ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that poverty is more than a material condition created through the lack of income or wealth, but a multidimensional social relation that is shaped by discourses, structures, social practices, and societal norms. The major methodological problem in the study of ancient poverty is, therefore, knowing what to look for in the first place. Placing too much emphasis on the “gaps” deflects attention from the historical processes that create those gaps in the first place, painting certain groups of people or behaviours in a particular light or obscuring them completely. Poverty as experienced is therefore located within the structures of Athenian society, but it is also shaped by discourses that promote or constrain the actions of individuals, families, and communities, presenting these as respectable or disreputable, depending on their contexts. Land ownership, for example, was the benchmark of Athenian citizenship and central to ideologies of self-sufficiency.
