Readings: Austin, chapter 4.
· The level of technology was much lower.
· Values developed that shaped the economy in unique ways.
· Scholars are still debating the nature of the ancient Greek economy.
· Lack of sources force scholars to employ qualitative methods of investigation.
· Few Greeks attempted what we would call sophisticated economic analysis.
· Nonetheless, the ancient Greeks did engage in economic activity.
· Most of our evidence for the ancient Greek economy concerns Athens in the Classical period and includes literary works.
· But the Egyptian papyri provide information about such things as taxes, government-controlled lands and labor, and the unique numismatic policies of the Ptolemies.
· Epigraphic evidence provides accounts for public building projects, leases of public lands or mines and accounts of taxes.
· Archaeological evidence: finds of pottery, hoarded coins, ancient shipwrecks.
· The most widely accepted model of the ancient Greek economy.
· Ancient Greek economy was fundamentally different from our market economy of today.
· Much smaller in scale, and different in quality.
· Oikonomia meant "household management," a familial activity that was subsumed or "embedded" in traditional social and political institutions.
· Economic activity was necessary in this system only in so far as the individual male citizen had to provide sustenance for himself and his family.
· This could be accomplished simply by farming a small plot of land.
· Beyond that, the male citizen was expected to devote himself to the wellbeing of the community.
· Ancient Greek values held in low esteem other economic activities.
· Manufacturing, business, and trade (not tied to the land and the family farm) considered :
o to be incompatible with active participation in the affairs of the polis
o and even as unnatural and morally corrupting.
· Production and exchange were to be undertaken only for personal need, to help out friends, or to benefit the community as a whole.
· Agriculture comprised the bulk of production and exchange.
· Cities were thus net consumers rather than producers.
· Manufacturing existed only on a small scale.
· Cities: mainly places for people to live as well as religious and governmental centers.
· Their contribution to the economy:
o to demand the surplus produce of the countryside,
o to manufacture limited amounts of goods,
o to provide market places and ports of trade for the exchange of goods.
· The most important economic sector tied to the land.
· Majority of agriculture carried out on the subsistence level by numerous small family farms.
· Primary crops: grains.
· Olives and grapes also widely produced.
· Sheep and goats.
· Agriculture precarious at best: competition for fertile land, cause of much social and political strife within and between city-states.
· Important place in the economy.
· Ancient Greeks typically used bronze and iron tools and weapons.
· Bronze and copper imported from the island of Cyprus.
· Tin imported from as far away as Britain.
· Iron relatively plentiful throughout Greece.
· Though productive in silver, ancient Greece was not as rich in gold, which was found primarily in Thrace.
· Difficult to estimate the population of Athens or any other Greek city-state in ancient times.
· Athens in 431 BC: approximately 305,000 people, including:
o 160,000 citizens,
o 25,000 free resident foreigners (metics),
o and 120,000 slaves.
· Most city-states were probably much smaller.
· Citizens, metics, and slaves all performed labor in the economy.
· About a quarter of the male citizens did not own land and had to take up other occupations for their livelihoods (manufacturing, service, retail, and trade sectors).
· These "business" occupations socially disesteemed, and small scale.
· The typical wage for a skilled laborer: one drachma per day (5th century).
· Slaves comprised an undeniably large part of the labor force of ancient Greece.
· A "slave dependent society" (Finley).
· Availability of cheap slaves: major factor in Greek attitudes toward labor.
· Technology and industrial organization stagnated in ancient Greece because of the availability of cheap slave labor.
· Thus, most manufactured products were literally hand-made with simple tools.
· No assembly lines and no big factories.
· The largest manufacturing establishment known: 120 slaves.
· Most manufacturing was carried out in small shops or within households.
· Manufacturing comprised a small part of the ancient Greek economy.
· Much specialization in manufacturing (pottery, wool, wood, buildings, metal crafts) but the scale and organization far cry from those of recent industrialized civilizations.
· Long-distance trade over land was difficult (mountainous topography).
· It was primarily done by merchant ships (specialized and important sector of the economy).
· Trade was carried out by private individuals and not organized by the state.
· Luxury goods, manufactured items (fine pottery) and specialty agricultural products (fine wine).
· Necessities also traded (grain, metals, timber, wine, and slaves).
· Thoroughly monetized economy.
· Coinage value based on precious metals (silver).
· The value of the metal was guaranteed by its issuing state.
· Limited ability of governments to influence their economies through the manipulation of their money supplies.
· Variety of denominations and weight standards.
· The most important during the classical time: the Attic (silver tetradrachm of 17.2 grams).
· Most city-states' coinages circulated only locally.
· Alexander's conquests had four major effects on the economy.
· It released a large quantity of silver and gold from the treasuries of Persia.
· Peace between cities: removal of some of the obstructions to mutual trade.
· Adoption of the Attic standard for gold and silver (needs of money-changing thus greatly reduced).
· The extension of empire meant an extension of trade routes: China, East Africa, Arabia, and India became more easily accessible than before.
· The Egyptian trade was mainly by sea: port of Berenice on the Red Sea; Alexandria on the Mediterranean.
· The Egyptians also had an eye to the land routes.
· They wanted to command the Phoenician ports (terminus of land route).
· The key point for Seleucid trade was Seleucia on the Tigris.
· From there, route to Antioch on the Orontes, and three routes to India, two by land and one by sea.
· The caravan cities, such as Petra and Palmyra flourished on the trade.
· The Chinese exported silk and other textiles, bamboo, and iron and imported vines and other trees and plants, as well as wine, olives, woolen goods, and artwork.
· The economy of mainland Greece declined during the Hellenistic age.
· Poverty, unemployment, falling wages, depopulation, and emigration.
· Land neglected, and smallholdings swallowed up in large estates.
· The Athenian silver mines at Laurium were depleted.
· Demand for fine painted pottery had ceased.
· Athenian wine was of poor quality.
· Olive oil, however, continued to command a market.
· The centres of Hellenic prosperity shifted from Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and Argos to Alexandria, Rhodes, Pergamum, and Antioch.
· Metals ranked highest in importance:
o Silver from Spain.
o Copper from Cyprus.
o Iron from the Black Sea coast.
o Tin from Cornwall.
· Grain came from Egypt, North Africa, the Crimea, and perhaps Babylonia.
· Specialization:
o Athens: honey, olive oil.
o Byzantium: fish.
o Jericho: dates.
o Damascus: prunes.
o Textiles: linen from Egypt, a kind of silk from Tyre, true silk from China, woolen goods from Miletus.
o Timber from Asia Minor and the north.
· The customs revenue of Rhodes in about 170 BC was five times that of Athens in 400, with almost certainly the identical rate of 2 percent.
· The Hellenistic world operated in a totally different dimension.
· Significant innovations in some places and sectors (fusion of Greek notions of the economy with those of the natives).
· Increased government control over the economy (papyrus records).
· A large percentage of the land controlled by the Greek royal dynasties.
· They instituted an official planting schedule for various crops.
· Almost all produce was turned over to the government and redistributed for sale to the population.
· The Ptolemaic state also involved itself in various manufacturing processes.
· But no intention to improve efficiency or to provide better quality at lower prices to its citizens.
· The goal of the government seems to have been to protect the profits of its state-run business.
· But the Ptolemaic government did not assemble a state merchant fleet (private traders instead).
· Those private traders also imported the few goods that Egypt needed from abroad.
· But for the most part, the economy of Egypt was a closed one.
· Coins: lighter standard than the Attic one.
· In 285, the Ptolemies barred the use of foreign coins in Egypt.
· Egypt did not produce silver and had chronic shortages of silver coins for daily transactions.
· Many exchanges performed in kind rather than in cash.
· The general scale of economic activities increased as large kingdoms of the Near East and the Greek mainland and islands became more interconnected.
· Increase of specialization.
· Thousands of amphorae reveal a very high volume of pottery production.
· From the study of these amphorae we will learn more detail about the economy (agricultural production, land tenure, and trade patterns).
· Some new technologies did have an impact on the economy.
· Archimedes' screw-like pump was used to remove water from mines and to improve irrigation for agriculture.
· New varieties of wheat, increased use of iron ploughs, better grape and olive presses.
· Unfortunately, some of the most impressive technological innovations of the Hellenistic period were never applied in any significant way (Heron's steam engine).
· Thus, most production continued to be low tech and labor intensive.
· Technology was not applied as much as it might have been to increase production.
· Overall, the ancient Greek economy was very different from our own.
· It was much smaller in scale and differed in quality as well.
· It generally lacked the productive growth mentality and the interconnected markets of our time.