the southern shores of the Black Sea the following summer, we are told
that‘there was no market at hand’in that part of northern Bithynia close
to Kalpes Limen, the bay midway between Herakleia and Byzantion,
which Xenophon thought would make a good harbour town
(Anab.6.4.16). A band of hungry men, between 9,000 and 8,000 strong
at this stage of their journey (Anab.6.2.16), is no ordinary sight, but in a
period of endemic warfare, with numerous encounters in geographically
disparate zones, groups of hungry or needy mercenaries, merchants, and
other travellers, were not unusual. In the chapters that follow, we learn a
good deal about how this band of battle-scarred adventurers planned to
live off the land, if necessary, but were quite prepared to buy supplies
when they needed them. There was a clear trade-off between the value of
resource on the hoof, and the practicalities of transporting animals for
the convenience of a ready food supply.^50
In order to understand how these different kinds of markets worked in
the north Aegean area, we also need to know what kinds of things had
more than local value as commodities. Exceptional documents, such as
the deeds of sale from Amphipolis, Philippoi, and elsewhere in Macedo-
nia,^51 or the inscription naming Pistiros as one of a number of inland
emporiain Thrace, where exchanges are guaranteed by the Odrysian
prince exercising power during the 350sbc,^52 show the range and
complexity of the social and economic infrastructure of market
exchanges in the region before the expansion of inter-continental trade
and traffic in early Hellenistic times. Such documents provide the neces-
sary framework for discussing the exchange of commodities, which will
be explored in more detail in the next two chapters. There is one other
dimension that deserves a few methodological reflections, namely the
social status of economic agents.
(^50) Xen.Anab. 6. 4.23, 6.6.1, 6.6.3–4, 6.6.38, 7.1.19, 1.35, 7.56 (market sales planned or
made by the mercenaries); 7.3.13 (plan to live‘off the land’, a euphemism for theft, cf. 6.6.1);
the story of the sheep captured from the countryside between Kalpes Limen and Chrysopolis,
along with quantities of wheat and barley, wine, beans, millet, andfigs (6.6.1, 6.6.5), later sold
(6.6.37), to whom and where is quite unclear, on their way to Chrysopolis, reflects the
different informal ways in which commodities exchanged hands, with and without money,
and the ambiguities over ownership that such methods involved; Stronk 1995, 19–23 on
fluctuating troop numbers. McInerney, discussing sanctuary economies, also emphasizes the
very different demands and periodicities of sanctuary economies and their methods of
managing herds (2010, 146–95, esp. 148–9).
(^51) Hatzopoulos 1988b; 1991; and 1996, II, nos. 84–91 (Amphipolis); no. 83 (Philippoi);
no. 92 (Mieza, with Hatzopoulos 2011a).
(^52) Ch.1 n.19.
Societies and economies 105