A Day In Old Athens

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75. The Beautiful Funeral Monuments.--If the noisy funeral customs
permitted to the Athenians may repel a later day observer, there
can be only praise for the Athenian tombs, or rather the funeral
monuments (stele) which might be set over the urns or ashes or the
actual coffins. Nearly every Athenian family has a private field
which it uses for sepulchral purposes: but running outside of
the city, near the Itonian Gate along the road to the Peireus, the
space to either side of the highway has been especially appropriated
for this purpose. Waling hither along this "Street of the Tombs"
we can make a careful survey of some of the most touching memorials
of Athenian life.

The period of hot, violent grief seems now over; the mourners have
settled down in their dumb sense of loss. This spirit of calm,
noble resignation is what is expressed upon these monuments. All
is chaste, dignified, simple. There are no labored eulogies of
the deceased; no frantic expressions of sorrow; no hint (let it
be also said) of any hope of reunions in the Hereafter. Sometimes
there is simply a plain marble slab or pillar marked with the name
of the deceased; and with even the more elaborate monuments the
effort often is to concentrate, into one simple scene, the best and
worthiest that was connected with the dear departed. Here is the
noble mother seated in quiet dignity extending her hand in farewell
to her sad but steadfast husband, while her children linger wonderingly
by; here is the athlete, the young man in his pride, depicted not
in the moment of weakness and death, but scraping his glorious form
with his strigil, after some victorious contest in the games; here
is the mounted warrior, slain before Corinth whilst battling for
his country, represented in the moment of overthrowing beneath
his flying charger some despairing foe. We are made to feel that
these Athenians were fair and beautiful in their lives, and that
in their deaths they were not unworthy. And we marvel, and admire
these monuments the more when we realize that they are not the work
of master sculptors but of ordinary paid craftsmen. We turn away
praising the city that could produce such noble sculpture and
call it mere handicraft, and praising also the calm poise of soul,
uncomforted by revealed religion, which could make these monuments
common expressions of the bitterest, deepest, most vital emotions
which can ever come to men.[*]

[*]As Von Falke (Greece and Rome, p. 141) well says of these
monuments, "No skeleton, no scythe, no hour-glass is in them to
bring a shudder to the beholder. As they [the departed] were in
life, mother and daughter, husband and wife, parents and children,
here they are represented together, sitting or standing, clasping
each other's hands and looking at one another with love and sympathy
as if it were their customary affectionate intercourse. What the
stone perpetuates is the love and happiness they enjoyed together,
while yet they rejoiced in life and the light of day."

Chapter XII. Trade, Manufactures, and Banking.

76. The Commercial Importance of Athens.--While the funeral mourners
are wending their slow way homeward we have time to examine certain
phases of Athenian life at which we have previously glanced, then
ignored. Certain it is, most "noble and good" gentlemen delight
to be considered persons of polite uncommercial leisure; equally
certain it is that a good income is about as desirable in Athens
as anywhere else, and many a stately "Eupatrid," who seems to
spend his whole time in dignified walks, discoursing on politics
or philosophy, is really keenly interested in trades, factories,
or farms, of which his less nobly born stewards have the active
management. Indeed one of the prime reasons for Athenian greatness
is the fact that Athens is the richest and greatest commercial city
of Continental Hellas, with only Corinth as a formidable rival.[*]

[*]Syracuse in distant Sicily was possibly superior to Athens in
commerce and economic prosperity, although incomparably behind her
in the empire of the arts and literature.

To understand the full extent of Athenian commercial prosperity we
must visit the Peireus, yet in the main city itself will be found
almost enough examples of the chief kinds of economic activity.

77. The Manufacturing Activities of Athens.--Attica is the seat
of much manufacturing. Go to the suburbs: everywhere is the rank
odor of the tanneries; down at the harbors are innumerable ship
carpenters and sail and tackle makers, busy in the shipyards; from
almost every part of the city comes the clang of hammer and anvil
where hardware of all kinds is being wrought in the smithies; and
finally the potter makers are so numerous as to require special
mention hereafter. But no list of all the manufacturing activities
is here possible; enough that practically every known industry is
represented in Athens, and the "industrial" class is large.[*] A
very large proportion of the industrial laborers are slaves, but
by no means all. A good many are real Athenian citizens; a still
larger proportion are "metics" (resident foreigners without political
rights). The competition of slave labor, however, tends to keep
wages very low. An unskilled laborer will have to be content with
his 3 obols (9 cents [1914] or $1.51 [2000]) per day; but a trained
workman will demand a drachma (18 cents [1914] or $3.02 [2000])
or even more. There are no labor unions or trade guilds. A son
usually, though not invariably, follows his father's profession.
Each industry and line of work tends to have its own little street
or alley, preferably leading off the Agora. "The Street of the Marble
Workers," the "Street of the Box Makers," and notably the "Street
of the Potters" contain nearly all the workshops of a given kind.
Probably you can find no others in the city. Prices are regulated
by custom and competition; in case any master artisan is suspected
of "enhancing" the price of a needful commodity, or his shady business
methods seem dangerous to the public, there is no hesitation in
invoking an old law or passing a new one in the Assembly to bring
him to account.

[*]For a very suggestive list of the numerous kinds of Greek industries
(practically all of which would be represented in Athens) see H.
J. Edwards, in Whibley's "Companion to Greek Studies," p. 431.

Manufacturers are theoretically under a social ban, and indeed
yonder petty shoemaker, who, with his two apprentices, first makes
up his cheap sandals, then sells them over the low counter before
his own ship, is very far from being a "leisurely" member of the
"noble and the good." But he who, like the late Lycophron, owns
a furniture factory employing night threescore slaves, can be sure
of lying down on his couch at a dinner party among the very best;
for, as in twentieth century England, even manufacture and "trade," if
on a sufficiently large scale, cover a multitude of social sins.[*]

[*]Plato, probably echoing thoughtful Greek opinion, considered it
bad for manufacturers to be either too wealthy or too poor; thus
a potter getting too rich will neglect his art, and grow idle;
if, however, he cannot afford proper tools, he will manufacture
inferior wares, and his sons will be even worse workmen then he.
Such comment obviously comes from a society where most industrial
life is on a small scale.

78. The Commerce of Athens.--Part of Athenian wealth comes from
the busy factories, great and small, which seem everywhere; still
more riches come in by the great commerce which will be found
centered at the Peireus. Here is the spacious Deigma, a kind
of exchange-house where ship masters can lay out samples of their
wares on display, and sell to the important wholesalers, who will
transmit to the petty shopkeepers and the "ultimate consumer."[*]

[*]Of course a very large proportion of Greek manufactures wares
were never exported, but were sold direct by the manufacturer to
the consumer himself. This had various disadvantages; but there
was this large gain: ONLY ONE PROFIT was necessary to be added
to the mere cost of production. This aided to make Greece (from
a modern standpoint) a paradise of low prices.

There are certain articles of which various districts make a
specialty, and which Athens is constantly importing: Boetia sends
chariots; Thessaly, easy chairs; Chios and Miletos, bedding; and
Miletos, especially, very fine woolens. Greece in general looks
to Syria and Arabia for the much-esteemed spices and perfumes; to
Egypt for papyri for the book rolls; to Babylonia for carpets. To
discuss the whole problem of Athenian commerce would require a book
in itself; but certain main facts stand out clearly. One is that
Attica herself has extremely few natural products to export--only her
olive oil, her Hymettus honey, and her magnificent marbles--dazzling
white from Pentelicos, gray from Hymettus, blue or black from
Eleusis. Again we soon notice the great part which GRAIN plays in
Athenian commerce. Attica raises such a small proportion of the
necessary breadstuffs, and so serious is the crisis created by any
shortage, that all kinds of measures are employed to compel a steady
flow of grain from the Black Sea ports into the Peireus. Here is
a law which Domsthenes quotes to us:--

"It shall not be lawful for any Athenian or any metic in Attica,
or any person under their control [i.e. slave or freedman] to lend
out money on a ship which is not commissioned to bring grain to
Athens."

A second law, even more drastic, forbids any such person to
transport grain to any harbor but the Peireus. The penalties for
evading these laws are terrific. At set intervals also the Public
Assembly (Ecclesia) is in duty bound to consider the whole state
of the grain trade: while the dealers in grain who seem to be
cornering the market, and forcing up the price of bread, are liable
to prompt and disastrous prosecution.

79. The Adventurous Merchant Skippers.--Foreign trade at Athens
is fairly well systematized, but it still partakes of the nature
of an adventure. The name for "skipper" (naukleros) is often used
interchangeably for "merchant." Nearly all commerce is by sea,
for land routes are usually slow, unsafe, and inconvenient[*]; the
average foreign trader is also a shipowner, probably too the actual
working captain. He has no special commodity, but will handle
everything which promises a profit. A war is breaking out in
Paphlagonia. Away he sails thither with a cargo of good Athenian
shields, swords, and lances. He loads up in that barbarous but
fertile country with grain; but leaves enough room in his hold for
some hundred skins of choice wine which he takes aboard at Chios.
The grain and wine are disembarked at the Pireus. Hardly are they
ashore ere rumor tells him that salt herring[+] are abundant and
especially cheap at Corcyra; and off he goes for a return cargo
thereof, just lingering long enough to get on a lading of Athenian
olive oil.

[*]Naturally there was a safe land route from Athens across the
Isthmus to Corinth and thence to Sparta or towards Ellis; again,
there would be fair roads into Boetia.

[+]Salt fish were a very usual and important article of Greek
commerce.

80. Athenian Money-changers and Bankers.--An important factor in the
commerce of Athens is the "Money-changer." There is no one fixed
standard of coinage for Greece, let alone the Barbarian world. Athens
strikes its money on a standard which has very wide acceptance,
but Corinth has another standard, and a great deal of business is
also transacted in Persian gold darics. The result is that at the
Peireus and near the Agora are a number of little "tables" where
alert individuals, with strong boxes beside them, are ready to sell
foreign coins to would-be travelers, or exchange darics for Attic
drachme, against a pretty favorable commission.

This was the beginning of the Athenian banker; but from being a mere
exchanger he has often passed far beyond, to become a real master
of credit and capital. There are several of these highly important
gentlemen who now have a business and fortune equal to that of the
famous Pasion, who died in 370 B.C. While the firm of Pasion and
Company was at its height, the proprietor derived a net income of
at least 100 mine (over $1,800 [1914] or $30,248.07 [2000]) per year
from his banking; and more than half as much extra from a shield
factory.[*]

[*]These sums seem absurdly small for a great money magnate, but
the very high purchasing power of money in Athens must be borne in
mind. We know a good deal about Pasion and his business from the
speeches which Deosthenes composed in the litigation which arose
over his estate.

81. A Large Banking Establishment.--Enter now the "tables"
of Nicanor. The owner is a metic; perhaps he claims to come from
Rhodes, but the shrewd cast of his eyes and the dark hue of his skin
gives a suggestion of the Syrian about him. In his open office a
dozen young half-naked clerks are seated on low chairs--each with
his tablet spread out upon his knees laboriously computing long
sums.[*] The proprietor himself acts as the cashier. He has
not neglected the exchange of foreign moneys; but that is a mere
incidental. His first visitor this morning presents a kind of letter
of credit from a correspondent in Syracuse calling for one hundred
drachme. "Your voucher?" asks Nicanor. The stranger produces the
half of a coin broken in two across the middle. The proprietor
draws a similar half coin from a chest. The parts match exactly,
and the money is paid on the spot. the next comer is an old
acquaintance, a man of wealth and reputation; he is followed by
two slaves bearing a heavy talent of coined silver which he wishes
the banker to place for him on an advantageous loan, against a due
commission. The third visitor is a well-born but fast and idle
young man who is squandering his patrimony on flute girls and
chariot horses. He wishes an advance of ten mine, and it is given
him--against the mortgage of a house, at the ruinous interest of
36 per cent, for such prodigals are perfectly fair play. Another
visitor is a careful and competent ship merchant who is fitting
for a voyage to Crete, and who requires a loan to buy his return
cargo. Ordinary interest, well secured, is 18 per cent, but a sea
voyage, even at the calmest season, is counted extra hazardous.
The skipper must pay 24 per cent at least. A poor tradesman also
appears to raise a trifle by pawning two silver cups; and an unlucky
farmer, who cannot meet his loan, persuades the banker to extend
the time "just until the next moon"[+]--of course at an unmerciful
compounding of interest.

[*]Without the Arabic system of numerals, elaborate bookkeeping surely
presented a sober face to the Greeks. Their method of numeration
was very much like that with the so-called Roman numerals.

[+]"Watching the moon," i.e. the end of the month when the debts
became due, appears to have been the melancholy recreation of many
Athenian debtors. See Aristophanes's "Clouds," I. 18.

82. Drawbacks to the Banking Business.--Nicanor has no paper money
to handle, no stocks, no bonds,--and the line between legitimate
interest and scandalous usury is by no means clearly drawn. There
is at least one good excuse for demanding high interest. It
is notoriously hard to collect bad debts. Many and many a clever
debtor has persuaded an Athenian jury that ALL taking of interest
is somewhat immoral, and the banker has lost at least his interest,
sometimes too his principal. So long as this is the case, a banker's
career has its drawbacks; and Demosthenes in a recent speech has
commended the choice by Pasion's son of a factory worth 60 mine
per year, instead of his father's banking business worth nominally
100. The former was so much more secure than an income depending
on "other people's money!"

Finally it must be said that while Nicanor and Pasion have been
honorable and justly esteemed men, many of their colleagues have
been rogues. Many a "table" has been closed very suddenly, when
its owner absconded, or collapsed in bankruptcy, and the unlucky
depositors and creditors have been left penniless, during the
"rearrangement of the tables," as the euphemism goes.

83. The Potter of Athens.--There is one other form of economic
activity in Athens which deserves our especial notice, different as
it is from the bankers' tables,--the manufacture of earthen vases.
A long time might be spent investigating the subject; here there
is room only for a hasty glance. For more than two hundred years
Attica has been supplying the world with a pottery which is in
some respects superior to any that has gone before, and also (all
things considered) to any that will follow, through night two and
a half millenniums. The articles are primarily tall vases and
urns, some for mere ornament or for religious purposes,--some for
very humble household utility; however, besides the regular vases
there is a great variety of dishes, plates, pitchers, bowls, and
cups all of the same general pattern,--a smooth, black glaze[*]
covered with figures in the delicate red of the unglazed clay. At
first the figures had been in black and the background in red, but
by about 500 B.C. the superiority of the black backgrounds had been
fully realized and the process perfected. For a long time Athens
had a monopoly of this beautiful earthenware, but now in 360 B.C.
there are creditable manufactories in other cities, and especially
in the Greek towns of Southern Italy. The Athenian industry is,
however, still considerable; in fifty places up and down the city,
but particularly in the busy quarter of the Ceramicus, the potters'
wheels are whirling, and the glazers are adding the elegant patterns.

[*]Sometimes this glaze tended to a rich olive green or deep brown.

84. Athenian Pottery an Expression of the Greek Sense of
Beauty.--Athens is proud of her traditions of naval and military
glory; of the commerce of the Peireus; of her free laws and
constitution; of her sculptured temples, her poets, her rhetoricians
and philosophers. Almost equally well might she be proud of her
vases. They are not made--let us bear clearly in mind--by avowed
artists, servants of the Muses and of the Beautiful; they are the
regular commercial products of work-a-day craftsmen. But what
craftsmen! In the first place, they have given to every vase
and dish a marvelous individuality. There seems to be absolutely
no duplication of patterns.[*] Again, since these vases are made
for Greeks, they must--no matter how humble and commonplace their
use--be made beautiful--elegantly shaped, well glazed, and well
painted: otherwise, no matter how cheap, they will never find a
market.

[*]It is asserted that of the many thousands of extant Greek vases
that crowd the shelves of modern museums, there are nowhere two
patterns exactly alike.

The process of manufacture is simple, yet it needs a masterly touch.
After the potter has finished his work at the wheel and while the
clay is still soft, the decorator makes his rough design with a
blunt-pointed stylus. A line of black glaze is painted around each
figure. Then the black background is freely filled in, and the
details within the figure are added. A surprisingly small number
of deft lines are needed to bring out the whole picture.[*] Sometimes
the glaze is thinned out to a pale brown, to help in the drawing
of the interior contours. When the design is completed, we have an
amount of life and expression which with the best potters is little
short of startling. The subjects treated are infinite, as many as
are the possible phases of Greek life. Scenes in the home and on
the farm; the boys and their masters at school; the warriors, the
merchants, the priests sacrificing, the young gallants serenading
a sweet-heart; all the tales, in short of poet-lore and mythology,--time
would fail to list one tenth of them. Fairly we can assert that
were all the books and formal inscriptions about the Athenians to
be blotted out, these vase paintings almost photographs one might
say, of Athenian daily life, would give us back a very wide knowledge
of the habits of the men in the city of Athena.

[*]In this respect the Greek vase paintings can compete with the
best work in the Japanese prints.

The potters are justly proud of their work; often they do not
hesitate to add their signatures, and in this way later ages can
name the "craftsmen" who have transmitted to them these objects
of abiding beauty. The designers also are accommodating enough to
add descriptive legends of the scenes which they depict,--Achilles,
Hercules, Theseus, and all the other heroes are carefully named,
usually with the words written above or beside them.

The pottery of Athens, then, is truly Athenian; that is to say,
it is genuinely elegant, ornamental, simple, and distinctive. The
best of these great vases and mixing bowls are works of art no less
than the sculptures of Phidias upon the Parthenon.

Chapter XIII. The Armed Forces of Athens.

85. Military Life at Athens.--Hitherto we have seen almost nothing
save the peaceful civic side of Athenian life, but it is a cardinal
error to suppose that art, philosophy, farming, manufacturing, commerce,
and bloodless home politics sum up the whole of the activities of
Attica. Athens is no longer the great imperial state she was in
the days of Pericles, but she is still one of the greatest military
powers in Greece,[*] and on her present armed strength rests a
large share of her prestige and prosperity. Her fleet, which is
still her particular boast, must of course be seen at the Peireus;
but as we go about the streets of the main city we notice many men,
who apparently had recently entered their house doors as plain,
harmless citizens, now emerging, clad in all the warrior's bravery,
and hastening towards one of the gates. Evidently a review is to
be held of part of the citizen army of Athens. If we wish, we can
follow and learn much of the Greek system of warfare in general
and of the Athenian army in particular.

[*]Of course the greatest military power of Greece had been Sparta
until 371 B.C., when the battle of Leuctra made Thebes temporarily
"the first land power."

Even at the present day, when there is plenty of complaint that
Athenians are not willing to imitate the sturdy campaigning of their
fathers, the citizens seem always at war, or getting ready for it.
Every citizen, physically fit, is liable to military service from
his eighteenth to his sixtieth year. To make efficient soldiers
is really the main end of the constant physical exercise. If a
young man takes pride in his hard and fit body, if he flings spears
at the stadium, and learns to race in full armor, if he goes on
long marches in the hot sun, if he sleeps on the open hillside, or
lies on a bed of rushes watching the moon rise over the sea,--it
is all to prepare himself for a worthy part in the "big day" when
Athens will confront some old or new enemy on the battlefield. A
great deal of the conversation among the younger men is surely not
about Platonic ideals, Demosthenes's last political speech, nor
the best fighting cocks; it is about spears, shield-straps, camping
ground, rations, ambuscades, or the problems of naval warfare.

It is alleged with some show of justice that by this time Athenians
are so enamored with the pleasures of peaceful life that they prefer
to pay money for mercenary troops rather than serve themselves on
distant expeditions; and certain it is that there are plenty of
Arcadians, Thracians, and others, from the nations which supply
the bulk of the mercenaries, always in Athenian pay in the outlying
garrisons. Still the old military tradition and organization for
the citizens is kept up, and half a generation later, when the freedom
of Athens is blasted before Philip the Macedonian at Cheroneia, it
will be shown that if the Athenian militia does not know how to
conquer, it at least knows how to die. So we gladly follow to the
review, and gather our information.

86. The Organization of the Athenian Army.--After a young "ephebus"
has finished his two years of service in the garrisons he returns
home subject to call at the hour of need. When there is necessity
to make up an army, enough men are summoned to meet the required
number and no more. Thus for a small force only the eligibles
between say twenty and twenty-four years of age would be summoned;
but in a crisis all the citizens are levied up to the very graybeards.
The levy is conducted by the ten "Strategi" (at once 'generals,'
'admirals,' and 'war ministers') who control the whole armed power
of Athens. The recruits summoned have to come with three days'
rations to the rendezvous, usually to the Lyceum wrestling ground
just outside the city. In case of a general levy the old men are
expected to form merely a home guard for the walls; the young men
must be ready for hard service over seas.

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