markets which, in this particular area, are connected with quite a sur-
prising variety of coin. Finley thought about essentials in terms of an
imagined‘peasant’, without recourse to the kind of everyday tools that
constituted the minimum range to complete agricultural tasks. In his
roundabout way, Plato conceded the importance of good quality tools.
Iron tools are among the least considered items in the repertoire of
domestic essentials.^46 The infrastructure of everyday life in thefirst
millenniumbcwas unthinkable without such tools. The comparative
invisibility of iron implements is largely due to the chemical structure of
iron blades and thus the poor survival of this metal, not to its lack
of importance to everyday subsistence. No farmer, herdsman, craftsman,
or trader could survive for a day without iron tools. Such tools were not,
admittedly, the kinds of artefacts that would be purchased often. This
merely reinforces the natural periodicities of different kinds of exchange.
All markets were not of the same kind. Large purchases of grain, by
designated officials, often calledsitonai,on behalf of whole communities,
took place typically once a year, although the timing of such exchanges
could be planned to target particular harvests—the late spring or early
summer harvests of Cyrene and Egypt, with the latest crop of all,
available via the northern Black Sea ports, providing the ultimate back
stop.^47 High value craft products, which needed a secure environment
for buying and selling, were transmitted in circumstances where security
could be ensured, both in terms of the physical environment, and in
terms of due legal process. We might expect tofind smiths operating
from their own premises in an urban context, where craftsmen could
assure purchasers of the quality of what they were proposing to buy.^48
Lower value, or perishable items, could easily be sold in temporary stalls,
which leave few obvious traces.^49 Market transactions, then as now, may
be quite informal arrangements, with home-made products, particularly
fresh food, preserves, and second-hand goods, passing hands with min-
imal reinforcement or intervention by third parties, whereas specialist
items and anything of value requires the ultimate sanction of a defined
body of law. Once again it is Xenophon who provides a realistic spotlight
on market exchanges. As the mercenary army, the remnants of Cyrus the
Younger’s Greeks defeated at Cunaxa in 401bc, made its way towards
(^46) Amouretti 2000; cf. Archibald (forthcoming c/).
(^47) Bresson 2011, 77, discussingSEG IX,2(=RO 486 – 93, no.96), from Cyrene, early
320sbc.
(^48) Cf. Tsakirgis 2005; Ellis Jones 2007.
(^49) Demosthenes describes the mad rush to clear the stalls at Elateia in central Greece
when Philip II suddenly appeared (Dem. 18.169).
104 Societies and economies