INTRODUCTION 21
is the only one for investigating this issue, for work on domestic assemblages
has much potential to shed light on the extent to which Greek households
were truly self-sufficient.^101 But the advantage of our catalogue is that it brings
to the discussion a wide variety of commodities that do not generally survive
for archaeologists to unearth.
As a thought experiment, we may picture an average farming household,that backbone of Athenian society at the less affluent end of the wealth spec-
trum, and ask how isolated such a household could have been from market
exchange.^102 What is striking is the long list of fairly essential goods that could
not be produced domestically and must have been acquired at the market.
Whilst much of the household’s textile needs may have been produced domes-
tically,^103 there is no question that footwear was acquired from professional
shoemakers. And it will have needed replacement: Theophrastus (Char. 22.11)
lampoons the stingy man who mends his own shoes rather than buying a new
pair. Lamps and lamp-wicks for lighting will have been a necessity. Along with
lamps went an impressive array of ceramic goods for cooking, eating and stor-
age that, again, must normally have been purchased – and these will have had
to be periodically replaced as well due to breakage: pots and pans, braziers,
crockery, wine jugs, storage jars, strainers and chamber pots. From what we
know of the price of pottery, most items lay within the purchasing power of
a modest household.^104 Fuel – if not available from one’s own land – must
have been bought; we know of charcoal makers working in the Attic coun-
tryside who produced this highly important resource, required as a cooking
fuel as well as for industrial processes and bathhouses.^105 All of the household’s
utensils, from cooking items such as knives, ladles and so on to tools, brooms
and other implements, were available at the agora and were a must-have for
even the poorest households. Various leather goods were also essential market
purchases, especially items such as panniers for donkeys, knapsacks and wine-
skins. Furniture was generally produced in slave-staffed workshops,^106 although
poorer households may have contained only the bare essentials. Even the barest
household with the stingiest owner was not hermetically sealed from the mar-
ket, and this sketch is overly pessimistic.
Beyond the bare essentials, normal Athenians will have aimed to purchasefar more. It may have been possible to dine exclusively off the produce of
one’s own farm, but some purchasing of supplementary items and small lux-
uries will have varied the fare greatly. Expensive fish may only rarely (if ever)
have made the table of poorer Athenians, but salt fish (tarichos) was proverbi-
ally cheap (Ar. fr. 347 K-A; Vesp. 4 91 )^107 and was imported from as far north
as the Black Sea and as far west as Cadiz (Cratinus fr. 44 K-A; Hermippus fr.
63 K-A; Eupolis fr. 199 K-A). Other fish, such as sprats, were seen as a cheap
and cheerful dish (Alexis fr. 200 K-A; cf. Alexis fr. 159 K-A);^108 and in exagger-
ated style, Eupolis (fr. 156 K-A) lampoons the cheapskate who only ever once