ABSTRACT
As a contribution to the overall objective of this volume to collate grain prices in the Mediterranean and surrounding regions from ancient Babylonia to modern Europe in order to analyse and compare their variability as an indicator of market performance, our chapter has two primary aims. First, to construct and present the first ever comprehensive list of attested prices of wheat and barley from the Greek, Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine worlds over the long millennium from the late fifth century BC to the early eighth century AD – with the exception of the great series of barley prices from ancient Babylonia, which is dealt with separately in this volume by Van der Spek and his team in Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 18 and 19. In our list we have tried to combine the traditional pedantic accuracy of ancient historians in reporting and interpreting the ancient prices with the more user-friendly approach of converting all prices into their equivalent in grams of silver per hectolitre of grain so they can be used for direct comparisons within antiquity and with later periods. Second, to investigate what our price data – sometimes rich, most often sparse – can or cannot tell us about market performance across the areas and ages we cover. We assess and comment on the frequent long-term stability of ancient prices, the extent and probable causes of volatility, and the apparent differences between regions and eras, some of which seem to represent significant changes in the nature of the market. In this chapter we locate our analysis of prices in broader considerations of institutions and mentality which we believe shaped or at least strongly influenced the nature of markets in our worlds and hence the grade of market performance.
