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I have seen estimates for the price of a hoplite panoply in fifth-century Greece in a few places. Are these based upon actual sources, or just a guess? (Especially considering that a full panoply with muscled cuirass, greaves, and Corinthian helm might have cost ten times as much as barely adequate gear of an aspis, bronze cap, spear and knife). Does anyone know where these figures originate?
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Depends what prices have you come across.
About 50 years ago W. Kendrick Pritchett et al, published the following information in Hesperia as part of a series of summaries of Attic stele…
From Keos from around the beginning of the 3rd century – presumably high quality items since they were prizes.
Bow:7 dr
Bow and quiver: 15 dr
Spearhead: 3.5 ob
Spear pole: 2 dr
Shield: 20 dr
(The type of Drachma is not specified…)
From Athens (5th century)
Throwing spear: 2 dr.
Spear w/o butt spike: 1dr 4o.
At the time Pritchett could note also that he knew of no study of arms prices…
Athenian cleruchs sent to Salamis circ 500 BC were required to have arms/amour worth
30 drachmas.
Aristophanes provides the following almost certainly inflated numbers:
Breastplate: 1000 dr.
Trumpet: 60 dr.
Helmet: 50 dr.
Again the numbers are universally seen as excessive but maybe they preserve an accurate ratio???? – but I would hesitate to ascribe much weight to Aristophanes’ numbers…
Paul Klos
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Quote:Depends what prices have you come across.
About 50 years ago W. Kendrick Pritchett et al, published the following information in Hesperia as part of a series of summaries of Attic stele…
From Keos from around the beginning of the 3rd century – presumably high quality items since they were prizes.
Bow:7 dr
Bow and quiver: 15 dr
Spearhead: 3.5 ob
Spear pole: 2 dr
Shield: 20 dr
(The type of Drachma is not specified…)
From Athens (5th century)
Throwing spear: 2 dr.
Spear w/o butt spike: 1dr 4o.
At the time Pritchett could note also that he knew of no study of arms prices…
Athenian cleruchs sent to Salamis circ 500 BC were required to have arms/amour worth
30 drachmas.
Aristophanes provides the following almost certainly inflated numbers:
Breastplate: 1000 dr.
Trumpet: 60 dr.
Helmet: 50 dr.
Again the numbers are universally seen as excessive but maybe they preserve an accurate ratio???? – but I would hesitate to ascribe much weight to Aristophanes’ numbers…
Do you know the number of the volume that had this article? It sounds very interesting.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
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MeinPanzer
‘The Attic Stelai: Part II’ - W. Kendrick Pritchett; Anne Pippin
Hesperia Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul., 1956), pp. 178-328
Some additional thoughts
In “Wages, Welfare Costs and Inflation in Classical Athensâ€
Paul Klos
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I wonder if these numbers could have any correlation to modern cash/exchange rates. For instance, if we could find a source for how much an "essential" like a meal cost, we could extrapolate a little bit into modern times.
Michael D. Hafer [aka Mythos Ruler, aka eX | Vesper]
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A very (very, very…) difficult undertaking indeed.
First the ideal faces all of the difficulties and problems associated with the concept Purchasing Power Parity used today to inflate the GDP of say China. That is what exactly are (or in our case were) the identical goods?
The PPP problem is difficulty even when you have equal access to good statistics; the real 800 lb gorilla is that by in large there are no numbers/data form classical Athens that can serve as the basis for any real (and certainly not a statistically significant samples) solid arguments for prices wages etc.
Take the oft cited figure of 1 dr. a day for a skilled worker in classical Athens…
The problems with this figure are legion – It is more or less based on just public sector wages for just the late 5th century, it totally ignores (mostly) any attempt to justify just who is a skilled worker and the hanging assumption that such a worker is either the norm or was paid more than a laborer… . For example lacking modern medical care, and modern EMS, is it really a safe assumption that a free skilled worker, someone doing a relatively safe job would necessarily earn more than someone doing “unskilledâ€
Paul Klos
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Quote:Depends what prices have you come across.
About 50 years ago W. Kendrick Pritchett et al, published the following information in Hesperia as part of a series of summaries of Attic stele...
Thanks very much for those figures. I'll look up the article.
Quote:I wonder if these numbers could have any correlation to modern cash/exchange rates. For instance, if we could find a source for how much an "essential" like a meal cost, we could extrapolate a little bit into modern times.
Well, the best method in general is to work in terms of grain or days' labour. The idea for the later is that a working adult has minimum needs for food and shelter, and in a healthy society the wage of unskilled labour will not fall below this. Wages are far from perfect, since they can vary due to social factors, and grain prices fluctuate heavily from month to month, but either method can give you a rough idea. See my thread "some thoughts on prices in Mesopotamia and Greece" (Ancient Civilizations sub-forum of RAT).
You also have to remember that what that money gets you is very different from today. Labour is cheap, goods are often expensive, and a lot of things just aren't available. But, with enough different types of data, you can see whether different societies were comparatively rich or poor and in what areas.
Quote:So if the Athenian cleruchs sent to Salamis were/or (better) maybe can be presumed to have been hoplites than a little under half of the 30 dr. number could have been absorbed by just a spear and aspis. Given Xenophon’s testimony that mercenary hoplites did not necessarily have/need a bronze or composite breastplate – one is still left with the fact that in the 5th century 17 or so dr. would seem to pay for a sufficient amount of helmet, greaves, cuirass (at minimum perhaps only a hide/leather spolas …) and sword such that with a proper shield and spear one was seen as a hoplite.
30 drachmas seems much too low if it includes armour. Full metal armour tends to be worth hundreds of worker-days, judging from my readings in medieval history. I would say that either cleruchs could be armed as peltasts/psiloi, or cleruch hoplites could be very minimally equipped.
Paul, so far I have seen no reason to doubt that the price of general labour in fifth-century Athens was between 2 and 6 obols per day. Allowances for military service or jury duty, and our few sources on other wages, seem to paint a fairly consistent picture (although I agree we don't know nearly so much about the economy of the rest of Greece). I also agree that 'unskilled' often means 'unprestigious' or 'easy to replace' (as witness the fact that farm hands tend to be considered unskilled even when they do work that requires knowledge of farming etc.). Your point that most of our figures come from the public sector is interesting, but we don't know how and if that affected things, especially since ancient government was very small by modern standards.
The price for skilled labour seems to have started at a drachma a day and gone up from there. Flute players were (or could be) skilled, and might not get hired every night, in which case they or their owners would need to charge more on the nights they were hired. The 13,000 Greek mercenaries to whom Xenophon attached himself hired out for five obols per day, for a mission where they could not expect much loot and would have to pay for their food and drink. There is the fact that hoplites needed land worth several drachmas a day at 'average' wheat prices in Athens, however.
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Quote: 30 drachmas seems much too low if it includes armour. Full metal armour tends to be worth hundreds of worker-days, judging from my readings in medieval history. I would say that either cleruchs could be armed as peltasts/psiloi, or cleruch hoplites could be very minimally equipped.
Actually that figure was from one of my note books and I was not too keen on the low number myself either. I didn’t note my source and it’s taken me a bit longer than I though to dig it up.
The sources is the item is A.H. Jackson’s “Hoplites and the Godsâ€
Paul Klos
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One question silver drachma or golden drachma?
Herodotus says that 8 silver drachmas were given for a man and his servant before Salamis and that was the reason that the ships were full.
Guess the man with the servant was a hoplite(?)
I am under the impression that greater difficulty was finding skills and time when armor is concerned, not money per se.
We have reconstructed Ariston of the Philaidae clan from pottery fragments in the British Museum and Athens Museum and he wears purple coloured armor(!!!!) but I gues he was the exception not the norm.
Image in the Greek Artwork thread.
Just my two pennies worth.
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30 dr. for a hoplite panoply or even a breastplate is hard to believe if the ratio ~ 1 dr. a day for a worker would be roughly acceptable. 1 dr. a day comes from classical Athen in the time of Perikles (?), so perhaps there had been a substantial inflation?
300 dr. sounds better, it would have been nearly the income of a year.
Wolfgang Zeiler
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Stefanos, were there silver drachmas? I thought that the only gold coinage in the fifth-century Aegean were the Great King's Archers (gold daric staters worth about 25-26 Attic drachmas). I think Philip started coining in gold once he took the mines around Amphipolis.
Conon394, I suppose that 15-20 drachmas might have been enough for a cheap helmet or a linothorax. I agree that that 30 drachma figure is puzzling. I'll have a look at those articles you have cited.
My impression is that making bronze plate armour was a very skilled, laborious task. See
this thread, where I talked to bronzesmith Jeroen Zuiderwick.
The range I have seen thrown around in a few places is 100-300 drachmas for full hoplite arms. It is good to see that the upper end of that range, at least, is based on sources. (Given that the figures on the weight of hoplite arms which you usually see around are mostly guesses and not borne out by the weight of replicas).
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First the Aeginitans who controled the Sifnos silvermines minted silver drachma. Aeginitan coin was the dollar of Mediteranean until the Persian Wars.
Athenians minted silver drachmas from the Laurion silver mines. Themistokles first persuaded them to spent them on the fleet.
Just before Persian overrun Athens the government gave according to Herodotus 8 drachmas to every man and his servant.
For the record:
Drachma(doric) Drachmi(ionic) derivative from the verb DRATOMAI which means I have in my hand or I take with my hand.
That is why I ask what type of drachma. I should have asked silver or bronze. Gold coinage appeared from the time of the Persian ascendancy in Greece. It is questionable if Italiotic Greeks had golden Drachmas at the time.
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