(A) The demands made by service on the Boule and the jury panels may be deduced from the following exclusions from an ordinary year of 354 days.

1. (1) Annual festival days: normally no sittings of the Boule, jury courts or Ekklesia (Ar. Thesm. 78–80, [Xen.] AP 3.8, schol. Ar. Wasps 660–3, Lys. 26.6): at least 75 days.

2. (2) Monthly festival days: normally the Ekklesia did not meet, but the Boule did. These were days 1–4 and 6–8 of each month – that is, 84 in a year, but 9 coincided with annual festival days: 75 days.

3. (3) ‘Impure’ days or days of ill omen: days involving the purification of the polis – by the rites of the Plynteria (Thargelion 25) when the garments of Athena's statue were washed, or by the hearing of homicide cases by the Areiopagos Council to rid the polis of the pollution of murder. The Areiopagos Council could judge homicide cases only on the 27th, 28th and 29th days of each month but would presumably not have done so on the major day of the Panathenaia (Hekatombaion 28) nor on the day of the Theogamia (Gamelion 27): of the somewhat less than 36 days thus available, perhaps about 15 might be postulated as ‘impure’ in any year. These days were probably not used by the Boule or by courts or by the Ekklesia. See Mikalson (1975A) 19–27.

4. […]

CONTROL AND INTERFERENCE

As head of the ‘Delian League’ from its foundation in 478/7 BC, Athens was in a position to monitor and control the long-distance movement of grain. The destruction of the Persian fleet at the battle of Eurymedon (?469 BC) left the Athenians without a serious rival in the Aegean sea, and their supremacy was thereafter not in doubt until the Sicilian débâcle of 413 BC. The career of the Athenian navy was not unchequered. In particular, something in the region of 200–250 ships were lost in Egypt in 454 BC. But no state or combination of states took the opportunity to mount a serious challenge to the Athenians. Again, the Athenians were never in a position to control all the major sea-routes. However, for geographical reasons it was relatively easy to monitor the route from the Black Sea, most of the grain imported into Old Greece came this way, and Athenian authority remained more or less unchallenged in this area throughout the period.

It does not follow from the apparent fact that the Athenians controlled this or that grain-route that they actually exploited their position of power at the expense of other states. It is appropriate to begin by addressing this concrete issue in relation to the Hellespont. Did the Athenians detain at Byzantium ships heading for the ports of other states, and did they actively steer grain ships toward the Piraeus?

The ‘Old Oligarch’, an anonymous critic of Athenian democracy of the third quarter of the fifth century, expresses a view only on the issue of Athenian interventionism at the expense of other states.

In 123 BC Gaius Gracchus as tribune of the plebs carried a measure providing for the monthly sale of grain to citizens of Rome at the fixed, low price of 6⅓ asses per modius, and for the construction of state granaries. Regular distributions of grain were a novelty in Rome and, on the scale envisaged in the Gracchan law, quite unparalleled in the earlier history of the Mediterranean world. Their institution presupposes an extraordinary expansion of Rome's power and resources, the development of a comprehensive network of supply, and a dramatic growth of the population of the city of Rome to the point where the vulnerability of its poorer inhabitants to hunger and starvation could become a political issue. This chapter sets out the main developments in the matter of supply and distribution, and assesses the ability of the Roman state to feed a fast-rising city population, in the century that separated the beginning of the Hannibalic War from the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus.

SUPPLY

Overseas suppliers

Cicero in a speech of 66 BC tells how Pompey as Grain Commissioner ‘visited Sicily, explored Africa and sailed to Sardinia … and secured those three sources of our country's food supplies’. In the age of Cicero, Sicily, Africa and Sardinia were all provinces which paid taxes to Rome in kind in the form of grain. The tithe of Sicily brought in around 3 million modii of grain each year, but the Roman government some-times drew as much again, or more, from the province. Africa might have been sending around 8 million modii of grain to Rome as tax in the same period.

PROXY-DATA

Historians of all periods before the recent past have uniformly lacked both long series of data on harvest-size in the case of staple crops, and direct quantitative data on climate, the main factor affecting agricultural performance. However, ingenious use has been made of food prices and real wages as indices of shortage or abundance, and of wine yields, harvest dates and tree rings as pointers to climatic fluctuations. Ancient historians have been unable to turn to such substitute data, though the work of dendroclimatologists will before long significantly advance our knowledge of the climate of antiquity.

However, the broad pattern of food crisis in antiquity can be recovered if such ancient evidence as exists for food crisis is combined with modern data on climate and agricultural yield. The latter data can be used as substitute or proxy-data in the absence of detailed records of climate for any period of history which experienced substantially similar climatic conditions.

Classical antiquity is generally thought to have been one such time. This supposition receives some general support from the literary sources, which present quite unsystematically a picture of a recognisably ‘Mediterranean’ climate, and from scientific analyses of glacier and tree-line fluctuations and pollen deposits. It is true that scholars have disagreed about the precise pattern of secular climatic change. But if one's interest is in conjuring up the day-to-day, year-to-year conditions of agricultural production largely at a subsistence level, these matters are of less significance than two other points about the ancient climate which are suggested by the modern meteorological data: regional diversity and interannual variability.

The role of individuals

The functioning of the Athenian democracy depended on the support of large numbers of citizens willing to attend meetings of the assembly and to act as jurors. The space on the Pnyx could not, however, accommodate anything like the whole citizen body, and though the composition of the Ekklesia was not constant, there were undoubtedly not a few who, being unable or unwilling, rarely or never entered the assembly – or the courts. The effective functioning of the Athenian polis depended also on the interest of citizens who were not simply content with listening and voting in the Ekklesia and the Dikasteria. These citizens could undertake one of the large number of offices of state which were determined by use of the Lot. Some experience would be gained in those offices, and some honour especially in the arkhonships. But collegiality, annual tenure and the prohibition of a second term limited their power, while the use of the Lot deprived them of any real significance in terms of political standing.

The ambitious individual would seek rather to gain experience in the Boule or to be elected as a member of an embassy dispatched on a particular mission or as a member of a special committee appointed to investigate a specific matter. Or he would seek one of the elected offices – in particular, to be elected as a strategos or (in the mid-fourth century) as a Festival Fund Commissioner.

Athenian attitudes to citizenship

The question of who were entitled to be Athenians in the fullest sense had, as we have seen, caused bitter controversy in the years after the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias in 510. Kleisthenes opposed the use of rigid investigation in settling disputes about an individual's origins and status and his reforms instituted a different mechanism for deciding acceptance as an Athenian. Henceforth, Athenian citizens were those descended from Athenian men who had been registered in the Kleisthenic demes at the end of the sixth century, and it was the responsibility of the demes to keep a register of their citizen members.

In 451/0, the Athenian assembly accepted Perikles' proposal to require Athenian parentage in the female as well as the male line as the basis for citizenship. The motivations of this proposal and its acceptance have been much disputed. Athens and its busy port Peiraieus were clearly attracting many foreigners to Attike – men in particular, it is likely, but women and families as well. With the marriage of foreign women into Athenian families, some Athenian fathers may have entertained fears of finding it difficult to marry their daughters to Athenian citizens, especially in the wake of Athenian war losses in the mid-450s. Athenians at large may have felt themselves confronted by a flood of outsiders, and, in particular, may have been unwilling to share, on an unrestricted basis, the opportunities that Athens now offered.

Democracy was unexpectedly restored in Athens in 403/2 by the Spartans and more predictably abolished by the Macedonians 81 years later. After a period of subservience to Sparta, Athens staged a revival dating from the battle of Cnidos in 394, which was followed up by the recovery of the islands of Lemnos, Imbros and Skyros in 392, and the capture of Byzantium and imposition of a 10% toll on all transit goods in 390. The revival had run its course by 388/7 (though the three islands remained Athenian possessions). The Spartans had retained their footholds in the Hellespont at Abydos and Sestos. Now they reasserted their authority by closing the Hellespont (while ‘pirates’ raided the Piraeus) and imposing peace on the Greek world with the aid of the Persian King (387/6). A second and more lasting Athenian resurgence was soon in progress. Profiting from the unpopularity of Sparta, the Athenians were already by the late 380s beginning to strike alliances with important states (Chios was an ally by 384), and in the summer of 378 formed the Second Athenian League. By 373 there were about 60 member states. Athens was arguably once again the strongest naval power.

The League had ceased to function as an instrument of power-politics by the mid-350s, when Athens was defeated by her allies in the Social War (357–355 BC). However 338, the date of the Macedonian victory at Chaeronea, was an even more crucial turning-point in the history of Athens. Before Chaeronea the Athenians were competing with other mainland states and latterly the emerging power of Macedon for influence and prestige in the Greek world.

The rewards and the hazards: three contemporaries

Compared with the hazards of active participation in the public life of Athens, what benefits accrued to the individuals themselves or to the Athenian community of citizens from such participation? At the individual level, it may be useful first to identify the rewards and the hazards by a consideration of the careers of three ambitious Athenians who were near-contemporaries and, in particular, by an examination of the means employed by them to advance themselves and to protect themselves against attack. Their probable dates of birth were: Iphikrates c. 418 (but perhaps as late as 413), Kallistratos not later than 415, and Timotheos 414 or earlier. And all three had achieved some public fame in their twenties – at an early age by Athenian standards.

Iphikrates was the son of a shoemaker and was conscious of his humble origins. Kallistratos was the nephew of Agyrrhios, who in the 390s proposed the introduction of pay for attending the assembly, had been active in public affairs since at least 405, and was a strategos in 388/7. Kallistratos' wealth was such that in the 360s, and probably well before, he was liable for liturgies and served as a trierarch. In 392/1 Kallistratos took his first known political step when he successfully prosecuted the envoys who were sent to Sparta to discuss peace. Agyrrhios' public debt and imprisonment may have played a part in the lull in political activity by Kallistratos in the 380s, if the silence of the sources may be so interpreted.

How was the ruling class to react as their inability to win authority over Judaea became gradually more apparent? They could hardly opt out of the invidious position into which they had been placed by Rome, except perhaps by the last resort of emigration, which was indeed quite probably the eventual fate of some of them (cf. B.J. 2.279). Rome needed local rulers and insisted that the rich took on that role. They had little choice.

Some of the ruling class presumably accepted their lot and soldiered on with blind disregard of the disorder in the countryside and among their poorer compatriots. Disorder and brigandage will have affected them directly only rarely. In the luxury of their homes they could ignore the problems of the peasants. Josephus even writes once, astonishingly, that four years before the revolt the city of Jerusalem was enjoying exceptional peace and prosperity (B. J. 6.300).

The rich themselves were not threatened by the social disorder. No class leaders had come forward to demand social justice on behalf of the oppressed (see above, p. 67). There were occasional charismatic figures who challenged their right to rule, but they won few supporters and were easily dealt with by the Roman governor (see above, p. 92).

It was normal Roman practice in the incorporation of a new province into direct rule to build upon existing institutions, and to depose the existing local leaders from power only when it seemed absolutely necessary. It will therefore be helpful in trying to understand the composition of the Judaean ruling class through which Rome ruled from a.d. 6 to 66 to delve back some way into the earlier history of the area.

The independent Jewish state of Judah came to an end in 586 b.c. with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Much of the population was carried off into exile in Mesopotamia. For many, the catastrophe seemed permanent, and they tried to build new lives, and new religious explanations of the world, in a foreign land. Babylon in turn, however, fell in 539 b.c. to Cyrus, the energetic king of Persia, and under his patronage and that of his successor the Jews began to revive their national life in Judah. The temple was gradually rebuilt and the High Priest was eventually recognized by the suzerain as the leader of the nation. This small Persian province was distinctively Jewish. The local representatives of the Persian king are known to have been in some cases Jews who maintained close, if not always friendly, relations with the governor of the neighbouring province of Samaria.

The origin of much of the social tension in Judaea lay in the growth and changing nature of the Judaean economy, which fuelled class hostility of increasing intensity. Josephus speaks of a universal sickness in Judaea from a.d. 6, which led the rich to oppress the masses and the masses to plunder the rich (B.J. 7.260–1). He sometimes describes the struggle between pro-Roman and revolutionary Jews in terms of a class war; a description which, though probably a misleading picture of the revolt itself when rich and poor were largely united against Rome (see below, pp. 176–201), is a fair reflection of much of the violence in the Judaean countryside both before the war broke out and after. Some of the revolutionaries indulged in banditry, murdering the leading men, looting the houses of the wealthy and setting villages on fire. The causes of such hostility lay in the widening gap between rich and poor as the economy of Judaea was integrated, in a unique fashion, into the wider Mediterranean world.

The centre of the Judaean economy was Jerusalem, which ‘dominates all the neighbourhood as the head towers above the body’ (B.J. 3.54). The countryside was productive: Josephus mentions grain, wood, fruits and cattle (B.J. 3.49–50), to which should be added olives and vines on the terraced hills and sheep and goats for sacrifice in the Temple.