The Bazaar Fish Market in Fourth-Century Greek Comedy

Abstract

Although scholars have noticed that fish sellers receive especially negative treatment in fourthcentury comedy, they have generally attributed this negativity to the price and supply of fish or a simple cultural bias against commercial activity. I argue that to make sense of fourth-century comic fragments about the fish market, we should look to attitudes and practices among participants in modern bazaar economies as analyzed by anthropologists. If we view the comic material in light of these economies, we may more clearly glimpse the source of the negative attitude towards fish sellers and the motivation behind comic treatments of the fish market.