In the time of Solon one must certainly have been able to travel quite a distance with an obolus, since that lawgiver forbid that a woman should take with her upon a march, or a journey, a larger quantity of meat and drink than could be purchased for that sum, and a basket of larger dimensions than an ell in length. On the contrary, when the citizens of Trœzen, according to Plutarch, resolved to give to each of the old men, women, and children who fled from Athens upon the approach of Xerxes, two oboli daily, it appears to be a large sum for the purpose. In the most flourishing period of the state, however, even a single person could maintain himself but indifferently on two or three oboli a day. Notwithstanding all this, the cheapness and facility of living still remained very great. In accordance with the noble reverence of the Greeks for the dead, the death of a man, his interment, and monument, often occasioned more expense than many years of his life, since private persons appropriated three, ten, fifty, and even 120 minæ, to that purpose.
The value of the property of the Athenian people, excluding the property of the state, and the mines, was according to a probable computation, at thirty thousand to forty thousand talents. Of these if only twenty thousand talents be considered productive property, every one of the twenty thousand citizens would have had, if the property had been equally divided, the interest of a talent, or, according to the common rate of interest, 720 drachmæ as an annual income. On this, with the addition of the profit from their labour, they might all have lived in a respectable manner. They would in that case have realised what the ancient sages and statesmen considered the highest prosperity of a state. But a considerable number of the citizens were poor. Others possessed a large amount of property, on which they could fare luxuriously on account of the cheapness of living, and the high rate of interest, and yet at the same time could increase their means, because property augmented exceedingly fast.
This inequality corrupted the state, and the manners of the people. Its most natural consequence was the submissiveness of the poor towards the rich, although they believed that their rights were equal. The rich followed the practice, afterwards so notorious and decried at Rome, of suing for the favour of the people, sometimes in a nobler, sometimes in a baser manner.
In proportion to the cheapness of the necessaries of life, the wages of labour must have been less in ancient times than at present. And all the multitude of those who sought labour as the means of subsistence must have diminished its price, since competition everywhere produces this result. In this number, beside the thetes and aliens under the protection of the state, a great part of the slaves are to be included; so that the families of slaves belonging to the rich, lessened the profit of the poorer class of citizens. The Phocians, by whom the keeping of slaves is said to have been in the earlier periods of their state prohibited, not unjustly reproached Mnason, who possessed a thousand slaves and more, for depriving an equal number of poor citizens of the means of subsistence. After the Peloponnesian War even citizens who had been accustomed to a higher standing were compelled to support themselves, whatever it might have cost them to submit to it, as day labourers, or in some other way, by the labour of their hands. For they had lost their landed property in foreign states, and on account of the want of money, and the decrease of the population, rents had depreciated, and loans were not to be had.
Dress of a Greek Labourer
(After Hope)
Nevertheless, we do not find that daily wages were excessively low. Lucian represents the daily wages of an agricultural labourer or gardener, on a remote estate lying near the frontiers of Attica, to have been, in the time of Timon, four oboli (5¾d. or 11.4 cents). The wages of a porter are the same in Aristophanes, and of a common labourer, who carried dirt, they were three oboli. When Ptolemy sent to the Rhodians one hundred house builders, together with 350 labourers, in order to restore the buildings destroyed by an earthquake, he gave them fourteen talents annually for their food, three oboli a day for each man. We know not, however, by what standard the money was estimated. This was, if they were slaves, for other aliment beside grain; if they were free men, it was only a part of their wages, since a man needs something else besides his food. In 408 B.C., a sawyer (πρίστης) who sawed for a public building, received a drachma a day. A carpenter, who worked on the same building, received five oboli a day. We find that in the time of Pericles, as it seems, a drachma, as daily wages, was given to each of a number of persons working by the day. It is not at all probable that they were artisans, but only common labourers.
Persons in higher stations, or those who laboured with the pen, were, according to genuine democratic principles, not better paid. The architect of the temple of Minerva Polias received no more than a stone sawyer, or common labourer engaged upon the building, namely, a drachma (8½d. or 17 cents) daily. The undersecretary (ὑπογραμματεὺς) of the superintendents of the public buildings received daily five oboli (7¼d. or 14.25 cents). For particular services, in which a certain deference is manifested by the labourer to the person served, a high price was paid in Athens, as is the case in all large cities. When Bacchus in the Frogs of Aristophanes wishes to have his bundle carried by a porter, the latter demands two drachmæ. When the god offers the ghost nine oboli, he replies that before he will do so, he must become alive again. If this conversation in the realm of departed spirits is not a scene from real life, it has no point. A living porter at Athens was probably just as shameless in his demands, and if less were offered, he might have said: “I must die before I do it.”