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LET'S WORK TOGETHER! ECONOMIC COOPERATION, SOCIAL CAPITAL, AND CHANCES OF SOCIAL MOBILITY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2014
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In the early fourth century bc, a slave of possibly Phoenician origin, called Pasion, was owned by the Athenian bankers Antisthenes and Archestratos (Dem. 36.43). During the course of his slavery, Pasion quickly rose to become the trusted manager of his owners' money-changing and banking firm in Piraeus. After having been manumitted (Dem. 36.48), he took over the running of this bank (Isocr. 17, passim), became a very successful banker, and established a shield factory. His businesses prospered to the extent that by the time of his death in 370/369 he had assembled a fortune estimated at around 70 talents. With this money, Pasion made a number of generous benefactions to the Athenians, as a reward for which the Athenians passed a decree in his favour granting him a gold crown and the right of citizenship to him and his descendants ([Dem.] 59.2). As soon as he received his grant of citizenship, Pasion started to make use of his citizen rights and invested in real property. Although he was probably never actively involved in politics, he is known to have been a close friend of several members of the political elite, such as Agyrrhius of Collyte (Isocr. 17.31) and Callistratus of Aphnida (Dem. 49.47). Moreover, he had dealings with important public figures, such as Timotheus, son of Conon (Dem. 49, passim).
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References
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54 Although all of these associations had some connection to cult worship, Leiwo, M., ‘Religion, or Other Reasons? Private Associations in Athens’, in Frösén, J. (ed.), Early Hellenistic Athens. Symptoms of Change (Helsinki, 1997), 103–18Google Scholar, considers their main purpose to have been not religion but synousia, with common meals, and social and financial support. According to him, the connection to a cult was necessitated by the lack of any (legal) model for other kinds of associations. Others scholars persist in believing that the religious meaning of these associations must have been primary, while other aims, such as economic or social support, were of minor importance: see Vondeling, J., Eranos (Groningen, 1961), 261Google Scholar; Millett (n. 7), 151. Nevertheless, even if their primary purpose was not necessarily economic in nature, membership of these religious associations which cut across economic strata and class boundaries might still have been economically fruitful.
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56 Aristotle considered the Greek polis to be both a community or association (koinonia) and a network of interconnecting koinoniai. For an analysis of the Greek city in view of the Aristotelian concept of koinonia, see Murray, O., ‘Polis and Politeia in Aristotle’, in Hansen, M. H. (ed.), The Ancient Greek City-state (Copenhagen, 1993), 197–210Google Scholar; J. Ober, ‘The Polis as a Society: Aristotle, John Rawls and the Athenian Social Contract’, in ibid.), 129–60; Vlassopoulos, K., ‘Beyond and Below the Polis: Networks, Associations, and the Writing of Greek History’, MHR 22.1 (2007), 11–22Google Scholar.
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59 An impression of the kind of intermingling which this state of affairs may have resulted in, might most vividly be obtained when considering the deme Rhamnous, where the arguably exceptional circumstances, particularly well attested for the latter half of the third century, present a vivid picture of the mingling of highly different individuals, which, as acknowledged by R. Osborne, ‘must have been an invariable characteristic of life in classical and Hellenistic Athens’. In Rhamnous, the continuously changing population seems to have formed groups and taken corporate actions easily, despite being unclassifiable in terms of conventional legal or social categories. While connecting in order to cooperate, residents at Rhamnous openly disregarded both the formal and informal divisions within Athenian society, such as divisions of legal status (most importantly between citizen and non-citizen), wealth, occupation, etc. See Osborne, R., ‘The Demos and its Divisions in Classical Athens’, in Murray, O. and Price, S. R. F. (eds.), The Greek City. From Homer to Alexander (Oxford, 1990), 284–5Google Scholar, for discussion.
60 For the assertion that in a networked structure, the holes between solidly linked sub-networks are points of entrepreneurial opportunity because the individuals who bridge those holes gain social capital, see Burt, R. S., Structural Holes. The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1992)Google Scholar; Burt, R. S., ‘The Contingent Value of Social Capital’, Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (1997), 355–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burt, R. S., Brokerage and Closure. An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford, 2005), 10–57Google Scholar.
61 The amount of information that we have concerning the granting of timai to both citizen and non-citizens is relatively abundant. Decisions of honour-granting institutions, such as the council or the assembly, phylai, demes, and other associations, to honour certain individuals for their services towards the state can be traced down in honorary decrees, private dedications established by former honorands, and literary texts. For collections of fifth- and fourth-century honorary decrees, see Henry, A. S., Honours and Privileges in Athenian Decrees. The Principal Formulae of Athenian Honorary Decrees (Hildesheim and New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Veligianni-Terzi, C., Wertbegriffe in den attischen Ehrendekreten der klassischen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1997), 14–151Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., ‘Athenian State Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1: I. Decrees Honouring Athenians’, ZPE 150 (2004), 85–112Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., ‘Athenian State Laws and Decrees, 352/1–322/1: III. Decrees Honouring Foreigners. A. Citizenship, Proxeny and Euergesy’, ZPE 158 (2006), 115–58Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., ‘Athenian State Laws and Decrees, 352/1–322/1: III. Decrees Honouring Foreigners. B. Other Awards’, ZPE 159 (2007), 101–54Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1 bc (Leiden, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an overview of the private dedications recording grants of honours and privileges, see Veligianni-Terzi (this note), 152–62. For recent discussions of the granting of timai to non-citizens (including metics), see in particular Adak (n. 15); Engen (n. 45); Deene (n. 58), 144–62.
62 Gauthier, P., Les Cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs (Athens and Paris, 1985), 83 ff. and 184 ffGoogle Scholar.; Zelnick-Abramowitz, R., ‘Supplication and Request: Application by Foreigners to the Athenian Polis’, Mnemosyne 51.5 (1998), 554–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adak (n. 15), 196–7. The only honour which could not be requested was the grant of citizenship: see Osborne (n. 2), iv.147.
63 According to Zelnick-Abramowitz (n. 62), 557, official requests differed from private requests in that official emissaries according to the customary law had access to the boule and to the ekklesia.
64 For grants of prosodos, see IG I³ 28.16–18 (450–440); I³ 55.18 (c. 431); I³ 70.9–11 (c. 430–420); I³ 159.20–7 (c. 430); I³ 65.17–20 (c. 427/426); I³ 73 (424/3); I³ 101 I.37–9 (410/409); II² 1.72–3 (403/402); II² 145 I.4–5 (403/402); SEG 14.36.6–7 (c. 400); IG II² 86 (early fourth century); II² 24b.10–12 (c. 387/386?); Pecirka 29/31.9–13 (c. 380–370); IG II² 74 (ante 378/377); II² 180.10–15 (c. 375–350); II² 103 (369/368); II² 107 (368/367); II² 151 (ante 353/352); II² 185 (ante 353/352); II² 660 I.13–15 (c. 350–300?); II² 579.8–12 (c. 350–300?); II² 1186 (mid-fourth century); II² 226.14–17 (c. 343/342); II² 238.b (338/337); II² 426 (336–334); SEG 19.119.15–20 (c. 334–330); Hesp. 29.81–157 + IG II2 564 (c. 329–322); IG II² 549 + 306 (323/322?); II² 448 II (323/322); II² 456b.19 (307/306); II² 505 (302/301); II² 571 (late fourth century).
65 See IG II² 109, line 9 (363/362); II² 226, lines 34–5 (342); II² 408, lines 6–8 (ante 330).
66 Zelnick-Abramowitz (n. 62), 555–62; Gauthier (n. 62), 181 f. Gauthier believes that, since some of the inscriptions do not refer to the involvement of citizens, foreigners could also appear on their own in the boule or ekklesia in order to submit or defend their requests (ibid., 183 f., 187 f.). See also the criticism by Zelnick-Abramowitz, R., Not Wholly Free. The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World (Leiden, 2005), 560Google Scholar.
67 For the citation, see Whitehead (n. 3), 90. On connections between Athenian politicians and foreigners and on the motives for moving proxeny decrees, see Perlman, S., ‘A Note on the Political Implications of Proxenia in the Fourth Century b.c.’, CQ 8 (1958), 185–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
68 For multiplex relationships, see Coleman, J., ‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’, American Journal of Sociology 94 Suppl. (1988), 95–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The fact that membership to an association cut across both economic strata and legal stratus groups has led some scholars to consider corporate entities and associations as being characterized by clientelistic relationships: see Gallant, T. W., Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece. Reconstructing the Rural Domestic Economy (Cambridge, 1991), 143–69Google Scholar; Arnaoutoglou, I., ‘Associations and Patronage in Ancient Athens’, AncSoc 25 (1994), 5–17Google Scholar. However, the fact that the business success of Athenian citizens' depended on the cooperative attitude of and sustainable corporate networks with their non-citizen colleagues refutes the assumption that all of these relationships between citizens and non-citizens were automatically of asymmetrical nature.
69 Cohen (n. 15), 65–6.
70 This may be one of the explanations behind the observation that, although bankers were not the only businessmen who successfully used their gains in order to obtain Athenian citizenship (e.g. the salt-fish seller Chaerephilus: see Davies [n. 1], no. 15128), they above all appear – if one is allowed to make any conclusion concerning the matter from the scant amount of evidence – to have been likely to be candidates for this rarest and most valuable of all timai that could be conferred upon non-citizens. See, for instance, the lives of Pasion (ibid., no. 11672; Osborne [n. 2], T30), Pasion's ex-slave Phormion (Davies [n. 1], no. 11675.IX; Osborne [n. 2], T48), Conon (Osborne [n. 2], T81), and Epigenes (ibid., T80). Additionally, it has been presumed that the trierarch Aristolochus of Erchia was the same man as the banker Aristolochus of Dem. 45.63 (Davies [n. 1], no. 1946), and that the victorious choregos Timodemus is to be identified with the banker Timodemus of Dem. 36.29, 50 (ibid., no. 13674). See also Davies (n. 7), 65–6; Cohen (n. 15), 88–9; Osborne (n. 2), iv.196.
71 [Lys.] 8 was presumably never intended for a law court, but may have been composed to address the members of the association of which the speaker (i.e. possibly Lysias himself) was a member.
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