Homeric Talents and the Ethics of Exchange

Abstract

The Homeric talent, a quantity of unworked gold, has attracted very little scholarly comment. Yet it is a conspicuous enough feature of the Homeric economy: when Agamemnon lists the gifts with which he hopes to win over Achilles, he includes ten talents of gold (khrusou talanta) in the first line of his plutocratic catalogue. The same sum also features among the gifts Achilles receives from Priam. In what follows, I argue that the talent occupies an anomalous position within the system of Homeric gift exchange, and that this anomaly has interesting implications both within and beyond the Homeric text.

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