Some thoughts on wealth in Classical Greece and Mesopotamia

[Sean Manning]

Economists at least back to Adam Smith have suggested that silver (for short-term price fluctuations) and grain (for long-term prices and standard of living) are the crucial commodities for understanding a civilized premodern economy. What happens when we compare fifth-to-sixth-century prices in Greece and Mesopotamia?

The wage for ordinary labour in ancient Mesopotamia in Classical times seem to have been 1-2 shekels of silver per month, and the wage of one shekel per month was traditional for thousands of years. A shekel weighed about 8.3 grams. On the other hand, skilled workers in fifth-century Athens got about a drachma a day, and hoplites had to have land worth rather more per day in an average year had they sold all their produce. Cyrus’ Greek mercenaries, and at least one architect in Athens, were paid about that rate. An Attic drachma weighed 4.3 grams, so a drachma a day is about 129 grams of silver per month. Even if we assume that the two obols (1/3 drachma) per day paid to jurymen as a subsistence wage is closer to the price of general labour, we get 43 grams of silver a month, compared to an upper limit of 16.6 grams of silver a month for unskilled labour in Mesopotamia. That is a difference of a factor of at least 2.5 and probable several times greater!

In Greece 460-400, a medimos of wheat (about 52.2 L) cost about 3 drachmas (13 grams). A drachma a day would buy 17.4 L at average prices. In Mesopotamia, 1 shekel traditionally bought 1 kor/gur (180 L) of less attractive barley, although in practice less. Two shekels a month would buy up to 12 L of barley a day. A gram of silver thus bought 4 L of wheat in fifth-century Greece, and 21.7 L of barley in ancient Mesopotamia. In fourth-century Mesopotamia barley was about 60 L a shekel, or 7.2 L per gram of silver, but silver was worth less then in Greece too. This suggests two things: silver was worth much less in Greece than Mesopotamia, and that the Mesopotamian masses were somewhat poorer than their Greek counterparts in terms of food.

Summary:
Mesopotamian wages: 1-2 shekels per month = 8.3-16.6 g Ag per month
Greek wages: 2-6 obols per day = 43-129 g Ag per month
Cost of wheat in 5th century Greece: 1/3 medimos (52.2/3 L) of wheat per drachma = 4.0 L wheat per g Ag
Cost of barley in 7th-5th century Mesopotamia: 1-3 shekels per kor of barley = 7.2-21.7 L barley per g Ag.

1 Babylonian kor = 180 L
1 medimos = 52.2 L
1 Attic drachma = 6 obols = 4.3 g (or a silver coin of that weight)
1 Babylonian shekel = 8.3 g (or fairly pure silver of that weight)

So Greek wages for general labour were 172-512 L wheat per month, and Mesopotamian wages for general labour were 60-360 L barley per month.

So ordinary Greeks may have been more than three times richer than ordinary Mesopotamians, since wheat was considered better food and harder to grow than barley.

A shekel of silver per month was a long-standing traditional wage in Babylonia, so one can’t invoke the old theory that Achaemenid tax-hoarding drove up the value of previous metals by taking them out of circulation. Moreover, the best summary I have seen suggests that prices initially rose then remained fairly stable under the Achaemenids. Babylonian currency was debased about 1/8 at the time, but I recall Attic coins were even purer. Thus purity of metal probably wasn’t a factor.

Thoughts? Was there nothing Mesopotamia could export westwards on a large scale in exchange for Mediteranean silver (a trading cycle which would have tended to bring the value of silver in both places closer together)? The Greeks always considered themselves to be a poor people, but this suggests that they may have been misled by their poor farmland and the glittering palaces of eastern rulers.

Sources: Aside from my general reading in Greek and Mesopotamian history,
Wages in Ancient Athens and Weights and Capacity and the really neat Commodity Prices in Ancient Babylonia. Already posted on the Bronze Age Center.

[Sean Manning]

Well, this seems to have dropped surprisingly flat on both fora I've tried it on. I really think this is a rather interesting topic, even for those who aren't (like me) trying to work up an economic model for a RPG setting.

[Jona Lendering]

No, it hasn't. The articles you've quoted are written by my friend Bert van der Spek, who has picked it up. He is currently organizing a research project on ancient price levels, and thought your remarks are quite interesting. The objection against your conclusion is, of course, that Herodotus says that Mesopotamia is incredibly rich compared to Greece. But he was never in Babylonia, so we do not know how important that objection really is.

[Sean Manning]

No, it hasn't. The articles you've quoted are written by my friend Bert van der Spek, who has picked it up. He is currently organizing a research project on ancient price levels, and thought your remarks are quite interesting. The objection against your conclusion is, of course, that Herodotus says that Mesopotamia is incredibly rich compared to Greece. But he was never in Babylonia, so we do not know how important that objection really is.

Thanks, then. I'm honoured.

If the figures I am using are accurate, the one possibility that I have been mulling over is this: perhaps Babylonia was overpopulated (relative to the work there was to do, at any rate)? Herodotus talks about the huge yields of the crops, the scale of the cities and their great buildings, and the wealth available to the rulers, but all those reflect total wealth not wealth per capita. A Greek looking at early modern China, say, might have been amazed by the density of population and the fertility of the rice paddies, without realizing that the masses were becoming impoverished because crop yields per capita were falling. Dr. van der Spek’s figures suggest prices fell under the Seleucids (although IIRC we really don’t know how and if wages changed) so I suppose scholars will have to wrestle with finding an explanation for that too. I’ll be eager to see what they come up with.

[Jona Lendering]

I’ll be eager to see what they come up with.

Yes, so am I; one of the very first conclusions was that peasants in Mesopotamia were poorer than in Egypt, but that's about it for the moment.

[Sean Manning]

Can you suggest a good guide in English to prices and wages/allowances in Late Bronze Age Egypt? I've found some things on Mesopotamia, and some on Ugarit, but as I haven't been trained in this area I'm having to research somewhat blind.

[Carlton Bach]

The objection against your conclusion is, of course, that Herodotus says that Mesopotamia is incredibly rich compared to Greece. But he was never in Babylonia, so we do not know how important that objection really is.

There is an interesting similarity here to the situation in the medieval Mediterranean. I'm doing a bit pof reading on the Kingdom of Sicily right now, and most sources from the time insist that it is incomparably richer than their homelands (these being Northern Spain, Germnany, France, England and Northern Italy). At the same time it is quite hard to see where that wealth would have come from other than a very labour-intensive agricultural sector. What we may be seeing in bopth cases is the difference between - in modern terms - different Gini coefficients. Sicily probabnly concentrated its wealth more and thus made more of it available for conspicuous consumption - so rich, even modestly rich, meant richer than elsewhere, but poor meant poorer.

Or this might just reflect precious metal inflation over time ('Classical' Mesopotamia is the second millennium BC, or are we talking Neo-Assyrian/Neo-Babylonian and after?) and different food habits. Does Mesopotamian culture have a bias against barley and in favour of wheat? Bottero refers to barley as the principal grain in Mesopotamian cuisine, so there may well simply have been no comparable supply of wheat in the market.

Don't we have a resident expert on post-Persian Mesopotamia here?

[Eleatic Guest]

Don't we have a resident expert on post-Persian Mesopotamia here?

Just my 5 cents...

I have always wondered why Mesopotamia pretty much dropped from the limelight of history after Alexander's death at the latest. Only two 250 years before, at the time of the Persian invasion, it had been still at the forefront of civilisations.

The only 'invention' which came from Mesopotamia then was the use of zero as a placeholder in the numeral (like 1024, as opposed to 1240), and the only reknowned scholar I know was Seleukos of Seleucia who supported Aristarchus' heliocentric system.

It was really between 550 and 350 BC that the older civilizations off Mesopotamia and Egypt had been superseded by the young(er) guns Greece, India and China. Therefore, I think Herodot may have described an economical situation in Mesopotamia which was in the process of changing - to the worse.

[L C Cinna]

Yes and a situation in Greece before it changed to the worse. With the constant wars after Alexander everything went down the drain. I just wonder why it didn#t recover under Roman rule? maybe because the most important centres for trade were now in Asia minor and Syria.

Does anyone have any info on Greece in the later period? Herrmann shortly mentions that Greece was one of the "worst and poorest" provinces in the 1st century CE and that it actually didn't matter that Nero declared that Greece doesn't have to pay taxes anymore as the province didn't bring any money for the state anyway and it was just a statement to please the people but without real consequences for the state.

[Sean Manning]

From what I have read on the Hellenistic period (especially Graham Shipley's The Greek World After Alexander), there is good reason to doubt that Greece was ruined after Alexander or the Roman conquest. As usual for the Hellenistic period, there isn't really enough data to confidently generalize, other than to say that the rich were getting richer or less public-minded and in some places land was becoming concentrated in a few hands. But I'm no economic historian, just a tired student in exam season.

Volker, most of my discussion above is of the sixth and fifth centuries, although the Babylonian figures are probably in the right ballpark for earlier Iron Age centuries.

[Jona Lendering]

Can you suggest a good guide in English to prices and wages/allowances in Late Bronze Age Egypt?

No, Egypt is my "black hole": I know next to nothing about it.

Don't we have a resident expert on post-Persian Mesopotamia here?

Well, I know something about it, but my friend Bert van der Spek knows a lot more. I can forward questions, but see the publications mentioned in the initial posting.

I have always wondered why Mesopotamia pretty much dropped from the limelight of history after Alexander's death

That tells a lot about historians. They believe that Greek sources cover everything that is important, and simply ignore it. The Hellenistic volume of the Routledge History of the Ancient World starts with a remark that the author knows nothing about the East; and the author of the Ancient Near East volumes (Amelie Kuhrt) writes that she was supposed not to proceed beyond Alexander. If I were Mr. Routledge, I would have put a second scholar on the Hellenism book, and if I were the main author, I would have asked for a co-writer. But no one seems to have bothered about it.

Please note that assyriologists have something to explain too. There are 120,000 tablets in the "Arched Room" of the British Museum; about one sixth has been published. Now what did they select? The biblical references of course: the age of Nebuchadnezzar. Plus the oldest parts (Hammurabi). The remainder has, quite simply, been ignored for the past century.

From what I have read on the Hellenistic period (especially Graham Shipley's The Greek World After Alexander), there is good reason to doubt that Greece was ruined after Alexander or the Roman conquest.

An idea that has been challenged, but has (in my view decisively) been vindicated by Brian Bosworth (The Legacy of Alexander, 2002, pp.64-97).

[Sean Manning]

That tells a lot about historians. They believe that Greek sources cover everything that is important, and simply ignore it. The Hellenistic volume of the Routledge History of the Ancient World starts with a remark that the author knows nothing about the East; and the author of the Ancient Near East volumes (Amelie Kuhrt) writes that she was supposed not to proceed beyond Alexander. If I were Mr. Routledge, I would have put a second scholar on the Hellenism book, and if I were the main author, I would have asked for a co-writer. But no one seems to have bothered about it.

Please note that assyriologists have something to explain too. There are 120,000 tablets in the "Arched Room" of the British Museum; about one sixth has been published. Now what did they select? The biblical references of course: the age of Nebuchadnezzar. Plus the oldest parts (Hammurabi). The remainder has, quite simply, been ignored for the past century.

The funny thing there is that historians seem to use documents in Egyptian scripts well for the Hellenistic period. (Although Greek papyri are still favoured).

How many of those 100,000 unpublished tablets are legible, though?

As someone just starting to study the ancient Near East, I have noticed the odd habit of so many Bible references popping up in titles of modern collections of sources myself. As an atheist, I’ve never quite understood why the fact that the authors of the Hebrew Bible were writing during a period makes it more interesting than other periods.

To be fair, the surviving Greek sources are a marvelous resource which provide many things which the cuneiform sources never did. But some types of ordinary records only survive where they were written in cuneiform, like those wondrous price records. And I agree that even for periods where we have good foreign narratives of Babylonian history we should interpret them in light of as many cuneiform sources as we can find, due to Greek prejudice against and ignorance of non-Greeks.

I’ll look at Bosworth. Shipley impressed me as learned but cautious, and I felt that The Greek World After Alexander makes a so-so textbook because it spends so much space warning against the misleading emphasis of earlier writers rather than arguing its own views.

(By the way, I should have a detailed critique of your re-interpretation of Gaugamela available in a week or so, Jona).

Does Mesopotamian culture have a bias against barley and in favour of wheat? Bottero refers to barley as the principal grain in Mesopotamian cuisine, so there may well simply have been no comparable supply of wheat in the market.

Regarding barley in Mesopotamia, I understand it could resist the increasingly saline soil better than wheat. As irrigation water evaporates, it leaves its load of salts in the soil, and as these build up over centuries land can become increasingly infertile. I hear this problem has started to affect California in modern times.

[Jona Lendering]

How many of those 100,000 unpublished tablets are legible, though?

Most of them, as far as I know. It is just like the Scrolls of the Dead Sea: too much has been found to publish in time. The difference is, of course, that the Scrolls were kept under embargo, whereas the Arched Room is accessible for all of us (although it helps if you can actually read cuneiform).

As someone just starting to study the ancient Near East, I have noticed the odd habit of so many Bible references popping up in titles of modern collections of sources myself. As an atheist, I’ve never quite understood why the fact that the authors of the Hebrew Bible were writing during a period makes it more interesting than other periods.

Atheists are the minority, and I guess that its relevance to the Bible is probably the best way to raise funds for the study of the Ancient Near East.

(By the way, I should have a detailed critique of your re-interpretation of Gaugamela available in a week or so, Jona).

That would be nice. Don't hurry, I am overoccupied these days.

[Sean Manning]

Pardon me, Jona, but I have looked at The Legacy of Alexander pp. 64-97 (although I will need longer to read it in detail) and I don't see what is relevant to the alleged economic decline of Greece after Alexander. Bosworth discusses Macedonian manpowder c. 340-300 BC, but not Greek manpower over a longer period. I quite agree with the theory that Macedon was weakened by fighting so many great wars, and sending out so many men who never returned. Philip had begun to build up the population and territorial base of Macedon by expansion into Thrace, but his successors were probably too busy to follow up. Were you thinking of another work?

[Jona Lendering]

No, I am the one who must say "pardon me". :oops: I must have mixed up Greece and Macedon. Sorry...