Again, the great Athenian jury-courts, which were busied with cases from
all parts of the empire, gave constant employment to nearly one fourth of
the citizens, the fee that the juryman received enabling him to live
without other business. It is said that, in the early morning, when the
jurymen were passing through the streets to the different courts, Athens
appeared like a city wholly given up to the single business of law.
Furthermore, the great public works, such as temples and commemorative
monuments, which were in constant process of erection, afforded employment
for a vast number of artists and skilled workmen of every class.

In the Agora, again, at any time of the day, a numerous class might have
been found whose sole occupation, as in the case of Socrates, was to talk.
The writer of the "Acts of the Apostles" was so impressed with this
feature of life at Athens that he summarized the habits of the people by
saying, "All the Athenians, and strangers which were there, spent their
time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing."
(Chap. xvii. 21.)

SLAVERY.--There was a dark side to Greek life. Hellenic art, culture,
refinement--"these good things were planted, like exquisite exotic
flowers, upon the black, rank soil of slavery."

The proportion of slaves to the free population in many of the states was
astonishingly large. In Corinth and AEgina there were ten slaves to every
freeman. In Attica the proportion was four to one; that is to say, out of
a population of about 500,000, 400,000 were slaves. [Footnote: The
population of Attica in 317 B.C. is reckoned at about 527,000. That of
Athens in its best days was probably not far from 150,000.] Almost every
freeman was a slave owner. It was accounted a real hardship to have to get