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[German version] (σιτοφύλακες/ sitophýlakes, 'grain-overseers'). It was their function in Athens to monitor the price of unmilled grain, and to ensure that millers sold flour in accordance with the price of barley, and bakers bread in accordance with the price of wheat. They also inspected the weight of the bread (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 51,3), and had to ascertain that the grain-merchants respected all the rules governing their trade (Lys. 22,16). The sitophylakes kept precise lists stating the amount and origin of imported grain (Dem. Or. 20,32). Although sitophylakes are attested on…

[German version] Unemployment was not an economic problem in Antiquity, because concepts such as full employment and working population did not exist. However, data from early modern cities suggest that in Antiquity, too, up to 25% of the adult urban population was incapable of sustaining itself, and a further 30-40% lived below the subsistence threshold. Aristophanes distinguishes the πτωχός ( ptōchós; 'one who has nothing to live on') from the πένης ( pénēs; 'one who must live modestly'; cf. Aristoph. Plut. 537-54). Latin also distinguished between poverty ( inopes, 'without mean…

[German version] [1] The Ancient Near East Work in the Ancient Near East was normally identified with physical labour in the agricultural and craft sectors, as well as in construction and haulage. Free labour was the province of self-employed producers and wage workers in institutional households (palace and temple). In the latter contexts, unfree labour was performed by dependents of many kinds, and also existed in the form of a state-decreed obligation of service. Slave labour was present to a varyin…

[German version] (ἀγορανόμοι; agoranómoi). Agoranomoi regulated the markets in Greek poleis and are documented in both inscriptions and literature from c. 120 cities of the 5th cent. BC to the 3rd cent. AD. Most inscriptions are from the Roman period; when the word agoranomos can also be a translation of Latin aedilis. Their duties seem to have been defined differently in various cities. According to Aristotle, in the 4th cent. BC Athens had ten agoranomoi elected by lot of whom five were responsible for the market in Athens and five for the one in Piraeus; they contr…

[German version] With Bohannan and Dalton we can distinguish between the market a) as a place and b) as a price-regulating mechanism of supply and demand [1]. While a job market in the sense of b) did not develop in antiquity, work was available like other goods in the marketplace. It could either be bought permanently in the form of a slave, or temporarily ‘lent’ by a free wage-earner (Latin locatio; Menander Sam. 189-95; Plaut. Trin. 843 f; 853 f.). Conversely, everyone could offer his work at the market (Mt 20:1-16). In Athens, there was a special area of the agora (κολονος μίσθιος/ kolonós m…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient and Egypt As early as the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC metals (copper and silver, later also tin and gold) fulfilled monetary functions as a medium of exchange, a means of payment for religious, legal or other liabilities, a measure of value and a means of storing wealth. Until the 1st millennium fungible goods, primarily corn, also served as a medium of exchange and measure of value. Economies in the Near East and Egypt were characterised by subsistence production, self-sufficient palace and oîkos economies. The need for goods or services w…

[German version] Although ἐμπόριον ( empórion, Lat. emporium) could originally be translated by ‘port/trading centre’, there arise a variety of problems of definition because of the changing meaning in antiquity due to regional differences and historical developments, and this caused the term to become a reflection of economic and cultural structures. Consequently, in modern research emporion is neither used as a topographical term, or as a distinct form of settlement, nor as a well-defined economic institution, but only to cover some fundamental, distinctive features: 1. An empo…

[German version] Redistribution is an asymmetrical exchange or distribution mechanism based on the importation of goods to a centre and their distribution. As an economic principle of supply and political principle of integration, it was important in pre-market economy societies. Although K. Polanyi (1886-1964), who used the term in his works on economic theory, appreciated that redistribution can function as an integrative principle in smaller groups such as institutionalized households or estate…

[German version] Because the exchange of goods was not seen in Antiquity in the framework of a market process but as a series of individual exchanges in trade, ancient theories of price are, at base, not comparable with those of neoclassical economic theory. The central question was not how prices arise as a result of different interests and regulate themselves within a given timeframe, but rather in what way the price of a good is connected to its value, and under what conditions a discrepancy arises between the two. Aristotle makes the distinction between the values of utility and…

[German version] (μετρονόμοι; metronómoi) were a group of market supervisors who inspected the weights and measures (μέτρα; métra) on the Agora (ἀγορά; agorá) at Athens and the Emporion in the Piraeus. According to Aristotle, five metronomoi were chosen by lot for the city and the Piraeus respectively (Aristot. Ath. pol. 51,2). Excavations of the Athenian agorá have brought to light measuring vessels and weights from the 6th cent. BC to the Hellenistic era. Some, dating from the 4th cent. BC, are provided with counterstamps, probably intended to gua…

[German version] In ancient communities or kingdoms, the MS depended primarily on the level of public spending, rather than on a comprehensive monetary policy with the intention to provide society and economy with a sufficient amount of coin for all necessary transactions. The primary purpose of coinage was to guarantee payments for soldiers or building works. Because in Antiquity money was usually fixed to a material value, the limits of the minting of coin were basically constrained by the volum…

[German version] In Antiquity, price was normally the result of the balance of supply and demand. Basic foodstuffs such as grain, oil (Oils for cooking [II]) and meat (Meat, consumption of) were the exception. On the basis of a 4th-cent. BC law the grain supervisors ( sitophýlakes ) in Athens had the task of seeing that unmilled grain was offered honestly ( dikaíōs) at market, that millers then sold the flour at a price corresponding to that for grain, that bakers sold bread at a price corresponding to what they had paid for the wheat, and that their loave…

[German version] Although in Antiquity no proper MT had been formulated and no writings on the topic existed, in philosophical literature and in poetry the problems connected with the existence of money were repeatedly discussed, such as the questions of what the basis of its value is and what the consequences for a society of the use of money are. Among the Greeks a critical attitude to money and richness based on financial means crystallized at quite an early stage: the striving for wealth has d…

[German version] The term χρηματιστική ( chrēmatistikḗ, sc. téchnē) is generally translated by ‘the art of acquiring money’, but should be understood in a wider sense as the practice of acquiring exchange goods (χρήματα, chrḗmata). It is attested only in the political philosophy of the 4th cent. BC (Pl. Grg. 477e; Euthyd. 307a; Aristot. Pol. 1256a1ff.). Aristoteles compares chrematistike with οἰκονομική ( oikonomikḗ, sc. téchnē, art of housekeeping), and distinguishes it from κτητική ( ktētikḗ, art of acquisition). He first describes κτητική as a component of οἰκονομι…

[German version] I. Ancient Near East Prices or equivalents for numerous fungible items had a generally recognized value in both Egypt and Mesopotamia, though nothing is known of how this came about. Prices in Egypt were at first expressed in a value unit šn( tj) (perhaps 'silver ring'?), in the New Kingdom also in copper and sacks of grain (though neither served as media of exchange) [7. 13]. In Mesopotamia, they were generally expressed in weights of silver (in Assyria, occasionally also tin). Indications as to equivalents are preserved to varying degrees of abundance and …

[German version] They were generally determined by the circumstances under which the work was performed. Thus agricultural work began at dawn and ended at dusk; A herdsmen, tending a herd on a nearby meadow, would return in the evening (Varro Rust. 2,10,1). On the large estates in Italy WH would be extended by e.g. fieldworkers being deployed on other work on rainy or frosty days; even holidays were used for work against which there was no religious objection (Cato Agr. 2,3; 2,4; 2,39;  Columella …

[German version] Reciprocity denotes a mechanism for exchange and social integration of particular importance in pre-market civilizations and based upon the normative obligation for an equalization of the given and received. The term had initially been used by ethnologists to describe exchange processes in primitive societies, and was later introduced by Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) into the debate about pre-industrial economies. Polanyi uses the term to describe the exchange principle between symmetr…

[German version] describes, in Karl Polanyis' theoretical model, an establishment functioning as a control point in the trade between two cultures with differently structured economic institutions. In a typical case, a port of trade is situated between a society without a market and a market economy or professional long-distance traders who are part of a market system. A typical example of this is the early trade of the Carthaginians (Carthage) with the tribes of West Africa (Hdt. 4,196). The port…

[German version] Ancient monetary systems were in principle based on the value of their substance: the value of coins related to the metal quota of the material from which they were made ─ gold, silver or bronze ─ and this was determined by weight and fineness. Based on these prerequisites the devaluation of money in antiquity could primarily be traced back to manipulations in the weight or fineness of the coins. As the quantity of money issued essentially depended on the level of public expenses,…

[German version] Besides slavery, free, contract-based labour was also used in all sectors of the ancient economy. Although craft workers and singers who belonged to an oikos only for a short period are mentioned by Homer, contracted wage work goes back rather to the use of mercenaries in the 6th cent. BC. In classical Athens, it does not appear to have been the normal practice for work contracts to be determined in writing. A special category is made up by work contracts occasioned by public building projects, which wer…