Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- List of references to Greek terms
- Maps
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Coming to terms
- Chapter 2 Classical modes and patterns of exchange
- Chapter 3 The juridical place of maritime traders
- Chapter 4 The level of wealth of maritime traders
- Chapter 5 Official attitudes towards maritime traders
- Chapter 6 Unofficial attitudes toward maritime traders
- Chapter 7 Archaic modes of exchange and the personnel involved c. 800–475 b.c.
- Chapter 8 Conclusion: then and now
- Appendix 1 Emporoi and nauklēroi: their attested states of origin
- Appendix 2 Cohesion among maritime traders
- Appendix 3 The dikai emporikai
- Appendix 4 Catalogue of emporoi and nauklēroi
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- General index
Chapter 6 - Unofficial attitudes toward maritime traders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- List of references to Greek terms
- Maps
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Coming to terms
- Chapter 2 Classical modes and patterns of exchange
- Chapter 3 The juridical place of maritime traders
- Chapter 4 The level of wealth of maritime traders
- Chapter 5 Official attitudes towards maritime traders
- Chapter 6 Unofficial attitudes toward maritime traders
- Chapter 7 Archaic modes of exchange and the personnel involved c. 800–475 b.c.
- Chapter 8 Conclusion: then and now
- Appendix 1 Emporoi and nauklēroi: their attested states of origin
- Appendix 2 Cohesion among maritime traders
- Appendix 3 The dikai emporikai
- Appendix 4 Catalogue of emporoi and nauklēroi
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- General index
Summary
THE “SOCIAL STATUS” OF MARITIME TRADERS
Having dealt with Athenian legal and administrative mechanisms, I now turn to the Athenians themselves. What were the attitudes adopted by Athenian society at large towards the emporoi and nauklēroi trading with Athens? In Chapter 5 we saw the vital service they performed for both citizens and others within the polis. Can we, in addition to identifying the economic role emporoi and nauklēroi played, say anything about their “social status”? How seriously, in other words, did their largely foreign origins influence Athenian estimations? Or, again, how respectable was the work they did?
That they did real work for a living may have earned maritime traders the blanket disapproval of the Athenian leisure class. Davies shows how during the classical period the composition of this leisure class changed, with newcomers whose sources of wealth were more diverse, but there is no evidence that it changed its view of those without leisure. In particular we should not misread an aristocrat's eagerness for imports as social approval of those who brought them.
How far down the social scale did this leisure ideal go? Relative estimations are another matter, and have to do with the various ways in which different Athenian strata viewed the sort of work a maritime trader did. Nowadays the corporal reserves his envy for the sergeant. He acknowledges the higher status of the major, but the gap fails to engage his aspiration.
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- Maritime Traders in the Ancient Greek World , pp. 54 - 61Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003