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LET'S WORK TOGETHER! ECONOMIC COOPERATION, SOCIAL CAPITAL, AND CHANCES OF SOCIAL MOBILITY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2014

Marloes Deene
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In the early fourth century bc, a slave of possibly Phoenician origin, called Pasion, was owned by the Athenian bankers Antisthenes and Archestratos (Dem. 36.43). During the course of his slavery, Pasion quickly rose to become the trusted manager of his owners' money-changing and banking firm in Piraeus. After having been manumitted (Dem. 36.48), he took over the running of this bank (Isocr. 17, passim), became a very successful banker, and established a shield factory. His businesses prospered to the extent that by the time of his death in 370/369 he had assembled a fortune estimated at around 70 talents. With this money, Pasion made a number of generous benefactions to the Athenians, as a reward for which the Athenians passed a decree in his favour granting him a gold crown and the right of citizenship to him and his descendants ([Dem.] 59.2). As soon as he received his grant of citizenship, Pasion started to make use of his citizen rights and invested in real property. Although he was probably never actively involved in politics, he is known to have been a close friend of several members of the political elite, such as Agyrrhius of Collyte (Isocr. 17.31) and Callistratus of Aphnida (Dem. 49.47). Moreover, he had dealings with important public figures, such as Timotheus, son of Conon (Dem. 49, passim).

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , October 2014 , pp. 152 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

I

In the early fourth century bc, a slave of possibly Phoenician origin, called Pasion, was owned by the Athenian bankers Antisthenes and Archestratos (Dem. 36.43). During the course of his slavery, Pasion quickly rose to become the trusted manager of his owners' money-changing and banking firm in Piraeus. After having been manumitted (Dem. 36.48), he took over the running of this bank (Isocr. 17, passim), became a very successful banker, and established a shield factory. His businesses prospered to the extent that by the time of his death in 370/369 he had assembled a fortune estimated at around 70 talents.Footnote 1 With this money, Pasion made a number of generous benefactions to the Athenians, as a reward for which the Athenians passed a decree in his favour granting him a gold crown and the right of citizenship to him and his descendants ([Dem.] 59.2).Footnote 2 As soon as he received his grant of citizenship, Pasion started to make use of his citizen rights and invested in real property. Although he was probably never actively involved in politics, he is known to have been a close friend of several members of the political elite, such as Agyrrhius of Collyte (Isocr. 17.31) and Callistratus of Aphnida (Dem. 49.47). Moreover, he had dealings with important public figures, such as Timotheus, son of Conon (Dem. 49, passim).

In short, the tale of Pasion is one of increasing riches and success. Not only did he, initially a humble slave, considerably improve his economic, legal, and social status within Athenian society during his own lifetime. He also managed to be freed from slavery and to receive the honour of being an Athenian citizen, which was extraordinary for a foreigner – let alone for a former slave.Footnote 3 But to what extent does Pasion's life story tell us something about social mobility as a significant phenomenon in classical Athens?Footnote 4 Traditionally, social mobility has been considered a characteristic feature of modern meritocratic societies, whereas pre-industrial societies have been categorized as static, hierarchical, and rigid. This opinion – clearly a legacy of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century economists and sociologists such as Smith, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim – has during the last few decades been challenged by ancient, medieval, and early modern historians, who, drawing on historical data from a wide variety of sources, have been able to cast doubt on the presumption of relatively little mobility in pre-industrial societies.Footnote 5

However, while extensive studies of social mobility exist for Rome,Footnote 6 only restricted aspects of social mobility in ancient Athens have been considered, and then mostly incidentally.Footnote 7 Thus, despite the obvious importance of this topic for our understanding of classical Athenian society, we still lack a specific study of Athenian social mobility. This can be explained by the fact that, for a long time, the different major schools of thought in Greek social and economic history were united in their belief that Athenian society was essentially static and rigid. Remarkable indications of social mobility and attestations of individuals undergoing dramatic changes of socio-economic status, such as Pasion, have generally been dismissed as exceptions. Many Athenian scholars have clearly taken the elitist and moralist Athenian texts, which plainly testify to the lack of an ideology emphasizing the possibility and merit of mobility (so important in modern, Western capitalist society), at face value.Footnote 8

One of the most important reasons for minimizing non-citizens' chances of social mobility in classical Athens was the standard belief that Athenian society was characterized by a rigid demarcation line between its various legal status groups. Characteristic is Raaflaub's assertion that

the success of the democracy in securing the loyalty and devotion of the vast majority of citizens rested largely on its insistence on a marked distinction between citizens (whatever their social status) on the one hand, and all categories of non-citizens on the other hand.Footnote 9

In the same way, Todd defined the three legal status groups in Athenian society as ‘sharply distinguished not simply as concepts but in actuality’.Footnote 10 A reality like this would indeed have had profound repercussions for those non-citizens attempting to improve their social status in Athenian society.Footnote 11 Since the early post-Second World War period, research on social mobility has largely turned to the study of social opportunity, specifically to the extent to which in certain societies individuals and groups have different chances of movement between positions of unequal advantage, providing their holders with unequal power, material or symbolic assets, and privilege. This concern had its roots in the prevalent interest in the degree of ‘openness’ – a concept denoting the relative fluidity or rigidity of a stratification system – and from curiosity about the individual, institutional, and societal factors responsible for it.Footnote 12 Much attention has been paid to potential opportunities for creating social networks, through which the acquisition of resources for social mobility is facilitated. In a seminal article from 1973, the sociologist Granovetter convincingly ascertained a division between weak-tie-linked and strong-tie-linked networks of social relationships, arguing that weak ties promote ‘bridging’ across those networks that commonly operate as small and closed cliques, and have a special role in a person's opportunity for social mobility, as long as they connect him or her to high-status individuals, by exposing him or her to opportunities beyond his or her immediate social status group. The use of strong ties, associating family members and close friends within a condensed network, however, restricts the chances of social mobility. Since the members of these social networks are likely to possess the same amount and types of advantages, there is limited opportunity for the kinds of social interaction that could potentially lead to upward social mobility.Footnote 13

If indeed Athenian society was characterized by a rigid demarcation line between citizens and non-citizens, this would, using Granovetter's model as a framework for analysis, imply that non-citizens' network opportunities were restricted to strong ties among themselves, without access to more heterogeneous forms of social capital (that is, ‘bridging capital’ as opposed to ‘bonding capital’),Footnote 14 which would be able to create ‘bridges’ across legal status. However, the notion that non-citizens were socially isolated from Athenian citizenry, with few connections to social resources facilitating mobility, is clearly wrong.

Recent attempts have been made to demonstrate that Athenian society was far more complex and multifaceted than the prevailing tripartite oversimplification.Footnote 15 The most devastating attack on the traditional view has been offered by Cohen in The Athenian Nation.Footnote 16 However, by focusing on arguably untypical and non-representative examples, such as slave entrepreneurs living separately from their masters, and wealthy prostitutes, Cohen's attack on the traditional view of Athenian society has not attracted broad support from the academic world.Footnote 17 Admittedly, several references in the ancient texts can be found, which, when taken at face value, may serve to legitimate the old orthodoxy.Footnote 18 Nevertheless, despite the common portrayal of non-citizen residents in Athens as being outside the Athenian (citizen) community, tolerated only because of their significance for Athens' superior economic performance,Footnote 19 scholars have never been able to ignore totally the various passages in the sources which give the impression of social life in Athenian society being characterized by a fairly easy intermingling of persons of divers origin and legal status.Footnote 20 Recall, for example, the extraordinary stories of individuals such as Pasion and Phormion, who, both before and after their naturalization, ‘moved into the highest social circles and integrated into the Athenian élite’,Footnote 21 as well as the curious setting of Plato's Republic in the house of the elderly metic Cephalus, following Socrates' visit to a festival honouring the Thracian goddess Bendis, whose cult had recently been introduced into Piraeus. After all, it is remarkable that, rather than stressing a dichotomy between citizens and non-citizens, Plato describes the metic hosts, that is to say Cephalus, friend and confident of Pericles (Lys. 12.4), and his adult sons Polymarchus, Euthydemus, and the orator Lysias,Footnote 22 as ‘friends and nearly kinsmen’ (Resp. 328d6) of their citizen guests, both Athenian aristocrats and more humble members of the Athenian citizenry.Footnote 23

Yet how representative are such instances? Might it be possible that such interactions between citizens and non-citizens were mainly limited to the social elite? Some scholars have thought so. Whitehead, for instance, concluding his discussion of the consequences of Pericles' citizenship law of 451/450 on the ideology of the metic, asserted:

we may point to Aspasia, Anaxagoras and the rest; but Perikles (like Plato) may not have seen any connection between his intellectual foreign guest-friends and the immigrant artisans and labourers now congregating in Piraeus and the urban demes, their presence valued in economic terms but their social mobility in the most obvious sense now completely blocked.Footnote 24

In this article, I will re-examine this claim, which denies any scope for social mobility by the average non-citizen in classical Athens. I will examine to what extent the peculiar nature of Athenian business life, now commonly recognized as having been characterized by enduring cooperation between citizens and non-citizens, provided opportunities for non-citizens to cross boundaries and ascend the social scale; in other words, what the repercussions of this peculiar aspect of Athens' economic system were for the scope of upward social mobility in classical Athens. I will make a suggestion for an alternative model regarding social mobility, by arguing that the enduring cooperation between citizens and non-citizens in Athenian business life – the recognition of which surely weakens the plausibility of a rigid demarcation line having supposedly physically segregated the various legal status groups – had important implications for the scope of social mobility in Athenian society. Most importantly, this cooperation provided opportunities for non-citizens to create networks across the boundaries of legal status. These networks could be brought into play in a variety of ways and contexts, and hence could plausibly function as important channels for social circulation.

II

It has already been recognized in modern scholarship that personal contact between citizens and non-citizens was in the usual course of events guaranteed by what have been called ‘democratic spaces’ or ‘free spaces’ in classical Athens: public places where citizens would necessarily have contact not only with one another but also with non-citizens and even slaves, hence creating common experiences and shaping new forms of identity. Most prominent among the ‘democratic’ or ‘free’ spaces was undoubtedly the Athenian agora,Footnote 25 the major zone of personal interaction in Athens. Indeed, as described by the speaker in Demosthenes' speech Against Aristogeiton 1 (Dem. 25.51), every single Athenian citizen frequented the marketplace on some business, either public or private. But they were certainly not the only ones. On the contrary, non-citizens had no less reason for passing time in the agora. As colourfully described by Millett – in a style matching the contemporary portrayal by EubulusFootnote 26 – the classical agora was, apart from the prime location in Attica for the business of buying and selling, also

the setting for administration, publicity, justice, ostracism, imprisonment, religion, processions, dancing, athletics and equestrian displays. In addition to persons passing through, individuals might gather there to get information (official or otherwise), gather a crowd, gamble, torture a slave, get hired as labourers, bid for contracts, accost a prostitute, seek asylum, have a haircut, beg for money or food, fetch water, watch a cock-fight and find out the time.Footnote 27

This mixing of functions, and, more importantly, the legitimate reason that it provided for both citizens and non-citizens and people of low status to be present in the agora and interact with Athenian citizens, ostensibly troubled conservative thinkers. Thus Plato in his Nomoi proposed moving the political function elsewhere, holding the assemblies in religious sanctuaries (738d) and electing magistrates in temples (753b). Aristotle, for his part, advised that, in addition to and separate from the agora for buying and selling, which he named the ‘necessary market’ (anagkaia agora), the Athenians should lay out a ‘free agora’ (agora eleuthera), devoted to schole and where no commercial transaction would take place and no artisan or farmer would be allowed to enter, unless summoned by the magistrates (Pol. 1331a30–b14).

But the agora was certainly not the only location where citizens and non-citizens – regardless of their origin, profession, wealth, or influence – inevitably and unrestrictedly intermingled with each other. It has, for instance, not always fully been recognized that at least some sort of personal interaction between citizens and non-citizens must have taken place within the mutual neighbourhood. In spite of prevailing assumptions, non-citizens were present in significant numbers in virtually every deme throughout Attica, rather than living as an isolated community within one specific area.Footnote 28 Although metics were normally not allowed to buy a house or a plot of land, they could rent a house, apparently wherever they wanted. An example is provided by an inscription from 343/342 bc (IG II2 1590), indicating that, at that time, the house adjacent to the agora of the deme Cydathenaeon was rented by a metic, while the next houses were rented by Athenian citizens.Footnote 29 Within the individual demes, non-citizens might have generated and expressed unity with neighbouring and more remote demesmen,Footnote 30 while numerous citizens might have felt related to non-citizens living within their own community.

The same might have occurred in social centres such as the Athenian gymnasia, where both citizens and metics appear to have exercised.Footnote 31 This can be attested by Plato in Euthydemus (271a–c), and can also be concluded from a passage in Aeschines' Against Timarchus (1.138), in which a law is mentioned forbidding slaves to exercise in the Athenian gymnasia, as it would have been out of place to permit supposedly inferior beings, using the words of Roberts, ‘to enjoy the physical and moral benefits conferred by athletic activity’.Footnote 32 According to the speaker, the lawgivers did not go on to command that ‘the free man shall anoint himself and take exercise’, as they, seeing the good that comes from gymnastics, thought that, in prohibiting the slaves, they were, by the same words, inviting ‘the free’. The speaker does not make any distinction between citizens and non-citizens, nor does he mention any special regulation for metics or xenoi (‘foreigners’). This suggests that both citizens and non-citizens were allowed to use the Athenian gymnasia, where they could interact with each other in a way which is illustrated by the encounter between Socrates and the Chian brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus in the Lyceum, as described in Plato's Euthydemus.Footnote 33

The same applies to the Athenian cemeteries, where gravestones of citizens and metics stood together indiscriminately. Against the views of Morris that formal burial was a privilege indicating and dependent upon citizenship, and that ‘classical Athenians put great emphasis on formal, bounded cemeteries as symbols of membership of the citizen body as a whole’,Footnote 34 voices have been raised to deny both the reality of burial as a citizen privilege and the existence of exclusive citizen cemeteries at Athens.Footnote 35 As a consequence, citizens and non-citizens can be supposed to have mourned their loved ones side by side, which provided the latter with an extra opportunity to mingle with certain members of the Athenian citizenry and thus create for themselves opportunities for social enhancement.

Citizens and non-citizens might also have associated during a shared participation in socio-cultural and religious activities of the polis or the individual demes. In an analogous way to their access to the central Panathenaic ritual, the procession at the City Dionysia, the Lenaia, the Hephaisteia, and the Eleusian Mysteries, metics are, for instance, known to have visited deme religious shrines and to have participated along with Athenian citizens in the worship of local deities. Moreover, citizens participated in alien cults that had been imported along with and for the sake of foreign non-citizens, as the participation of Socrates in the celebration of the newly introduced Bendis, described above, demonstrates.Footnote 36

All this demonstrates that non-citizens resident in Attica were anything but socially isolated from the Athenian citizenry, and that in many circumstances they had occasions to intermingle with Athenian citizens. Of course, although this intermingling might have diluted the rigid demarcation line which supposedly physically segregated the various legal status groups, it may not have been sufficient to ensure the creation of weak ties between citizens and non-citizens, which could be used as a social resource by non-citizens attempting to improve their status in Athenian society. Such relationships, however, can reasonably be supposed to have been created in those settings where citizens were most inclined to build long-lasting relationships with non-citizens, as their mutual achievements depended on it – settings such as Athenian business life.

III

Around 345 bc, a certain Euxitheus appeared before an Athenian court to appeal against the decision of his deme Halimous, taken during a re-examination or diapsephisis, to remove him from the official deme register (Dem. 57). Euxitheus asserted that he met the requirements for Athenian citizenship, being descended from both an Athenian father and an Athenian mother. He claimed that the man allegedly responsible for his expulsion, Eubulides, acted out of personal enmity, having no real evidence against him except for some unconvincing and dishonourable indications, such as his father's foreign accent and his mother's humble employment, selling ribbons and working as a wet-nurse. By doing so, Eubulides had allegedly slandered him, in violation of a nomos stating that people who insulted a male or female citizen about his or her work in the agora were liable to a charge of slander.Footnote 37 The nomos mentioned by Euxitheus (Dem. 57.30) not only suggests that slander based upon occupation had at one time been common enough to become a source of concern for lawmakers, but also denotes the reality of citizens ‘working in the agora’ in classical Athens.

For quite a long time, scholars have supported Hasebroek's claim, following the insights of Bücher and Weber,Footnote 38 of a deep-rooted economic dichotomy in classical Athenian society between a citizenry mainly living on income generated from landed property and occasionally providing bottomry loans to shipping merchants, while in every other respect leading the life of landowners, and a group of non-citizen residents, largely operating in trade and manufacturing.Footnote 39 This picture can no longer be maintained, as various studies have shown that, especially in the fourth century, numerous Athenians pursued commercial activities.Footnote 40 In fact, men such as Apollodorus, son of the former slave and naturalized citizen Pasion, who did everything to distance himself from the metic community he originated from by profiling himself as a landowner in order to assert his citizenship,Footnote 41 can reasonably be considered as rather anachronistic figures. After all, as demonstrated by Davies, in the fourth century it became increasingly normal for citizens to have a mixed holding, consisting of real property in land and houses, manufacturing property in the form of revenue-earning slaves, and liquid investments.Footnote 42 Nevertheless, some scholars persisted in maintaining that citizens and non-citizens practiced their profession in separate areas: that is to say, for instance, that trade by non-citizens was concentrated in the harbour of Piraeus, while market exchange in the agora in Athens was protected against foreign merchants and dominated by citizens. This opinion, however, has lost all support, and it is now commonly believed that citizens and non-citizens closely cooperated in commercial activities.Footnote 43

This reality unmistakably worried contemporary critics with prejudices against trade and commerce. In Aristotle's sociology of the polis, for instance, the residents obtaining their income through ‘working in the agora’ ideally form a distinct ‘illiberal’ group (Pol. 1291b14–30; 1289b26–34). In what he terms the best constituted (namely, oligarchic) poleis, those pursuing the ‘market life’ (agoraios bios) would not be citizens (1328b34), while those democracies admitting ‘market people’ (agoraioi anthropoi) are considered as substandard. Regarded as more acceptable are the Thebans, who had a law which barred from office anyone who had been actively engaged in the agora in the preceding ten years (1278a25; cf. [Rh. Al.] 1424a25–31).Footnote 44 One might at first sight suspect Aristotle's disapproval of citizens ‘working in the agora’ to be caused merely by the fact that those activities were incompatible with the notorious nostalgic idea of the self-sufficient oikos. However, the nature of Plato's insistence on the minimalization of commercial interaction between citizens and non-citizens, by letting them deal with non-citizens through slaves or other non-citizen mediators and then only on pre-set days in each month (Leg. 925b), indicates an anxiety about the mingling of diverse sorts of people who allegedly ought to be kept apart. Indeed, Plato might possibly have recognized that this mingling, obviously an unavoidable consequence of not only the joint work of but also the cooperation between citizens and non-citizens in commercial activities, undoubtedly had profound effects on the supposed demarcation lines between the various legal status groups in Athenian society. After all, it was in Athenian business life, more than in any other context,Footnote 45 that Athenian citizens were probably most inclined to build sustainable – and, more importantly, beneficial – relationships with non-citizens, as the success of their business depended on it. The development of sustainable boundary-crossing networks connecting citizens with non-citizens in cooperative environments provided opportunities for and access to shared experience and common interests and advantages, which plausibly might have served, inter alia, as instruments by which both legal status groups were persuaded to make more cooperative choices than they would have done in a so-called game-theoretic ‘state of nature’.

The denser the network, the more likely that both citizens and non-citizens would have cooperated for mutual benefit, even in the face of persistent problems of collective action, such as the so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’, ‘prisoner's dilemma’, and so forth.Footnote 46 Additionally, the constructed ties would have been an important instrument for organization and interaction, and would have functioned as channels through which information about the honesty and reliability of both citizen and non-citizen could be verified.Footnote 47 Moreover, they would have supported prevailing norms of reciprocity by creating expectations that favours would be returned and by increasing for those who behaved opportunistically the potential danger that they would not share in the benefits of future transactions. All these mechanisms would automatically have reduced transaction costs, most comprehensively described by North as ‘the costs of measuring the valuable attributes of what is being exchanged and the costs of protecting rights and policing and enforcing agreements’,Footnote 48 and thus enhanced not only the individual's business performance but also Athenian efficiency and productivity.

Athens' superior economic performance during this period has recently – in the light of the currently prevalent ‘transaction cost economics’ – been credited to the fact that the Athenians were particularly successful in developing institutions that fostered exchange and reduced transaction costs.Footnote 49 Ancient historians working with the concept ‘transaction costs’ have (presumably with the proposals in Xenophon's Poroi in mind) mainly focused on the most apparent elements in the transaction cost/productivity equation, such as monetary systems and laws which sought to improve the economic climate for foreign tradesmen and entrepreneurs in Athens.Footnote 50 As important as these innovations may have been, the practical need of sustainable boundary-crossing networks in Athenian business life cannot be overlooked.Footnote 51 It is hard to believe that Athens' economic performance would have been as high-class as it is known to have been without the necessary social networks between the most important parties involved.Footnote 52

Considering the importance of reducing transaction costs (such as information searching, negotiation, and monitoring and enforcing transactions) for the facilitation of transactions in Athenian business life, and consequently for the enhancement of Athenian trade, it is highly unlikely that this business life was deficient in intensive boundary-crossing social networks between citizens and non-citizens. In order to achieve and sustain such a level of economic performance, citizens and non-citizens cooperating in Athenian business life needed to be brought into association with each other and to come to function as a single, extended network. In some instances, the long-standing connections between citizens and non-citizens might have evolved into a more formalized form of association, employable for economic purposes. An illustration of such an association is a relief of the mid-fourth century dedicated to the nymphs and all the gods, by what appears to have been a professional association of fullers (Berlin SK 709). The names of the dedicators attested in the inscription point to a fraternity between citizens and non-citizens, both male and female, who were drawn together by means of shared occupational interests.Footnote 53 The available material is perhaps a little too scanty to make real conclusions about the frequency and functions of such associations,Footnote 54 but it is hard not to see such groupings, which appear in our sources towards the end of the fourth century, as forerunners of the professional associations that we encounter in the Hellenistic and Roman period.

One might wonder whether the Athenians acknowledged the importance of those boundary-crossing networks for both their own individual businesses and Athens' economic performance. They were, of course, familiar with the fact that making use of long-standing networks for the circulation of goods decreased the danger of deceit, excessive valuing, or violence. By tradition, they had made use of reciprocity or mutual exchange between (usually socially equal) philoi.Footnote 55 Moreover, contemporary thinkers unquestionably acknowledged the pragmatic value of association. Aristotle, for instance, believed that most of the koinoniai which the polis encompassed were founded for the advantage of its members (Eth. Nic. 1160a4–6).Footnote 56 This makes it plausible to assume that the Athenians might have been truly aware of the advantage of associating with those non-citizens actively involved in their business life, and that they strategically accepted the existence of boundary-crossing networks in their society, thus pragmatically being more liberal and inclusivist than has been taken as read in the past. As important as society is in determining individual economic action, I believe, with Granovetter but contrary to Sahlins,Footnote 57 in the existence of a conceptual middle ground between the often non-pragmatic cultural basis of social structures, as described in the works of Athenian theorists such as Plato and Aristotle, and in the reality of individuals acting contrary to such structures for practical needs, thus having a crucial role in moulding society in keeping with these practical needs.

IV

The business, social, and associative connections between the various legal status groups active in Athenian business life automatically created opportunities for social capital accumulation, and thus had important effects on the scope of social mobility for non-citizens. On the broadest level, they might have had important effects on the scope of social mobility for the total group of non-citizens in Athenian society. After all, the net of constructed weak-tie bridges between the existing strong-tie networks of citizens on the one hand and non-citizens on the other is very likely to have resulted in a comprehensive intermingling of the members of both legal status groups,Footnote 58 producing opportunities to create and assert social status, and providing a channel through which movement between or access to the different positions of unequal advantage might have been possible.Footnote 59

Moreover, while the social capital accumulating from the weak-tie bridges between citizens and non-citizens benefited the community of non-citizen Athenian residents as a whole, the bridge-builders themselves – namely the non-citizen artisans, traders, and businessmen forging contacts and friendships with their citizen colleagues – might have done especially well. First, precisely because of their ability to bring together otherwise less well-connected contacts and because of the prestige which their citizen contacts as social assets conveyed, they were liable to become increasingly well-respected members of the non-citizen community and more attractive to other high-profile non-citizens as a contact in their own networks, resulting in turn in further networking reinforcement as well as a higher social position within the non-citizen community.

Secondly, and presumably more importantly, functioning as a broker within the extensive social network of weak and strong ties constituting Athenian society, they are above all to be expected to have managed to acquire vital social capital, through their building of bridges to citizens,Footnote 60 and thus to have been capable of bringing this social capital into play for personal enhancement on the social scale. Positioned at a crossroads of social organization and having more diverse contacts, the so-called bridge-builders were most of all likely to be candidates discussed for inclusion in new opportunities and consequently able to transfer their social capital assets to other kinds of assets crucial for achieving a rise in status.

One example of this is the way in which social connections to citizens might have been not only useful but also essential for those non-citizens attempting to obtain Athenian timai, ranging from mere honours through functional privileges even to full Athenian citizenship.Footnote 61 Although metics considering themselves to be worthy of honours in return for their services towards the Athenian demos could pass a written request (aitesis) to the boule (council of citizens),Footnote 62 their interests had to be defended by citizens. After all, in normal circumstances non-citizens had no access to the honouring institutions,Footnote 63 unless granted the right of prosodos (privileged entry).Footnote 64 There is some scant evidence which has caused some scholars to believe that foreigners were allowed to appear in the boule or ekklesia (principal assembly) to state their case.Footnote 65 If so, this might only have happened through the mediation of an Athenian citizen, who (as he is known to have done in their absence) spoke for them and recommended them to these institutions.Footnote 66 It is possible that some metics relied on the support of their own prostates (sponsor) for this, but as the relationship between a metic and his prostates appears to have developed ‘from a strict original requirement to a virtual dead letter’ by the fourth century, it is very likely that many of them will have had to bring into play their most influential citizen contacts, just as the other foreigners did.Footnote 67

This is only one of the many situations in which non-citizens' contacts with Athenian citizens, and the social capital which these contacts entailed, could be used in order to acquire other forms of capital that were crucial for social advancement. Of course, the nature and intensity of the weak-tie contacts established in Athenian business life might have affected the extent to which these contacts were fruitful for non-citizens seeking social advance. Presumably the most fruitful were multiplex relationships, linking citizens and non-citizens in more than one context, allowing the resources of one relationship to be appropriated for use in others, such as the possibility of calling upon a person who had obligations in one context for aid when having problems or needs in another context.Footnote 68 The fact that banking, for instance, was, more than any other business sector, so intensely personalized that business and social relations were inclined to coalesce,Footnote 69 might have automatically provided bankers with an extensive and intensive social network of often influential Athenian citizens as social backing.Footnote 70 In addition, those relations which were endorsed in a more or less formalized association might have contained a more coercive power and thus a greater assurance of the transferability of the social capital assets obtained within these associations. After all, a member of an association would have been expected to do everything possible to help any member of the same group – whatever their socio-economic or legal status – in their capacity as members of that group. Examples of this characteristic of Athenian associations are far from few, but [Lysias] 8 undoubtedly provides the most vivid account of what might – and above all what might not – have been expected from fellow-members of an association (sunousia).Footnote 71

V

In conclusion, it can definitely be suggested that the peculiar nature of Athenian business life, characterized by the joint work of and cooperation between citizens and non-citizens, had a significant impact on the scope of social mobility in Athenian society. This joint work and cooperation provided opportunities for non-citizens in creating networks across the boundaries of legal status, networks that could be brought into play in a variety of ways and contexts, and hence could plausibly function as important channels for social circulation.

Consciously crossing the boundaries of legal- and politico-centric history, this model exposes an important social mechanism, through which (inter alia) a reasonable case can be made for the existence of social advancement of non-citizens in classical Athens. Needless to say, it would be fascinating to take this conclusion a step further, by mapping the various networks to which non-citizens belonged, and by examining to what extent they actually managed to make use of these channels in order to enhance their social status. That, however, is clearly beyond the scope of this article, and hence remains as an important question for future research.

References

1 Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 b.c. (Oxford, 1971), 428–9Google Scholar; Trevett, J., Apollodoros, the Son of Pasion (Oxford, 1992), 1–2Google Scholar.

2 Osborne, M. J., Naturalization in Athens (Brussels, 1981–3), ii.47–9Google Scholar. For dissimilar views on the date of Pasion's naturalization, see Kapparis, K. A., Apollodoros ‘Against Neaira’ [D. 59]. Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Berlin, 1999)Google Scholar, 169.

3 As noted by Whitehead, D., The Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge, 1977), 114–16Google Scholar, freedmen were, although of identical legal status to other metics, generally regarded as a distinct group. For naturalization in classical Athens, see Osborne (n. 2); Deene, M., ‘Naturalized Citizens and Social Mobility in Classical Athens: the Case of Apollodorus’, G&R 58.2 (2011), 159–75Google Scholar.

4 As recognized by the German sociologist Kaelble, H., Historical Research on Social Mobility. Western Europe and the USA in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1977)Google Scholar, 113, ‘social mobility’ is a vague concept, which for the benefit of historical research requires not only a precise definition but also precise contours. In this article, the term ‘social mobility’ is interpreted as being ‘the movement in time of social units between different positions in the system of social stratification of a society’. As social stratification can be conceived of in many dimensions, social mobility is thus a multifaceted concept, which should be studied as such. For the definition, see Müller, W., ‘Mobility, Social’, in Smelser, N. J. and Baltes, Paul B. (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Amsterdam, 2001), 9918Google Scholar.

5 Social mobility as a subject of historical research became important in the ‘golden age’ of the so-called new social history in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, scholars were above all seeking to study the history of equality of social opportunities, by discussing the history of social mobility in a comparative view. Major contributions in this field were brought forward not only by sociologists and political scientists but also by historians. Past & Present (1966), the Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1976), and Historical Methods (1998) dedicated special issues to social structures and social mobility in past societies, while the Journal of Economic History published numerous articles in the 1970s and early 1980s on social structures, inequalities, and mobility.

6 See Hopkins, K., ‘Social Mobility in the Later Roman Empire: The Evidence of Ausonius’, CQ 11 (1961), 234–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hopkins, K., ‘Eunuchs in Politics in the Later Roman Empire’, PCPhS 9 (1963), 62–80Google Scholar; Hopkins, K., ‘Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire’, P&P 32 (1965), 12–26Google Scholar; Hopkins, K., Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacMullen, R., ‘Social Mobility in the Theodosian Code’, JRS 54 (1964), 49–53Google Scholar; Weaver, P., ‘Social Mobility in the Early Roman Empire: The Evidence of the Imperial Freedmen and Slaves’, P&P 37 (1967), 3–20Google Scholar; Dobson, B., ‘The Centurionate and Social Mobility During the Principate’, in Nicolet, C. (ed.), Recherches sur les structures socials dans l'antiquité classique (Paris, 1970), 99–116Google Scholar; Pleket, H., ‘Sociale stratificatie en sociale mobiliteit in de Romeinse keizertijd’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 84 (1971), 215–51Google Scholar; Wiseman, T. P., New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 b.c.–a.d. 14 (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Brunt, P. A., ‘Nobilitas and novitas’, JRS 72 (1982), 1–17Google Scholar; Purcell, N., ‘The Apparitores: A Study in Social Mobility’, PBSR 51 (1983), 125–73Google Scholar; Frézouls, E., La Mobilité sociale dans le monde romain (Strasbourg, 1992)Google Scholar; Saller, R., Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; W. Waldstein, review of Delgado, J. M. Serrano, Status y promoción social de los libertos en Hispania Romana (The Status and Social Advancement of Freedmen in Roman Spain), Gnomon 65.3 (1993), 276–8Google Scholar; Rosen, K., ‘Roman Freedmen as Social Climbers, and Petronius “Cena Tremalchionis”’, Gymnasium 102.1 (1995), 79–92Google Scholar; de Quiroga, P. L. Barja, ‘Freedmen Social Mobility in Roman Italy’, Historia 44.3 (1995), 326–4Google Scholar; Tacoma, L. E., Fragile Hierarchies. The Urban Elites of Third-century Roman Egypt (Leiden, 2006)Google Scholar; Richardson, J. S., ‘Social Mobility in the Hispanic Provinces in the Republican Period’, in de Blois, L. (ed.), Administration, Prosopography and Appointment Policies in the Roman empire (Amsterdam, 2001), 246–54Google Scholar; Patterson, J., ‘Social Mobility and the Cities of Italy’, in Landscapes and Cities. Rural Settlement and Civic Transformation in Early Imperial Italy (Oxford, 2006), 184–264Google Scholar; Tran, N., ‘Les affranchis dans les collèges professionnels de l'Italie du Haut-Empire: l'encadrement civique de la mobilité sociale’, in Molin, M. (ed.), Les Régulations sociales dans l'Antiquité (Rennes, 2006), 389–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, A. E., Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul. Strategies and Opportunities for the Non-elite (Cambridge and New York, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Such as in Davies' study of wealth and social position (Davies, J. K., Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens [New York, 1981]Google Scholar) and in Millett's work on lending and borrowing (Millett, P., Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens [Cambridge, 1991]CrossRefGoogle Scholar), which among other things addresses the impoverishment and decline of privileged Athenian families. Fisher, N. R. E., ‘Greek Associations, Symposia, and Clubs’, in Grant, M. and Kitzinger, R. (eds.), Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean. Greece and Rome (New York, 1988), ii.1167–97Google Scholar; Fisher, N., ‘Symposiasts, Fish-eaters and Flatterers: Social Mobility and Moral Concerns in Old Comedy’, in Harvey, D. and Wilkins, J. (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes (London, 2000), 372–3Google Scholar; and Deene (n. 3) are notable exceptions.

8 Thus, in [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 2.18, the so-called Old Oligarch reports how Attic comedy attacks not only well-born Athenians but also common citizens seeking to rise above their standing. Similarly, Aristotle describes how men tend not to be made indignant and envious by attainable virtues, such as courage and justices, but rather by attributes which they cannot hope to acquire, especially wealth and power (Rhet. 1387a6–15). Eur. Suppl. 176 and Thuc. 2.40.1 are notable exceptions, stating it to be wise or honourable to seek economic advancement through honest, hard work.

9 Raaflaub, K., ‘Democracy, Oligarchy and the Concept of the “Free Citizen” in Late Fifth-century Athens’, Political Theory 11 (1983), 532CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Todd, S. C., The Shape of Athenian Law (Oxford, 1993) 173Google Scholar. See also Raaflaub, K., ‘Des freien Bürgers Recht der freien Red: ein Beitrag zur Begriffs- und Sozialgeschichte der athenischen Demokratie’, in Eck, W., Galsterer, H., and Wolff, H. (eds.), Studien zur Antiken Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift Friedrich Vittinghoff (Cologne and Vienna, 1980), 44–6Google Scholar; Meier, C., Introduction à l'anthropologie politique de l'antiquité classique (Paris, 1984), 20–2Google Scholar; Pomeroy, S. B., Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1975), 78Google Scholar.

11 Just as social mobility is referred to in this article as a multifaceted concept, so the concept of social status should be interpreted as the position which one holds in a given society and which can be influenced by birth, wealth, honorific assets, legal status, social standing or connections, etc. Contrary to how the concept has been used in Hunter, V. J. and Edmondson, J. C., Law and Social Status in Classical Athens (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar, it should not be equated with legal status.

12 Müller (n. 4), 9918–24.

13 Granovetter, M., ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973), 1360–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 From Granovetter's basic distinction, Putnam, R. D., Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York and London, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, identified two kinds of social capital: bonding and bridging social capital. Bonding social capital refers to relations between homogenous groups, bringing the possibility for negative consequences, most prominent among which is the exclusion of outsiders. Bridging social capital, which is most likely to create social inclusion, refers to relations between people differing on crucial personal characteristics, such as ethnicity, socio-economic status, or – when referring to classical Antiquity – legal status.

15 See, for example, Cohen, E. E., Athenian Economy and Society. A Banking Perspective (Princeton, NJ, 1992)Google Scholar; Hunter, V. J., Policing Athens. Social Control in Attic Lawsuits (Princeton, NJ, 1994)Google Scholar; Bäbler, B., Fleissige Thrakerinnen und wehrhafte Skythen. Nichtgriechen im klassischen Athen und ihre archäologische Hinterlassenschaft (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adak, M., Metöken als Wohltäter Athens. Untersuchungen zum sozialen Austausch zwischen ortsansässigen Fremden und der Burgergemeinde in klassischer un hellenistischer Zeit, ca. 500–150 v. Chr. (Munich, 2003)Google Scholar; Vlassopoulos, K., ‘Free Spaces: Identity, Experience and Democracy in Classical Athens’, CQ 57.1 (2007), 33–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Cohen, E. E., The Athenian Nation (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 30–48Google Scholar and 130–92.

17 For a detailed discussion of The Athenian Nation, see e.g. Osborne, R.'s review in CPh 97 (2002), 93–8Google Scholar.

18 See, for example Dem. 22.55, 59.122; Arist. Pol. 1326a18–22.

19 See especially Whitehead (n. 3).

20 See Sinclair, R. K., Democracy and Participation in Athens (Cambridge and New York, 1988), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hansen, M. H. and Crook, J. A., The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Structure, Principles and Ideology (Oxford, 1991) 87Google Scholar; Parker, R., Athenian Religion. A History (Oxford, 1996), 266–7Google Scholar.

21 For the phrase, see Finley, M. I., Democracy Ancient and Modern (London, 1985), 48Google Scholar.

22 Lysias' family property was worth 70 talents before 404 bce, which gave him the reputation of being ‘the richest metic in Athens’ (P.Oxy. XIII, 1606, line 30, 153–5).

23 Among them were, for instance, Charmantides of Paeania (Davies [n. 1], no. 15502); Plato's own brothers Euthydemus and Glaucon (Davies [n. 1], no. 8792 X), who were descendants of Solon, close relatives of the oligarchic leaders Charmides and Critias, and stepsons of the Periclean democratic eminence Pyrilampes; Nicaretus; the impoverished Socrates; the sophist Thrasymachus; and Cleitophon son of Aristonymus, who is usually identified as a supporter of the oligarchic regime of 411 ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 34).

24 Whitehead (n. 3), 150, and see also 120.

25 For the agora as respectively a ‘democratic’ or ‘free space’, see Millett, P., ‘Encounters in the Agora’, in Cartledge, P., Millett, P., and von Reden, S., Kosmos. Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2002), 220Google Scholar; Vlassopoulos (n. 15), 38. For the deep politicization of Athenian culture as a result of this particular ‘free space’, see Vlassopoulos (n. 15), 45–7.

26 See Eubulus in Ath. 12.640b–c (= Kock ii.190).

27 Millett (n. 25), 215. For a selection of attestations of the merging of businesses in the agora, see Wycherley, R. E., The Athenian Agora. Results of Excavations Conducted. Vol. 3. Literary and Epigraphical Testimonia (Princeton, NJ, 1957)Google Scholar. See also Wycherley, R. E., ‘The Market of Athens’, G&R 3.1 (1956), 2–23Google Scholar.

28 Notwithstanding the fragmentary nature of surviving records, metics are attested in more than forty separate demes scattered around Attica, including many rural, while fewer than 20 per cent appear to have lived in the Piraeus: see Whitehead, D., The Demes of Attica, 508/7–ca. 250 b.c. A Political and Social Study (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 82–5Google Scholar; Cohen (n. 16), 122–3, esp. n. 106. For a detailed account of the demes, see – in addition to Whitehead (this note) – the complementary study by Osborne, R., Demos. The Discovery of Classical Attika (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.

29 IG II2 1590.

30 Despite the fact that, throughout the classical period, many Athenian demesmen moved away from their ancestral demes (Damsgaard-Madsen, A., ‘Attic Funeral Inscriptions: Their Use as Historical Sources and Some Preliminary Results’, in Christiansen, E., Damsgaard-Madsen, A., and Hallager, E. [eds.], Studies in Ancient History and Numismatics Presented to Rudi Thomsen [Aarhus, 1988], 55–68Google Scholar; Osborne, R., ‘The Potential Mobility of Human Populations’, OJA 10 [1991], 231–52Google Scholar; Taylor, C., ‘A New Political World’, in Osborne, R. [ed.], Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution. Art, Literature, and Politics, 430–380 bc [Cambridge, 2007], 84–7Google Scholar; Taylor, C., ‘Migration and the Demes of Attica’, in Holleran, C. and Pudsey, A. [eds.], Demography and the Graeco-Roman World. New Insights and Approaches [Cambridge, 2011], 117–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar), the Athenians who had moved oikos still maintained strong ties with their ancestral demes. See Cohen (n. 16), 49–78 and 104–29, for an examination of the heterogeneity of the Athenian and deme community.

31 This is acknowledged by Hansen, M. H., ‘The Polis as an Urban Centre: The Literary and Epigraphical Evidence’, in Hansen, M. H. (ed.), The Polis as an Urban Centre and as a Political Community (Copenhagen, 1997), 15Google Scholar; and by Fisher, N., ‘Citizens, Foreigners and Slaves in Greek Society’, in Kinzl, K. H. (ed.), A Companion to the Classical Greek World (Oxford, 2010), 343Google Scholar.

32 Roberts, J. W., City of Sokrates. An Introduction to Classical Athens (London, 1998), 27Google Scholar.

33 The assertion in Miller, W., Greece and the Greeks. A Survey of Greek Civilization (New York, 1941), 133Google Scholar, that the Cynosarges, one of the three gymnasia in Athens, was reserved for nothoi (those of illegitimate birth) and metics, thus suggesting that metics were not allowed in other gymnasia, is based on no evidence at all. On the contrary, not only do foreigners appear to have visited other gymnasia, but well-born Athenians are also known to have visited the Cynosarges (And. 1.61; Ps.-Plut. Ax. 364a).

34 Morris, I., Burial and Ancient Society. The Rise of the Greek City-state (Cambridge, 1987) 54Google Scholar; Morris, I., ‘The Archaeology of Ancestors: The Saxe-Goldstein Hypothesis Revisited’, CArchJ 1 (1991), 157–8Google Scholar.

35 Patterson, C., ‘“Citizen Cemeteries” in Classical Athens?’, CQ 56.1 (2006), 48–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 The participation of metics in Athenian polis religion has recently been scrutinized by S. Wijma, ‘Joining the Athenian Community: The Participation of Metics in Athenian Polis Religion in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c.’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Utrecht, 2010). In this excellent study, Wijma has demonstrated that, both at polis and at deme level, the Athenians tried to incorporate metics into the citizen or deme community by having them share in the polis or deme rites, while articulating their position in that community by having them participate in a specific way.

37 In Athenian law, the truth of an allegation was not a sufficient defence. See Todd (n. 10), 260.

38 Bücher, K., Hansay, A., and Pirenne, H., Études d'histoire et d'économie politique (Brussels, 1901), ;249–84Google Scholar; Weber, M., ‘Die Stadt’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft 47 (1921), 756Google Scholar; Weber, M., Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum (Tübingen, 1924), 32–3Google Scholar.

39 Hasebroek, J., Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece (New York, 1978), 22Google Scholar, 28, and 35.

40 Millett, P., ‘Maritime Loans and the Structure of Credit in Fourth-century Athens’, in Garnsey, P., Hopkins, K., and Whittaker, C. R. (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy (Berkeley, CA, 1983)Google Scholar, 38; C. Mossé, ‘The “World of the Emporium” in the Private Speeches of Demosthenes’, in ibid., 53–63; Hansen, M. V., ‘Athenian Maritime Trade in the 4th Century b.c.: Operation and Finance’, C&M 35 (1984), 88 and 92 n. 74Google Scholar; also Oertel's much earlier criticism in his review of Hasebroek (n. 39), Deutsche Literaturzeitung 49 (1928), 1624–5Google Scholar In fourth-century Athens in particular, numerous Athenians were self-employed in manufacturing and trade: see Ehrenberg, V., The People of Aristophanes. A Sociology of Old Attic Comedy (Oxford, 1943), 162Google Scholar; Hopper, R. J., Trade and Industry in Classical Greece (London, 1979), 140Google Scholar; Finley, M. I., Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, ed. Saller, R. P. and Shaw, B. D. (London, 1981), 99Google Scholar; Davies (n. 7), 38–72; Osborne, R., ‘The Economics and Politics of Slavery at Athens’, in Powell, A. (ed.), The Greek World (London, 1995), 30Google Scholar; Reed, C. M., Maritime Traders in the Ancient Greek World (Cambridge, 2003), 27–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a contemporary attestation of Athenian citizens exercising trade, see Xen. Mem. 3.73.6. Many others were professionally engaged in entrepreneurial activities: see Garnsey, P., Non-slave Labour in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar; Davies (n. 7), 38–72; Thompson, W. E., ‘The Athenian Entrepreneur’, AC 51 (1983), 53–85Google Scholar.

41 Apollodorus moved from Piraeus to the countryside after his father's death (Dem. 53.4) and seems to have embraced the rather extravagant lifestyle and ideology of the long-standing landed Athenian elite (Dem. 36.8, 45). See Trevett (n. 1), 164–79; Deene (n. 3), 169–74, for discussion.

42 Davies (n. 7), 37–8. The mixed holdings of Apollodorus' own father, Pasion, of Arizelus of Sphettus (Aeschin. 1.97–101), of Ciron (Davies [n. 1], no. 8443), and of Euctemon of Cephisia (ibid., no. 15164) appear to have been standard for the fourth-century propertied class, while those of men such as Demosthenes the elder (ibid., no. 3597.XIII) and of Diodotus (ibid., no. 3885) were probably exceptional.

43 See von Reden, S., ‘The Piraeus: A World Apart’, G&R 42.1 (1995), 24–37Google Scholar, for discussion.

44 Aristotle's disapproval of the so-called ‘market mob’ (agoraios ochlos), allegedly based on the grounds that their low-status lifestyle does not encourage proper virtues (Pol. 1328b40), reverberates in several texts written by and for the Athenian elite, assuming that men operating outside the norms of philia relationships were inclined towards deceit (e.g. Pl. Resp. 289e and 371c; Prt. 347c; Xen. Cyr. 1.2.3; Mem. 3.7.5). See Millett (n. 25), 218–19.

45 An exception is without any doubt the Athenian army. For the participation by metics in the Athenian armed forces, see Whitehead (n. 3), 83–6; Cohen (n. 16), 73–4; Adak (n. 15), 67–72; Engen, D. T., Honor and Profit. Athenian Trade Policy and the Economy and Society of Greece, 415–307 b.c.e. (Ann Arbor, MI, 2010), 197–202Google Scholar.

46 For ‘the tragedy of the commons’ as a sociological concept, see Hardin, G., ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162 (1986), 1243–8Google Scholar. The ‘prisoner's dilemma’ as a fundamental problem in game theory was originally framed by Flood and Dresher in 1950. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence payoffs and named it the ‘prisoner's dilemma’ (see Poundstone, W., Prisoner's Dilemma [New York, 1993]Google Scholar, for discussion).

47 For the use of social networks for collecting information among Athenian citizens, see Ober, J., Democracy and Knowledge. Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens (Princeton, NJ, 2008), 118–67Google Scholar.

48 North, D. C., Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York, 1991), 27Google Scholar.

49 See e.g. Scheidel, W., Morris, I., and Saller, R. P. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge, 2007), 374–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ober (n. 47), 17, 23–4. The concept of ‘transaction costs’ is most comprehensively described by North (n. 48), 27, as ‘the costs of measuring the valuable attributes of what is being exchanged and the costs of protecting rights and policing and enforcing agreements’. For transaction-cost economics, see Williamson, O. E., ‘The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach’, American Journal of Sociology 87 (1981), 548–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coase, R. H., The Firm, the Market, and the Law (Chicago, IL, 1988)Google Scholar; Benkler, Y., The Wealth of Networks. How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven, CT, 2006), 106–16Google Scholar.

50 For transaction costs and ancient law, see B. Frier and D. P. Kehoe, ‘Law and Economic Institutions’, in Scheidel, Morris, and Saller (n. 49), 113–43.

51 As early as 1985, Granovetter, M., ‘Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness’, American Journal of Sociology 91.3 (1985), 481–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar, condemned ‘new institutional economics’ because of its failure to acknowledge the importance of solid personal relations and networks of relations – what he called ‘embeddedness’ – in generating trust, in establishing expectations, and in creating and enforcing norms.

52 It is known that the Athenians were remarkably prosperous on a per capita basis, and much wealthier than they had formerly been: Morris, I., ‘Economic Growth in Ancient Greece’, Journal of the Institute of Theoretical Economics 160.4 (2004), 709–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, I., ‘Archaeology, Standards of Living, and Greek Economic History’, in Manning, J. G. and Morris, I. (eds.), The Ancient Economy. Evidence and Models (Stanford, CA, 2005), 91–126Google Scholar; Kron, G., ‘Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition, and Living Standards’, Historia 54 (2005), 68–83Google Scholar; S. von Reden, ‘Consumption’, in Scheidel, Morris, and Saller (n. 49), table 15.1. By the 330s, Athenian revenues appear to have been equal to or higher than what they had been in the 430s, at the height of the empire (for Athenian fourth-century prosperity and its relationship to overseas trade, see Burke, E. M., ‘Lycurgan Finances’, GRBS 26 [1985], 251–6Google Scholar; Burke, E. M., ‘The Economy of Athens in the Classical Era: Some Adjustments to the Primitivist Model’, TAPhS 122 [1992], 199–226Google Scholar). Moreover, the polis again actively financed building projects and provided welfare benefits for its citizens (Ober [n. 47], 65–6, 254–58), while the earnings of both skilled and unskilled labourers were remarkably high when compared to other pre-industrial societies (Scheidel, W., ‘Real Wages in Early Economies: Evidence for Living Standards from 1800 bce to 1300 ce’, JESHO 53.3 [2010], 425–62Google Scholar).

53 IG II² 2934: οἱ πλυνῆς : Νύμφαις : εὐξάμενοι : ἀνέθεσαν : καὶ θεοῖς πᾶσιν Ζωαγόρας : <Ζ > ωκύπρου : Ζώκυπρος : Ζωαγόρου : Θάλλος : Λεύκη Σωκράτης Πολυκράτους : Ἀπολλοφάνης : Εὐπορίωνος : Σωσίστρατος Μάνης : Μυρρίνη : Σωσίας : Σωσιγένης : Μίδας (‘To the nymphs and all the gods, fulfilling a vow, the fullers set up this tablet: Zoagoras the son of Zokypros, Zokypros the son of Zoagoras, Thallos, Leuke, Sokrates son of Polykrates, Apollophanes, the son of Euporion, Sosistratos, Manes, Myrrhine, Sosias, Sosigenes, Midas’). See Vlassopoulos, K., ‘Two Images of Ancient Slavery: The “Living Tool” and the Koinônia’, in Herrmann-Otto, E. (ed.), Sklaverei und Zwangsarbeit zwischen Akzeptanz und Widerstand (Hildesheim, 2011), 467–8Google Scholar, for discussion.

54 Although all of these associations had some connection to cult worship, Leiwo, M., ‘Religion, or Other Reasons? Private Associations in Athens’, in Frösén, J. (ed.), Early Hellenistic Athens. Symptoms of Change (Helsinki, 1997), 103–18Google Scholar, considers their main purpose to have been not religion but synousia, with common meals, and social and financial support. According to him, the connection to a cult was necessitated by the lack of any (legal) model for other kinds of associations. Others scholars persist in believing that the religious meaning of these associations must have been primary, while other aims, such as economic or social support, were of minor importance: see Vondeling, J., Eranos (Groningen, 1961), 261Google Scholar; Millett (n. 7), 151. Nevertheless, even if their primary purpose was not necessarily economic in nature, membership of these religious associations which cut across economic strata and class boundaries might still have been economically fruitful.

55 See Adkins, A. W. H., ‘Friendship and Self-sufficiency in Homer and Aristotle’, CQ 13 (1963), 30–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herman, G., Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Millett (n. 7), 109–26; Konstan, D., ‘Greek Friendship’, AJPh 117 (1996), 71–94Google Scholar; Konstan, D., Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge, 1997), 1–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, P., ‘Philia, Eunoia and the Greek Interstate Relations’, Antichthon 31 (1997), 28–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Konstan, D., ‘Reciprocity and Friendship’, in Gill, C., Postlewaite, N., and Seaford, R. (eds.), Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1998), 279–301Google Scholar, for discussion.

56 Aristotle considered the Greek polis to be both a community or association (koinonia) and a network of interconnecting koinoniai. For an analysis of the Greek city in view of the Aristotelian concept of koinonia, see Murray, O., ‘Polis and Politeia in Aristotle’, in Hansen, M. H. (ed.), The Ancient Greek City-state (Copenhagen, 1993), 197–210Google Scholar; J. Ober, ‘The Polis as a Society: Aristotle, John Rawls and the Athenian Social Contract’, in ibid.), 129–60; Vlassopoulos, K., ‘Beyond and Below the Polis: Networks, Associations, and the Writing of Greek History’, MHR 22.1 (2007), 11–22Google Scholar.

57 Granovetter (n. 51), 485–7; Granovetter, M. and Swedberg, R., The Sociology of Economic Life (Oxford, 1992), 12Google Scholar; Sahlins, M. D., Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago, IL, 1976), 55–6Google Scholar.

58 For a detailed discussion of the implications of this kind of intermingling in Athenian society, see Deene, M., Aspects of Social Mobility in Classical Athens (Ghent, 2013), 221–52Google Scholar.

59 An impression of the kind of intermingling which this state of affairs may have resulted in, might most vividly be obtained when considering the deme Rhamnous, where the arguably exceptional circumstances, particularly well attested for the latter half of the third century, present a vivid picture of the mingling of highly different individuals, which, as acknowledged by R. Osborne, ‘must have been an invariable characteristic of life in classical and Hellenistic Athens’. In Rhamnous, the continuously changing population seems to have formed groups and taken corporate actions easily, despite being unclassifiable in terms of conventional legal or social categories. While connecting in order to cooperate, residents at Rhamnous openly disregarded both the formal and informal divisions within Athenian society, such as divisions of legal status (most importantly between citizen and non-citizen), wealth, occupation, etc. See Osborne, R., ‘The Demos and its Divisions in Classical Athens’, in Murray, O. and Price, S. R. F. (eds.), The Greek City. From Homer to Alexander (Oxford, 1990), 284–5Google Scholar, for discussion.

60 For the assertion that in a networked structure, the holes between solidly linked sub-networks are points of entrepreneurial opportunity because the individuals who bridge those holes gain social capital, see Burt, R. S., Structural Holes. The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1992)Google Scholar; Burt, R. S., ‘The Contingent Value of Social Capital’, Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (1997), 355–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burt, R. S., Brokerage and Closure. An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford, 2005), 10–57Google Scholar.

61 The amount of information that we have concerning the granting of timai to both citizen and non-citizens is relatively abundant. Decisions of honour-granting institutions, such as the council or the assembly, phylai, demes, and other associations, to honour certain individuals for their services towards the state can be traced down in honorary decrees, private dedications established by former honorands, and literary texts. For collections of fifth- and fourth-century honorary decrees, see Henry, A. S., Honours and Privileges in Athenian Decrees. The Principal Formulae of Athenian Honorary Decrees (Hildesheim and New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Veligianni-Terzi, C., Wertbegriffe in den attischen Ehrendekreten der klassischen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1997), 14–151Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., ‘Athenian State Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1: I. Decrees Honouring Athenians’, ZPE 150 (2004), 85–112Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., ‘Athenian State Laws and Decrees, 352/1–322/1: III. Decrees Honouring Foreigners. A. Citizenship, Proxeny and Euergesy’, ZPE 158 (2006), 115–58Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., ‘Athenian State Laws and Decrees, 352/1–322/1: III. Decrees Honouring Foreigners. B. Other Awards’, ZPE 159 (2007), 101–54Google Scholar; Lambert, S. D., Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1–322/1 bc (Leiden, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an overview of the private dedications recording grants of honours and privileges, see Veligianni-Terzi (this note), 152–62. For recent discussions of the granting of timai to non-citizens (including metics), see in particular Adak (n. 15); Engen (n. 45); Deene (n. 58), 144–62.

62 Gauthier, P., Les Cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs (Athens and Paris, 1985), 83 ff. and 184 ffGoogle Scholar.; Zelnick-Abramowitz, R., ‘Supplication and Request: Application by Foreigners to the Athenian Polis’, Mnemosyne 51.5 (1998), 554–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adak (n. 15), 196–7. The only honour which could not be requested was the grant of citizenship: see Osborne (n. 2), iv.147.

63 According to Zelnick-Abramowitz (n. 62), 557, official requests differed from private requests in that official emissaries according to the customary law had access to the boule and to the ekklesia.

64 For grants of prosodos, see IG I³ 28.16–18 (450–440); I³ 55.18 (c. 431); I³ 70.9–11 (c. 430–420); I³ 159.20–7 (c. 430); I³ 65.17–20 (c. 427/426); I³ 73 (424/3); I³ 101 I.37–9 (410/409); II² 1.72–3 (403/402); II² 145 I.4–5 (403/402); SEG 14.36.6–7 (c. 400); IG II² 86 (early fourth century); II² 24b.10–12 (c. 387/386?); Pecirka 29/31.9–13 (c. 380–370); IG II² 74 (ante 378/377); II² 180.10–15 (c. 375–350); II² 103 (369/368); II² 107 (368/367); II² 151 (ante 353/352); II² 185 (ante 353/352); II² 660 I.13–15 (c. 350–300?); II² 579.8–12 (c. 350–300?); II² 1186 (mid-fourth century); II² 226.14–17 (c. 343/342); II² 238.b (338/337); II² 426 (336–334); SEG 19.119.15–20 (c. 334–330); Hesp. 29.81–157 + IG II2 564 (c. 329–322); IG II² 549 + 306 (323/322?); II² 448 II (323/322); II² 456b.19 (307/306); II² 505 (302/301); II² 571 (late fourth century).

65 See IG II² 109, line 9 (363/362); II² 226, lines 34–5 (342); II² 408, lines 6–8 (ante 330).

66 Zelnick-Abramowitz (n. 62), 555–62; Gauthier (n. 62), 181 f. Gauthier believes that, since some of the inscriptions do not refer to the involvement of citizens, foreigners could also appear on their own in the boule or ekklesia in order to submit or defend their requests (ibid., 183 f., 187 f.). See also the criticism by Zelnick-Abramowitz, R., Not Wholly Free. The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World (Leiden, 2005), 560Google Scholar.

67 For the citation, see Whitehead (n. 3), 90. On connections between Athenian politicians and foreigners and on the motives for moving proxeny decrees, see Perlman, S., ‘A Note on the Political Implications of Proxenia in the Fourth Century b.c.’, CQ 8 (1958), 185–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 For multiplex relationships, see Coleman, J., ‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’, American Journal of Sociology 94 Suppl. (1988), 95–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The fact that membership to an association cut across both economic strata and legal stratus groups has led some scholars to consider corporate entities and associations as being characterized by clientelistic relationships: see Gallant, T. W., Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece. Reconstructing the Rural Domestic Economy (Cambridge, 1991), 143–69Google Scholar; Arnaoutoglou, I., ‘Associations and Patronage in Ancient Athens’, AncSoc 25 (1994), 5–17Google Scholar. However, the fact that the business success of Athenian citizens' depended on the cooperative attitude of and sustainable corporate networks with their non-citizen colleagues refutes the assumption that all of these relationships between citizens and non-citizens were automatically of asymmetrical nature.

69 Cohen (n. 15), 65–6.

70 This may be one of the explanations behind the observation that, although bankers were not the only businessmen who successfully used their gains in order to obtain Athenian citizenship (e.g. the salt-fish seller Chaerephilus: see Davies [n. 1], no. 15128), they above all appear – if one is allowed to make any conclusion concerning the matter from the scant amount of evidence – to have been likely to be candidates for this rarest and most valuable of all timai that could be conferred upon non-citizens. See, for instance, the lives of Pasion (ibid., no. 11672; Osborne [n. 2], T30), Pasion's ex-slave Phormion (Davies [n. 1], no. 11675.IX; Osborne [n. 2], T48), Conon (Osborne [n. 2], T81), and Epigenes (ibid., T80). Additionally, it has been presumed that the trierarch Aristolochus of Erchia was the same man as the banker Aristolochus of Dem. 45.63 (Davies [n. 1], no. 1946), and that the victorious choregos Timodemus is to be identified with the banker Timodemus of Dem. 36.29, 50 (ibid., no. 13674). See also Davies (n. 7), 65–6; Cohen (n. 15), 88–9; Osborne (n. 2), iv.196.

71 [Lys.] 8 was presumably never intended for a law court, but may have been composed to address the members of the association of which the speaker (i.e. possibly Lysias himself) was a member.