of the others (pentekosiomedimnoi, hippeis, zeugitai) show that this class must have included all the artizans, the men who, in the lawgiver’s own words, “learn the works of Athena and Hephaestus of the many crafts.” This description of the ancient Athenian craftsmen as sons of Pallas and Hephaestus recurs in Plato[95]. A class that is described in this way plainly rests under no stigma. As Wallon puts it, “le travail, loin d’être un titre d’exclusion, était un moyen d’arriver au pouvoir[96].” Some five years after Solon’s legislation the old classification of the free population as nobles, farmers and artizans (δημιουργοί) reappears and the artizans secure two out of ten seats on the board of chief magistrates[97]. But in the fifth century this has changed. Contrast the tone of Solon with that of Xenophon[98], who states that some citizens “actually” live by handicrafts, and that mechanical occupations are rightly held in contempt by civilized communities. When Socrates has demonstrated to Alcibiades that the Athenian ecclesia is made up of working men (cobblers, criers, tent-makers and the like), he proceeds to this inference: “if you have a contempt for them individually, then you must have a contempt for them as a body[99].” This contempt for manual work appears in Aristophanes, as for instance in his constant contemptuous references to Euripides’ mother, who had been a greengrocer[100]. It is recognized and discussed by Herodotus, who regards it as of comparatively recent growth: as he puts it, “most of the Greeks have learned to despise artizans[101].” His view is supported by Isocrates, who when describing the state of things that prevailed in the Athens of Solon and Cleisthenes, declares that “the propertied classes, so far from despising those who were not so well off, ... relieved their necessities, giving some of them farms at moderate rents, sending out others to travel as merchants, supplying others with capital for their various employments (ἐργασίας)[102].” The passage just quoted is no doubt tendencious. But, as maintained by Mauri[103], it does indicate that labour was not despised in archaic Athens. More than that it suggests that in the days of Solon and Cleisthenes there was a good deal of free labour under the patronage, if not in the actual employment, of rich individuals. The transformation that began in the fifth century seems to have occurred gradually. It had not been completed when Herodotus wrote. Among the Athenian citizens who just at that time were being employed by Pericles on the Athenian acropolis we have seen from Plutarch that there were included carpenters, smiths, and leather workers. In the next generation we find Xenophon declaring that most of those who understand these crafts are servile. The words are put into the mouth of Socrates, who was the younger contemporary of Herodotus by some fifteen years[104]. Socrates and Xenophon however sometimes voice the earlier view.