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Revealing Antiquity
La storia spezzata: Roma antica e Occidente moderno
Un'interpretazione della storia di Roma dal punto di vista della continuità della storia d'Europa.
Fatti che diventano problemi, in una ricerca che arriva dritta al cuore del nostro passato.
Fatti che diventano problemi, in una ricerca che arriva dritta al cuore del nostro passato.
262 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
2 people are currently reading
217 people want to read
About the author
Aldo Schiavone
51 books7 followersAldo Schiavone (1944) è uno degli storici italiani piú tradotti nel mondo: in inglese, francese, spagnolo, arabo, cinese. Ha insegnato nell'Università di Firenze, dove è stato preside della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza; nell'Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, di cui è stato fondatore e direttore; nella Scuola Normale Superiore. È membro dell'Institute for Advanced Study di Princeton e dell'American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Tra i suoi libri pubblicati per Einaudi: Italiani senza Italia (1998), Ius. L'invenzione del diritto in Occidente (2005, 2017), Storia e destino (2007), Spartaco. Le armi e l'uomo (2011, 2016), Ponzio Pilato. Un enigma tra storia e memoria (2016, 2017), Eguaglianza (2019) e La storia spezzata. Roma antica e Occidente moderno (2020).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 24, 2022
La Rome antique. Je connais un peu le sujet. Des textes denses et académiques, j'en ai lus. Mais ça...
Schiavone commence en déplorant que dans les dernières années, il y a eu beaucoup d'avancées dans nos connaissances sur Rome, mais que peu d'ouvrages synthétiques et accessibles ont été publiés. C'est ce qu'il propose de faire...
... juste avant de se lancer dans un long essai verbeux, bourré de néologismes et de jargon technique qu'il ne définit pas. Peut être la traduction est-elle à blâmer, mais je n'y crois pas.
La 4e de couverture et mes recherches internet promettaient deux choses sur ce livre :
1- Une analyse du débat à savoir si le passage de la Rome antique au Moyen-Âge représente plutôt une rupture ou une continuité. (C'est carrément dans le titre.)
2- Une survol historiographique. C'est-à-dire : l'histoire de l'histoire de Rome. Comment chaque époque s'est-elle servie de ses angoisses pour tenter d'expliquer la chute de Rome?
Ces deux sujets sont abordés sans réelle profondeur dans les 2-3 premiers chapitres et c'est tout.
Les 200 pages suivantes sont consacrées à une exploration de l'économie romaine telle qu'elle était comprise en 1996 (quand le livre a été écrit).
Bref, un truc assez pointu pour être déjà désuet. Et nulle part n'est mentionné que, finalement, c'était ça le sujet du livre.
Schiavone commence en déplorant que dans les dernières années, il y a eu beaucoup d'avancées dans nos connaissances sur Rome, mais que peu d'ouvrages synthétiques et accessibles ont été publiés. C'est ce qu'il propose de faire...
... juste avant de se lancer dans un long essai verbeux, bourré de néologismes et de jargon technique qu'il ne définit pas. Peut être la traduction est-elle à blâmer, mais je n'y crois pas.
La 4e de couverture et mes recherches internet promettaient deux choses sur ce livre :
1- Une analyse du débat à savoir si le passage de la Rome antique au Moyen-Âge représente plutôt une rupture ou une continuité. (C'est carrément dans le titre.)
2- Une survol historiographique. C'est-à-dire : l'histoire de l'histoire de Rome. Comment chaque époque s'est-elle servie de ses angoisses pour tenter d'expliquer la chute de Rome?
Ces deux sujets sont abordés sans réelle profondeur dans les 2-3 premiers chapitres et c'est tout.
Les 200 pages suivantes sont consacrées à une exploration de l'économie romaine telle qu'elle était comprise en 1996 (quand le livre a été écrit).
Bref, un truc assez pointu pour être déjà désuet. Et nulle part n'est mentionné que, finalement, c'était ça le sujet du livre.
February 23, 2023
«Perché mai la civiltà moderna dovette costruirsi a fatica come qualcosa di nuovo sulle rovine dell'antica, invece di essere la sua diretta continuazione?»
Schiavone cerca di rispondere a questa domanda, concentrandosi in particolare sull'economia dell'impero romano, e sui valori "culturali" dietro alle politiche economiche (per così dire, visto che come fa notare lui stesso, è poco preciso e corretto parlare di politica economica in ambito antico).
Lo schiavismo e il peculiare rapporto con il lavoro, sono i motivi fondamentali per cui, secondo l'autore, la società romana non poteva durare. Ha raggiunto un suo apice, che era considerato un apice, un limite non superabile, da parte degli stessi intellettuali romani, e non poteva andare oltre. Il crollo era quindi inevitabile.
E' un saggio molto interessante e convincente (a mio parere, c'è da dire però che io sono tutt'altro che un esperto), a volte un po' complesso nel linguaggio ma non in maniera eccessiva, ed è anche molto suggestivo nel raccontare la società romana e nel fare confronti con la modernità.
Come mi succede sempre quando leggo un saggio storico che mi piace, mi ha fatto venire voglia di leggere molto altro, sui romani ma anche sul medioevo e in generale sulla storia culturale dell'occidente.
Devo dire però che è anche un po' ridondante, soprattutto sullo schiavismo, tende un po' a ribadire più e più volte lo stesso concetto.
Schiavone cerca di rispondere a questa domanda, concentrandosi in particolare sull'economia dell'impero romano, e sui valori "culturali" dietro alle politiche economiche (per così dire, visto che come fa notare lui stesso, è poco preciso e corretto parlare di politica economica in ambito antico).
Lo schiavismo e il peculiare rapporto con il lavoro, sono i motivi fondamentali per cui, secondo l'autore, la società romana non poteva durare. Ha raggiunto un suo apice, che era considerato un apice, un limite non superabile, da parte degli stessi intellettuali romani, e non poteva andare oltre. Il crollo era quindi inevitabile.
E' un saggio molto interessante e convincente (a mio parere, c'è da dire però che io sono tutt'altro che un esperto), a volte un po' complesso nel linguaggio ma non in maniera eccessiva, ed è anche molto suggestivo nel raccontare la società romana e nel fare confronti con la modernità.
Come mi succede sempre quando leggo un saggio storico che mi piace, mi ha fatto venire voglia di leggere molto altro, sui romani ma anche sul medioevo e in generale sulla storia culturale dell'occidente.
Devo dire però che è anche un po' ridondante, soprattutto sullo schiavismo, tende un po' a ribadire più e più volte lo stesso concetto.
September 9, 2019
Schiavone asks two questions. The key question: why was there a break, a disconnect, an asymptote between ancient Rome and the modern west? Why didn't Rome continue a smooth glide into modernity? A secondary question: can we identify a point in time (well before the peak of empire) during which institutions could have emerged to allow a continuity with modernity? The answer Schiavone provides is that the Roman economy was based around slavery and this was concomitant with a separation between the rural, agricultural, and urban spheres. Mix that with strong cultural bias against commerce that was enshrined in law and you probably can't draw a line that connects Rome and the modern West without at least going on some massive detours. This is very much a "culture matters" argument and demonstrates how locked in to an economic system a society can become. I'm not completely convinced, though. It assumes a lot about the path of knowledge production in the absence of slavery, and it ignores the fact that the empire (even within the cultural milieu of anti-commercial attitudes) was very effective at facilitating trade by the very existence of the empire (it reduced trade barriers and transaction costs). Regardless of whether it convinced me, The End of the Past is informative and was a pleasure to read. Here is a much more learned review: https://notesonliberty.com/2017/04/03...
Some notes below:
- a bit of academic snark: in introducing on of his interlocutor's work, Schiavone writes "In two possibly overrated essays"- in ancient Rome (as with almost every other society before 1600), agricultural labor was idealized (so long as one owned the land he worked) and wage labor (especially relating to commerce) was scorned upon. In ancient Rome, production was pushed to the periphery of societal vision.
- "The intensification of the pressure on productive work... was accompanied (for various reasons, which were almost always military in nature) by a very strong bias toward slave labor."
- unlike in slave systems in the modern era, in ancient Rome and Greece no ethical or economic justifications for slavery were to be found. It was just a fact.
- in distinguishing modern and ancient economic systems, Schiavone notes that in modern day economies people act in spheres of activity that can (in some sense) be separated, while in ancient economies a person's identity as economic agent was never separated from his identity as kinsman, clan rival, etc. (I think this vastly overstates the separation of identities in the modern era, but exchange is certainly more anonymous).
- the author claims a distinct separation between the agricultural, rural, "archaic" economy on one side and the mercantile, urban, "advanced" economy on the other with little interaction between the two. Maybe, but is this so different from medieval or Renaissance times. The main difference here is that Rome was built on slavery and the beginning of the modern era was built on the broad emergence of wage labor.
- example of bias against merchants: starting in 219 BC, senators were banned from owning ships with tonnage greater than 300 amphorae (small even then). This disallowed merchants from carrying on their trade if they wished to become a senator and locked in the status of agricultural production.
- "Military plunder turned out to be the sole mechanism for the self-support that the Roman economy managed to build."
- The largest concentration of shipwrecks are from the 400 years between 200 BC and 200 AD, after which there was "a sudden drop (which is unlikely to have been fortuitous)"
- mix of market and government distribution mechanisms in Rome with most of the demand for wine met through market transactions and grain being doled out by the state
- the most important aspects of production had always taken place in rural surroundings and never broke free into "industrial capital"
- David Hume: "I do not remember a passage in any ancient author, where the growth of a city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture"
- rather than multiplying the number of investments and technological improvement, the availability of wealth triggered considerable unproductiveness and waste.
- if a master was killed by a slave, all of the master's slaves who lived with him were put to death
- the death sentence for hundreds of slaves was carried out due to 1 murder, even though there were plebs rioting against the punishment
- at least 35 percent of the Italian population was enslaved- the massive presence of slavery determined the "technological stagnation" of Greece and Rome
- the idea of making orderly use of the body of acquired knowledge and techniques in order to improve the quality of production cycles systematically never became a project that was pursued in an organized manner
- there was no connection between scientific knowledge and the transformation of external surroundings
- where could Rome have changed course. Several Roman thinkers (including Cicero) in the middle of the first century BC proposed restructuring the republic around a broad social coalition of small and medium-sized municipal landowners actively involved in commercial and imperial interests (I don't really see it changing much of anything)
Some notes below:
- a bit of academic snark: in introducing on of his interlocutor's work, Schiavone writes "In two possibly overrated essays"- in ancient Rome (as with almost every other society before 1600), agricultural labor was idealized (so long as one owned the land he worked) and wage labor (especially relating to commerce) was scorned upon. In ancient Rome, production was pushed to the periphery of societal vision.
- "The intensification of the pressure on productive work... was accompanied (for various reasons, which were almost always military in nature) by a very strong bias toward slave labor."
- unlike in slave systems in the modern era, in ancient Rome and Greece no ethical or economic justifications for slavery were to be found. It was just a fact.
- in distinguishing modern and ancient economic systems, Schiavone notes that in modern day economies people act in spheres of activity that can (in some sense) be separated, while in ancient economies a person's identity as economic agent was never separated from his identity as kinsman, clan rival, etc. (I think this vastly overstates the separation of identities in the modern era, but exchange is certainly more anonymous).
- the author claims a distinct separation between the agricultural, rural, "archaic" economy on one side and the mercantile, urban, "advanced" economy on the other with little interaction between the two. Maybe, but is this so different from medieval or Renaissance times. The main difference here is that Rome was built on slavery and the beginning of the modern era was built on the broad emergence of wage labor.
- example of bias against merchants: starting in 219 BC, senators were banned from owning ships with tonnage greater than 300 amphorae (small even then). This disallowed merchants from carrying on their trade if they wished to become a senator and locked in the status of agricultural production.
- "Military plunder turned out to be the sole mechanism for the self-support that the Roman economy managed to build."
- The largest concentration of shipwrecks are from the 400 years between 200 BC and 200 AD, after which there was "a sudden drop (which is unlikely to have been fortuitous)"
- mix of market and government distribution mechanisms in Rome with most of the demand for wine met through market transactions and grain being doled out by the state
- the most important aspects of production had always taken place in rural surroundings and never broke free into "industrial capital"
- David Hume: "I do not remember a passage in any ancient author, where the growth of a city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture"
- rather than multiplying the number of investments and technological improvement, the availability of wealth triggered considerable unproductiveness and waste.
- if a master was killed by a slave, all of the master's slaves who lived with him were put to death
- the death sentence for hundreds of slaves was carried out due to 1 murder, even though there were plebs rioting against the punishment
- at least 35 percent of the Italian population was enslaved- the massive presence of slavery determined the "technological stagnation" of Greece and Rome
- the idea of making orderly use of the body of acquired knowledge and techniques in order to improve the quality of production cycles systematically never became a project that was pursued in an organized manner
- there was no connection between scientific knowledge and the transformation of external surroundings
- where could Rome have changed course. Several Roman thinkers (including Cicero) in the middle of the first century BC proposed restructuring the republic around a broad social coalition of small and medium-sized municipal landowners actively involved in commercial and imperial interests (I don't really see it changing much of anything)
October 4, 2021
A malincuore devo ammettere che non sono riuscito a finirlo, una lettura veramente pesante, un fiume di parole per non dire praticamente nulla. Iper accademico, affronta un argomento spinoso e sul quale veramente potrebbero venirne fuori delle discussioni molto interessanti, invece l'autore si perde in frasi interminabili che bisogna rileggere almeno tre volte per cercare di capirne almeno vagamente il senso e il contesto.
Quello che più mi lascia interdetto è che un libro simile sia stato ripubblicato quasi 30 anni dopo la sua prima uscita da una diversa casa editrice. A questo punto l'unica spiegazione è che sono io a non avere le capacità per poterlo apprezzare.
Quello che più mi lascia interdetto è che un libro simile sia stato ripubblicato quasi 30 anni dopo la sua prima uscita da una diversa casa editrice. A questo punto l'unica spiegazione è che sono io a non avere le capacità per poterlo apprezzare.
December 24, 2019
An absolutely brilliant work of scholarship. While it's undoubtedly academic in nature and not for someone just getting interested in history, it's a very readable translation. Schiavonne tackles a question that allows for incredibly compelling thought experiments, and his extended chapter on slavery and ancient mentalities about labor is genuinely awe inspiring scholarship.
August 14, 2024
Livre très érudit. Pourrait bénéficier d'un seconde lecture. Livre assez complexe qui n'est pas toujours aisé à suivre. Très original à la frontière de l'histoire, des sciences sociales, et de la philosophie.
May 18, 2019
Chapter "Slaves, Nature, Machines" is brilliant.
June 19, 2016
Para muchos historiadores y académicos una pregunta fundamental para entender la historia del desarrollo es ¿por qué el Imperio Romano en la cúspide de su poder no dio el salto a la modernidad?
Aldo Schiavone profesor de derecho romano de la Universidad de Florencia ofrece una explicación, la desigualdad. Desigualdad en dos formas, una la evidente presencia de la esclavitud como fuente de mano de obra para realizar todo tipo de actividades económicas, desde la agricultura hasta las administrativas y por otro lado la enorme desigualdad económica y social que surgió de la tenencia de tierras entre la aristocracia ( la clase senatorial y ecuestre) y los ciudadanos libres que no se beneficiaron de la expansión territorial que comenzó en el siglo 3 A.C. y continuo hasta el siglo 2 D.C.
Schiavone revisa las ideas filosóficas, políticas y económicas que explican porque el capitalismo no inicio en Roma, como por momentos parecía que podían tomar el camino hacia la modernidad pero al final sucumbieron frente a la imposibilidad de concebir ideas que hoy parecen tan simples como el valor del trabajo y el uso económico de la ciencia y la mecánica.
Un gran libro para los interesados en los estudios clásicos y para los interesados en la historia económica del mundo antiguo.
Aldo Schiavone profesor de derecho romano de la Universidad de Florencia ofrece una explicación, la desigualdad. Desigualdad en dos formas, una la evidente presencia de la esclavitud como fuente de mano de obra para realizar todo tipo de actividades económicas, desde la agricultura hasta las administrativas y por otro lado la enorme desigualdad económica y social que surgió de la tenencia de tierras entre la aristocracia ( la clase senatorial y ecuestre) y los ciudadanos libres que no se beneficiaron de la expansión territorial que comenzó en el siglo 3 A.C. y continuo hasta el siglo 2 D.C.
Schiavone revisa las ideas filosóficas, políticas y económicas que explican porque el capitalismo no inicio en Roma, como por momentos parecía que podían tomar el camino hacia la modernidad pero al final sucumbieron frente a la imposibilidad de concebir ideas que hoy parecen tan simples como el valor del trabajo y el uso económico de la ciencia y la mecánica.
Un gran libro para los interesados en los estudios clásicos y para los interesados en la historia económica del mundo antiguo.
January 2, 2017
Livre fascinant qui m'a fait revoir l'ensemble de la période antique sous un nouvel angle, avec une écriture un peu baroque mais agréable.
Analyse multi-disciplinaire des raisons pour lesquelles l'empire romain (et le monde classique en général) a créé un système prospère mais stagnant au lieu d'engendrer une dynamique de croissance et de développement continuel. Economie, histoire des idées, anthropologie politique sont mises à contribution. L'auteur défend la thèse qu'une combinaison des facteurs suivants en ont été la cause : économie reposant sur l'esclavage et le commerce plutôt que l'investissement productif, schéma de pensée dédaignant le travail pour autrui et valorisant la rente agraire, domination politique de l’aristocratie provinciale à partir du principat.
Quelques gemmes dans l'analyse des progrès techniques (une galère à vapeur presque conceptualisée...) et l'analyse du rapport des sociétés à l'esclavage.
Analyse multi-disciplinaire des raisons pour lesquelles l'empire romain (et le monde classique en général) a créé un système prospère mais stagnant au lieu d'engendrer une dynamique de croissance et de développement continuel. Economie, histoire des idées, anthropologie politique sont mises à contribution. L'auteur défend la thèse qu'une combinaison des facteurs suivants en ont été la cause : économie reposant sur l'esclavage et le commerce plutôt que l'investissement productif, schéma de pensée dédaignant le travail pour autrui et valorisant la rente agraire, domination politique de l’aristocratie provinciale à partir du principat.
Quelques gemmes dans l'analyse des progrès techniques (une galère à vapeur presque conceptualisée...) et l'analyse du rapport des sociétés à l'esclavage.
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