298 PETER VAN ALfEN
38 For a discussion of this type of ‘trickle down effect’ see van der Veen 2003 : 409–10 and
Foxhall 2005.
39 It is worth noting as well that Athenian society especially in the late fourth century was,
according to Kron 2011 , marked by a high degree of economic egalitarianism. His study
of Athenian wealth distribution demonstrates that despite extremes of wealth and poverty
the bulk of Athenian male citizens were living far from a hand-to-mouth existence. Kron
2011 : 132 calculates the median wealth per adult male to be 2,451 drachmas.
40 Cf. Lys. 24.20.
41 A quote attributed to Gloria Steinham about (former) East Germany in the early 1990s
captures the essence of this joy: ‘First we have a revolution and then we go shopping.’
42 See the collected papers in Lawall and van Alfen 2011 for the (ab)uses of imitative commod-
ities in the Greco-Roman world.
43 See Bresson 1998.
44 Parker 2002 explores the role and discourse of distance in the consumption of Indian com-
modities, including many noted here, in the Roman period.
45 Although Clark 2010 calls into question some of the fundamental tenets of the (presumed)
consumer revolution of 1650–1800 in England, he notes ‘[s] omehow consumers, without
much increase in wages, were consuming a whole cornucopia of new objects.’ New con-
sumption patterns, along with new commodities, also seem to obtain for the Persian period,
the underlying economic and social structure of which needs further analysis.