[460-410 B.C.]
Everywhere in the ancient world, but in a higher or less degree in different countries, the necessaries of life upon the whole were cheaper than they are at the present day. But with regard to particular articles, examples enough of the contrary are found. The main causes of this comparative cheapness were the less amount of money in circulation, the uncommon fruitfulness of the southern countries which the Greeks inhabited, or with which they traded; countries which at that time were cultivated with an extraordinary degree of care, but are at present neglected; and the impossibility of exportation to the distant regions which had no intercourse, or but little, with the countries lying on the Mediterranean Sea. The last is especially the reason of the great cheapness of wine. The large quantities of the same which were produced in all southern regions, were not distributed over so considerable an extent of the earth as at present. Nevertheless in considering the prices of commodities in ancient times the difference of times and places must be well weighed. In Rome and Athens wine was not, in the most flourishing condition of the state, as cheap as it was in Upper Italy and in Lusitania. In Upper Italy, the Sicilian medimnus of wheat, which was equal to the Attic medimnus, and considerably less than the Prussian bushel (or than 1½ English bushels), was worth, even in the times of Polybius, according to the account of that historian, only four oboli. This price seems to rest upon an inaccurate comparison of the Roman with the Greek coin, and particularly upon the supposition that the modius, one-sixth of the medimnus, was worth two asses, the medimnus, therefore, worth twelve asses; which, estimating the denarius to be equivalent to the drachma, would be equal to 4½ oboli. To this last amount four ancient oboli of the standard of Solon (11.4 cents) may certainly be estimated as equivalent. The medimnus of barley was worth the half of this price, the metretes of wine (about ten English gallons), was worth as much as the medimnus of barley.
In the time of Solon, indeed, an ox was worth only five drachmæ, a sheep one drachma, and the medimnus of grain the same. But gradually the prices increased five fold; of several articles seven, ten and twenty fold. After the examples of modern times this will not appear strange. The amount of ready money was not only increased, but by the increase of population, and of intercourse, its circulation was accelerated: so that already in the age of Socrates, Athens was considered an expensive place of residence.
The cheapness of commodities, in ancient times, has generally been exaggerated by some, who supposed the assumption, that prices were on an average ten times lower than in the eighteenth century, to come the nearest to the truth. The prices of grain, according to which the prices of many other articles must be regulated, show the contrary. It is difficult to designate average prices, however; since so few, and those only very casual accounts, are extant. Letronne designates the value of the medimnus of grain at two and a half drachmæ as the average price in Greece, in particular at the city of Athens, about the year 400 B.C.; and in accordance with this, he assumes the value of grain, compared with that of silver, to have been in the relation of 1 to 3146; the same at Rome, fifty years before the Christian era, to have been in the relation of 1 to 2681, in France, before the year 1520 in the relation of 1 to 4320, and in the nineteenth century in the relation of 1 to 1050. This estimation, according to which the present prices of grain are three times as high as they were during the period of the most flourishing condition of Greece, appears the most probable.
The most temperate man needed daily, at least, an obolus for his food, one-fourth of an obolus for a chœnix of grain, according to the price of barley in the time of Socrates; together, annually, reckoning the year at 360 days, 75 drachmæ; for clothes and shoes at least 15 drachmæ. A family, therefore, of four adult persons must have needed at least 360 drachmæ (£12 or $60) for these necessaries of life. The sum requisite, however, in the time of Demosthenes, must have been 22½ drachmæ higher for each person; for 4 persons, therefore, 90 drachmæ (£3 or $15) higher. To this must be added the cost of a habitation, the value of which, estimated at least at 3 minæ, would involve, according to the common rate of interest (12 per cent.), an annual expense of 36 drachmæ (£1 or $5). So that the poorest family of 4 adult free persons, if they did not wish to live upon bread and water, needed upon an average about £17 or $85 annually.
Socrates did not have, as was falsely reported, two wives at the same time, but one after the other; Myrto, who was poor when he married her, and who probably had no dowry, and Xanthippe. He also had three children. Of these, Lamprocles was already adult at the death of his father, but Sophroniscus and Menexenus were minors. He prosecuted no manual art after he had sacrificed the employment of his youth to the never-resting effort to acquire wisdom. His teaching procured him no income. According to Xenophon he lived upon his property, which, if it should have found a good purchaser (ὡνητὴς), the house included, might easily have brought, altogether, five minæ; and he needed only a small addition from his friends. From this it has been inferred, that living was extraordinarily cheap at Athens. It is evident, however, that Socrates with his family could not live upon the interest of so small an amount of property. For, however poor the house may have been, its value can scarcely be estimated at less than three minæ. So that, without taking the furniture into consideration, the remainder of his property from which interest could be derived, could have amounted to but two minæ, and the income from it, according to the common rate of interest, to only twenty-four drachmæ. With this sum he could not have procured even the amount of barley which was requisite for himself and his wife, to say nothing of the other necessaries of life, and of the support of his children.
The history of the ancient sages is so entangled and garnished with traditions, and the circumstances of their lives are so differently represented even by contemporary writers, that we can seldom find firm ground on which to stand. Thus, according to the defence of Socrates composed by Plato, the former is represented to have affirmed that he could pay for his liberation only about a mina of silver; and Eubulides says the same. According to others, he estimated the amount which he should pay at twenty-five drachmæ, and in the defence ascribed to Xenophon he is represented as neither having himself estimated any amount, nor having allowed his friends to do so. Thus the well-informed Demetrius of Phalerum affirmed, in opposition to Xenophon, that Socrates had, beside his house, seventy minæ at interest in the possession of Crito. And Libanius informs us that he had lost eighty minæ, which he had inherited from his father, by the insolvency of a friend, in whose hands he had placed it, and who certainly cannot have been, as Schneider supposed, the wealthy Crito.
But assuming that Xenophon’s account is perfectly correct, we must suppose that the mother of the young boys supported herself and both the children, either by labour or from her dowry, and that Lamprocles supported himself, and that the famed economy of Socrates probably consisted, among other things, in this also, that he kept them at work. And then, again, suppose that he always lived upon his twenty-four drachmæ, with a small additional sum from his friends, yet no one could live as he did. It is true, that he is said to have frequently offered sacrifices at home, and upon the public altars. But they were doubtless only baked dough, shaped into the forms of animals, after the manner of the poor; properly bread, therefore, a great part of which was at the same time eaten, and to which his family also contributed. He lived in the strictest sense upon bread and water, except when invited to entertainments at the tables of others, and could therefore be particularly glad, as he is said to have been, on account of the cheapness of barley, when four chœnices sold for an obolus. He wore no undergarment; even his outside garment was poor, and the same one was worn both summer and winter. He generally went barefooted, and his dress-sandals, which he occasionally wore, may have lasted him his life-time. His walk for pleasure and exercise before his house served him instead of a relish for his meal. In short, no slave was so poorly maintained as was Socrates. The drachma [about 8½d. or 17 cents] which he gave Prodicus was certainly the largest sum ever spent by him at one time. And it may boldly be affirmed, without wishing to disparage his exalted genius, that, in respect to his indigence, and a certain cynicism in his character, the representation of Aristophanes was not much exaggerated, but in the essential particulars was delineated from the life.
If in the time of Socrates four persons lived upon £17 or $85 a year, they must have been satisfied with but a scanty allowance. He who wished to live respectably, needed even then, and still more in the time of Demosthenes, a sum considerably larger. According to the speech against Phænippus, there were left to the complainant and his brother by their father, forty-five minæ to each, on which, it is said, one could not easily live, namely, upon the interest of it, which amounted, according to the common rate of interest, to 540 drachmæ (£19 or $95).
Mantitheus in Demosthenes asserts that he could have been maintained and educated upon the interest of his mother’s dowry, which amounted to a talent; consequently, according to the usual rate of interest, upon 720 drachmæ (£25 or $125), annually. For the maintenance of the young Demosthenes himself, his sister still younger, and his mother, seven minæ (£24 or $120) were annually paid, without reckoning anything for their habitation, since they dwelt in their own house. The cost of the education of Demosthenes was not included in this sum. For that the guardians remained in debt. Lysias refers, in one of his speeches, to the knavish account of the guardian of the children of Diodotus. He had, for example, charged for clothing, shoes, and hair-cutting over a talent for a period of less than eight years, and for sacrifices and festivals more than four thousand drachmæ, and he ultimately would pay a balance of only two minæ of silver, and thirty Cyzicene staters, whereby his wards had become impoverished. Lysias remarks, that if he had charged more than any one in the city had ever done before for two boys, and their sister, a pedagogue, and a female servant, his account could not have amounted to more than a thousand drachmæ (£35 or $175) annually. This would be not much less than three drachmæ daily, and must certainly appear to have been too much in the time of that orator for three children and two attendants.