Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

88 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
Menon by making cloaks?” (2.7.6). At the top of the earning scale of
the self-employed were the Sophists—that is, itinerant professors
of rhetoric who moved from city to city and charged considerable
sums of money for their services, as well as celebrity entertainers,
including, in the Hellenistic period, professional actors.
One of the benefits of Athens’s maritime empire in the fifth century
b.c.e. was that it provided enough surplus in the economy not
only to finance the ambitious Periklean building program, but also
to pay poor Athenians to be rowers in the navy and elderly or infirm
Athenians to be jurors. These groups are discussed later (see p. 231),
but it is important to note here that the surplus wealth in Athens’s
coffers thus guaranteed many Athenians a living wage.
The most despised group were those in the employ of other
Greeks, whether on a permanent or on a temporary basis. When
Achilles wishes to convey the worst social condition imaginable,
he instances that of a man who works as a day laborer, rather than
that of a slave, because the latter enjoyed security of sorts (The
Odyssey 11.489–91). For this reason, when Sokrates recommends
working as the bailiff of a large estate to a once wealthy individual
who lost his fortune at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the latter
comments, “I’d hardly like to be a slave” (Xenophon, Memoirs of
Sokrates 2.8.4), on the grounds that he would not want to be bossed
around.
Whatever his source of livelihood, every citizen was obligated to
serve the state. This meant attending the assembly and the religious
festivals that were funded at public cost, serving on the council,
holding the office of magistrate when called upon to do so, or being
a juror in the courts. In Athens, a magistrate’s term of office lasted
a year, whereas a council member served for about one-tenth of the
year, and this was probably true of other Greek communities. It is
estimated that, in any given year, at least 8,500 Athenians—about
one-quarter of the entire citizen body—were engaged in public service
if we include the 6,000 who served as jurors and the 1,500 who
participated in dramatic performances (see pp. 232 and 272). In
practice, however, the number was probably much higher if we
include those who served in a junior or unofficial capacity. All citizens
were also required to serve in either the army or the navy, and
when called up to do so, could not recuse themselves. For those at
the bottom of the economic scale, fulfilling their civic responsibilities
would have entailed considerable financial hardship.
Scenes on vases depict the world of men as primarily dominated
by drinking parties, hunting, exercising in the gymnasium, and