Description: Recent work on the Classical Athenian economy has emphasised its dynamism (e.g., Ober 2015; Bresson 2016), and key evidence for this lies in the occupational lexicon, that is, the sheer number of Greek terms for individual jobs. These attest to a remarkable level of labour specialisation, driven by a groundswell of market demand among a relatively egalitarian and relatively prosperous free population. In a ground-breaking study, Harris (2002) presented evidence for some 170 of these, and Lewis (2020) added further evidence, bringing the list of terms to 246, reflective of perhaps 180-200 full-time occupations once terms for part-time tasks are set aside. Yet the implications of this research for social history have not yet been explored in detail, and studies of work in Athenian society remain dominated by the old familiar jobs – the farmer, the potter, the sculptor, and the metalworker. Meanwhile, calls for studies of social history from below tend to privilege voices and agency rather than (also) the social experience of work, which arguably took up most of a labourer’s waking day. This paper will attempt to describe one occupation in fine detail as a case study: the market gardener. By looking at the location of their work, their tools, seasonal labour tasks, and customer-base, analysed in comparative perspective and drawing on a wide range of ancient source material, it will show that a much more textured social history of work in Classical Athens is possible. 

Biography: David Lewis hails from Donaghadee on the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland, and is Senior Lecturer (= Associate Professor) of Greek History and Culture at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. His work focuses on the history of labour, and he has a special interest in slavery. He is the author of Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c. 800-146 BC (Oxford University Press, 2018), and co-editor of two books: The Ancient Greek Economy: Markets, Households and City-States (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Skilled Labour and Professionalism in Ancient Greece and Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2020). 

This talk will not be available on zoom and will not be recorded.