Introduction
I. Contractual Status of the Hektemoroi
II. The Origins of the Hektemoroi in Attica
III. Payment by the Hektemoroi
IV. Conclusion
I would propose the following reconstruction of events. During the 8th century the hinterland in Attica was brought under cultivation; to do this a new source of farm labor was needed. The owners of this new land modelled their response on what they had learned from contact with the Near East; i.e., they selected a system of tenant farming, with rents set at a fixed rate. Leasing is far more advantageous for the landowner than would be a sharecropping system, in which the landowner's income, like the farmer's, would fluctuate from year to year. These tenant farmers became collectively known as hektemoroi because of the method of paying their rent. As later became the practice, landowners required a down payment on the rent in the amount of one-sixth of the total amount due. It was to be paid in silver, as had been the practice in the Near East. It is also possible that the remainder of the rent was due in silver, since the landowner could more easily dispose of silver than the crop; however, it is just as possible that the remainder was paid in kind. Silver was available in Attica from the working of the mines in Laureion and had been traded and exported since the Early Helladic Period. The hektemoroi had several ways of acquiring the silver: payment as wages or for goods produced, or borrowing it, offering as a pledge a member of the family. If the farmer did not pay the rent, the landowner could arrest the entire family, and probably could seize whatever they possessed to cover the rent. While ancient authors mention their seizure, they do not indicate that they could be sold into slavery for this and it is not likely they were. However, some had borrowed the silver to pay part or all of the rent, pledging a member of their family, as Plutarch mentions. When they could not repay the debt, the pledged individual was seized and sold into slavery, often as part of the export trade. It was probably the payment of part or all of the rent in silver which was most burdensome to these tenant farmers, as had been the case in the Early Dynastic Period in Sumer, when UruKAgina instituted his reforms banning the demand for payment in silver rather than in kind. This aspect of the contract is probably what led many into debt and forced them to secure the loan with members of their family, who if they defaulted were sold to pay off this debt.