by Oswyn Murray
The complexity of economic forms can be seen already in the agrarian sector. Older models of ‘the agrarian economy’ have tended to see it as centred on basic food crops such as wheat and barley grown in the plains by a peasantry owning well-defined plots of land, with perhaps household breeding of small livestock such as chickens and pigs. This approach rests on the basic fallacy of assuming a single type of primitive agrarian economy, modelled on that of northern Europe in the Middle Ages. In fact the Mediterranean agrarian economy is quite different. The growing of cereals and legumes in the plains was only a small part of an economic system which included also the cultivation of vines and olives on terraced hillsides (with a much greater profit margin than cereals), and the exploitation of the four-fifths of Greek territory which is upland pasture and mountain terrain, and which was outside private ownership in this period, and often indeed true borderland outside the control of any single city. The herding of sheep and goats, often by the system known as transhumance (moving between widely separate winter and summer grazing) was a major source of wealth, through the provision of meat and cheese to the lowlands; even more important were the other products of animal husbandry, wool and leather; for these supported a manufacturing industry of spinning, weaving and cloth-making, tanning and leather-work, which provided much of the employment in upland settlements. With the development of the cities, charcoal-burning became another source of wealth, as the only fuel suitable for cooking and heating in an urban environment, and as the forerunner of coal in the smelting of metals. Nor should other ways of exploiting the natural environment be neglected, such as reed gathering and fishing in marshland and coastal areas, or stone-quarrying and forestry in the mountains.
In a landscape as varied as that of Greece, the agrarian economy is not in fact a simple process of the creation of wealth through monoculture, but a complex of interlocking specialised activities requiring sophisticated markets of exchange and urban centres for its support, and a flourishing group of skilled craftsmen. The reorganization of local government by Kleis-thenes of Athens at the end of the sixth century (below p. 275) was based on population size, and shows how the population of Attica was distributed before the great changes of the fifth century, with the exploitation of the silver mines of Laurion, the creation of an urban proletariat dependent on empire and the development of the Piraeus as a major naval and trading port. The membership distribution of the new Council shows that the population was divided roughly equally between three groups, the city itself, the lowland agricultural plains of the Pedion, the Mesogeia, Marathon and Eleusis, and the uplands. What is especially surprising is that many of the upland townships had a population greater than the settlements of coast and plain; the largest town of all outside Athens, three times the size of the Piraeus, was Acharnai in upland marginal country, famous for its great numbers of hoplites and its wealth derived from charcoal burning. Other major settlements were Rhamnous and Aphidna in shepherd country and Phrearrhioi in the Sounion peninsula. This population distribution reflects the diversity of sources of wealth available in the agrarian economy of Attica, centred on Athens, whose early growth must be explained, not by any natural advantage as a port or power centre, but as the essential focus of an agrarian distribution and exchange network. With due allowance for differences in size and terrain the conclusions reached for Attica will hold also for other cities and their surrounding territories.
Craftsmanship retained the ambivalent status it had possessed in the Homeric world. It was ‘banausic’, degrading as a physical activity, and yet the skills involved were still principally at the service of the aristocracy. Craftsmen were peculiarly open to economic pressures and incentives: already Hesiod records a proverb, ‘potter competes with potter’ (Works and Days 25), and Aristotle later asserted that ‘the majority of artisans are rich’ (Politics 3.1278a). In fact both wealth and pride in their skills are attested by the artists’ signatures of the archaic period. The earliest of these is a late seventh century statue base for a kouros set up on Apollo’s island of Delos: ‘Euthykartides the Naxian made and dedicated me’ (Inscriptions de Délos no. 1). In the sixth century, sculptors’ inscriptions are relatively common, and from about 570 onwards Attic potters and painters also often sign their vases: ‘Sophilos painted’, ‘Sophilos made’ (the earliest), ‘Exekias painted and made me’ – there was even rivalry: ‘as never Euphronios’, claims one vase of Euthymides. Three Attic potters were both wealthy enough to dedicate important sculptures on the Acropolis, and proud enough of their craft to proclaim it in the accompanying inscriptions (pl. 7a). Yet craftsmanship never became socially respectable, as Herodotus recognized in citing the exceptional case of Corinth (p. 147).
Trade was different. The distinction between long-distance and short-haul trading has already been made, and there is good evidence that the (aristocratic) governments of some cities continued to show interest in larger scale trading activities throughout the archaic period. The wealth of Corinth was mainly based on trade, particularly in the wake of the western colonial expansion: it is hard to understand her colonial and foreign policy without assuming the existence of a leadership fully conscious of the importance of trading links (p. 150). Milesian colonization in the Black Sea and the group of Phocaean colonies in the far western Mediterranean, from Marseilles to northern Spain, are other obvious examples of the close relationship between political and trading interests.
There is less evidence for the activity of Aegina, Corinth’s main trading rival in the archaic period, because the Aeginetans made no fine pottery for export. Nevertheless the fact that such a small and markedly infertile island was one of the richest and most powerful cities of the time gives some measure of the importance of trade to her economy. Until the building of the new Athenian navy in the Persian Wars, the Aeginetan navy was the second largest in mainland Greece: about 490 she could muster 70 ships against Athens (perhaps not all triremes), and she contributed 30 front-line ships to the battle of Salamis, leaving the less modern vessels to guard her shores. This last contingent implies 6000 rowers, and suggests that the total male population of fighting age must have been at least equal to the total overall population of the island in the first half of this century (about 9000). Aegina was certainly involved in the corn trade with Egypt; she was probably also a major distributor of Attic Black and Red Figure pottery, and this in turn suggests that other long-distance trade with Attica may have been in the hands of Aeginetans. In his account of the colonization of Cyrene (p. 118), Herodotus mentions Kolaios of Samos who helped the settlers: he had been on the regular run to Egypt when he was blown off course to the island where they had left one of their number. The Samians gave this man provisions,
and putting off from the island resumed their voyage to Egypt, but they were carried away by an east wind; and it did not let up until they had been blown through the Pillars of Herakles (Gibraltar) and landed up at Tartessos, to their great good fortune. For this trading post was untouched at the time, so that on their return they made the greatest profit of any Greeks certainly known to me from their trading – with the exception of course of Sostratos son of Laodamas the Aeginetan; for no one can compare with him.
(Herodotus 4.152)
It has usually been assumed that Sostratos was a similar merchant adventurer opening up a new market; but new evidence suggests that he represents a more developed type of trading activity. An inscription found in 1970 at Gravisca, port of Etruscan Tarquinia, reads:
‘I am of Aeginetan Apollo; Sostratos had me made, son of [?]’.
The script is Aeginetan, probably of the late sixth century; it is likely enough that the Sostratos of this inscription is either the same man as Herodotus’ millionaire, or at least belonged to the same family (grandson perhaps). Moreover the commonest mercantile mark on the base of Attic Black Figure pottery, found on nearly a hundred vases, consists of the letters SO; all these vases whose origin is known come from Etruria, and their chronological range is 535–50
5. Sostratos then, the richest trader in Greece, was no lone adventurer, but either the founder of a trading house or the most successful of that large group of merchants who were providing the Etruscan market with Greek luxury goods by the end of the sixth century. Such men were apparently welcomed by the aristocracy throughout Greece: Pindar was happiest writing for Aeginetans, and he knew well enough the source of their wealth:
On every merchantman, in every skiff
go, sweet song, from Aegina
and spread the news that Lampon’s son,
Pytheas, sturdy and strong,
has won the wreath for All Strength in the Nemean Games
(Nemean 5.3–9)
His Aeginetan odes are full of sea-faring references appropriate to ‘long-oared Aegina’ (Olympian 8.21).
The various attempts on the part of Athens to escape the naval supremacy of Aegina have an economic origin. The Peisistratid tyranny may have been friendly to Aegina; but shortly after its fall there began a series of wars, in which Corinth supported Athens (Herodotus 5.7–90; 6.49ff; 6.8ff): finally about 483, Themistokles persuaded the Athenians to build the largest fleet that Greece has ever seen, specifically for use against Aegina. ‘It was the war with Aegina that saved Greece, for it compelled the Athenians to become a naval power’ (Herodotus 7.144). The rivalry continued after the Persian Wars until Athens forced Aegina into her empire in the mid fifth century.
In most cities however trade would not have directly concerned the aristocratic government except as recipients of its products; it is clear that much of the movement of goods around the Mediterranean area is the result of the initiative of a professional class of traders. The institutions protecting and controlling this class were remarkably highly developed, as is shown by a business letter of apparently about 500 BC, written on lead and found on the island of Berezan (Russia) in the Black Sea in 1970, near the Milesian colony of Olbia:
Back This lead belongs to Achillodoros; addressed to his son and to Anaxagores.
Front O Protagores, your father writes to you. He is wronged by Matasys, for he (Matasys) enslaves him (Achillodoros) and has deprived him of his cargo (?). Go to Anaxagores and inform him: for he (Matasys) says that he (Achillodoros) is a slave of Anaxagores, alleging ‘Anaxagores holds my property, both male slaves and female slaves and houses’; but he (Achillodoros) cries out and says there is nothing between himself and Matasys, and says that he is a free man and there is nothing between himself and Matasys; but if there is anything between him (Matasys) and Anaxagores, they themselves know about it between themselves. Say this to Anaxagores and to the wife (whose?). He (Achillodoros) writes these others things to you: your mother and your brothers, if they are among the Arbinatai, bring them into the city; and the ship’s officer (? or a personal name), having gone to him (? Anaxagores) will go down to Thyora (?).
(Y. G. Vinogradoff, Vestnik Drevnei Istorii 1971
fasc.4 pp. 74–100)
Many details of Achillodoros’ letter are unclear; but it seems that Anaxagores has seized Matasys’ property, and Matasys has countered by seizing Achillodoros and his cargo, alleging that he is a slave and the property of Anaxagores; this Achillodoros denies. Both seizures appear to be in some sense legal acts rather than wholly arbitrary; they are probably an accepted form of redress in disputes between parties who belong to different communities; the unfortunate Achillodoros is caught in the middle, though he may in fact be an agent for Anaxagores. It is situations such as this which gave rise to general treaties between cities laying down the procedure in ‘actions resulting from agreements’ (dikai apo symbolōn), which were already well established in the fifth century.
At the other end of the Mediterranean, some two thousand miles away by sea, similar trading documents have been found, at the trading-post of Emporion in northern Spain, and further north where Greek merchants made contact with Iberian natives in southern France. One lead tablet from Pech-Maho on the French Languedoc coast illustrates the complex nature of ancient trade. On one side is a contract written in Etruscan, on the other one in Ionic Greek. This second records barges coming from Emporion in which a Greek called Heronoiios has a half share to the value of ‘two eights and a half’, of which ‘two sixes and a half’ have already been paid ‘on the river … where the barges are usually moored’. The document is drawn up according to Greek practice, but the witnesses have strange Iberian names – Basigerros, Bleruas, Golobiur and Sedegon. The trade is almost certainly in wine (mentioned in other documents), destined for the inland tribes of France. The cosmopolitan Ionian and Etruscan traders of the Mediterranean were the catalyst for a process known as acculturation, as the northern tribes voluntarily changed their lifestyles under the influence of the more sophisticated cultures of the south. Gradually a native tribal elite emerged, and a barter economy in slaves, wine, and metals developed as far north as central Gaul, and even beyond in the search for amber to Denmark and the shores of the Baltic.
Where trade was regular, this resulted in the establishment of trading posts (the emporion), permanent communities of resident Greeks often from different cities, dependent usually on the goodwill of the local inhabitants, and differing from the colony in their lack of official attachment to a founding city. The emporion seems characteristically either to have been established on the borders of an area of civilization, like the Levantine coast, Etruria or Egypt, or to represent the closest point to an important source of raw materials. Settlements such as Al Mina and Pithecusae are early examples; Spina in the Po Delta, founded about 520, was primarily Greek but had an Etruscan element in the population. The excavations since 1969 at Gravisca have revealed a different balance – a Greek community possessing its own religious sanctuary on the fringes of an Etruscan settlement. The Greek presence began in the late seventh century and coincided with the sudden Hellenization of many aspects of the life of Tarquinia; from about 580 comes the earliest evidence for regular Greek shrines, with sacrificial debris and dedications: script, dialect and pottery suggest strong east Greek influence. Various different gods were worshipped – Aphrodite, Hera, Demeter and Apollo; the dedication to Aphrodite of models of parts of the female anatomy shows that women were present in the community. It is likely enough that if there was any political organization for Greeks, it was centred on these shrines which perhaps belonged to merchants from different cities.
This was certainly the pattern of Naucratis in Egypt, the most important and the best documented of the archaic emporia or ports of trade. The Odyssey already contains a number of specific passages, which suggest that contact with Egypt was beginning again after the Dark Age; the most revealing of these is Odysseus’ alleged pirate raid on the Egyptian coast (14.245ff; see p. 51): such piracy must often have been the prelude to more peaceful contacts. But most Egyptian objects found on Greek sites before the mid seventh century (for instance those at Pithecusae) had probably passed through Phoenician intermediaries. The earliest evidence for direct relations with Egypt comes from the Egyptian bronze objects found on Crete and Samos; Crete is the natural staging post for an Egyptian voyage, and the Samian Kolaios, who was so fortunately blown off course about 640, was on an established run to Egypt. Serious trading relations with Egypt in fact began with the foundation of the Saite dynasty of Psammetichos I (Psamtik, 664–610); by the reign of Amasis (570–26), this trade was sufficiently important to attract royal control. The Greek town of Naucratis is about 50 miles inland on the Canopic branch of the Nile, and only 10 miles from the royal capital of Sais; Herodotus visited it and describes its history:
Amasis was a friend of the Greeks and benefited them in various ways; in particular he gave those who came to Egypt the city of Naucratis to inhabit: to those who did not wish to stay permanently but merely to make voyages there, he gave land to set up altars and temples to the gods. The largest of these temples, the best known and the most used is called the Hellenion, set up in common by the following cities: of the Ionians, Chios, Teos, Phocaea, and Clazom
enae; of the Dorians, Rhodes, Cnidos, Halicarnassos and Phaselis; and of the Aeolians only the Mytileneans. The temple belongs to them, and it is these cities who provide the overseers of the trading post; any other cities that make a claim to do so, make a claim without rights. The Aeginetans established a temple of Zeus on their own, the Samians one of Hera, and the Milesians one of Apollo. Naucratis was in the old days the only trading post, and there was no other in Egypt. If anyone put in at any of the other mouths of the Nile he had to swear that he had done so of necessity, and after his oath sail in the same ship to the Canopic mouth; if he were unable to sail because of adverse winds, he had to carry his cargo in barges round the Delta until he arrived at Naucratis. Such was the privileged position of Naucratis.
