Year: 2025
Type: article
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.
Source: The Classical Quarterly
Author: Konstantinos Karathanasis
Institution: Texas A&M University
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4416768483
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