should we think ofemporiain a more abstract way, as commercial
operations, or access to wider and more distant markets?
These questions were reviewed by Pébarthe in an important paper that
probes these concepts more deeply than previous attempts to grapple
with the ancient texts have attempted to do. Pébarthe argues that the
Thasians drew revenues from their dependencies on the mainland,
including Oisyme and Galepsos, in the form of taxes on various com-
modities, including metals, mined on behalf of various Thracian com-
munities of the area. The Thasians had negotiated or acquired specific
rights at Skapte Hyle, from where, Herodotus tells us, they drew 80T a
year (6.46.3)—considerably more than they could expect from mining
revenues accruing from the island’s mines—out of a total annual revenue
of 200T, which could even rise to 300T. This provides a remarkable
sketch of Thasos’s economic potential in the late sixth andfirst half of the
fifth centurybc. Among the fundamental strategic assets developed at
this time was the commercial harbour.^26 The city had expanded its
monumental appearance in a number of sanctuaries within the wider
civic environment of the city’s immediate territory, particularly around
the Artemision, the sanctuary of Herakles, and the sanctuary of Apollo
Pythios, which was later among the precincts that marked the limits of
the city’s fortifications (Fig. 6.1).^27
Pébarthe emphasizes that only at Skapte Hyle did the Thasians have
direct involvement in the proceeds of the mines. Elsewhere in the region
their profits were acquired indirectly, by the provision of exchange
facilities, or places of exchange (theemporiareferred to both by Herod-
otus and by Thucydides).^28 Herodotus makes clear (7.113) that the gold
and silver miners of the Pangaion region were the Odomantoi, the Pieres
and especially the Satrai, who, in the previous paragraph, are associated
by the historian with the oracular shrine of Dionysos in the high moun-
tains of Rhodope. Pikoulas’sfieldwork in the lowland region betweenðåæd ôHí KífiB IíôØðÝæÆò ̈æfiÜŒÅfi Kìðïæßøí ŒÆd ôïF ìåôܺºïı L KíÝìïíôï:‘(later the Thasians
revolted from them [= Athens and her allies], having been in dispute) over theemporiaand
themetallon, which they managed.’Ps.-Scylax, whose text is usually dated in the mid fourth
centurybc, refers topoleisof the coast of Thrace, including Amphipolis, Phagres, Galepsos,
Oesyme,‘and otheremporiaof the Thasians’(67).
(^26) J.-Y. Empereur and A. Archontidou,BCH111 (1987) 622–6; J.-Y. Empereur and
A. Simossi,BCH112 (1988), 736–42; J.-Y. Empereur and A. Simossi, BCH113 (1989) 2,
734 – 40; 114 (1990) 2, 881–7; 115 (1991) 2, 712–20; 116 (1992) 2, 721–6; 117 (1993) 647–52;
Grandjean and Salviat 2000, 52–7.
(^27) Grandjean and Salviat 2000, 82–7, 89–91, 99, 111–13, 142–3, 196–7; Muller 2010,
219 – 23.
(^28) Pébarthe 1999, esp. 132–5.
The lure of the northern Aegean 259