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THE ANCIENT GREEK ECONOMY
The Ancient Greek Economy: Markets, Households and City-States brings

together sixteen essays by leading scholars of the ancient Greek economy
specialising in history, economics, archaeology, and numismatics. Marshaling
a wide array of evidence, these essays investigate and analyse the role of mar-
ket exchange in the economy of the ancient Greek world, demonstrating
the central importance of markets for production and exchange of goods
and services during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Contributors
draw on evidence from literary texts and inscriptions, household archaeol-
ogy, amphora studies, and numismatics.Together, the essays provide an orig-
inal and compelling approach to the issue of explaining economic growth
in the ancient Greek world.
Edward M. Harris is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of

Edinburgh and Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Durham University.
He is the author of Democracy and the Rule of Law in Classical Athens and The
Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens, and has published many essays on
ancient Greek law and economy.
David M. Lewis holds a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at

the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of several articles on slav-
ery in Greek society and economy, and has published in journals such as
Classical Quarterly and Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte.
Mark Woolmer is Assistant Principal of Collingwood College and a

Teaching Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at
Durham University. He is the author of Ancient Phoenicia: An Introduction
and editor of the forthcoming Companion to Ancient Phoenicia.
THE ANCIENT GREEK
ECONOMY
MARKETS, HOUSEHOLDS
AND CITY-STATES
Edited by
EDWARD M. HARRIS
Durham University / The University of Edinburgh
DAVID M. LEWIS
The University of Edinburgh
MARK WOOLMER
Durham University
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107035881
© Cambridge University Press 2016
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2016
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The ancient Greek economy : markets, households and city-states / Edited by Edward M. Harris,
Durham University / The University of Edinburgh, David M. Lewis, The University of Edinburgh,
Mark Woolmer, Durham University.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-03588-1 (hardback)
1. Greece–Economic conditions. 2. Greece–History. 3. History, Ancient.
I. Harris, Edward Monroe, editor. II. Lewis, David Martin, 1985– editor.
III. Woolmer, Mark, editor.
HC293.A53 2015
330.938–dc23 2015016365
ISBN 978-1-107-03588-1 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
CONTENTS
List of Figures page viii

List of Tables ix
List of Contributors xi
Preface xiii
1 INTRODUCTION: MARKETS IN CLASSICAL AND

HELLENISTIC GREECE 1
Edward M. Harris and David M. Lewis
PART I CREATING THE FOUNDATIONS OF MARKET

EXCHANGE: THE ROLE OF THE STATE
2 ARISTOTLE AND FOREIGN TRADE 41

Alain Bresson (translated by Edward M. Harris)
3 FORGING LINKS BETWEEN REGIONS: TRADE POLICY
IN CLASSICAL ATHENS 66
Mark Woolmer
4 CHOOSING AND CHANGING MONETARY
STANDARDS IN THE GREEK WORLD DURING THE
ARCHAIC AND THE CLASSICAL PERIODS 90
Selene E. Psoma
5 THE LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH
IN ANCIENT GREECE: THE ROLE OF PROPERTY RECORDS 116
Edward M. Harris
PART II HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION FOR MARKETS
6 INDUSTRY STRUCTURE AND INCOME

OPPORTUNITIES FOR HOUSEHOLDS IN
CLASSICAL ATHENS 149
Peter Acton
v
vi Contents
7 WHOLE CLOTH: EXPLORING THE QUESTION OF

SELF-SUFFICIENCY THROUGH THE EVIDENCE FOR
TEXTILE MANUFACTURE AND PURCHASE IN
GREEK HOUSES 166
Barbara Tsakirgis
8 AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND DOMESTIC
ACTIVITIES IN RURAL HELLENISTIC GREECE 187
Evi Margaritis
PART III MARKETS AND TRADE NETWORKS: THE EVIDENCE

OF TRANSPORT AMPHORAS
9 PATTERNS OF AMPHORA STAMP DISTRIBUTION:

TRACKING DOWN EXPORT TENDENCIES 207
Tania Panagou
10 MARKETS, AMPHORA TRADE AND WINE
INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF THASOS 230
Chavdar Tzochev
11 TRANSPORT AMPHORAS, MARKETS, AND CHANGING
PRACTICES IN THE ECONOMIES OF GREECE, SIXTH
TO FIRST CENTURIES BCE 254
Mark L. Lawall
PART IV MARKETS, COMMODITIES AND TRADE NETWORKS
12 AEGEAN-LEVANTINE TRADE, 600–300

BCE: COMMODITIES, CONSUMERS, AND THE
PROBLEM OF AUTARKEIA 277
Peter van Alfen
13 TOWARDS A GENERAL MODEL OF LONG-DISTANCE
TRADE: AROMATICS AS A CASE STUDY 299
John K. Davies
14 THE MARKET FOR SLAVES IN THE FIFTH- AND
FOURTH-CENTURY AEGEAN: ACHAEMENID
ANATOLIA AS A CASE STUDY 316
David M. Lewis
Contents vii
15 ‘VITA HUMANIOR SINE SALE NON QUIT

DEGERE’: DEMAND FOR SALT AND SALT TRADE
PATTERNS IN THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLD 337
Cristina Carusi
16 CLASSICAL GREEK TRADE IN COMPARATIVE
PERSPECTIVE 356
Geoffrey Kron
Appendix Commodities in Classical Athens: The Evidence

of Old Comedy 381
Bibliography 399
Index 465
FIGURES
6.1 The Marginal Competitor page 154

6.2 Components of Competitive Advantage 155
6.3 Competitive Advantage and Industry Structure 157
6.4 Adding a Furnace 158
6.5 Wedgwood’s Economics 159
6.6 Competitive Advantage and Industry Structure 163
7.1 Agora Epinetron (P 9445, P 18605) 169
7.2 Agora Deposit J 2:4, Loom Weight MC 1506 172
7.3 House C in the Industrial District, Loom Weights, Spindle Whorl
and Brazier Lot NN 590 173
7.4 Classical Houses on the Areopagus, 9 Loom Weights (Deposit K 17:2) 174
7. 5 Athens, Agora Deposit U 13:1, Select Loom Weights 175
7.6 House of Many Colors, Map of Distribution of Finds 177
8.1 Map: The Lowlands of Mount Olympos 189
8.2 Country House at Kompoloi 191
8.3 Country House at Platania 193
9.1 Map: Production Centres of Stamped Amphoras, with
Approximate Counts of their Stamps 208
10.1 Geographic Distribution of Thasian Amphora stamps 234
10.2 Allocation of Thasian Amphora Exports in the Aegean and Black Seas 240
10.3 Regions Importing Thasian Amphoras 242
10.4 An Estimate of Production Dynamics for Thasian Amphoras Based
on the Number of Fabricants Attested on Stamps 248
11.1 Black Figured Pelike, Obverse (no. RC 1063) 265
11.2 Black Figured Pelike, Reverse (no. RC 1063) 266
14.1 Slave Coffles 331
viii
TABLES
6.1 Impact of Division of Labour page 152

9.1 Find Spots of Amphora Stamps from Cities of Subgroup 2a 215
9.2 Find Spots and Counts of Amphora Stamps from Cities
of Subgroup 2b 216
of Subgroup 2c 218
of Category 3 220
of Category 4 222
9.6 Assortments of Amphora Stamps Found in Certain Areas
in Descending Order 228
12.1 An Overview of Commodities in Aegean-Levantine Trade,
c. 600–300 BC 280
12.2 The Date and Origin of Commodities in Aegean-Levantine
Trade, c. 600–300 BC 281
15.1 Salt Consumption in the Greek City-States 339
15.2 Ancient Salting Vats 348
16.1 Trade Statistics for Great Britain (converted into dr. using wheat
equivalents) 359
ix
CONTRIBUTORS
Peter Acton was a vice president of The Boston Consulting Group from
1986 to 1999 and is now an independent scholar. He is the author of
Poiesis: Manufacturing in Classical Athens (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Alain Bresson is Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the

Department of Classics at The University of Chicago, US.
Cristina Carusi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at

University of Texas at Austin, US.
John K. Davies is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History and Classical

Archaeology at University of Liverpool, UK.
Edward M. Harris is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Durham

University, UK and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of
Edinburgh, UK.
Geoffrey Kron is Associate Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman

Studies at University of Victoria, Canada.
Mark L. Lawall is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at

University of Manitoba, Canada.
David M. Lewis is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of

Edinburgh, UK.
Evi Margaritis is Marie Curie Intra European Postdoctoral Fellow,

The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at University of
Cambridge, UK.
Tania Panagou is an archaeologist who works for the 21st Ephorate of

Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Greece.
xi
xii Contributors
Selene E. Psoma is Associate Professor in Greek History at the University of

Athens, Greece.
Barbara Tsakirgis is Associate Professor of Classics and History of Art in the

Department of Classical Studies at Vanderbilt University, US.
Chavdar Tzochev is an independent scholar and has held fellowships at the

American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece, and the American
Research Center in Sofia, Bulgaria. His book, The Amphora Stamps from Thasos,
is forthcoming in the Athenian Agora series.
Peter van Alfen is Margaret Thompson Associate Curator of Greek Coins at

the American Numismatic Society, US.
Mark Woolmer is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Classics and

Ancient History and Assistant Principal of Collingwood College at Durham
University, UK.
newgenprepdf
PREFACE
The origins of this book lie in a conference entitled “Beyond

Self-Sufficiency: Households, City-States, and Markets in the Ancient Greek
World,” held in St. John’s College, Durham University, on July 2–5, 2011, orga-
nized by the editors of this volume. This meeting could not have taken place
were it not for the generous support of Department of Classics and Ancient
History and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Durham University. We
would like to thank Sue Hobson and the team at St. John’s College for their
assistance in running the conference.
The rationale behind the conference lay in dissatisfaction with the belief
found in many scholarly studies that the Greeks cherished a notion of autarky
that profoundly influenced economic behaviour, in particular minimizing
engagement with markets and market exchange. Although the conference was
not conceived with a view to publication, it became apparent that many of the
participants found this approach inadequate to explain the evidence from the
ancient Greek world, and that a volume challenging this view from a number
of different vantage points would be valuable. We then submitted a proposal
to Cambridge University Press and received positive and helpful reports from
two anonymous referees.Vasia Psilakakou did a splendid job proofreading the
entire manuscript before we sent it to the press. Finally, we would like to thank
the team at Cambridge University Press in New York for their expert assis-
tance in preparing the volume for publication.
xiii
1
INTRODUCTION
Markets in Classical and Hellenistic Greece
Edward M. Harris and David M. Lewis
In Aristophanes’ Peace, two craftsmen approach Trygaeus, the protagonist of

the play, shortly after he has secured an end to the war with the Spartans. Both
are overjoyed at the news: one, a sickle maker, relates how his fortunes have
been turned around. Whilst war with Sparta was raging, his business suffered
heavily; he could scarcely sell any of his wares. For the audience watching the
play in 421, this would have struck a chord: the rural occupants of Attica had
fled behind the city’s long walls a decade earlier when Archidamus invaded
Athenian territory (Thuc. 2.14), and since then they had been largely unable to
return to the normal rhythms of agricultural life. With Trygaeus’ peace estab-
lished, however, the sickle seller’s business is thriving: he can sell each sickle at
fifty drachmas (Pax 1201). The other craftsman, a potter, is enjoying the peace
as well, since he can sell his merchandise for three drachmas apiece (Pax 1202).
But not everyone is delighted with the fruits of Trygaeus’ diplomacy. An arms
dealer, a spear maker and a helmet maker approach him in a state of exasper-
ation. As craftsmen and retailers whose businesses thrive in times of war, they
are now out of pocket and cannot offload their goods for a pittance – even a
thousand-drachma breastplate is completely unmarketable, except perhaps as a
commode (Pax 1224–39). After enduring a few further crude jokes about the
uselessness of their products in a time of peace, the arms dealers slink away
without having sold any of their manufactures (Pax 1240–64).
Notwithstanding the effects of comic exaggeration on the prices in this
passage,1 this is a revealing text for the economic historian, for it shows a basic
1
2 Edward M . Harris a nd D av id M . Le wi s
appreciation among the Athenians of the so-called market principle: that

goods for sale will fluctuate in price depending upon the levels of demand
and supply (and warfare is a prime example of the kind of circumstance that
can alter these variables drastically).2 Other Athenian texts further illustrate
the fact that prices of commodities fluctuated according to variations in
demand and supply, affecting a whole range of items, if not all those available
in the marketplace. One commodity for which we have a number of attesta-
tions for price fluctuations is grain.3 Millett believes that ‘grain was probably
exceptional in the extent to which customary and actual prices tended to
diverge,’4 but this assertion is not borne out by our evidence, which shows
price fluctuation across a variety of commodities due to supply and demand.
In a fragment of Diphilus (fr. 31 K-A) the speaker attributes a rise in wine
prices to a spike in demand (cf. Dem. 42.20, 42.31). In Aristophanes’ Knights,
the sausage seller states that sardines are now cheaper than ever before dur-
ing the war (Ar. Eq. 644–5; 647–50) and later in the play reminds his master
how cheap silphium has been recently (Ar. Eq. 894–5). In the Peace, Trygaeus
tells War that Attic honey is currently expensive and recommends another
kind (Ar. Pax 253–4). In Theophrastus’ Characters (4.12) a rustic coming to
town asks about the prices of hides and salt-fish. Plutarch (Demetr. 33.5–6)
narrates how Demetrius’ murder of a maritime trader bringing goods to
Athens so terrified other merchants that they stayed clear of the Piraeus. As a
result, the price of salt rose to 40 drachmas per medimnus, and wheat to 300
drachmas per medimnus.5 War did not just cut off supply, driving prices up,
but might also have the opposite effect: when Agesilaus flooded the markets
of Asia Minor with booty, it drove down the prices of similar commodities
(Xen. Ages. 1.18). This principle was not limited to the Aegean world, but
was widespread in the Mediterranean: Polybius (34.8.4-10 = Strabo 3.2.7
and Ath. 8.1.330c-331b) notes how the rich natural resources of Lusitania
resulted in relatively low prices for items such as barley (one drachma per
medimnus), wheat, wine (one drachma per metretes), lambs, pigs, figs, calves
and oxen.
Not only were the prices of commodities sensitive to changes in demand
and supply, but Greek writers noticed this and could explain price changes
in these terms. One of the keenest observers of what we would nowadays
term economic phenomena was Xenophon. In writing on the silver mines,
he notes:
Mining is not like working with bronze or iron, for instance, where if
there is a large number of smiths their products become cheap and the
smiths are forced out of business. Likewise, when grain or wine is plen-
tiful, the price of the crop falls, working the land becomes unprofitable
and in the end large numbers of farmers abandon their work and become
traders or retailers or money-lenders instead. [Xen. Vect. 4.6, tr.Waterfield]
I ntroduction 3
This passage forms part of a longer tract on plans to revitalize Athenian p ublic
finances through the development of the silver mines in southern Attica. Later,
Xenophon suggests that the state buy 10,000 slaves to work the mines. But
these are not to be bought all at once, for the spike in demand that would
accompany such a move, as Xenophon notes, would raise prices and the degree
of choice that the state had in relation to its purchases would suffer:
If a whole lot of us go ahead and build houses at the same time, we will
end up paying more for lower-quality products than we would on a
gradual approach, and if we go in search of huge numbers of slaves we
will be forced to buy inferior men at inflated prices. [Xen. Vect. 4.36, tr.
Waterfield]
These passages show that Xenophon lived in a world where markets were
commonplace and the knowledge that commodity prices would fluctuate
given changes in demand and supply was familiar.Yet observations of the sort
Xenophon makes in these passages are hard to reconcile with the picture of
the Athenian economy and ancient economic thought that has proven popular
in the last few decades.
Markets – or the Lack of Them – in Recent Scholarship

Despite the abundant evidence for market exchange in Athens and other
Greek cities, there has been relatively little discussion of the role played by
markets in the economy of the Ancient Greek world in the past forty years. In
his The Ancient Economy published in 1973, a book that has influenced much
recent work, M.I. Finley downplayed the importance of market exchange in
the ancient Mediterranean.6 Finley began with a statement of Erich Roll: ‘If,
then, we regard the economic system as an enormous conglomeration of
interdependent markets, the central problem of economic enquiry becomes
the explanation of the exchanging process, or, more particularly, the explana-
tion of the formation of price.’7 He then posed the question, ‘what if a society
was not organized for the satisfaction of its material wants by an enormous
conglomeration of interdependent markets?’ If this were not possible, ‘eco-
nomic analysis’ would be ‘impossible.’8 Finley then claimed that ‘wage rates and
interest rates in the Greek and Roman worlds were both fairly stable locally
over long periods (allowing for sudden fluctuations in moments of intense
political conflict or military conquest), so that to speak of a “labour market”
or a “money market” is immediately to falsify the situation.’9 Even if this state-
ment is valid for labour (which, as we will see, it is not) and credit, it does not
take into account commodities, for which, as we have seen, there is much
evidence that prices varied in response to changes in supply and demand.
And the reason why wages and interest rates may not have varied may have
been that supply and demand in these areas remained fairly constant over long
periods, not because there were no markets for labour and credit.10 Finley
found support for his argument about ‘the inapplicability to the ancient world
of a market-centered analysis’ in the work of Max Weber, Johannes Hasebroek
and Karl Polanyi.11 Finley did not provide evidence to prove his point but
asserted that it had been established by Weber, Hasebroek and Polanyi, and
thus required no further proof. In fact, his statement misrepresents the views
of Weber and Polanyi: Weber did speak of capitalism in the ancient world, and
Polanyi found traces of market-based activity in fourth-century Athens.12
Finley went on to criticize French for writing about ‘investment of gov-
ernment capital in rural development’ in Athens under the Peisistratids in the
sixth century BCE and to scold Sir John Hicks for discovering the first phase
of the Mercantile Economy in the city state. He then declared that ‘if such
assumptions prove invalid for antiquity, then all that follows must be false,
about economic behaviour and the guiding values alike.’13 Finley may have
been correct to find these specific analyses by French and Hicks anachronistic
or unconvincing, but a few unconvincing examples of analyses based on mar-
ket principles do not justify banishing all discussion of markets.
Finley’s main argument against analyzing economic activity in the ancient
world in terms of markets is found on the last page of the first chapter of The
Ancient Economy.14 He continues his criticism of Rostovtzeff ’s use of the term
‘world-market’. To refute Rostovtzeff ’s view that the ancient Mediterranean
formed a single economic unit, Finley quotes the economic geographer B.J.L.
Berry: ‘neither local nor long-distance trade disturbed the subsistence base of
the house-holding units in peasant societies. The role of central-place hierar-
chies is, on the other hand, predicated upon extreme division of labour and
the absence of household self-sufficiency in necessities.’15 Finley then adds the
assertion (though not a single source is cited): ‘neither predicate existed to a
sufficient degree in antiquity.’
There are several fallacies in Finley’s argument. First, one should note
that Berry never states that ancient Greece was a peasant society and that
Finley appears to assume that ancient Greece belongs in this category with-
out providing reasons for his decision.16 Second, Finley operates with a rather
stark dichotomy: either one speaks of peasant societies without markets or
a ‘world-system,’ a ‘conglomeration of interdependent markets.’ This simplis-
tic dichotomy omits the full range of possibilities that lie between these two
extremes. Third, as Harris has recently observed, there may not have been
much vertical specialization of labour in the economy, but there was a con-
siderable amount of horizontal specialization, and this created one of the key
conditions necessary for the creation of a market.17 This is not an original
observation: Plato noticed the connection between the specialization of labour
and market exchange in the second book of the Republic (371b-e). But the key
I ntroduction 5
point is that Finley excluded the full range of types of markets that lie between
the extremes of the world market and household self-sufficiency in necessities.
Finley’s views set the agenda for several decades.18 A decade after the pub-
lication of Finley’s The Ancient Economy, K. Hopkins called Finley’s approach
‘The New Orthodoxy’ and provided a useful summary of its main tenets:
The new orthodoxy stresses the cellular self-sufficiency of the ancient
economy; each farm, each district, each region grew and made nearly
all that it needed. The main basis of wealth was agriculture. The vast
majority of population in most areas of the ancient world was primar-
ily occupied with growing food. To be sure, there were exceptions (such
as classical Athens and the city of Rome), but they were exceptions and
should be treated as such. Most small towns were the residence of local
large land-owners, centres of government and of religious cult; they also
provided market-places for the exchange of local produce and a conve-
nient location for local craftsmen making goods predominantly for local
consumption. The scale of inter-regional trade was very small. Overland
transport was too expensive, except for the cartage of luxury goods. And
even by sea, trade constituted a very small proportion of gross product.
That was partly because each region in the Mediterranean basin had a
roughly similar climate and so grew similar crops.
The low level of long-distance trade was also due to the fact that neither
economies of scale nor investment in productive techniques ever reduced
unit production costs sufficiently to compensate for high transport costs.
Therefore, no region or town could specialize in the manufacture of
cheaper goods; it could export only prestige goods, even overseas. And
finally, the market for prestige goods was necessarily limited by the pov-
erty of most city-dwellers and peasants.19
Hopkins proposed some small modifications to this orthodoxy. Without

questioning the basic tenets of Finley’s analysis, he listed seven factors that
led to increased levels of production: first, total agricultural production rose;
second, the population of the Roman world in the first and second centu-
ries CE increased; third, the proportion of the total population engaged in
non-agricultural production and services increased (attested by specializa-
tion of labour in Pompeii, Corycus and Rome – Hopkins does not mention
Athens in the Classical period or any other Greek polis); fourth, as a result of
increased division of labour, non-agricultural production rose; fifth, average
productivity rose; sixth, the total amount and proportion of total production
extracted in rent and taxes increased; and, seventh, the expenditure of taxes in
the Roman provinces stimulated local production.20 At the very end of this list
Hopkins concedes: ‘[T]‌here is no intention here to underrate ... the extent to
which trade which was stimulated by other factors, such as reciprocal needs
and market forces.’21 This is as much attention as Hopkins is willing to concede
to the role of expanding markets in stimulating an increase in the division of
labour and enhancing productivity. In his summary of the essays by Snodgrass,

Garlan, Millett and Mossé in Trade in the Ancient Economy, however, Hopkins
calls them ‘firmly primitivist in emphasis.’22 The possibility that productivity
rose in Classical and Hellenistic Greece through the expansion of markets is
never even considered.
In a response to Hopkins’ essay published almost twenty years later, Millett
was willing to concede that there was economic growth in the Roman
Empire during the first and second centuries CE: ‘the relative stability and
tranquillity of this period . . . and the arguably unified economy of the empire,
possibly provided conditions which were conducive to modest but more or
less sustained growth.’23 On the other hand, ‘scope for sustained growth in
the centuries BC was elusive or non-existent.’24 Millett excludes a priori the
possibility that expanding markets could have led to an increase in the special-
ization of labour and increases in productivity. Millett never mentions markets
for commodities or labour, but claims there were no capital markets: ‘stud-
ies of modern economic growth stress the importance of capital markets (in
England, from the sixteenth century) in converting savings into investment.
Such markets were almost entirely absent from the ancient world where the
high incidence of hoarding may help explain relatively low levels of infla-
tion.’25 (Millett provides no evidence for the ‘high incidence of hoarding’ as
opposed to lending and investment.) The exogenous shocks of famine, plague
and war took a heavy toll in the smaller economy of the Greek world.26 The
main way to increase one’s wealth was to take it from outside the community
or by exploiting slave labour.27
In the 1990s the view that self-sufficiency was key to an understanding of
the economy of Ancient Greece remained prevalent. For instance, G. Reger in
a book on the economy of Delos asserts:
[T]‌he goal of the peasant household was self-sufficiency: the ability to

supply as many wants as possible from the activity of the members of the
household itself. Landholdings suitable for grain and a garden plot, a few
olive trees, and some goats could satisfy most food needs. For ceram-
ics and the few metal tools a farmer needed, a handful of local village
specialists sufficed. This microcosm, which numerically was undoubtedly
the predominant unit of economic activity in the ancient world, had few
points of contact with a larger trading economy.
Even though these peasants participated in festivals and occasionally bought

items to celebrate weddings and funerals, ‘an evaluation of the role of peasant
self-sufficiency is crucial.’28
In a book published in 1991 Gallant took a similar approach: farmers in
Attica were peasants who had little or no involvement in the market.29 Likewise,
in his account of recent work on the economy of Ancient Greece, Cartledge
I ntroduction 7
avoids any discussion of markets. According to Cartledge, ‘to the extent that
manufacture of goods for exchange on the domestic or external market always
played second fiddle to primary domestic production for autarkic home con-
sumption, the ideal-typical Greek city was always a consumer not a producer
city.’30 As a result, Cartledge believes the ‘Athenian community pursued always
and only an import interest rather than an export interest.’31 In the opinion of
Cartledge, as ‘a vehicle for the distribution of goods, trade may have to take its
place in the queue behind plunder and gift’ and ‘force, military force, remained
the ideal economic specific, in the fourth as it had been in the fifth.’32
In a major study of the ancient Mediterranean published in 2000 Horden and
Purcell questioned Finley’s view that most communities aimed at self-sufficiency,
which may have remained an ideal but was rarely achieved: ‘[T]‌he prevalence
of autarky has been deduced from its persistence as an ideal: practice has been
inferred from rhetoric.’33 Yet according to Horden and Purcell, the Athenian
system in which ‘the market replaces the usual function of storage’ was rela-
tively unusual.34 As a result, Horden and Purcell claim that the economy was
embedded, prefer to use the term ‘redistribution’ and avoid the term ‘market
exchange.’35 It should therefore come as no surprise that the term agora, a place
that Herodotus and Pausanias consider a standard feature of the Greek polis,
cannot be found in the index to The Corrupting Sea. In the section on ‘Places
of Redistribution’ there is much discussion of ports and emporia, but market-
places are not mentioned once.36 When discussing metals, Horden and Purcell
believe that ‘redistribution of metals was carried out in a vast variety of ways in
Antiquity, under state or elite supervision.’37 The role of private entrepreneurs
mining at Laurion (Dem. 37; 42.3) and that of private merchants transporting
silver (Xen. Vect. 3.2) are overlooked in their account.38
In recent years, some scholars have questioned Finley’s view that the econ-
omy of ancient Greece was stagnant and have pointed to signs of economic
growth. For instance, I. Morris has drawn attention to the increase in the size
of dwellings from the Archaic to the Classical period and rightly views this
as a sign of economic growth.39 Yet although Morris has found signs of eco-
nomic growth, he does not provide any model to account for this phenom-
enon. In the introduction to The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models, the
editors Manning and Morris repeatedly call for models to explain economic
growth in the ancient world, but the possibility that expanding markets may
have led to a better allocation of resources, stimulated production and fostered
an increase in the specialization of labour is not entertained.40 Likewise, in
an essay optimistically entitled ‘Wealthy Hellas,’ J. Ober reviews the evidence
for economic growth in the Classical period, but attributes this increase in
wealth to political factors. Even though there was an agora in the center of
most Greek poleis, Ober does find a place for markets in his discussion of eco-
nomic growth.41 Ober rightly stresses the importance of studying institutions
and their influence on economic growth, but he neglects the institutions that
Douglass North and other scholars in New Institutional Economics have
identified as the key motors in the expansion of markets: the rise of the state,
strong property rights, and third-party enforcement of contracts.
In their introduction to The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman
World Scheidel, Morris and Saller note that from 800 BCE to a thousand years
later the economy grew.42 They identify the causes of this growth as changes in
climate, a benign disease pool, improvements in agriculture and ‘risk-buffering
strategies such as fragmenting landholdings, diversifying crops, and trading sur-
pluses.’43 But little of this growth can be attributed to the expansion of markets
because ‘states remained major economic actors, markets were fragmented and
shallow, with high transactions costs, investment opportunities were limited;
money and markets generated intense ideological conflicts; and the economy
remained minuscule by modern standards.’44 Despite these constraints, the
authors admit that ‘goods moved around the Mediterranean more efficiently
than ever before.’ But how could goods move around the Mediterranean with-
out effective markets? The chapters on the economy of Classical Greece in
this volume contain very little discussion of markets, and in one chapter von
Reden claims that there was not enough demand in Classical Athens to neces-
sitate the creation of permanent markets (see discussion later in the chapter).45
Despite some nods to New Institutional Economics, the editors and contribu-
tors in this volume make very little use of the insights of this approach with
its stress on the importance of the expansion of markets fostered by robust
institutional arrangements.
In the past fifteen years, however, some ancient historians have shown a
willingness to pay more attention to the role of markets in the economy of the
ancient Greek polis. In an essay published in 1998 J.K. Davies provided three
diagrams of the flows of goods, services and money in the Greek polis. At the
center of each diagram is the agora into which and out of which flowed goods
and services from farms and households and which connected the polis with
markets abroad. The agora was also connected to the polis, which provided
regulation and protection and received taxes and fees in return.46 In 2000
A. Bresson gave a collection of essays the provocative title La cité marchande,
stressing the key role of market exchange in the life of the Greek polis. His
two-volume synthesis, L’économie de la Grèce des cités, contains a long discus-
sion of local and international markets and develops an approach building on
the insights of New Institutional Economics.47 In the introduction to a recent
volume of essays about the economy of the Hellenistic world the editors
Z. H. Archibald and J. K. Davies place market exchange alongside subsistence
and redistribution as the major kinds of resource allocation in the Eastern
Mediterranean during the third, second and first centuries BCE.48 But one of
the most vigorous calls for more attention to be paid to the role of markets has
I ntroduction 9
come not from an ancient historian but from the anthropologist Jack Goody.
In a perceptive critique of the work of Polanyi, Finley and those influenced
by them, Goody rightly observes that ‘not to recognize the presence of market
activities in the ancient world is to blindfold oneself.’49
In this volume, we forefront markets as a key element in understanding
how the economy of ancient Greece functioned and in explaining economic
growth. But ‘market’ is a term with multiple meanings and nuances. Before we
proceed to set out the contents of this volume, it is necessary to unpack these
meanings and to see how and when they apply to the ancient Greek world.
Types of Market in the Greek World

The general reluctance to discuss the role of markets in the economy of
Ancient Greece is rather astonishing when one considers that the agora was
a standard feature of the Greek polis. According to Herodotus (1.153.1–2), the
Persian king Cyrus scorned the Greeks because they place an open space in
the middle of their cities where men deceived each other on oath. The histo-
rian explains that the king was referring to marketplaces (agorai) for buying and
selling, which indicates that they were a characteristic part of every city-state.50
When writing about the city of Panopeus in Phocis, Pausanias (10.4.1) hints
that it can barely qualify for the title of polis because it lacks an agora as well
as other public buildings. The Athenian Standards Decree from the late fifth
century BCE about weights, measures and coinage instructs officials to set up
a copy in the agora of every allied city (IG i3 1453E, line 4; 1453G, line 2); this
command would have been pointless if every city in the Athenian Empire did
not have an agora. From a passage in Plutarch’s life of Aratus (8.3) we can see
that it was a normal occurrence for farmers to come from the countryside to
the market at Sicyon. Even Sparta in the Classical period, a city not known for
its trade and crafts, had a permanent market where more than 4,000 people
met to exchange goods on a single day in 397 BCE. This market was so large
that it had a special section devoted to items made of iron, including knives,
swords, spits, axes, hatchets and sickles (Xen. Hell. 3.3.5-7).51
Even though one must distinguish between the term ‘market’ in the physical
sense and the term ‘market’ in the abstract sense, the two are closely related: the
construction of markets in the physical sense facilitates and encourages the
development of market exchange. In the physical sense, a market is a place
where people regularly come to buy and sell. In the Greek polis the commu-
nity marked this space out by boundary markers or the construction of build-
ings such as stoas to provide shops for merchants. Market in the abstract sense
is a sphere in which prices are created by the forces of supply and demand.52
Market exchange is distinguished from other forms of exchange such as taxes,
redistribution, gift-giving or payment of ransom. According to K. Polanyi, the
market in this sense ‘is motivationally distinct, for it receives its impulse from
the urge of monetary gain. It is institutionally separated from the political and
governmental center.’53
When discussing the role of markets, one must avoid the question: Was
the economy of ancient Greece a market economy or a non-market econ-
omy?54 There are several reasons not to frame the issue in these terms. First,
this question implicitly assumes that in any society one can identify a ‘basic’
or ‘dominant’ form of exchange to the exclusion of other forms of exchange.
A more extreme version of this approach claims that the ‘basic’ or ‘dominant’
mode of production determines the shape of social relations in a given place.
For instance, Polanyi thought that one could divide all societies according to
their integration by three different forms of exchange: reciprocity, redistribu-
tion, and market exchange.55 But most societies exhibit many different forms
of exchange.56 In modern societies, several forms of exchange co-exist: friends
and family give each other gifts on holidays and at birthdays, states collect var-
ious forms of taxes and provide a range of services to citizens and residents,
and different types of price-setting markets exist for different goods and ser-
vices. True, markets are larger and more extensive in the modern world, but
market exchange still remains one form of exchange alongside other forms of
exchange. In several countries in Western Europe (e.g., France) the govern-
ment absorbs more than half of gross domestic product in taxes and redistrib-
utes a large amount of the public budget to its citizens by providing subsidies
and services such as health and education.
Instead of framing the question as a stark dichotomy (market economy or
non-market economy), one needs to ask what kind of price-setting markets
existed.57 Posing the question in this way provides a more flexible approach
to the evidence, one that allows us to take account of diversity in economic
behavior and to identify different patterns of exchange. Markets can vary in
three basic ways: in terms of time, in terms of space and in terms of items
exchanged.58
Time
First, there can be occasional markets, periodic markets and permanent mar-
kets. The earliest literary evidence for an occasional market comes from the
Odyssey, which reflects the social realities of the late eighth or early seventh
century BCE.59 In his story about his kidnapping, Eumaeus the swineherd
tells how Phoenicians came to his country with merchandise and traded
until their ships were full of cargo bought by exchanging their goods (Od.
15.415–416, 455–456). There is no indication that the Phoenicians came on a
regular basis, and their trade did not form part of any social relationship such as
the guest-host relationship (xenia). They came to Eumaeus’ country and stayed
I ntroduction 11
as long as they needed to dispose of their goods and acquire other goods to
take to another place. In this period, the agora was simply a meeting place in
the middle of a settlement. It had not yet acquired an exclusively commer-
cial function.60 We also find occasional markets during the Classical period.
Thucydides (1.62.1; 6.44.2, 3; 8.95.4) and Xenophon (An. 4.8.8 [Macronians]
and 23 [Trapezuntians]) report how a city might provide a market for an army
passing through its territory.61 In this case, the demand for goods arose at a sin-
gle time and did not continue after the army departed.
At the next level are periodic markets, which take place at regular intervals,
say every ten days or twice a month. In many peasant societies most mar-
kets are periodic rather than permanent and continuous. In these societies, as
Berry notes,
The market is not open every day, but only once every few days on a
regularly scheduled basis, because the per capita demand for goods sold
in the market is small, the market is limited by primitive transport tech-
nology, and the aggregate demand is therefore insufficient to support
permanent shops. Businessmen adjust by visiting several markets on a
regular basis; and by accumulating the trade of several markets they are
able to survive.62
One finds an example of this kind of market at Baetocaece in Syria. An inscrip-

tion from this city containing a letter from the Emperor Valentinian contains
instructions from a communication by King Antiochus I (early third century
BCE) or King Antiochus II (mid-third century BCE) calling for panegyreis to
meet twice a month at Baetocaece, on the fifteenth and the thirtieth (IGLS
VII 4028, lines 15–39). During the Imperial period, the periodic markets of
Asia Minor coordinated their schedules so that merchants could travel from
one to another.63 We find the same arrangement in Campania during the early
Roman Empire.64 Periodic markets were often linked to festivals (panegyreis)
and existed alongside permanent markets. These might meet once a year such
as the Thermika at Thermos (Polyb. 5.8.5) or twice a year as at Tithorea (Paus.
10.32.15-16). On the one hand, markets were held to provide food and other
items for those coming to attend a religious festival. On the other, merchants
might take advantage of the large number of customers gathering at festivals to
sell items like cattle and slaves.65 Despite their religious aspect, Strabo (10.5.4)
calls panegyreis gatherings that are ‘in a way commercial activities.’ These mar-
kets also might create a temporary rise in the demand for coinage, and the
communities hosting them would respond by minting special panegyris issues
to facilitate commercial exchange.66
As the economy grows and the specialization of labour increases, perma-
nent markets are established. As Berry notes, several factors bring about the
rise of permanent markets: ‘the establishment of law and order, introduction
of cash as an exchange medium, expansion of transport facilities, and growth

of non-agricultural markets for foodstuffs.’67 New Institutional Economics also
stress the role of law and order in creating the conditions necessary for the
expansion of markets.68 Other factors include increasing demand as the result
of rising incomes and more extensive manufacturing production. The agora in
Athens was certainly a permanent market where buyers and sellers congre-
gated most days of the year.69 As we saw earlier in this chapter, the market at
Sparta also appears to have met frequently. The market in Corinth appears to
have met regularly and was even more full than usual during the festival of
Artemis Euclea (Xen. Hell. 4.4.2).
The central agora in Athens was so large that it was divided into different
sections. Xenophon (Oec. 8.22) claims that slaves sent to the market for shop-
ping had no trouble finding different wares, because they were all kept in their
appointed places. Eupolis (fr. 327 K-A) mentions the place where books are
for sale,70 and has one of his characters recall how ‘I went around to the garlic
and the onions and the incense and straight to the perfume, and around to the
trinkets.’ Pherecrates (fr. 2 K-A) mentions the wreath stalls, the perfume mar-
ket and the stalls for bergamot, mint and larkspur. The same poet characterizes
perfume stalls as an area where young men were apt to loiter and chat (fr. 70
K-A; cf. Polyzelus fr. 12 K-A; Theophr. Char. 11.8). Theophrastus (Char. 11.4)
writes of parts of the agora where walnuts, myrtleberries and fruits are for sale.
Alexis in his Kalasiris mentions a quarter known as the ‘circles’ (kykloi) where
utensils were sold (Poll. Onom. 10.18–19). Periodically – probably once every
lunar month – this area was set aside for a slave auction (Lewis, Chapter 14
in this volume). A separate part of the market was called the ‘women’s agora’
where one could find items just for women (Poll. Onom. 10.19). Wine was
available near the city gate in the Ceramicus (Is. 7.20; cf. Ar. fr. 310 K-A).
Another area was noted for its fresh cheese (Lys. 23.6), others for vegetables
and pots (Ar. Lys. 557), flour (Ar. Eccl. 686) and meat (Teles fr. 2 K-A). If one
wanted to hire a porter or a worker, one went to the hire market (Pherecrates
fr. 142 K-A). It is vital to grasp that what enabled the Athenian agora to meet
every day, what enabled it to grow to such a size that it developed subsections
and what made the construction of permanent market buildings an attractive
choice to the polis was high levels of demand. We will return to this theme
later in the chapter.
Space
Markets may also vary in spatial terms. At the lowest level there are local mar-
kets where buyers and sellers from a relatively small area gather to exchange
goods and services. Although we have plentiful evidence for large perma-
nent markets in cities such as Athens, Corinth, Miletus and Delos, there is less
I ntroduction 13
evidence for smaller local markets. For Attica, however, there is epigraphic
evidence for agorai in several demes: Besa (Agora XIX P9, line 31), Deceleia
(IG ii2 1237, lines 64–68, 78–84), Eleusis (SEG 28.103 [333/2 BCE]; IG ii2 1103,
lines 2–4), Erchia (SEG 21:541E, lines 50–51), Sounion (IG ii2 1180 (c. 350
BCE), lines 4–17), north of Sounion at Pasalimani (Salliora-Oikonomakou
[1979]. Cf. IG ii2 1080) and at Halai Aixonides.71 For those living in the city of
Athens there was the main agora near the Acropolis, but there were also sev-
eral deme markets: Kollytus (IG i3 426, line 8), Kydathenaion (Agora XIX L6a,
line 5), Skambonidai (IG i3 244 [c. 460 BCE] C.1, line 7) and Melite (Agora
XIX P26, line 454). There was also a marketplace at the Piraeus (IG ii2 380;
1176 [c. 380 BCE], line 20). In a recent study, Kakavogianni and Anetakis have
presented the archaeological evidence for markets in Myrrhinous, Steiria and
Thorikos, as well as archaeological evidence to back up the epigraphical attes-
tations for markets at Sounion (and perhaps one between Erchia and Oe) and
Thorikos.72 There would thus have been an agora within three or four hours’
walk for almost all farmers in Attica.73 It is highly unlikely that scholars have
accounted for every marketplace of this sort, and future research is likely to
uncover similar markets in other parts of Attica.74
At the next level are regional markets that linked buyers and sellers from dif-
ferent city-states.There has been some debate about how to identify a ‘region,’
but there are three main criteria: geography, ethnicity and polity.75 Shared
physical features can unite areas into a region. For instance, the Aegean basin
shares certain climatic and geological features. One can also identify areas that
include several city-states by the shared ethnic identity of the inhabitants, such
as Achaea, Aetolia, Ionia, Macedonia and possibly regions like Arcadia and
Messenia. Sometimes these regions united by common ethnicity coalesced
into political units such as federal leagues (the Achaean league, the Aetolian
league), but sometimes they did not (Ionia, the Dodecannese). Reger has iden-
tified the Cyclades as a regional economy, one that bound together local trade
in many commodities.76 These regional units were often linked by commercial
exchange. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians (874–6, 878–80) a trader comes to Athens
from Thebes to sell ‘marjoram, pennyroyal, rush-mats, lampwicks, ducks, jack-
daws, francolins, coots, wrens and dabchicks’ and ‘geese, hares, foxes, moles,
hedge-hogs, cates, badgers, martens, otters, and Copaic eels.’ Another trader
comes from Megara to buy salt and garlic (889–90). In a fragment of Strattis’
Cinesias we hear of a character buying grain from Boeotians (fr. 14 K-A). In
her chapter on weight standards Psoma shows how neighbouring cities might
adjust their weight standards to facilitate exchange and promote the growth
of regional markets. For instance, Alexander I of Macedon used a reduced
Milesian standard for his tetradrachms and smaller fractions to promote trade
with the cities of the Chalcidic peninsula, who used the same standard. In the
fifth century the city of Byzantium in Thrace and the city of Chalcedon in
Bithynia on the opposite shore issued coins on the same standard and with
similar types to make trade easier between their markets.
Beyond regional markets, there were interregional markets in some com-
modities. In a world without refrigeration not all commodities were suitable
for long-distance transport. On the other hand, one should not underestimate
the volume of interregional trade.The Athenian comic poet Hermippus (fr. 63
K-A) provides a long list of items found in the Athenian agora:
From Cyrene stalks of silphium, and oxhides, from the Hellespont mack-
erel and all sorts of dried fish, from Thessaly pudding, and ribs of beef . . .
the Syracusans bring pigs and cheese . . . From Egypt masts with sails
and papyrus. From Syria frankincense, beautiful Crete supplies cypress
for the gods, Libya much ivory for sale, Rhodes raisins and dried figs
for sweet dreams. Slaves come from Phrygia, mercenaries from Arcadia,
Pagasae sends slaves and tattooed men. The Paphlagonians send Zeus’
acorns and shining almonds (these are what adorn a feast). Phoenicia for
its part sends fruits of palm and semodalin, Carthage carpets and richly
colored pillows.
The archaeological record and other sources show that this is not just poetic
invention. Several essays in this volume deal with the specifics of medium and
long-distance trade, drawing upon the rich data provided by archaeologists to
enhance our understanding of the trade in different commodities. Kron shows
how the Greeks carried on an intensive trade in many types of commodities,
which helped to raise the living standards of not only the elite but also many
average families.
Chavdar Tzochev’s contribution to this volume focuses upon the trade in
Thasian wine as a case study. He examines the evidence for export of Thasian
wine to the Black Sea, with striking results: this was not an irregular occur-
rence where Thasians occasionally exported wine surpluses as a result of
unusually high grape harvests. The stamps on Thasian amphoras allow us to
view exports diachronically, and this evidence shows the regular annual export
of large quantities of Thasian wine to the Black Sea littoral. The evidence of
amphoras can be used in other ways, too: Tania Panagou’s contribution, which
surveys the distribution of amphora stamps across the Greek world, shows how
a city like Corcyra might transport commodities in amphoras to ports as dis-
tant as Sicily and Athens. Her collation of the data enables us to see – albeit in
a broad sense – the export tendencies of many Greek poleis. Mark Lawall’s con-
tribution, on the other hand, discusses the amphora as an aspect of ‘imperfect
markets’ – the ways in which the realities of Greek markets do not meet the
pristine expectations of neoclassical economics. His discussion takes us down
to the level of haggling between buyer and seller in the agora, discussing some
of the realities of market exchange in the ancient marketplace. Psoma’s essay
shows how Macedonian monarchs and Greek city-states might mint different
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A long and painful silence followed this speech and Olivia, turning
toward Sabine, tried to reproach her with a glance for speaking thus to the
old lady. Aunt Cassie was being put to rout so pitifully, not only by Sabine,
but by Horace Pentland, who had taken his vengeance shrewdly, long after
he was dead, by striking at the Pentland sense of possessions, of property.
The light of triumph glittered in the green eyes of Sabine. She was
paying back, bit by bit, the long account of her unhappy childhood; and she
had not yet finished.
Olivia, watching the conflict with disinterest, was swept suddenly by a
feeling of pity for the old lady. She broke the painful silence by asking them
both to stay for lunch, but this time Aunt Cassie refused, in all sincerity, and
Olivia did not press her, knowing that she could not bear to face the ironic
grin of Sabine until she had rested and composed her face. Aunt Cassie
seemed suddenly tired and old this morning. The indefatigable, meddling
spirit seemed to droop, no longer flying proudly in the wind.
The queer, stuffy motor appeared suddenly on the drive, the back seat
filled by the rotund form of Miss Peavey surrounded by four yapping
Pekinese. The intricate veils which she wore on entering a motor streamed
behind her. Aunt Cassie rose and, kissing Olivia with ostentation, turned to
Sabine and went back again to the root of the matter. “I always told my dear
brother,” she repeated, “that twenty-five hundred a year was far too much
for Horace Pentland.”
The motor rattled off, and Sabine, laying the letter on the table beside
her, said, “Of course, I don’t want all this stuff of Cousin Horace’s, but I’m
determined it shan’t go to her. If she had it the poor old man wouldn’t rest
in his grave. Besides, she wouldn’t know what to do with it in a house filled
with tassels and antimacassars and souvenirs of Uncle Ned. She’d only sell
it and invest the money in invincible securities.”
“She’s not well ... the poor old thing,” said Olivia. “She wouldn’t have
had the motor come for her if she’d been well. She’s pretended all her life,
and now she’s really ill—she’s terrified at the idea of death. She can’t bear
it.”
The old relentless, cruel smile lighted Sabine’s face. “No, now that the
time has come she hasn’t much faith in the Heaven she’s preached all her
life.” There was a brief silence and Sabine added grimly, “She will certainly
be a nuisance to Saint Peter.”
But there was only sadness in Olivia’s dark eyes, because she kept
thinking what a shallow, futile life Aunt Cassie’s had been. She had turned
her back upon life from the beginning, even with the husband whom she
married as a convenience. She kept thinking what a poor barren thing that
life had been; how little of richness, of memories, it held, now that it was
coming to an end.
Sabine was speaking again. “I know you’re thinking that I’m heartless,
but you don’t know how cruel she was to me ... what things she did to me as
a child.” Her voice softened a little, but in pity for herself and not for Aunt
Cassie. It was as if the ghost of the queer, unhappy, red-haired little girl of
her childhood had come suddenly to stand there beside them where the
ghost of Horace Pentland had stood a little while before. The old ghosts
were crowding about once more, even there on the terrace in the hot August
sunlight in the beauty of Olivia’s flowery garden.
“She sent me into the world,” continued Sabine’s hard voice, “knowing
nothing but what was false, believing—the little I believed in anything—in
false gods, thinking that marriage was no more than a business contract
between two young people with fortunes. She called ignorance by the name
of innocence and quoted the Bible and that milk-and-water philosopher
Emerson ... ‘dear Mr. Emerson’ ... whenever I asked her a direct, sensible
question.... And all she accomplished was to give me a hunger for facts—
hard, unvarnished facts—pleasant or unpleasant.”
A kind of hot passion entered the metallic voice, so that it took on an
unaccustomed warmth and beauty. “You don’t know how much she is
responsible for in my life. She ... and all the others like her ... killed my
chance of happiness, of satisfaction. She cost me my husband.... What
chance had I with a man who came from an older, wiser world ... a world in
which things were looked at squarely, and honestly as truth ... a man who
expected women to be women and not timid icebergs? No, I don’t think I
shall ever forgive her.” She paused for a moment, thoughtfully, and then
added, “And whatever she did, whatever cruelties she practised, whatever
nonsense she preached, was always done in the name of duty and always
‘for your own good, my dear.’ ”
Then abruptly, with a bitter smile, her whole manner changed and took
on once more the old air of indolent, almost despairing, boredom. “I
couldn’t begin to tell you all, my dear.... It goes back too far. We’re all
rotten here ... not so much rotten as desiccated, for there was never much
blood in us to rot.... The roots go deep.... But I shan’t bore you again with
all this, I promise.”
Olivia, listening, wanted to say, “You don’t know how much blood there
is in the Pentlands.... You don’t know that they aren’t Pentlands at all, but
the children of Savina Dalgedo and Toby Cane.... But even that hasn’t
mattered.... The very air, the very earth of New England, has changed them,
dried them up.”
But she could not say it, for she knew that the story of those letters must
never fall into the hands of the unscrupulous Sabine.
“It doesn’t bore me,” said Olivia quietly. “It doesn’t bore me. I
understand it much too well.”
“In any case, we’ve spoiled enough of one fine day with it.” Sabine
lighted another cigarette and said with an abrupt change of tone, “About
this furniture, Olivia.... I don’t want it. I’ve a house full of such things in
Paris. I shouldn’t know what to do with it and I don’t think I have the right
to break it up and sell it. I want you to have it here at Pentlands.... Horace
Pentland would be satisfied if it went to you and Cousin John. And it’ll be
an excuse to clear out some of the Victorian junk and some of the terrible
early American stuff. Plenty of people will buy the early American things.
The best of them are only bad imitations of the real things Horace Pentland
collected, and you might as well have the real ones.”
Olivia protested, but Sabine pushed the point, scarcely giving her time to
speak. “I want you to do it. It will be a kindness to me ... and after all,
Horace Pentland’s furniture ought to be here ... in Pentlands. I’ll take one or
two things for Thérèse, and the rest you must keep, only nothing ... not so
much as a medallion or a snuff-box ... is to go to Aunt Cassie. She hated
him while he was alive. It would be wrong for her to possess anything
belonging to him after he is dead. Besides,” she added, “a little new
furniture would do a great deal toward cheering up the house. It’s always
been rather spare and cold. It needs a little elegance and sense of luxury.
There has never been any splendor in the Pentland family—or in all New
England, for that matter.”
2
At almost the same moment that Olivia and Sabine entered the old house
to lunch, the figures of Sybil and Jean appeared against the horizon on the
rim of the great, bald hill crowned by the town burial-ground. Escaped at
length from the eye of the curious, persistent Thérèse, they had come to the
hill to eat their lunch in the open air. It was a brilliantly clear day and the
famous view lay spread out beneath them like some vast map stretching
away for a distance of nearly thirty miles. The marshes appeared green and
dark, crossed and recrossed by a reticulation of tidal inlets frequented at
nightfall by small boats which brought in whisky and rum from the open
sea. There were, distantly visible, great piles of reddish rock rising from the
endless white ribbon of beach, and far out on the amethyst sea a pair of
white-sailed fishing-boats moved away in the direction of Gloucester. The
white sails, so near to each other, carried a warm friendliness in a universe
magnificent but also bleak and a little barren.
Coming over the rim of the hill the sudden revelation of the view halted
them for a moment. The day was hot, but here on the great hill, remote from
the damp, low-lying meadows, there was a fresh cool wind, almost a gale,
blowing in from the open sea. Sybil, taking off her hat, tossed it to the
ground and allowed the wind to blow her hair in a dark, tangled mass about
the serious young face; and at the same moment Jean, seized by a sudden
quick impulse, took her hand quietly in his. She did not attempt to draw it
away; she simply stood there quietly, as if conscious only of the wild beauty
of the landscape spread out below them and the sense of the boy’s nearness
to her. The old fear of depression and loneliness seemed to have melted
away from her; here on this high brown hill, with all the world spread out
beneath, it seemed to her that they were completely alone ... the first and the
last two people in all the world. She was aware that a perfect thing had
happened to her, so perfect and so far beyond the realm of her most
romantic imaginings that it seemed scarcely real.
A flock of glistening white gulls, sweeping in from the sea, soared
toward them screaming wildly, and she said, “We’d better find a place to
eat.”
She had taken from the hands of Sabine the task of showing Jean this
little corner of his own country, and to-day they had come to see the view
from the burial-ground and read the moldering queer old inscriptions on the
tombstones. On entering the graveyard they came almost at once to the little
corner allotted long ago to immigrants with the name of Pentland—a corner
nearly filled now with neat rows of graves. By the side of the latest two,
still new and covered with fresh sod, they halted, and she began in silence
to separate the flowers she had brought from her mother’s garden into two
great bunches.
“This,” she said, pointing to the grave at her feet, “is his. The other grave
is Cousin Horace Pentland’s, whom I never saw. He died in Mentone.... He
was a first cousin of my grandfather.”
Jean helped her to fill the two vases with water and place the flowers in
them. When she had finished she stood up, with a sigh, very straight and
slender, saying, “I wish you had known him, Jean. You would have liked
him. He was always good-humored and he liked everything in the world ...
only he was never strong enough to do much but lie in bed or sit on the
terrace in the sun.”
The tears came quietly into her eyes, not at sorrow over the death of her
brother, but at the pathos of his poor, weak existence; and Jean, moved by a
quick sense of pity, took her hand again and this time kissed it, in the
quaint, dignified foreign way he had of doing such things.
They knew each other better now, far better than on the enchanted
morning by the edge of the river; and there were times, like this, when to
have spoken would have shattered the whole precious spell. There was less
of shyness between them than of awe at the thing which had happened to
them. At that moment he wanted to keep her forever thus, alone with him,
on this high barren hill, to protect her and feel her always there at his side
touching his arm gently. Here, in such a place, they would be safe from all
the unhappiness and the trouble which in a vague way he knew was
inevitably a part of living.
As they walked along the narrow path between the rows of chipped,
worn old stones they halted now and then to read some half-faded,
crumbling epitaph set forth in the vigorous, Biblical language of the first
hardy settlers—sometimes amused, sometimes saddened, by the quaint
sentiments. They passed rows of Sutherlands and Featherstones and Canes
and Mannerings, all turned to dust long ago, the good New England names
of that little corner of the world; and at length they came to a little colony of
graves with the name Milford cut into each stone. Here there were no new
monuments, for the family had disappeared long ago from the Durham
world.
In the midst of these Jean halted suddenly and, bending over one of the
stones, said, “Milford ... Milford.... That’s odd. I had a great-grandfather
named Milford who came from this part of the country.”
“There used to be a great many Milfords here, but there haven’t been any
since I can remember.”
“My great-grandfather was a preacher,” said Jean. “A Congregationalist.
He led all his congregation into the Middle West. They founded the town
my mother came from.”
For a moment Sybil was silent. “Was his name Josiah Milford?” she
asked.
“Yes.... That was his name.”
“He came from Durham. And after he left, the church died slowly. It’s
still standing ... the big white church with the spire, on High Street. It’s only
a museum now.”
Jean laughed. “Then we’re not so far apart, after all. It’s almost as if we
were related.”
“Yes, because a Pentland did marry a Milford once, a long time ago ...
more than a hundred years, I suppose.”
The discovery made her happy in a vague way, perhaps because she
knew it made him seem less what they called an “outsider” at Pentlands. It
wouldn’t be so hard to say to her father, “I want to marry Jean de Cyon. You
know his ancestors came from Durham.” The name of Milford would make
an impression upon a man like her father, who made a religion of names;
but, then, Jean had not even asked her to marry him yet. For some reason he
had kept silent, saying nothing of marriage, and the silence clouded her
happiness at being near him.
“It’s odd,” said Jean, suddenly absorbed, in the way of men, over this
concrete business of ancestry. “Some of these Milfords must be direct
ancestors of mine and I’ve no idea which ones they are.”
“When we go down the hill,” she said, “I’ll take you to the meeting-
house and show you the tablet that records the departure of the Reverend
Josiah Milford and his congregation.”
She answered him almost without thinking what she was saying,
disappointed suddenly that the discovery should have broken in upon the
perfection of the mood that united them a little while before.
They found a grassy spot sheltered from the August sun by the leaves of
a stunted wild-cherry tree, all twisted by the sea winds, and there Sybil
seated herself to open their basket and spread the lunch—the chicken, the
crisp sandwiches, the fruit. The whole thing seemed an adventure, as if they
were alone on a desert island, and the small act gave her a new kind of
pleasure, a sort of primitive delight in serving him while he stood looking
down at her with a frank grin of admiration.
When she had finished he flung himself down at full length on the grass
beside her, to eat with the appetite of a great, healthy man given to violent
physical exercise. They ate almost in silence, saying very little, looking out
over the marshes and the sea. From time to time she grew aware that he was
watching her with a curious light in his blue eyes, and when they had
finished, he sat up cross-legged like a tailor, to smoke; and presently,
without looking at her he said, “A little while ago, when we first came up
the hill, you let me take your hand, and you didn’t mind.”
“No,” said Sybil swiftly. She had begun to tremble a little, frightened but
wildly happy.
“Was it because ... because....” He groped for a moment for words and,
finding them, went quickly on, “because you feel as I do?”
She answered him in a whisper. “I don’t know,” she said, and suddenly
she felt an overwhelming desire to weep.
“I mean,” he said quietly, “that I feel we were made for each other ...
perfectly.”
“Yes ... Jean.”
He did not wait for her to finish. He rushed on, overwhelming her in a
quick burst of boyish passion. “I wish it wasn’t necessary to talk. Words
spoil everything.... They aren’t good enough.... No, you must take me,
Sybil. Sometimes I’m disagreeable and impatient and selfish ... but you
must take me. I’ll do my best to reform. I’ll make you happy.... I’ll do
anything for you. And we can go away together anywhere in the world ...
always together, never alone ... just as we are here, on the top of this hill.”
Without waiting for her to answer, he kissed her quickly, with a warm
tenderness that made her weep once more. She said over and over again,
“I’m so happy, Jean ... so happy.” And then, shamefacedly, “I must confess
something.... I was afraid you’d never come back, and I wanted you always
... from the very beginning. I meant to have you from the beginning ... from
that first day in Paris.”
He lay with his head in her lap while she stroked the thick, red hair, in
silence. There in the graveyard, high above the sea, they lost themselves in
the illusion which overtakes such young lovers ... that they had come
already to the end of life ... that, instead of beginning, it was already
complete and perfect.
“I meant to have you always ... Jean. And after you came here and didn’t
come over to see me ... I decided to go after you ... for fear that you’d
escape again. I was shameless ... and a fraud, too.... That morning by the
river ... I didn’t come on you by accident. I knew you were there all the
while. I hid in the thicket and waited for you.”
“It wouldn’t have made the least difference. I meant to have you, too.” A
sudden impatient frown shadowed the young face. “You won’t let anything
change you, will you? Nothing that any one might say ... nothing that might
happen ... not anything?”
“Not anything,” she repeated. “Not anything in the world. Nothing could
change me.”
“And you wouldn’t mind going away from here with me?”
“No.... I’d like that. It’s what I have always wanted. I’d be glad to go
away.”
“Even to the Argentine?”
“Anywhere ... anywhere at all.”
“We can be married very soon ... before I leave ... and then we can go to
Paris to see my mother.” He sat up abruptly with an odd, troubled look on
his face. “She’s a wonderful woman, darling ... beautiful and kind and
charming.”
“I thought she was lovely ... that day in Paris ... the most fascinating
woman I’d ever seen, Jean dear.”
He seemed not to be listening to her. The wind was beginning to die
away with the heat of the afternoon, and far out on the amethyst sea the two
sailing ships lay becalmed and motionless. Even the leaves of the twisted
wild-cherry tree hung listlessly in the hot air. All the world about them had
turned still and breathless.
Turning, he took both her hands and looked at her. “There’s something I
must tell you ... Sybil ... something you may not like. But you mustn’t let it
make any difference.... In the end things like that don’t matter.”
She interrupted him. “If it’s about women ... I don’t care. I know what
you are, Jean.... I’ll never know any better than I know now.... I don’t care.”
“No ... what I want to tell you isn’t about women. It’s about my mother.”
He looked at her directly, piercingly. “You see ... my mother and my father
were never married. Good old Monsieur de Cyon only adopted me.... I’ve
no right to the name ... really. My name is really John Shane.... They were
never married, only it’s not the way it sounds. She’s a great lady, my
mother, and she refused to marry my father because ... she says ... she says
she found out that he wasn’t what she thought him. He begged her to. He
said it ruined his whole life ... but she wouldn’t marry him ... not because
she was weak, but because she was strong. You’ll understand that when you
come to know her.”
What he said would have shocked her more deeply if she had not been
caught in the swift passion of a rebellion against all the world about her, all
the prejudices and the misunderstandings that in her young wisdom she
knew would be ranged against herself and Jean. In this mood, the mother of
Jean became to her a sort of heroic symbol, a woman to be admired.
She leaned toward him. “It doesn’t matter ... not at all, Jean ... things like
that don’t matter in the end.... All that matters is the future....” She looked
away from him and added in a low voice, “Besides, what I have to tell you
is much worse.” She pressed his hand savagely. “You won’t let it change
you? You’ll not give me up? Maybe you know it already ... that I have a
grandmother who is mad.... She’s been mad for years ... almost all her life.”
He kissed her quickly. “No, it won’t matter.... Nothing could make me
think of giving you up ... nothing in the world.”
“I’m so happy, Jean ... and so peaceful ... as if you had saved me ... as if
you’d changed all my life. I’ve been frightened sometimes....”
But a sudden cloud had darkened the happiness ... the cloud that was
never absent from the house at Pentlands.
“You won’t let your father keep us apart, Sybil.... He doesn’t like me....
It’s easy to see that.”
“No, I shan’t let him.” She halted abruptly. “What I am going to say may
sound dreadful.... I shouldn’t take my father’s word about anything. I
wouldn’t let him influence me. He’s spoiled his own life and my mother’s
too.... I feel sorry for my father.... He’s so blind ... and he fusses so ...
always about things which don’t matter.”
For a long time they sat in silence, Sybil with her eyes closed leaning
against him, when suddenly she heard him saying in a fierce whisper, “That
damned Thérèse!” and looking up she saw at the rim of the hill beyond the
decaying tombstones, the stocky figure of Thérèse, armed with an insect-net
and a knapsack full of lunch. She was standing with her legs rather well
apart, staring at them out of her queer gray eyes with a mischievous,
humorous expression. Behind her in a semicircle stood a little army of dirty
Polish children she had recruited to help her collect bugs. They knew that
she had followed them deliberately to spy on them, and they knew that she
would pretend blandly that she had come upon them quite by accident.
“Shall we tell her?” asked Jean in a furious whisper.
“No ... never tell anything in Durham.”
The spell was broken now and Jean was angry. Rising, he shouted at
Thérèse, “Go and chase your old bugs and leave us in peace!” He knew
that, like her mother, Thérèse was watching them scientifically, as if they
were a pair of insects.
3
Anson Pentland was not by nature a malicious man or even a very

disagreeable one; his fussy activities on behalf of Morality arose from no
suppressed, twisted impulse of his own toward vice. Indeed, he was a man
of very few impulses—a rather stale, flat man who espoused the cause of
Morality because it belonged to his tradition and therefore should be
encouraged. He was, according to Sabine, something far worse than an
abandoned lecher; he was a bore, and a not very intelligent one, who only
saw straight along his own thin nose the tiny sector of the universe in which
circumstance had placed him. After forty-nine years of staring, his gaze had
turned myopic, and the very physical objects which surrounded him—his
house, his office, his table, his desk, his pen—had come to be objects
unique and glorified by their very presence as utensils of a society the most
elevated and perfect in existence. Possessed of an immense and intricate
savoir-faire he lacked even a suspicion of savoir-vivre, and so tradition,
custom, convention, had made of his life a shriveled affair, without
initiative or individuality, slipping along the narrow groove of ways set and
uninteresting. It was this, perhaps, which lay at the root of Sybil’s pity for
him.
Worshiping the habit of his stale world, he remained content and even
amiable so long as no attack was made upon his dignity—a sacred and
complicated affair which embraced his house, his friends, his clubs, his
ancestors, even to the small possessions allowed him by his father. Yet this
dignity was also a frail affair, easily subject to collapse ... a sort of thin shell
enclosing and protecting him. He guarded it with a maidenly and
implacable zeal. When all the threats and pleadings of Aunt Cassie moved
him to nothing more definite than an uneasy sort of evasion, a threat at any
of the things which came within the realm of his dignity set loose an
unsuspected, spiteful hatred.
He resented O’Hara because he knew perhaps that the Irishman regarded
him and his world with cynicism; and it was O’Hara and Irishmen like him
—Democrats (thought Anson) and therefore the scum of the earth—who
had broken down the perfect, chilled, set model of Boston life. Sabine he
hated for the same reasons; and from the very beginning he had taken a
dislike to “that young de Cyon” because the young man seemed to stand
entirely alone, independent of such dignities, without sign even of respect
for them. And he was, too, inextricably allied with O’Hara and Sabine and
the “outlandish Thérèse.”
Olivia suspected that he grew shrill and hysterical only at times when he
was tormented by a suspicion of their mockery. It was then that he became
unaccountable for what he said and did ... unaccountable as he had been on
that night after the ball. She understood that each day made him more
acutely sensitive of his dignity, for he was beginning to interpret the
smallest hint as an attack upon it.
Knowing these things, she had come to treat him always as a child,
humoring and wheedling him until in the end she achieved what she
desired, painlessly and surely. She treated him thus in the matter of
refurnishing the house. Knowing that he was absorbed in finishing the final
chapters of “The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” she
suggested that he move his table into the distant “writing-room” where he
would be less disturbed by family activities; and Anson, believing that at
last his wife was impressed by the importance and dignity of his work,
considered the suggestion an excellent one. He even smiled and thanked
her.
Then, after having consulted old John Pentland and finding that he
approved the plan, she began bit by bit to insinuate the furniture of Horace
Pentland into the house. Sabine came daily to watch the progress of the
change, to comment and admire and suggest changes. They found an odd
excitement in the emergence of one beautiful object after another from its
chrysalis of emballage; out of old rags and shavings there appeared the
most exquisite of tables and cabinets, bits of chinoiserie, old books and
engravings. One by one the ugly desk used by Mr. Lowell, the monstrous
lamp presented by Mr. Longfellow, the anemic water-colors of Miss Maria
Pentland ... all the furnishings of the museum were moved into the vast old
attic; until at length a new drawing-room emerged, resplendent and
beautiful, civilized and warm and even a little exotic, dressed in all the
treasures which Horace Pentland had spent his life in gathering with
passionate care. Quietly and almost without its being noticed, the family
skeleton took possession of the house, transforming its whole character.
The change produced in Aunt Cassie a variety of confused and
conflicting emotions. It seemed sacrilege to her that the worn, familiar,
homely souvenirs of her father’s “dear friends” should be relegated into the
background, especially by the hand of Horace Pentland; yet it was
impossible for her to overlook the actual value of the collection. She saw
the objects less as things of rare beauty than in terms of dollars and cents.
And, as she had said, “Pentland things ought to find a place in a Pentland
house.” She suspected Sabine of Machiavellian tactics and could not make
up her mind whether Sabine and Horace Pentland had not triumphed in the
end over herself and “dear Mr. Lowell” and “good, kind Mr. Longfellow.”
Anson, strangely enough, liked the change, with reservations. For a long
time he had been conscious of the fact that the drawing-room and much of
the rest of the house seemed shabby and worn, and so, unworthy of such
dignity as attached to the Pentland name.
He stood in the doorway of the drawing-room, surveying the
transformation, and remarked, “The effect seems good ... a little
flamboyant, perhaps, and undignified for such a house, but on the whole ...
good ... quite good. I myself rather prefer the plain early American
furniture....”
To which Sabine replied abruptly, “But it makes hard sitting.”
Until now there had never been any music at Pentlands, for music was
regarded in the family as something you listened to in concert-halls, dressed
in your best clothes. Aunt Cassie, with Miss Peavey, had gone regularly for
years each Friday afternoon, to sit hatless with a scarf over her head in
Symphony Hall listening to “dear Colonel Higginson’s orchestra” (which
had fallen off so sadly since his death), but she had never learned to
distinguish one melody from another.... Music at Pentlands had always been
a cultural duty, an exercise something akin to attending church. It made no
more impression on Aunt Cassie than those occasional trips to Europe
when, taking her own world with her, she stayed always at hotels where she
would encounter friends from Boston and never be subjected to the strain of
barbaric, unsympathetic faces and conversations.
And now, quite suddenly, music at Pentlands became something alive
and colorful and human. The tinny old square piano disappeared and in its
place there was a great new one bought by Olivia out of her own money. In
the evenings the house echoed to the sound of Chopin and Brahms,
Beethoven and Bach, and even such barbaric newcomers as Stravinsky and
Ravel. Old Mrs. Soames came, when she was well enough, to sit in the
most comfortable of the Regence chairs with old John Pentland at her side,
listening while the shadow of youth returned to her half-blind old eyes. The
sound of Jean’s music penetrated sometimes as far as the room of the mad
old woman in the north wing and into the writing-room, where it disturbed
Anson working on “The Pentland Family and the Massachusetts Bay
Colony.”
And then one night, O’Hara came in after dinner, dressed in clothes cut
rather too obviously along radically fashionable lines. It was the first time
he had ever set foot on Pentland soil.
4
There were times now when Aunt Cassie told herself that Olivia’s
strange moods had vanished at last, leaving in their place the old docile,
pleasant Olivia who had always had a way of smoothing out the troubles at
Pentlands. The sudden perilous calm no longer settled over their
conversations; Aunt Cassie was no longer fearful of “speaking her mind,
frankly, for the good of all of them.” Olivia listened to her quietly, and it is
true that she was happier in one sense because life at Pentlands seemed to
be working itself out; but inwardly, she went her own silent way, grieving in
solitude because she dared not add the burden of her grief to that of old
John Pentland. Even Sabine, more subtle in such things than Aunt Cassie,
came to feel herself quietly shut out from Olivia’s confidence.
Sybil, slipping from childhood into womanhood, no longer depended
upon her; she even grew withdrawn and secret about Jean, putting her
mother off with empty phrases where once she had confided everything.
Behind the pleasant, quiet exterior, it seemed to Olivia at times that she had
never been so completely, so superbly, alone. She began to see that at
Pentlands life came to arrange itself into a series of cubicles, each occupied
by a soul shut in from all the others. And she came, for the first time in her
life, to spend much time thinking of herself.
With the beginning of autumn she would be forty years old ... on the
verge of middle-age, a woman perhaps with a married daughter. Perhaps at
forty-two she would be a grandmother (it seemed likely with such a pair as
Sybil and young de Cyon) ... a grandmother at forty-two with her hair still
thick and black, her eyes bright, her face unwrinkled ... a woman who at
forty-two might pass for a woman ten years younger. A grandmother was a
grandmother, no matter how youthful she appeared. As a grandmother she
could not afford to make herself ridiculous.
She could perhaps persuade Sybil to wait a year or two and so put off the
evil day, yet such an idea was even more abhorrent to her. The very panic
which sometimes seized her at the thought of turning slowly into an old
woman lay also at the root of her refusal to delay Sybil’s marriage. What
was happening to Sybil had never happened to herself and never could
happen now; she was too old, too hard, even too cynical. When one was
young like Jean and Sybil, one had an endless store of faith and hope. There
was still a glow over all life, and one ought to begin that way. Those first
years—no matter what came afterward—would be the most precious in all
their existence; and looking about her, she thought, “There are so few who
ever have that chance, so few who can build upon a foundation so solid.”
Sometimes there returned to her a sudden twinge of the ancient,
shameful jealousy which she had felt for Sybil’s youth that suffocating
night on the terrace overlooking the sea. (In an odd way, all the summer
unfolding itself slowly seemed to have grown out of that night.)
No, in the end she returned always to the same thought ... that she would
sacrifice everything to the perfection of this thing which existed between
Sybil and the impatient, red-haired young man.
When she was honest with herself, she knew that she would have had no
panic, no terror, save for O’Hara. Save for him she would have had no fear
of growing old, of seeing Sybil married and finding herself a grandmother.
She had prayed for all these things, even that Fate should send Sybil just
such a lover; and now that her prayer was answered there were times when
she wished wickedly that he had not come, or at least not so promptly.
When she was honest, the answer was always the same ... that O’Hara had
come to occupy the larger part of her interest in existence.
In the most secret part of her soul, she no longer pretended that her
feeling for him was only one of friendship. She was in love with him. She
rose each morning joyfully to ride with him across the meadows, pleased
that Sybil came with them less and less frequently; and on the days when he
was kept in Boston a cloud seemed to darken all her thoughts and actions.
She talked to him of his future, his plans, the progress of his campaign, as if
already she were his wife or his mistress. She played traitor to all her world
whose fortunes rested on the success and power of his political enemies.
She came to depend upon his quick sympathy. He had a Gaelic way of
understanding her moods, her sudden melancholy, that had never existed in
the phlegmatic, insensitive world of Pentlands.
She was honest with herself after the morning when, riding along the
damp, secret paths of the birch thicket, he halted his horse abruptly and with
a kind of anguish told her that he could no longer go on in the way they
were going.
He said, “What do you want me to do? I am good for nothing. I can
think of nothing but you ... all day and all night. I go to Boston and try to
work and all the while I’m thinking of you ... thinking what is to be done.
You must see what hell it is for me ... to be near you like this and yet to be
treated only as a friend.”
Abruptly, when she turned and saw the suffering in his eyes, she knew
there was no longer any doubt. She asked sadly, “What do you want me to
do? What can I do? You make me feel that I am being the cheapest, silliest
sort of woman.” And in a low voice she added, “I don’t mean to be,
Michael.... I love you, Michael.... Now I’ve told you. You are the only man
I’ve ever loved ... even the smallest bit.”
A kind of ecstatic joy took possession of him. He leaned over and kissed
her, his own tanned face dampened by her tears.
“I’m so happy,” she said, “and yet so sad....”
“If you love me ... then we can go our way ... we need not think of any
of the others.”
“Oh, it’s not so easy as that, my dear.” She had never before been so
conscious of his presence, of that strange sense of warmth and charm which
he seemed to impose on everything about him.
“I do have to think of the others,” she said. “Not my husband.... I don’t
think he even cares so long as the world knows nothing. But there’s Sybil....
I can’t make a fool of myself on account of Sybil.”
She saw quickly that she had used the wrong phrase, that she had hurt
him; striking without intention at the fear which he sometimes had that she
thought him a common, vulgar Irish politician.
“Do you think that this thing between us ... might be called ‘making a
fool of yourself’?” he asked with a faint shade of bitterness.
“No ... you know me better than that.... You know I was thinking only of
myself ... as a middle-aged woman with a daughter ready to be married.”
“But she will be married ... soon ... surely. Young de Cyon isn’t the sort
who waits.”
“Yes ... that’s true ... but even then.” She turned quickly. “What do you
want me to do?... Do you want me to be your mistress?”
“I want you for my own.... I want you to marry me.”
“Do you want me as much as that?”
“I want you as much as that.... I can’t bear the thought of sharing you ...
of having you belong to any one else.”
“Oh ... I’ve belonged to no one for a great many years now ... not since
Jack was born.”
He went on, hurriedly, ardently. “It would change all my life. It would
give me some reason to go on.... Save for you.... I’d chuck everything and
go away.... I’m sick of it.”
“And you want me for my own sake ... not just because I’ll help your
career and give you an interest in life.”
“For your own sake ... nothing else, Olivia.”
“You see, I ask because I’ve thought a great deal about it. I’m older than
you, Michael. I seem young now.... But at forty.... I’ll be forty in the autumn
... at forty being older makes a difference. It cuts short our time.... It’s not as
if we were in our twenties.... I ask you, too, because you are a clever man
and must see these things, too.”
“None of it makes any difference.” He looked so tragically in earnest,
there was such a light in his blue eyes, that her suspicions died. She
believed him.
“But we can’t marry ... ever,” she said, “so long as my husband is alive.
He’ll never divorce me nor let me divorce him. It’s one of his passionate
beliefs ... that divorce is a wicked thing. Besides, there has never been a
divorce in the Pentland family. There have been worse things,” she said
bitterly, “but never a divorce and Anson won’t be the first to break any
tradition.”
“Will you talk to him?”
“Just now, Michael, I think I’d do anything ... even that. But it will do no
good.” For a time they were both silent, caught in a profound feeling of
hopelessness, and presently she said, “Can you go on like this for a little
time ... until Sybil is gone?”
“We’re not twenty ... either of us. We can’t wait too long.”
“I can’t desert her yet. You don’t know how it is at Pentlands. I’ve got to
save her, even if I lose myself. I fancy they’ll be married before winter ...
even before autumn ... before he leaves. And then I shall be free. I couldn’t
... I couldn’t be your mistress now, Michael ... with Sybil still in there at
Pentlands with me.... I may be quibbling.... I may sound silly, but it does
make a difference ... because perhaps I’ve lived among them for too long.”
“You promise me that when she’s gone you’ll be free?”
“I promise you, Michael.... I’ve told you that I love you ... that you’re
the only man I’ve ever loved ... even the smallest bit.”
“Mrs. Callendar will help us.... She wants it.”
“Oh, Sabine....” She was startled. “You haven’t spoken to her? You
haven’t told her anything?”
“No.... But you don’t need to tell her such things. She has a way of
knowing.” After a moment he said, “Why, even Higgins wants it. He keeps
saying to me, in an offhand sort of way, as if what he said meant nothing at
all, ‘Mrs. Pentland is a fine woman, sir. I’ve known her for years. Why,
she’s even helped me out of scrapes. But it’s a pity she’s shut up in that
mausoleum with all those dead ones. She ought to have a husband who’s a
man. She’s married to a living corpse.’ ”
Olivia flushed. “He has no right to talk that way....”
“If you could hear him speak, you’d know that it’s not disrespect, but
because he worships you. He’d kiss the ground you walk over.” And
looking down, he added, “He says it’s a pity that a thoroughbred like you is
shut up at Pentlands. You mustn’t mind his way of saying it. He’s
something of a horse-breeder and so he sees such things in the light of
truth.”
She knew, then, what O’Hara perhaps had failed to understand—that
Higgins was touching the tragedy of her son, a son who should have been
strong and full of life, like Jean. And a wild idea occurred to her—that she
might still have a strong son, with O’Hara as the father, a son who would be
a Pentland heir but without the Pentland taint. She might do what Savina
Pentland had done. But she saw at once how absurd such an idea was;
Anson would know well enough that it was not his son.
They rode on slowly and in silence while Olivia thought wearily round
and round the dark, tangled maze in which she found herself. There seemed
no way out of it. She was caught, shut in a prison, at the very moment when
her chance of happiness had come.
They came suddenly out of the thicket into the lane that led from Aunt
Cassie’s gazeboed house to Pentlands, and as they passed through the gate
they saw Aunt Cassie’s antiquated motor drawn up at the side of the road.
The old lady was nowhere to be seen, but at the sound of hoofs the rotund
form and silly face of Miss Peavey emerged from the bushes at one side,
her bulging arms filled with great bunches of some weed.
She greeted Olivia and nodded to O’Hara. “I’ve been gathering catnip
for my cats,” she called out. “It grows fine and thick there in the damp
ground by the spring.”
Olivia smiled ... a smile that gave her a kind of physical pain ... and they
rode on, conscious all the while that Miss Peavey’s china-blue eyes were
following them. She knew that Miss Peavey was too silly and innocent to
suspect anything, but she would, beyond all doubt, go directly to Aunt
Cassie with a detailed description of the encounter. Very little happened in
Miss Peavey’s life and such an encounter loomed large. Aunt Cassie would
draw from her all the tiny details, such as the fact that Olivia looked as if
she had been weeping.
Olivia turned to O’Hara. “There’s nothing malicious about poor Miss
Peavey,” she said, “but she’s a fool, which is far more dangerous.”
CHAPTER IX
As the month of August moved toward an end there was no longer any
doubt as to the “failing” of Aunt Cassie; it was confirmed by the very
silence with which she surrounded the state of her health. For forty years
one had discussed Aunt Cassie’s health as one discussed the weather—a
thing ever present in the consciousness of man about which one could do
nothing, and now Aunt Cassie ceased suddenly to speak of her health at all.
She even abandoned her habit of going about on foot and took to making
her round of calls in the rattling motor which she protested to fear and
loathe, and she came to lean more and more heavily upon the robust Miss
Peavey for companionship and support. Claiming a fear of burglars, she had
Miss Peavey’s bed moved into the room next to hers and kept the door open
between. She developed, Olivia discovered, an almost morbid terror of
being left alone.
And so the depression of another illness came to add its weight to the
burden of Jack’s death and the grief of John Pentland. The task of battling
the cloud of melancholy which hung over the old house grew more and
more heavy upon Olivia’s shoulders. Anson remained as usual indifferent to
any changes in the life about him, living really in the past among all the
sheaves of musty papers, a man not so much cold-blooded as bloodless, for
there was nothing active nor calculating in his nature, but only a great
inertia, a lack of all fire. And it was impossible to turn to Sabine, who in an
odd way seemed as cold and detached as Anson; she appeared to stand at a
little distance, waiting, watching them all, even Olivia herself. And it was
of course unthinkable to cloud the happiness of Sybil by going to her for
support.
There was at least O’Hara, who came more and more frequently to
Pentlands, now that the first visit had been made and the ice was broken.
Anson encountered him once in the hallway, coldly; and he had become
very friendly with old John Pentland. The two had a common interest in
horses and dogs and cattle, and O’Hara, born in the Boston slums and
knowing very little on any of these subjects, perhaps found the old

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The Ancient Greek Economy Markets

Households and City States Edward M.

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Neurological concepts in ancient Greek medicine 1st

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Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek

The City in the Greek and Roman World 1st Edition E J

The Ancient Greek Economy: Markets, Households and City-States brings

Edward M. Harris is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of

David M. Lewis holds a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at

Mark Woolmer is Assistant Principal of Collingwood College and a

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

List of Figures page viii

1 INTRODUCTION: MARKETS IN CLASSICAL AND

PART I CREATING THE FOUNDATIONS OF MARKET

2 ARISTOTLE AND FOREIGN TRADE 41

PART II HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION FOR MARKETS

6 INDUSTRY STRUCTURE AND INCOME

7 WHOLE CLOTH: EXPLORING THE QUESTION OF

PART III MARKETS AND TRADE NETWORKS: THE EVIDENCE

9 PATTERNS OF AMPHORA STAMP DISTRIBUTION:

PART IV MARKETS, COMMODITIES AND TRADE NETWORKS

12 AEGEAN-LEVANTINE TRADE, 600–300

15 ‘VITA HUMANIOR SINE SALE NON QUIT

Appendix Commodities in Classical Athens: The Evidence

6.1 The Marginal Competitor page 154

6.1 Impact of Division of Labour page 152

Alain Bresson is Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the

Cristina Carusi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at

John K. Davies is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History and Classical

Edward M. Harris is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Durham

Geoffrey Kron is Associate Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman

Mark L. Lawall is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at

David M. Lewis is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of

Evi Margaritis is Marie Curie Intra European Postdoctoral Fellow,

Tania Panagou is an archaeologist who works for the 21st Ephorate of

Selene E. Psoma is Associate Professor in Greek History at the University of

Barbara Tsakirgis is Associate Professor of Classics and History of Art in the

Chavdar Tzochev is an independent scholar and has held fellowships at the

Peter van Alfen is Margaret Thompson Associate Curator of Greek Coins at

Mark Woolmer is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Classics and

The origins of this book lie in a conference entitled “Beyond

Edward M. Harris and David M. Lewis

In Aristophanes’ Peace, two craftsmen approach Trygaeus, the protagonist of

appreciation among the Athenians of the so-called market principle: that

Markets – or the Lack of Them – in Recent Scholarship

Hopkins proposed some small modifications to this orthodoxy. Without

labour and enhancing productivity. In his summary of the essays by Snodgrass,

[T]‌he goal of the peasant household was self-sufficiency: the ability to

Even though these peasants participated in festivals and occasionally bought

Types of Market in the Greek World

One finds an example of this kind of market at Baetocaece in Syria. An inscrip-

of cash as an exchange medium, expansion of transport facilities, and growth

Anson Pentland was not by nature a malicious man or even a very

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