Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

230 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
of the gods. Few small farms were entirely self-sufficient. Most
farmers had to travel to market to exchange their produce. In the
Hellenistic Period, Egypt became the most intensively cultivated
region in the Greek world.
Commerce
Already in Homer’s The Odyssey we can detect a marked disdain
for those who made their livelihood by commerce. When the
Phaiakians ask Odysseus whether he is a trader, the question comes
across as an insult. Even in the Classical Period, much of Athens’s
trade was conducted by its metic population rather than by its citizenry,
which reflects this same age-old prejudice. Yet despite their
low status, traders played a vital role in the exchange of grain, wine,
salted fish, and luxury goods.
Part of the odium that attached to those who made their living
by commerce was due to the fact that there was no clear distinction
between trading and piracy in early Greece, and pirates frequently
pillaged coastal communities. It was because of the risk of seaborne
raids that cities like Athens were founded several miles from the
coast. When Athens took control of the Aegean in the fifth century
b.c.e. , piracy had virtually been eliminated. With the decline of
Athenian naval power in the fourth century, however, it enjoyed
a resurgence. So serious was the problem in the Hellenistic Period
that several Greek islands passed laws requiring women to stay
indoors, for fear that they might be snatched away by pirates.
Manufacture and Retailing
Most manufacturing enterprises were extremely small. The largest
Athenian ergastêrion, or workshop, of which we have record
belonged to Kephalos, a metic who employed 120 slaves in his
shield factory in the Piraeus. The father of Demosthenes employed
over fifty slaves in his knife factory. The majority of enterprises
were probably much smaller. It is estimated that Athens’s entire
force of potters in the fifth century b.c.e. numbered no more than
five hundred, most of whom worked in groups of about six. Athens
and the Piraeus were major centers of manufacturing. Evidence
of bronze working has been found in the vicinity of the temple of
Hephaistos, god of metalworking, on the west side of the Agora,
while potters and vase painters worked chiefly in a district just outside
the city on the west known as the Kerameikos (from which the
word ceramic derives).