294 PETER VAN ALfEN
of conspicuous consumption, and also programs like pay for judging cases that
put coins in the hands of even the poorest citizens (cf. Kallet 2007 ).^39 Even in
the absence of sumptuary laws, social pressures might have limited the number
of exclusive, top-register products on offer in the Athenian agora, while more
spending power among a wider portion of the population could bring former
‘luxury’ goods within the reach of non-elites, at least for the occasional splurge.
My point is that toward the end of the fifth century, in Athens if not elsewhere,
consumers were to be found not just among the elite, but throughout all strata
of society. For these consumers, markets full of imports had become more
than just something to point up as a patriotic sign of economic and political
hegemony, but an important part of an internalized, emotionalized, consuming
way of life, something both Pericles and the Old Oligarch underscore. Here
again, as I noted earlier, this bounty of imported and other goods in the agora
contributed to a communal sense of wealth and well-being, even if all market
goers could not afford all the goods all the time. Window shopping, as many
today know, can be as satisfying, if not more so, than committing to an actual
purchase.^40 But no such communal or individual joy can be had when the
markets are depleted, or the goods monotonous.^41
If indeed markets full of imports and common access to them had come to
define part of the Athenian, and more generally Greek way of life by the end of
the fifth century, any notion of a turn to complete communal self-sufficiency –
a bleak world without the variety of imports – would not hold much appeal,
except, of course, to the appetite-denying philosophical brood. In the real
world, no such Platonic utopia could be achieved anyway except by extreme
forms of coercion or duress; most markets had long since passed the tipping
point where banning imports would be feasible, desirable, or even, from a fiscal
perspective, prudent. The consumer had long since emerged out of the shad-
ows of the Archaic age a powerful entity who grew still stronger over time.
Once new products became lodged in his or her habits and expectations, these
would be difficult to dislodge, even as he or she moved on to the next novelty.
Arguably, this incessant ratchet effect in aggregate demand, ever increased but
never decreased the scope of the goods that could be found in markets. In fact,
the ubiquitous act of imitating foreign goods locally, whether coins, ceramics,
textiles, even perfumes and spices, shows us how irrepressible the force of this
demand could be; no one imitates, if no one is buying.^42 States, for their part,
quickly learned to harness this force for the communal good: import/export
taxes were a, if not the major source of revenue for most Greek communities.^43
Thus caught in the ever-widening net of consumer demand, the com-
modities I have presented here are useful for thinking about the problem of
long-distance trade and self-sufficiency. Arguably none of the commodities
identified as imports in Levantine-Aegean trade were critically needed for sus-
taining life in, or to ensure the security of Aegean communities; and, indeed,