AEGEAN-LEVANTINE TRADE, 600–300 BCE 293
Oration (2.38), he notes that ‘on account of the greatness of the city everything
comes in from all the world, and for us it is as natural to enjoy the goods of
others as it is to enjoy our own local produce.’ Similar links between Athenian
power and pleasure in imports are expressed by the Old Oligarch (2.7): ‘it is
because of their mastery of the sea that the Athenians have mixed with var-
ious peoples in different areas and discovered a range of festive practices. In
consequence, what is sweet in Sicily, Italy, Cyprus, Egypt, Lydia, Pontus, the
Peloponnese or elsewhere has all been brought together in one place because
of the mastery of the sea.’ Athens in the 430s and 420s was a major entrepôt,
and the range of commodities found there must have been extensive, but how
much more extensive than other equally important entrepôts, like Syracuse or
Carthage, is open to question. The Atheno-centric view of both Pericles and
the Oligarch serve rhetorical purposes and obscure the fact that the Athenians,
like many others elsewhere, were experiencing the benefits of a process that
had begun before their empire coalesced and would continue after its collapse.
There was, in general circulation all over the Mediterranean, an abundance of
goods, and while some markets might have been better stocked than others,
only the poorest and most remote likely had no experience of at least some
small imports and foreign commodities. Both passages also strongly imply that
it was not just the wealthy elites, those with plenty of spare tetradrachmas, who
enjoyed these imports, but anyone with even a few hemiobols to spend who
strolled the agora.^36
Some years ago, Braund ( 1994 ) took issue with the implication of mass accessto luxury goods found in these passages, arguing that most ‘luxury’ imports
would still be well beyond the financial reach of the mass of poor Athenians,
and that the picture of a shopping utopia painted by Pericles was little more
than an ‘Athenian mirage,’ a political panacea. While Braund is certainly cor-
rect to draw attention to the political messages of these passages, still we should
question whether his view of mass access is correct.^37 There will always be
goods occupying the highest luxury register, that are indeed well beyond the
reach of the ‘average consumer’; such goods are designed to be that way, serv-
ing primarily as tools of elite social distancing: today’s Bentley coupe, Prada
shoes, and Tiffany jewelry are cases in point. But not all imports, even those
Braund considered luxury goods, like those listed in the Hermippus fragment
noted earlier, were necessarily of the highest luxury register. Like the com-
modity state, the luxury register is dynamic, with items moving into and out
of it depending on the immediate context. In late fifth century Athens, and no
doubt elsewhere, a number of political, economic, and social forces converged
that might have caused some of these imports to trickle down out of the
higher registers, if in fact they ever occupied them to begin with.^38 Included
among these converging forces was the Athenian sense of egalitarianism that
generally discouraged the wealthy and other elites from engaging in displays