vivid sketch of economic management, which shines a torch-like beam
onto contemporary economic ideas seems, on internal evidence, to have
been written in the early third centurybc, and provides the only panor-
amic insight into the management of territorial kingdoms from the
period under consideration in this book.^88 The same anonymous author
goes on to explain regional administration (‘satrapal’management),
principally in terms of the management of revenues; from land,first
and foremost; from natural resources; from trade (port dues); from taxes
and tolls (land and market taxes); from animals; and from the product of
other activities ([Arist.]Oec.1345b 33–1346a 5). The regional (‘satrapal’)
account most likely derives from experiences garnered in the period of
Alexander the Great’s Successors in Asia Minor, when the Persian
system of administration was still very prominent in local practice. The
assumption seems to be that the balance of revenues wouldflow directly
to royal coffers. We know very little about how these operations actually
worked. Most of what we do know derives from the symptoms of
decision-making in royal chanceries—particular coinages minted; par-
ticular letters sent by named rulers to named civic entities or individual
landholders; Athenian forensic speeches (which give some idea of where
political sensitivities lay), and various civic requests or royal responses to
requests, gratefully commemorated by magistrates representing the
recipients in stone inscriptions. Much of this information, though by
no means all of it, refers to the kingdom of Macedonia. But there is also a
similar, if smaller, range of material relating to the Odrysian kingdom of
Thrace, which makes it easier to look at both of these territorial entities
alongside one another and tofind out whether they represent similar
patterns offiscal and operational behaviour. By examining these two
states within the wider region of the north Aegean and east Balkans, a
mesh of interconnected relationships becomes visible—between the
royal courts and their rural retainers; between coastal cities and their
hinterlands; between wealthy patrons and the communities that bene-
fited from their largesse. The armies of the two kingdoms were among
the most visible and dominant forms of human capital in the region.
Nevertheless, these military assets need to be viewed in the context of
regional economic relations, as well as the inter-regional tensions that
dominate surviving political narratives.
Given the fragmentary state of information aboutfiscal measures,
historians need to apply a model of sorts in order to get a realistic
(^88) Van Groningen 1933; Descat 2003, esp. 155; Bresson 2005a, 45–50 for discussion of
this author’s interest in minting coins; Aperghis 2004, 117–79.
Herdsmen with golden leaves—narratives and spaces 77