It is obvious that a community cannot grow on an insufficient agricultural base, unless food is imported; in order to guarantee such imports, something must be exported. While successful cases are infrequent in Aegean Greece, we can single out a few communities which supported themselves well beyond what subsistence farming on the small agricultural lands could provide - through specialization.
First, there are two identifiable cases where some natural wealth in metal and fine stone (so rare elsewhere in the ‘Third Greece’) encouraged such specialization. Siphnos, an island in the Cyclades archipelago, was among the richer communities in the Aegean world at the beginning of the Classical Age (cf. Praktika (etc.) 1998): not only was the centre of the polis adorned with prestigious architecture, but the community could also afford to build the famous ‘Treasury of the Siphnians’ at Delphi (cf. Daux and Hansen 1987). Herodotos (3.57.2) admired their prosperity:
The Siphnians were very prosperous and the richest of the islanders, because of the gold and silver mines on the island. They were so wealthy that the treasure dedicated by them at Delphi, which is as rich as any there, was made from a tenth of their income; and they divided among themselves each year’s income.
The wealth which was thus displayed could not be based on what the sea and the land provided in foodstuffs alone, but was owed to the exceptionally rich mines on the island where metal (iron, lead, gold and silver) was found, and marketed, via the good harbour, across the Greek world: ‘Their island contained gold mines, and the god ordered them to pay a tithe of the revenues to Delphi’ (Pausanias 10.11.2). An early member of the Delian League, Siphnos eventually suffered from the increasingly systematic exploitation of Athens’ own silver-mines at Laureion, against which the island’s exhausted mines could not compete. Pausanias goes on to say: ‘so they built the treasury, and continued to pay the tithe until greed made them omit the tribute, when the sea flooded their mines and hid them from sight.’ This decline of the island’s economic base entailed a collapse of the community’s stability: by the fourth century, Siphnos features in the extant sources mainly because of social unrest, expulsions and civil war, and all that Strabon (10.5.1), writing at the end of the first century bce, says about Siphnos is that ‘because of its worthlessness’ it had inspired the proverbial ‘Siphnian knuckle-bone’ (parts of a slaughtered animal which were usually discarded).
Paros (cf. Carson & Clark 1980) on the other hand had just enough agricultural land to support its small community. The conspicuous wealth of this island, like that of Siphnos, however, was owed not to agriculture and fishing (and some shipbuilding) but to exporting a natural commodity: the famous Parian marble: ‘On the island of Paros is the so-called ‘‘Parian stone’’, the best one for sculpting statues’ (Strabon 10.5.7). The island’s good harbours, its central location in the Aegean, and most of all the perfectly white and smooth quality of the stone made Parian marble a commodity which was sought after for art and architecture throughout the Greek world. If the extant sources illuminate what is typical, the islanders’ interests focused on exports, and apart from some quarrels with neighbouring islands (notably Naxos), they made no serious attempt at an independent foreign policy: a member of the Delian League from its inception in 478/7, Paros remained untouched by the events of the Peloponnesian War; after Athens’ defeat it fell under Spartan supremacy in 404, but joined the Second Delian League and later the Korinthian League.
While Siphnos and Paros exported their own natural commodities (metal or marble), other communities which had nothing comparable to export, and were equally disadvantaged by the small size and/or bad quality of their agricultural lands, supported themselves well beyond subsistence by trading other communities’ goods. Unlike in the poleis we have surveyed in Section 2, the small agricultural base in these did not allow for a sizeable community to stay within the city and run a port of trade; rather, substantial numbers of the communities’ members were highly mobile, or even altogether based abroad.
Many a Cretan community is probably most typical for this kind of trading, but an early example is Phokaia in western Asia Minor, the terminus of a road from Sardis through the Hermos valley to the Aegean coast. Its agricultural land is small, but its harbour is an ideal base for both trading and the more versatile pirate vessels (the difference remained blurred until well into the post-classical period). Before the Classical Age Phokaian boats sailed as far as Egypt and Spain, trading in silver and tin (the latter necessary for producing bronze) from even further beyond; Phokaia also became the mother city of several colonies in the western Mediterranean, the most famous of which was Massalia (Marseille; cf. Blistene et al. 1995). After Pho-kaia’s conquest by the Persians around 500, however, most inhabitants left Asia Minor for Corsica, and later for Elea (Hyele) in southern Italy (like Phokaia a settlement with little hinterland but a good harbour). What remained of Phokaia joined the Delian League, but it never regained importance.
Similarly, Aigina relied on its fleet. The island itself lacks substantial agricultural lands and thus could not support more than a couple of thousand subsistence farmers: ‘The country of Aigina is fertile at a depth below the level part, but rocky on the surface, and particularly barren’ (Strabon 8.6.16). Aigina, however, supported probably ten times this figure of inhabitants in the Classical Age, and was rich enough to build a magnificent city and the famous temple of Aphaia (Walter 1993). As in the example of the Cretans or the Phokaians, the Aiginetans’ excellent seamanship supported trade as far as Spain - and piracy. The historian Ephoros (FGrHist 70 F 176) is cited by Strabon (8.6.16) on the consequences:
Ephoros says that silver was first coined in Aigina, by Pheidon; for the island, he adds, became a merchant centre, since, on account of the poverty of the soil, the people employed themselves at sea as merchants, and hence, he adds, petty wares were called ‘Aiginetan merchandise’.
The decline of Phokaia, Samos and Miletos (see above) enabled further growth in Aigina’s trade, gradually allowing the richer Aiginetans to live off the income from tolls and businesses without themselves having to brave the seas. The rise of Athens, however, led inevitably to conflict with Aigina, which was forced to become a member of the Delian League in 456. In 431 its population was expelled by the Athenians and Athenian cleruchs replaced the Aiginetan population, ‘wiped off like butter from the eyes’ (Plutarch Perikles 8.7). Only few of them survived and returned after the Peloponnesian War, but the island’s economy never quite recovered, not least because of the competition of nearby Piraeus.
Rather than exporting or trading goods, the third kind of community with easy access to the sea but only small agricultural lands was one which, as it were, imported people, as a centre of pilgrimage. The prime example is of course Delphi (cf. Bom-melaer 1991), which had no agricultural hinterland of its own to speak of, but was accessible from the Korinthian Gulf via the harbour of Kirrha/Krisa. After its conquest in the so-called First Sacred War in the early sixth century and throughout the Classical Age, Kirrha/Krisa belonged to the sanctuary, and its plain was to remain uncultivated (Aischines 3.108), leaving Delphi altogether without a sizeable agricultural base. The income which supported Delphi instead came from the pilgrims, and the participants and visitors at the Pythian Games which were celebrated every fourth year. After all (and despite the similar claim made for Athens in the quotation from Xenophon in Section 1), according to Strabon (9.3.6):
Delphi is almost in the centre ofGreece taken as a whole, between the country inside the Isthmus [viz. of Korinth] and that outside it; and it was also believed to be in the centre of the inhabited world, and people called it the navel of the earth. . . . Such being the advantages of the site of Delphi, the people easily came together there.
Repeatedly, Delphi had to fight for its independence from Phokis and Lokris; this eventually allowed Philip II to intervene and exert direct influence on the oracle.
Similarly, the oracle of Apollo on the tiny island of Delos, with no natural sources of fresh water, clearly could not survive on what the soil provided. In the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo (51 - 60), the god’s mother, Demeter, says:
Delos, if you would be willing to be the abode of my son Phoibos Apollon and make him a rich temple; for no other will touch you, as you will find: and I think you will never be rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage nor yet produce plants abundantly. But if you have the temple of far-shooting Apollon, all men will bring you hecatombs and gather here, and incessant savour of rich sacrifice will always arise, and you will feed those who dwell in you from the hand of strangers; for truly your own soil is not rich.
The island nevertheless very successfully supported its community through incoming pilgrims, however, and the yearly festival of the lonians (ibid. 146 - 55):
In Delos do you [viz. Apollon] most delight your heart; for there the long robed lonians gather in your honour with their children and shy wives: with boxing and dancing and song, mindful, they delight you so often as they hold their gathering. A man would say that they were deathless and unageing if he should then come upon the Ionians so met together. For he would see the graces of them all, and would be pleased in heart gazing at the men and well-girded women with their swift ships and great wealth.
As the focus of the Athenian League (originally referred to as the ‘Delian League’), Delos housed the league’s treasury from 478/7 until its transfer to Athens in 454. Delos continued to be a cult centre, living mainly off the income generated by the steady flow of visitors; later, this became the nucleus of the commercial centre and slave market into which the Romans converted the island in the second century (cf. Strabon 10.5.4; cf., in general, Bruneau & Ducat 1983).
Exporting natural riches like metal or marble, running long-distance trade for others or importing, as it were, pilgrims and visitors helped these communities to grow well beyond the meagre size of their agricultural land, by using the easy access to the sea they enjoyed. However, when their specialization failed (as at Siphnos, above) or foreign powers interfered (as at Phokaia or Aigina), these communities’ existence was soon endangered.
World History
