the attic stelai - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

198 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
The average price of wheat at Athens in the fourth century B.C. according to
this table was more than 6 drachmas per medimnos. In [Demosthenes], XXXIV,
Against Phormnio, 39, it is expressly stated that the normal Athenian price was five
drachmas.165 For prices elsewhere, the most convenient summary is given by Larsen
from Delian figures.166 " In 282 the average price of wheat for seven months was
6 dr. 5 ob. For 281 and 279 Jarde (173-175) estimates an average price of 9 dr. 5 2
ob. and 8 dr. 3X2 ob. respectively but considers these prices abnormally high. For the
first part of the second century Heichelheim repeatedly lists but questions a price of
10 dr." 167
For Roman prices of wheat there is considerable evidence, which has been summarized
by T. Frank in Economic Survey, I, for various periods.168 Three sesterces
a modius ('A medimnos) was an average price for wheat in peacetime.
If we accept the identification of the phormos with the medimnos, the price of
wheat in 414 B.C. was over twenty per cent higher than what is given in [Demosthenes]
as the normal price. Our figures, moreover, give a slight clue to the cost of living at
Athens. We know that the ration of the Spartan soldier in the field was one fortyeighth
of a medimnos.'69 At our figures this ration would have cost 45 drachmas per
year in a period when a workman earned a drachma per diem and worked 300 days per
annum. This may be regarded as a maximum figure, for the Spartan soldier was given
a very liberal allowance and his servant was given only half as much.170
--5 I.G., I12, 400, speaks of ' the established price.'
166 Roman Greece," Economic Survey, IV, p. 384. Cf. Day, Ec. Hist. of Athens, p. 7.
167
Cf. the table in L. Spaventa de Novellis, op. cit., p. 49.
168 Pp. 49, 77, 97-98, 158-159, 191-192, 283-284, and particularly 402-404.
169 Herodotos, VII, 187; Thucydides, IV, 16; VII, 87. For detailed estimates of the cost of
living in the third century, see the careful tabulations of Larsen, op. cit., pp. 412-414.
170 It may be noted here that two frequently quoted fifth-century prices have not been taken to
refer to wheat. In Plutarch (Solon, 23) the price of grain is given as one drachma in the Solonian
sacrificial valuations. The type of grain is not specified. Several scholars (Jarde, Ce're'ales, pp. 123
and 178; M. N. Tod in Cambridge Ancient History,- V, p. 25) regard it as barley. Secondly,
Plutarch (De tranquillitate animi, 470 F) puts into the mouth of Sokrates the words 3o,8o0v To
upWETov. This would make the medimnos equal two drachmas. But the grain here specified is clearly
alphita.
The evidence of the fifth-century sacred calendar in the Elgin Collection, which has been most
recently published as I.G., 12, 842, is probably not to be connected with grain prices. The right
side of this early Fasti, which exhibits a script with three-bar sigma, reads in part as follows:
e'Hp [qf] v 7rvp65v Uvo xOCVuKE, TpEZs /38Xot'. Prott (Leges graecorum sacrae, I, Leipzig, 1896, p. 6), who
published the text as no. 2 of his Fasti Sacri, stated that the form 03l3eAo6 must refer to a loaf of
bread, and there is ample evidence for the use of the form with this meaning, as it must now be noted
against Prott's objections for its use as a coin. On the other hand, Hicks (Ancient Greek Inscriptions
in the British Museum, I, Oxford, 1874, p. 136), who was the first editor of the text, believed that
the reference was to the price of wheat: "To the two heroes, two choinixes of wheat, (price)
three obols." This would make the medimnos, which contained 48 choinikes, amount to 12 drachmas.
B6ckh has suggested with reference to the prices in a similar sacred calendar that a considerable