324 DAVID M. LEWIS
century was a once-weekly affair.^42 Should we expect slave auctions in Athens
to have been more frequent? Secondly, although Braund notes several pieces of
evidence relating to slave auctions in Athens, he misses one key piece of evi-
dence on their frequency. When it comes to thinking about how our Phrygian
would have been sold, we should take into account several options.
Most prosaically, privately negotiated transactions may well account for a
large proportion of slave sales. This sort of everyday haggling is presupposed in
Theophr. Char. 17.6, and an historical instance described in detail in Hyp. 3.3–4;
(cf. Men. Sik. 2–10).^43 In addition to this we should envisage a large monthly
auction in the kykloi (‘circles’), a sub-section of the agora. Aristophanes (Eq.
43) describes how Demos bought a Paphlagonian slave on the first day of
the month, and a scholion on this line claims that ‘on the first of the month
slaves were sold and generals were approved by vote.’^44 This seems to imply a
periodic market in slaves such as that known for Baeteocaece in Syria in the
time of Antiochus I (or perhaps Antiochus II: OGIS 262). But the source is
not straightforward: [Arist.] Ath.Pol. 61.2 claims that generals were approved
every prytany, which does not tie-in with the lunar calendar. It may be the case
that the scholiast is reporting a later Hellenistic practice from the period of
the twelve tribes. However, Aristophanes (Vesp. 169–71) clearly implies that a
market existed on the first of the lunar month in the fifth century where live-
stock could be sold (cf. Theophr. Char. 4.15), and it is most probable that refer-
ences in Athenian comedy to slave auctions in the kykloi should be associated
with this monthly market.^45 This periodic market must have brought together
‘big-ticket’ items such as slaves and cattle that could not be auctioned in such
a volume on a daily basis; by contrast, smaller commodities could routinely be
bought in the agora.^46
We possess some information on the kykloi from later writers,^47 as well as
some intriguing snippets from classical comedy that convey a sense of the
dread and clamour that slaves faced when auctioned. Aristophanes (339 K-A)
has a slave lamenting ‘what an ill-starred day it was then, when the auction-
eer called “this man’s price?” for me!’^48 Eupolis (fr. 273 K-A) has a character
demand that a woman is delivered to him and auctioned.^49 A Syrian slave in
Antiphanes’ Neottis (fr. 166 K-A) explains how a merchant brought him and
his sister to Athens when they were children; when they were put up for auc-
tion, a loan shark (obolostatês) bought them. And a character in Menander (fr.
150 K-A) worries about being sold, saying ‘I already see myself, I swear by
the gods, stripped-down in the kykloi, hurried about the circle and sold.’^50
That Menander, Pollux and Harpocration refer to kykloi rather than a single
kyklos implies several simultaneous, adjacent auctions with bidders arrayed in
a circle around the slave and auctioneer. Slaves were probably displayed on a
platform: Aristophanes (fr. 903 K-A) referred to this as the ‘table’ (trapeza).^51
Finally, we should not forget the sale of slaves by the pôlêtai, who must have