evidence-based level.^99 The nature of ancient exchange depended on the
evaluation of one commodity for an equivalent in weighed metal, usually
silver. The relative price of weighed metal to other commodities is one of
the distinctive characteristics of ancient exchange that deserves particu-
lar attention; the other is the impulse to create commodities. The instinct
to create objects has not played a particularly prominent role in the
discussion of ancient economies and is the subject to which we turn next.
(^99) At 37.3.5 Diodorus gives 100dr. as the price of a jar of exclusive wine; in the Attic
confiscationstelai, the price of some slaves is given as 173dr. and 179.5dr. respectively
(Pritchett 1956, 278). So the unit prices are not perhaps quite so very different, although it is
hard tofind like-for-like equivalents in the documentary evidence.
128 Societies and economies