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

258 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
exceptional feature is that the roasted animals were large and whole.23 This appears
clearly from several passages in Athenaeus. In IV, 144 a, Athenaeus cites Herodotos,
I, 133, where the latter speaks of the poor as setting out small animals, the rich large
animals such as a cow, a horse or a camel. Similarly, Athenaeus IV, 130 e-f. In IV,
148 e, beef ribs are named among the foods served by the stingy, and in several
passages (I, 25 e; II, 63 d-e; III, 96 b), beef is mentioned along with other meats
without exceptional comment. It was doubtless true, as Antiphanes, the comic poet,
once said,24 that the Greeks were leaf-chewing (phyllotroges), and scant of table
(mikrotrape2oi), but in comparison with other meats, beef does not seem to have been
costly. In the Edict of Diocletian, the price of beef per pound is less than those for
pork or lamb and the same as that for goat.25
2. ac'f (VI, 73). Goat. References to the ubiquitous goat are surprisingly few
in an economic context, but it is hard to believe that goats were less common in
ancient than in modern times.26
In the fourth-century sacrificial calendar which was found near Marathon,27 the
price of the goat is given six times as 12 drachmas. In line 18 an all-black he-goat is
valued at 15 drachmas. The price of goats in this inscription is identical with that of
ewes for male divinities. In the inscription concerned with the cult of the Salanminioi
(363/2 B.C.), the price to be paid for a goat is given as 10 drachmas.28 In the wellknown
famine which affected Greece ca. 330 B.C., the price of a goat in an Eleusis
inscription is given as 30 drachmas.29 Economic Survey contains reference to only one
fee for a goat-that at 80 drachmas in A.D. 22 in Egypt.30
The only literary passage which relates to the price of goats is in Isaios, XI,
Estate of Hagnias, 41.31 One hundred head of goats, together with sixty sheep, a fine
horse, and furniture, are estimated at 3000 drachmas (one-half talent). A riding
horse was seriously valued at 1200 drachmas in Aristophanes.32 The furniture would
presumably bring much less. If we allow the same price for the goats and sheep, the
23
Aristophanes, Ach., 85.
24
Kock, C.A.F., II, p. 81.
25 Col. IV.
26 See Larsen, op. cit., p. 485. What I would hope would be the definitive article on the goat
(Ziege) has not yet appeared in R.E.
27 I.G., I12,
1358.
28 W. S. Ferguson, Hesperia, VII, 1938, p. 5, line 85.
29
I.G., I12, 1672, line 289 (329/8 B.C.). Ziehen (Rh. Mus., LI, 1896, p. 215), however, suggests
that these sacrificial victims had horns which were gilded and that the gilding was included in the
price.
30 !I, p. 231. For one other price from Egypt, see Segre, op. cit., p. 132.
31 Cf. the more indefinite passage in Isaios, VI, Estate of Philoktemon, 33.
32 Aristophanes, Nubes, 21; 1224. Cf. Ehrenberg, People of Aristophanes2, p. 223; and Michell,
Ec. of Anc. Greece, p. 66, note 1.