Athenian Manufacturing

“The standard of living in Athens in classical times was high – and not just in relation to the period, but by comparison with almost any other society until recently,” writes Peter Acton in his recent Poiesis. Economic growth in Greece between 800 and 300 BCE was between 0.6 percent and 0.9 percent  a year, twice as fast as in England and Holland before the Industrial Revolution. Health, as measured by bone density, increased rapidly, despite urbanization. . . . Houses, though not luxurious, were large and comfortable by the standards of the time. . . . By classical times the basic daily wage was around six times subsistence requirements and half of Athens’s population lived a life that would have been described as ‘decent or middling’ in Holland and better than the typical Briton in the eighteenth century” (3-4).

One of the keys to this success was the growth of manufacturing in ancient Athens: “Athens was rich in raw materials including marble, limestone, clay, and silver, and trading partners provided other luxury items such as fine cloth, spices, and precious metals, often for further processing in Athens. Classical times saw a major increase in output, especially in mining, metalwork, stone, timber, and housing. . . . Quality rose along with quantity” (4-5). 

Manufacturing businesses were comparatively large: “It is a common mistake to see manufacturing as having undergone a steady progression from self-sufficiency based on home crafts to mechanized mass production; in reality individual craftsmen, small workshops, cooperative production arrangements, and large factories have coexisted over millennia in various societies, not least in classical Athens. The average number of employees per operating business in Australia in 2000-2001 was 10.4, and, at the last count, over a quarter of businesses in contemporary Greece had fewer than 10 employees. We know of many in classical Athens that were considerably larger” (3).

Not that one would know it from most histories of Athens. He cites a recent and well-regarded “portrait” of the city that “describes a city almost wholly innocent of commercial pursuits. Nowhere in its more than 500 pages does it attempt to address how Athenians made a living. The 32-page index has no entries for craft, industry, manufacturing, metalwork, pottery, retailing, selling, vending, or workshop” (2). It’s classical history as if written by Plato who “gave craftsmen a place in his Republic” but made it clear that “industry was a much less valuable use of time than philosophical enquiry.” For Plato, “workers do not embody skills so much as appetites that need to be controlled” (12). Acton claims that one has to go back more than a century to find an equivalent to his history of “manufacturing in classical Athens.”

With training in business and classics, and experience as a business consultant, Acton is well-placed to fill the gap. Applying a model developed by the Boston Consulting Group, he gives an educated guess about how industries were formed, organized, and functioned, then focuses on specific industries like pottery, mining, textiles, word-working, construction, and agriculture. He end with a chapter examining the workers themselves – citizens, women, resident aliens, slaves. It’s revealing history, from someone who, looking at a vase or a ruined column, had the good sense to realize that somebody must have made all this stuff.