INTRODUCTION

This chapter addresses several questions. In the Greek world of the classical period what sorts of people engaged in inter-regional trade? Was there a clear division of labor, whereby some earned most of their living from long-distance trade and still others engaged in it as a sideline activity?

I argue that in the classical period there was a clear division of labor. One group, composed of those called emporoi and nauklēroi, derived most of their livelihood from inter-regional trade. (These two words are commonly and somewhat misleadingly rendered in English as “traders” and “shipowners”; in his 1935 article Finley [333–6] rightly pointed out that nauklēroi may have regularly engaged in emporia themselves.) The second group consists of various sorts of people who engaged in emporia from time to time but who did not rely on it for most of their livelihood.

That in brief is the general picture. Can we be more specific? Yes and no. On the one hand we can mention other traits that usually seem to characterize those called emporoi or nauklēroi. On the other, as Finley (1935: 320–2, 333–6) showed, the ways in which these words were actually used prevent us from claiming that, because someone is called an emporos, then by definition he must have made a career of wholesale trade in goods, carried by him on someone else's ship, that were owned but not produced by him.