299
13
TOWARDS A GENERAL MODEL Of
LONG-DISTANCE TRADE
Aromatics as a Case Study
John K. Davies
I
Many of us of an older generation inherited in our youth a specific pic-
ture of post-Mycenaean Greece. It is a seductive one, since it is sketched by
most extant Greek literary texts, from the epic and lyric poets consistently
until Aristotle, and is given depth and shading by a modern scholarly tra-
dition which largely respects their values and reflects their preoccupations.
It portrays a language group of Greek speakers initially fragmented geo-
graphically within a land- and sea-scape of scattered settlements, gradu-
ally crystallising into larger units and expanding its presence along much
of the Mediterranean littoral, but doing so by maintaining and solidifying
a socio-political institution, the polis. Although supra-polis institutions, of
greater or lesser longevity, emerged and came to wield some powers, they
were mostly regarded askance, and for that and other reasons were insuf-
ficient to generate anything approaching a lasting international order in
the Archaic and Classical periods. As a result, for the sake of basic commu-
nal survival, and irrespective of wide variations between poleis in power,
in population size, and in the importance accorded to each element of
the basic internal triangle of powers (magistrates, Council, and Assembly),
polis systems and values had to continue to place great weight on assert-
ing and maintaining the maximum possible degree of polis independence,
whether governmental, legal, cultic, or economic. Although imports were