Note 344 — Chapter I

Grote, ii, 204. But cp. Aristotle (Politics, ii, 9) and Plutarch (Lycurgus, c. 27), who agrees with the saying of Plato and others (cp. Müller, Dorians, Eng. tr. ii, 43, note) that in Sparta a free man was most a freeman, and a slave most a slave. And see Schömann, Alterthümer, i, 362. Hume (On Populousness) cites Xenophon, Demosthenes, and Plautus as proving that slaves were exceptionally well treated at Athens, and this is borne out by the Athenian comedy in general (cp. Maisch, Greek Antiquities, Eng. tr. § 32). But the fact remains that at Athens slaves, male and female, were frequently tortured to make them give evidence against their masters, who in turn were free to kill them for doing so (Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, pp. 240-41). And Aristotle takes for granted that they were substantially inferior in character to freemen.