AEGEAN-LEVANTINE TRADE, 600–300 BCE 295
a number of them were banned from Plato’s ideal city for being completely
superfluous. Even so, enough people in enough Aegean communities clearly
felt that these goods added significantly to their quality of life – whether pro-
pitiating the gods with Arabian frankincense, serving Mesopotamian sesame
cakes at a wedding, or wearing clothes cleaned with Egyptian natron – to
ensue their steady flow toward Greek cities from quasi-mythical lands far, far
away.^44
Whether or not these indications of increasing types of commoditiesflowing in trade and greater access to them by non-elites amounts to the
type of consumer revolution in the Classical Greek world that has been
argued for the years 1650–1800 remains to be seen.^45 A great deal more
work needs to be done on sorting commodities, communities, and consum-
ers. In the meantime, however, we can conclude with some certainty that
by ca. 400 BCE, much of the Greek world, and indeed much of the wider
Mediterranean world, was experiencing happy times imports-wise. And in
those places where the cold ideal of autarkeia bumped up against the warm
reality of people’s desires, we can be pretty well assured the Paphlagonian
acorns won out.
NOTES
1 The Hermippus fragment lists twenty-four foodstuffs and manufactured items. In the same
section where this fragment is preserved, Athenaeus (1.27d-28d) records additional lists by
Antiphanes, Pindar, and Eubulus enumerating mostly manufactured goods, e.g., jars, pans,
carts, beds, and processed foodstuffs like cheese, from various locales within and without
the Aegean. For grocery-type lists, see Alexis (fr. 127 K-A; apud Ath. 4.170a): nineteen spices
including sesame and silphium; Anaxandrides (fr. 41 K-A; apud Ath. 4.131d): ninety-nine
things, mostly foodstuffs, but also myrrh and frankincense; Mnesimachus (fr. 4 K-A; apud
Ath. 9.402f-403d): seventy-seven items, mostly foodstuffs, but also cassia, cinnamon, frank-
incense, myrrh, and storax; cf. Antiphanes (fr. 190, 206, 224, 236; apud Ath. 1.27d, 7.309d,
11.500e); Ar. Ach. 873–80; Menander (fr. 24 Kock; apud Ath. 4.146e-f; 11.484d). This list of
lists is far from exhaustive; many more are found in Aristophanes and other fragments.
2 For example, the Catalogue of Ships in Homer (Il. 2.494–759) or Old Testament genealo-
gies, e.g., Genesis 10.
3 The silver Sidonian mixing bowl given to Telemachus by Menelaus, for example, is the cost-
liest and most beautiful of the things stored in his house (Od. 4.613–19).
4 Cf. Thuc. 2.38 and [Xen.] Ath. pol. (‘The Old Oligarch’) 2.7; both passages are discussed in
more detail later in this chapter.
5 On the pleasures of consumption, especially the consumption of novelties, see Aristox. (fr.
50 Wehrli; apud Ath. 12.545e), quoted later in this essay. For a more recent appraisal of such
pleasures, including the joy of shopping in antiquity, see Davidson 1997 : 204 and Foxhall
2005. For spending idle hours in the agora see Lysias 24.19-20 and Isoc. 7.15.
6 Aristophanes coins the term plouthygieia, ‘wealth-healthiness’ to describe what the goddess
Athena pours over Demos (i.e., the Athenian populace; Eq. 1091). Kallet ( 2003 : 137–40)
discusses this passage at length, underscoring Demos’ transformation via access to luxurious
trappings.
7 See Diod. Sic. 16.41.4 for another example of trade (emporia) bestowing eudaimonia on a city,
in this case Sidon. On the abundance of the Athenian market see also Isoc. 4.42.