Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

220 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
A slave carrying two amphorae. Courtesy akgimages,
London.
Athens also had to import virtually all its shipbuilding supplies.
These included timber, sailcloth, and ruddle, which was used for
the painting of triremes. The chief supplier of timber was Macedon,
supplemented by Thrace and southern Italy. Athens also
imported slaves, particularly from Thrace, the Black Sea region,
and Asia Minor. In the fourth century b.c.e., it probably needed to
import approximately 6,000 slaves per annum in order to maintain
its full complement. Other major imports included tin, iron,
and copper.
Athens’s essential imports were not its only ones. Perikles
boasted with justification that “all the produce of every land comes
to Athens” (Thukydides 2.38.2). An impressive list of the exotic
commodities for sale in Athenian markets is provided by a comic
writer called Hermippos in a play dated around 420 b.c.e. It includes
silphium (a plant used in medicine and as a condiment)
and ox hides from Cyrene in Libya; mackerel and salt fish from the
Hellespont; pork and cheese from Syracuse; sailcloth, rigging, and
papyrus from Egypt; cypress wood from Crete; ivory from Libya;
raisins and dried figs from Rhodes; pears and apples from Euboia;
slaves from Phrygia; mercenaries from Arkadia; tattooed and untattooed
slaves from Pagasai; acorns and almonds from Paphlagonia;