The Athenian Working Class

Scale, Nature, and Development

Bibliographic Data

ID20084440
AuthorsHans Van Wees (corresponding author)
Year2024
Pages127-154
Publication date2024-01-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueVoiceless, Invisible, and Countless in Ancient Greece (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/9780191995514.003.0006
OpenAlexW4389256965
ISBN9780191995514
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited40

This chapter looks at those Athenians who were ‘working-class’ in the sense that they derived part or all of their livelihood by performing wage labour. It argues that that about 90 per cent of Athenians were in this category around 600 bce, and that most of them worked under highly exploitative conditions for a wage of only one-sixth of the crops they cultivated on their employers’ farms. Economic growth and social reform in the sixth century meant that a substantial ‘middle class’ of independent working producers emerged and that in classical Athens only about 55 per cent of citizens were still reliant on wages, now earned from casual or seasonal labour. Contrary to recent claims that wage labour was exceptionally well rewarded in classical Athens, this chapter argues that the Athenian working class continued to earn only a bare subsistence

Agriculture · Archaeology · Casual · Economics · Geography · Labour economics · Livelihood · Market economy · Political science · Politics · Social class · Subsistence agriculture · Wage · Working class · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Ancient Near East History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Law