GREEKS AND ETRUSCANS IN ITALY
A desire to own goods from distant places need not imply a personal interest in arranging their acquisition and trans¬port. Indeed, the exchange of goods could be a very complex phenomenon. Members of the Greek upper classes, for example, professed contempt for trade and traders, but they still engaged in exchange with outsiders. In the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries, much of this exchange took the form of gift giving and of hospitality, which established mutual obligations. Individuals of equivalent social standing in different communities sometimes exchanged gifts (usually items of prestige) and, in the process, recognized each other’s social position. Inferiors also gave gifts to their superiors in return for protection and good favor; foreign traders are known to have given gifts to members of the local elites for just this purpose.
Like Greek aristocrats, Roman elites at a later date (see Chapter Five) also professed scorn for commerce and traders, and there are Etruscan inscriptions showing the existence of a similar culture of gift giving. Leading individuals could benefit from trade without entering into a commercial relationship, and perhaps without even coming into much contact with traders. Italian aristocrats, in other words, were not merchants.
The seventh, sixth, and fifth centuries were the great age of the Etruscan and Greek cities of Italy and Sicily. In addition to the evidence provided by archeology and by inscriptions (which often prove to be obscure and uninformative), the histories of these societies are illuminated by a few literary texts. Some of them are even contemporary with the last stages of the Archaic Period; they identify major figures and events, and shed light on social and political organization.
All these texts, however, were composed at a considerable distance from the com¬munities themselves. In Greece, the writing of histories began in the fifth century. In the last third of that century, two of the greatest Greek historians wrote—if only tangentially for the most part about events in the West. First, while elaborating upon the background to the celebrated clashes between the Persian Empire the leading power in the eastern Mediterranean at the time and the Greek city-states, Herodotus (died before 420) described in varying detail the history of sev eral Greek cities of Sicily and southern Italy, and especially of the powerful “tyrants” who were often their rulers. Second, Thucydides (c. 460–c. 400) outlined the foundation of the Greek colonies in Sicily (two to three centuries before he wrote), and commented briefly on their subsequent history as part of his account of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse (the largest Greek city on the island) during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431–404). Centuries later, other Greek writers, such as Diodorus Siculus (died after 21 B.C.), a Sicilian Greek himself, and the biographer Plutarch (died after A.D. 120), also dealt with events at this early period, using and adapting previous historical works that do not survive today.