1. Spina, chariot horses and Athenian pottery.
- Author
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Vickers, Michael
- Subjects
- *
PARAMETER estimation , *ARISTOCRACY (Social class) , *RACE horses , *SILVERWARE - Abstract
This article examines the evidence for the trade in Athenian pottery from the point of view of the archetypal Athenian aristocrat, namely the owner of a team of chariot-horses. Plato's dictum 'In every city there are two cities: the rich and the poor' (Rp. 422e) has been consistently overlooked by those who take the figure of a drachma a day as the standard by which consumption might be measured. The owner of chariot horses will have been in another income bracket altogether, moving in circles where a drachma might be a trifling sum and where items such as gem stones, peacocks, houses, slaves, inheritances, dowries, were priced in minae (units of 100 drachmas). Prices of horses were expressed in minae, although some thor oughbreds were valued in talents (larger units of 60 minae). Some of the finest chariot horses were imported from the Veneto in the northern Adriatic, and the rich finds of Attic pottery in the necropolis at Spina have been associated with this trade. There is, however, a large gulf between the prices attested for Attic painted pottery in antiquity and the prices we hear of for race horses. Indeed, such figures as have been cited in the literature suggest, for example, that if all the Attic pots ever produced were exported through the Piraeus in 399 BC (a year for which Athens' trade figures can be estimated), they would have formed less than 40% of the value of the goods traded. Spread over two centuries or more, the value of pottery in terms of Athens' trade will have been wholly insignificant. Finley's observation that 'silver was the most important Athenian resource' is followed up. Next to no coins have been found at Spina, but it is argued that commodities such as grain or race-horses will have been paid for with the ancient equivalent of large denomination bank notes. Much extant plate (and indeed plate now lost, but mentioned in temple inventories) is made up in multiples of one or another coinage. The silver on the ships sent out to bring back bulky cargoes will have not have taken much room; the space will have been filled with the kind of pottery found in such quantities at Spina: pottery made in imitation of Attic silverware of a kind that is now being found in increasing quantities, especially in Thrace. An added bonus of seeing the ancient world through the eyes of an Athenian aristocrat is that recent arguments that there were aristocratic pot-painters at Athens are wholly untenable. Finley's observation that Beazleyism is a case of the emperor having no clothes can be seen to possess a certain merit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017