Why Did Ancient Greeks Put Lazy People on Trial?

Why Did Ancient Greeks Put Lazy People on Trial? In classical Athens, having no visible way to make a living could land you in court. Any citizen could prosecute you for it, and the city's oldest council could call you up its rocky hill to answer one question: how do you live? Meanwhile, the same city paid a small daily allowance to men too disabled to work, as long as they passed an inspection proving they really couldn't. From a law that four different men got the credit for (one of them an Egyptian pharaoh whose dates don't fit), to two broke philosophers rewarded 200 drachmas for their night shifts at a mill, a law that made it illegal to sneer at a woman for selling ribbons, a disabled man accused of faking because he rode a horse, and a "death penalty for laziness" that may never have existed, here's how Athens decided who counted as lazy, and the one-line reaction from a visiting Spartan that turns the whole law upside down. If that council on the hill summoned you tomorrow and asked how you live, who would you bring as your witness? Tell us in the comments. CHAPTERS: 0:00 What do you do? 1:28 A law with four fathers 3:54 Did Draco really execute lazy people? 6:11 Two philosophers and a midnight mill 8:36 Work could save you. It couldn't make you respectable. 11:01 The man who had to prove he couldn't work 13:14 The men nobody summoned 15:04 The Spartan who wanted to meet the convict Sources in this episode: Plutarch (Life of Solon; Life of Lycurgus), Herodotus, Diogenes Laertius, Athenaeus, Aristotle (Politics; Rhetoric), the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians, Xenophon (Oeconomicus), Isocrates (Areopagiticus), Demosthenes (Against Eubulides), Lysias (On the Refusal of a Pension to the Invalid), and the 409 BCE inscription of Draco's homicide law. Subscribe for more of the everyday side of ancient Greece nobody taught you. #AncientGreece #AncientHistory #GreekHistory #AncientAthens #ClassicalGreece #HistoryDocumentary