8 - Risk and the polis: the evolution of institutionalised responses to food supply problems in the ancient Greek state

Summary

Hunger was never far away in ancient Greece. Conventional histories of the Greek cultural achievement rarely draw attention to the material bases of ancient society. In this chapter we aim to show how risk and uncertainty played a part in shaping the central institutions and practices of the Hellenic world, and how historians and archaeologists can use the Greek evidence to help them understand responses to risk in other complex societies. In particular, we will focus on the changing relationships between interannual climatic variability, population growth and the state from the eighth to the third century BC. During this half-millennium, two broad types of state can be distinguished within the Greek world, the polis and the ethnos. Most of our chapter will be concerned with cultural responses to variability and risk within the polis, a state formation based on the political relationship of citizenship.

Nothing is more shameless than an empty belly, which commands a man to remember it, even if he is sorely tired and pain is in his heart.

(Homer, Odyssey 7:216–8)

The polis and politics were invented in a land where agricultural producers laboured under certain natural disadvantages, related in particular to the seasonality and variability of production of staple crops.