Laudator Temporis Acti

Gustave Glotz (1862-1935), Ancient Greece at Work, tr. M.R. Dobie (1927; rpt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1967), pp. 278-280:

The worker's day began very early. He rose before daylight. Aristophanes amuses himself with a description of the scene. "As soon as the cock sends forth his morning song, they all jump out of bed, blacksmiths, potters, leather­dressers, shoe-makers, bathmen, flour-dealers, lyre-turners, and shield-makers; they slip on their shoes and rush off to their work in the dark." Work no doubt went on until sunset. In the mines, where it never ceased, there were successive ten-hour shifts. For night work the millers, bakers, and pastry-cooks paid wages at skilled rates.

Inside the workshops painted on the vases we often see clothes hanging on the wall. When a man was working he wanted to be comfortable. For sedentary work he bared his upper part and legs, or took off everything, wearing only a cap. In the forges and potteries, the more clothes there are hanging on the wall, the more vases hang there too. Going near the fire made a man thirsty.

In the absence of machines, and with only a moderate division of labour, the craftsman and the labourer had relatively varied occupations. For tasks done by several men together, and especially for hard or monotonous work, the time was set by music. The flute, the pipe, and the whistle governed motions and gave orders in the ship-building yards. There were old songs for every trade, and for each operation in it. The airs which Calypso and Circe sang as they span and wove were known by all the women. Others were sung when the corn was pounded or milled. Harvesters, millers, fishermen, rowers, bathmen, all had their chanty. With the cultivation of the vine the Greeks took to Egypt the Song of the Wine-Press. Like dancing and gymnastics, manual labour was made rhythmical and gay.

Shop and workshop were open to visitors and idlers. As in Hesiod's time, men liked to go into the forge and to stand peacefully watching the workmen as they handled tongs, hammer, and polisher. They went to the barber's as the Frenchman goes to his café. Young men made appointments to meet and chat at the perfumer's. Socrates was always sure of finding an audience at the statuary's or the armourer's; when he wished to meet Euthydemos he went with a crowd of friends into a saddler's shop, and it was the leather-dresser Simon who took down his sayings in a diary.

The passage from Aristophanes is Birds 488-492 (on the cock; tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

Such was his authority, so great and mighty was he then, that even to this day, as a result of that long-ago power, he has only to sing reveille and everyone jumps up to work, smiths, potters, tanners, cobblers, bathmen, grain traders, the whole carpentering, lyre-pegging, shield-fastening lot. In the dark men put on their shoes and set forth.

οὕτω δ᾽ ἴσχυσέ τε καὶ μέγας ἦν τότε καὶ πολύς, ὥστ᾽ ἔτι καὶ νῦν
ὑπὸ τῆς ῥώμης τῆς τότ᾽ ἐκείνης, ὁπόταν μόνον ὄρθριον ᾁσῃ,
ἀναπηδῶσιν πάντες ἐπ᾽ ἔργον, χαλκῆς, κεραμῆς, σκυλοδέψαι,
σκυτῆς, βαλανῆς, ἀλφιταμοιβοί, τορνευτολυρασπιδοπηγοί·
οἱ δὲ βαδίζουσ᾽ ὑποδησάμενοι νύκτωρ.