Women in Stems: Produce Vendors in the Athenian Agora

In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BCE), the titular character rallies the σπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανοπώλιδες, encompassing in one word the women who sold grain, pulses, and vegetables in the Athenian agora (Ar. Lys. 457). Female produce vendors appear in Old Comedy as interlocutors and instigators, and while such depictions played for laughs rather than accuracy, these women appear to have been a fixture of the classical marketplace (Ar. Ach. 478; Wasps 497-9; Thesm. 387, 456). This paper examines the role of women in the production and sale of garden products, using literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence to better understand an understudied area of the Greek economy, one which operated between urban and rural spheres of activity.

In contrast to the elite culture of female seclusion, many Attic women were active in the agora, selling a range of goods including vegetables, herbs, and flowers for garlands, wreaths, and medicine (Cohen 2016, 717; Lewis 2016, 382-4). They are attested in fourth-century inscriptions (IG II2 1554, 40, 66–7; IG II2 1561, 22–7), working alone or with family members (Meyer 2010; Kennedy 2014, 126–33). Past studies mention the involvement of women in different areas of agriculture (Scheidel 1995-6; Saller 2007, 102), but not the full chaîne opératoire from primary production to the manufacture, sale, and use of plant products. Investigating the role of these women in the agricultural economy also offers insights into the intensive cultivation of suburban market plots (Carroll-Spillecke 1989, 16; Bresson 2016, 129–31). Economic histories have focused so far on staple commodities— grain, wine, oil — and if gardens are mentioned at all, it is usually only kitchen gardens, cultivated for subsistence rather than profit (Burford 1993, 135– 7; Krasilnikoff 2000, 178–9). But since recent interdisciplinary research attests to agricultural market integration in southern Greece sooner than previously believed (Izdebski et al. 2020), the production and sale of specialized garden products is worth revisiting.

If Athenian women were legally restricted to low-value transactions (Isae. 10.10), then female vendors likely sold produce grown or gathered in plots around the city rather than purchasing stock wholesale (Kuenen-Janssens 1941, 213). In one case, a female grocer lived by a spring (IG III App. 87, 8), which may have watered her garden. This kind of small-scale cultivation and trade operated entirely within an urban context, offering an alternative model to Plato’s suggestion that farmers should sell to vendors and return to their fields, rather than selling their own product (Rep. 371c–d). While this may have been the case for male citizen farmers, gardens could have been profitably cultivated at a scale accessible to more marginal groups. Market gardening, like selling in the agora, may have come with a certain amount of social stigma (Brock 1994, 339, n. 19). But as demonstrated for poor families in the Roman world, small peri- urban gardens provided a vital food source and opportunities to participate in the local economy (Linderski 2001, 305-8). Attic women clearly found similar opportunities in the “free space” of the Athenian agora (Vlassopoulos 2007).