THEBES OBTAINS AID FROM ^.GIXA. 1/1
- he 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 chil- dren 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. Doubt- less 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 intermanied 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 gen- erally, 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 kleruchies sent out by Athens, of which this to Euboea was the first, arose in a great measure out of the multi- plication 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 justi- fiable as this now before us, which grew naturally, according to the ideas of the time, out of her success against the Chalkidians. The war between Athens, however, and Thebes with her Boeotian allies, still continued, to the great and repeated disad- vantage of the latter, until at length the Thebans in despair sent to ask advice of the Delphian oracle, and were directed to " so- licit aid from those nearest to them." 1 " How (they replied) we we to obey ? Our nearest neighbors, of Tanagra, Koroneia, and Thespice, are now, and have been from the beginning, lending us all the aid in their power." An ingenious Theban, however, coming to the relief of his perplexed fellow-citizens, dived into the depths of legend and brought up a happy meaning. " Those nearest to us (he said) are the inhabitants of ^Egina : for Thebe (the eponym of Thebes) and -^gina (the eponym of that island) 1 IJerodot. v, SO.
