ABSTRACT
In the Vth and IVth centuries industry in Greece assumed an economic and social importance which did not escape attention. When Socrates would indicate the composition of the Athenian Assembly, before mentioning the husbandmen and the small tradesmen he enumerates the fullers, the shoemakers, the masons, and the metal-workers. The men of the crafts can form the majority; their chiefs become the masters of the commonwealth. Demos gives himself into the hands of lamp-merchants, turners, leather-dressers, and cobblers, and Aristophanes puts this statement into the mouth of a sausage-seller. Moreover, the citizens abandon the lower kinds of work, and in the accounts of public works they appear as an aristocracy of labour, lost in the multitude of Metics and slaves. Nor was Athens an exception. The little towns of the Peloponnese swarmed with craftsmen; their military contingents were almost entirely formed of men with professions. The industrial callings even attracted women. Many freedwomen and daughters of citizens reduced to need devoted themselves to the works of Athene Ergane. They wove for custom, they sold yarn, ribbons, clothes, and bonnets of their own making, or they plaited wreaths.
