16 EDwaRD M. HaRRIs aND DavID M. LEwIs
of detail to our understanding of the regional and long-distance trade in
commodities in the Greek economy, as well as a firmer appreciation of their
scale and dynamism.Markets in Commodities, Labour and Credit
One should also distinguish among markets in commodities, markets in
labour and markets in credit. As we noted earlier, different commodities
might be traded in different types of markets. Some items such as fresh veg-
etables or fresh meat had to be sold close to the place of production, but oth-
ers could be sent to distant markets. It was possible to put cattle and horses in
ships and send them to ports across the sea. For instance, the Athenians trans-
ported cavalry from Attica to Sicily during the campaign against Syracuse
(Thuc. 6.43). But the costs of transportation might make it impossible for a
merchant to make a profit from a long-distance trade in animals. As we have
seen from discussion earlier in the chapter, however, it was easy to ship large
amounts of grain or large quantities of wine in ships across the Aegean or
the Black Sea.
But even though these products came from great distances, prices appear
to have been set locally. A speech in the Demosthenic corpus ([Dem.] 56.3-4)
describes how Cleomenes, Alexander’s governor of Egypt, tried to manipu-
late the price for grain in the Greek cities. He sent people to several places to
find the prevailing prices and sent ships to ports where the price was highest.
During this time, the price of grain at Athens was high, but the arrival of ship-
ments from Sicily caused the price to decline. As Reger observes,Kleomenes’ ‘distribution scheme,’ if I may call it that, seems to have
required not a general price-setting market but a large number of rela-
tively independent local markets. These price differences were not simply
the result of differing transportation costs, since otherwise there would
have been no higher profit in moving the grain. On the arrival of a grain
shipment from Sicily, prices in Athens crashed – proof enough that prices
in the Peiraieus were set in the Peiraieus, not at Rhodos.... These prices
represented real differences between independent and semi-independent
local markets, where prices were set locally and were relatively impervi-
ous to the impact of price changes elsewhere.^77Yet even though the price of grain fluctuated only in terms of supply and
demand in local markets, the price of gold was set in terms of supply and
demand throughout the Aegean. As Le Rider has shown, the silver-to-gold
ratio was 13 1/3:1 in the 380s. But with the increased production of gold by
Philip II, the silver:gold ratio slipped to 12:1 and fell to 9 1/2:1 by 329/8 as a
result of an influx of gold from Alexander’s conquests.^78 The increase in the
supply of gold led to a decrease in the price.