If therefore in the fifth and fourth centuries citizen craftsmen appear to have worked mainly in small individual concerns[129], it by no means follows that the same was the case in the seventh and sixth centuries. The conditions during the later period were due to causes that only began to operate during that period. On the other hand industry must have begun to organize itself into considerable concerns somewhere about the beginning of the earlier period, at the time of the developments that are admittedly associated with the beginnings of tyranny. What was the status of the employees in these earlier enterprises such as the potteries of Corinth, the sixth century mines at Laurium, or the metal and woollen works at Samos? Almost our only piece of direct evidence on this subject is a statement of Alexis[130] that Polycrates the tyrant of Samos, whose connexion with Samian industry is established in Chapter III, “used to send for skilled artizans at very high wages (μετεστέλλετο τεχνίτας ἐπὶ μισθοῖς μεγίστοις).” These highly paid artizans may have been foreigners—Athenians, Milesians, or the like[131]—but they can scarcely have been slaves. Indirect evidence in the same direction is more abundant. Periander for example, the second tyrant of Corinth (about 620–580 B.C.), is said to have forbidden the purchase of slaves[132]. This regulation looks like an attempt towards the end of the period of tyranny at Corinth to stem an influx of servile labour. It is doubtful whether slave owning on a large scale existed at this period[133]. The Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries regarded slavery as they knew it as a modern development[134]. Timaeus says[135] that till recently the Locrians had a law and likewise the Phocians against possessing either maid servants or slaves (οὔτε θεραπαίνας οὔτε οἰκέτας) and that Mnason the friend of Aristotle having acquired a thousand slaves was ill-spoken of (διαβληθῆναι) among the Phocians as having deprived that number of the citizens of their daily bread. There is much therefore to be said for the view expressed by Clerc[136] that free labour flourished afresh in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. with the overthrow of aristocracies, or in other words in the age of the early tyrants. Ciccotti has recently well observed that in all the literature from the hymn of Demeter to the writings of Plutarch slaves occupy no place in the picture of social conditions at this period[137].