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Class Distinctions in Fifth-Century Athens
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
The origins of Athenian class distinctions lie far back in the days of the synoecism, and it is tantalizing that so little is known of this process. Yet much of the interest of the question depends on differences of time and circumstance, so that, although the Athenian social atmosphere was something very unlike our own, the dissimilarity is partly due to conditions which were general in the ancient world and not peculiar to the case under consideration. It is true that, like us, the ancients were distinguished by the fact of belonging to classes. Not all were wealthy; not all were celebrated. Neither were they all skilled, humble, virtuous, or unscrupulous. As now, wealth was not infrequently the accident of birth, and the example of Democedes the physician, who won affluence by his personal capacity, is a rather rare one. On the other hand, many factors which emphasize class distinction to-day were absent. There was no large-scale industry in our sense of the word. Indeed, if we wished to speak of industry in Greek, we should use the term χειρουργία—something performed manually. Again, there was not available a large multiplicity of goods, the acquisition of which would stamp the obviously wealthy. Consider the simple items mentioned in the inscription which gives the inventory of Alcibiades’ bedroom furniture and compare them with those of a later age, with the multa et lauta supellex which Cicero tells us belonged to Pompey. Or compare Cicero's own villas and portrait galleries with the homely domesticity of Ischomachos as we see it in Xenophon's Oeconomica.
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References
Page 15 note 1 If the Athenian manner of life had been a little less frugal, the Egestaeans might not have produced so disastrous an impression by the display of a little silver plate (Thuc. vi. 46).
Page 15 note 2 See Somerset Maugham's essay ‘Democracy’ in the series On a Chinese Screen for a discussion of the Chinese indifference to smells and its social consequences.
Page 16 note 1 There were few slaves in Locris and Doris even as late as the time of Aristotle (Timaeus, frag. 67, Athen. 264–72).
Page 16 note 2 Petrie, , Social Life in Ancient EgyptGoogle Scholar, gives several examples of the impartial character of Egyptian legislation. From a very early period Sparta had had laws which gained the approval of Thucydides (i. 18).
Page 16 note 3 Lamachos at Potidaea: Plut. Nicias, xv. 1.
Page 16 note 4 C.I.A. i. 324; the accounts for the building of the Erechtheum mention one Archilochos as receiving a drachma a day—the same pay as that given to the labourers.
Page 16 note 5 Plutarch, , Customs of the Lacedaemonians, xxivGoogle Scholar, speaks of the Spartan uniform as of something novel.
Page 16 note 6 Herod, ii. 37 and 164. Cf., too, Genesis xlvii. 22, where Joseph buys up all the land in Egypt—‘Only the land of the priests bought he not’.
Page 17 note 1 Cf. Demosth, , In Euboul. 1314.Google Scholar
Page 17 note 2 Plut, , Cimon, iv.Google Scholar
Page 17 note 3 This view of the phratry seems to be generally accepted. There is evidence for its having had some such function in the Draconian homicide law republished at the end of the fifth century (Tod, No. 87).
Page 18 note 1 Gomme, , Population of AthensGoogle Scholar, has noticed that out of 150 surviving inscriptions from fifth-century tombstones 40 refer to foreigners.
Page 18 note 2 Herodotus (ii. 167) remarks that ‘… the Thracians, the Scyths, the Persians, the Lydians, and almost all other barbarians hold the citizens who practise trades, and their children, in less repute than the rest…. These ideas prevail throughout the whole of Greece, particularly among the Lace-daemonians’.
Page 19 note 1 Herod, vii. 144. This bonus was to have been 10 drachmas per person, a sum equivalent to a month's pay on the basis of the wages paid to dicasts.
Page 19 note 2 Pausanias (vii. 15. 7) claims to have seen their grave on the battlefield. Cf., too, i. 22. 3.
Page 19 note 3 Eupolis, Ath. i. 4, speaks of Pindar's poems as ἤ
χ ειρουρία
Page 20 note 1 Kipling in Souvenirs of France, p. 31, attributes French extravagance of speech to the fact that the country has a rigorous standard of life. Again, the Englishman's habit of understatement is connected with his habits of waste.
Page 20 note 2 Xen, , Ath. Pol. i. 10.Google Scholar The writer complains that it is impossible to strike a slave at Athens for fear of his really being a citizen.
Page 21 note 1 Pro Phorm., 1125.Google Scholar Cf. the advice on how to talk well in the Wasps (1174–1264).
Page 21 note 2 He was known as the ‘Thracian Swallow’: Aristoph. Ran. 680.
Page 21 note 3 Thuc. vii. 63.
Page 22 note 1 Herodotus regards it as impossible that the Athenians should be so simpleminded as to be taken in by the ruse whereby Pisistratus obtained power (i. 60).
Page 22 note 2 Archidamus says of the Spartans: ‘We are trained not to be too clever in useless matters’ (Thuc. i. 84).
Page 23 note 1 Thuc. iii. 17.
Page 23 note 2 Ibid. vii. 63.
Page 23 note 3 Ibid. iii. 98.
Page 23 note 4 Plato, , Meno, 82b.Google Scholar
Page 24 note 1 Cf. Eurip, Phoen. 391.Google Scholar Demosthenes, on the other hand, thought Athens allowed more of it than any other state (Phil. iii. 111).
Page 24 note 2 Plato, , Laws, vii. 806.Google Scholar
Page 24 note 3 Thuc. vii. 27.
Page 24 note 4 Ibid. vii. 75.
Page 24 note 5 Ibid. viii. 97.