Another consequence of some moment arose out of this victory. The
Athenians planted a body of four thousand of their citizens as
klêruchs (lot-holders) or settlers upon the lands of the wealthy
Chalkidian oligarchy called the Hippobotæ,—proprietors probably in
the fertile plain of Lêlantum, between Chalkis and Eretria. This is
a system which we shall find hereafter extensively followed out by
the Athenians in the days of their power; partly with the view of
providing for their poorer citizens,—partly to serve as garrison
among a population either hostile or of doubtful fidelity. These
Attic klêruchs (I can find no other name by which to speak of them)
did not lose their birthright as Athenian citizens: they were not
colonists in the Grecian sense, and they are known by a totally
different name,—but they corresponded very nearly to the colonies
formally planted out on the conquered lands by Rome. The increase
of the poorer population was always more or less painfully felt in
every Grecian city. For though the aggregate population never seems
to have increased very fast, yet the multiplication of children in
poor families caused the subdivision of the smaller lots of land,
until at last they became insufficient for a maintenance; and the
persons thus impoverished found it difficult to obtain subsistence
in other ways, more especially as the labor for the richer classes
was so much performed by imported slaves. Doubtless some families
possessed of landed property became extinct; but this did not at
all benefit the smaller and poorer proprietors; for the lands thus
rendered vacant passed, not to them, but by inheritance, or bequest,
or intermarriage, to other proprietors, for the most part in easy
circumstances,—since one opulent family usually intermarried with
another. I shall enter more fully at a future opportunity into this
question,—the great and serious problem of population, as it affected
the Greek communities generally, and as it was dealt with in theory
by the powerful minds of Plato and Aristotle. At present it is
sufficient to notice that the numerous klêruchies sent out by Athens,
of which this to Eubœa was the first, arose in a great measure out of
the multiplication of the poorer population, which her extended power
was employed in providing for. Her subsequent proceedings with a view
to the same object will not be always found so justifiable as this
now before us, which grew naturally, according to the ideas of the
time, out of her success against the Chalkidians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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