FORGING LINKS BETwEEN REGIONS 81
to relocate their businesses to Athens, something that would have been partic-
ularly appreciated during the last half of the fourth century. Not only could
any land purchased be used for the construction of warehouses, thereby reduc-
ing transaction costs; it could also be used as an alternative form of security
when acquiring loans. Although grants of enktesis theoretically reduced the
tangible transaction costs incurred when trading in Athens, the main benefit
was its honorific value and the accompanying reduction in intangible costs.
Gold crowns, perhaps the single most expensive honor granted to merchants,
also offered tangible and intangible benefits.^63 Aeschines (3.46–47) records that
recipients of gold crowns that had been proclaimed in the assembly were not
required to dedicate them and could do with them as they pleased. Thus, they
could be melted down and converted to coinage or could be retained and
displayed as a visual record of the esteem in which the honorand was held.
From 350 BCE, the value of an honorific gold crown was usually (but not
always) specified in the decree and was either 500 or 1,000 drachmas, depend-
ing on the scale of the service that had been performed. The commissioning
of a gold crown was a significant expenditure for Athens: during the second
half of the fourth century BCE, a single crown constituted between 0.01 per-
cent and 0.30 percent of the state’s overall revenue.^64 Furthermore, if we accept
the assessment that the average construction costs of a trireme amounted to
approximately 6,000 drachmas, then every gold crown represented around
one-sixth of a warship.^65 This demonstrates two things: first, that the Athenians
considered the honorific tradition an important institution for encouraging
merchants and their commodities to Athens; and second, that the increased
volume of traffic encouraged by these honors, and the accompanying expan-
sion of markets, would offset any costs incurred.
Legal Protection and Supranationality
When deliberating about foreign and domestic policy, the Athenians were
well aware of the importance of institutionalizing the relationship between
state and merchant in order to encourage and facilitate trade. For instance,
Aristotle, in his discussion of the five themes of political discourse essential
for the political survival of a city, identifies what a city must do to achieve this
goal. Using food supply as a case study, he states that a city should ‘make agree-
ments and commercial treaties with the countries concerned’. It was therefore
necessary, according to Aristotle (Rh. 1360a), to consider two types of relation-
ships: those with stronger states and those with states that were useful for trade.
Moreover, Aristotle’s work highlights the importance of coordinating foreign
and domestic policy if a state were to be successful at increasing the volume
of transactions taking place within its markets. With regard to foreign policy,
Aristotle advocates the creation of agreements and treaties with important