The Ancient Economy


Book Description

"The Ancient Economy holds pride of place among the handful of genuinely influential works of ancient history. This is Finley at the height of his remarkable powers and in his finest role as historical iconoclast and intellectual provocateur. It should be required reading for every student of pre-modern modes of production, exchange, and consumption."--Josiah Ober, author of Political Dissent in Democratic Athens




Capital in Classical Antiquity


Book Description

This book discusses the extent to which Thomas Piketty’s work can offer a model for ancient economic history, both methodologically and politically. The book derives from a research workshop in Berlin in April 2018, which brought together a group of established and early career scholars to discuss the implications of Piketty’s work and related themes for classical antiquity. Key questions reflected in the text include:d: How should we characterise the ‘development’ of the economy/economies of the classical Mediterranean, in relation to the role of ‘capital’ and the prevalence of inequality? How was wealth, both public and private, evaluated and managed? How much of the wealth of their society did the ancient 1% control – and is their dominance better understood in terms of the power of capital, or the role of predation and state capture? How far did certain ancient polities – above all the Greek city-states – succeed in placing limits on the power of the rich and integrating their interests with those of the masses? Did inequality increase between the height of the Roman Principate and late antiquity, as is often believed? This book will be valuable reading for academics and students working in economic history, ancient history, and other related fields.




Capital in Classical Antiquity


Book Description

This book discusses the extent to which Thomas Piketty’s work can offer a model for ancient economic history, both methodologically and politically. The book derives from a research workshop in Berlin in April 2018, which brought together a group of established and early career scholars to discuss the implications of Piketty’s work and related themes for classical antiquity. Key questions reflected in the text include:d: How should we characterise the ‘development’ of the economy/economies of the classical Mediterranean, in relation to the role of ‘capital’ and the prevalence of inequality? How was wealth, both public and private, evaluated and managed? How much of the wealth of their society did the ancient 1% control – and is their dominance better understood in terms of the power of capital, or the role of predation and state capture? How far did certain ancient polities – above all the Greek city-states – succeed in placing limits on the power of the rich and integrating their interests with those of the masses? Did inequality increase between the height of the Roman Principate and late antiquity, as is often believed? This book will be valuable reading for academics and students working in economic history, ancient history, and other related fields.




Capital, Investment, and Innovation in the Roman World


Book Description

Investment in capital and innovation in its uses are often considered the linchpin of modern economic growth, but has this always been so? This volume aims to shed new light on the ancient Roman economy in the first book-length contribution focusing on the allocation and uses of capital and credit and the role of innovation in the Roman world.




Capital in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.




Ravenna in Late Antiquity: AD; 7. Ravenna capital: 600-850 AD


Book Description

A comprehensive survey of Ravenna's history and monuments in late antiquity, including discussions of scholarly controversies, archaeological discoveries, and interpretations of art works.




The Ancient City


Book Description

This book provides a survey of modern debates on Greek and Roman cities, and a sketch of the cities' chief characteristics.




The Classical Debt


Book Description

Ever since the International Monetary Fund’s first bailout of Greece’s sinking economy in 2010, the phrase “Greek debt” has meant one thing to the country’s creditors. But for millions who claim to prize culture over capital, it means something quite different: the symbolic debt that Western civilization owes to Greece for furnishing its principles of democracy, philosophy, mathematics, and fine art. Where did this other idea of Greek debt come from, Johanna Hanink asks, and why does it remain so compelling today? The Classical Debt investigates our abiding desire to view Greece through the lens of the ancient past. Though classical Athens was in reality a slave-owning imperial power, the city-state of Socrates and Pericles is still widely seen as a utopia of wisdom, justice, and beauty—an idealization that the ancient Athenians themselves assiduously cultivated. Greece’s allure as a travel destination dates back centuries, and Hanink examines many historical accounts that express disappointment with a Greek people who fail to live up to modern fantasies of the ancient past. More than any other movement, the spread of European philhellenism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries carved idealized conceptions of Greece in marble, reinforcing the Western habit of comparing the Greece that is with the Greece that once was. Today, as the European Union teeters and neighboring nations are convulsed by political unrest and civil war, Greece finds itself burdened by economic hardship and an unprecedented refugee crisis. Our idealized image of ancient Greece dangerously shapes how we view these contemporary European problems.




Cities, Peasants and Food in Classical Antiquity


Book Description

Sixteen essays in the social and economic history of the ancient world, by a leading historian of classical antiquity, are here brought conveniently together. Three overlapping parts deal with the urban economy and society, peasants and the rural economy, and food-supply and food-crisis. While focusing on eleven centuries of antiquity from archaic Greece to late imperial Rome, the essays include theoretical and comparative analyses of food-crisis and pastoralism, and an interdisciplinary study of the health status of the people of Rome using physical anthropology and nutritional science. A variety of subjects are treated, from the misconduct of a builders' association in late antique Sardis, to a survey of the cultural associations and physiological effects of the broad bean.




Two Romes


Book Description

An integrated collection of essays by leading scholars, Two Romes explores the changing roles and perceptions of Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity. This important examination of the "two Romes" in comparative perspective illuminates our understanding not just of both cities but of the whole late Roman world.