiency. Occu-
pied wdth these political plans, Spartacus
forgot that the enemy, to whom he had
allowed time to recover from his fright, was
arming with all his strength. A strong, well-
disciplined army was raised, and the Praetor
Crassus, who was experienced in war, was

ROME 165

appointed supreme commander. The Romans
now behaved with much greater caution, and
also utihsed their technical knowledge, in
which they were superior to their enemies.
Nevertheless, at the beginning they suffered
defeats. Only when dissensions broke out
in the camp of Spartacus — once more it was
the hot-headed, undisciplined Gauls who
operated independently under their own
generals, and suffered great losses in the
struggles with the Romans — did the position
of Crassus become more favourable. Spar-
tacus, indeed, won several victories over him,
but eventually he succumbed to the Roman
forces in the year 71. He was himself
mortally wounded in the battle. Some 6000
men of his army fell into the hands of Crassus,
who crucified them, whereas in the camp of
Spartacus 3000 Roman prisoners were found
aUve. The " lowest " category of mankind,
the warriors of Spartacus, had spared the hves
of their foes. It was several decades before the
Romans were able to divest themselves of the
terrors inspired in them by the gladiatorial
war. The Roman mothers among the common
people used to frighten their naughty children
with the cry, " Hush ! Spartacus is coming."

CHAPTER VI

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS

I. The Laments of the Dispossessed.

The social developments which have been
sketched (in the preceding chapter) became
even more pronounced towards the end of
the Republican epoch. From the struggles
and wars which the Roman legions waged
from the Rhine to the Euphrates, from the
Danube to the Sahara deserts, the large-
landed proprietor and the large capital that
was bound up with the military apparatus
emerged as the real victors. Juhus Caesar,
once the secret friend of Catiline, later the
victorious general, who aspired to the laurels
of the social monarchy, made an attempt to
rouse the Roman and Italian masses, to
reorganise the provinces, and to heal the
wounds inflicted upon them by large landed
property and large capital, but the whole of
his reformist endeavours bore a dictatorial

1 66

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 167

character. On the 15th March, 44 B.C., he
was murdered, but thirteen years later the
Roman Empire became a monarchy. Augustus
was the first Roman Emperor (31-14 B.C.).

The years of this pohtical upheaval repre-
sented a period of high intellectual civilisa-
tion, so far as the Romans generally were
capable of such. The Latin poets Virgil
(70-19 B.C.), Ovid (43 B.C. to A.D. 9), Horace
(65-8 B.C.) were the literary ornaments of this
period. And, as we have seen, the historians
Sallust and Livy also belonged to this epoch.
They marked the acme of the Latin intel-
lectual civilisation. This was also the period
in which the elements of a new world religion
— Christianity — were gathered among the
lower strata of the people, and in the seats
of learning of Palestine and Alexandria.

From the social economic point of view
nothing had altered in the meantime. Italy
was covered with latifundia, which were
operated by slaves and small holders for the
exclusive advantage of their proprietors.
The expulsion of peasants and the expro-
priation of the State domains were the means
employed by the founders of the latifundia in
Italy; and the provinces were disposed of

168 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

by the tax farmers, who received broad lands
in Asia and Africa, and ruthlessly exploited
the real tillers of the soil. Population
decreased, general compulsory service was
replaced by mercenary armies, and when
later the great wars ceased, the number of
slaves also diminished. The native Italian
energy began to dry up. The famous saying
of Pliny the elder (born 23, died a.d. 79),
" The latifundia have ruined Italy, and are
now ruining the provinces too " (Natural
History, XVIII. 6, 35), describes the condi-
tions which had begun to develop in the last
century B.C. Pliny wrote about the middle of
the first century, but long before this a
proverb had been in vogue that a man
signified only as much as he possessed.

The Roman poet Horace, who was anything
but a demagogue, complained {Odes, II. 18) :

" What though you move the ancient bound,
That marks your humble neighbour's ground,
And avariciously o'erleap
The Hmits right should bid you keep ?
Where lies your gain that driv'n from home
Both wife and husband forth must roam,
With squalid babes upon their breast ? "

Seneca the elder, or the Rhetorician (54 B.C.

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 169

to A.D. 38), reports the complaint of a country-
man, whose neighbour had burned down huts
because the trees pleased him : " You rich
own the countryside, and fill the towns and
their environs with your palaces. So that
your villas, lying in all directions, may be
warm in the winter and cool in the summer,
and be unaffected by changes in the seasons,
so that there may be artificial woods and
navigable lakes on your highest ridges, we
see now simple slaves in the fields who formerly
counted as a people, and the sphere of power
of their masters extended farther than that of
kings."

In another complaint of a poor man against
a rich, the peasant tells the story of his
sufferings : "At first I did not have a rich
man for neighbour. All around me pro-
prietors of equal fortune were settled upon
numerous farms, and cultivated their modest
domains in neighbourly concord. How
different now ! The country which once
supported all these citizens is now become a
single great plantation, which belongs to a
single rich man. His property has pushed
forward its boundaries on all sides. The
peasant farmsteads which it swallowed up

170 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

are levelled to the ground, and the sanctuaries
of the fathers are destroyed. The old pro-
prietors have taken leave of the protective
god of the paternal house, and are obliged
to travel afar, with wife and children. Uni-
form desolation reigns over the countryside.
Everywhere I am enclosed by wealth as by a
wall; here the gardens of the rich; there
their fields ; here their vineyards ; there their
woods and pastures. And this wholesale
annexation only stopped short at the proper-
ties of other rich persons."

These complaints are the last despairing
cry of the decaying Roman peasantry. And
things were no better with the urban prole-
tariat. The overseas expansion of Rome
inflicted irreparable damage upon the Roman
and Italian industrial workers.

The expropriation of the peasantry and
overseas expansion are also the characteristic
features of the beginning of the modern times
of Western Europe. Why was the outcome
of the two processes so different ? In Rome
it was followed by decay. In Christian
Europe it was followed by economic and
political prosperity.

In Western Europe the expropriated peasant

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 171

wandered to the towns, and found employ-
ment in industry and manufactures. The
overseas conquests supphed raw material.
The manufactured goods found a sale in the
growing demand and the expanding market.
In Rome the expropriated peasant wandered
to the town, and found the superior competi-
tion of slaves. The overseas conquests were
countries upon a higher level of civilisation
than Rome. Asia Minor and Egypt were
masters of industrial processes and products
which the free Romans did not possess, and
could not create. Just as the Greeks intel-
lectually defeated their victors, so Asia Minor
and Egypt proved themselves to be far
superior to the Romans as producers. Rome
became the market for the provinces. Its
impoverished masses were obUged to live
either by State doles or private benevolence,
or to return to the land as small holders upon
such conditions as the large landlords imposed
on them.

Christian Europe pushed its way through
from the Renaissance to the modern era,
developed technology, enriched its sources
of material aid, and completed the economic
revolution. Rome, however, retrograded; it

172 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

created feudal conditions and forced the small
tenants to become bondsmen. This was the
so-called colonate, which struck root every-
where after the first century of the Imperial
epoch.

It goes without saying that the whole of
this Roman retrogression exposed the urban
proletariat to privation, poverty and ruin.
The discontent and the rebellious sentiments
which had inspired aU those who were dis-
possessed and heavily in debt, and proletarian
existences generally at the time of Spartacus
and Catiline, were bound, under such cir-
cumstances, to be considerably heightened.

Why is it, however, that we do not hear of
any communistic movements on the part of
the Roman proletariat ? Before we answer
this very important question we will digress
for a while among the Roman writers who
could not avoid giving expression here and
there to critical social sentiments.

2. Longings for Simplicity, Freedom and
Harmony.

As in Hellas, in times of sharp social
divisions and proletarian movements, so the
Latin poets and thinkers also glance back at

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 173

that period of primitive communism when
men had hved in simphcity, in freedom and
harmony. These poets either glorified or
longed for the return of the Golden Age, which
is equivalent to pronouncing a condemnation
of the age of private property, violence, trade
speculation, and war at home and abroad.

Sallust, in his Catiline, sighed regretfully
for the time when the life of man was yet
free from covetousness, and man contented
himself with his own. Virgil is more pointed
in his Georgics (I. 125-28), where he extols
the time when Saturn still reigned (and not
Jupiter, the god of the iron age, which
brought so much trouble and pain) :

" Before the rule of Jove no tillers used to
subdue the fields. It was impious then e'en
to m.ark the field or distinguish it by bounds.
Men's gains were for the common stock; of
her own free-will more readily the earth did
all things bear when none solicited her
gifts."

Here Virgil puts forward the idea that in the
time of primitive communism the soil of the
earth was much more fertile, and showered
its gifts on mankind without effort. This
notion corresponds to the Biblical account of

174 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

Paradise. Only after the fall from grace did
the earth bear thorns and thistles. In Virgil
the hope persisted indestructible that the
Golden Age, the reign of Saturn, would soon
return, and bring back to mankind the
blessings of that primitive period [Bucolics,
Eclogue 4) :

" The mighty line of cycles begins its round
anew. Now too the maiden Astrsea ^ returns,
the reign of Saturn returns. Now a new
generation of men is sent down from the
height of heaven. Only be thou gracious to
the birth of the child, ^ beneath whom the
iron brood shall first begin to quail, and the
golden race to arise in all the world."

And Horace sings of the simplicity of the

1 The maiden Astraea is the goddess of righteousness,
but, according to Roman ideas, had left the earth in
the iron age. When this goddess returns, it would
signify the beginning of a new age of righteousness, or
the Golden Age.

2 By child Virgil here means the child of his pro-
tector and benefactor PoUio, M'ho was Roman Consul.
The poem was written about the year 42 B.C. in honour
of the said Pollio, whose wife was near her confinement.
Catholic theologians perceive in this Eclogue a prophecy
relating to Jesus and Mary. In any case, this verse is
very remarkable, showing as it does some acquaintance
with Jewish Messianic ideas.

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 175

barbarians and their communism, and con-
demns riches [Odes, III. 23) :

" The Scythians of the plains,
More happy are housed in their wandering wains ;
More blessed the Getan stout,
Who not from acres marked and meted out
Reaps his free trees and grain,
Pour into the Capitol,
Or down the nearest ocean roll.
Our jewels, gems and gold attire.
Nutriment of loss and miseries untold."

This yearning after the simple natural life
remote from luxury, and the complexities
and cares and conflicts of civilisation was
widespread in cultured circles in the first
century of the Empire. This is the distinct
expression of the stoical influence, which is
embodied most definitely in Seneca the
philosopher (son of the Rhetorician, born
4 B.C., died A.D. 65, by his own hand, in
consequence of Nero's condemnation to death
hanging over him). In his Letters (90) he
describes the fascination of the simple natural
life, and of primitive communism, and ex-
claims :

" How happy was the primitive age when
the bounties of nature lay in common and
were used promiscuously. They enjoyed

176 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

all nature in common, which thus gave them
secure possession of the public wealth. Why
should I not think them the richest of all
people among whom there was not to be
found one poor man ?

** But avarice broke in upon a condition
so happily ordained, and by its eagerness to
lay something away and to turn it to its own
private use, made all things the property of
others, and reduced itself from boundless
wealth to straitened need. It was avarice
that introduced poverty and by craving much
lost all. And so although she now tries to
make good her loss, although she adds one
estate to another, evicting a neighbour either
by buying him out or by wronging him,
although she extends her country estates to
the size of provinces and defines ownership as
meaning extensive travel through one's own
property — in spite of all these efforts of hers no
enlargement of our boundaries will bring us
back to the condition from which we have
departed. It was possible for no man either
to surpass another or to fall short of him.
What there was was divided among unquar-
relling friends. Not yet had the stronger
begun to lay hands upon the weaker. Not

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 177

yet had the miser, by hiding away what lay
before him, shut off his neighbour from even
the necessities of hfe. Each cared as much
for his neighbour as for himself."

Seneca was, in fact, one of the most remark-
able thinkers that Rome produced. He extols
the day of death as the birthday of everlasting
life and the peaceful blessedness of beyond.
He vigorously recommends benevolence to-
wards slaves, and even towards enemies. His
mental outlook was in many respects so near
to Christianity that many Church Fathers
supposed him to have been a friend of St.
Paul. This assumption, however, has been
proved to be unfounded. Seneca is merely
another proof that the later moral teaching
of the Stoa tended in the same direction as
the Jewish teaching in Palestine, or the
Hellenic- Jewish teaching in Alexandria.
Collectively they were the outcome of the
intellectual, social and political development
of the Roman Empire during the last cen-
tury of the Republican period and the first
century of the Empire.

The yearning for a harmonious, natural,
personally free social order ran parallel with
the intellectual search for a higher order of

M

178 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

ethics and religion . And whenever a beUe ving
world seeks for a noble, humane and pure
morality, the result is a spiritualisation of
doctrine and of belief in God. We have seen
this in the case of the Jewish prophets. As
soon as the conviction of a moral world order
made headway among them, Jehovah lost
his local and physical characteristics and
was elevated to the position of universal
God of justice and righteousness. The con-
cept of Jehovah became more abstract. And
this also came to pass on the comprehensive
stage of the Roman Empire. The old gods
lost their prestige. Cultured Roman men
and women turned to the stoical moral
philosophy as well as to Oriental cults.
Egyptian and Asiatic mysteries exercised a
fascination over Roman minds, and Judaism
gained many adherents among them. This
was already happening in Hellenic circles.
The five books of Moses (the Pentateuch) had
been translated into Greek in the third
century B.C., and were known under the title
of the Septuagint. In the catastrophic up-
heavals throughout the broad Roman-
Hellenic dominions, evoked by the world wars
of Pompey and Caesar, as also by the social

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 179

fissures and internal struggles in the Roman
Empire, the nobler spirits were easily sus-
ceptible to the new ideas and sentiments
which arose, partly from the agitations of the
masses of the people, and partly from the
connection with Greek and Oriental thought.
A new intellectual epoch was about to break
upon mankind. We mean Christianity.

It is obvious that the new ideal world did
not make the same impression upon the
various sections and classes of people in the
Roman dominion. Material position, educa-
tion, tradition, the political and geographical
conditions of the manifold groups of men were
too diverse to permit of the exercise of an
equal degree and kind of influence. As a
whole, however, the effects were of two kinds.
The dispossessed and subjugated aimed above
all at a just distribution of the goods of the
world, at freedom from oppression, dependence
and the anxieties of existence. Their funda-
mental ideas were social righteousness, the
putting down of the proud and the rich, and
the setting up of the lowly and poor. Their
goal was a communistic revolution. On the
other hand, the noble and learned sections,
who were influenced by mental motives.

180 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

sought after religious consolation, a new
belief and firm metaphysical truths, in order
to allay the unrest of their souls and to fill
the void in their hearts, which was caused by
the dissolution of the old gods; in other
words, they desired to gain a new philosophy,
a new reUgion. We have therefore to do
with two tendencies : communism and
doctrinal truth. The first tendency gradually
enveloped the masses, the other embraced
the higher and cultured elements. The latter
section created the Christian theology, the
disputes over dogmas and orthodoxy. Both
tendencies were combined in many theological
leaders of the masses.

We do not propose here to deal with religious
and ethical dogmas, as we are not writing
a history of the origin of Christianity, but
a history of socialist thought. Our task is
therefore confined to elucidating the com-
munistic trend of thought in Christianity, as
it was chiefly through this agency that
Christianity became the ideology of the
proletariat in the Roman Empire. We are
now in a position to answer the question
thrown out in the preceding chapter — Why
the Roman proletariat, with all its struggles

ROMAN SOCIAL CRITICS 181

and opportunities, did not evolve any com-
munistic system of thought. Christianity
was the communism of the Roman proletariat.
Just as the ruhng sections of Rome were
incapable of creating their own philosophy
and religion, but took over these from the
defeated Hellenes, so also the Roman and
Italian lower classes were not able to create
their own proletarian ideology, but received it
from the envoys of Jewish-Hellenic circles of
culture.

CHAPTER VII

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY

I. Pre-Christian Palestine.

In the last two centuries B.C. the poHtical
and moral conditions of the Jews had become
immeasurably tragic. After their return
from the Babylonian exile, the Jews formed
themselves into a religious community. The
government was theocratic, but politically
Palestine formed an insignificant province,
first of the Persian Empire, then of the Mace-
donian Empire, and, after the fall of the
latter, it became a part of Syria, under the
rule of Seleukidians, who gradually effected
the Hellenisation of the Jews. But when
Antiochus Epiphanes (i68) tried to root out
by force the worship of Jehovah, and had
made many martyrs, the pious inhabitants
of the country rebelled, defeated the Syrian
troops, and achieved political independence
under Judas Maccabeus. These few years of

the deepest humiliation and of wonderful

182

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 183

salvation strengthened Judaism to an extra-
ordinary extent. From this time dates the
Book of Daniel, in which the destruction of
the Imperialist world empire and the emer-
gence of the kingdom of God under the
supremacy of the Jews is prophesied : " And
as for the rest of the beasts, their dominion
was taken away. And behold, there came
with the clouds of heaven one like unto the
Son of Man, and he came even to the ancient
of days. And the kingdom and the dominion
and the greatness of the kingdoms under the
whole heaven shall be given to the people
of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom
is an everlasting possession."

A kingdom of righteousness is to be estab-
lished, under Jewish supremacy, in place of
the predatory Imperialist empire. This was
the ideal.

Meanwhile, government was carried on by
the Maccabees. Three tendencies manifested
themselves among the Jews : the Sadducees,
the Pharisees and the Essenes. The Saddu-
cees were composed of the priestly nobles
and other educated persons, who inclined
towards Hellenism, and did not beUeve in a
special Jewish mission. They were the states-

184 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

manlike, practical politicians to whom the
idea of a Jewish world dominion appeared
impossible and ridiculous. They formed a
small minority. The Pharisees comprised
the middle classes, which observed strict
Jewish legal ordinances : the Jews were to
become a holy people, a nation of priests.
National and religious sentiments were most
closely associated amongst the Pharisees.
The third tendency was the Essenean : a
small portion of the Jews turned aside, as
related above, from all national and State
objectives. The Essenes aspired to a morally
pure humanity, a real kingdom of God, with-
out State or coercion, without laws from the
government or the priesthood, and where the
sole service rendered would be the voluntary
performance of social tasks for the benefit of
the community. They held themselves aloof
from all party disputes, from all thirst for
dominion, and were unperturbed by the
quarrels between Sadducees and Pharisees.

The political independence of Judaea lasted
for about a century. The national economic
life became vigorous, agriculture flourished,
handicrafts and industry were esteemed,
and even the Rabbis and scholars regarded

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 185

it as a duty to perform physical labour as the
basis of their existence. Thrift, trade, the
piety and morality of the lower middle-class
were the prevailing sentiments. This con-
dition was soon to change. In the year 63
Pompey conquered Syria, invaded Palestine,
and in the midst of the priestly disputes which
were raging in Jerusalem the Roman cohorts
stormed the city, and — to the indignation
of the Jews — Pompey entered the holy of
hohes of the Temple. Henceforth the country
lost its independence, the Jewish kings
became dependent upon Rome, Roman pro-
curators levied tribute on the people, who
resented the Roman oppression, partly by
conspiracies and insurrections, and partly
by passive resistance. The old hope of a
coming kingdom of God blazed forth with
passionate ardour. Have the prophets pro-
phesied falsely? Has not Judaism kept the
commandments of God in the most trying
times? And has the blood of the Jewish
martyrs been spilled in vain ? No ! The
Messiah, the King anointed by God, must
soon appear, and assume world dominion.
Popular leaders sprang up, new parties were
formed, among which was one with terrorist

186 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

tactics; the national soil was in a state of
upheaval. Nor was this all. The nation
was split socially. The sentiments which
prevailed at that time are indicated in the
Gospel of Luke, where Mary, the mother of
Jesus, on the discovery of her pregnancy,
praises God and says of him : "He has
scattered the proud. He hath put down the
mighty from their seats and hath exalted
them of low degree. The hungry he hath
filled with good things, and the rich he hath
sent empty away " (i. 51-53)-

Internally and externally Judaea was a
seething furnace in which the most sublime
national and social passions blazed. As was
so often the case in Jewish history, when heavy
oppressions weighed upon the people, or
when world-shaking political events were
happening, the feeling spread among the Jews :
the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God
is at hand ; the arrival of the Messiah cannot
be far off.

2. Jesus.

*' Not by might nor by power, but by my
spirit " (Zech. iv. 6).

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 187

In this overheated atmosphere Jesus
appeared.

He was born in a handworker's family in
Nazareth, in North Palestine, attended a
Jewish school in that village, Hstened to the
speeches in the Synagogue, made a pilgrimage
each year to Jerusalem to the Feast of the
Passover, Jerusalem being the centre of the
intense mental life of the Jews.

The bent of his mind was soon apparent.
Even as a youth he was in the thick of the
fierce strivings of his people. He was fond
of Isaiah, and read the wonderful passage,
" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because
he hath anointed me to preach the gospel
to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the
broken-hearted, to proclaim release to the
captive, and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty them that are bruised, to
preach the acceptable year of the Lord "
(Luke iv. 17-20).

Such was the prologue. It summarised
the life of Jesus. He soon attracted the
attention of his fellows. Nobody could be
indifferent to his personahty. His inter-
vention was challenging. Many perceived
in him one of the future leaders in the hbera-

188 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

tion struggle against the Romans, and en-
deavoured to gain his support for one of the
rebeUions in course of preparation. For what
other purpose had God endowed him with
such great gifts? And what object could be
more exalted than to free his sorely oppressed
people ?

At first Jesus seems to have been not
immune from this temptation. The national
passions burned fiercely and inflamed so
many pure-minded men for the liberation
struggle against Rome. Why not him too?
From this short period of sohdarity with
his people the saying probably dates, " I
come not to bring peace, but a sword," as it is
quite incongruous with the later period in
which it is placed by the Gospel of Matthew
(x. 34). Gradually Jesus attained to quite
a different way of thinking. Not by the
sword, not by force, but by spiritual and
peaceful means, by sacrifice and inward
purification will Judaea, as well as Rome, be
redeemed from evil. Temporal power fails
and must always fail. Temporal power
derives from the principle of evil.

The whole plan of insurrection then appeared
to him as a temptation of Satan. Forty

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 189

days and forty nights he wrestled with it in
the wilderness. And if we should defeat
the Romans and win their empire and their
glory? What then? Would mankind be
any the better, to receive in exchange for it
an empire of Pharisees, of human ordinances
and priestly regulations? No. "It is
written, Thou shalt worship God and serve
him alone." And what the will of God is
has been proclaimed to mankind by the
prophets.

Social righteousness and the redemption
of the poor, contempt and condemnation of
riches, abolition of all coercive rule, love
to all men, a humanity which bears the king-
dom of God within it, in the life of its soul
— such is the secret of the kingdom of God.

And all the revolutionaries and nationalists
forsook him. But the simple people flocked
around him. He gained supporters and
disciples. As the multitude assembled about
him he ascended a mountain and spoke :

" Blessed are the poor, they that mourn,
the meek, the merciful and the peacemakers,
they which are persecuted for righteousness'
sake. Blessed are they that resist not evil,
but return good for evil. Blessed are they

190 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

which do not have Courts of Justice, and know
not penal laws, but love their enemies, and
pray for their persecutors. For all men have
but one Father, who is in heaven. May his
kingdom come, his will be done. For his is
the kingdom, the power and the glory for
ever."

Jesus said to his well-tried comrades :
political struggles, revolutionary insurrections,
national wars, murder and sudden death,
legal reforms and national autonomy will
not help you to reahse the ideal of the old
prophecies. The kingdom of God is not of
this world — it does not mean the domination
and power of the Jews over all peoples, of
amassing more wealth than other nations,
nor does it mean observing the Temple service,
or the Synagogue ceremonies, priestly purifi-
cation and juridical ordinances, nor the
keeping alive of patriotic interests and holding
aloft national colours. All these things are
ephemeral. The kingdom of God rather
means : regeneration of the whole of life
on the basis of infinite love of humanity —
loving-kindness towards all who are weak
and errant, endless compassion upon all men,
the melting of all class differences, labour in

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 191

common for all. This alone will be enduring,
and redeem mankind from evil. This is the
kingdom of God.

Jesus was the spiritual quintessence of
the prophetical development, as we have out-
lined it in Chapter I. sections 2 and 3. His
influence was avowedly anti-national and,
in the opinion of the Jewish authorities, also
anti-religious. His propaganda was com-
munist. It was the later stoical ethics,
purified, enriched and deepened by the results
of the intense religious culture of Exilic
and post-Exilic Judaism. No Hellene ever
had the consciousness of sin, and the feeling
of holiness, of fear of God and joy in God
to the same extent as the Jews in the time
of Jesus.

It was this feeling which enabled the Jews
to rebel against the Roman tyranny, and to
carry on for years a heroic struggle with
prodigal sacrifices. But Jesus went beyond
Judaism. He broke through national bound-
aries, and destroyed the traditional religious
structure, which had been erected with so
much suffering and anguish of heart by the
great Masters. He was a revolutionary,
although a peaceful one, but his peacefulness

192 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

was surprisingly revolutionary. Perhaps the
Jews would have forgiven him everything if
he had used his popularity to further the
national revolt against Rome. They begged
for the life of Barabbas, who was to have
been crucified on account of insurrection
against the Roman domination (Mark xv.
7). But Jesus and his disciples were already
so remote from Jewdsh life that the evangelist
Mark described the national-patriotic deed
of Barabbas as a murder. From the point
of view of religion, politics and social arrange-
ments, Jesus stood outside the pale of Jewish
and Roman civilisation, and had to be con-
demned and hung on the cross.

3. Communism in the Primitive Communities.

There was not one among the immediate
disciples of Jesus who had distinguished
himself by his personality or knowledge,
or was in a position to continue the work of
the Master on the same lines. The manner
in which the authors of the Gospels relate
so much that is secondary or legendary in
the life of their hero, and enclose the ever-
lasting kernel of his spirit in worthless husks,

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 193

is sufficient proof that they did not compre-
hend Jesus. The period in which he exerted
his decisive influence and himself became
conscious of his mission was also too short
to permit of training worthy successors.
These circumstances, some years later, pro-
vided Paul with the opportunity of assuming
the role of organiser of Christianity. Paul
was a stranger to the Jewish-proletarian
thoughts and sentiments. He was a Pharisee
and man of learning, whose conscience was
extremely troubled by the impossibility of
fulfilling the accumulating laws and prescrip-
tions. The seventh chapter of his Epistle
to the Romans gives us a profound insight
into the conflicts which raged in his mind
over the substance and influence of the Jewish
laws. It is not impossible that in this he
was also influenced by Stoical and Gnostic
interpretations of the laws as expressing
the corruptibility of man fallen from the
primeval state. Nevertheless, Paul assimi-
lated the teaching of Jesus, so far as it could
be assimilated by the intellect and con-
science of a learned man. His whole
personality and education constrained him
to impart a dogmatic bias to this teaching.

194 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

His strong personality, marked by holiness,
overflowing love of humanity, and boundless
doctrinal ardour, forced the proletarian and
communist elements into the background.
These elements fought against St. Paul for
a sufficiently long time, but his strength of
will and self-sacrificing propaganda assured
him the victory. The new doctrine triumphed
over the communist practice. It was his
great other-worldliness, the complete detach-
ment of St. Paul from the material interests
of life, which rendered it easy for him so to
despise the institutions of this world that to
maintain opposition against them was not
worth the trouble. The main point was the
salvation of the soul, which was assured by
belief in Jesus. As long as there was an
opportunity to keep alive this belief, it was a
matter of indifference who exercised temporal
power, or how it was exercised.

In the years which immediately followed
the martyrdom of Jesus the first communities,
which were almost exclusively composed
of Jewish proletarians, were conducted either
on a communistic basis, or in the spirit of
the communistic ideal. They were proud of
their poverty, they were the " Ebionites,"

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 195

the poor and needy, the trustees of social
righteousness. " Ye cannot serve God and
Mammon," declared Jesus to the disciples,
in his plain and decisive manner. And as they
desired to serve God, they turned their backs
on Mammon. The primitive communities
either lived on communistic principles, or
aspired to the . communist mode of Hving.
" And aU that believed were together, and
had all things common ; and they sold their
possessions and goods, and parted them
to all, according as every man had need "
(Acts of the Apostles, ii. 44, 45). " And the
multitude of them that believed were of one
heart and of one soul, and not one of them
said that aught of the things which he pos-
sessed was his own; but they had all things
common {Ibid. iv. 32). Riches were con-
sidered a disgrace, and poverty bore an
almost holy character. All were convinced
that the service of Mammon, the thirst for
wealth and riches, was inevitably bound up
with sin, whilst poverty signified a renuncia-
tion of worldly pleasures and temporal power.
The increase in the number of Christians,
the diffusion of the communities, the ascend-
ancy of the Pauline propaganda and conception

196 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

of Christianity weakened communism, which
was supplanted by generous almsgiving and
a benevolent provision for the poor brothers
and sisters. Gradually, however, class differ-
ences made their appearance in Christendom ;
among the Christians there were rich and poor,
employers and workers, and the old brother-
liness disappeared. The class antagonism
found its theoretical expression in the struggle
between " faith " and " works." This con-
flict is reflected in the Epistle of James,
the author of which contrasted the doctrines
of Jesus with those of Paul : " What doth it
profit if a man say he hath faith, but have not
works? can that faith save him?" The
Epistle of James describes the pride of the
rich in their belief, their claim to special
honour in the Christian assemblies, their
hypocrisy towards their poor fellow-believers,
and declares : "So faith apart from works
is dead." He reminds the rich that God
chose the poor, who are still exploited by the
rich, and dragged before the judges. There-
fore, exclaims the author, "Go to now, ye
rich men, weep and howl for your miseries
that are coming upon you. Your riches
are corrupted, and your garments are moth-

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 197

eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted.
Ye have heaped treasure together in the last
days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who
have mowed your fields which is of you kept
back by fraud crieth out, and the cries of them
that have reaped have entered into the ears
of the Lord " (James v. 1-4).

The complaints in the Epistle of James
need not, however, be generalised. In the
first three centuries after Christ the commun-
istic spirit was still strong in Christian com-
munities. Even if passive obedience was
rendered to the laws and institutions of the
Roman Empire, the majority of Christians
were not at all disposed to recognise them as
being just. The Greek and Latin Fathers
of the Church strictly adhered, at least in
theory, to the anti-governmental and com-
munistic doctrines; they condemned private
property, and the claims of the State to
power, military service and patriotism.

4. The Spirit of Christianity and of the
Patristics.

The third and fourth centuries of the youth
of Christianity and the influence of the Greek

198 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

and Latin Church Fathers bequeathed to
the middle ages a social tradition which
was hostile to the dominion of Mammon
and the supremacy of private economic,
worldly and State interests, and favoured the
ascetic and communistic modes of life. More
especially was it the accounts given by
" Acts " of the primitive community at
Jerusalem which kept alive the longing for
a communal life in the breasts of the nobler
members of the new religion. Everything
which Ernest Renan has written about the
Apostolic age is excellent, from a psycho-
logical point of view, and reveals deep insight
into the Judaic-Christian world :

" All, then, lived in common, having but
one heart and one soul. No one possessed
aught that was his own. In becoming a
disciple of Jesus a man sold all he had and
gave the proceeds to the society. The con-
cord was perfect; there was no quarrel over
dogma, no dispute about precedence. The
tender memory of Jesus effaced all dissensions.
Joy was in all hearts, keen and profound.
(No literature has so often repeated the word
' love ' as the New Testament.) The morality
was austere. They grouped themselves by

PRLMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 199

households to pray and give themselves
up to the ecstatic exercises. The recollection
of these first two or three years lingered as
that of an earthly paradise, which Christianity
was thenceforth to pursue in all its dreams,
and was vainly to seek to recover " (Ernest
Renan, The Apostles).

Just as the Golden Age formed the ideal of
the ancient poets and thinkers, so the primi-
tive community of Jerusalem was the model
for the Church Fathers and all earnest
Christians. In the course of the first cen-
tury this ideal became transfused with the
millennial expectations, as well as with the
most valuable results of Hellenic-Roman
thought ; the communistic, religio-ethical and
natural rights doctrines of Plato, of the Stoa
and neo-Platonists, which collectively were
idealist, that is, they regarded the idea, the
spiritual, the godly, as the primary supreme
power in human life, to which the latter must
subordinate itself; the ideal was the real and
typical.

The Church Fathers — Barnabas (in the
first third of the second century), Justin the
Martyr (about the middle of the second
century), Clement of Alexandria (in the last

200 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

quarter of the second and first quarter of the
third century), his successor Origen (died 254),
TertulUan (contemporary of Clement of Alex-
andria, flourished in North Africa), his
successor Cyprian (contemporary of Origen),
Lactantius (flourished at the beginning of
the fourth century in North Africa, Asia
Minor and Trier), Basilius of Caesarea (died
379), John Chrysostom (Bishop of Constanti-
nople, died 407), Ambrosius (Bishop of
Mailand, died 397), Augustine (354-430,
Bishop of Hippo, North Africa) were the
custodians of this religious, ethical and
philosophical knowledge, and all of them
were partly hostile to Mammon, and partly
inclined towards communism, or at least in
theory they regarded the communistic way
of living as virtuous, and as the ideal of a
Christian.

Barnabas, who was nearest to the Apostolic
age, exhorted, in the Epistle to the Christians,
which is ascribed to him, " to communicate
in all things with thy neighbour ; thou shalt
not call things thine own; for if ye are
partakers in common of things that are
incorruptible, how much more should ye be
of those things which are perishable."

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 201

Justin the Martyr appealed to the Gospels
(Matthew v. 42, 45; vi. 19, 20, 25, 31;
Mark viii. 36 ; Luke vi. 34 ; ix. 25 ; xii. 22,
31, 34), and declared in his Apology (I. 14,
15) » " We who loved the path to riches and
possessions above any other now produce
what we have in common, and give to every-
one who needs." Clement of Alexandria,
who was influenced most strongly by Stoic
ideas, declared : " Let it then be granted that
good things are the property only of good
men, and Christians are good. Accordingly
good things are possessed by Christians alone.
But what is possession? It is not he who
has and keeps it, but he who gives away, he
is rich" (Pcedag. III. 6). He is also respon-
sible for the saying, " Lust of money is the
citadel of sin." In these opinions he was
followed by Origen.

TertuUian, although the son of a Roman
captain in Carthage, was an implacable
opponent of the Roman Imperial power, and
considered it to be incompatible with the
duties of a Christian to occupy any position
in a heathen State : " There is no agreement
between the divine and the human sacrament,
the standard of Christ and the standard of

202 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

the devil, the camp of light and the camp of
darkness " (Idolatry, chap. 19). He was also
neither patriotic nor statesmanlike. In the
year 197 he wrote : " But as those in whom
all ardour in the pursuit of glory and honour
is dead, we have no pressing inducement to
take part in your public meetings, nor is
there aught more entirely foreign to us than
politics. We acknowledge one all-embracing
commonwealth — the world" {Apology, chap.
38). In the same work, which consists of a
defence of the Christians against the heathen
Romans, he also says : " Only those are good
brothers who are good men. But on this
very account perhaps we are regarded as
having less claim to be held true brothers
that no tragedy makes a noise about our
brotherhood, or that the family possessions
which generally divide brotherhood among
you create fraternal bonds among us. One in
mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share
our earthly goods with one another. All
things are common among us but our wives."
Cyprian becomes enthusiastic in his descrip-
tion of the primitive Jerusalem community,
and says : " All that comes from God is for
our common enjoyment, and from His benefits

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 203

and gifts none is excluded, so that the whole
human race may share equally in God's
munificence. . . . For whatsoever is of God
is in our using common, nor is any man shut
out from His bounties and gifts, to the end
the whole human race may equally enjoy
God's goodness and bounty. In which
example of equality the earthly possessor
who shares his gains and his fruits with the
brotherhood, free and just in his voluntary
bounties, is imitator of God the Father."

Cyprian vigorously declaims against the
attachment to property : " You are captive
and slave of your money. You are fast in
the chains and bonds of covetousness ; whom
Christ had once loosened, again you are
become bound."

Lactantius was powerfully influenced by
Plato's Republic, and considered economic
communism to be possible, if its disciples
revered God as the source of wisdom and
reUgion. But he was decisively against com-
munity in women. Like Plato, Lactantius
would also like to see the present age revert
to the happy conditions of the primeval
time, that age of Saturn, when righteousness
still dwelt here below, when the earth was

204 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

yet the common possession of all, and all
lived a common life (Epitome, 35 to 38).

Basilius the Great (of Caesarea) complains
in his Homilies : " Nothing withstands the
power of wealth, and everything bows before
its tyranny. . . . Are ye not thieves and
robbers? The bread thou hast belongs to
the hungry, the mantle thou wearest belongs
to the ill-clad, the shoes thou hast on belong
to the unshod, the silver thou hast heaped up
belongs to the needy. Thou doest injury to
as many men as thou couldst give to." His
fight against wealth did not remain a negative
criticism. Basil advocated common owner-
ship : " We who are gifted with reason show
ourselves to be more cruel than the irrational
animals. The latter make use of the natural
products of the earth as common things.
The herds of sheep feed on one and the same
pasture. Horses browse all together on one
and the same meadow. But we make things
to be our own which are common, and possess
all that belongs to the community." Finally,
Basil recommended living according to the
Lycurgian laws : " Let us imitate the Hel-
lenes and their mode of living, which was full
of humanity. There are people among them

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 205

with the excellent habit of all citizens
assembling in one building around a table
for meals in common/'

Gregory Nazianzen writes quite in sym-
pathy with the communistic and natural
rights tendencies of the Church teaching of
his time. Freedom and serfdom, poverty
and riches are a reversion from the primitive
condition, and the consequence of greed,
envy, discords, and sin. " But thou, O
Christ, lookest upon the original freedom,
and not upon the subsequent separation,
supportest with all thy strength Nature,
honourest the original freedom, and consolest
poverty."

Chrysostom recommends communistic ex-
periments, and recalls the primitive com-
munity of Jerusalem : " For they did not give
in part and in part reserve, nor yet in giving
all gave it as their own, and they lived more-
over in great abundance. They removed all
inequality from among them, and made a
goodly order. But to show that it is the
living separately that is expensive and causes
poverty, let there be a house in which are
contained children and the wife and the man.
Let the one work at her wool, the other bring

206 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

his earnings from his outdoor occupation.
Now tell me in which way would these spend
most, by taking their meals together and
occupying one house, or by living separately ?
Of course, by living separately, for if the ten
children must live apart they would need ten
several rooms, ten tables, ten attendants,
and the income otherwise in proportion.
Is it not for this very reason that where there
is a great number of slaves they have all one
table, that the expense may not be so great ?
For so it is division always makes diminution,
concord and agreement make increase. The
dwellers in the monasteries live just as the
faithful did. Now did ever any of these die
of hunger? Now it seems people are more
afraid of this than of falling into a boundless
and bottomless deep. But if we did make
actual trial of this, then indeed we boldly
venture upon this plan." So spoke Chry-
sostom in a sermon delivered in Constantinople
in the year 400.

Ambrose held private property to be sinful ;
it was first called into existence by sin. He
defends the stoical principle : " Nature pro-
vides everything for all to have in common.
God has, in fact, created all things, so that

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 207

enjoyment may be common to all and the
earth may be the common possession of all.
Nature therefore creates the right to com-
munism, but coercion makes of it the right
to private property." " Our Lord God has
willed that this earth should be the common
possession of all mankind, and its produce to
be shared by all, but covetousness has divided
up this right of possession " (De Nabuthe,
I, 2; Expositio in Lucam, xii. 15, 22, 23).

Even Augustine, the disciple of Ambrose,
was inclined to communism in theory :
" Consider this, beloved, that on account of
private possessions exist lawsuits, enmities,
discords, wars among men, riotous dissensions
against one another, offences, sins, iniquities,
murders. On account of what ? On account
of what we each possess. Let us therefore,
brethren, abstain from the possession of
private property or from the love of it if we
may not from its possession " (Commentary
to Psalm cxxxi.). Augustine declares further :
" For we have many superfluities if we keep
nothing but what is necessary. Find out
how much he hath given thee, and take of
that what is enough. All other things which
remain as superfluities are the necessaries of

208 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

others. The superfluities of the rich are the
necessaries of the poor. Seek what is enough
for God's sake, not what is sufficient for your
greediness " (Commentary to Psalm cxlvii. 12).
This was merely theory, which was made
use of in preaching. In the same century
(the fourth to the fifth) as Ambrose and
Augustine gave expression to these thoughts,
the landworkers in North Africa were engaged
in a struggle for common ownership, or, at
least, equality of possession, and for freedom
and equality. This rural labour movement
against the large landowners was known by
the name of the Circumcellion, and threw in
its lot with the Donatist movement, which
was originally a purely religious or reformist
tendency within the Church, led by Bishop
Donatia, and named after him. The Dona-
tists chiefly directed themselves against the
abuses in the Church hierarchy (priestly
domination), and pursued such objects as
Church reforms. They were joined by the
rural proletarians, who were held in subjection
by the big landlords. The Circumcellionists
even resorted to force. Church and State,
dogmatic erudition and Roman exploiters
united and finally defeated the agricultural

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 209

proletarians. St. Augustine wrote (411) against
the Donatists and Circumcellionists, arguing
that the just only had a right to property,
whereas the Donatists and Circumcellionists
could not have this right, as they had turned
against civil and ecclesiastical authority.

It was not any kind of theory which caused
Augustine to direct his spiritual arms against
the rural proletariat of North Africa striving
after economic equality. He was familiar
with the Hellenic-Roman natural rights, as
well as with the spirit of primitive Christianity
and the Gnosis. He was one of the most
learned bishops of the Catholic Church. But
communism, or even economic equality, did
not form a part of the official dogmas of the
Church. And what was officially recognised
did not have its origin in theory, but in
practical policy, which was usually deter-
mined by real or supposed class interests.
We perceive here the tragical conflict between
theory and practice, between the spiritual
ideal and material life.

This tragical conflict cuts athwart the whole
history of religion, of ethics and of communism.
It is evidence of the imperfection of human
nature, or of a dualism of forces which struggle

210 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

with each other. It constitutes the pecuHar
problem of the rehgious, philosophical and
communist thought of late antiquity, of the
middle ages, and of modern Socialism. The
Stoa conceived the origin of this conflict to
lie in the ascendancy of private property
and of civilisation; in the abandonment of
the primitive communistic state. Christian
theology ascribed it to the fall from grace.
The later Gnosis explained it by the existence
of two elemental antagonistic forces : good and
evil, light and darkness. Utopian Socialism
saw its cause in the irrational and defective
organisation of society. Marxism regards it
as the product of an economic development,
which will disappear as soon as society attains
to the level of economic and spiritual com-
munism.

5. The Millennium — Communistic Kingdom
of God.

During the first three centuries the belief
was almost universal among the Christians
that Jesus would soon return, and establish a
kingdom of God on earth, in which he would
reign as king. This was imagined to be the

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 211

return of the golden age of primitive com-
munism, in which complete equality would
prevail, and in which Nature, freed from the
blight of the fall from grace, or from the harsh
dominion of Jupiter, would again bring forth
her gifts, without effort and in wonderful
abundance. The sources of this behef are
easily discovered by those who have atten-
tively read our previous chapters; the Jewish
prophets, Hesiod, Virgil. The old prophets
prophesied that the Jews, purified by suffer-
ing, oppression and atonement, would be
called to world dominion, under the direction
of Jahweh, and this world dominion would
establish social righteousness, eternal peace
in history and nature, and joyful life for all.
An application of this belief to the Christians
is made by the Revelation (Apocalypse) of
John (chap. xx. i-6), which was written after
the persecution of the Christians by Nero.
It is stated there that God will chain up the
devil (worldly power) for a period of a thou-
sand years, and cast him into the pit, when
the Martyrs will rise again, and with Christ
will govern this thousand years' kingdom.
This kingdom of God is therefore called the
thousand years' kingdom, the Millennium, and

212 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

belief in it is called Chiliasm (chilioi is Greek
for thousand) . The Hellenic and Roman Chris-
tians identified Chiliasm with the return of
the Golden Age, as described by Hesiod and
Virgil. It is thus not surprising that the
kingdom of God was conceived as a time of
great material and spiritual joy, as a com-
pletely communistic state, in which the
Christians, sinless like the first men, would
be rewarded for all their suffering and persecu-
tions. The masses clung to this belief with
great tenacity, and, in their imagination, were
not likely to fail to endow the coming mil-
lennial kingdom with every excellence. Even
so eminent a Father of the Church as Irenaeus
(Bishop of Lyons towards the end of the second
century) and Lactantius (beginning of the
fourth century) regarded the fantastic de-
scriptions of the kingdom of God as doctrinal
truths. Special pleasure was taken in describ-
ing the effortless increase in the production
of the earth.

Gradually the Chiliastic belief became
weaker, and likewise the theologians were at
pains to explain away the communistic spirit
of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles by
interpretations. In the fourth century Chris-

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 213

tianity became a buttress of the State. Com-
munism fled to the cloisters and to the heretics,
but the communistic and ChiHastic aspira-
tions revived with every rebeUion during the
middle ages and the modern times, especially
with the Anabaptists and in the English
Revolution. Christianity, however, was the
sole vital organisation of the Empire. In the
third century the Roman Emperors became
distinctly aware of its power, but they did
not know of its internal transformation from
a social revolutionary movement to a con-
servative force. Once more they instituted
extensive persecutions of the Christians. Soon
after they abandoned those futile tactics and
conceded to Christianity a status equal with
that of other rehgions (313). Towards the end
of the fourth century Christianity became the
State Church. It triumphed because it had
adapted itself to the institution of private
property and governmental politics. No longer
did it strive after communistic ideals, but it
wrangled over dogmas and metaphysical
articles of belief. The masses became mute,
the theologians became the spokesmen.

214 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

6. Downfall of the Ancient World.

The retrogression of the Roman Empire
proceeded inevitably. The feudahsation of
landlordism, the binding of the small tenant
to the soil, the organisation of the urban hand-
workers in guilds, were partly the cause, and
partly the effect of the economic paralysis
and retrogression. The depressed condition
of the agricultural population was obviously
not calculated to attract the town proletarians
back to the land. Further, with the increas-
ing subjection of the country people there
began an emigration to the towns, where,
however, relatively few workers could find
employment.

The restriction of production and the
diminution of the means of subsistence ex-
pressed themselves in a decrease of the popula-
tion, and a reduction of the amount of labour
power. And this happened at a time when
the German tribes, Goths, Allemans, Vandals,
Burgundians and Franks, began to press more
and more strongly upon the confines of the
Empire. The Empire needed soldiers, but
the landlords needed workers, and the man-
power requirements of both forces could not

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 215

be satisfied, because, as stated, the popula-
tion decreased. Large-scale landownership
was victorious, and retained the workers.
The defence of the Empire became weakened
to an increasing extent, so that the Germans,
Huns, Avars and other surging tribes event-
ually succeeded in overrunning Rome. The
soldier Emperor Diocletian made some
attempt at re-organisation, on comprehensive
and absolutist lines, at the turn of the third
century. He transformed the Roman Empire
into a Caesarian and military despotism, at-
tached the whole population to their callings,
in caste fashion, regulated all and everything,
but the Empire was suffering from social and
economic sickness, and could not be healed.
This was the period of the rise of the Christian
Church, the period of the death struggle of
the Roman world empire. At the end of the
fourth century it dissolved into two portions :
the Empire of the West and the Empire of the
East. The former succumbed to the Germans,
and the latter subsisted for some time as the
Byzantine Empire.

216 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

7. Causes of the Downfall of the Ancient
World.

In the preceding chapter we have described
the last phases of the Roman Empire or the
Ancient World. We spoke of the incurable
sickness which had fallen upon this Empire.
We do not yet know, however, what, in the
last resort, was the cause which prepared the
end of a political organism once so powerful.
Overwhelming hostile forces could indeed
destroy a great deal, but the German tribes
and the Huns were superior to the Romans
neither in numbers nor in organisation. The
success of these tribes was finally possible only
because Rome was already sick and could not
discover within itself the means to social
recovery. What then was the real cause
which accomplished the downfall of Rome,
and, therefore, of the ancient world?

The cause is to be found solely in the
incapacity of Rome to develop the productive
forces, jto increase production, and to satisfy
the material needs of such a great empire.
Had Rome remained an agricultural empire,
based upon a numerous and independent
peasantry, or had it developed a technically

PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 217

progressive industrial life, alongside of the
latifundia economy, it would have been in a
position to supply the population with the
necessary means of life. The result would
have been a constantly growing population,
which would have been able to furnish suffi-
cient troops, technical means and the neces-
sary finances to defend the boundaries of the
Empire.

But Rome remained, on the one hand,
wedded to relatively primitive modes of pro-
duction, and, on the other hand, the latifundia
economy made an end of the free peasantry.
The consequence was a shrinkage in the oppor-
tunities for existence, and therefore a con-
stant decrease of the number and strength of
the population. The despotism of Diocletian,
the regulations of the State and the police,
instead of remedying, aggravated this evil,
by narrowing still more the already slender
basis of life.

Why, however, did Rome remain attached
to primitive modes of production ? Because it
was based on unfree labour.

The material retrogression was the conse-
quence of this. Slavery and dependence
impressed the stamp of degradation and

218 SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ANTIQUITY

dishonour upon productive labour. The best
minds and the most gifted artists turned away
from productive labour, which they held to
be unworthy of a free man. In this state of
affairs technical progress was impossible. As
soon as the means of existence proved insuffi-
cient, the Romans did not seek new labour
methods, scientific and mechanical inven-
tions, improved tools, etc., but helped them-
selves by force, by war, by conquest, and by
robbery. Not higher production of labour,
but tribute from defeated countries, was the
object of Rome. As, however, Rome had
conquered and plundered the ancient world,
and had squandered the wealth of which it
had been despoiled, the material basis of the
Empire became so narrow that it could no
longer support the superstructure. The im-
pact of the undisciplined barbarian peoples
which were set in motion sufficed, therefore,
to overthrow the last great Empire of the
Ancient World.

INDEX

Agis, King of Sparta, 69;

Communist martyr, 74
Ambrose, Church Father, on

natural right, 206
Amos, Jewish prophet, 29
Anacreon, on power of money,

59

Antiochus Epiphanus, at-
tempts forcible Hellenising
of Jews, 182

Antique world, coUapse of,
214 ; causes, 216

Antiquity and the present
time, 15

Antiquity and modem times,
170

Antiquity, essence and sig-
nificance of, 7-1 1

Apocalypse (Revelation of
John), 211

Appian, Roman historian, 128;
on Tiberius Gracchus, 140

Aristonikos, leader of slave in-
surrection, 153

Aristophanes, Greek comedy
writer against Communism
and against avarice, 109

Aristotle, 1 7 ; against Com-
munism, 98-103 ; on causes
of social necessity, 102

Augustine, Church Father, on
private property, 207

Baal and Jahweh, 21-27
Barabbas, Jewish revolution-
ary, 192

Barnabas, Church Father, on
Communism, 200

Caesar and the Teutons, 10;
and social monarchy, 166

Catiline, 143-149

Chiliasm, 212

Christianity and the Prole-
tariat in the Roman Empire,
180

Chrysostom, Church Father,
on Communism, 205

Church Fathers and Com-
munism, 199-208

Cicero, opponent of Catiline,
143; anti-social, 146-147

Class antagonisms, origin of,
13; sharpening of, 14;
among the Israelites, 24-40 ;
among the Greeks, 54-60;
in Sparta, 62 ; in Athens,
82; Plato on, 88; Aristotle
on, 98; in Rome, 132;
Tiberius Gracchus on, 139;
Catiline on, 148 ; Horace
on, 168; Seneca the elder
on, 169; in Judaea, 182; in
primitive Christianity, 196

Class State, Plato on, 57

Cleomenes, Spartan King, 74

Communal meals, 64, 72, 80

Communist descriptions, 121

Community of women, 65, 91,
113, 122, 202

Com supplies and the Roman
proletariat, 142

219

220

INDEX

Daniel, book of, 183

Debts cancellation, 14, 40, 72,

82, 145
Democracy in Athens, 83 ;

Plato's objection to, 86
Demos, significance of, 59
Diodorus, Greek historian, 78
Draco, Athenian law-giver, 12,

81

Ebionites, 194

Education in Sparta, 64 ; in

Plato's Ideal State, 92 ; Aris-
totle on, 93
Egypt, Hellenic, 123; social

economic conditions, 123
Essenes, Jewish Communistic

sect, 45 ; their mode of

living, 46-49
Ethics, influence on religion,

179
Eupolis, Greek social comedy

writer, 108
Ezekiel, Jewish prophet, 39

Gladiators, slaves as, 155
Golden Age, 11, 19, 54, 107,

108, 173, 199
Gracchi, 139

Helots in Sparta, 67
Hesiod, Greek poet, 54
History, divisions of, 7
Hosea, Jewish prophet, 31

Isaiah, Jewish prophet, 38 ;
on the social life of Pales-
tine, 38; on eternal peace,
39

Jahweh, significance of, 21 ;
conflict with Baal, 23 ; and
Hebrew primitive society,
26; as universal God, 29

James, Epistles of, 196;
against Pauline doctrines,

196; against rich Chris-
tians, 197

Jeremiah, Jewish prophet, 35

Jesus, 186; social atmosphere
of his influence, 187; origin,
187 ; bent of his mind, 187 ;
prologue of his life course,
187; early solidarity with
his people, 188; change in
his world outlook, 188; his
life mission, 188; against
force, 190; for spiritual re-
demption of mankind, 190;
turns from his people, 192;
martyrdom, 192

Josephus, Jewish historian, 45 ;
on the Essenes, 45

Jubilee year, 41 ; Jewish re-
form efforts, 41

Judas Maccabeus, Jewish hero,
182

Labour, despised in antiquity,
67; cause of downfall of
Rome, 217

Land, redistribution of, 14,
40, 62, 71, 82, 145

Latifundia in Rome, 138, 167,
217

Love conflicts in Communist
society, 114

Lipara, Communistic settle-
ment, 78

Livy, Roman historian, 129

Lycurgus, Spartan lawgiver,
61 ; establishes Communism
in Sparta, 62 ; his consti-
tution famous throughout
antiquity, 66; defects of
Lycurgian constitution, 67

Malachi, Jewish prophet, 40
Mary, the mother of Jesus, 186
Messiah, 186

Micah, Jewish prophet, 32 ; on
eternal peace, 32

INDEX

221

Modem times, characteristic

of, 15
Monotheism, ethical, 13, 28
Moral philosophy, 13
Mythology and theology, 12

Natural rights : theory of
Communism, 16; Plato and
Aristotle on, 16, 17; essence
of natural rights, 17, 18;
founded by Zeno, 17 ; propa-
gated by Stoics, 17; in-
fluence on civilisation, 17;
PhUo on, 46; Seneca on,
169; Church Fathers on,
200

Natural state of peoples :
fables of Paradise and
Golden Age, 11, 174; Plato
on, 16; Virgil and Horace
on, 175

Panchaens, 124

Patricians and Plebeians, 136

Paul, Apostle, 193; his char-
acter, 193 ; organisation of
Christianity, 194 ; on mar-
ried life, 49

Peloponnesian War : social
effect on Sparta, 85 ; on
Plato, 98 ; on social struggles
in Athens, 126

Phaleas of Chalcedon, Com-
munist reformer, 102

Pharisees, Jewish party, 184

Phereakrates, social comedy
writer in Greece, 106

Philo, Jewish religious philo-
sopher, 45 ; description of
Essenes, 46

Philosopher kings, 91 ; as
saviours of the State, 91
their education, 92

Plato, Greek philosopher, 85

^. on natural right, 97 ; on
war, 98 ; on class state, 86

on communal meals, 90;
difference between Plato and
Lycurgus, 97 ; Aristotle
against, 98
Plebeians, 130; unrest among,

131

Plebiscite, 133

Phny on Roman Latifundia,
168

Plutarch on Lycurgus, 62 ;
on Tiberius Gracchus, 139;
character of Spartacus, 156

Polybius, Roman historian,
128

Pompey, Roman general, con-
quers Palestine, 185

Poverty and riches, 59 ; Theo-
gnis on, 59

Power, temporal, 50, 190

Prophets, Hebrew, 27; their
character, 28 ; universal out-
look of, 28; creators of
social ethics, 29; of Mono-
theism, 29; of ideal of
eternal peace, 39

Renaissance, 8

Righteousness, Jewish pro-
phets on, 30
Romans, character of, 129

Sadducees, Jewish party, 183
Sallust, Roman historian, 129;

on Catiline conspiracy, 143
Seisachteia (throwing-off of

burdens), 82
Seneca, Roman philosopher,

168; and Apostle Paul, 177
Slave insurrections in Roman

Empire, 149; in Apulia,

151; in Sicily, 151; in

Asia Minor, 153; under

Spartacus, 155
Social legislation among the

Jews, 40
Solon, Athenian reformer, 82

222

INDEX

Spartacus, 155 ; history of his
struggles, 155-165

Stoic school, 17; propagates
natural right, 17; is Anar-
chist-Communist,
leader Zeno, 1 7 ;
on Christianity,
Paul, 193

Sun State, significance of, 154

19; its
influence
177; on

Telekleides, Greek comedy

writer, log
Tertulhan, Church Father, 201
Theognis, Greek poet, 58

Usury in antiquity, 56, 131

Virgil, Roman poet, 174; on
the Golden Age, 174

War, revolutionary effect of,
25 ; Jewish prophets against,
29

Women's Parliament and Com-
munism, no

Zachariah, Jewish prophet, 40
Zephaniah, Jewish prophet,
36

1

i

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University of British Columbia Library

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FORM 310

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