Most of our evidence for the ancient Greek economy concerns Athens in the Classical period and includes literary works, such as legal speeches, philosophical dialogues and treatises, historical narratives, and dramas and other poetic writings. These activities have left behind material remains and are described in various contexts scattered throughout the extant writings of the ancient Greeks. They produced and exchanged goods both in local and long distance trade and had monetary systems to facilitate their exchanges. Nonetheless, the ancient Greeks did engage in economic activity. Sources of EvidenceĪlthough the ancient Greeks achieved a high degree of sophistication in their political, philosophical, and literary analyses and have, therefore, left us with a significant amount of evidence concerning these matters, few Greeks attempted what we would call sophisticated economic analysis. In addition, reference will be made to some recent scholarly trends in the field. Rather, it will attempt to set out the types of evidence available for studying the ancient Greek economy, to describe briefly the long-running debate about the ancient Greek economy and the most widely accepted model of it, and then to present a basic view of the various sectors of the ancient Greek economy during the three major phases of its history. This brief article, therefore, will not include any of the statistics, tables, charts, or graphs that normally accompany economic studies. Moreover, the evidence is insufficient to employ all but the most basic quantitative methods of modern economic analysis and has forced scholars to employ other more qualitative methods of investigation. Thus, despite over a century of investigation, scholars are still debating the nature of the ancient Greek economy. Throughout these periods of ancient Greek civilization, the level of technology was nothing like it is today and values developed that shaped the economy in unique ways. In the Archaic and Classical periods, Greece was not unified but was comprised of hundreds of small, independent poleis or “city-states.” During the Hellenistic period, Greek civilization spread into the Near East and large kingdoms became the norm. 2 During this time, Greek civilization was very different from our own in a variety of ways. in what are called the Archaic (776-480), Classical (480-323), and Hellenistic (323-30) periods.
Ancient Greek civilization flourished from around 776 to 30 B.C. Given the remoteness of ancient Greek civilization, the evidence is minimal and difficulties of interpretation abound. The ancient Greek economy is somewhat of an enigma. Darel Tai Engen, California State University – San Marcos Introduction 1
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