Quick questions on The economic activities of Periclean Athens: HSC Ancient History

The agora sat at the civic and commercial heart of Athens, a large open square ringed by stoas, shops and civic buildings where citizens, metics and visitors traded everyday goods, from food and pottery to textiles and slaves. Trade in the agora was not left unregulated. The agoranomoi, market officials, oversaw fair dealing and correct weights and measures across the marketplace generally, while a specialised board, the sitophylakes or grain wardens, supervised the sale of grain specifically, checking prices and quantities to prevent profiteering in Athens' single most sensitive commodity. The agora therefore combined the ordinary daily business of a Greek city with the state's direct interest in making sure its most critical import reached ordinary households at a fair price.

Athens had no general income tax on its own citizens in peacetime; instead, the city extracted resources from its wealthiest members through liturgies, compulsory public duties personally funded by the individual rather than paid as cash into the treasury. The costliest was the trierarchy, in which a wealthy citizen funded the fitting-out and running costs of a trireme for a year, drawn from a pool of perhaps several hundred to around a thousand of the richest Athenians who could expect to be called on in rotation, sometimes also taking command of the ship. A cheaper but still substantial liturgy was the choregia, funding the training, costumes and rehearsal expenses of a chorus competing at a major festival such as the City Dionysia or the Lenaia. Liturgists competed for public prestige as much as they resented the cost, since a successful trierarchy or a victorious chorus brought lasting civic honour, an incentive structure that let Athens fund warships and festivals without a permanent citizen tax.

Peter Garnsey (Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World, 1988) frames Athens' Black Sea grain dependence as a structural vulnerability common to large Greek cities, one that shaped foreign policy and naval strategy as much as it reflected simple commercial convenience.