sense that her status determined the status of her children:
To be a citizen of Athens during the fi ft h century b.c.e., one
had to be a man born to an Athenian father and an Athenian
mother.
Nevertheless, women were in charge of much of the fun-
damental economic activity that regulated daily life. Women
were responsible for training and managing the slaves, ensur-
ing that all members of the house were fed and clothed, and
keeping track of the material goods and supplies of the house.
In Xenophon’s work Oikonomikos, his character Socrates
states that a good wife is the partner of her husband; while
he is the one who supports the family, “it is by means of the
wife’s economy and thrift that the greater part of the expen-
diture is checked, and on the successful issue or the mishan-
dling of the same depends the increase or impoverishment
of a whole estate.” Xenophon expands on this philosophy as
he has his character Isomachus (who is portrayed as a pomp-
ous fool) describe how he instructed his young wife regarding
some of her duties: “Over those members of the household
whose appointed tasks are conducted indoors, it will be your
duty to preside; yours to receive the stuff s brought in; yours to
apportion part for daily use, and yours to make provision for
the rest, to guard and garner it so that the outgoings destined
for a year may not be expended in a month.”
CITIZENS
In Athens citizenship was limited to men born from two Athe-
nian parents (during the fi ft h century b.c.e.) or to an Athenian
father (during parts of the fourth century b.c.e.) or who had
been granted citizenship by a vote of the democratic assembly.
Economically, the most signifi cant benefi t enjoyed by citizens
was the ability to own land, a right limited to citizens. In ear-
lier centuries full political enfranchisement at Athens and in
other cities was limited to citizens who met certain property
qualifi cations, and even in the early days of the Athenian de-
mocracy certain political offi ces could be held only by citizens
whose real property—land—yielded a certain value in crops;
the citizen class of pentekosmiomedimnoi, the “500 bushel
producers,” could hold offi ces denied to the thetes, those citi-
zens without property or with only a little.
Citizens were generally exempt from taxation, except in
unusual circumstances, though the wealthy citizens were ex-
pected to support the city’s fi nances in other ways. Citizens
enjoyed full legal protection and full access to the courts. In
fact, only (male) citizens had access to the courts, so when
metics or women sought legal redress for some injury, they
would have to fi nd a male citizen willing to go to court on
their behalf. Citizens could be fi ned by the state, and any
Athenian man who had thus accumulated suffi cient debt to
the public treasury was prevented from holding political of-
fi ce and could even lose his right as a citizen, a process called
atimia, or disenfranchisement. In the sixth century, before
the legal reforms of the Athenian statesman Solon (ca. 630–
ca. 560 b.c.e.), citizens who fell heavily into private debt could
even be seized by their creditors and sold as slaves.
WEALTH AND COINAGE
Th e most durable and esteemed form of wealth was land, and
even under the democracy those Athenians who owned large
tracts of land constituted a de facto aristocracy, exerting the
most political infl uence over the aff airs of the city. But during
the sixth century, as trade fl ourished in the Greek world and
as city centers grew, more and more people made their liv-
ing through means other than agriculture and accumulated
wealth in ways other than growing crops, raising livestock, or
renting land for others to do the same. Even large landown-
ers rarely achieved the ideal of complete self-suffi ciency. Such
items as tools and furniture, clothing, and luxury goods had
to be brought into a house from the outside, either acquired
through exchange or purchased with money.
Money fi rst appeared in the Greek world around 600 b.c.e.
in the form of coins made of electrum, an alloy of gold and
silver. By the Classical Period this alloy had fallen out of favor,
mainly because the ratio of gold to silver, and therefore the value
of each coin, could vary and was hard for people to determine
by examining the coin. Coinage in antiquity did not derive its
value by any institutional guarantee, as modern money does. It
was simply a convenient way of exchanging small pieces of pre-
cious metal. So the names of ancient Greek coins refer to units
of weight rather than value per se. Th e fundamental unit, the
drachma, was a unit of weight, and a drachma in Athens might
weigh more or less than a drachma at Corinth. A drachma of
silver would be worth much less than a drachma of gold. Cer-
tain coinages were used more widely than others, as archaeo-
logical fi nds indicate, refl ecting perhaps the relative strength of
the economies of various cities. Athenian silver drachma coins
from the fi ft h and fourth centuries b.c.e., displaying the owl of
the goddess Athena, are widely found throughout the Mediter-
ranean world, refl ecting central role of Athens in commerce
during the Classical Period.
At Athens the weights of coins and their relative values
were as follows: Six obols equaled one drachma, 100 drach-
mas equaled one mina, and 60 minas equaled one talent.
Th ere were coins that weighed an obol, coins that weighted a
drachma, and (the most commonly found coin) four-drachma
pieces (the tetradrachm). Th ere were no mina or talent coins;
these terms were used to describe weights of silver or gold in
tallying up values.
A juror serving in an Athenian courtroom was paid three
obols per day, half a silver drachma; a citizen who rowed as
part of the crew of a warship in the fi ft h century b.c.e. was
paid one drachma per day. From this information, we can
conclude that a drachma per day was a reasonable wage for
labor—we know from literature that the jurors tended to con-
sist of older men, those past their laboring years, for whom
half a drachma might have represented a reasonable supple-
ment to whatever resources they were living from. A talent of
silver, then, was 6,000 drachmas, or approximately 16 years’
wages (at one drachma per day). Th e former slave-turned-
banker Pasion left an estate of 24 talents’ worth of silver, indi-
cating the vastness of his wealth.economy: Greece 365