CLST 102 Lecture 15: W6L2 Work and Status

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Classical Studies
• Course: CLST 102
• Professor: Fabio Colivicchi

Document Summary

Clear that our written sources has a bias - only represents a small portion of the population (the upper class) and the stance they take (what is socially acceptable for them are different from reality) This picture very misleading, since there is ample evidence that the athenians had a much more realistic attitude: many craftsman, farmers who worked with their hands, political discourse often used someone"s work/status in arguments. Xenophon, memorabilia: impoverished athenian who lost all his land. He had to work with his hands, better than begging, but still not good. Don"t have hard data on economy, so we. At the outbreak of peloponnesian war: large part of the population was farmers who lived in the countryside. Elite owned more and better land, but in general most athenians were owners of land, usually small fields. Significant concentration of land in the hands of few was discouraged: oikos sustainability, social sustainability. Ideal = economic self-sufficiency based on agriculture/land ownership.