308 JOhN K. DAVIES
even in warfare as a component of fireballs,^68 the scale of effective demand,
although utterly unquantifiable even for Classical Athens, let alone for the
Greek-speaking world in general, has to accord the trade a significant struc-
tural role in the fabric of Greek culture.IV
The brief descriptive account given in the previous section suggests a number
of observations that are relevant to the theme of this volume. First, it offers a
model of commodity-supply that is flexible enough to accommodate chang-
ing circumstances through time and to apply to other such long-distance traf-
fics. Aromatics are ideal, since the uniqueness and remoteness of the area of
initial production, together with the production-end management structure
as reported by Theophrastus, allow one to create a simple linear model com-
posed of producers, hubs (e.g., Marib, then Taymā‘, Hindanu, Petra, Gaza, and
Tyre, then Memphis, Rhodes, Peiraieus, and Syracuse with others), transporters
(Sabaioi, Minaioi, Nabataeans, and others), distributors (Phoenicians, Greeks,
and Egyptians), and consumers (e.g., the temples and banqueters of Greece).
It will be obvious that even so simple a model as this generates a complex
network: for a different commodity such as copper, with multiple sources of
production, the map – whether topological or geographical – generated by it
will be still more intricate, but the underlying structure will remain the same.
Secondly, in total contrast to traffics in grain or ship-timber, there is virtu-
ally no trace of sustained or systemic intervention by the polities of the areas
of consumption in any external aspect of the traffic or in the operation of a
price-setting market. To be fair, that statement requires three qualifications.
First, it must accommodate the occasional gesture in politico-euergetistic
mode, such as the gifts made by Antiochus I and Seleucus I to the Apollo
temple at Didyma in winter 288/7.^69 Second, it must accommodate the
activities of market-supervisors such as the Athenian agoranomoi in guarding
against adulteration.^70 Third, it must accommodate the evidence from third-
and second-century Delos both of price-fluctuation within the 4 to 6 dr/
mina range and of ‘an absolutely uniform price for frankincense, governed by
amount purchased, of 5 dr/mina for over 71 years from 250 to 169 BC’.^71 This
third qualification, surprising in itself (and various explanations are possible, as
Reger notes), nonetheless suggests that in spite of the length and vulnerability
of the supply-chain supplies were stable enough to permit such uniformity.
Thirdly, there is room for caution about the role of polities elsewhere in the
supply-chain. True, the terminology used by our Greek literary sources hardly
allows us to distinguish between transporter or distributor and polity, but
inscriptions set up by the South Arabians themselves seem to offer a correc-
tive, since they reflect participation in the traffic on the part of individuals who