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106 Ecology and Beyond
new taste for bread rather than for the traditional maza, a taste
that the Athenians acquired during the Peloponnesian War,
would also explain why people preferred imported wheat instead
of barley. Unfortunately, this viewpoint is difficult to accept. It
contradicts all the information we may have about the Greek city
and its link with its countryside. Furthermore, as pointed out by
Horden and Purcell, Thucydides (7.28.1) informs us that grain
was transported by land from Oropos, which occupied a key
position on the canal of Euripos. 35 It sometimes seemed more
convenient (for instance for security reasons during a war) to
disembark grain in Oropos, and then to transport it to Athens.
This shows at least that transport costs were not so high as to
prevent any such transfer. In fact nothing disproves the existence
of a connection between the city and its chora. The very idea
of a fully autarkic Athenian peasant is a myth. Some basic
exchange may have been made in kind. But from the land leases
from Athens and different parts of the Greek world, we know
that in the classical and Hellenistic period most rents on land
were to be paid in cash, not in kind. 36 Also, the assumption that
there existed no agora outside those of Athens and Piraeus
cannot be admitted: other agorai existed in Eleusis, Halai Aixonides,
and Sounion. 37 The too-simple idea of an autarkic and
motionless Mediterranean countryside should be rejected.
The second point concerns what might be called virtual
connectivity. Before the time for which we possess written
documents, this type of connectivity is very hard to prove. Yet
as early as the second millennium bc, there already existed in
the Mediterranean a kind of common international behaviour, if
not shared law. This is proved by the famous report on the
Travel of Unamon, which has been the object of a recent
re-evaluation from an international law perspective. 38 The
35
Horden and Purcell, CS 128, who stress the role of Oropos as a centre of
connectivity.
36
R. Osborne, Classical Landscape with Figures: The Ancient Greek City
and its Countryside (London, 1987), 42–3.
37 2 2 2
Eleusis: IG II 1188; Halai Aixonides: IG II 1174; Sounion: IG II
1180; D. Whitehead, The Demes of Attica (Princeton, 1986), 96–7 and n. 51.
38 R. De Spens, ‘Droit international et commerce au début de la XXIe
dynastie: Analyse juridique du rapport d’Ounamon’, in N. Grimal and B.
Menu (eds.), Le Commerce en Égypte ancienne (Cairo, 1998), 105–26.