25. Changed Circumstances Threatened to Plunge Ancient Athens Into Civil War
Over the centuries, a pattern had developed in ancient Athens and the surrounding region of Attica, in which poor farmers borrowed seeds from rich aristocrats to plant on their small plots. They then repaid the loans at harvest time with grain and labor on the aristocrats’ estates. That pattern was disrupted in the seventh century BC when commerce revived after a centuries-long slump. The non-aristocratic Athenians of the Coast district got into seaborne trade and bought land with their profits.
The new class of traders and businessmen then used slave labor to farm their newly-acquired estates more efficiently than the traditional aristocrats did theirs. As a result, Athens’ nobility found itself out-competed by the nouveau riche tradesmen. So they squeezed their poorer neighbors, enslaved them and seized their farms whenever they failed to repay their seed loans on time. That outraged other Athenians. Not because they objected to slavery per se, but because they objected to the enslavement of fellow Athenians.
