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

210 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
of the publications of these two scholars contain numerous references to the ceramic
literature. On the Parthenon frieze, Eros holds a parasol to protect Aphrodite.
III. FURNITURE
Our record of the sale of confiscated furniture seems to show that there was
little sense of personal luxury in Athens in the last quarter of the fifth century, even
among men of wealth. Doubtless the couches, chairs, and tables listed had the same
elegant lines as the furniture pictured on vases and in reliefs, but there is no least
suggestion of the later kind of lavishness which brought Cicero, for instance, to pay
12,000,000 sesterces for a table of rare citrus wood. Greek furniture makers knew
how to make pieces that were costly as well as beautiful, but such elaborate products
were not intended for private use. Stools of ebony, couches inlaid with ivory, chests
of rare woods, tables with golden legs, and others covered with silver, are carefully
listed as such in the temple inventories of Athens, Eleusis and Delos, but the furniture
from the houses of the companions of Alkibiades was for the most part made simply
of wood. A few decades later Lysias, in arguing that Aristophanes had lived modestly,
maintained that the wealth of prominent men was always being overestimated by the
people; Aristophanes, he said, had had to borrow table vessels when he entertained
important guests, and in truth, many of the representatives of the old rich families
could make no show at all in the way of furniture.1 Though they may be exaggerated,
Lysias' remarks reflect a kind of distaste for any exhibit of private wealth, a distaste
which must have been prevalent enough at the close of the Periclean age to influence
even the circle of Alkibiades in its manner of living.2 Indeed, it is possible that these
young men went further than most, and affected certain " Spartan " simplicities.
Even for plain furniture the prices listed in the Attic Stelai are remarkably low.
When the property of Aristophanes was sold, that same household equipment which
had had to be pieced out with loans from friends brought 1000 drachmas; 'presumably
this included the furniture, dishes and utensils (but not the doors, which had been
stolen) of a fairly typical Athenian town house belonging to a man of some prominence.
Yet if we use the furniture prices found in our list and mentally furnish such
a house, it is almost impossible to reach a total expenditure much over 500 drachmas.
Does this really mean that the friends of Alkibiades lived about as rudely as the
Naxian farmer whose furniture, according to a mortgage stone of ca. 300 B.C., secured
500 drachmas of dowry? ' Probably not; rather, the low prices should be considered as
ILysias, XIX, Property of Aristophanes, 30.
2
It is tempting to try to draw some conclusion from a fragment of Eupolis' Poleis, where household
equipment is listed, but there is no knowing whether this catalogue was supposed to apply
to a poor or rich, country or city, house (frag. 228: Kock, C.A.F., I, p. 320).
3 Lysias, XIX, 31.
4I.G., XII, Suppl., 195; see Finley, Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens, New