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Thetes were free men, but without land or other resources.
They were a class of farmers that emerged in areas where the status of
individual property was in effect. To make a living they subjected themselves
to the owners of holdings, selling them their services. In the poetry of Homer and Hesiod,
they are presented hiring their work for a specific job or for a season
of the year. If the need for labour arose, they were usually hired onto
estates, otherwise they were occupied in occasional jobs or were begging.
In cases where they had a long-term job, they were rewarded with the provision
of residence, food and clothing, while for occasional jobs their payment
was in kind. In Works and Days, Hesiod recommends hiring a man
40 years old for ploughing as he is strong and able to push the plough-share
in a straight line, employing a thete with no family for threshing and a
childless woman for the maintenance and preservation of the harvest.
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| In the Homeric poems, thetes are presented as foreigners. In Attica, for example,
there were numerous thetes originating from the refugees who had come from
the Peloponnese and Boeotia during the migrations, and had not been integrated
into Ionian tribes. Landless natives who had been reduced to
destitution were also included among the thetes. |
| According to the most widespread view, the essential criterion for the definition
of the social position of a person was not his personal freedom but whether he
belonged to some group, and in particular his place in relation to the basic social
unit -the household. Thus, it has been held that the lowest class was not that of the
slaves, but that of the thetes. In the Odyssey, Achilles in Hades is presented
claiming that he would rather live and be a thete in the service of a poor man, than
reign over all the dead of the underworld. The life of the thetes was therefore
insecure: they did not belong with anyone and were not part of the aristocratic
household, as some slaves would have been, who from this point of view were in a better position
than them. |