ARISTOCRACY AND MONETIZATION: PLATO, PARMENIDES, HERAKLEITOS, AND PINDAR

If there was an ‘aristocracy’ in the archaic and classicalpolis, how was it differentiated from the rest of thepolis? There are various possible criteria for differentiating a socio-political elite, notably birth, legal status, education, virtue, power, access to deity, wealth, and performance (or display). European history has left us with a strong association between ‘aristocracy’ and the criterion of birth, which produces a relatively closed elite. As for the ancient Greekpolis, however, an excellent recent collection of essays entitled‘Aristocracy’ in Antiquityedited by Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees generally rejects earlier assumptions that a hereditary aristocracy is clearly identifiable, and gives some prominence instead to the criterion of display or performance (such as competing in Panhellenic games or erecting an image of an ancestor). My concern is not directly with this interesting controversy, but rather with a historical process that is almost entirely omitted by‘Aristocracy’ in Antiquity(and by most other discussions of Greek aristocracy), namely themonetizationof thepolisthat was made pervasive by the invention of coinage and its rapid spread in Greek culture from the early sixth centurybce.