A real estate ‘market’ in classical greece? the example of town housing

Annual of the British School at Athens

Volumn 95, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 329-343

  Nevett, Lisa ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85012537527     PISSN: 00682454     EISSN: 20452403     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400004706     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. See e.g., L. Foxhall, ‘Household, gender and property in Classical Athens’ CQ, n.s. 39 (1989), 22-44, at p. 2810.1017/S0009838800040465 B. Strauss, ‘Oikos/polis: towards a theory of Athenian paternal ideology 450-399 BC’, in Aspects of Athenian Democracy (Classica et Mediaevalia Dissertationes, ii; Copenhagen, 1990), 101-27, at 104; id., Fathers and Sons in Athens: Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1993). 34.
2. M. I. Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (London, 1981), 71.
3. S. D. Lambert, Rationes Centesimarum: Sales of Public Land in Lykourgan Athens (Amsterdam, 1997), 231.
4. Rationes Centesimarum: Sales of Public Land in Lykourgan Athens. 232 n. 67.
5. The excavator, D. M. Robinson, published the inscriptions in a series of articles on epigraphic finds from the site, listed above (n. 1). Additional information about the find spots of some of the documents is also given in the relevant volumes of the final publication of the site (D. M. Robinson, Excavations at Olynthus i-xiv, [Baltimore, 1928-1952]), as part of the more general discussion of individual houses. I have not reproduced the texts here since I have not had the opportunity to inspect the stones or squeezes, and I have not proposed any new readings. For recent re-evaluation of the inscriptions, including some new readings, see Hatzopoulos 1988 (n. 6) and Hennig (n. 6). The sources and discussion for each inscription are summarized in Appendix 1 below, grouped according to type of find spot, and the individual inscriptions are referred to in the text of this paper using the numbers assigned there.
6. Appendix, 1, nos. 3, and 8.
7. Hatzopoulos (n. 6), 62-4, and E. M. Harris, ‘When is a sale not a sale? The riddle of Athenian terminology for real security revisited’, CQ n.s. 38 (1988), 351-8110.1017/S0009838800037010.
8. Appendix, nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14; in some cases the heading is missing, but the preposition is preserved.
9. These inscriptions were published by Robinson alongside the documents relating to property transactions (the relevant articles are listed in n. 1). They comprise three peace treaties dating to the first half of the 4th c. (Robinson 1938, 44-7; id. 1943, 103-24) and a handful of stelai ranging in date from the 6th-4th c. together with a number of stelai and other fragments from a range of dates down to the late Roman period. Examples from the 4th c. predominate, although this is not surprising given the major expansion in the city's population at that time and the small scale of settlement in the area during other periods.
10. Such a connection has traditionally been assumed: see, for example, Robinson 1928, 22g; Robinson 1931, 49; Robinson 1934, 120; Cahill (n. 11), 377.
11. Appendix, 4.
12. These are Appendix 12 and 15, which are both from areas where only limited excavation was undertaken. The exact find spot of 13 cannot be determined from published evidence.
13. e.g., in connection with I: Robinson 1934, 129.
14. H. J. Wolff, review of Fine 1951, and Finlcy (1985; 1ST edn. 1953), Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 70.2 (1953), 411-25, at p. 417, n. 7.
15. Fine 1951, 42.
16. These are Appendix 12 and 15, which are both from areas where only limited excavation was undertaken., 45-6.
17. These are Appendix 12 and 15, which are both from areas where only limited excavation was undertaken., 42; Finley 1985, 15-16.
18. Fine 1951, 42.
19. Appendix, 3.
20. L. C. Nevett, House and Society in the Ancient Greek World (Cambridge, 1999), 68-74.
21. Fine 1951, 46-7; Finley 1985, 19-21; S. Miller, ‘Mortgage horoi from the Athenian Agora’, Hesp. 41 (1972), 274-81, at pp. 276-9.
22. This applies to 15, which seems to have been inscribed on both sides.
23. The inscriptions dated to within this eight year period are Appendix 2, 4, 7, 13, 14, and 15 which come from only two different years. A further four are dated to a single further year, for which there is no parallel amongst the documents from elsewhere in the Chalkidiki. The information for all of the Chalkidean inscriptions is set out by Hatzopoulos 1988 (n. 6), 72-7 and 80. It does not, however, seem wise to attempt to go along with Hatzopoulos in associating each priest with a specific year on the basis of internal evidence alone.
24. Robinson 1946, 73-4; Hennig (n. 6), 149 53; Cahill (n. 11), 379.
25. V. Andreyev, ‘Some aspects of agrarian conditions in Attica in the fifth to third centuries BC’, Eirene, 12 (1974), 5-46, at 16-18 contra D. M. Lewis, ‘The Athenian rationes centesimarum’, in M. I. Finley (ed.), Problèmes de la terre en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1973), 187-212, at 194.
26. Finley 1985, 61.
27. D. M. Robinson and J. W. Graham, Excavations at Olynthus. viii: The Hellenic House (Baltimore, 1938), 98.
28. Robinson 1934, 131.
29. For example Fine 1951, nos. 1, 5, 9, 12, 15, and 17.
30. J. H. Kent, ‘The temple; estates of Delos, Rheneia and Mykonos’, Hesp. 17 (1948), 243-338, at 29310.2307/146922. Thucydides’ account (ii. 14) of the abandonment of the Attic countryside during the Peloponnesian war, with residents taking woodwork from buildings, also supports this view.
31. The available evidence suggests that additional factors, including the amount of decoration in an individual house and the numbers of finds of various types, seem not to have been associated with variation in the value of the property. Nevertheless the evidence is not conclusive, since the group of houses with associated inscriptions includes only a small number which are recorded as having been decorated, and the inventories of finds may be incomplete for various reasons (see Nevett (n. 24) 57 61).
32. See Cahill (n. II), 209 11; Nevett (n. 24), 56.
33. Cahill (n. 11), 380 3.
34. Compare the social role played by the Agora at Athens: S. von Reden, Exchange in Ancient Greece (London, 1995). 106-8; P. Millett, ‘Encounters in the Agora’, in P. Cartledge, P. Millett and S. von Reden (eds) Kosmos: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1998), 203-28, at 211-28.
35. On increase in house size, see Nevett (n. 24), passim; on the use of decoration, see E. Walter-Karydi, Die Nobilitierung des Wohnhauses (Konstanz, 1994), passim.
36. Robinson (n. 23), 60.
37. Both the epigraphic and the literary evidence from Athens and Attica are discussed in detail by W. K. Pritchett, ‘The Attic Stelai: Part II’, Hesp, 25 (1956), 178-328 at 270-210.2307/147037. This is supplemented by the texts published by Fine 1951. The number of town houses these sources yield is relatively small since many of the prices are for land, as well as or rather than housing, or else refer to rural property or to property whose location cannot be established.
38. J. K. Davies, Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens (New York, 1981). 49.
39. Compare Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens. 50.
40. This inscription seems to belong to the late 4th or early 3rd c.: Étiennc (n. 6). 43. It is interesting to note that the eleven values it provides for town houses cover a narrower range than those attested in Attica and Chalkidiki, although the mean is only slightly below that of the latter. It is difficult to evaluate the significance of this in view of the difference in date between the Tenos inscription and the evidence from the other Two areas, uncertainties over the relative value of the currency, and also because the processes leading to the recording of these particular transactions at Tenos are unknown and may have been selective.
41. Finley 1985, 61, cited above.
42. The evidence for the organization of space in houses excavated from a variety of settlements is summarized in Nevett (n. 24), chs 5 and 6.
43. For example Fine 1951, no. 26.
44. R. Osborne, ‘The potential mobility of human populations’. OJA 10.2 (1991), 231-52, at pp. 239-46.
45. Robinson 1934, 129-30; ‘The potential mobility of human populations’. 131-2; id. 1938, 55-6. A further document published by Wilhelm (A. Wilhelm, ‘Inschrift aus der Chalkidiki―’, Neue Beiträge zur Inschriftenkunde, 1 (1911) 42-4) is cited by Hatzopoulos 1988 (n. 6), 24 n. 1, and Cahill (n. II), 452 as coming from Olynthos, although this is not stated in the original publication and Hatzopoulos appears to suggest elsewhere that the inscription is from Arnaia (Laringovi) (Hatzopoulos 1988 (n. 6), 15 n. 4).