The Ancient Greek Economy. Markets, Households and City-States

THE LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC GROwTH 123

followed by the property and the owner. The neighbors on the north and the

south are given, then the name of the buyer and the surety who promises to

pay the remaining amount of the price if the buyer does not. In the left-hand

margin is the price of the property and the amount of the sales tax. This kind

of document served several purposes. First, it was a financial document, which

recorded the revenue gained by the state from the sale and from the sales tax.

In this regard it served to keep public officials, the poletai, accountable.^40 It

also recorded the name of the surety who pledged to pay the purchase price

if the buyer did not. But the document also provided evidence of the owner’s

title. The method of describing the property is very crude (only the deme and

the names of the neighbors), but it should have been sufficient to identify its

location.

These two sets of records were not unusual: the poletai kept regular records

of confiscated property. Another example comes from the year 367/6 and

records the confiscation and sale of a house belonging to a certain Theosebes

of Xypete located at Alopeke.^41 These records are more detailed and give the

deme of the property as well as its borders:  a road leading to the sanctu-

ary of Daedalus, the sanctuary itself and the neighbor to the south, Philippus

of Agryle (cf. the detailed description of the boundaries of Plato’s land at

Iphistiadai [Diog. Laert. 3.41]). The evidence also confirms what we observed

earlier: the inscription has two people from outside Alopeke who own prop-

erty in the deme.

The records of the poletai were located at Athens, but there may have been

other records located in the demes.^42 It is striking that in the records of the

property confiscated from those convicted in the affair of the Herms and

the Mysteries in 415 BCE, the person who reported the property was the

demarch.^43 When the Athenians decided that there would be property tax

levied in 362 BCE, the members of the Council were to report who were

the members of the demes and who owned property in the demes ([Dem.]

50.8). Soon afterward, Apollodorus was reported in three demes where he

held property. The fact that the Council was able to determine who owned

property and who did not strongly suggests that there were records they

could consult. If they had had to walk around the entire deme asking own-

ers and their neighbors who owned what, the process would have taken

much longer. This passage also reveals another important aspect of records

about property in Athens: there was no one central register, but many types

of records in different places. Owners might also use court records about

cases involving property or inheritance to prove title. All verdicts in private

cases appear to have been kept on file and could be consulted as the need

arose.^44

One should not exaggerate the amount of information available in these

records. Because they record sales and are not property registers, they do not give