The non-agricultural economy of the ancient Greek world included crafts, trade, and services. Evidence for such, heavily biased towards Athens, is found via philosophical writing, comedy, forensic speeches, inscriptions, and archaeological finds. Elite attitudes, in which farming was the idealised citizen occupation, also impact the evidence. Nevertheless, at least 230 different terms for non-agricultural roles and occupations can be found in the sources (with many overlaps). Of these, fifty-three are for women. Workshops were generally small, with up to five or six craftsmen of low status, predominantly resident aliens (metics), freedmen or slaves. At least some rich citizens at Athens owned workshops, with a number of slaves perhaps able to live and work independently. Notable trades such as mining, marble-, bronze-, and metalwork, ceramics, and tanning seem to have clustered in common locations within cities and territories. Women’s non-agricultural economic roles seem to have been related mainly to textiles, retail of simple products, and provision of personal services.

Xenophon’s Oeconomicus examines how elite Athenians should manage their individual households and estates (oikoi) and makes the case that they should set aside aristocratic disdain for work and money-making and seek to become successful estate managers and entrepreneurs. This will benefit them personally in many ways and make them better citizens of the democracy, who will more effectively serve the city as hoplites and cavalrymen and perform other civic roles: the wealth they accrue will allow them to carry out liturgies for the city, and the managerial skills they develop will make them better leaders. Indeed, Xenophon portrays the oikos as a microcosm of the city in which members of the elite can hone the skills that they will need to lead the city effectively. Socrates figures prominently in the Oeconomicus, as in the Memorabilia, as a critic of destructive elite values and behaviors and a proponent of reconceptualizing what it means to be a “gentleman” in light of the good citizenship needed from the elite; his account of his conversation with Ischomachus offers elite Athenians a model for transforming themselves into “gentlemen” in the true sense of the word.