The Distribution of Wealth at Athens In

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G. KRON

THE DISTRIBUTION OF W EALTH AT ATHENS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

aus: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 179 (2011) 129–138

© Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn


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THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AT ATHENS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Very little quantitative work has been done by historians on the social structure and distribution of wealth

in Classical Greece, and much of the work, which has been done, has relied heavily upon speculation.1 Most

scholars no doubt assume that we have insuf ficient source evidence to allow any conclusions to be drawn,

and until relatively recently classicists have tended to be indifferent to many of the methods of research in

social history and sociology used to good effect by historians of better documented eras.

J. K. Davies, however, made an extremely important contribution,2 sketching a wealth distribution

graph for Fourth century Athens, based primarily on three considerations. 1) That there were approxi-

mately 300 Athenians with estates worth between 3 and 4 talents, liable for the προεισφορά and the most

expensive liturgies3; 2) that there were 1,200 individuals with estates of more than a talent (I estimate 1 T.

3,000 dr.)4 liable for εἰσφοραί or for minor liturgies,5 or for membership in a trierarchic symmory between

Periander’s reform in 357/6 and Demosthenes’ in 3406; and 3) that 9,000 Athenian citizens met the 2,000dr. requirement for citizenship imposed by Antipater in 322/1, following the Lamian war, when he estab-

lished an oligarchy at Athens.7 There are a few minor points of detail in which I differ from Davies’ recon-

struction, however, nor did he analyze his results any further or compare them with other pre-industrial

societies. An important source of information on the social and economic history of Classical Athens has

therefore remained largely unexploited ever since.

1 Most notably L. Foxhall, The Control of the Attic Landscape, in B. Wells (ed.), Agriculture in Αncient Greece (Stock-holm, 1992) 155–159, which, while perhaps plausible enough, is almost entirely conjectural, followed by R. Osborne, Is it a

Farm? The Definition of Agricultural Sites and Settlements in Ancient Greece, in Agriculture in Ancient Greece, 22–7. Seealso A. Bresson, L’économie de la Grèce des cités: I. Les structures de la production (Paris, 2007) 150; L. Foxhall, Access toResources in Classical Greece: The Egalitarianism of the polis in Practice, in P. Cartledge et al. (eds.), Money, Labour and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient Greece (London and New York, 2002), 209–20, and the comments thereon byI. Morris, Archaeology as a Kind of Anthropology (A Response to David Small), in I. Morris, K. A. Raaflaub (eds.), Democra-cy 2500? Questions and Challenges (Dubuque, Iowa, 1998), 229–39. See also E. Ruschenbusch, Die Sozialstruktur der Bür-gerschaft Athens im 4. Jh. v. Chr., ZPE 59 (1985) 249–251, and, for a broader discussion of ancient Greek income inequality,which I will not discuss here, see now J. Ober, Wealthy Hellas, TAPA 140 (2010) 241–86. More work has been done, particularlyrecently, on suggesting the possible income distribution in the Roman Empire, see W. Scheidel, S. Friesen, The Size of the

Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire, JRS 99 (2009) 61–91, with references. Heretofore, most of thehard data analyzed for its implications for ancient social inequality have been records for private landholding (which excludes

much public land), rather than wealth, from Greco-Roman Egypt. See R. S. Bagnall, Landholding in Late Roman Egypt. The

Distribution of Wealth, JRS 82 (1992) 128–140; idem, Village Landholding at Aphrodito in Comparative Perspective, in J.-L.Fournet (ed.), Les archives de Dioscore d’Aphrodité cent ans après leur découverte. Histoire et culture dans l’Égypte byzan-

tine (Paris, 2008) 181–90; P. Schubert, A Yale Papyrus (P. Yale III 137) in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library III (Oakville, CT, 2001) 16–30.

2 J. K. Davies, Wealth and the Power of Wealth at Classical Athens (New York, 1981) 34–7. See also, on the interpretationof the evidence for Athenian taxation and liturgies, J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600 –300 B.C . (Oxford, 1971)xxiii–xxiv.

3 Davies, Wealth (n. 2) 26–7.4 The exact wealth value is uncertain. Nine thousand drachmae produces a better fit than one talent and is more likely to

be suf ficient to support the syntrierarchy, εἰσφορά, and lesser liturgies. One talent is surely the minimum possible, based onthe argument of Davies, Wealth (n. 2) 34–5, and given that a fortune of between 1 T. and 1 T. 4000 dr. has been attested forindividuals of doubtful liability for εἰσφορά and liturgies. See E. Ruschenbusch, Die athenischen Symmorien des 4. Jh. v. Chr., ZPE 31 (1978) 275–284, 277–8; Davies, Propertied Families (n. 2) xxiii–iv. The possible 6,000 dr. property qualification forthe πεντακοσιομέδιμνοι may also offer some corroboration. See Pollux 8, 30; Davies, Wealth (n. 2) 36.

5 Isoc. 15.145.

6 Dem. 21, 154; Dem. 14, 16.

7 Diod. 18, 18, 4–5; Plut. Phoc. 28, 7; Ktesikles ap. Athen. 6, 272C.


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Davies’ graph does have to be modified in one important respect, however. I believe that Hansen has

demonstrated,8 despite Ruschenbusch’s objections,9 that the population of Fourth century Athens after

the Lamian war will have been 31,000 adult male citizens rather than 21,000, and my analysis of possible

wealth distribution curves effectively rules out the smaller figure.

At the highest wealth values, the curve is so steep that it is extremely dif ficult to determine the proper

slope or to calculate the area under the curve. Fortunately, as Ruschenbusch and Mossé have shown to a

reasonable degree of certainty,10 only the wealthiest 1200 Athenians were liable for εἰσφορά (or for the

trierarchy under Periander’s system), and since we know that the wealth of those liable for these obligations

was between 6,000 and 5,750 talents,11 we can estimate the wealth of the richest 300 or 1% indirectly by

8 See, among others, M. H. Hansen, Demography and Democracy: The Number of Athenian Citizens in the Fourth Cen-tury B.C. (Herning, 1986); idem, Demography and Democracy Once Again, ZPE 75 (1988) 189–193; idem, Demography and

Democracy. A Reply to Eberhard Ruschenbusch, Ancient History Bulletin 3 (1989) 40–44.9 E. Ruschenbusch, Epheben, Buleuten und die Bürgerzahl von Athen um 330 v. Chr., ZPE 41 (1981) 103–105; idem, Noch

einmal die Bürgerzahl Athens um 330 v. Chr., ZPE 44 (1981) 110–112; idem, Zum letzten Mal. Die Bürgerzahl Athens im4. Jh. v. Chr., ZPE 54 (1984) 253–269, idem, Demography and democracy. Doch noch einmal die Bürgerzahl Athens im 4. Jh.v. Chr., ZPE 72 (1988) 139–140.

10 Ruschenbusch, Athenische Symmorien (n. 4); C. Mossé, Les symmories athéniennes, in Points de vue sur la fiscalitéantique (Paris, 1979) 31–42. The objections of P. J. Rhodes, Problems in Athenian Eisphora and Liturgies, AJAH 7 (1982)1–19, and D. M. MacDowell, The Law of Periandros about Symmories, CQ 36 (1986) 438–449 are convincingly addressed byE. Ruschenbusch, Symmorienprobleme, ZPE 69 (1987) 75–81. For more recent literature, see also M. Christ, The Evolution ofthe Eisphora in Classical Athens, CQ 57 (2007) 53–69, but note that his own argument is dubious, based on a very hazardousargument from silence.

11 Dem. 14 (Symm.), 19; 27; Philoch. 328F 46 (6,000 T.); Poly. 2, 62, 7 (5,750 T.). These sources suggest that the τίμημα ofAthens was presumably the capital subject to taxation, rather than the total wealth of the society, as Demosthenes 14.26–7 also

seems to make clear, since one can directly calculate the yield of an εἰσφορά tax as a proportion of it. The Florentine catasto,which exempted any estates worth less than 200 florins from the forced loans or prestanze, and allowed all taxpayers to deductthat sum from their taxable wealth, offers a useful parallel.

Fig. 1. Athenian Wealth Distribution Curve


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The Distribution of Wealth at Athens in Comparative Perspective 131

subtracting the wealth of the next wealthiest 900 from the 6,000 talent figure. Nonetheless, it is comforting

to observe that we can achieve the same result by a more direct calculation, which is consistent with our

source evidence.

There were a number of estates rumoured to have been about 60 to 100 talents by various Fourth cen-tury sources.12 Although, as the speaker of Lysias’ On the Property of Aristophanes points out, there wasa common tendency to inflate large fortunes,13 we would probably not be far wrong in positing 2 individu-

als with 360,000 dr. or just under 60 talents. Demosthenes claims that his inheritance of an estate worth

just over 14 talents placed him as ἡγεμών of his symmory,14 and therefore either among the wealthiest

Athenians in the 20 symmories, or, more likely, among the wealthiest in the 100 μέρη into which these 20

symmories were in turn divided. Positing 30 individuals with 15 T. or 90,000 dr. is consistent with these

sources, and produces a good fit with our other evidence. For the cut-off for the 300 προεισφέροντες, I

have chosen 21,000 dr. or 3 T. 3,000 dr.15 These conjectures fit reasonably well when plotted on our wealth

distribution curve, but even more importantly, they imply a total wealth for the 1,200 individuals liable for

εἰσφορά of 35 million 165 thousand δραχμαί. This compares very closely with the τίμημα of 6,000 talents

or 36 million δραχμαί

given by Demosthenes for liturgists and εἰσφορά payers (5,750 T. according to Poly-bius, presumably for a different period). This close correspondence, incidentally, provides further corrobo-

ration for the claim of Ruschenbusch and Mossé that those liable for εἰσφοραί were also 1200 in number.

At the lower end of the wealth scale, we have much less evidence. The natural slope of the curve,

which is relatively flat, means that the adjustment will be rather subtle, but it is useful to refine the slope of

the curve as much as possible. I have taken into account Lysias’ speech 34 ( Against the Subversion of the Ancestral Constitution) delivered in 403 BC against the motion of Phormisius, which proposed disenfran-chising Athenians without any land (which I interpret to include garden or house plots, and certainly not

just agricultural land). Dionysius of Halicarnassus informs us that this motion would have disenfranchised

about 5,000 citizens.16 This figure is probably only a rough estimate, and the population in the late Fourth

century may have increased somewhat since 403. Nevertheless, Hansen is probably right to assume a rela-

tively stable population, and the proportion of landless Athenian citizens is also likely to have declined asAthens recovered, so I will assume that we can take 5,000 as a tentative estimate of the number of adult

male citizens with no landed wealth in the mid-4th century as well.17

The question remains just what level of wealth is likely to mark this transition from small house- or

land-owners to those who possessed only movable property. For these calculations, I have chosen the very

conservative figure of 100 dr. Our attested evidence for house prices suggests that few indeed could be

purchased for less than about 100 dr. and most of the least expensive houses seem to have been 200 to 300

12 See Davies, Wealth (n. 2) 35 note 25 and fuller analysis in Davies, Propertied Families (n. 2).13

Lys. 19. 45–53. We must also be aware of the possibility, if not likelihood, that the assets of some wealthy Atheniansmay have been concealed in order to minimize their tax burden, as argued by M. R. Christ, Liturgy Avoidance and Antido-

sis in Classical Athens, TAPA 120 (1990) 147–169 and E. E. Cohen, Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective(Princeton, 1992) 194–201.

14 Dem. 27.7.

15 See Ruschenbusch’s brilliant analysis of the implications of IG II2 1622, which suggests, arguing from independentconsiderations, a cut-off of 20,000 drachmae. See E. Ruschenbusch, Ein Beitrag zur Leiturgie und zur Eisphora: Die Höhe des

Vermögens, das die Pflicht zur Leistung einer Leiturgie und zur Zahlung der Eisphora begründete, ZPE 59 (1985) 237–240; id.,Die trierarchischen Syntelien und das Vermögen der Synteliemitglieder. Zugleich ein Beitrag zum vorhergehenden Aufsatz,

ZPE 59 (1985) 240–9, p. 242–3. For ancient evidence supporting the threshold of 3 to 4 T. for προεισφέροντες and liturgists,see Davies, Propertied Families (n. 2) xxiii–xxiv; Davies, Wealth (n. 2) 26–7. For the number of προεισφέροντες, see R. W.Wallace, The Athenian proeispherontes, Hesperia 58 (1989) 473–490.

16 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, de Lys. 32; cf. Th. Lenschau, Phormisios (1), RE XX (1941) 541–4.

17 On this assumption, this would have represented around 16% of the Athenian adult male population, a figure not dis-similar to the 14% of the Florentine population who had no net assets in the Catasto of 1427. See D. Herlihy, C. Klapisch-Zuber,

Tuscans and their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven, 1985) 251.


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dr. in value.18 Tiny parcels of land worth 50 dr. or less are attested,19 but may not have represented the

entire holding of their owners, if the fragmentation of holdings by poorer peasants attested in modern eth-

nographic studies is relevant, and it is uncertain if ownership of such small plots would have exempted the

very poor from the workings of Phormisius’ proposal. As far as movable property is concerned, Pritchettestimates, based upon his detailed study of the confiscated property of the Hermocopidae, that the furniture

of a Greek household would rarely exceed 500 dr. in total value. 20 Possession of personal effects of a fifth

of this value is not unlikely for some of the better off of the landless. Interestingly, the Roman figure of 375

sesterces for the proletarii or capite censi is equivalent to about 94 denarii or δραχμαί.21 I strongly suspectthat the Roman proletarii were significantly worse off than these landless Athenians, but at least it shouldbe clear that this 100 dr. figure is certainly not unrealistically high.

The resulting wealth estimate for mid to late 4th century Athens is 75,967,000 drachmae or 12,661

talents. When divided by the estimated 31,000 adult male citizens, this represents a mean wealth per adult

male of 2,451 dr. One can also calculate the median wealth graphically as approximately 925 dr. Although

the Athenian wealth figures most likely exclude the significant but unquantifiable metic population, and

therefore under-estimate the total wealth of Attica,22 it is comforting to find that this result is comparableto the much more securely attested mean wealth for adult males in Florence and its contado (countryside)produced by the records of the Catasto property tax levied by the Florentine government in 1427. Theserecords provide a great wealth of demographic information about a pre-industrial city-state at the height of

its prosperity and influence in international trade and banking, and have been studied in depth by Herlihy

and Klapisch-Zuber.23 They offer a figure of 15,085,331 florins as the total net wealth of Florence and its

contado, which, when divided by the 75,056 adult males in its population, yields a net wealth per adult maleof 201.0 florins.24 Two hundred florins had a purchasing power, in terms of wheat, the principal means of

subsistence for both populations, of approximately 3,088 dr.25 About 17% of the Florentine wealth total,

however, consisted of shares in the “Monte,” or the Florentine Government debt.26 Whereas Athenian

18 House prices: οἰκίδιον: 105 dr. Attic Stelai X, 16; 300 dr. Isaios 2,35; house, land, garden: 205 dr. Attic Stelai X, 17;house: 105 dr. Attic Stelai X, 15; 60 dr. Attic Stelai VI, 112–3; 350 dr.; Attic Stelai VI, 112–3; 575 dr. Hesperia 10 (1941) 14–30,ll.1–39; 215 dr. Hesperia 51 (1982) 74–98, stele II, ll.1–7; 145 dr. loc. cit., ll.16–21.

19 Low prices for land: 50 dr.; IG II2 1596, 23–4; 100 dr.; IG II2 1597 (A), ll.17–18; over 150 dr.; IG II 2 1598 A, ll.4–5;

ἐσχατιά: 50 dr. found in 6 examples: IG II2 1594, ll.27–30; 31–32; 33–4; 37–8; 39–43.20 W. K. Pritchett, A. Pippin, The Attic Stelai: Par t II, Hesperia 25 (1956) 178–328, 180.21 For the Roman census ratings, see D. W. Rathbone, The Census Qualifications of the assidui and the prima classis, in

H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg et al. (eds.), De Agricultura: In Memoriam Pieter Willem de Neeve (1945–1990) (Amsterdam, 1993)121–152.

22 No attempt has been made to estimate wealth owned or controlled by metics, for whom we have little direct evidence,

but who surely represented a significant proportion of the population of Attica, nor have we addressed the question of the num-

ber of slaves in Athenian households, significant questions, which deserve in-depth study. While the proportion of foreigners at

Florence was decidedly lower than at Athens, up to 42% of Florentine households had one or more domestic servants in 1552,

many of whom were likely chattel slaves. See R. A. Goldthwaite, The Painting Industry in Early Modern Italy, in R. E. Spear,P. Sohm (eds.), Painting for Pro fit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-century Italian Painters (New Haven, 2010) 279. Forthe prevalence of slavery at Florence, see Iris Origo, The Domestic Enemy: The Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth

and Fifteenth Centuries, Speculum 30 (1955) 321–366; R. A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore,2009) 376–7.

23 Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans (n. 17).24 See Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans (n. 17) 94 Table 4.1; 184 Table 6.5.25 One florin therefore has approximately the same purchasing power as 15.3657 dr. R. Goldthwaite, The Building of

Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, 1980) xv; 429; 436; 439 gives the following figures: 1 staio = 24.7 L; in 1427, 1 florin = 83soldi; daily wage = .70 staia wheat = 9.8 soldi. Therefore 1 florin = 8.47 (83/9.8) days’ wages and buys 5.93 (8.47 × .70) staia

of wheat = 146.4 (5.93 × 24.7) litres of wheat. At Athens, according to M. L. Lang, Weights, Measures, and Tokens (Princeton,1964) 44: 1 κοτύλη = 0.273 L and one μέδιμνος = 192 κοτύλη = 192 × 0.273 L = 52.416 L. Since 5.5 drachmae is a typicalprice for one μέδιμνος of wheat in the fourth century (see Pritchett and Pippin (n. 20) 196–8), 1 drachma buys 9.53 L wheat.

26 In 1427, 2.58 million florins of Florentine wealth consisted of public debt. See Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans (n. 17) 94 Table 4.1. For the or igins and rising importance of the Monte in the Trecento, see M. B. Becker, Florence in Transi-tion: Vol. 2. Studies in the Rise of the Territorial State (Baltimore, 1968) 151–200.


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εἰσφοραί were direct taxes, the Florentine equivalent, the Prestanze, were forced loans, which were credit-ed to the lender, could be bought and sold (at a market price well below their original value), and paid inter-

est at a low rate, which was financed using indirect sales taxes, the gabelle.27 If we exclude this public debt

from the wealth calculations, the wealth per adult male is 166.8 florins, equivalent to 2,563 dr., extremelyclose to our Athenian figures. Economic comparisons between societies, even contemporary ones, raise a

whole host of methodological problems. Nevertheless, wealth per capita does seem to have been of the same

order of magnitude in both societies. This does tend to support the impression of Beloch and Meyer (and

most of our ancient sources) of Athens as a wealthy commercial city and trading and manufacturing centre,

not unlike Quattrocento Florence, rather the primitive agrarian society portrayed by Bücher or Finley. 28

Our primary interest here is in the distribution of wealth, though. In order to allow direct comparisonsbetween wealth-distribution curves for different societies, most researchers create a standard Lorenz curve.

It graphs the share of the total wealth possessed by all individuals at or below each point of the wealth

distribution curve, and plots them against the percentile of the total population, which these individuals

represent. For a perfectly egalitarian wealth distribution, the result is a straight line along the diagonal, and

as the level of inequality increases the curve dips away from the diagonal and towards the axes. The distri-bution curves for several societies can then be mapped on the same graph and directly compared. One can

also create a simple numerical measure of inequality, called the Gini co-ef ficient, by calculating the area

between the Lorenz curve and the diagonal, which varies between a value of 0 for perfect equality up to a

value of 1 for absolute inequality.

The result for 4th century Attica is illustrated in figure 2, above, alongside specific points on the Lorenz

curves calculated for Florence in 1427, the United States in 1953, as well as the entire Lorenz curve for

England in 1911–13. As one can see, the points on the American curve for 1953–4 provides the closest fit

to the Athenian Lorenz curve. This is important evidence that the Athenian wealth distribution, as we have

estimated it, reveals no striking inconsistencies, which would suggest that any of our assumptions or source

27 Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans (n. 17) 2–4.

28 For the economy of Renaissance Florence and its relatively broad distribution of wealth, as compared to contemporaryEuropean cities, see R. A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1993); idem, Economy (n. 22).

Fig. 2. Lorenz Wealth Distribution Curves


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evidence must be discarded or radically changed. The Lorenz curve for the city of Florence is more inegali-

tarian, but not radically different, and had we mapped the Lorenz curve for the six lesser cities in Florence’s

sphere of influence (Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Prato, Cortona, and Volterra), the curve would just about bisect

the difference between Athens and Florence. The curve for England prior to World War I shows the sort ofprofound inequality, which marked truly aristocratic societies.29

The same results can be summed up more simply, if a little more crudely, by calculating the corre-

sponding Gini coef ficients, as one can see from the second column in table 1, below.

Table 1: Wealth Distribution Statistics30

Region Date Gini coef ficient Top 1% own Top 10% own

Attica ca. 321 BC 0.708 30.9 60.2

Florence 1427 0.788 (29) 68

Tuscan cities 1427 0.747 (33) 63

England 1911–3 0.95 66 92

England 1953–4 0.83 43 79

USA 1912 0.93 56.4 90

USA 1953–4 0.71 27 55

USA 1998 0.794 36.4 67.8

Canada 1998 0.69 (21) 53

The closer the Gini coef ficient is to 1, the greater the level of inequality. Our Gini coef ficient for Attica is

0.708, which when rounded off is effectively identical to the value of 0.71 for the USA in 1953–4. It is strik-ing that the Athenian wealth distribution is not dissimilar to that of a modern representative democracy and

welfare state (in a period of fairly high social equality, at least compared to the United States today), and an

extremely important corrective to the common assumption that Athenian political democracy co-existed

with a basically aristocratic and inegalitarian social structure. Of course, in absolute terms all of these

societies, including modern representative democracies, are unequal, particularly when one concentrates

on wealth distribution, which tends always to be significantly more unequal than income distribution.31 It is

only when wealth distribution curves, which seem so strikingly unequal to the casual observer, are studied,

quantified, and placed into an historical context, that one can interpret them effectively.

Our Athenian evidence is rather tenuous, of course, based on inferences from a few literary and epi-

graphic sources, but the wealth distribution evidence from Florence is very fully documented, and gives a

29 English social inequality was documented in some depth by 19th and early 20th century social reformers. See, forexample, C. Booth, Life and Labour of the London Poor – First Series: Poverty 2, Streets and Population Classi fied (London,1902, repr. New York, 1970); G. E. Fussell and J. H. Treble, Urban Poverty in Britain 1830–1914 (London, 1979); J. Burnett,Plenty and Want (London, 1979); J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing (London, 1986).

30 Sources: A. B. Atkinson, A. J. Harrison, Distribution of Personal Wealth in Britain (Cambridge, 1978) 165; A. B.Atkinson, Unequal Shares (London, 1972) 20–1; Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans (n. 17) 99 Fig. 4.1; A. B. Kennickell, AnExamination of Changes in the Distribution of Wealth From 1989 to 1998: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,

Jerome Levy Economics Institute, Bard College Working Paper no. 307 (Annandale-on Hudson, 2000); J. G. Williamson,P. H. Lindert, American Inequality – A Macroeconomic History (New York, 1980) 50 Table 3.6; E. W. Wolff, Recent Trends inWealth Ownership, 1983–1998, Jerome Levy Economics Institute, Bard College Working Paper no. 300 (Annandale-on Hud-son, 2000); L. Soltow and J. L. Van Zanden, Income and Wealth Inequality in the Netherlands, 16th–20th century (Amster-dam, 1998) 191; Statistics Canada, Assets of Canadians – An Overview of the Results of the Survey of Financial Security(Ottawa, 2000). For slightly different comparative figures, looking at household net worth and excluding business equity, see

R. Hill, T. Myatt, The Economics Anti-textbook: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Microeconomics (London, 2010) 200, table 9.3.31 See J. B. Davies, A. F. Shorrocks, The Distribution of Wealth, in A. B. Atkinson, F. Bourguignon (eds.), Handbook of Income Distribution, vol. I. (Amsterdam, 2000) 605–75.


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Gini coef ficient of 0.79 for the city of Florence itself, almost identical to the Gini coef ficient for England in

1970 and for the USA in 1998 of 0.794. Moreover, the Gini coef ficient for the six smaller cities in Florence’s

territory, is 0.75, only very slightly more unequal than Attica. The Florentine results tend to show that the

Athenian wealth distribution curve is credible for a pre-industrial city-state. We would naturally expect ahigher degree of inequality at Florence, since, with the exception of a brief interlude following the Ciompi

revolution of 1378, the Florentine government was controlled alternately by an oligarchy (albeit a relatively

broad-based one for this period) or by the Medici,32 whereas Athens was one of Greece’s first and likely

one of its most stable democracies.

The highly inegalitarian wealth distribution of England in 1911–3, which is obvious from the Lorenz

curve, is equally clear from the Gini coef ficient of 0.95. England was not unique in its high social inequal-

ity, however. Many other European and North American nations were very nearly as inegalitarian in the

early 20th century. For the USA in 1912, for example, Williamson and Lindert have estimated a Gini coef-

ficient of 0.925.

Another, arguably more immediate and intuitive, measure for illustrating the degree of inequality in

a society is to estimate the proportion of total wealth possessed by the richest 1%, 5%, and 10% of thepopulation. For 4th century Attica, the wealth distribution curve allows one to easily calculate that the

wealthiest 300 προεισφέροντες, essentially the richest 1%, owned 30.9% of the total wealth; the richest 5%

owned 49.8%; and the richest 10% owned 60.2% of the total. These figures clearly indicate a high degree of

wealth concentration, but they are actually about midway between contemporary figures for Canada, which

is generally a more egalitarian society than most industrial democracies, although it lags behind the Scan-

dinavian social democracies, and the United States, which has had a significantly higher degree of wealth

inequality than Canada, at least. For example, the wealthiest 10% in Canada now hold 53% of the total

wealth, about 7% less than the same segment of the Athenian population, whereas the wealthiest 10% in the

USA held 67.8% of the total wealth as of 1995, about 8% more than at Athens. The Gini coef ficient of wealth

inequality for the US at the same date was 0.794, closer to Renaissance Florence than to Attica. Moreover,

while these figures fluctuate, estimates for 2007 have put the share of the national non-home wealth held bythe richest 1% at about 43% of the total wealth in the United States, significantly higher than at Athens.33

The degree of inequality in truly hierarchical societies is even more striking. By 1911–3 England had

experienced more than 30 years of democratic reform and several successful challenges to dominance of

the landed aristocracy, first gathering momentum with the Third Reform Bill of 1883, which gave the vote

to the majority, but not all, of the (male) working classes.34 Nevertheless, the richest 1% still held 66% of the

total wealth of the nation, and the richest 5% a full 86%. Nor was the United States of the so-called gilded

age much more egalitarian. The top 1% in the USA in 1912 owned 56.4% of the total wealth of the nation;

the richest 5% 79.8%; and the richest 10% owned 90% of the national wealth according to Federal Trade

Commission probate statistics analyzed by Williamson and Lindert.35

32 For the Ciompi revolution, see G. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343–1378 (Princeton, 1968) and for thedevelopment of the Florentine state through its domination by the Medici, see G. Brucker, Renaissance Florence (Berkeley,1983).

33 E. W. Wolff, Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze – an

Update to 2007, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Working paper no. 589 (Annandale on Hudson, 2010) 10. For thetrends in the United States since the early 1980s, see E. W. Wolff, TopΗ eavy: A Study of the Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America (New York, 1995). For further international comparisons, see E. W. Wolff, International Perspectives on HouseholdWealth (Cheltenham, 2006). For an extremely timely analysis of the effects of income inequality on health and other measuresof social well-being, see R. Wilkinson, K. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (Lon-don, 2009). For the post-Reagan era neoliberal approach to poverty and social injustice, and the social effects of attempts to

scale back or dismantle the welfare state in the United States, see J. Goode and J. Maskovsky (eds.), The New Poverty Studies:The Ethnography of Power, Politics, and Impoverished People in the United States (New York, 2001).

34

See, for example, C. Seymour, Electoral Reform in England and Wales: The Development and Operation of the Parlia-mentary Franchise, 1832–1885 (New Haven, 1915); D. Read, The Age of Urban Democracy: England 1868–1914 (London, 1994).35 Williamson and Lindert, American Inequality (n. 30) 50 Table 3.6.


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136 G. Kron

Table 2: Share of Total Wealth possessed by richest 1%/5% of population36

Year U.K. Sweden Germany U.S. Holland

1911–3 66/86

1915 55/79

1920–2 50/77 34/- 50/76

1925 61/82 48/73

1935 54/77 42/70 33/- 42/68

1938–39 55/77 33/- 45/71

1945 38/66 26/-

1949–51 47/71 33/60 23/- 34/60

1953–55 44/71 26/- 27/- 35/61

1960 34/60 30/- 37/64

1965–66 33/59 24/48 28/- 29/- 33/59

1969–70 30/54 23/46 25/- 31/56

1972 32/57 26/-

1974–75 21/44 28/54

Appendix – Calculation of Wealth Distribution and Lorenz Curve

In order to fully quantify the results of the Athenian wealth distribution curve, I have made use of com-

puter graphing software, specifically Curvus Pro 2.5 for Power Macintosh, to fit a smooth continuous

curve through the plot points reconstructed from the ancient evidence and our estimates of the wealth of

Athenians without a house plot or land, plotting wealth in δραχμαί on the y-axis and the number of adult

male citizens on the x-axis. This software has the advantage of not only fitting curves, but of determin-

ing the coordinates of points on or near an existing curve. One is therefore able to calculate and input the

co-ordinates of a series of additional hypothetical plot-points linking the few discreet points provided by

our sources. All of these points are then plotted and fitted by the program so as to create a smoother and

more continuous curve. Further hypothetical points can then be added and the existing hypothetical points

adjusted to remove obvious discontinuities. After several iterations of this process, the wealth distribution

curve (figure 1, above) was created. The few plot-points provided by the sources effectively determine the

shape of this curve to a relatively high degree since significant adjustments of the hypothetical plot points

disrupts the smoothness of the curve and creates discontinuities or sudden changes in slope which are read-

ily visible to the naked eye.

Once we have the co-ordinates of a series of closely spaced plot-points along this curve, one can cal-

culate the wealth possessed by the entire Athenian population, or by segments of it, by calculating the area

under the graph, which can be done by a simple arithmetic method using any spreadsheet program. One

simply breaks the area under the curve into a series of rectilinear polygons defined by our final set of co-

ordinates, and makes a cumulative total of their areas. This involves a slight approximation as each segment

of the curve is modeled with a straight line, but the inaccuracy can be minimized by using a large number

of polygons and by increasing the number of segments into which the curve is divided, wherever the slope

changes most rapidly.

The inaccuracy resulting from this approximation using polygons should be little more than 1 or 2%,

as shown by Atkinson and Harrison’s study of the accuracy of linear interpolation when modeling points36 Source: Soltow and Van Zanden, Wealth Inequality (n. 30) 191.


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on continuous Lorenz curves.37 Certainly, even the crudest area calculation, one made by simply connect-

ing the original plot points by straight lines rather than a continuous curve, yields an estimate which is still

within 17% of our refined estimate breaking the area under the curve into 30 polygons. This method of

calculation should not introduce a significant error into our estimates.The formulae for the calculation of the wealth represented by the area under each segment of our

wealth distribution curve, approximated by a polygon fitted closely to the curve is expressed by the follow-

ing formula and tables.

Spreadsheet for calculation of wealth distribution

Number of adult males

= pi

Wealth (dr.)

= wi

Mean wealth

= Dpi,i+1

Number

= mean (wi,i+1)

Aggregate wealth of polygon

= area (i, i+1)

720000

2 360 000 225000 28 6300000

30 90 000 55500 270 14985000

300 21 000 18500 250 4625000

550 16 000 14000 410 5740000

960 12 000 10500 240 2520000

1 200 9 000 8250 220 1815000

1 420 7 500 6745 280 1888600

1 700 5 990 5645 174 982230

1 874 5 300 4990 288 1437120

2 162 4 680 4390 601 2638390

2 763 4 100 3875 645 2499375

3 408 3 650 3410 1 018 3471380

4 426 3 170 2910 1 560 4539600

5 986 2 650 2386,5 897 2140690,5

7 230 2 288 2205,5 897 1978333,5

8 127 2 123 2061,5 873 1799689,5

9 000 2 000 1850 1 680 3108000

10 680 1 700 1577,5 1 340 2113850

12 020 1 455 1325 2 030 2689750

14 050 1 195 1080 1 930 2084400

15 980 965 862,5 2 020 1742250

18 000 760 605 3 000 1815000

21 000 450 337,5 2 000 675000

24 000 225 162,5 2 000 325000

26 000 100 75 2 000 150000

28 000 50 25 3 000 75000

31 000 0 0 0 0

37 A. B. Atkinson, A. J. Harrison, Distribution of Personal Wealth in Britain (Cambridge, 1978) 132–6.


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138 G. Kron

Where:

Dpi,i+1= pi+1-pimean (wi,i+1) = wi+(wi+1-wi)/2

area (i, i+1) = Dpi,i+1

*mean (wi,i+1

)

Speadsheet for Lorenz curve calculations

Cumulative

Wealth

Cumulative

Population

Normalized

Wealth

Normalized

Population

0 0 0 0

23475000 300 0.309009011 0.009677419

26620000 470 0.350407662 0.01516129

33480000 960 0.440708059 0.030967742

36000000 1,200 0.473879633 0.038709677

37815000 1,420 0.497771064 0.045806452

39703600 1,700 0.522631316 0.05483871

40685830 1,874 0.535560727 0.060451613

42122950 2,162 0.554478002 0.069741935

44761340 2,763 0.589207982 0.089129032

47260715 3,408 0.622108063 0.109935484

50732095 4,426 0.66780296 0.142774194

55271695 5,986 0.727559182 0.193096774

57412385.5 7,230 0.755737782 0.233225806

59390719 8,127 0.781779225 0.26216129

61190408.5 9,000 0.80546912 0.290322581

64298408.5 10,680 0.846380728 0.344516129

66412258.5 12,020 0.874206019 0.387741935

69102008.5 14,050 0.909612067 0.453225806

71186408.5 15,980 0.937049698 0.515483871

72928658.5 18,000 0.959983498 0.580645161

74743658.5 21,000 0.983874929 0.677419355

75418658.5 24,000 0.992760172 0.774193548

75743658.5 26,000 0.997038252 0.838709677

75893658.5 28,000 0.999012751 0.903225806

75968658.5 31,000 1 1

Geoffrey Kron, Department of Greek an Roman Studies, University of Victoria, Victoria B.C., Canada

[email protected]

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