Download ATHENS WORLD ERAS VOL. 6: CLASSICAL GREEK CIVILIZATION

A Boeotian terracotta of a plowman with his horses (Musee du Louvre, Paris, France)
at least some land distribution. It is also possible that the
liberation of the sharecroppers from debt-bondage automatically brought about their transformation into small
farmers, but evidence for this is lacking.
Other Opportunities. A third possibility is that under
Solon's new order landless farmers could turn to work in
the metropolis, as craftsmen, small businessmen, and
shopkeepers. That Solon's reforms opened up avenues to
non-agricultural employment is supported by the fact that
laborers and craftsmen of various kinds obviously found
employment in the great building and improvement programs initiated by the tyrants.
Sources:
Antony Andrewes, The Greeks (New York: Knopf, 1967).
M. M. Austin and P. Vidal-Naquet, Economic and Social History of Ancient
Greece: An Introduction, translated by Austin (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977).
Nicholas F. Jones, Ancient Greece: State and Society (Upper Saddle River,
N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1997).
Anthony M. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (London:
Dent, 1980).
ATHENS
Archaic Period. In Athens during the Archaic Period
(700-480 B.C.E.), Solon divided the Athenians according
to their income, while at the end of the sixth century
another legislator, Cleisthenes, divided them according to
their places of residence. Villages and hamlets became the
basic unit of the state, and Cleisthenes created ten separate
bodies of people, or "tribes." In the course of the sixth century some rules were established as to which Solonian
income class could hold what public office, while the new
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Cleisthenic system made the selection of individuals
orderly. As might be expected, the most important offices
were reserved for the highest income class; lesser offices
were filled by the next two income classes. No office carried
pay. The lowest class could only sit in the assembly and
serve as jurors in the courts. All four classes had the right to
appeal to a court of last resort instituted by Solon. These
measures affected only the citizens.
Classical Period. The social classes into which the residents of Athens and Attica were divided in the Classical
Period (480-323 B.C.E.) were three: citizens, metics, and
slaves. The political and legal rights and the social status of
these groups did not coincide. Only the citizens, who
throughout the Classical Period constituted a homogenous
group, had full rights, including the right to own land. It is
estimated that at the end of the fifth century, three-fourths
of the citizens of Athens owned land in some form or
another. Until the beginning of the Second Peloponnesian
War in 431 B.C.E., the political leaders of Athens were
landowners. During the war men who had made money in
trade and manufacture began to rise to power, but owning
land continued to carry prestige, and commercial nouveaux
riches met with criticism and ridicule, examples of which
are found in the comedies of the era.
Land Ownership. As at Sparta, the question of the
inalienability of land is difficult to decide. It probably
could be bought and sold in the fifth century; certainly it
was possible to do so in the fourth century. However, real
estate was not commercialized as it is in the modern
world. Mortgage was regarded as a bad thing and was
used only in emergencies. It does not seem to have been
WORLD ERAS VOL. 6: CLASSICAL GREEK CIVILIZATION
used to raise money for other purposes; for example, to
invest in business.
Agriculture. The basis of the Athenian economy in the
fifth and fourth century remained farming. Much of it was
subsistence farming rather than market farming, since only
the farmers in the neighborhood of Athens could bring
their produce to market in the city; even there most of the
activity was exchanges in kind, rather than for cash. Some
"heavy industry" in the form of mining also existed. The
state leased the silver mines at Laurium to private entrepreneurs, who were generally citizens, for exploitation. Other
citizens are known to have owned factories. The father of
the orator and politician Demosthenes owned two enterprises, which might be described as "large-scale industry,"
one manufacturing beds and employing twenty slave carpenters, and another, a cutlery, employing thirty workers.
Citizens also worked in such professions as lawyers, architects, and sculptors; the citizens at the bottom of the social
scale were employed in various trades, such as carpenters,
painters, sawyers, masons, blacksmiths, and sailors.
Metics. Resident aliens residing in Athens were known
as meticsy which means "those who have changed their place
of residence." Solon encouraged the immigration to Athens
of citizens of other Greek states as a way to increase trade
and manufacture. The foreigners who established themselves as tradesmen and craftsmen in Athens in the course
of the sixth and fifth centuries certainly did invigorate the
Athenian economy with their skills and talents. The metics
in the fifth century were mostly Greeks; in the fourth century a great variety of nationalities was represented among
them: Thracians, Lydians, Carians, Phoenicians, and
Egyptians lived and worked in Athens. Toward the end of
the fourth century the metic population was probably about
one-half that of the citizens. The institution was not peculiar to Athens; metics lived in many other Greek cities.
Origins. The attitude toward land and farming no
doubt had something to do with the origins of this class.
Historically, agriculture was the earlier economic activity;
custom and tradition kept it in the hands of citizens. Along
with this attitude went the low opinion that citizens had of
what they regarded as demeaning work, which included
almost all occupations except agriculture. Once the metic
system was established, it was found to provide in the persons of the foreigners a reliable class of people who would
do what the full citizens refused to do. The metic system,
in other words, ensured the presence of a population that
could take care of the economic life of the state.
Occupations. Since they could not own land, the metics
naturally turned to those economic activities that were
open to them: manufacture, commerce, and banking. Most
of the small businessmen in Athens and Attica were metics. Many metics also worked as skilled journeymen and
artisans, and some were extremely successful. In the largest
manufacturing enterprise known to have existed in Classical Athens, the metic family of Cephalus owned an arms
factory employing 120 slave workmen, who made shields.
SOCIAL CLASS SYSTEM AND THE ECONOMY
Political Rights. The metics had no political rights and
no voice in the government of the state. They were not eligible to sit in the popular assembly, or the senate, of Athens, or hold any public office. They did enjoy the passive
protection of the laws, but at first could not sue or defend
themselves in person before the court. All metics were
required to have a guardian or patron who was a citizen,
and they depended on this patron to represent them in
court. The inability to appear personally in court fell into
abeyance early; already in the fifth century there were
instances of foreign residents engaged in litigation without
the interjection of a patron. The restriction, too, on metic
ownership of land was gradually eased until it became
merely theoretical.
Taxes. A metic's obligations were the payment of a special tax, which, at twelve drachmas for men and six drachmas for women, was low; another tax was imposed on them
for the privilege of trading in the marketplace. Deserving
metics could be granted an exemption from the annual
metic tax and so be put on the same level as the citizens,
who did not pay a tax on their persons, but only on their
property. In addition to these obligations, the metics were
also liable to the taxes and duties incumbent upon the citizens. They had to undertake the so-called liturgies, that is,
the financing and supervision of certain public activities,
such as paying the expenses for a warship and its crew, and
if qualified to do so, serving as the ship's captain. Like the
citizens, the metics served in the army and navy and were
subject to the payment of a special tax that was raised in
time of war or great emergencies.
Wealth. The basis of the metics' social position was
wealth; some were poor, while others were extremely rich.
Apart from some rare prejudice toward them motivated by
snobbery or xenophobia, the rich metics were accepted by
the citizens, and even by the aristocrats among them, as
their social equals. The sons of Cephalus were counted
among the wealthiest Athenians, belonging to the social
and intellectual elite.
Contributions. Although they were resented occasionally as upstarts, the metics were not regarded as economic
rivals of the citizens. On the contrary, their contributions
to the economic life and well-being of the state were welcomed by the citizens. The metics, for their part, accepted
the order under which they lived, for it enabled them to
live in peace and enjoy the material prosperity, power, and
prestige of Athens. Many of them became fully assimilated, and, as a whole, the metics never formed a separate,
much less a hostile, group against the citizens. In times of
internal conflict they favored the democracy against the
party of the oligarchs.
Slaves. A third legal class at Athens comprised the
slaves, both public and private. Although they were
legally property, like inanimate objects, slaves were
granted a certain protection of the laws. They could not
be beaten, wounded, or killed. Apart from that, slaves had
no legal personality; they could not go to law, and it was
up to their owners to protect them from injury. They
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A view of the northwestern side of the agora of ancient Athens (Photo: Ekdotike Athenon SA, Athens)
could testify in court, but their testimony was valid only if
given under torture. Like the metics, the slaves belonged
to different nationalities from various parts of the eastern
and northern neighbors of Greece such as Asia Minor,
Thrace, and Scythia, in present-day southern Russia.
There were also Greeks among them. Men became slaves
through war or through piracy, as prisoners who were
then sold into slavery. Women and children of towns and
cities captured by the enemy were regularly enslaved.
Given the frequency of warfare and the unsafe sea lanes,
anyone could become a slave. In fourth-century Athens
non-Greek slaves predominated.
Mining. Slaves did the same sort of work as the
members of the free workforce and were to be found in
every sector of economic life: in farming, commerce,
manufacture, domestic service, and in the navy, as oarsmen on the warships. Only mining was regarded as specifically slavish work, although occasionally freemen
worked in the silver and lead mines located at Laurium,
a district in southern Attica.
Working Conditions. The conditions in which
slaves lived and worked varied considerably. The type of
work that a slave did determined his social status and
his standard of living, in a manner similar to that of the
metics. At the bottom of the scale were the slaves working in the mines under harsh conditions in narrow tunnels, without much hope of gaining their freedom and
with a short life expectancy. As far as the rest of the
slaves were concerned, the differences between free and
slave labor were few. One difference was that the free
worked for themselves, while the slaves worked for
someone else, although here, too, there were exceptions. A second difference was that slave labor was more
likely to be employed in the larger "factories," and free
labor in the smaller, family businesses. On top of the
slave hierarchy stood the public slaves—scribes, secre-
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taries, and assistants working in the political, administrative, fiscal, and other committees that constituted
the large bureaucracy of democratic Athens. Another
group of public slaves formed the police force of Athens. The public slaves enjoyed a privileged position and
considerable personal freedom.
Pasion. Another privileged group consisted of slaves
who lived apart from their owners, with the consent of
the latter. These "separately domiciled" slaves worked
in all sorts of occupations as independent operators,
but on condition that they turned over a portion of
their earnings to their masters; by saving up some of
the rest of their income they could buy their freedom
and rise to the status of metics. The independently
working slaves did not differ much from the free artisans and craftsmen; there is even some reason for
thinking that they had some legal standing that
allowed them to seek the protection of the courts. A
slave could advance himself considerably. The banker
Pasion, for example, began his career as a slave in a
banking firm, then became a freedman, and eventually
an Athenian citizen. Pasion was the wealthiest banker
and manufacturer of his time, and at his death was a
multimillionaire in modern terms.
Erechtheum. Inscriptions on marble show that citizens,
metics, and slaves worked side by side as craftsmen and
laborers. In one instance an inscription records the trades,
social class, and pay of the workers completing the construction of the temple of Athena, known as the Erechtheum in the last decade of the fifth century. Much of the
temple still stands today on the Athenian Acropolis. Many
professions and trades are listed; among them are 2 architects and their secretary, 44 masons, 19 carpenters, 9 sculptors, 7 wood-carvers, 3 painters, a pair each of sawyers and
wax modellers, 1 joiner, lathe worker and gilder, and 7 men
whose trade is unknown. Of the total 107 workers, 24 were
WORLD ERAS VOL. 6: CLASSICAL GREEK CIVILIZATION
citizens, including the architects and their secretary, 42
were metics, and 20 were slaves. Sixteen slaves worked in
the specialized trades of masonry and carpentry; no slave
worked as a common laborer, while six freemen did. Later
sources add coppersmiths, engravers, wagon masters, drivers, ropemakers, weavers, and leather workers to the work
force on the Acropolis. On the whole these men did the
same kind of work and were paid the same wage. The only
distinctions made were that the architects and their secretary were under contract for one year and received a salary,
two distinct advantages. The rest of the workers, depending on the type of work they did, were paid either by the
day or by their production rate. Slaves also regularly served
in the navy of Athens as oarsmen, side by side with citizen
and metic shipmates; in fact, the majority of the rowers in
the warships were slaves.
scale, maintaining large war fleets, and waging war, all at
the same time.
Assimilation. Through the work that they did the slaves
of Athens became assimilated with the lower classes of the
free population. They did not constitute a separate social
class, nor did they compete with the citizens for employment. The modern view that slave labor made worse the
economic position of the free workers is mistaken.
Nowhere in the ancient sources is there any indication of
antagonism against slave workers; on the contrary, free
workers regarded the slaves as "working companions,"
rather than as economic rivals.
Rivals. The Athenians were not the only imperialists.
Other states also built empires, not for financial gain, but
for political and military reasons. The Spartans, for
instance, did not force the members of the Peloponnesian
League, of which they were the leaders, to pay tribute.
Nevertheless, the members of the League did contribute
some of their wealth by paying for the maintenance of the
military forces of the League. Corinth also practiced a form
of imperialism. She maintained links with her colonies,
requiring some of them to grant special privileges to the
mother city.
Slave Revolts. At the height of the Peloponnesian War
in 413 B.C.E., the Spartans blockaded Athens, and twenty
thousand slaves ran away. Many of them were probably
miners escaping their harsh working conditions. They fell
into the hands of the Boeotians, who sold them for a good
price. The deserters did not intend to start a slave war
against Athens. Apart from a few revolts by the helots at
Sparta, there were no slave uprisings of the kind that
occurred later in Roman Italy. The differences in nationality and in their social and economic circumstances prevented slaves in Greece from developing a class
consciousness and so from uniting to form a program of
common action.
Imperialism. For fifty years after the Persian Wars,
Athens was the most prosperous Greek state, mainly
because it was now an imperial power. The old belief that
war was a legitimate means of enriching oneself remained
alive, but in the Classical Period it took on the more subtle
form of imperialism, which may be defined as the imposition by a superior power of demands on others, in this case
demands for the payment of tribute. It had been agreed
originally that the moneys paid into the treasury on Delos
were to be used in prosecuting the war against Persia; however, it was probably inevitable that some of the tribute
from the dozens of city-states should eventually come to be
used for the benefit of Athens alone. The increase of Athens's wealth from this source explains how that country,
having only mediocre farmland and few natural resources
except silver, could become the wealthiest city-state in the
Greek world, building public buildings on a magnificent
SOCIAL CLASS SYSTEM AND THE ECONOMY
Plot Holders. No voice was raised in Athens to defend
the interests of the states subjected to Athenian rule. One
politician, Thucydides, the son of Milesias, raised the question of the tribute paid by the states for the construction of
new public buildings, but he did not really champion the
cause of the subject states. The Athenians were fully satisfied with the benefits from their empire; besides the financial benefit from the tribute, they held control of foreign
sources of various commodities. As virtual dictators over
their vassal states, the Athenians could confiscate allied
lands and settle on them as so-called plot holders. Having
such holdings in the Aegean region was not enough for
them; in 415 B.C.E. they began a war against Sicily for
more such free land.
Imports. In the Classical Era the chief concern of Athenian authorities was feeding the population, which was
large for its time, probably numbering around 250,000
people. During this period Athens regularly had to import
two-thirds of its grain from abroad. Its leaders accordingly
followed a policy of keeping the sea lanes open to grain cargoes bound for Athens and of controlling the Dardanelles,
the vital passage to the grain regions along the Black Sea.
Sicily, too, was a source; early in the Second Peloponnesian
War the Athenians sent warships to Sicily to intercept
grain transports sailing for the Peloponnese.
Timber. Athens kept control of the sea with her powerful navy, but the navy in turn stood in constant need of raw
materials with which to build new ships and maintain the
old. The greatest need was timber, the main sources of
which were the hinterlands of the Thracian coasts, southern Italy, and Sicily. In 465 B.C.E. Athens made an attempt
to establish a settlement in Thrace, with a view to obtaining timber there, but attacks upon the settlers by the native
tribes and opposition from the kings of Macedon frustrated
the operation. After another unsuccessful venture in 445
the Athenians turned to the west, making treaties with various Sicilian and south Italian towns. Two years later a colony was established at Thurii in south Italy. In 437 Athens
finally gained a foothold in Thrace with the foundation of
Amphipolis, but it lost the town in 424 to the Spartans.
Self-Sufficiency. Other commodities needed for both
military and civilian purposes also had to be imported
throughout the Classical Period. They included various
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metals, flax for sails, and pitch and ruddle (vermillion or
cinnabar) for the hulls. For these commodities, as well as
papyrus and leather, Athens had to rely entirely on
imports. Athens was self-sufficient only in honey, wine,
and olive oil; it also had natural resources of silver, marble, and potting clay.
Profits. The Athenians could not pay for all these
imports with money earned by export. Neither the export
of olive oil, Attic wine, nor manufactured goods was able to
generate substantial profits. In the fifth century Athens was
rich from the tribute paid by the subject states and could
pay for its imports. In the fourth century it had to rely on
the export of silver, taxation, and the revenue from duties
and tolls levied on the maritime traffic in its ports. Increasingly Athens also attracted visitors eager to participate in
her intellectual life, and also ordinary tourists, whose
money was beneficial to the economy.
Second Peloponnesian War. The major changes in the
wake of the Second Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.E.)
were political. Sparta replaced Athens as the dominant
power and was itself replaced by Thebes. Intermittent warfare continued down to 338, devastating fields and dislocating farmers. Farmers and veterans of the war sought
employment as mercenaries. The collapse of the Athenian
empire at the end of the fifth century added to the unemployment: the craftsmen, artists, and builders whom Athens had employed with the money extracted from the
empire sought work in more stable states in Asia or in Sicily and Italy. Colonization like that in the Archaic Period
could no longer provide a safety valve for overpopulation.
Lean Times. In Athens itself there was a certain physical recovery from the devastation of the countryside during
the long Peloponnesian War. Nonetheless, the early fourth
century was a period of lean times financially, and for the
remainder of the century the Athenians were less prosperous than they had been during the days of their great
empire. The problems of the preceding era remained, but
in a more acute form, the overriding among them being the
need to feed a population that had decreased somewhat but
was poorer. A declining capacity to import grain and other
vital commodities, despite the organization of a new maritime league, meant that Athens no longer had the same
control of the sea as in the preceding century.
Survival. Despite these problems, there was no permanent crisis of the kind alleged by Marxist historians,
either in the farmlands or in urban society. No landgrabbing by big capitalist proprietors took place, either in
Attica or in Greece in general. Attica continued to be a
land of small estates, which on the whole managed to sustain themselves. On the "industrial" side there is some
evidence of an increase in entrepreneurial activity, chiefly
in the mining of silver.
Sources:
Antony Andrewes, The Greeks (New York: Knopf, 1967).
M. M. Austin and P. Vidal-Naquet, Economic and Social History of Ancient
Greece: An Introduction, translated by Austin (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977).
138
Moses I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1973).
Simon Hornblower, The Greek World 479-323 EC (London 6c New York:
Methuen, 1983).
Nicholas F. Jones, Ancient Greece: State and Society (Upper Saddle River,
N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1997).
Russell Meiggs, Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).
J. Perlin and Borimir Jordan, "Running Out: 4,200 Years of Wood Shortages," Co-Evolution Quarterly, 37 (1983): 18-25.
Anthony M. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (London:
Dent, 1980).
BOEOTIA
Cattle Lands. A region in central Greece bordering on
Attica, Boeotia was named after its large cattle pastures.
The area consisted of the two plains of Orchomenos and
Thebes, both of which were good wheat land. In the second half of the sixth century, a Boeotian League of many
small towns came into being and issued a common coinage.
In the Classical Period (480-323 B.C.E.) the number of cities and towns had shrunk to about a dozen, controlled in
varying degrees by the largest city, Thebes.
War Prosperity. On the whole the Boeotians were a
self-contained agricultural people who did not share the
overseas expansion of Greece. Boeotian farms were prosperous, and the land was regarded as rich. The Boeotians profited from the economic difficulties of Athens,
their neighbor to the southeast, during the Second
Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.E.), when the Spartans occupied the Attic plain, making it possible for
Athenian slaves to desert to Boeotia. The Boeotians
made money by selling the slaves; they also made
inroads into Attica, capturing quantities of military
equipment and looting the estates of the wealthier Athenians. The pillaged property, combined with a sound
agricultural economy and the acquisition of the city of
Plataea from Athens, created a considerable prosperity
and a rise in the population in the fourth century.
Source:
Simon Hornblower, The Greek World 479-323 BC (London & New York:
Methuen, 1983).
CLASSICAL PERIOD: ECONOMIC CRISIS
Food Supply. During the Classical Period (480-323
B.C.E.), the city-states were primarily centers of consumption, and the first task of their governments was to provide
their people with the commodities essential for survival,
imported grain being the most important of them. Athens
was not the only state in need of foreign grain; several other
states in Greece proper and in Ionia also had to rely on regular imports. Insofar as the city-states could be said to have
had an economic policy, that policy consisted in ensuring
the supply of food and finding the means to pay for it. The
solution of these two problems overrode all other economic
concerns; in effect, a state's economic policy was, in reality,
based upon imports, and its financial goals consisted in little more than the raising of taxes.
WORLD ERAS VOL. 6: CLASSICAL GREEK CIVILIZATION