A history of trust in ancient Greece

256 Pages·2011·0.978 MB·English

by  Steven Johnstone

a history of trust in ancient greece

A History of ∏rust in
Ancient Greece
steven johnstone
The University of Chicago Press chicago and london
steven johnstone is associate professor in the Department of
History at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Disputes and
Democracy: The Consequences of Litigation in Ancient Athens.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2011 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2011.
Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 40509- 4 (cloth)
isbn- 10: 0-2 26- 40509- 5 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Johnstone, Steven, 1959–
A history of trust in ancient Greece / Steven Johnstone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 40509- 4 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn- 10: 0-2 26- 40509- 5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Trust—Greece—History.
2. Trust—Economic aspects—Greece. 3. Trust—Political aspects—
Greece. 4. Democracy—Greece. 5. Greece—Civilization—To
146 b.c. 6. Greece—Economic conditions—To 146 b.c. I. Title.
df231.2.j64 2011
938—dc22
2011007969
o This paper meets the requirements of ansi / n iso z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Adam, you!

contents
Preface ix Acknowledgments xi
• •
1 introduction 1

• •
2 haggling 12

• •
3 measuring 35

• •
4 keeping track 62

• •
5 valuing 81

• •
6 collaborating 111

• •
7 apportioning liability 127

• •
8 deciding 148

• •
Common Greek Weights and Measures 171
•
Notes 173 Bibliography 217
• •
Index of Passages Cited 233 General Index 237
• •

preface
Henry Adams remarks:
A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life,
but his deed stops there. A teacher aff ects eternity; he can never tell
where his infl uence stops. A teacher is expected to teach truth, and may
perhaps fl atter himself that he does so, if he stops with the alphabet or
the multiplication table, as a mother teaches truth by making her child
eat with a spoon; but morals are quite another truth and philosophy is
more complex still. A teacher . . . makes of his scholars either priests or
atheists, plutocrats or socialists, judges or anarchists, almost in spite of
himself. In essence incoherent and immoral, history had either to be
taught as such—or falsifi ed.1
This relationship between teacher and student may have existed in
A dams’s time, but it is much too intimate and unpredictable to be tol-
erated in our own. The state demands docile workers, students long for
well- paying jobs, and teachers balk at accepting the troubling infl uence
that comes with relinquishing control. No one wants a teacher who cre-
ates both tyrants and philosophers, equally useless.
The same objections do not apply to an author. The change from
teacher to author, from students to readers, restores the erratic and pro-
found possibilities of the relationship. If an author disavows the disciplin-
ing of his readers, if he refuses to impose the etiquette of coherent history
and emancipates his readers to forge their own truth, if he imagines that
his book, instead of remaking readers in his own image, might free them
even to confound him, he recognizes that the readers’ freedom and even
transformation comes not from the author’s imposing it but through their
struggling themselves to make meaning out of history. An author’s work
provides only the materials or possibility of transformation; your mode
of reading—of historical realism, of contemporary relevance, of theo-