ABSTRACT
Traders, who formed at best a transient element in city populations, stood low in the scale of respectability and integration in the community. It is easy enough to ascertain that the world of traders had close connections, recognised as such by contemporaries, with what has been described elsewhere in this study as the demi-monde. Even before the institution of 'traders' suits', and all the more afterwards, Athens was a uniquely well-frequented port. The chance survival of a proverbial phrase from the fourth century casts another small light on the relationship between philosophising and being a trader. This is where aristocratic, 'amateur' trade shades into ordinary trade, and it becomes clearer than ever that being a trader was more comparable with following another mobile skilled occupation than with other ways of life. There are many references to traders in comedy: more in Latin than in Greek, because more Roman comedy is extant than Greek New Comedy.
