Proles

Anonymous French Artist
Men sawing Timber
17th century
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Laurits Andersen Ring
Building Watercourse at Søndersø
1885
oil on canvas
Fuglsang Kunstmuseum, Lolland, Denmark

Elias Porcelius
The Carpenter
ca. 1710
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Wilhelm Trübner
Young Carpenter planing a Coffin
1870
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anthon van Rappard
Cotton Worker
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Anonymous German Artist
Lathe Worker
ca. 1518
woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Stefano della Bella
Studies of Workers
ca. 1640
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Joseph Wagner after Jacopo Amigoni
Lamp-Lighter
1739
etching and engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Albert Renger-Patzsch
Crab Fisherman
1925
gelatin silver print
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Fritz Boehle
Group of Fishermen
ca. 1898
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Ramiro Arrúe Valle
Basque Fishermen
1930
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Carl Ludvig Locher
Women gathering Nets on the Beach at Hornbæk
1884
oil on canvas
Kunsten Museum, Aalborg, Denmark

Alexander Archipenko
Gondolier
1914
gouache on paper
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Lorenzo Bianchi and Domenico Cuciniello
Maltese Fish-Seller
ca. 1825
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin
Kitchen Maid
ca. 1738
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Claude-Joseph Bail
Far Niente
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse

For the Athenians vexing Peloponnesus, and their particular territory Laconia most of all, they thought the best way to divert them was to send an army to the confederates of the Athenians, so to vex them again.  And the rather because Perdiccas and the Chalcideans were content to maintain the army, having called it thither to help the Chalcideans in their revolt.  And because also they desired a pretence to send away part of their Helotes, for fear they should take the opportunity of the present state of affairs, the enemies lying now in Pylus, to innovate.  For they did also this further, fearing the youth and multitude of their Helotes, for the Lacedaemonians had ever many ordinances concerning how to look to themselves against the Helotes.* They caused proclamation to be made that as many of them as claimed the estimation to have done the Lacedaemonians best service in their wars should be made free; feeling them in this manner and conceiving that, as they should every one out of pride deem himself worthy to be first made free, so they would soonest also rebel against them.  And when they had thus preferred about two thousand, which also with crowns on their heads went in procession about the temples as to receive their liberty, they not long after made them away, and no man knew how they perished. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

*Helot is the general name applied to the people who cultivated the ground for the Spartans.  As the latter lived entirely in barracks till the age of thirty and even after that were closely attached to the army, the farming of their estates had to be done by others.  These farm workers were serfs, but not slaves.  They were bound to the land but could not be sold, and they were paid a proportion of produce from the land they worked.  They were of various races, being composed of the people who had owned the land when the Spartans conquered it.