Wealth in the Archaic Period: Symbolic Rather Than Financial Capital

Why, one may ask, did men such as Hieron lavish such wealth and attention on matters that, to Thucydides at least, seemed of secondary importance? The answer to this question is simple enough and consistent with Thucydides’ analysis of the past. The tyrants of Sicily, and of Greece in general, had, we might say, great “wealth,” but not “capital.” Precious metals could store surplus wealth, whether as bullion or as coinage, but it is easy to forget that such resources are effectively inert. Almost all of us—whether we live in North America or mainland China—live in a world where accumulated wealth automatically and as if by its inner nature produces additional wealth. Capital generates interest or dividends or rent or some other form of wealth. If we accumulate money, we put it in banks, stocks, or bonds, and our money reproduces some fraction of itself as a return on our investment. For many of us, it is hard to imagine the instincts that a different system, which lacked these now pervasive financial mechanisms, would have stirred. Even those of us who grew up in formerly Communist nations understood interest payments existed, since Communist society was, in part, a reaction against such a financial system. Marx denounced “the wealth of the few that increases constantly, although they have long ceased to work.” ^[12] This condition, in which capital not only reproduces but also augments itself, is the hallmark of capitalist production: “As soon as capitalist production stands on its own two feet, it not only maintains this relation but reproduces it on a constantly expanding scale.” ^[13]

Until financial mechanisms became more pervasive and reliable, the precapitalist lord could, as we have seen, expand his power only by recourse to “political accumulation.” Capital did not automatically grow and increase its value in archaic Greece. We know, of course, that money was loaned for interest,^[14] and in this sense money could generate money, but loans were a special case, not the natural form in which to store accumulated wealth. Herodotus, for example, records a story about a certain Milesian in the early part of the sixth century (Hdt. 6.86a). Although oppressed by the instability of Ionia and the rapidity with which money changed hands, the Milesian knew that the Peloponnese was securely settled. He converted one-half of his wealth into silver (6.86a.4) and decided to deposit it with Glaukos, a Spartan renowned for justice at the time. The Spartan was supposed to safeguard the silver in its original form until the Milesian or one of his heirs returned for it, and the silver cache would, in an ideal world, simply be returned to its owner. There was no question of interest. The Milesian was grateful if he could guarantee the security and integrity of his wealth.

Another story from Herodotus illustrates the function of surplus wealth stored as precious metal. In book 7, Pythios is portrayed as the richest man in the entire Persian empire after Xerxes (Hdt. 7.27.2). He offers to Xerxes all of the money he has accumulated—two thousand talents of silver and almost four million Daric staters of gold (7.28.3). After announcing this gift, he makes a revealing comment: “All this I freely give to you: for myself, I have a sufficient livelihood from my slaves and my lands.” He keeps surplus wealth in the form of metal, but this surplus wealth is not productive. Land and labor produce wealth, and so long as Pythios controls these productive forces, he can live perfectly well without recourse to monetary wealth at all. The story, as it unfolds, reveals three tiers of wealth, each separate from the other. At one extreme stand the land and labor of Pythios, which he retains and does not offer to Xerxes (nor does Xerxes anticipate such a gift). These forces of production stand outside the normal exchange between king and subject. Next comes Pythios’s monetary wealth, and it is this wealth that he offers. His gift is wildly generous in quantity but only exceeds the amount that he might have owed in tribute.

Later in the book, however, Herodotus delimits the sphere of exchange in which monetary gifts pass from one person to another. Pythios asks to have one of his sons excused from military service. Yet the fortune of precious metals that he had offered does not justify this request. Not only does Pythios fail to get what he requests, but the request itself outrages Xerxes and provokes him to execute Pythios’s son in brutal and spectacular fashion. In a classic example of “spheres of exchange,” no amount of middle-rank gifts (e.g., money) can equal the smallest top-rank gift (in this case, military service by a single member of Pythios’s family).^[15] Xerxes’ behavior is extreme, and his cruelty here characteristic of the “oriental despot,” but the underlying framework is Greek. Money thus occupies an ambiguous position, for while it provides the material for a spectacularly generous gesture, the value of monetary exchange faces qualitative limits that no quantitative amount can transcend.

For a tyrant such as Hieron, money in the storeroom was an important thing to have, and he accumulated as much as he could, but as long as it sat in his treasury it did nothing. It was of potential use and could be expended on any number of things, but the entire time he kept it hidden away, it remained unchanged. Where capital is a living entity that grows of itself, wealth is inanimate and inert. The effective price of gold may well rise or fall, but ten talents of silver in the back room will not transmogrify itself into eleven talents no matter how long one waits.

Pythios’s generosity was, in fact, not an idle or extravagant act, but, despite his subsequent miscalculation, in fact the best possible avenue of investment. When money does not earn financial interest, it is best invested in personal relationships. The only way in which wealth could produce more wealth was through investment in some action that strengthened the relationship between the giver and some individual or group. In archaic societies, gifts must be repaid with interest, and gifts are, in fact, the normal productive avenue of investment. In Greek, charis is the term used to describe various facets of this reciprocal relationship of gratitude.^[16] Pythios’s story commands attention because it is a special case, given the generosity of the initial gift, the importance of the subsequent request to himself (his eldest son), and the unimportance, by some criteria, of the request to Xerxes (a single, utterly insignificant soldier). Its point comes from the fact that both Pythios and Xerxes can be seen as having transgressed separate norms: in Xerxes’ eyes, Pythios violates the implicit ranking of gifts, while Xerxes, of course, reacts to Pythios with the savagery that Herodotus repeatedly uses to characterize foreigners.

To sum up, if Pythios’s gold and silver had formed capital in a modern sense, his gift would have been grotesque, for he would have given away the source of additional wealth. But, to use Marx’s phrase, Pythios’s money was “petrified into a hoard, and it could remain in that position until the Last Judgement without a single farthing accruing to it.” ^[17] For the capitalist, money generates money, and things are commodities that serve only as a means to be converted into and out of money at a profit. The noncapitalist sells one commodity to acquire money with which to purchase another useful item, while the capitalist buys commodities only to sell them again at a profit.

In an archaic society, symbolic capital takes the place of modern capital, which does not, properly speaking, exist.^[18] Money is not in itself a source of wealth, but a temporary repository that must be cashed in and invested in some social relation before it can generate any returns. In many cases, symbolic capital represents “a disguised form of purchase of labor power, or a covert exaction of corvées.” ^[19] In the Archaeology, Thucydides is not so much analyzing inner workings of the polis as an individual social unit as he is exploring the interaction of poleis. As we noted above, Thucydides has little interest in individual states, viewing them as the constituents out of which larger, more viable units can be assembled. Archaic Greek culture gave enormous value to balance and moderation in personal behavior, but balance was the keystone of all interstate relations as well. Sparta had considerable power in continental Greece, and the mainland provided a prestigious theater in which to showcase Sparta’s status, but the Greek in Olbia or Rhegion, or even on Naxos, had little to fear from direct Spartan force. No Greek state could exert its authority over a critical mass of the Hellenic world. Thus no polis or league was large enough to set off a chain reaction of growth. Each was, in Thucydides’ view, mired in skirmishes with its neighbors (Thuc. 1.15.2). Sparta, by contrast, did win complete and decisive victories over Messenia but then found itself almost as debilitated as strengthened by the constant effort of exerting this mastery over a brutalized and recalcitrant population.

The “rhetoric of wealth” matches its function. Pindar, writing for the elite of the early fifth century, reflects an ideology according to which wealth, ploutos, must be displayed and expended socially: “If someone hoards hidden wealth at home and attacks others with mockery, he fails to consider that he is giving up his soul to Hades without glory” (Isthm. 1.66–68). “I take no pleasure in keeping great wealth hidden away in my hall, but in using what I have to be successful and to win a good name by helping my friends. For the hopes of men who toil much come to all alike” (Nem. 1.31–32). “Wealth is widely powerful, whenever a mortal man receives it, blended with pure excellence, from the hands of fortune, and takes it as a companion that makes many friends” (Pyth. 5.1–4). The expenditure of wealth (dapanê) is good. At Isthm. 1.42, financial expenditure (dapanê) commands as much admiration as the physical stress of training (ponoi). The genos of the Theban Melissos delights in the expenses (dapanê) of horse racing on an international level (Isthm. 4.28–31), and they have not let these expenses (dapanai, pl.) wear out their reverence for their hopes (Isthm. 5.57–58).

Financial profit, kerdos, clearly exists by the fifth century—the coinages that began to emerge in the sixth century were popular in large measure because they could efficiently store such financial surpluses. We can see, however, that at least some of those who accumulated wealth took great pains to present themselves as the exponents of the earlier premonetary world. The relatively small island of Aigina could support roughly 4,000 people at bare subsistence, but in the first half of the fifth century it regularly fielded fleets of fifty ships or more, requiring a complement of 10,000 adult men, suggesting a population of c. 40,000.^[20] Aigina clearly generated the vast majority of its wealth through nonagricultural means, primarily seaborne trade. Starting in the sixth century, Aigina was a leading producer of coined silver and thus could afford to tie up large quantities of its wealth in precious metals. Kerdos is always a dangerous thing in Pindar^[21]—unless it is used metaphorically and converted into a special case that reverses its original nature.^[22] Raw monetary exchanges are degrading and threaten to turn even the Muse into a whore.^[23] The elite of Aigina did not, however, shun Panhellenic athletic contests or the elite medium of epinician poetry. Eleven of the forty-five complete surviving epinician poems by Pindar celebrate Aiginetan victors, and Aiginetans were far and away Pindar’s most common patrons. These men generated wealth by nontraditional means (i.e., not by agriculture), but with this monetary wealth they paid the poet Pindar to create an image that set them in a traditional position to which they held a dubious claim. The Aiginetans invested some of their surplus wealth first in supporting the training needed for international competition and then in commissioning epinician poems. But the epinician poems, it should be noted, are still read. The Aiginetans converted their silver into symbolic capital that is still paying them dividends long after they and their world have vanished.

Archaic Greece was constantly, as Marshall Sahlins, quoting Hobbes, observed of archaic societies in general, at “war with warre,” but a war in which status and prestige, rather than absolute dominance and possession of territory, were the primary goals. The weapons were less spear and sword than the public display and consumption of property, especially at the great Panhellenic gathering places. Participation in and victory at the games, the dedication of costly monuments, the building of lavish sanctuaries with temples and impressive offerings, the glorification of a city’s role (or, for colonies, the role of their founding city) in the poetic record, and the production of new poems translate a particular occasion—a victory in the games, the founding of a city, or simply a particular celebration of a local festival—into the permanent and international poetic record.^[24]

The prestige of a Greek state differed absolutely in one fundamental respect from that enjoyed, for example, by the leaders of the various empires that had flourished in Near East. If Xerxes did not receive the public respect and subordination he desired, he might be expected to appear at the head of a devastating force to annihilate those at fault. He could extract respect by command. Greek poleis could not bring such force to bear. They needed to win respect from their fellows, to move their fellow Greeks to yield this respect freely. Herodotus dramatizes how suspicious and prickly states could be: those Greek states willing to oppose Xerxes did so conditionally. In book 7 of Herodotus, the Argives and Gelon of Syracuse preferred surrender to Persia to acceptance of the hegemony of Sparta and Athens. Status was, with the occasional exception of basic survival (cf. the Melians), the single most important factor in international relations. In the end, even the Persian Wars became a contest over status. After Salamis and before Plataia, Persia no longer threatened Athens with annihilation but offered favorable terms (Hdt. 8.140). But even though it no longer needed to fear the disasters that had overtaken Miletos in 494 (Hdt. 6.18–22) or Eretria in 490 (Hdt. 6.100–102), Athens chose to continue the struggle. The desire for autonomy and respect among Greek poleis now emerged as a passion for freedom: “We will defend ourselves,” the Athenians boast, “because we long for freedom (eleutheria)” (Hdt. 8.143.1). Prestige won from Greek states was always conditional and could be denied if the claimant pushed too hard or demanded too much. The Athenians in Herodotus’s narrative constructed their opposition to Xerxes, with all of its harsh risks, as a dramatic claim for respect and prestige among their fellow Hellenes. But if Athenian resistance was perhaps the grandest such gesture, the game to which it contributed was well established.

The contest for prestige affected the rhetoric by which the elite of the archaic period presented themselves. The epinician poets portrayed tyrants in different ways than they did private victors, adopting for the tyrants “a rhetoric of extremes which suits the preeminent position and gestures of [their] patrons.” ^[25] Yet each of Pindar’s odes to Hieron also incorporates sections that stress the limits of power and thus modulate the claims of his patron.^[26] Hieron deserves praise from others, according to Pindar, because of his selfless generosity:

You are the guardian (tamias) of an ample store. You have many faithful witnesses of both good and bad. But abide in a blossoming temper, and if you are fond of always hearing sweet things spoken of you, do not be too distressed by expenses (dapanai), but, like a steersman, let your sail out to the wind. Do not be deceived, my friend, by glib profit-seeking (kerdos). The loud acclaim of renown that survives a man is all that reveals the way of life of departed men to storytellers and singers alike. The kindly excellence of Kroisos does not perish, but Phalaris, with his pitiless mind, who burned his victims in a bronze bull, is surrounded on all sides by a hateful reputation.

The underlying logic here is that of the potlatch, in which the wealthy publicly consume vast quantities of wealth. Hieron is a great man and wealthy, but he deliberately expends that wealth without regard to selfish concerns, and he thus lays a claim to praise and social approbation. Pindar equates Hieron with the kindly Kroisos and contrasts him with the murderous Phalaris. The tyrant wins praise beyond the borders of his immediate domain because he exploits his enormous powers in benevolent and socially acceptable ways. Listeners in Olbia or Olynthos, outside of Hieron’s direct control, can yield to him their jealously guarded admiration. Or, to use Bourdieu’s terminology, Hieron applies portions of his material wealth first to horse racing and then to the victory ode, but only because he thereby converts this material wealth into symbolic capital.

The pose that Pindar sketches for Hieron is not, however, confined to poetry, nor should we divide the archaic Greek world into serious/political and frivolous/literary spheres. The same rhetoric of self-presentation appears in the historical record. Diodoros, following the historian Timaios of the third century B.C., describes the aftermath of Gelon’s spectacular victory over Karthaginian forces at Himera in Sicily. Although anachronisms from the Hellenistic period may embellish this account, its overall tenor corresponds very closely to the picture from the archaic period.^[27] When Diodoros emphasizes the general consequence of this victory, he focuses upon the “respect” (Diod. 11.23.3: apodochê) and “goodwill” (eunoia) that Gelon earned. Diodoros goes on to describe an elaborate theater of power and self-effacement. Gelon’s victory earned him respect and goodwill not only in Syracuse but throughout Sicily (11.25.5). His former adversaries on the island approached him now “asking for forgiveness for their previous errors, announcing that they would in the future do everything that he ordered.” ^[28] Not to be outdone, Gelon responded by concluding an alliance but exercising great restraint (11.26.1: epieikôs chrêsamenos). He “bore his good fortune as a mortal should” (tên eutuxian anthrôpinôs epheren). Perhaps Gelon could consolidate his power and bring down his enemies by force, and so they approached him for reconciliation. On the other hand, military action is expensive, time-consuming, and risky, so Gelon played an appropriately gracious role in response. Both sides disguise their new calculations of material power in an elegant and dignified social minuet.

Gelon reserved his greatest gesture for his own polis. Tyrants who cared to live long carefully disarmed their subjects and surrounded themselves with bodyguards. More than one tyrant had been murdered by a vengeful populace once he lost control of armed force. Gelon thus staged a scene that transgressed the behavior normally attributed to a tyrant, and legitimated his rule. He commanded all citizens to assemble under arms, and then appeared among them, not only unarmed, but wearing only the simplest of clothing, and in this vulnerable condition he delivered a verbal defence of his entire life and of his dealings with the Syracusans.^[29] The crowd was amazed that he had put himself at the mercy of so many men who wished to kill him. Far from taking vengeance, they showered him with praises, and his control over Syracuse was never afterward challenged. Gelon then turned to the standard material rhetoric of the period (Diod. 11.26.7), instantiating his prestige by building temples to Demeter and Kore, dedicating a golden tripod of sixteen talents’ weight at Delphi, and beginning work on a temple to Demeter near Delphi.

Diodoros also tells us about Gelon’s death (Die wealth that could be expended on funerals—a measure that was od. 11.38). Gelon had instituted strict sumptuary laws limiting thcommon in the archaic period and that was an attempt to weaken the solidarity of powerful aristocratic clans. He left strict instructions that his own funeral should conform to these regulations and specified that he be buried in a particularly fertile field a number of miles outside of the city. The common people (11.38.5: ho dêmos) spontaneously erected an impressive grave (taphos axiologos) for Gelon and subsequently offered to him the cult due to a heros.^[30] No act could confer greater legitimacy on a Greek ruler. Whether or not we believe Diodoros’s account, its shape aptly describes the goal for which a Greek tyrant might strive and to which wealth would properly be subordinated. If the Aiginetans and Hieron enjoy the continuing audience that Pindar’s odes command, Gelon acquired sufficient symbolic or cultural capital that his subjects—and the literary tradition embodied by Timaios and Diodoros—paid dividends to his grave long after his death.