Classical World

In the course of his discussion of φιλία in the Nicomachean Ethics (8.13), Aristotle writes: "it seems that, as justice is of two kinds, one unwritten and the other legal, one kind of friendship of utility is moral [ἠθική] and the other legal [νομική]. . . . The legal type is that which is on fixed terms; its purely commercial variety is on the basis of immediate payment [literally, hand to hand], while the more liberal variety allows time, but stipulates for a definite quid pro quo. In this variety the debt is clear and not ambiguous, but in the postponement it contains an element of friendliness [φιλικόν]; and so some states do not allow suits arising out of such agreements, but think men who have bargained on a basis of credit ought to accept the consequences. The moral type is not on fixed terms; it makes a gift, or does whatever it does, as to a friend" (trans. W. D. Ross). Although Steven Johnstone does not cite this passage, it might have served as [End Page 529] an epigraph to his study of the role of trust in social and commercial relations in classical Greece. For Aristotle, apart from payment on the spot, all interpersonal exchange is premised on trust and hence on a degree of affection.

Indeed, Johnstone goes beyond Aristotle in demonstrating that even instant payment for goods required a good measure of trust. For knowing the worth of the goods you were purchasing in the agora or elsewhere was a major challenge. Weights and measures were often approximate, and in any case rarely and inconsistently applied in commercial transactions. In such a system, haggling is a way of diminishing the knowledge gap between the buyer, who is ignorant of the quality of the goods he is about to purchase, and the seller, who may well have better information: "because of qualitative disparities of goods, ancient particular prices have a less direct relation to any abstract price than modern particular prices do" (47). The same difficulties beset personal account keeping, for example on a farm; though I am inclined to think that the Greeks could total sums, even fractions, in their heads (very possibly better than we can), Johnstone demonstrates convincingly that there was no systematic effort to measure production. What is more, "the practices of assigning money values, τιμήματα, were radically subjective" (82); class distinctions, for example, were not based on clear monetary criteria (witness the practice of antidosis to determine relative wealth).

With the sixth chapter, Johnstone turns to social rather than economic themes, although his argument makes it clear that there is no hard and fast distinction between the two. He argues that citizens on official boards generally tried to reach a consensus rather than decide matters by vote, although the latter was available as a last resort. Even the practice of collective liability, as in the case of the generals at Arginusae, may be seen as an effort to overcome practical obstacles: "The allocation of responsibility in equal shares was not just the consequence of democratic ideologies or a cause of group solidarity; it also constituted a simple algorithm for distributing liability in the face of a real and even daunting difficulty: the problem of information" (137).

In the final chapter, Johnstone argues, rather cursorily, that rhetoric was not just a skill practiced by speakers for the purpose of persuasion, but was a generalized ability in Athens, "where every speaker could expect that someone else would challenge and disenchant his words and where speeches would be received by listeners wise to all the tricks of language" (149). I am sympathetic to this notion of an "active audience" (153). Theophrastus advised speakers to leave gaps in their orations, "for by catching on to what has been omitted by you he [the listener] becomes not just part of your audience but also a witness [μαρτύς] on your side" (Demetrius, On Interpretation 222 = Theoph. 696 Fortenbaugh). Thucydides' account of the debate over the fate...