Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 69
that at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War there were 13,000
hoplites on full-time duty, 16,000 of “the oldest and the youngest”
who manned the garrisons, 1,200 cavalry, and 1,600 archers excluding
the thêtes , who may have accounted for between 40 percent or
more. This gives us a citizen body of approximately 50,000–60,000.
If we multiply that figure by four to include women and children,
we arrive at a total of about 200,000 Athenians. There is no evidence
to indicate in any Greek society whether men outnumbered
women or vice versa except in the case of Athens at the time of the
Peloponnesian War, when there was a drastic shortage of males as a
result of military casualties. The evidence for the shortage of males
lies in the fact that the offspring of common-law wives were now
recognized as legitimate, which had not been the case previously.
The population was reduced by perhaps as much as a third by the
plague that ravaged Athens from 430 to 426 b.c.e. , but it recovered
and probably remained stable until the end of the fourth century,
when it began to decline.
Evidence for the size of the population of other Greek states is
extremely meager. Argos is thought to have had a citizen body
roughly the same size as Athens, whereas that of Corinth was probably
only half the size. Sparta, at its peak, had a very small citizen
body. Herodotos (7.234.2) tells us that, even in 480 b.c.e. , the year
of the battle of Thermopylai, Sparta’s fighting force numbered only
8,000. By 371 b.c.e., its citizen body had dwindled to a mere 1,500.
The reason for this sharp decline is not fully understood, but it
probably had as much to do with disenfranchisement as it did with
depopulation. Many Spartans may have become impoverished and
found themselves unable to contribute to the dining clubs that were
a precondition of citizenship (see p. 122).
The most populous Greek states in the Classical Period were in
southern Italy and Sicily. Judging by the extent of the archaeological
remains, the largest was Syracuse. In the period of the Roman
Empire, several Greek cities, including Alexandria, Apamea,
Antioch (modern Antakya), Ephesos, and Pergamon, all had populations
of at least 250,000.
Athenian citizens were divided into classes according to the economic
productivity of their land. The highest property class was
known as the pentakosiomedimnoi, so named because their land
yielded 500 bushels of corn annually. The next was the hippeis or
cavalry, whose yearly yield was 300 bushels. These were followed
by the zeugitai or “yokemen,” whose yield was 200 bushels, so
named because they served in close rank (i.e., yoked together) in