Dinheiro e sociedade (Teofrasto, Caracteres)

Abstract

Leaving aside all the ambiguities pertaining to the relationship of Theophrastus’s Characters with other conventional models in Greek literature, they are beyond all doubt related to 4th century B.C. Athenian society, thus portraying the behaviour and attitudes of some characteristic human types. Bearing in mind the importance of money within the life of the social community of the time we will seek to pin down expressive flashes in most of the thirty portraits that make up Theophrastus’s catalogue: relevance of financial status, forms of acquiring economic benefits, the meaning of money in establishing social distinction, the behaviours it determines, the external signs that give it away, the rhetoric it encompasses. From the large repertory of money references the evolution undergone by Athens, upon which years of war and crisis had imposed a more individualistic and pragmatic lifestyle, becomes evident.