Pigs

Three years give candidate pig prices: 281, 171, and 169 B.C.

The pig price of 281 B.C. is 21.7 percent above the mean, but unfortunately I have not been able to identify any military activity in the Kyklades in that year, except for the flight of Arsinoë II from Samothrake to Egypt after the murder of her husband, Ptolemaios Keraunos. If her hasty escape brought her through Delos—likely by reason of geography—it left her no time to make an offering to Apollo to mark her passage.^[127] Nor does any evidence assign her a substantial escort of troops, or even of courtiers.

The other two sets of prices fall during the war with Perseus. For Posideon 171 B.C. is recorded a single pig price of 18.4 percent above mean. Perhaps military activity could account for it, but since the month before saw a remarkably low price of 150—28.95 percent below mean—the typical monthly cycle in pig prices we have seen year after year seems sufficient.

The case for 169 B.C. is rather better. Prices of 10.5 and 18.4 percent above mean occur in Metageitnion and Posideon, which at least suggests a trend (the price for Panemos is 6.6 percent higher than mean). Since there was a military presence on Delos itself and a bad winter affected oil prices, this year seems likely to have experienced high pig prices owing to military activity.

It is interesting to compare these results with prices for two years during which we can be certain, or virtually so, that Delos was at peace: 218 and 179 B.C. For both years, wood prices are either perfectly normal (Lenaion-Hieron, 218; Hieron-Posideon, 179) or actually low (Galaxion and Thargelion, 218; Lenaion, 179, although there is a good explanation for this price). On the contrary, oil and pig prices behave as in any other year, showing seasonal fluctuations and, in the case of pigs, some unusually high prices (Artemision, Panemos, and Metageitnion, 218; Hieron [14.5 percent] and Metageitnion [16.1 percent], 179). This is very satisfying confirmation that high wood prices really are attributable to the military operations that coincided with them, and that oil and pig prices were generally unaffected by war, unless troops were actually on Delos. Moreover, pig prices may show quite extraordinary but very transient elevations that are best attributed to the preferences of farmers and the natural history of the pig, as we have seen.

The results of this study nicely confirm the inferences drawn from the examination of seasonal price fluctuations and long-term price trends. Of

the three goods, only firewood was drawn from a relatively broad trade network, and that was limited to the Kyklades and, perhaps, Samos and a few other northerly islands. Olive oil (after 272 B.C. ) and pigs came from sources so nearby that only troops on Delos itself could affect their prices. Independent Delos was no great entrepôt, transshipping goods from and to all over the Aegean; it was a Kykladic backwater, very unlike its subsequent incarnation under the Athenians in the late second and early first centuries B.C.