Most workshop owners were not Athenian citizens, as happened with the farming sector, where non-citizens did not have the right to own landed acres, even though they could rent land or do seasonal work as farmers. In the workshops there were probably more metics than citizens. |
Workshop production may have been hit by the Dekelian War, but it was not as hard hit as were farming and the mines. Buildings and tools were safe behind the walls that guarded Athens and the Piraeus. Of course runaway slaves could go to the Lacedaemonian encampment: we are told by Thucydides that a large part of the runaways were 'specialist' craftsmen. |
Athens was never, it must be emphasized, a city that relied mainly on workshop production - either before or after 403 B.C. There is scant corroborative evidence, in terms of workshop products, that Athens was a power in overseas trade. Profits mainly came (as both Xenophon and Andokides mention in passing) from trading farm produce and from an imperialist war.
| introduction | landowning-farming | trade | mines | | |||
| state welfare | liturgies | private property | | |||
|