General Information and Sites on Public and Private Life

Who are the Athenians? who are the Greeks. Note the difference between "The Greeks believed..." and "Some Greeks believed..."

Consider the evidence of this map

Maps and images from "on high"

Countryside

Public Life

• Private Life in General. [may have to enter '/sites/greek_world/index.html' manually.
• Marriage and family;
• Houses:
  1. wealthy household; exterior (reconstructed); house on Delos (plan); at Mallia
  2. lower end housing complex at Athens; at Olynthus
  3. oxenbarn.

Economy

• What the sources tells us...On the whole, Athenians including middle class citizens, tended to own some land in rural Attica, but to also have a profession in the city. Many were engaged in commerce, manufacturing and international trade. In this respect the citizens of Athens were different from Spartans and Thebans, and other Greeks. The Athenian drachma [Athens was blessed with a vein of high grade silver at Laurion] was widely used as the dollar is today.
  • Plato and Thucydides (this historian) were gentlemen / farmers; independently wealthy. They owned lands in Athens and elsewhere in Greece. Socrates was a stone mason / scultuptor. Demosthenes' family owned a factory that employed 300 (slaves??) and made body armour. One leading politician was a tanner, another a sausage maker by profession.
  • Many Athenians and resident aliens [''metics''] were engaged in import / export businesses; in banking, insurance as well as ship building. These individuals had extensive contact throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
  • In general, middle class Athenians
• Work in "factory"; a blacksmith; copper market ; tannery
• transportation ; a cargo ship ; banking /money changing, retain trade in the Plaka
• food1; olives; harvest of olives; grapes for wine; meat and a butcher; catching fish; seafood; shepherd.
• women's work...spinning; midwife

Discussion of passages in Thorton's Introduction