It has been conjectured, that Peisistratos was author of the law against idleness; by which he sought to compel as many of the citizens as had no visible means of support, to take refuge in the country. Be this, however, as it may, it was not alone by severity, that the laws of Athens sought to recommend the pursuits of industry.[393] Superior excellence in any useful art entitled a man to very high honours, to maintenance at the public expense, in the Prytaneion, in company with the chief magistrates and generals of the commonwealth, and one of the first seats at all spectacles and popular assemblies. But to preserve this post, it was not enough to have once done well. The ambitious citizen could maintain it only by persevering in the career of invention and improvement, for if another man in the same line were judged to excel him, he relinquished to the new comer both his dinners and his seat.[394] ----- Footnote 393: In Plutarch’s life of Pericles there occurs a very remarkable passage, describing the constant employment and plenty which were diffused through the city by the policy of that great statesman. As for the mechanics and meaner sort of people, they went not without their share of the public money, nor yet received it to maintain them in idleness. By the constructing of great edifices, which require many arts, and a long time to finish them, they had equal pretensions to be recompensed out of the treasury, (though they stirred not from the city,) with the mariners, soldiers, and garrisons. For the different materials, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress, furnished employment to carpenters, masons, braziers, goldsmiths, painters, turners, and other artificers; the conveyance of them by sea employed merchants and sailors, and, by land, wheelwrights, waggoners, carriers, rope-makers, leather-cutters, paviers, and iron-founders; and every art had a number of the lower people ranged in proper subordination to execute it, like soldiers under the command of a general. Thus, by the exercise of these different trades, was plenty diffused among persons of every rank and condition. § 12. Engl. Trans. Footnote 394: Aristoph. Ran. 761, ibique Schol. Cf. Meurs. Them. Att. p. 106. -----