INDUSTRY STRUCTURE AND INCOME OPPORTUNITIES 151
people in the way that other aspects of Athenian life appear to have been. Even
Glotz believed that ‘the head of an undertaking was not driven by the need
to collect as much capital and labour as possible because he was not driven by
the necessity of getting the biggest possible returns out of expensive machines,
in order to diminish his general costs and to obtain a progressive increase in
profits.’^16 Hopper observed that factories were acquired by chance as a result
of other financial dealings, and that there is no evidence of investments made
to extend an enterprise, nor of any particular expertise or enthusiasm for effi-
ciency on the part of owners, although he does not explain this peculiar insou-
ciance.^17 Finley mocked Demosthenes for not having taken depreciation into
account in his description of returns on his investment in manufacturing;^18 a
more charitable interpretation would take returns on manufacturing invest-
ment about 20 percent higher than on land to imply that investors did account
for depreciation (and some other costs) – at least implicitly. Humphreys speaks
of ‘small-scale, disconnected business ventures, assessed by the security of their
returns rather than their potentiality for expansion’ and attributes this largely
to the social preferences of Athenians, who were happier being rentiers rather
than serious industrialists.^19 Of course they were happier being rentiers – that
is how the apophora system worked;^20 it does not mean that the slaves and
freedmen (who actually ran their businesses) were not interested in profit.
Even in the 2007 Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, several
contributions start by noting the apparent failure of the ancients to build large
manufacturing enterprises.^21 The analysis undertaken in this chapter demon-
strates that firm size was quite varied and followed patterns predictable from
modern business theory. It appears that ancient Athenian manufacturers devel-
oped and grew their businesses in much the same way we would have done,
given the level of available technology.
There were a number of large manufacturing enterprises in Athens. Lysiasand Polemarchus claimed to have co-owned 120 slaves, most of whom must
have been employed in their shield factory (Lys. 12.19). This figure might be
exaggerated but must have seemed plausible to the judges presiding over the
case, and even if we halve the number, it remains a large factory.^22 We hear of
another shield factory some twenty years later (or possibly the same one under
new ownership), whose revenues imply at least sixty-five slaves.^23 In his speech
against his guardian Aphobus, Demosthenes claimed that one of the work-
shops he inherited employed “thirty-two or thirty-three slaves and the other,
twenty” (Dem. 27.9). Pantaenetos seems to have employed about thirty slaves
in processing ore (Dem. 37.4, 17, 31). Aristophanes’ portrayal of Cleon, espe-
cially in the Knights, is generally taken to mean that he inherited a tannery, or
at least funds that a forebear had made from tanning; if so his wealth suggests
it was a large enterprise.^24 There is reason to believe that Anytus, rich enough
to have been accused of bribing a panel of judges, might have owed his wealth