Boardman J., Hammond N.G. L. The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC
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THE EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC EXPANSION 425
varied. In Thessaly, Sparta and Crete the rural population as a whole
was legally bound to the soil. In remote mountain districts farmers
remained independent; but the rural elements
in
more open and
accessible districts seem commonly to have become peasants
in
the
anthropological sense, yielding food
to
greater landowners,
to
the
market, or to the religious and secular machinery of the
polls.
Even so
the dynamic character of progress prevented the small farmers in the
more advanced areas from being formally depressed into helotry.
If
many Athenians in 500 could economically be termed peasants, they still
were citizens of the
polis
and could exhibit the attitudes of the chorus
in Aristophanes'
Acharnians.
The essential consequences of the changes in the countryside were
the accumulation of disposable wealth, which we may term capital,
under the control largely of the upper classes. This capital, consisting
of food, metals and animals, could not have been a large stock, inasmuch
as Greece did not produce the surpluses available in the river valleys
of the Near East; but it proved adequate to fuel continuing economic
growth. There was, indeed, not the need to build up large fixed capital
assets which marked the industrial revolution in western Europe and
America, for commerce was conducted in vessels of small capacity and
industrial establishments were tiny groups of artisans with almost no
machinery. Much of the surplus of society, accordingly, could remain
in a few hands at the outset. The upper classes sometimes did employ
their wealth in overseas trading or in leading colonies; but they did not
consider themselves entrepreneurs either in improving rural yields or
in supporting industrial activity. Insofar as either result was attained
it was the incidental product of upper-class demands for crops and
manufactured wares.
IV.
THE EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC EXPANSION
The ultimate sources of Greek economic expansion lay in the agricultural
world of the ninth and eighth centuries. The conduit, as we have seen,
through which rural changes were funnelled was formed by its greater
landowners. The effects
or
outward marks
of
economic progress,
however, extended far beyond the range of the upper classes in the many
tiny
poleis,
who unleashed strengths in Greek society which they could
not fully control. These effects may be summed up first as the rise of
trade and industry, with specialized, independent manpower, and then
eventually the appearance of urban centres and the spread of coinage.
Objects such
as
obsidian had been transported about the Aegean since
at least the Mesolithic period; in the Mycenaean age interchanges of
luxury items, metals and pottery had been extensive. During the Dark
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426 45
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- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
Ages,
on
the other hand, foreign material
in
any area was extremely
limited until Attic Protogeometric pottery
-
both actual examples and
also
its
attractive style
-
began
to
spread abroad
in
the tenth century.
Beads
of
faience, blue frit and glass have been found
in
two tombs of
this century
at
Lefkandi in Euboea. Ninth-century evidence includes a
bronze bowl, now considered Phoenician,
in
the Ceramicus cemetery
at Athens and ivory, glass beads and gold
in an
Agora grave and
in
Euboea. By the eighth century ivories, Near Eastern objects and artistic
impulses from Phoenicia appear abundantly
in
Crete, and by this time
Geometric styles interacted throughout
the
Aegean and exerted
an
influence as far west as the earliest levels
of
Carthage.
All
too
often this marked increase
in
overseas contacts has been
treated simply
as a
search
for
profit through deliberate trade,
an
interpretation which ignores several fundamental problems.
8
The
historian must, that is, explain not only how desirable objects
or
raw
materials could
be
found
in the
Near East
and in the
western
Mediterranean,
but
also
the
manner
in
which conscious, effective
demand arose
in
the Aegean world. How, too, did
a
specialized type
of trader emerge who had the capital
to
acquire
a
stock of items
?
or
again how could he secure protection both in and outside his homeland?
Modern studies of simple societies suggest that this range of problems
is
a
difficult one, and that exchange
is
often masked
or
even thought
of in terms
of
reciprocal gifts by adventurous leaders who do not call
themselves traders.
For the early Greek world these questions must be given a balanced
answer. Movement
of
physical goods
in the
Aegean was expanding
by 800 and spread farther thereafter.
At
least
by
the time
of
Odyssey
VIII. 159-64, where Odysseus is accused
of
being 'one who, faring
to
and
fro
with
his
benched ship,
is a
captain
of
sailors
who are
merchantmen, one who is mindful
of
his freight, and has charge
of
a
homeborne cargo, and the gains
of
his greed', the concept
of
making
gains by seaborne exchange was consciously understood. The seafarers,
too,
who set up
a
trading post
at
Al Mina
in
Syria by the end
of
the
ninth century, frequented
it
continuously. Yet
in the
first stages
of
Greek economic advance 'trade' must not be overemphasized. Com-
mercial motives were not
a
primary force either in the settlement of Asia
Minor
or in
western colonization; above
all the
rise
of
specialized
industrial and commercial classes is at times dated much too early, and
their significance exaggerated.
Once under way, however, commerce expanded remarkably. Very
commonly
in
recent studies the view
of
Bucher and Hasebroek that
Greek commerce was a traffic purely in luxuries has been accepted, and
8
So
John
Hicks,
A
Theory
of
Economic
History (Oxford,
1969).
Sahlins'
study
is a
useful
corrective.
Also G 27.
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THE EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC EXPANSION 427
certainly the upper classes were
in
general the element which had the
funds
to
buy. The range
of
wares and the systematic organization of
trading activity were also more limited than in the modern world; but
it
yet
remains certain that
raw
materials
as
well
as
manufactured
products were moved back and forth through the Mediterranean.
To judge from early modern commercial patterns textiles may have
been
a
very important item
in
Archaic Greek trade. Richly designed
robes are visible on female statues and in vase-paintings, and were often
mentioned
in
poetry; Xenophanes
(fr. 3)
scornfully described
the
purple-clad lords
of
Colophon, ' haughty, adorned with well-dressed
hair, steeped in the scent of skilfully-prepared unguents'. Miletus had
a textile trade with Sybaris
in
Italy which was
so
important that the
Milesians went into mourning
on
the news
of
the destruction
of
its
commercial partner (Hdt. vi. 21).
If
most woven goods were probably
luxuries, the wool being loaded onto
a
ship
at
Cyrene
in
the famous
Arcesilas cup (Paris BN 4899) must be accounted
a
bulk item.
Like textiles, timber does not survive well in archaeological contexts,
but
it
had often
to
be imported
for
buildings and ships. Metals were
also vital, for Greece had only limited deposits of copper, iron and silver,
with which to meet the needs of its workshops for armour, tools, statues
and other purposes, both for home consumption and for export. Grain
imports, on the other hand, were minor until almost 500, when some
cities expanded enough to require more food than could be transported
to them by land.
9
The slave trade, which grew across the Archaic period,
involved both skilled courtesans like the famous Rhodopis and unskilled
personnel destined to provide labour in the ports and shops of the Greek
cities.
The most visible surviving evidence of trade is pottery, which was
used
to
contain perfumes and ointments, for olive oil and wine, and
for many other purposes. Far too much discussion of Greek commerce
has been based on its distribution and volume,
a
hazardous procedure
in view
of
the other items which may have entered into seaborne
exchange as well as the accidents of archaeological investigation; but
in the most general way ceramic evidence may suggest that trade abroad
underwent
a
great jump
in
the seventh century (Protocorinthian and
Corinthian ware) and again in the sixth century, when Athenian black-
figure and red-figure vases swept the market from France and Italy
to
Russia and the Near East.
By this latter point
a
host
of
colonies and trading posts supported
'
B
89, 3S, notes the lack of evidence for the export
of
Egyptian grain until the fifth century
but like most scholars still connects
the
foundation
of
Naucratis with such
a
trade;
c izy,
Heichelheim,
P
W (Suppl. vi) s.v. 'Sitos', admits large-scale grain movements only
in
the fifth
century.
In
the sixteenth century scarcely
i
per cent
of
Mediterranean cereal consumption was
provided by maritime trade in a marginal, spasmodic fashion (F. Braudel,
Capitalism and Material
Life
1400-1800
(New York, 1973) 84-6).
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428
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ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
a continuous and fairly large trade network centring on such Aegean
states as Miletus, Corinth, Aegina and eventually Athens.
In
its initial
stages
the
network was begun
and at
least
for a
century
or
more
supported
by
adventurous
men
from
the
upper classes. Sappho's
brother traded to Egypt, as did Solon. Colaeus of Samos, who opened
up the Spanish route, and Sostratus of Aegina, who may have been the
dedicant of an anchor at the Etruscan port of Pyrgi, were also probably
of similar origins. By the sixth century, however, trade had apparently
fallen into the hands
of
independent shipowners who beat about the
Mediterranean as opportunities warranted; certain types
of
Athenian
vases
at
this time were clearly designed
for
sale
in
Etruria. Sailing
vessels, which normally ran from seventy
or
eighty tons upwards
to
a few hundred tons, experienced much less technological improvement
than did war galleys; even so, better knowledge and organization of
markets could have brought
a
considerable increase
in
shipping
efficiency.
10
Important though this overseas network became, the decisive
ad-
vances
in
trade and industry occurred
in
the home waters
of
Greece.
Only
a
small part even of the urban population ever cared to commit
itself to maritime dangers
—
'the land can be trusted, but not the sea'
(Pittacus 10, Snell)
—
and the main source of demand was internal. The
fierce sense of independence of each
polls,
however, and the costs of land
transport
led to the
rise
of
many small economic centres along
the
Aegean coasts.
By
the
sixth century these points
had
groups
of
resident traders
operating on their own account, and also independent industrial sectors,
but their origins are murky. The scanty evidence in Homer and Hesiod
does not support the well-known theory that artisans were originally
contained within aristocratic households
(Hauswirtschaft);
the smithy
mentioned
in
the Works
and Days
appears
to
have been autonomous.
Fundamental needs for daily life were always satisfied largely within the
home, but the creation of effective demand for locally produced wares
such as armour and the great Dipylon vases entailed the patronage of
more than one upper-class household. Recent excavations at Sardis even
demonstrate that in this Lydian capital some gold refiners and jewellers
worked not
in
the palace but near the commercial centre. Although
craftsmen were dependent
on
noble tastes both generally and more
specifically in the case of commissioned statues and other objects, they
plied their trades
in
their own shops and
at
their own risk.
Industrial activity had never totally ceased in the Dark Ages. Before
10
J.
F. Shepherd and G. M. Walton,
Shipping,
Maritime
Trade
and
the Economic Development
of
Colonial
North
America
(Cambridge, 1972), illustrate such improvements in an era when the average
size
of
vessels was less than one hundred tons.
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THE EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC EXPANSION 429
900 a silver refinery existed at Argos, and a bronze foundry at Lefkandi;
potters, woodworkers
and
smiths continued
to
exist everywhere.
From the ninth century onwards, nonetheless, there was tremendous
technological progress in Greek industries, and specialization of crafts
developed to some
degree.
By the beginning of the Classic era the Greek
world had acquired the stock
of
skills and methods which it, and the
Romans thereafter, normally relied upon for the rest of ancient history.
This advance was almost entirely the result of borrowing from Near
Eastern sources; the technique of gold granulation used in the jewellery
found
in
ninth-century Athens (see Plates Vol.) thus came from the
Levant before 800.
In
areas such
as
stone-working
the
Greeks
did
develop new tools and distinctive ways of handling their materials; but
if Aegean workers
in
metal, stone, clay and probably wood gained
mastery abroad and also in home markets their success was due mainly
to other factors. One was the encouragement which they received from
their society to experiment and to evolve artistic styles: ' Whatever the
Greeks borrow from the barbarians they improve upon
in
the end'
([Plato],
Epinomis
98yd). The other major impetus was the independent
and relatively competitive spirit nurtured in Greek markets. In an initial
stage Hesiod {Op. 25—6) had already observed how 'neighbour vies
with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth... potter
is
angry with
potter, and craftsman with craftsman'; by the sixth century artistic pride
could lead
to
the taunt which the painter Euthymides placed
on an
amphora (Munich 2307), 'As never Euphronius'.
The centres
in
which artisans and traders lived were by the sixth
century true cities, no longer villages almost exclusively agricultural in
character. The history
of
Greek urban development
is
unfortunately
studded by semantic confusion as well as chronological error. The major
Greek communities shifted from the loose structure of the
ethnos
to the
far more tightly integrated
polls
system before 700, but
a polis
was not
in itself
a
city, even if the concentration of all significant activity at one
point was
an
important encouragement
to
urbanization. Athens,
for
example,
did not
change from
a
group
of
villages into
an
urban
agglomeration with
its
focus
in the
agora until the last part
of
the
seventh century; embellishment of
its
public and religious centres came
only under
the
Pisistratids. The provision
of
fountain houses
and
aqueducts,
a
mark
of
increasing concentration
of
population, can
be
dated firmly
to
the late seventh and early sixth centuries, and
by
this
time most of the significant cities of later centuries can be said
to
have
appeared.
In the definition of a city the presence of specialized economic sectors
is essential along with the physical patterns of its public architecture,
yet social, political and religious requirements were the primary causes
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- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
for the emergence of cities in Greece. The major buildings of an early
city were its temples; economic functions did not affect the planning
of urban centres until the fifth century.
11
In the cities the upper and lower classes
of
the
poleis
played their
political, religious and cultural roles; but cities also provided important
sources
of
demand and gave protection, legal and physical,
to the
expanding commercial and industrial groups. From the surrounding
countryside
the
cities needed food, water
and
people,
and
these
requirements had some effect in turning
at
least near-by farmers into
peasants dependent on markets. Aristotle (fr. 510) reports friction
at
Naxos between city dwellers and villages over the low price the former
would offer for fish; yet cities compensated at least indirectly for their
exploitation of the rural world by quickening its economic and social
changes.
Artisans and traders moved about the Greek world and even farther,
and they could settle in foreign states as resident aliens (metics); a recent
calculation suggests that
at
least half the potters
and
vase-painters
known
at
Athens during black-figure and early red-figure production
had foreign names, even though they
all
worked fully within
the
Athenian artistic tradition.
12
The prominence of metics especially later
at Athens, however, must not mislead us;
in
most cities down
to
500
local citizens and slaves provided the necessary manpower for the newer
pursuits.
These groups were not large. In the Athenian potteries of the sixth
century probably few more than one hundred persons were active
at
any one time; an urban population which exceeded several thousand
was rare and required the import of grain by sea. Cities and countryside
were
not
sundered. Where city walls existed, they were more often
draped about
the
urban core than independent
in
shape;
in the
Cleisthenic reorganization of Attica the city of Athens itself was given
no special place. Yet the vitality of cities does not depend wholly on
their size; cultural and artistic forces in Greek civilization had now an
urban framework.
At about the same time as cities became visible geographical centres
of economic life coinage appeared as a tangible economic force.
13
Trade
was conducted mainly in oral terms and largely via exchange of goods,
accounting was scarcely necessary
for
private purposes
in a
society
where agency and credit were limited,
but
supple economic activity
came to require a standard measure and medium of value. As Herodotus
(1.
94) reports the tradition, coinage began
in
Lydia. Although
it is
difficult to draw practical distinctions between earlier lumps of precious
11
H
56;
H
81.
"
H
l8A, 9-IO; H 2O.
13
On coinage see CAH iv
2
, ch. id. On its purposes G 22; G
8.
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ECONOMIC TENSIONS 431
metal
and the
Lydian electrum pellets
of
the late seventh century,
arranged
on
fixed relationships
of
weight (stater, ^,
J,
^j..
.on
to
^),
numismatic evolution was certainly continuous thereafter. Soon
the
pellets were stamped with recognizable designs
of
animals and other
devices, and at least by the middle of the sixth century Aegina had begun
an extensive coinage
of
silver staters marked
by a sea
turtle.
In the
western Mediterranean Himera and Selinus started coining, perhaps
from Spanish silver, soon thereafter; and
by
500 most
—
though not
all
—
the major states of the Greek world had mints which operated
at
least occasionally.
The swiftness with which the invention was adopted in an era of tiny
economic
and
political units suggests that
it
met significant needs.
Coinage was issued by states for public objectives as for building navies
or paying the mercenaries of tyrants, for fines and tolls on commercial
activity (evidence for which begins in the mid-sixth century), perhaps
for expenses
in the
construction
of
temples,
and
even
no
doubt
to
advertise the growing pride and power
of
the minting
poleis.
Private
purposes, especially
in
relation
to
commerce
and the
payment
of
dowries, were served by coinage only incidentally. The electrum issues
of Asia Minor were struck in small enough fractions to be economically
useful, but the mints
of
Greece itself produced very limited amounts
of smaller denominations in silver until the fifth century. Then copper
coinage also began to appear, particularly in the west, for market needs.
Yet money did provide a mode of translating immoveable assets into
reckoning assets, and those who could acquire a surplus over their ne6ds
came to place that surplus in coinage. The tendency, inevitably, was
to
hoard and so to immobilize coins; but surviving hoards which had been
buried down
to
500 are extremely few. For this lack two reasons may
be suggested: the upper classes came only slowly
to
consider coinage
a prime vehicle for their wealth; and also most men had too little surplus
to be able to freeze it as permanently as did Persian monarchs. Coinage,
in sum, was not
in
itself a potent economic force until well after 600,
and its appearance cannot be taken as a cause for the rise of tyrants or
for other manifestations
of
social
and
economic unrest. Still, once
society had grown sufficiently mobile for the concept of coinage to take
hold Greek economic life became wedded
to
the new invention.
V. ECONOMIC TENSIONS
Wherever we can see to any depth into the turbulence of the centuries
from 800
to
500, the causes were mainly aristocratic contentions and
interstate rivalries. Modern historians are often inclined
to
seek eco-
nomic roots for political and social unrest; as
far
as one can do so
in
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432 45
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- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
early Greece, the explanation must be in rural terms. The forces which
led men to venture on overseas colonization have been discussed in
chapter 37; above all the colonists wanted their own plots of land. At
home contention arose over rural debts and enslavement or exploitation
of the weaker farming elements; there was also strife between the
aristocrats proper and ambitious men who stood just below them. Since
political rights in the
po/is
were tied primarily to land ownership or free
use of land, these problems were the more critical.
Precision on many aspects of these issues can be attained only by
framing arbitrary hypotheses. The existence of modern debate over the
possibility of legal transfer of land ownership has already been noted;
even less clear is the process by which one farmer fell into lasting debt
to a neighbour. The vagaries of agricultural disaster which can strike
one plot and not another are usually compensated in a simple world
by temporary loans, as Hesiod envisaged (Op.
349-51,
477-8). Larger
and more permanent debts are commonly the product of an entrance
into a market system where rewards and losses are outside the farmer's
control. Hesiod, again, does not speak of interest
(tokos),
though this
price of borrowing was well known in Classical times. Nor can we
specify clearly the nature of either debtors or creditors. Solon attests
that some Athenians had been sold into slavery; presumably these had
been very small farmers who quickly exhausted their margin of security.
Other Athenian debtors were still tied to their land but had to yield
a full sixth of their crops; these were quite possibly middling but
unsuccessful farmers who would be grouped in Solon's class reform as
^eugites.
Since men of this level normally fleshed out the ranks of the
phalanx, their independence was a matter of importance to the state.
The lenders were necessarily men possessing
chremata.
These would
in the first instance have been the aristocratic landowners, but middling
farmers could rise as well as fall; other men, too, might gain wealth,
as Solon fr. 11 suggests, by overseas ventures (or mercenary service).
The rise of such kakoi was a theme which Theognis reiterated in
criticizing the society of the late sixth century, and in contemptuously
calling them men who had once worn goatskins (54-5) he reveals their
rural origins. Even clearer testimony to the existence of ambitious rural
elements which were not aristocratic is provided by Hesiod's
Works and
Days, for the usual description of this work as a peasant poem totally
misconstrues its picture of independent farmers, distinct from the
basileis.
These men, true, could be oppressed by those who held political
power; yet they bought slaves,
filled
their granaries by' work with work
upon work' (382), and in the heat of summer sat in the shade and drank
wine from Byblos (589)
—
this at a time when any imported object was
a great luxury. It should be recalled, too, that in the late eighth century
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ECONOMIC TENSIONS 433
Hesiod envisaged his successful auditor as launching his own ship and
selling excess crops by sea.
All in all, the rural situation must have been
a
complicated one in
many parts of
Greece.
In some areas the farming populations sank into
legal dependence; at Samos, Miletus, and elsewhere there was civil strife.
Only at Athens, however, do we gain a
brief,
but bright illumination
of problems and remedies as shown in the work of Solon, archon in
594-
His activity has been discussed in detail in chapter
43.
Here one may
note that Solon's elevation to the position of reformer and reconciler
was not solely a reaction to rural problems of debt. Athens was suffering
from bitter aristocratic factionalism, which had been evident in Cylon's
abortive effort
at
tyranny and was
to
appear later
in the
rise
of
Pisistratus; and also from discontent over Athenian failure in a war with
Megara. In Solon's own verse (fr. 10.3) there is stress on the fact that
'a city is destroyed of great men'. The breadth and vision of Solon's
reforms also deserve emphasis; though he placed remedies for rural debt
and enslavement first, he encouraged the settlement
of
metics and
promoted the training of sons in their fathers' skills. Yet he must not
be interpreted as a modern economic wizard, who engaged, for example,
in conscious inflation through reform of weights, measures and coinage.
The Argive king Pheiddn traditionally took similar action; but for
Pheidon it is certain that his activity consisted only of defining measures
of grain and
wine.
Solon's ill-reported steps were probably no more than
minor modifications of measures and perhaps of weights in connexion
with his definition of classes in terms of rural income. Coinage, after
all,
was not yet struck at Athens, or by Pheidon.
14
Solon's reforms did not fully remove the manifold sources of trouble
in sixth-century Athens, which soon experienced the rule of the tyrant
Pisistratus and his sons. Pisistratus supported farmers by extending state
loans
-
perhaps a necessary step once Solon had banned loans secured
by the body of the debtor
-
as well as burdening the rural population
with
a
direct 10 per cent tax on production. More important for the
future tranquillity of
the
Athenian state was his encouragement of civic
patriotism by his religious, political and architectural actions and by the
damping
of
the vehemence
of
aristocratic contentions. Most other
tyrants of early Greece followed very similar policies; though their role
in initiating economic development
is
often overemphasized, their
strengthening
of
the polis structure and their patronage of arts and
letters indirectly encouraged continuing economic growth.
If Athens and the other states
of
Hellas came safely through the
upheavals of the age of expansion, the causes were many. In the rise
14
Kraay, F 19, a study which has been unsuccessfully attacked by H. Cahn and others. E 202.
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ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS
of thepolis the aristocrats were leaders and often were the element which
profited most directly, yet it is apparent that even their political
dominance came under attack by self-assertive kakoi, i.e. middling
farmers who energetically seized opportunities. In the fundamental
concepts of the polis, moreover, all free citizens had rights as well as
duties. Hesiod's Works and Days contains extended arguments, both
practical and ethical, against injustice; later leaders such as Solon of
Athens and Pittacus of Mitylene could appeal to a general public
consciousness; if aristocrats became too self-seeking a polis often
accepted, if only temporarily, a tyrant whose actions were usually
directed first at repressing his fellow aristocrats. Nor is there any reason
to introduce modern concepts of class warfare and picture all aristo-
crats as ruthless exploiters for personal profit. The poets of the period
(Mimnermus, fr. 2; Alcaeus, fr. 360; Solon, frr.
1,
24; et al.) make it clear
that poverty
(penia)
was one of the worst evils which could afflict their
aristocratic audience, and preceding pages have sufficiently illuminated
the desire for gain which attended Greek expansion; yet aristocrats vied
at least as much for honour and cultural eminence as for wealth
(Phocylides, fr. 9; Sappho, fr. 148; Hdt. 1. 30). The economic tensions
of the age were a reflection of growth, not of decline; and the great
enlargement of the Greek world, both overseas and in the local rise of
cities,
also helped to diminish the intensity of conflict.
In the relations of the Greek poleis during these centuries modern
scholars have often sought to discover economic motives. The earliest
known war, the struggle between Chalcis and Eretria over the Lelantine
plain in the late eighth century, has thus been treated as rivalry of two
trade leagues; and colonization has at times been explained as efforts
to secure trading advantages. Very little of this line of argument has
any merit. The colony at Ischia was sited with some eye to Etruscan
metal sources, but most Greek settlements overseas were always
agriculturally based. Their continuing demand for Greek products was
satisfied by private, not public, commercial ventures. Even if Athenian
vases drove Corinthian ware out of overseas markets in the sixth
century, we do not know who the shippers of either type of pottery
were; the occasional trademarks on the foot of Athenian vases are
mainly Ionic.
15
Greek colonies were fundamentally new
poleis,
not
subject areas of the early modern type which had to engage in
subterfuge to escape Spanish or Portuguese trading monopolies.
This does not mean that Greek states were uninterested in commerce
and industry. When Phocaean refugees from Persian rule tried to settle
islands near Chios, the Chians refused to permit it (Hdt.
1.
165),' fearing
15
G 21; G 21 A.
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