Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The Public Sphere 233
well that movement up the economic scale was very hard to achieve.
Besides, there wasn’t a great deal to do with wealth anyway, other
than to use it for conspicuous display—that is, to impress others.
Just as the Greeks did not believe in the virtues of work for work’s
sake, so, too, they hardly had any notion of the concept of wasting
time. Loafing about was an essential part of every citizen’s life. It
was by loafing about in the Agora each day that Athenians learned
the latest gossip, exchanged ideas about the burning political issues
of the day, and discussed the proposals that were tabled for the
next meeting of the assembly. As already noted, they also used their
time in the Agora to make their daily purchases, since respectable
women were expected to stay at home.
TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION
Travel was widespread in all periods. From the eighth century
b.c.e. onward, traders had regular contacts with non-Greeks such
as Phoenicians and Egyptians. Already in The Odyssey we encounter
itinerant experts, including bards, physicians, builders, and seers,
who were known collectively as dêmiourgoi or “those who serve the
community,” and who, as Homer (17.386) tells us with a touch of
hyperbole, were “invited from the ends of the earth.” To this group
in later times should be added Sophists, or teachers of rhetoric, who
were much in demand in the fifth century b.c.e. , and—a much larger
group—mercenaries. In addition, many Greeks made long journeys
at some point in their lives to attend a Panhellenic festival, consult
an oracle, or visit a healing sanctuary. We should also bear in mind
that Greeks throughout the Mediterranean were frequently being
uprooted as a result of warfare, famine, land hunger, and so on.
Land Travel
When Telemachos and his friend Peisistratos set off from Pylos to
Sparta at the end of Book 3 of The Odyssey, they do so in a chariot
with a single night’s stopover at Pherai (modern Kalamata). Homer’s
suggestion that chariots, which required both driver and passenger
to stand alongside one another in a very restricted space,
were used for long-distance travel is pure fantasy. The poet clearly
thought it inconsistent with their status to have the royal pair traveling
on mules, which in reality would have been the only way (other
than on foot) to accomplish a long journey over land. There were,
in fact, no roads for wheeled traffic over long distances anywhere
in the Greek world, nor indeed was there any motivation to con-