The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy by Alain Bresson

Author:Alain Bresson [Alain Bresson]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Thus these merchants are so eager for grain that when they learn that there is a great deal of it somewhere, they hasten to the spot, crossing the Aegean, the Black Sea, and the Sicilian Sea. Then, after having loaded as much of it as they can on their ships, they board the same vessels themselves and cross the sea. And when they need money, they do not unload the grain just anywhere, but take it and deliver it where they have learned that the price of grain is highest and where people want it most.

Whether they are buying or selling, information is what leads people to move about. In this case, economic information is also a good that one might keep to oneself. This was true of the network of informers that Kleomenes of Naukratis put together. In 332 BCE, Alexander named him governor of Egypt, a province rich in grain. In the early 320s, he set up a network of informers in the Aegean that allowed him to send grain where it would bring the highest prices.⁶⁴ In his treatise On Duties (De officiis 3.12 [50–53] and 15 [63]), using an example that he had certainly borrowed from his Rhodian teachers (themselves probably inspired by the lessons of the Rhodian philosopher Panaitios), Cicero mentioned what might be called the merchant’s dilemma: a merchant is bringing wheat from Alexandria to Rhodes at a time when in this city the price of wheat is very high because of a shortage; along the way, he meets other ships loaded with wheat that are headed for Rhodes; being the first to arrive in Rhodes, will he tell the Rhodians about these other ships, or will he keep quiet and sell his wheat as dearly as he can?⁶⁵ Cicero reports the Stoic masters’ divergent opinions: Diogenes of Babylon thought that the merchant had only to abide by the law and that in this case it was not illegitimate to take the profit available to him, whereas his disciple Antipater considered it immoral not to reveal the information. After a long discussion, Cicero finished by citing another Stoic philosopher, Hekaton of Rhodes, who pointed out that getting rich was in itself useful to one’s family and one’s city, and implicitly concluded that in the end, there was no obligation to reveal the information.

Hieron (“Sacred Place,” “Sanctuary”), located on the Asiatic coast at the entrance to the Black Sea north of Byzantion, was the place where merchant ships gathered before entering or leaving.⁶⁶ That is what Menippus of Pergamon, an author of the first century CE, says explicitly, identifying this sanctuary as dedicated to Apollo Ourios and adding:⁶⁷ “This fort is the point of departure for navigators who are heading for Pontos.” The place appears as a point of reference in navigational itineraries, as in Pseudo-Skylax (67.8 and 92.1), and also in contracts like that of the Demosthenic speech Against Lacritus (35.10). The proof of this is that it was there that Philip II was able to take by surprise a fleet loaded with grain that was being sent to Athens.

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