INTRODUCTION 13
evidence for smaller local markets. For Attica, however, there is epigraphic
evidence for agorai in several demes: Besa (Agora XIX P9, line 31), Deceleia
(IG ii^2 1237, lines 64–68, 78–84), Eleusis (SEG 28.103 [333/2 BCE]; IG ii^2 1103,
lines 2–4), Erchia (SEG 21:541E, lines 50–51), Sounion (IG ii^2 1180 (c. 350
BCE), lines 4–17), north of Sounion at Pasalimani (Salliora-Oikonomakou
[1979]. Cf. IG ii^2 1080) and at Halai Aixonides.^71 For those living in the city of
Athens there was the main agora near the Acropolis, but there were also sev-
eral deme markets: Kollytus (IG i^3 426, line 8), Kydathenaion (Agora XIX L6a,
line 5), Skambonidai (IG i^3 244 [c. 460 BCE] C.1, line 7) and Melite (Agora
XIX P26, line 454). There was also a marketplace at the Piraeus (IG ii^2 38 0 ;
1176 [c. 380 BCE], line 20). In a recent study, Kakavogianni and Anetakis have
presented the archaeological evidence for markets in Myrrhinous, Steiria and
Thorikos, as well as archaeological evidence to back up the epigraphical attes-
tations for markets at Sounion (and perhaps one between Erchia and Oe) and
Thorikos.^72 There would thus have been an agora within three or four hours’
walk for almost all farmers in Attica.^73 It is highly unlikely that scholars have
accounted for every marketplace of this sort, and future research is likely to
uncover similar markets in other parts of Attica.^74
At the next level are regional markets that linked buyers and sellers from dif-ferent city-states. There has been some debate about how to identify a ‘region,’
but there are three main criteria: geography, ethnicity and polity.^75 Shared
physical features can unite areas into a region. For instance, the Aegean basin
shares certain climatic and geological features. One can also identify areas that
include several city-states by the shared ethnic identity of the inhabitants, such
as Achaea, Aetolia, Ionia, Macedonia and possibly regions like Arcadia and
Messenia. Sometimes these regions united by common ethnicity coalesced
into political units such as federal leagues (the Achaean league, the Aetolian
league), but sometimes they did not (Ionia, the Dodecannese). Reger has iden-
tified the Cyclades as a regional economy, one that bound together local trade
in many commodities.^76 These regional units were often linked by commercial
exchange. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians (874–6, 878–80) a trader comes to Athens
from Thebes to sell ‘marjoram, pennyroyal, rush-mats, lampwicks, ducks, jack-
daws, francolins, coots, wrens and dabchicks’ and ‘geese, hares, foxes, moles,
hedge-hogs, cates, badgers, martens, otters, and Copaic eels.’ Another trader
comes from Megara to buy salt and garlic (889–90). In a fragment of Strattis’
Cinesias we hear of a character buying grain from Boeotians (fr. 14 K-A). In
her chapter on weight standards Psoma shows how neighbouring cities might
adjust their weight standards to facilitate exchange and promote the growth
of regional markets. For instance, Alexander I of Macedon used a reduced
Milesian standard for his tetradrachms and smaller fractions to promote trade
with the cities of the Chalcidic peninsula, who used the same standard. In the
fifth century the city of Byzantium in Thrace and the city of Chalcedon in