to disfranchise many of those who, by birth, were citizens,—a feeling, namely, that the possession of independent means, up to a certain point, should be a qualification for taking part in public life.
At Athens, in the time of the Periclean reforms, there does not seem to have been much civic pauperism. A hundred and fifty years or so before, Solon's great agrarian reform had taken a load of debt off the cultivators of the soil, and had done much to limit the size of landed estates. In the days of Pericles probably more than one half of the Attic citizen-body were owners of land. It was a law that every Athenian citizen should bring up his son to some calling or trade by which he could subsist. With its harbours and its fleet, Athens had unrivalled opportunities for commerce. But Pericles saw that, if the encouragement of industry and commerce was truly to strengthen the city, the artisan and the merchant must feel that they were in deed, and not merely in name, citizens. The unity of the State must be realised as far as possible according to the Greek idea; that is, every citizen must have some personal share in public business. Here, however, a grave difficulty encountered him. A poor citizen could not be expected to serve as a juror in the law-courts, or to attend the public assembly, if such public duties were to suspend the pursuit of his private calling. This difficulty was met by the proposal of Pericles to pay the citizen for the time which he gave to the State. The payment was extremely small; at first it was one obol, a little more than
