by the plunder acquired.[176] The exact Hesiod advises his farmer, whose work is chiefly performed by slaves, to employ and maintain the Thête during summer-time, but to dismiss him as soon as the harvest is completely got in, and then to take into his house for the winter a woman “without any child;” who would of course be more useful than the Thête for the indoor occupations of that season.[177] [173] Odyss. iv. 643. [174] Odyss. xiv. 64. [175] Compare Odyss. xi. 490, with xviii. 358. Klytæmnêstra, in the _Agamemnôn_ of Æschylus, preaches a something similar doctrine to Kassandra,—how much kinder the ἀρχαιόπλουτοι δεσποταὶ were towards their slaves, than masters who had risen by unexpected prosperity (Agamemn. 1042). [176] Thucydid. i. 5, ἐτράποντο πρὸς λῄστειαν, ἡγουμένων ἀνδρῶν οὐ τῶν ἀδυνατωτάτων, κέρδους τοῦ σφετέρου αὐτῶν ἕνεκα, καὶ τοῖς ἀσθενέσι τροφῆς. [177] Hesiod, Opp. Di. 459—ἐφορμηθῆναι, ὁμῶς δμῶές τε καὶ αὐτὸς—and 603:— ... Αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δὴ Πάντα βίον κατάθηαι ἐπήρμενον ἔνδοθι οἴκου, Θῆτά τ᾽ ἄοικον ποιεῖσθαι, καὶ ἄτεκνον ἔριθον Δίζεσθαι κέλομαι· χαλεπὴ δ᾽ ὑπόπορτις ἔριθος. The two words ~ἄοικον ποιεῖσθαι~ seem here to be taken together in the sense of “dismiss the Thête,” or “make him houseless;” for when put out of his employer’s house, he had no residence of his own. Göttling (_ad loc._), Nitzsch (ad Odyss. iv. 643), and Lehrs (Quæst. Epic. p. 205) all construe ἄοικον with θῆτα, and represent Hesiod as advising that the houseless Thête should be at that moment _taken on_, just at the time when the summer’s work was finished. Lehrs (and seemingly Göttling also), sensible that this can never have been the real meaning of the poet, would throw out the two lines as spurious. I may remark farther that the translation of θὴς given by Göttling—_villicus_—is inappropriate: it includes the idea of superintendence over other laborers, which does not seem to have belonged to the Thête in any case. There were a class of poor free women who made their living by taking in wool to spin and perhaps to weave: the exactness of their dealing, as well as the poor profit which they made, are attested by a touching Homeric simile (Iliad, xiii. 434). See Iliad, vi. 289; xxiii. 742. Odyss. xv. 414.