as offshoots from major civic centres in Aegean Greece, these ports
conducted close trading relations with their continental neighbours,
many of whom spoke local dialects or languages unrelated to Greek.
There may well have been a greater degree of shared vocabulary between
these communities, particularly along the coastal lowlands, as a result of
long-term cultural communication and commodity exchange. Greek was
thelingua francaof commerce in the region, and those engaged in
commerce are likely to have been Greek speakers, whether as bilingual
or multilingual agents. There was a stronger incentive for non-Greek
speakers to learn Greek than the other way around. This might also
explain why the civic histories in these ports seem to reflect little of the
commercial activity that is so evident in their material culture and in the
tastes and preferences of their non-Greek neighbours. Monoglot Greeks
living or working in the port towns had to negotiate with non-Greek
speakers through interpreters. This was the experience of Xenophon,
who, as an Athenian mercenary captain of a Peloponnesian army, gives
a unique insight into the busy comings and goings of Thracian regional
administrators and opportunistic commercial travellers, as well as of
soldiers of fortune.^34
A LEARNED QUARTET: MICHAEL ROSTOVTZEFF,
ANDREW SHERRATT, VELIZAR VELKOV,
AND MANOLIS ANDRONIKOS
The Balkan region has not played a prominent part in handbooks and
general studies of ancient Mediterranean economies. Southern Greece,
particularly the islands of the southern Aegean, Athens, and the Pelo-
ponnese, often appear as case studies. Northern Greece, Macedonia, and
the Straits have rarely been included. The inaccessibility of material
published in local languages is perhaps partly to blame. A more signifi-
cant influence on the selection of suitable examples has been the concep-
tual history of Europe, which has most often been subdivided in a
polarized scheme, whether between east and west, or north and
(^34) Book 7 of Xenophon’sAnabasisreveals the permeability of south-eastern Thrace to
travellers. Herakleides of Maroneia (Anab.7.3.16–19, 4.2, 5.2, 4–5, 6–8, 9–11, 6.2, 41, 7.41;
Stronk 1995, ad loc.) is given a rather dubious profile as a money-grubbing go-between, but
this may have more to do with Xenophon’s own self-justification than with any basis in
reality.
Introduction 21