THE STRUGGLE OVER PRICES AND CONDITIONS OF PRICE FORMATION IN CLASSICAL ATHENS

Armin Eich

University of Wuppertal

1.) Introduction＊* The author is indebted to Sven Günther and Dorothea Rhode for valuable comments. All remaining errors and erroneous assumptions are my own.

Price movements were a phenomenon of existential importance in all historical societies that developed some form of monetary economy. So they are today in many parts of the world. Because the vital significance of prices for basic commodities was well known to political decision-makers from antiquity until the onset of the liberal age, interventions into price formation processes were practiced in nearly every state and epoch, ancient Greece and especially classical Athens forming no exception. Notwithstanding these governmental interventions, however, it must be assumed that - given the fact that public welfare was mostly absent or, at best, rudimentary - price movements entailed generally high levels of stress in premodern societies. Of course, this applies especially to times of crises. As crises, however, were not a rare phenomenon1Even if the crisis factor is left out of account, there can be no doubt that substantial price oscillations occurred frequently on ancient markets, as was recently emphasized by Dominic Rathbone and Sitta von Reden (2015, 170): “We can observe (…) that massive deviations from normal price levels were frequent, both within and between regional economies (…).”in antiquity and could be triggered (among other things) by military activities, which were endemic in the ancient world, bad weather, crop failures, diplomatic complications, pirate activities, or even the mere threat that these things might happen, using the phrase “in times of crisis” with regard to ancient Athens is nearly equivalent to saying “almost all the time.”

As, however, every intervention in price formation furthers the interests of some people and hurts those of others, interferences with free price formation can be expected to have been in many cases conflictual. Hence, the relevant debates, policies and interferences of various types are understood in this paper as part of a struggle between conflicting interests within Attic society. However, for whatever reason (perhaps because of the triviality of the phenomenon or the reluctance of the elite to publicly emphasize their profit-interests), the struggle over prices was, as a rule, not subject to systematic reflection or to much explicit debate. As a consequence, much information can only be obtained implicitly, with the result that many sources have to be examined with a view to what the originators of the texts did not (or not principally) intend to tell their readers.

It is the main purpose of this paper to uncover how, in what forms and through which institutions these conflicting interests found their expression. As the variety of the relevant material is immense, only a few case studies can be offered, which are, however, selected with a view to cover a broad range of aspects. The study will proceed from the more obvious cases to the rather difficult ones.

In some cases, Athenian interventions into price formation were clear-cut (but not necessarily uncontroversial) affairs where the actors, aims and circumstances can be described and analyzed in a manner compatible, to a fair degree, with scholarly consensus. For the sake of illustration and without any claim to being exhaustive, examples of this type of intervention are given in the second section of this paper.

Things become more complicated, however, when we (in sections three to five) look at institutionalized actions and behavior patterns not explicitly devised to have a primary effect on prices, but that nevertheless did have effects of this kind, be it intentionally or not.2As critical discussions on an earlier version of this paper made clear, some further remarks about the approach taken here are indispensable. First, my subject is, as has been pointed out, the struggle over prices in classical Athens. The term “struggle” is used in its broad sense referring to all kinds of conflictual behavior as for instance the promotion of laws to the detriment of special interests, constant public denigration of members of certain professions, the use of the judicial system against people with interests different from one’s own and so on. Sources are discussed with this subject in mind; a comprehensive overview over all aspects of the relevant texts (which would take a voluminous book to write) cannot be given here. Second, due to the elusiveness and rhapsodic character of our sources, the presentation offered here also looks somewhat rhapsodic and disconnected. This arrangement was intentionally chosen because the evidence allows only for some glimpses into a phenomenon about which our knowledge is very limited.The terms “institution,” “institutionalized” vel sim. are used here in a broad sense akin to the usage of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) (“humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction”),3North 1994, 360. Apart from the somewhat analogous understanding of institutions, no use is made here of the theoretical framework of the NIE (which are focused on the question as to whether specific institutions were conducive to economic growth or not, whereas my focus is on manifestations of a deeply rooted and often latent social struggle).including routine decision making, structures of communication, stereotyped collective behavior and its effects.

In detail, in section three, the famous speech of Lysias Against the Grain Dealers (22) and other rhetorical texts are analyzed as evidence for a type of heavy pressure exerted by the judicial apparatus on weaker members of the supply chain in the Attic grain trade.

Section four is dedicated to a very different kind of “political” pressure on market participants, focusing on how group-focused enmity (as expressed in theatre performances) against members of certain trades might have influenced the market conduct of the targeted professional groups.

Section five is focused on the difficult question of how dividing lines between groups with divergent interests shifted over short intervals of time. In other words, it is assumed that economically defined classes may redirect their interests quickly due to changes of circumstances. The section concentrates on the provision of the so-called Grain Tax Law (374/373 BC) in which the demos is given the right to fix the retail prices of the cleruchic grain from Lemnos, Imbros and Skyros. Although we have no evidence with regard to how the decisionmaking processes in this or similar cases actually looked, some (admittedly theoretical) thought is given to the problem of which conflicting interests were at work in the assembly when the time came to effectively fix a retail price.

Section six is dedicated to structural conditions affecting wealth distribution, it being understood that patterns of wealth distribution in a given society have a heavy impact on price formation. In modern industrial societies wealth distribution is subject to conscious “economic engineering,” illustrated, for instance, by the way fresh money is injected into circulation. In ancient societies, however, complex theories on how purchasing power (and therefore prices) would be affected by the issuing or redistribution of money did not exist. But some texts betray a semiconscious awareness of the interplay of the factors evoked (wealth distribution, money circulation, effects on prices). For the illustration of this, some passages of Aristophanes are singled out.

2.) Regular Interventions into the Price Formation Process

A range of different forms of intervention into the price formation process evolved from the sixth to the fourth century. As it is hardly ever possible to say when an institution precisely came into use, no chronological order is sought. The following list gives (without any claim to being complete) a brief overview of price-influencing measures attested in the sources for the classical and early Hellenistic eras.4For a brief overview over the historical development of the “policies of grain supply,” see Descat 2003.

An important form of indirect price subsidizing was the military escorting of grain convoys or, more generally, the use of military force to ensure the security of sea routes.5On the commonness of σίτου παραπομπαί, see Ormerod 1924, 118, n. 3; also Garnsey 1988; Whitby 1998; De Souza 1999; Burke 2010.This implies the state taking on considerable protection costs6The classical treatment of the subject is Lane 1979.which (as far as we know) were not passed on to consumers. This type of policy was practiced on a massive scale by Athens7See the paper of D. Rohde in this volume.(but many smaller poleis also protected their corn imports8Cf. the episode narrated by Polyaen. 5.13.1.militarily).9That Athens was far from being the only polis in classical Greece that depended on major imports of grain is plausibly argued by Ober 2010, 254; 2015, 87.Another important type of government action Athens resorted to in order to keep price movements under control was the establishment of special diplomatic relations with grain exporting states in order to get privileged access to local markets at times when demand exceeded supply.10Bresson 2011, esp. 77-79; Garnsey 1988, 123-127.Other subjects of agreements facilitating trade and therefore likely to produce dampening effects on prices typically included the installation and reciprocal recognition of special maritime courts (prominent in Attic sources)11Cohen 1972.or the mutual renunciation of practicing sylan against citizens of the contracting parties.12Bravo 1980; Gauthier 1972, 209-284.Furthermore, Athens was in a position, at the time it headed an empire or profited from its dominant position in the eighty years or so during the aftermath of empire,13A couple of examples in Bresson 2011.to impose regulations on or to negotiate agreements with other states that benefited Athenian imports (for instance the decrees for Chalcis, that exempted merchants going to Athens from paying taxes at Chalcis,14IG I3 40; see Pébarthe 2005.or the “Phaselitan decree,” which modified an older agreement between Phaselis and Athens to the effect that merchants who, on their way to Athens, called at the Phaselitan port could not be tried for any presumed breach of contract or other wrongdoings elsewhere than in Athens15In the 460s BC: IG I3 10; cf. Pébarthe 2007.).

With regard to internal legislation, the most important instrument of price regulation, at least from the fourth century onwards, were agoranomic interventions into market operations16Comprehensive overview: Capdetrey and Hasenohr 2012.including the straightforward setting of prices for certain commodities,17Eich 2016, 236-237.the mediation between importers of grain and retail traders with regard to purchase prices18The responsible Athenian officials were called sitophylakes; for their function as mediators, see Bresson 2000.as well as the enforcement of defined profit margins throughout transaction chains (e.g. from wholesale to retail trade, from retailer to miller, from grain into flour, from flour into bread).19[Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 51.3.Additionally, presumably from the second half of the fourth century onwards, the so called sitonia, i.e., the setting up of public funds dedicated to buying grain (sitos demosios) on supra-regional markets, developed into a widespread institution.20Bresson 2008, 126-128, 181-189; Reger 1993, 300-334, esp. 326-328. Fantasia (2010) considers the Athenian policy of grano pubblico (according to Fantasia attested for the first time in the law of Agyrrhios 374/373 BC (SEG 48.96; 60.137)) to be the model for many Hellenistic poleis that strove to influence consumer prices by having recourse to the selling of budgetary grain (sitos demosios) on the local market in times of supply crises. For analogous measures in military contexts (4th century), see Günther 2016.Whereas the agoranomia and the sitonia were universal instruments in the world of Greek city states, further price influencing measures were available for a hegemonic city like Athens, as for instance the ban on financing cargoes of grain with destinations other than Athens21Ampolo 2010, 60; Figueira 1986, 150.or the sale of tributary grain at fixed prices in times of seasonal scarcity.22Migeotte 2010.

Every single type of intervention mentioned in the previous paragraphs implies some conflict of economic interest, if only because the (indirect) subsidizing of prices or the capping of profit margins had a negative impact on profit expectations of local producers and/or providers. Admittedly, there is not much explicit evidence for discontent, irritation or even resistance regarding the specific measures alluded to. However, the existence of a fundamental antagonism between the rich and the poor was assumed by many writers of the classical and Hellenistic ages. Nevertheless, topics that gave occasion to narrate how this basic conflict materialized in concrete struggles are only rarely addressed in the surviving sources. This is obviously partly due to accidents of transmission. For the sake of illustration, I refer to the Athenian “Methonedecrees” showing that the hegemonic city imposed import restrictions on her allies with the aim of increasing the quantity of grain destined for Athens. If the stele on which the decrees were inscribed had been lost we would know next to nothing about this policy today.23IG I3 61. Cf. Rubel 2001.Similarly, the overall picture of economic discourse in ancient Athens would be very different from that we are accustomed to if a corpus of speeches held at the regular assemblies peri sitou had survived.24Cf. [Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 43.4.In the rare event, however, that sources documenting conflicts over economic interests, especially prices, have survived, they betray a most intense level of bitterness. A couple of sources belonging to this category will be focused on in the next section.

3.) Using Court Procedures for Teaching Retail Traders Lessons about Consumer Prices

The most important source for the subject in hand is a well-known text, the speech Against the Grain Dealers written by Lysias in 387/386 BC for an anonymous plaintiff.25Seager 1966 and Gauthier 1981 remain fundamental; see also Figueira 1986.The speaker is evidently a man in fear for his life. A short time before the speech was delivered, a lynch mob had demanded that some grain dealers or sitopolai be delivered by the bouleutai for immediate execution, as suspicions had been raised that these men had conspired with the aim of circumventing profit-reducing regulations imposed on their trade. The pertinent laws prescribed strictly that each individual sitopoles was allowed to buy only a limited amount of grain from oversea-traders and to resell it on the market with a profit margin of one sixth at the most. They were not allowed to coordinate their businesses to the slightest degree. In spite of these clear requirements, during an earlier supply crisis an official (the sitophylax Anytos) charged with overviewing the transactions in the grain market had encouraged the sitopolai to stop outbidding each other, as their competitive attitude tended to drive grain prices higher, which fluctuated heavily at this time (winter 387/386 BC). This seems to have worked for a while, but as the sitopolai (allegedly) continued to cooperate beyond the term of office of Anytos rumours spread that the grain dealers were conspiring against the demos with an eye to furthering their profits. At this juncture the general mood became increasingly aggressive, and the demand was raised that the sitopolai be killed on the spot.

The accuser of Lysias 22 opposed this lynch law, whereupon the angry crowd turned against him as well. To calm the situation down and divert the public fury from him, the speaker himself brought the case against the sitopolai to court, implacably demanding the death sentence for all involved in the alleged unlawful speculation.

Several aspects deserve to be stressed with regard to the subject at hand. First, the accuser presupposes that the events and (alleged) deeds brought before the court were for all those involved a matter of life and death. Most importantly, citizens are said to have died as a result of the supposed villainy of the corn dealers.26Lys. 22.21. Cf. the panic of the Athenians in view of an imminent supply shortage described in [Dem.] Or. 50.4-6.In other words, the accuser assumes that when a high-price phase continued for long enough starvation became a real risk for some politai and their families, who could not afford to pay the prices for basic foodstuffs anymore and who had no access to favorable credits. One might suspect the speaker (who is obviously trying to induce the listeners to have pity on themselves) to exaggerate somewhat. To dismiss the assertions of Lysias, however, as pure invention is not advisable.27Whitby 1998, 119: “What counted overall were impressions, since a belief that grain was in short supply would escalate rapidly into reality (…).”It would be as if a contemporary plaintiff alleged in all seriousness that many people came to death due to a recent increase of, say, chocolate prices, an obviously ridiculous assertion not conducive to winning a lawsuit. It would have been equally absurd if Lysias played with the audience’s fears if there was no real danger, and experience, of starving. It is of course perfectly possible that the actual number of deaths in this particular crisis was very low. But the fears and anxieties of the audience were entirely real and these emotions generated hatred and fury. Moreover, one may imagine how the situation was for metoikoi, foreigners and slaves, when there was the real possibility that even politai would starve to death.

In situations like this, i.e., when the security of supply was endangered or was supposed to be endangered, the Athenians were habitually quick to call for or to impose the death penalty, as for instance in the case of Leocrates (who spread the - false - news in Rhodes that Athens had been captured by Macedonian troops, whereupon merchants present there cancelled their journeys to Athens and unloaded their cargoes).28Lycurg. 16-19.Also relevant are the cases of an anonymous businessman, son of an Athenian strategos, who, having borrowed a great deal of money ἐκ τοῦ ἐμπορίου, failed to deliver the appropriate securities to his creditors in time,29[Dem.] Or. 34.52.or of all those investors who dared to lend out capital for business journeys with a destination other than Athens.30See below, n. 40.

Secondly, the plaintiff concedes that there might be some truth in the assertion of the defendants that the responsible sitophylax had invited them to stop bidding against each other and act in concert for a while. Nonetheless, the logographos exhorts the audience not to listen to what the defendants might bring forward to justify their actions but to consider their own interest: “So, if you convict them, you will both do justice and buy your corn at a fairer price: otherwise, it will be dearer.”31Lys. 22.22 (trans. Lamb LCL). Aristoph. Eq. 1359-1360 shows that such a line of reasoning was fully established already in the second half of the fifth century.What is more, retail traders were, at least according to the speaker, quite often put to death. As a matter of fact, we cannot say what this means in actual figures, but from the speaker’s point of view this way of dealing with the sitopolai was indispensable, the interests of the corn dealers being entirely identical with that of the worst polemioi32Lys. 22.15.of Athens. The sitopolai were the foes of the Athenian people, and they were intra muros. “And thus at times, although there is peace, we are besieged by these men,” wrote Lysias.33Ibid.Killing some retail traders from time to time - or, at least, seriously threatening them with death - was a strong reminder to their surviving colleagues to purchase grain only in the prescribed quantities and to increase prices only within the limits set by the law. It was, however, also a signal sent to the naukleroi / emporoi or grain importers.34“This is, in fact, the purpose of the speaker: to reassure the emporoi by punishing the sitopolai.” (Figueira 1986, 169).In contrast to the appropriate attitude towards the corn dealers who from the speaker’s point of view had to be inevitably intimidated by the threat of severe punishment, the emporoi deserved pity and the gratitude of the people: pity, because the retail traders were (allegedly) in the habit of conspiring against the grain importers, thus artificially driving wholesale prices down; gratitude, because they strove (according to Lysias) to offer the Athenian consumers grain for a reasonable price in spite of the machinations of the sitopolai.35The speaker of the endeixis against Theokrines ([Dem.] Or. 58) argues along the same lines (11; 53-55). Moreover, we learn from this speech that it was a criminal offense “to lodge false denunciations against the emporoi.” Thus, people who lost a case against an emporos could be arrested immediately after the verdict against them was pronounced.Lysias forgets to mention that profit expectations of emporoi rose - in contrast to those of the sitopolai - dramatically in phases of high grain prices (according to an estimate of Alain Bresson from around 4,800 drachmas for a shipload of 3,000 medimnoi of grain in times of “normal” prices to some 37,000 drachmas when grain prices were three times higher than the “normal” price),36Bresson 2000a, 149. It should be stressed that Bresson’s figures are estimates based on a rough calculation intended to give an approximate idea of the orders of magnitude which were at stake. The approach has been criticized by Warnking (2017), who offers a refined database, which is, however, in my impression speculative.so that it would have been more appropriate to put the interests of the emporoi (instead of those of the sitopolai) on the same level with those of Athens’ enemies.

The obvious discrepancies between the respective treatments of the retail traders, against whom a deadly class hatred was stirred up, and the wholesale traders, in relation to whom a rather submissive attitude was recommended, can easily be explained by the varying degrees of substitutability and flexibility associated with the two respective trades. The Athenians, although constantly maintaining the threat of deadly violence against the sitopolai, could be nonetheless absolutely certain that there would be always enough men willing (or more precisely: forced by their economic circumstances) to take over the dangerous job - and to profit from its opportunities. But killing some emporoi or threatening them with death might deter other emporoi / naukleroi from calling at the Athenian port, at least for a while.

It should, however, be added that Lysias presents the dichotomy in a very pointed manner with the socially vulnerable retail traders on the one side and the relatively independent importers on the other. Things were, of course, not as easy as that (see below). Nonetheless, the speech gives an important insight into how brutally pressure was exerted on certain professional groups who had the bad luck to be easily substitutable.37It may possibly be argued that Lysias’ speech was delivered at the end of the Corinthian War, when the straits were blocked by the Lacedaemonians and the demoralized people may have overreacted to bad news from the marketplace. This may indeed have been the case, but nonetheless I strongly advocate in favour of taking Lysias’s words seriously. Not only had sitopolai been put to death in former crises, but even about the agoranomoi (meaning the sitophylakes) it is said: “(…) often (pollakis) you have been known to inflict the extreme penalty on those officials who were citizens.” (Lys. 22.16). More importantly, the speaker stresses the fact that the “attacks” of the sitopolai occur even in times of peace (εἰρήνης οὔσης).The text of Lysias’ speech leaves no doubt that price policies were a highly sensible affair in which a human life did not count for much. Small wonder, in a world in which social security was virtually nonexistent or, at best, existed in only a rudimentary form, so that, when monetary or food resources were exhausted, misery, indebtedness and probably death were at people’s doorstep.

Another source I would like to mention in this context is the speech Against Dionysodoros (from the Corpus Demosthenicum), delivered in Athens some fifty years after Lysias’s speech. I refer to this text to balance the idea of Lysias that in dealing with grain importers a submissive attitude should always be adopted. According to the plaintiff, his contracting partners Dionysodoros and Parmeniskos violated contractual arrangements, which obliged them to undertake a business journey to Alexandria, where they were expected to take on board grain as a return cargo to Athens. This agreement was made when prices in Athens were high. On his return journey Parmeniskos learned, while lying at anchor in the port of Rhodes, from his business partner that in the meantime grain prices at Athens had fallen. Having received this information, he decided (or so the plaintiff asserts) to sell the Egyptian grain at Rhodes, where prices were higher at this time. According to the speaker this action was “liable to the severest penalties,”38[Dem.] Or. 56.10.in other words, the emporos Parmeniskos deserved to be put to death for having decided to sell his ship load in the Rhodian port.

The forms of action recommended by Lysias against the corn dealers and by the speaker of the Dionysodoros speech against the emporoi seem to be, at first sight, largely analogous. At second glance, however, there are considerable differences: the speaker takes some pains to make it clear that his charges are not directed against the totality of a professional group that should be exposed to the constant threat of the death penalty, as it was demanded by the plaintiff in the speech against the corn-dealers but rather against a few allegedly corrupt individuals, who should be punished for a specific transgression and whose reputations were conveniently smeared as exceptions. Anyway, it was obviously possible to threaten even emporoi - on the goodwill of whom (as a class) the city was highly dependent - with the death penalty when the supply of the city at affordable prices was at stake.

It makes no difference, by the way, that the assertions of the speaker are to a large extent inaccurate: if the defendants actually sold their cargo in Rhodes on hearing about the Athenian price trend39Xenophon regards this type of behavior as typical for emporoi (Oec. 20.27-28). See Figueira 1986, 167. On traders’ information networks and their functioning, see Descat 2002.they were guilty of a breach of contract and could be convicted by an Athenian court, finding them liable to pay their financier the sum contractually stipulated for infringements of their mutual agreement. It was rather the plaintiffs, in all probability metoikoi in Athens and therefore subject to the ban of lending capital for other destinations than Athens, who had reason to fear for their life, in case suspicions were raised that they might have acted in collusion with the defendants: in that case, the plaintiffs would have committed a crime that would indeed have to have been very severely punished.40Lycurg. 27; Dem. Or. 35.51; [Dem.] Or. 56.6, 11; see Isager and Hansen 1975, 29; Whitby 1998, 121-122.

There is a further piece of information in the Dionysodoros-speech which deserves mention here. The speaker considers it perfectly feasible that wholesale traders on seeing grain prices being high in Athens would borrow money, buy a cargo in Athens for the outward journey to Egypt, sell their cargo there, buy a cargo for the return journey, bring it to Athens and sell it there, all this with the expectation or at least in the hope that prices would remain high and stable in the meantime. This is at any rate an indication that prices could remain high for a longer period (at least for some months), thus encouraging food price speculation, despite the efforts of institutions like the sitophylakes or the sitonia to make prices fall.

Part of the struggle over prices was, as we have seen, the exertion of pressure on certain professional groups with the aim of preventing them from making full use of their market power, using the threat of severe punishment and mobilizing public opinion against these groups, who answered (partly) with the development of informal networks and the interchange of exclusive market-relevant information.

4.) Keeping Small Traders in Check through Public Demonization

Before focusing on less well documented antagonisms, I would like to discuss one further group of market participants on whom pressure was also heavily exerted, albeit in a different sphere, the Athenian theatre stage, it being understood here that theatre performances in the framework of the Dionysic festivals served - among many other things - as media of collective selfassurance and of demarcating the in-group from outsiders in public conscience. Demonizing attacks were directed against heterogeneous groups of people, as for instance the sophists, against whom a deadly hatred was stirred up,41The words Plato put in the mouth of Socrates (as a representative of the sophists) that a komodopoios had played a most important role in influencing public opinion against him, referring in all probability to Aristophanes (Ap. 18d), are a strong reminder that contemporaries took it for granted that stage polemics could have a huge impact on general attitudes.or socalled sycophants and, relevant here, the fishmongers who can be considered as pars pro toto for those retail traders (kapeloi)42For kapeloi in general (especially the polemical attitude displayed towards them by ordinary citizens and/or philosophers), see, for instance, Mansouri 2002; Migeotte 2015. Looking for a despicable trade at the bottom end of the range Aristophanes makes Agorakritos (in the Equites) an ἀλλαντoπώλης, i.e. someone who bought slaughterhouse waste to make sausages out of it. This job qualifies him equally well as would have done that of a fishmonger to contend with Cleon for the crown of villainy.who sold easily perishable goods at local markets.43There was a wide spread of prices between the different kinds of fish, but this had no effect regarding the degree of aversion the fishmongers met with (at least as testified to by the writers of comic plays). See Collin-Bouffier 2008, esp. 97-100.Given the sources, it is assumed that people practicing this trade were hate figures throughout all antiquity. However, much of the relevant information stems from fragments of the Old and Middle Comedy, a fact that sometimes gives rise to source-critical reservations because these texts are strongly prejudiced.44See Möller 2011, 22. The same holds true for a totally different corpus of sources, the tabulae defixionum, which are, precisely because they are extremely biased, an excellent source for sharp competition in the market place carried out by using non-economic devices. Cf. Faraone 1991, esp. 11, n. 46.This warning is absolutely sound, but with regard to the subject in hand it is precisely this quality of the comedy that makes the source specifically valuable. Comedies were, of course, meant to be performed, and theatre performances were events of an official politico-religious character that reached a large part of the citizenry.45See, e.g., Mac Dowell 1995, 7-26.So, when a specific professional group like the fishmongers were on periodic occasions, which involved a high degree of publicity, portrayed as habitually cheating their customers in all possible ways, and were constantly being abused as murderers and thieves, miarotatoi, hated by the gods and execrable,46Roubineau 2012, 52.this amounts to the application of structural violence, targeted at a specific group. The comic scenes, to a large extent transmitted through the sixth book of Athenaios’ Deipnosophistai, are partly a caricature, partly phantasies of violence and punishment, sometimes combined with specific ideas on how to confine the alleged power of the fish traders to enforce every price they wished upon their customers (absurd high fish prices were a running gag in the Athenian comedy).

A frequently quoted fragment of Alexis’s comedy Melting Pot fits so well in here that I quote it once more. The content is the imaginary proposal of a law regulating the price-setting of the ichthyopolai:

If a fish seller sets a price he’s asking for a fish and then sells it for less than the price he said, immediately throw him in jail, so that in fear (he will sell the fish?) for the right price or bring them all back home at night rotten. Then the old lady, the old man, and the young slave who has been sent will all shop the way they ought to. (trans. Paulas 2010)47Frag. 130 Kassel / Austin = Ath. 6.226 a-b, ll. 3-10; cf. Paulas 2010, 421.

Initially, it may seem somewhat strange that the fishmonger in this punishment phantasy shall be led to jail because he sold his commodities at a lower price than originally displayed. The idea behind this particularity seems to be that fishmongers would routinely set their prices too high when the fish market opened. In doing so - or so it is insinuated -, they demand in their greediness more than the real or fair value of the commodity. The lowering of the price in the course of the day is deemed to be an admission that the prices initially demanded had been too high and were intended to defraud the public. The unfairness and ignorance of this reasoning are characteristic of the stage attacks on the retail traders of perishable goods. One can safely assume that every visitor to the theatre knew perfectly well that the price of fish fell during the day because the quality of the fish was decreasing, and understood that the trader had to accommodate the expectations of his customers. The fact, however, that the furious allegations put forward on stage against the fishmongers were profoundly unfair did not in any way compromise their socio-economic function, i.e. exerting pressure on the retail traders of perishable goods. Viewed from this angle, demonization in the court room and demonization on the stage can be understood as structurally related.48The gap between the communication situation of the court room and the theatre was not nearly as large in classical Athens as it may be felt to have been from our contemporary perspective. For instance, in both cases the audience was a fairly representative segment of male citizens who were listening to “staged” disputes in which claims to truth were raised by the parties against each other, “the demos” having the role of addressee, witness and judge (this last aspect applies, of course, only to a limited extent to the audience in the theatre that only in a general sense of the word may have understood itself as a “judge of the arts”). For further affinities of the rhetorical and the theatre stage, see Scafuro 1997(with regard to the New Comedy).In the special case of the fishmongers a professional group was targeted, that was (similar to the sitopolai in Lys. 22) perceived as principally hostile towards the majority. Irrational as it is, this kind of marginalization of specific professions will have played its part in making the groups (not necessarily every individual member) attacked refrain from trying to increase their profits.49This kind of intimidation of professional groups by venomous hate speech was bound to have a long history in the millennia to come. The group-focused enmity already apparent in the Greek sources anticipates to some degree later developments culminating in (profession-related) antisemitism; see Raphael 1995.

In other words, segregating fishmongers as if they were a closed group with specific characteristics and then denigrating this imagined group as much as possible made these people more vulnerable and more susceptive to socioeconomic disciplining. Moreover, denigration on the stage and at other public events (e.g. lawsuits) is only part of the story. In his valuable paper, La main cruelle de l’agoranome,50Roubineau 2012.Jean Manuel Roubineau, combining sources from all over ancient Greece, reminds his readers how intimidatingly the power of agoranomoi and market surveillance in general was practiced, it being virtually impossible for persons of low social status to proceed against a measure or an order (like a selling-order or price-fixing) of an agoranomos: “La mauvaise réputation des marchands en général, et, en l’espèce, des poissonniers,”51Ibid., 59.in addition to their being easily replaceable, placed these small traders in a very weak position in case they would try to significantly enhance their profit margins by raising prices. That this situation was not conducive to the development of agreeable characters among the retail traders goes without saying; and the comedy writers knew very well how to profit from this fact.

The point of the story is that the Athenians, if they had actually been harassed and tyrannized by retail traders to the extent literary texts would make us believe, always had the possibility of changing the way the city was supplied with fish and other goods. Imperial Rome, for instance, managed to organize the importation of huge quantities of grain and oil and to distribute it to 200,000 households, demonstrating thereby that from a purely economic and organizational point of view operations of such a kind were perfectly feasible with the means available in the ancient world. Likewise (albeit, on a much smaller scale), Athens could have put up fishing rights for auction (as it did, for example, with the management of the pentekoste or the cleruchic grain) and regulate retail prices or might even have distributed the catch for free. The city would have gotten rid of the alleged fishmongers’ tyranny and, in addition, would have opened up opportunities for investors to make a profit. But neither that nor any other attempt at reform ever occurred. The truth seems to be: the majority of the Athenians were happy with the system the way it was, the retail traders of perishable goods being recruited from the margins of society and susceptive to social pressure, so that prices never or very rarely exceeded a certain level52Quality fish, of course, could achieve high prices, but this was not relevant for most ordinary consumers. See Lytle 2010. Fresh meat, being not fundamentally different from fish with regard to durability, was supplied by producers of (as compared with the fishmongers) a fundamentally different social standing. Thus, fresh meat was and remained an expensive commodity.(in stark contrast to grain prices which could fluctuate wildly over the short term). Constant bullying was simply part of the (price-)game. The reason why this socio-economic disciplining worked is the same as with the corn dealers: retail traders of perishable goods were substitutable to a very high degree.

The phenomena focused on so far may be open to different interpretations, but at least they illustrate how much aggressive energy was consumed in the conflicts over price formation. As has already been stressed, the fact that we can at least get an impression on how much bitterness could be involved in the ordinary struggle over prices is due to the chances of transmission: if the curious sixth book of the Deipnosophistai or the twenty second speech of the Corpus Lysiacum had been lost in the process of tradition, our already scanty explicit knowledge on that matter would be reduced to indications and clues. Anyway, on the basis of our present state of knowledge it is reasonable to assume that hostile attitudes and class antagonisms were likely to play a significant role when decisions over interventions in the price formation process had to be made, even when there happens to be no direct evidence for a conflict carried out openly. To assume, therefore, that there was some sort of struggle going on (and be it within the limits of voting procedures), it is enough to recognize a structural antagonism of interests in a specific issue.

5.) Price Struggles: Shifting Dividing Lines of Class-Interest

Let me take as an example53A considerable number of relevant measures or sets of measures (like the financial policy of Eubulos (Hintzen-Bohlen 1997, 98-100), the package favoring trade in the “Lycurgan era,” for which see Burke 2010, or the proposals of Xenophon as presented in his Poroi) is attested, which could be discussed under this heading. As, however, each of these interventions needs to be individually examined to cover the specific implications and indirect consequences (possibly) entailed by their implementation, I limit myself to a few select examples giving an impression of how the mechanisms of hidden struggles over prices took place in specific cases.for a “hidden struggle over prices” a regulation from the Athenian Grain Tax Law of 374/373 BC.54This is not the place to discuss the research on the document and its contents in their entirety. The following remarks are focused solely on the implications of the sentence quoted below, i.e. on the procedure regarding price fixing by the demos. The provision is used as a starting point to ask questions concerning what conflicting interests must be considered as pertinent when “the demos” was tasked to fix a retail price for tributary grain. See, however, for valuable contributions concerning various aspects of the law: Faraguna 1999; Magnetto et al. 2010; Sorg 2015; Fawcett 2016, 162-164.The passage in question (ll. 36-44) reads:

Let the People choose ten men from all Athenians, in the Assembly, when it chooses the generals, to manage the grain. Let these have the grain weighed in accordance with what has been written, and sell it in the Agora, whenever the People decide; but it shall not be permitted to put to the vote a proposal to sell it before the month Anthesterion. Let the People set the price of the wheat and the barley at which those who are chosen are to sell it.55Translation by Rhodes and Osborne 2003, no. 26, ll. 36-46.

At first glance, everything seems plain and harmonious here. “The demos” appears to be a homogenous unit which knows very well how to attend to its interests (the quotation marks are set as a reminder that in political reality this homogeneity seldom materialized: “the demos” was in many cases a shortcut for “the majority of the demos”). Having reserved the tributary grain from the cleruchic islands for the public domain, “the demos” took care that the wheat and barley came up for sale at the end of winter (at the earliest) when stocks could be expected to be at the lowest and prices to be at the highest level, and maritime activity was reduced. Furthermore, “the demos” granted itself the right to set the retail price by a resolution of the ekklesia. To be sure, the tributary grain from the cleruchic islands would probably not suffice to even temporarily saturate the Athenian market, let alone to secure a sustainable supply at a fixed price, but its regulated offer would certainly have a dampening effect on the overall retail prices of grain.56Gauthier 1987; cf. Sosin 2002, esp. 137-141.Thus far, the obvious aims of the provisions the Grain Tax Law makes regarding the fixing of the retail price of the tributary grain from Imbros, Lemnos and Skyros.

It goes without saying, however, that the demos in real life was not a homogenous unity but an association of persons divided into a number of “sections” which had, among other things, diverging economic interests. The most important dividing line ran, in my opinion, between those participants in the market whose estates regularly produced large surpluses, and those who regularly produced (relatively) low surpluses or (sometimes) no surpluses at all.57Eich 2006, 194-197.Other important groups were the urban traders and craftsmen who produced no agricultural goods whatsoever. According to Xenophon, however, they shared with the agricultural producers the common interest “to buy cheap and to sell dear.”58Xen. Mem. 3.7.6.To determine where the line between the producers of high or respectively low surpluses is to be drawn precisely would prove no easy task, but for the issue discussed here a rough idea will suffice. Thus, the land of politai belonging to the liturgical class (regardless of how it was put to profitable use, be it as crop land or e.g. as the location for manufactural production) surely falls into the first category; on the other hand: owners of so-called family farms (measuring ca. four or five hectares and usually being regarded as sufficiently productive so as to secure hoplite status)59Andreyev 1974; Burford 1977.or smaller parcels60In other words, those farms the returns of which were insufficient to recover the costs for the standard hoplite equipment. The price of a cheap hoplite panoply is estimated at roughly 80 drachmas (Németh 1995, 13). The estimate may be somewhat on the low side (ibid., 11) but gives an approximate idea of the economic performance of family farms. It should be noted that, although 80 (or even 200) drachmas (once in a lifetime) were not a very massive investment, many citizens, i.e. those who remained beneath the hoplite level, were apparently not able to provide that sum.are considered as not regularly yielding high surpluses (at least from the viewpoint of the liturgical class).

The first class poses no serious problems regarding the case in hand; its members were effectively prevented from pursuing their vested interests to the end, i.e., hoarding grain and waiting for acute shortages of supply to take advantage of extraordinary high prices61It is clear from the sources that public interventions regarding the price of barley and wheat did not deter rich Athenians from growing grain. It will suffice here to refer to some relevant texts: Phainippos, a very wealthy Athenian landowner of the fourth century, was said to bring in more than a thousand medimnoi of grain per harvest to sell it - processed into flour - with a huge profit on Attic markets ([Dem.] Or. 42.20-21); Xenophon, when coming in his Oeconomicus to agricultural topics, took it for granted that an Attic farmer would sow and harvest grain (17.7; 18.1-9). Cultivation of cereal crops is also attested through the Eleusinian aparchai-records for 329/328 BC (IG II2 1672), on which see Garnsey 1992 who estimates that “in a standard year” (4th century) 17.5 percent of Attica (referring to the whole territory, not only to arable soil) was under grain (148); a total of ca. 400,000 medimnoi was brought in this year (329/328 BC) of severe shortage (cf., for instance, Pritchett 1956, 185). Very probably, however, grain was often grown (not on widely extended fields but) in the interstices (τὰ μετóρχια) between fruit-trees and wine (cf. Pernin 2014, no. 12, ll. 64-69 from Rhamnous (l. 8 for the term μετóρχια)). But apart from competing with emporoi on the grain market, members of the elite had a vast scope of possibilities to invest in luxury goods like beef, flowers or manufactural products because their co-citizens did not existentially depend on local surplus grain. Elite land, however, always remained to a certain degree potential grain land because large landowners could in in the event of a changing political climate (for instance towards free trade ideology) easily switch to grain production. From this point of view their (latent) interests as potential producers of grain were always involved in interventions into the grain trade, even if only because regulating interventions drove them to decide not to grow cereals.Democratic legislation (providing for interventions into the price formation process, encouraging imports etc.) and the majority structure of the ekklesia normally provided sufficient safeguards against the pursuit of a radically free market policy by the wealthy (i.e., profiting from scarcity). On the other hand, no one could compel producers of high surpluses to bring their harvest (if there was a harvest, cf. note 61) to the market immediately after it was brought in, i.e., when consumer prices were low. Moreover, producers of large surpluses could invest in the regulated Athenian grain trade, and they did so massively.62See Eich 2006, 362-387 for sources and references.As investors, they were as interested in high retail prices as they were as producers. Obviously, the setting of an official price in times of reduced supply (particularly from outside Athens), when prices tended to rise, ran counter to the interests of those suppliers regularly producing large surpluses.

More difficult to determine are the interests of small producers. A substantial part of them are likely to have been farmers, even if for some parts of the year asty-based craftsmen and/or small traders might have had - due to the short distances to be covered between their places of work and the meeting places of the assembly - the majority of votes in the ekklesia. As Minor Markle pointed out, however, there are reasons to believe that city-dwellers had no structural majority in the ekklesia. First, farmers formed a substantial majority of the citizen population (in the order of magnitude of five sixths).63On the socio-economic composition of the Athenian assembly, cf. Markle 2004, esp. 106; 1990, 151-152.Second, only some of the small farmers had to overcome great distances to Athens, “many farmers would have resided inside a radius of eight kilometers from the center of the city of Athens.”64Ibid., 150.Third, contemporary Greek authors and orators regularly present farmers as a dominating force in the assembly.65Admittedly, other sources present craftsmen as the most visible force in the assembly. The discrepancy obviously reflects seasonal fluctuations in the composition of assembly participation. See ibid., 154-159.Finally, there were times in the agricultural year when there was little work to be done, allowing for a prolonged absence of the oikodespotes (e.g. for military campaigning, de maiore ad minus for a journey to the city and back). We must assume, therefore, that producers of (some) agricultural goods were a significant interest group in the ekklesia.

However, to participate in the advantages of a subsidized grain market in times when reserves were running low, they also needed a stock of money. In other words: they had to sell a part of their agricultural products on the local markets (or to work part-time as a wage laborer, if work was in demand). Typically, producers of low surpluses (among them poor peasants) did not regularly dispose of considerable reserves of money as they could not afford to withhold their products from the market for a longer period of time but had, as a rule, to sell shortly after the harvest was brought in.66Whitby 1998, 105: “The small farmer in Attica, who for economic reasons had to sell his crop (whether grain or something else) soon after the harvest, and then repurchase food during the rest of the year might well have considered devoting part of his land to crops that produced the highest return.”In many instances, debts had to be paid off out of the profit made on this occasion. Debt contracts sometimes provided explicitly for a repayment “out of the new harvest” (ἐκ τῆς καινῆς ὥρης),67Gauthier 1987.thus obliging the small producers to sell at times at which prices tended to fall. Therefore, depending on the concrete situation, a farmer may have had an interest in the temporary persistence of a high-price phase (until he could have converted his commodities into money). Others, who might be (or had to be) content with a small profit but were running out of food stocks for their own consumption would very likely vote in favor of subsidized grain being sold on the market at the earliest opportunity. This applies, of course, not only to small peasants but particularly to craftsmen or artisans working in the city and producing no food for themselves.

Thus, the outcome of the vote on when and at what price the tributary grain from the cleruchic islands should be sold depended on how big or small the respective groups would have been at the given time. There may have been several thousand (or maybe only several hundred) people in the assembly who hoped to make a small profit if prices remained somewhat higher for a certain period of time. Others who needed to buy their food on the market most likely urgently sought a market intervention. The conflict of interest is further complicated by the fact that the various interest-groups were not separated by impenetrable boundaries. Thus, modest farmers who sell their harvest when prices are elevated can be expected to subsequently change their attitude from being opponents of price intervention into supporters.

The vote provided for in the Grain Tax Law was in some way a trial of strength determining whose interests would prevail at any given moment. If speeches were held in the assemblies at which prices were fixed, we may imagine them to have been polemic and aggressive. Presumably, the speakers did not demand that their opponents should be put to death immediately (as Lysias or (Pseudo-)Demosthenes did in the speeches quoted above), because there was no weakest link in the chain (like the sitopolai in the sequence of transactions in the grain trade). Moreover, as the dividing line between the parties was, as has been shown, shifting, a citizen could find himself for a time on the one side of the line (profiting from high prices) and a short time afterwards on the other (interested in falling prices). This special constellation may have mitigated the bitterness of the antagonism somewhat.

An example of a different kind is also from Lysias, who tells us that sitophylakes were frequently put to death due to allegations that the conduct of their duties had been defective (22.16: pollakis).68Figueira 1986, 168 argues that an office “carrying a high risk of capital punishment for mismanagement should have encountered difficulties in staffing itself through sortition (sc. as was the case with the sitophylakes).” The point is not wholly clear. Why should it be easier to find candidates for an elective office when the risk of capital punishment was high? At least, men running for office would have been indispensable for staffing an elective office, whereas theoretically every citizen could have become sitophylax by lot. Incidentally, the very real danger of suffering banishment or execution never brought about a shortage of candidates for the strategeia.Of course, this may well have be an exaggeration, but on the other hand it is undeniable that the sitophylakes had the duty to take momentous decisions in highly controversial matters.69Bresson 2000.In the example discussed above, Anytos decided to advise the sitopolai not to outbid each other (or so the corn dealers said). This was allegedly understood as a temporary permission to make agreements on retail prices among each other. On this interpretation, the sitophylax had committed a capital offense. Anytos had the social standing to easily ward off the counterattack of the defendants, but for an officeholder who did not have comparable networks at his disposal, a similar constellation could potentially prove fatal.

The sitophylakes played an important role in mediating the wholesale price formation process between the emporoi and the local retail traders. Of course, this price could not be fixed by state intervention, but the sitophylakes could exert some moral (and frequently effective) pressure on the contracting parties. The negotiated prices tended to be stable for some time. However, news about changes of wholesale prices not only travelled fast over sea but could have dramatic effects on the spot and immediately. Take, for instance, the story of one Protos in the speech Against Zenothemis of the Corpus Demosthenicum. This man laid claim to a part of a cargo that was to be sold on the Athenian market. But then, precisely when the news broke that grain prices were falling, he vanished from the scene and went into hiding.70Dem. Or. 32.25-27.Obviously, he saw no possibility any more to repay his creditors out of the projected sales, since the profit expectations had to be adjusted downwards (needless to say, the plaintiff demands that Protos should be put to death (32.27)). Protos may, of course, have been an isolated case at this particular moment. But the incident reminds us how volatile ancient markets could be and how unpredictably and desperately some participants could eventually react to negative indications. Nevertheless, it was the sometimes almost unmanageable task of the sitophylakes to decide which moment was the right one to intervene insistently into the process of price negotiations. Here, too, difficulties were compounded by the phenomenon of shifting dividing lines between class interests. To give but one example: the majority of consumers can be expected to have had an interest in low wholesale prices. But if there were a great number of emporoi out there, heading for the Athenian trading port, who had invested high sums in their cargoes, an untimely and precipitate fall in wholesale prices could cause the temporary breakdown of the grain market. In this case, the interests of Athenian consumers and capital investors would both suffer (the consumers threatened with hunger, the investors worried about their profit), so that both can be assumed to develop an interest in rising prices in this particular situation. This coincidence of interests was, however, bound to end as soon as imports resumed. One can easily imagine further constellations in this complex interplay of forces, but here it will suffice to restate the overall point of this section: that specific interests in price formation were not uniformly associated with particular class positions but could quickly change, depending on a variety of factors (like the amount of reserves in money or goods at the time of the harvest and the specific distribution of these reserves in the hands of producers and so on).

6.) Prescientific Insights into Structural Conditions of Price Formation: The Case of Aristophanes

So far, I have mentioned points of (potential) conflict which were, or at least might have been, subject to public debates and struggles which have left some traces in the written sources. This is, however, not normally the case when structural (pre-)conditions are taken into consideration, one of which is singled out here to be considered more closely: the reproduction of a stable layer of poverty71Even Ober (2015, 97), who makes the flourishing of a broad prospering middle class during the Classical Age the centerpiece of his argument, assumes (in the optimistic version of his model) that 41 percent of people living in Attica lived at or below subsistence level (pessimistic assumption: 57 percent). Cf. Jameson 1992, 145: “Strauss estimates about 20,000 hoplites and the same number of thetes at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. If all of these hoplites owned land and we use the largest current estimate for the cultivable land of Attica (96,000 hectares) and suppose that their properties averaged 50 plethra (4.5 hectares) in size they would have held 90,000 hectares, leaving some 6,000 hectares for the richest and poorest.”and more especially the price of unskilled labor. Factors that influence how purchasing power is distributed in a given society are indeed manifold, ranging from - to give only a few examples - inheritance laws and the extent to which the division of labor is practiced, to the way in which fresh money is put into circulation, as well as the velocity with which it circulates and so on. The ancients had no comprehensive idea of how these factors interacted to produce a given purchase power distribution and related socio-economic facts. Remarkably enough, however, some Greek writers were capable of identifying single factors and their effects, as, for instance, the so-called Anonymous Iamblichi, who understood that a high velocity of money circulation was conducive to a more equal distribution of wealth, while the deceleration of money circulation tended to bring about wealth concentration and thus an unequal distribution of wealth.72Graham 2000, 19A 7.1, 870-871 (= DK, FV6 II 89, no. 7).This is on any account an important insight into the working of a single factor influencing the distribution of wealth and poverty.

There are, anyway, other important texts for the subject in hand, the most remarkable among which were written by the comedy writer Aristophanes of Athens, which betray at least a vague idea of the indispensable role of poverty in the process of establishing commodity-value and distribution of purchasing power. The Plutus,73See Tordoff 2012; Olson 1990; Sommerstein 1984.performed in 388 BC, contains in a nutshell a theory about the price of labor (in a wide sense of the word: the amount of value that societies are prepared to spend for simple labor). In a key passage, Penia, the personification of poverty, instructs her dialogue partners and the audience that universal availability and equal distribution of money would lead to general poverty, due to the lack of incentives for producing goods and offering services.74Aristoph. Plut. 509-618.Money could fulfil its socio-economic function only if it was structurally in short supply. However, she does not conclude from this observation that everybody should dispose of less money than he or she wishes to have - thus universalizing incentives to strive for wealth; but rather that merely a certain part of society needs the incentive of being poor. This implies that others need to be rich, thus being able to buy the services and goods provided by the needy. This idea was already hinted at in the Wasps (performed in 422 BC) when Aristophanes made Bdelykleon explain to his father: “They want you to be poor, and I will tell you why.” (l. 703). However, in the following verses it is rather explained how (not exactly why) the politicians manage the reproduction of poverty and wealth to perpetuate.

In the Plutus, Penia is chased from the stage; in real life she stayed. To avoid misunderstandings: There is no trace of a struggle regarding the wage level75It should be stressed that the category “wage level” is only a very rough indicator for the degree of poverty in an ancient city. A sizeable data base exists only for wages paid by governments (see next n.) and these are most often not paid on a daily basis but as compensation for a particular task (Werklohn), making it much more difficult to evaluate data. However, even with regard to this kind of remuneration low wages are far more common than high ones (cf. the data provided by Feyel 2016, 408-416). Even though, what we obtain with these figures is a glimpse into the world of casual labor. Beside that world and / or partly overlapping with it, there were the poor prostitutes, chronically sick, elderly without family or fortune etc. For their place of life, cf. Rougier-Blanc 2014; for their range of activities and professions, see Vélissaropoulos-Karakostas 2002. Not pertinent for the subject discussed here is Cecchet 2015, for whom poverty is above all a discourse.in the sources of classical Greece, one drachma per day forming in normal times a kind of maximum wage for so-called unskilled work.76See Rosivach 2011, 176-183. Among wages paid by governments those paid to mercenaries are the most pertinent here, because they were a mass-phenomenon and competed with wages on the free labor-market. These wages were on the order of three to four obols per day, one drachma when the financial situation allowed it (Pritchett 1971, 3-29; cf. Loomis 1998. 57). Contra Ober (2010, 262; 2015, 97), who (like most current authors) thinks 1.5 drachmas to have been a common daily wage for unskilled workers in the second half of the fourth century. This assumption is based mainly on two entries in the accounts of the Eleusinian epistatai from the year 328 BC. Cf. Clinton 2005, no. 177, l. 33 (cf. l. 32, where the number is, however, partly supplemented) and l. 45, where a single worker resp. 30 misthotoi are mentioned as having received nine obols as their daily wage rate. The entries are, however, somewhat unusual when compared with other wage data of the document. The epistatai normally paid to free men wages was compensation for tasks performed, not a fixed amount per day (cf. Clinton 2008, 185-188). Moreover, the workers mentioned in the entries cited above are, contrary to the ordinary practice of the accountants, not indicated by name, but only as an anonymous group or individuals deemed misthotoi or oikositoi (aner oikositos). Clinton thinks these men of the epistataiaccounts to be slaves, who were χωρὶς οἰκοῦντες, paying an apophora to their masters (ibid., 184). In this case, their wages would be unusually high, other slaves documented in the account receive daily wages from one to three obols. The explanation for this discrepancy might be sought in the fact that the men in question did not receive food at the expense of public funds (in contrast to the public slaves used by the temple administration), as they were fed and clothed by their masters (ibid.). Perhaps the wages of the oikositoi were made up of a share for the worker himself and a fraction destined to be paid as apophora to the slave owner. Be that as it may, the wages of IEleus. 177.33 almost certainly do not reflect market wage rates and were obviously not typical for their time. Nine obols a day is most plausibly an administratively regulated wage level, which was fixed for political, not economic reasons.In a politeuma like Athens, however, that could afford to spend 2,400 talents for an occasional and politically unnecessary siege, higher wages or wage substitutes could theoretically have been paid,77Isoc. Or. 15.113; cf. Thuc. 2.70.2 (Samons 2000, 235). The approximately 16 talents that had to be borrowed to disburse the diobelia in 410/409 BC may serve as a comparative figure. The yearly amount for dikast pay (3 obols per day) has been estimated at 22 to 37 talents (Blok 2015, 88, 101). Possibly, dikast pay did not burden the public treasuries at all; see Rohde (2019, chapter 2.1.2). Rohde estimates the overall annual costs of political wages at roughly 120 to 130 talents (chapter 2.1.1). Whereas these expenses (running into the low triple digits) were viewed with concern or sometimes downright rejection by the wealthy elite, it almost never seems to have been regarded as a problem to spend thousands of talents for warfare and armament. Mathematically, budgetary restructuring always would have been possible, psychologically, it was not an option. See Pritchard (2015) for a comprehensive study of the subject.albeit at the expense of a gradual and sustainable redistribution of wealth. This, again, was made very explicit by Aristophanes, who put the following words in the mouth of Bdelykleon:

Listen to me, dear little father, unruラe that frowning brow and reckon, you can do so without trouble, not with pebbles, but on your fingers, what is the sum-total of the tribute paid by the allied towns; besides this we have the direct imposts, a mass of percentage dues, the fees of the courts of justice, the produce from the mines, the markets, the harbours, the public lands and the confiscations. All these together amount to nearly two thousand talents. Take from this sum the annual pay of the dicasts; they number six thousand, and there have never been more in this town; so therefore it is one hundred and fifty talents that come to you.78Aristoph. Vesp. 655-663 (trans. O’Neill).

Although quite exaggerated (always on the high side), these data roughly mirror the correct dimensions. So, Christy Constantakopoulou, after having given a fresh assessment of the pertaining data, could conclude: “Bdelycleon’s empire of a thousand cities in Aristophanes’ Wasps, which should be understood as a comic hyperbole, may be closer to reality than we think.”79Constantakopoulou 2013, 39.One may legitimately conclude that the aラuent won a lasting victory by giving the impression that it really was impossible to raise wage levels in a sustainable fashion in Athens. The victory was complete, but admittedly over an opponent who did not dare offer resistance.

However, what matters here is not so much the point scored by the elite against the poor, but the idea of Aristophanes that money could fulfil its function only if it is structurally in short supply. According to this point of view, abundance of money in everybody’s hands would lead to idleness and loss of creativity because of the lack of incentives to work or to provide services. Aristophanes does not include inflation in his catalogue of fatal consequences an oversupply of money would have. But, implicitly, it is part of his model (according to which an oversupply of money would cause monetary value to fall which in turn would lead to economic inactivity). More importantly, the ancient comedy writer anticipates in a manner that may be deemed prescientific and foreboding a phenomenon that today is treated with a claim to scientific precision, viz. the negative effects which an increase of the purchasing power of the relatively poorest is supposed to have on money stability and the development of prices. A case in point is the so-called “Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment,”80Staiger, Stock and Watson 1997.denoting the proportion of unemployed people, the additional demand of whom (in case they would find paid work) would - according to this theory - endanger money stability and whose finding a job is therefore not seen as desirable.81Analogous ideas can be already found in the pages of Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s volumes England and America, published in 1833. Wakefield complaints vehemently that working-class people in North America accumulate on average too much money in too short spans of time, thus endangering investments and price stability. He proposes as a remedy (although otherwise a committed supporter of free market policies) to artificially increase the price of land in America and to regulate “the supply of immigrant labour,” so that there would always be a reservoir of poor people “willing” to do jobs which had turned out to be unattractive for most people as long as poor workers were in short supply (Wakefield 1833, 2, 191-193). Of course, these political demands are written before the background of a rapidly developing capitalist economy, but if the mutanda are taken into account, the fundamental idea is very much the same as already formulated by Penia in the Aristophanean Plutus.This way of thinking is, two and a half millennia earlier, implicit in Aristophanes’s concept of Penia and also in the verse from Wasps quoted above (l. 703): “They want you to be poor, and I will tell you why,” which touches on taboos usually anxiously respected in ancient discourse.

7.) Summary

As stated at the beginning, our evidence is much too fragmented and flimsy as to allow a comprehensive treatment of the subject. What can be said with certainty is that prices of vital goods in Athens were only exceptionally allowed to fluctuate freely according to the “laws” of supply and demand. Rather, most of the time (and not only in times of crises) ‘political’ pressure of some kind was exerted on producers and traders to offer their goods at an affordable price (section two). However, the form of pressure could vary significantly, highly dependent on the social position of the producer / trader (section three). The most pertinent criterion turned out to be the substitutability of the persons exposed to pressure. If it was foreseeable that after removing an individual or even groups of people practicing a certain trade in the shipment or processing chain, other people would immediately step in to fill the gap, populist pressure could easily be applied with success. It is particularly striking that the speaker of Lysias (Against the Grain Dealers (cf. section two)) unashamedly requests the judicial jury to vote for the death penalty regardless of the factual guilt of the defendants with the only aim being to teach the surviving grain dealers never to transgress the strict rules concerning the profit margins conceded to retail traders. Moreover, it should be stressed that Lysias did treat the course of action recommended by him not as a last resort in a very exceptional situation but as a kind of standard method to be applied in cases of (dangerous) short supply.

In section four, the focus was on a completely different kind of public pressure, conceived as a kind of structural violence (semiconsciously) aimed at having a disciplinary effect on a particular group of market participants, namely retail traders of perishable goods. The most important source for the application of this kind of violence are the fragments of Attic Comedy that document the insulting and defamatory way in which fish mongers (as the most hated species of retail traders) were portrayed on the stage. It is contended in this paper that we grasp in these fragments traces of a group-focused enmity that - as a welcome collateral effect - helped exert moral pressure on the pertinent group with the aim in mind to manipulate their market behavior (above all their price setting). Of course, the effects of moral pressure of this kind cannot be expressed in precise numbers (however, the effect of price-influencing factors cannot usually be predicted with any mathematical exactitude), but it should be regarded as certain that the ‘moral’ standing of commodity-suppliers had a heavy influence on the overall price structure and that theatre performances were one way (of doubtlessly many) of inculcating into the public conscience a sense of who could make claims to a superior moral standing (and, thus, to regard themselves recognized as respected market participants, as the emporoi certainly could) and who could not. Being easily replaceable, the fishmongers could expect only to be reviled as cheaters regardless of their taking fair prices or not.

While these case studies hopefully conveyed an impression of how various institutions or interest groups tried to influence price formation processes by non-economic means, section five was aimed at demonstrating how difficult it is to establish the precise dividing lines between interest groups or classes taking part in the struggle over prices in a society, like that of Athens, where many consumers are also producers, and, what is more, consumers and producers of the same commodities. For sake of illustration, the clause of the so-called Grain Tax Law of 374/373 BC was singled out that provides for selling the cleruchic grain at a price fixed by the demos. It is argued that, as the category of “demos” comprises a plurality of divergent interests, it must be assumed that there was no common interest shared by each member of “the demos” about rising or falling prices at any one time during the sequence of seasons. More importantly, the dividing lines between the various interest-groups can plausibly regarded as constantly shifting. This constellation must have made it pretty unpredictable what retail-price per medimnos the ekklesia would choose as useful or, in other words, which interests would prevail in any given voting procedure. The term “struggle,” therefore, applied in this context refers to trials of strength by voting procedures that took place under complex circumstances.

Finally, a glimpse was risked on the general economic framework within which price formation took place, or, more precisely, on the ideas ancient authors were able to conceive about the functioning of that framework. At the center of the argument (a case study once more) were two texts by Aristophanes which show that this author had a sophisticated understanding of the overall preconditions that determined to a certain degree the way prices were formed. The most important among these are:

- that money has to be always in short supply to fulfil its main functions;

- that if money was at everybody’s disposal in abundance there would be no incentives to work, so that a general abundance of money would lead to a general scarcity of material wealth;

- that the desirable scarcity of money does not imply that everybody has somewhat less than he or she wishes to have, but that money is unevenly distributed, with a stable layer of poor people who have to work and provide services to make a living and (on the other hand) wealthy classes to which the task is ascribed of sustaining effective demand;

- that this situation is conducive to price stability (an insight which is only present in Aristophanes’ thought by implication, but nevertheless is there, as Aristophanes recognizes that money would tend to lose its purchasing power if monetary wealth was more evenly distributed);

- that this whole constellation is man-made and could theoretically be changed.It does not matter that Aristophanes did not share all these opinions. Rather, the ideas formulated playfully by Aristophanes are evidence for the level of reflection that was achieved during the fourth century as to what effects changes regarding overall wealth distribution could be expected to have on purchasing power or whether a certain degree of poverty should be tolerated for its incentive effects. These issues imply an impact on prices and can be supposed to have been very controversial. They are, in other words, another facet of the struggle over prices.

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