AChAEMENID ANATOLIA AND ThE SLAVE SUPPLY 321
all, but either a successful merchant or quite possibly (since the honours attach
to ‘the descendants of Aisepos’^20 ) a native dynast with a stake in the trade of
horses and slaves.^21 Even if only the first two of these propositions are correct,
this document furnishes us with a valuable window into the commercial links
between Greeks and non-Greeks in the early years of Persian rule, and in par-
ticular into the everyday business of the slave trade. It shows that slaves were
passing through Cyzicus from the interior in the late sixth century in no small
numbers, that the Cyzicene state made a significant sum of money in taxing
this trade, and that it was prepared to offer honours to those involved in this
lucrative activity.^22
This evidence shows that far from being purely hostile, relations betweenGreeks and non-Greeks in our region are marked by commercial co-operation
from an early period. The existence of extensive trade connections with
non-Greek communities provides a context and rationale for the westward
movement of slaves, and frees us from the need to rely on the mono-causal
explanation (and a rather unlikely and patchily attested one at that) of Greek
predation to account for the presence of Anatolian slaves in Aegean markets.^23
Predatory activities by Greek raiders and warfare are more likely to represent
surface ripples on a deeper current of long-term commercial dealings, events
that could throw periodic gluts of captives onto the market but were in them-
selves insufficient to meet the regular quotidian demand of the Aegean slave
economies. If much larger numbers of Anatolian slaves were supplied through
commerce with non-Greeks, it stands to reason that various internal processes
in the supplier societies must be responsible for the initial enslavement of these
individuals.^24 As to the relative significance of these mechanisms, we can only
guess; if raiding was significant, it was raids by locals on locals, not depredations
of Greeks that will have been more important.^25
Wretched Merchandise: The Mechanics of
Transport and Sale
One striking feature of our evidence for slavery in Classical Athens is the
relatively low price of slaves compared to real wages. A slave in fourth cen-
tury Athens generally cost between 200–500 drachmas, something like
150–200 days’ worth of wages for the average skilled craftsman and quite often
less; by contrast, a slave in Achaemenid Babylonia during the sixth century cost
375–750 days’ wages at the average rate for a skilled craftsman.^26 We shall return
to the issue of slave prices at the end of this section; for now we may address a
pressing question: Why were slaves so cheap? The answer probably does not lie
in low levels of demand, for although this factor surely fluctuated during our
period, the impression of the Attic evidence, at least, is that anyone who could
afford a slave would aim to buy one (e.g., Lys. 24.6): this was not a luxury