LABOUR AND STATUS IN CLASSICAL ATHENS: THE CASE OF THE UNSPECIALIZED WAGE-LABOURER

Abstract

In the philosophical works of the Athenian elite, wage-labour was scorned for being incompatible with personal freedom and the practice of virtue. This line of thinking, however, economic historians recently exposed as idiosyncratic, since wage-labour in Athens has been shown to be extensive and potentially a source of high prestige. Considering the importance of specialization (tekhnê) in labour, this article focusses on the social status of a category that is usually overlooked—namely, those wage-labourers who would be deemed unspecialized. Through a close examination of popular literature, it is argued that the attitudes of elite and non-elite Athenians partially converged, since the latter looked with disdain not upon wage-labour in general but upon unspecialized wage-labour in particular.