322 DAVID M. LEWIS
commodity bought only by the rich for conspicuous display, but a valuable
investment owned by a large swathe of the free populace. There is no obvious
reason why similarly high levels of demand should not be expected elsewhere.
Two factors help to explain the low prices of slaves in this period: low trans-
port costs, and a steady, organised and abundant supply of slaves.
For the issue of transport costs let us trace the journey of a Phrygian slave
from his or her point of origin to final sale in Attica and compute a few
rough figures. We may take Gordion as a hypothetical starting-point, and
(to tie neatly with the preceding discussion) Cyzicus as an Aegean market.
Undoubtedly there were a number of routes from the interior and a number
of destination ports,^27 but this putative route will serve the present point to all
intents and purposes. Slaves were most likely moved in coffles, that is, columns
of individuals chained or roped together.^28
A slave coffle travelling on foot from Gordion probably covered no more
than 20 miles per day.^29 The journey to Cyzicus is a trip of some 250 miles;^30
as a rough figure then, we should place the minimum journey time at around
two weeks. This may serve as a conservative estimate; Gordion is located deep
within the satrapy of Greater Phrygia, and slaves originating in areas located
closer to coastal markets could be transported there in a shorter time. Broadly
speaking, transport costs in the movement of slaves increase due to several fac-
tors. The costs of feeding and supervision must be taken into consideration, as
must the means of transport, which can prove expensive. Furthermore, sale to
multiple middlemen along the route racks up costs by increments, and sales
taxes (such as Cyzicus’ andrapodôniê) imposed along the way have much the
same effect. A shorter distance means that costs due to feeding and supervi-
sion remain low, and that the slave can be delivered from his point of origin
to the coastal market by the same merchant operating within his normal arena
of travel. Shorter distances also keep down mortality rates among the slaves;
longer journeys usually lead to higher levels of starvation, exhaustion, sickness
and death.^31 A couple of observations are now in order.
First, from a comparative-historical perspective, the transport of slaves from
areas such as Thrace or Phrygia to Attica or other Aegean markets would have
incurred rather low costs. One often reads of the high costs of land transport
in antiquity, but a slave coffle could move under its own steam and travel across
terrain inaccessible to vehicles; the coffle method allows many slaves to be
supervised by only a few individuals, and the main outlay would be for food
for the journey (probably carried by mules) and supervision.^32 The tolls lev-
ied at the Anatolian coastal market and the destination market (e.g., Piraeus)
probably were not much higher than 2 percent.^33 Compared to shipping a
Phrygian slave to Roman Italy, never mind the enormous costs involved in
moving slaves from the African coast to American markets, the movement of a
Phrygian slave to Athens was an extremely cheap and simple process.^34