Economy and Economics of Ancient Greece

Takeshi Amemiya

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415701549
• eBook ISBN: 9781135991708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

Addressing the dearth of literature that has been written on this key aspect of economic history, Takeshi Amemiya, a well known leading economist based at Stanford University, analyzes the two diametrically opposed views about the exact nature of the ancient Greek economy, putting together a broad and comprehensive survey that is unprecedented in t

Part I
History, society, culture

1 History

Introduction

I will present a brief outline of ancient Greek history, covering a period roughly from 1600 BC (the time of the first Indo-European invasion of Greece) to 322 BC, the year Athens was conquered by Macedonia. This period is further divided into the following four sub-periods: 1600–1200 Mycenaean Age, 1200–800 Dark Age, 800–510 Archaic Age, and 510–322 Classical Age. In this book I will be concerned mostly with the Classical Age and the history of Athens, the time and place for which, by far, the greatest amount of information is available. The reader should consult the chronology table given at the beginning of the book. Some of the references that cover this whole period are Green (1973), Fine (1983), Starr (1991), and Pomeroy et al. (2004).

Mycenaean Age 1600–1200

Greek history can be said to have started around 1600 BC, when the Indo-Europeans invaded the Greek mainland. The so-called Indo-Europeans were the group of people sharing the same language but not necessarily of the same ethnic race, who lived in the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. They started migrating beginning around 4000 BC. Some migrated toward Europe and some toward Iran and India. A branch of the migrants moved into Greece around 1600 BC. People had lived in Greece for a long time before that event and an advanced Minoan culture had flourished in the Aegean islands, centering in Crete. These indigenous people are believed to have been of a different race from the Indo-Europeans, both culturally and linguistically. The palace of Knossos in the northern part of Crete, excavated by Arthur Evans in 1899, was the center of the Minoan civilization. Clay tablets bearing a linear script called Linear A were found there. It has not been deciphered but is believed to be a non-Indo-European language. Unlike Roman alphabets, each symbol of Linear A represents either a vowel, or a combination of a consonant and a vowel. In this sense it is like Japanese hiragana.

The Indo-Europeans who invaded Greece established many towns in places such as Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Thebes, and Athens, each ruled by a king living in a well-fortified palace ruling a hierarchical bureaucracy. We can see the extent of the power and wealth enjoyed by the kings in the remains of the walled palace of Mycenae and the treasures excavated there by Heinrich Schliemann in 1874. Since Mycenae was the most powerful among these kingdoms, the civilization founded by these Indo-Europeans is called Mycenaean. Within 150 years after their invasion into the Greek mainland, the Mycenaeans invaded Crete and destroyed the palace of Knossos thereby putting an end to the Minoan civilization. This age is characterized by the extensive use of bronze artifacts. For more detailed study of the Mycenaean civilization, the reader should consult Drews (1988), Chadwick (1976), and Dickinson (1994). This last reference covers the Minoan civilization as well.

Clay tablets bearing the Mycenaean script have been excavated from the remains of the above-mentioned cities, notably Pylos and Knossos. It is called Linear B and it uses essentially the same script as Linear A, yet the language it represents is different from Linear A and was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952 and found to contain characteristics of the Greek language. The writings found in most of the clay tablets excavated so far describe the various roles of personnel and workers, and the inventories of produce and goods collected and distributed by the central administration. Aside from the names of a few gods and goddesses, not much cultural and social information can be obtained from the writings. See the aforementioned Chadwick (1976) for the nature of Linear B script and what we can learn about Mycenaean society from it.

The major differences between Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations besides the difference in language are as follows: (1) The palaces of Mycenaean cities were strongly fortified whereas the palace of Knossos was not. Many weapons have been excavated from the remains of Mycenaean cities whereas hardly any were found from Minoan sites. From this we might surmise that the Minoan world was more peaceful. (2) In the Minoan society, the status of women seemed to be higher than in the Mycenaean society. Some argue that the Minoan society was matriarchal but there is no hard evidence for it. The Mycenaean society, on the other hand, was patriarchal. (3) The most powerful god of the Mycenaeans was the male god Zeus whereas goddesses seem to have played a much more important role in the Minoan civilization, judging from the large amount of female figurines excavated from Minoan sites. The Mycenaean conquest of the Minoans is symbolized by mythological epics such as the marriage of Zeus and Hera, the defeat of the Amazons by Achilles, and the killing of Gorgon Medusa by Perseus. (4) The Minoans were more artistic than the Mycenaeans. We can still see the beautiful wall paintings excavated from the palace of Knossos, now exhibited in the Heraklion Museum. The paintings of Mycenaean origin are inferior.

The conquest of the Jo̅mon tribes by the Yayoi tribes that took place in Japan approximately two thousand years ago has a certain parallel to the Mycenaean conquest of the Minoans. For example, Jo̅mon was a matriarchal society whereas Yayoi was patriarchal, and the Jo̅mon tribe was more peaceful than Yayoi.

The Mycenaean civilization came to an abrupt collapse around 1200. Several causes for the collapse have been proposed such as natural disasters, famines, and foreign invasions. It is not known, however, whether one of these causes or their combination was the true culprit. Whatever the cause, all the major cities of the Mycenaean age suffered great physical damage and their population began to decline suddenly around this time. The catastrophe was not limited to the Greek mainland and extended to Anatolia and Egypt. Scholars used to believe this was caused by the invasion of the Dorians, a group of Greeks from northern Greece, different from those who sustained the Mycenaean civilization. They spoke the Doric dialect. It is true that there was a southward movement of the Doric race sometime between 1200 and 900, but it is doubtful that it occurred with such great force as to destroy the whole of Greece in such a short time. The Dorians eventually made Sparta their stronghold but archaeological evidence suggests that the establishment of Sparta did not occur long before 900. See Drews (1993) for an excellent discussion of the causes of the catastrophe.

Many of the inhabitants of the destroyed Mycenaean cities migrated to other regions such as Achaea, Arcadia, and the western coast of Anatolia, called Asia Minor. A majority of those who migrated into Asia Minor lived in its central area called Ionia and the dialect of the region is called the Ionic dialect. This migration is attested by the fact that the Ionic dialect is similar to the dialect of Attica.

Dark Age 1200–800

The next 400 years following the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization is called the Dark Age because archaeological finds from this era are scant compared to the preceding era. Houses are smaller, pottery is of an inferior quality, and graves are smaller with fewer buried treasures. Linear B seems to have disappeared and there is no sign of any written language. However, it would be far from the truth to conclude that nothing happened in this period. During those 400 years, there was gradual recovery from the initial devastation and there were signs of development which culminated in the later flourishing of the Greek civilization. The development of this period may be characterized by the following occurrences: (1) The emergence of city-states (polis). Compared to Mycenaean palace-centered kingdoms, city-states were characterized by a sense of citizenship and community under common law and common religion. (2) Closely related to the above, there was a transition from monarchy to aristocracy. (3) Toward the latter period of the Dark Age continuing on to the next age, an oriental influence on Greek culture started to make an impact. (4) A new type of pottery with geometric patterns emerged.

Archaic Age 800–510

The trends mentioned in the last paragraph continued in this period and came to their fruition. Among the city-states that started emerging in the preceding period, Athens developed into the most populous and prosperous polis. It was the only community that survived the devastation of the Dark Age. Hence Athenians prided themselves as autochthonos (springing from the earth), meaning they had always been there. According to Athenian tradition, Dracon introduced laws about homicide and other offences in 620. Not much about Dracon is known, however. In the beginning of the sixth century, Solon contributed a great deal to the development of the Athenian polis. He compiled a new code of laws, superseding most of the more severe laws of Dracon, established the foundation of the Athenian constitution (which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3, “Athenian democracy”), abolished debts incurred by the̅tes (the lowest income class), made the enslavement of citizens illegal, and stimulated the economy and trade by bringing foreign residents (metics) to Athens and letting them engage in manufacturing and trade. This tradition of metics and slaves primarily engaging in manufacturing and trade persisted throughout the Classical Age. Solon’s constitution was more aristocratic than democratic. Nevertheless, it seems correct to say that he planted the seeds of democracy that culminated in the establishment of democracy by Cleisthenes in 510 after 50 years of tyranny by Peisistratos and Hippias in the intervening years.

This was the period in which population grew in city-states throughout Greece and trade with outside regions expanded. As the result of overpopulation, many Greek city-states established colonies in regions such as Sicily and the Black Sea area.

The cultural influence from the Levant and Mesopotamia continued to increase. (See Burkert (1992) for the extent of this oriental influence.) One of the most significant events of this age was the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet into Greece in the ninth century. There is no evidence of scripts before this after Linear B disappeared. Homeric poems were the first writings to be written in the Greek alphabet created by adapting the Phoenician alphabet. (It is believed that Homer did not write them himself, however.) The alphabet turned out to be much more suited to express the Greek language than scripts like Linear A and B.

It is believed that Homer was active in Asia Minor in the middle of the eighth century. His Iliad depicts the heroic deeds of warlords from various Greek kingdoms in the war against Troy. The oral tradition about the Trojan War had existed long before Homer fabricated it into a majestic epic poem. The Trojan War of this oral tradition is supposed to have taken place shortly before the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization in 1200. Whether or not such a war actually took place is uncertain. Schliemann believed it did and excavated Troy several times in the early 1870s. He thought he found the remains of the ancient city of Troy sacked by the Greeks. Unfortunately he dug too deep into the layers of the successive cities and mistook the ancient city that existed in 2200 as Homer’s Troy. (For a further discussion of the Trojan War and a sear...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Map of Ancient Greece
• Map of Attica
• Chronology Up to 600 BC
• Chronology of Sixth- And Fifth-Century Athens
• Chronology of Fourth-Century Athens
• Weights, Measures, and Units
• Part I: History, Society, Culture
• Part II: Economy
• Part III: Economics
• Glossary of Greek Names and Terms
• References