INTRODUCTION

When did Athens become dependent on foreign grain? At what stage did imports become inevitable, no matter how good the harvest was? As with most aspects of early Greek history, the data that throw light on this issue are scanty. They consist of brief notices, often in late literary works, of various foreign adventures undertaken by Athenians and of shadowy regulations issued by Solon; of coin and pottery finds in Egypt and the Black Sea respectively, difficult to date and interpret; and of some funerary evidence from Attica which might or might not have significance for demographic trends.

On the basis of such unpromising material, the doctrine has evolved that the population of Attica had outrun its resources and was dependent on imports by the late archaic age. A prohibition on the export of agricultural products apart from olive oil, attributed to Solon by Plutarch, has been taken to imply an absolute shortage of cereals. Athenian activity abroad has been interpreted as similar in origin and purpose to the earlier colonisations in which Athens did not participate, that is, as essentially designed to reduce the number of domestic consumers and facilitate the import of grain. Recently this general argument from the nature of the colonisation movement has been complemented by the claim that the pattern of burials indicates very fast population growth in eighth-century Attica.

Recent reference works and textbooks reflect the impressive consensus that has grown up around this issue. Rhodes states in his substantial commentary on Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians that Athens already relied on imported corn to supplement the local crop by the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the sixth.