John Bintliff 1. Introduction Classical Athens Was a Giant Urban Center In

CHAPTER TWO CITY-COUNTRY RELATIONSHIPS IN THE ‘NORMAL POLIS’ John Bintliff 1. Introduction Classical Athens was a giant urban center in the Greek Aegean: the combined built-up walled pairing of Athens and Piraeus came to some 511 hectares, which on the basis of widely followed calculations would indicate some 50–60,000 inhabitants in the walled urban zone.1 Regarding the combined population of late-fifth-century bce Athens and its home territory of Attica, we can take the more conservative estimate of Osborne2—some 150,000 people living in classical Attica around 430 bce, or Garnsey and Hansen’s much higher 250 or 300,000.3 The range suggests that the city and its port town housed from one sixth to more than a third of total Attic population.4 1 Jameson et al. 1994; Bintliff 1997; Hansen 2004. 2 Osborne 1987, 46. 3 Garnsey 1988, 89–90; Hansen 1988, 12. 4 The estimates of the total high classical Attic population vary from minimum 150,000 to maximum 300,000. There is a similar variety in estimates of its composi- tion. Osborne, Hansen and Garnsey between them offer a range of 70–120–165,000 people for total citizen population, respectively; 20– or 35,000 are estimated to be metics by Osborne and Hansen, respectively; finally, slaves are ‘guesstimated’ at 50– or 80,000 respectively by Osborne and Hansen. The spatial distribution of the three constituent groups is unclear. Metics should have been almost entirely con- centrated within the walled double urban complex, which makes the higher estimate of their numbers by Hansen highly problematic when we allow for their possession of at least on average one household slave per family, leaving perhaps just 5–15,000 in the city to be citizens and their household slaves. The lower calculation of Osborne appears far more manageable, allowing citizen numbers resident in the city and Piraeus to be equal or slightly larger than metics, perhaps some 20–25,000 citizens (which would comprise on lower total citizen calculations around one third, on the higher a mere 8% of all citizens in Athens plus Attica). This allows for an average of one slave per urban citizen household. One way to recover Hansen’s metic numbers, which do have some textual support, would be to suggest metic residence in the larger Attic agglomerations outside of Athens, a neglected question we will return to later in this chapter. But in any case, all these figures point to confirmation for Thucydides’ statement, that at this time the majority of Attic citizens dwelt outside the city conurbation (2.16.1). 14 john bintliff It is hardly surprising that those citizens who dwelt in the giant walled city-complex cultivated a cosmopolitan life, given the concentration of maritime, commercial, artisanal and rentier concerns. If Garnsey is right,5 in good years Attic food production covered more than one half of the region’s needs, in bad years imported food could be the dominant source for survival; but on average Athens relied on a significant international component to its markets, and Hansen has recently stressed the passage in the Funeral Oration where Pericles states ‘Because of the size of our city, everything can be imported from all over the earth, with the result that we have no more special enjoy- ment of our native goods than of the goods of the rest of mankind’.6 We can quickly see the special character of life in Athens-Piraeus. The size of the conurbation is unparalleled in the contemporary Aegean, and the heavy mix of foreigners, merchants, artisans and financiers alongside resident citizens of mixed pursuits would be unusual outside of similar major commercial foci such as Corinth, and vastly different to life in the country towns and villages (demes) of the Attic countryside. The opposition commonly noted in Athenian literature between the town and the country is easily accounted for, and indeed Frost has even cited an archaic tombstone on the road to Acharnae as early evidence for this mentality: the passers-by should grieve for Tetichus— ‘whether [you are] a man of the astu or a xenus’ (whom he inter- prets as countryfolk).7 However, neither Hansen nor Osborne contests the statement of Thucydides (2.16.1), for which there is other supportive evidence, that at the start of the Peloponnesian War the majority of Athenian citizens lived in the Attic countryside. Indeed this large khôra was highly productive and as just mentioned, Garnsey has calculated that in normal years it could provide around one half of Attic and Athen- ian food needs. Hans Lohmann, [Figure 1] in the only detailed ar- chaeological study of a rural deme,8 has demonstrated that the fifth and fourth centuries bce saw a corresponding unparalleled intensive 5 Garnsey 1988. 6 Thucydides 2.38.2; Hansen 2004, 23. 7 Frost 1994. It may be noted, however, that it was also suggested during the discussion of this chapter at the conference from which this volume originated, that the astu referred to might also be that of Acharnae itself, giving a very different complexion to the inscription, and a potential support to my comments later regarding rural towns in Attica. 8 Lohmann 1993..

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