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Sather Classical Lectures
Ancient Economy (Sather Classical Lectures)
"Technical progress, economic growth, productivity, even efficiency have not been significant goals since the beginning of time," declares M. I. Finley in his classic work. The states of the ancient Mediterranean world had no recognizable real-property market, never fought a commercially inspired war, witnessed no drive to capital formation, and assigned the management of many substantial enterprises to slaves and ex-slaves. In short, to study the economies of the ancient world, one must begin by discarding many premises that seemed self-evident before Finley showed that they were useless or misleading. Available again, with a new foreword by Ian Morris, these sagacious, fertile, and occasionally combative essays are just as electrifying today as when Finley first wrote them.
292 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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823 people want to read
About the author
Moses I. Finley
71 books62 followersSir Moses I. Finley was an American and English classical scholar. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy (1973), where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
February 17, 2011
I don't mean to be a giant nerd, but this was probably one of the most interesting books I read while studying classics.
April 6, 2016
Finley's "The Ancient Economy" is a fascinating look into how very different the concept of an economy is in the ancient world from our modern assumptions and understanding. Without a strong narrative or central thesis, the book can feel a bit too broad, but it does an excellent job of pushing back against an ahistorical view of the classical economy (or, perhaps more accurately, economies).
Finley's book does an excellent job of placing the Roman and Greek slave societies within their context and discussing them dispassionately from an analytical point of view, rather than getting lost in our understandable revulsion at economic models that are heavily based on the enslavement of other human beings. In fact, a large portion of his work focuses on the importance of relationships (master and slave, patron and client) and land-ownership in the socio-economic system. It is well-written and successfully reaches out to the non-academic reader. I'm not sure I share his view that economics can teach us little about the ancient economy (as, he reasons, economics is such a new field), but I take his point that imposing modern assumptions about economic activity and incentives is foolish at best.
A lack of a strong narrative connecting the various chapters gives them a bit of a disjointed feeling, perhaps a reflection of the book's origin as a lecture series, and leads to a rather abrupt ending (despite the further considerations chapter of the second edition that I read). But the reader comes away better informed about the period and the perspectives of their main economic actors. Recommended as supplemental reading for those interested in the period.
Finley's book does an excellent job of placing the Roman and Greek slave societies within their context and discussing them dispassionately from an analytical point of view, rather than getting lost in our understandable revulsion at economic models that are heavily based on the enslavement of other human beings. In fact, a large portion of his work focuses on the importance of relationships (master and slave, patron and client) and land-ownership in the socio-economic system. It is well-written and successfully reaches out to the non-academic reader. I'm not sure I share his view that economics can teach us little about the ancient economy (as, he reasons, economics is such a new field), but I take his point that imposing modern assumptions about economic activity and incentives is foolish at best.
A lack of a strong narrative connecting the various chapters gives them a bit of a disjointed feeling, perhaps a reflection of the book's origin as a lecture series, and leads to a rather abrupt ending (despite the further considerations chapter of the second edition that I read). But the reader comes away better informed about the period and the perspectives of their main economic actors. Recommended as supplemental reading for those interested in the period.
June 19, 2016
Seminal work by a Marxist historian who put aside his political beliefs and wrote the best work on Greek and Roman history of his generation. Anyone who seeks to understand the real workings of the Classical world must begin here.
July 4, 2021
I didn’t understand it but i feel like it was well written
March 20, 2022
Overall great content, but at times a little hard to understand and repetitive. If you’re interested in the “ancient economy” at all, I would recommend giving it a read.
July 9, 2024
Finley's main argument is that the ancient world did not have a separate category for the "economy," as the modern world defines that term. Their decisions were driven by social, political, religious, and other factors, but never by eonomic ones. They "lacked the concept of an 'economy', and, a fortiori, that they lacked the conceptual elements which together constitute what we call 'the economy.' Of course they farmed, traded, manufactured, mined, taxed, coined, deposited and loaned money, made profits or failed in their enterprises. And they discussed these activities in their talk and their writing. What they did not do, however, was to combine these particular activities conceptually into a unit . . . Hence Aristotle, whose programme was to codify the branches of knowledge, wrote no Economics."
The central argument was not as illuminating to me as the tangential material that Finely discusses along the way, such as the progression from the Greek's concept of oikonomos (rule of the household) and the Roman's concept of paterfamilias to the rise of "political economy" to the modern notion of "economics"; the discussion of free and servile work, especially as developed by Cicero; the relation between masters and slaves in the ancient world; the classifications and orders in the accent world; the relation between farmers and the urban centers; and public liturgies and those responsible for them.
The central argument was not as illuminating to me as the tangential material that Finely discusses along the way, such as the progression from the Greek's concept of oikonomos (rule of the household) and the Roman's concept of paterfamilias to the rise of "political economy" to the modern notion of "economics"; the discussion of free and servile work, especially as developed by Cicero; the relation between masters and slaves in the ancient world; the classifications and orders in the accent world; the relation between farmers and the urban centers; and public liturgies and those responsible for them.
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May 6, 2021An incredibly interesting book to be sure, but at a certain point my limitations were apparent to the point of a sort of mental immobility—try as I might, I could not gain a foothold. That said, there are themes of this book that I enjoyed working out… seeing that I wrote them down, I might as well summarize some of my half-baked thoughts.
I’d say the most salient point Finley makes here is that the Greeks lacked a concept of economy disembedded from society. Activities we may describe as “economic” such as farming, trading, manufacturing, mining, taxing, coining, and the deposit and loaning of money were all done, but not under a single sub-system termed “economics.” This is most evident by way of Finley’s reminder that markets (let a lone a system of inter-dependent markets) are formed when the process of exchange requires an explanation of the formation of price. Antiquity lacked such institutional behavior. From the book itself—
“Economic growth, technical progress, increasing efficiency are not ‘natural’ virtues; they have not always been possibilities or even desiderata, at least not for those who controlled the means by which to try to achieve them.”
While any idea of capital formation would’ve been alien to the economies here studied, wealth itself was certainly a driving factor. This is another way of saying that the economic mindset of ancient Greece and Rome was acquisitive rather than productive. The desire for wealth was *not* the desire to create capital. When public resources were outrun, there were two options—either reduce the population by sending it out or bring in resources from the outside through booty or tribute.
Dissimilarities between our world and the ancient world do not simply rest on the abstract level of production vs. acquisition. Economic behavior was (from our own point of view, at least) compromised heavily by class systems and other incentives more clearly embedded within a more social realm. Status was a considerable driver of “economical” decision making. Cicero’s ‘De Officiis’ quoted at length in Finley’s book is illuminating. Laboring for wages is seen as a crude and unfree way of life and are the “warrant of their slavery.” Merchants and craftsmen who make profits only by “outright lying” and well as retailers and performers that “cater to sensual pleasures.” Medicine, architecture, teaching and large-scale commerce are respectable if only for their intellectual character, but to be content with one’s profits and retire to ones landed estate—there is nothing better for the free person. To be free is to be enabled to live an honest life free of the entanglements and morally ambiguous quandaries of obligation.
Certainly, to be free was to, as Cato said, “be a seller, not a buyer.” A free man was not economically dependent on another, neither for wages under debt. But denunciations by elite of wage and slave work drew upon moral rather than economic values. If the land was seen to be the fountainhead of all that is good and moral, these exhortations were usually issued by the town weary poets who recommend that people go back to the land. To be free implied no sense of economic well-being of the freedman.
This brings us to additional ruptures between the modern and ancient economic frameworks can be found in looking at labor. According to Finley, forcing labor into three strict categories—slave, serf, free—is impossible and a meaningless exercise. Slaves and freemen often did the same sorts of work (moneylending, shopkeeping) as each other, yet did not feel in competition with one another since the institution of wage-labor came only much later. The intellectual abstraction of one’s labor as an entity to be sold was not immediately apparent. Neither was the proper measurement of “labor time.”
In fact, it was often unclear what the benefits of being a free person was. The *ordo-plebeiorum* included both beggars, skilled and unskilled workers, domestics, administrators, all those who made possible luxury consumption of all the upper orders of both modest and immodest circumstances. Sometimes, especially in the late ancient world, the freer the peasant the more difficult life was, what with variables like bad harvests, or obligations like army service and domestic flareups. An acceptance of dependent status could sidestep some of these challenges. In Finley’s own words:
“The client of the archaic period or the *colonus* of the later Empire may have been variously oppressed, but he was also protected by his patron from dispossession, from the harsh laws of debt, and on the whole from military service. The genuinely free peasant had no protection against a run of bad harvests, against compulsory army service, against the endless depredations in civil and foreign wars.”
Indeed the acceptance of dependent status “became the rule in the course of the Roman Empire.”
Finely notes that in the eastern empire,
“the decline of slaver was a reversal of the process by which slavery took hold. Once upon a time the employers of labour in these regions imported slaves to meet their requirements. Now their own lower classes were available, as they had not been before, from compulsion, not from choice, and so there was no need for a sustained effort to keep up the slave supply, nor to introduce wage-labour.”
Not a thought was put towards greater productivity, for the social structure and cultural attitudes that birthed the puzzling relationship between slave and freeperson never gave cause to technological innovations necessary for an economy which mirrors our own values of growth, productivity and efficiency. Our own demons aside, the acquisitive economy had obvious limitations. It was an economy based upon greater and greater acquisition in concert with idleness and leisure of the gentleman. The trend of the later empire was a steady increase in the size of landholdings by fewer and fewer landholders. Finley notes that,
“Large incomes, absenteeism and its accompanying psychology of the life of leisure, of land ownership as a non-occupation, and, when it was practiced, letting or sub-letting in fragmented tenancies all combined to block any search for radical improvements.”
And so it inevitably all came apart, not in an explosive fashion, but a slow and decadent rot that took hundreds of years.
“A vicious circle of evils was in full swing. The ancient world was hastened to its end by its social and political structure, its deeply embedded and institutionalized value system, and, underpinning the whole, the organization and exploitation of its productive forces.”
It’s stimulating (and depressing) to wonder at our own limitations. Many have said that the bell has tolled for capitalism but I don’t think that people have seriously considered what this might mean. I think many people think some sort of “revolution” will take place, bringing people to their knees in a state of chaos or ushering in some sort of paradise. I think the truth is closer to Finley’s own analysis of the slow decay of the ancient world. While history and the present rhyme rather than repeat, I think it’s clear that asset holding is becoming a greater and greater share of wealth throughout the world in our own time. Mental habits of free market fundamentalism remain unassailable in ruling circles and a similar idleness is settling in… and with the weakening of labor, a growing underclass that opts for the security of dependency over the wilderness of freedom may seem increasingly likely… Whether this takes place as becoming a part of some *oikos* or living in debt peonage as a Uber driver… well I see little difference. Has the decadent rot begun?
I’ll leave many of Finley’s other themes alone since I’m not qualified to remark on them. Whatever limitations I encountered here are probably exponents of my own… There’s no doubt a simper introduction to this topic… but this was a fascinating book nevertheless, particularly the second chapter on masters and slaves.
I’d say the most salient point Finley makes here is that the Greeks lacked a concept of economy disembedded from society. Activities we may describe as “economic” such as farming, trading, manufacturing, mining, taxing, coining, and the deposit and loaning of money were all done, but not under a single sub-system termed “economics.” This is most evident by way of Finley’s reminder that markets (let a lone a system of inter-dependent markets) are formed when the process of exchange requires an explanation of the formation of price. Antiquity lacked such institutional behavior. From the book itself—
“Economic growth, technical progress, increasing efficiency are not ‘natural’ virtues; they have not always been possibilities or even desiderata, at least not for those who controlled the means by which to try to achieve them.”
While any idea of capital formation would’ve been alien to the economies here studied, wealth itself was certainly a driving factor. This is another way of saying that the economic mindset of ancient Greece and Rome was acquisitive rather than productive. The desire for wealth was *not* the desire to create capital. When public resources were outrun, there were two options—either reduce the population by sending it out or bring in resources from the outside through booty or tribute.
Dissimilarities between our world and the ancient world do not simply rest on the abstract level of production vs. acquisition. Economic behavior was (from our own point of view, at least) compromised heavily by class systems and other incentives more clearly embedded within a more social realm. Status was a considerable driver of “economical” decision making. Cicero’s ‘De Officiis’ quoted at length in Finley’s book is illuminating. Laboring for wages is seen as a crude and unfree way of life and are the “warrant of their slavery.” Merchants and craftsmen who make profits only by “outright lying” and well as retailers and performers that “cater to sensual pleasures.” Medicine, architecture, teaching and large-scale commerce are respectable if only for their intellectual character, but to be content with one’s profits and retire to ones landed estate—there is nothing better for the free person. To be free is to be enabled to live an honest life free of the entanglements and morally ambiguous quandaries of obligation.
Certainly, to be free was to, as Cato said, “be a seller, not a buyer.” A free man was not economically dependent on another, neither for wages under debt. But denunciations by elite of wage and slave work drew upon moral rather than economic values. If the land was seen to be the fountainhead of all that is good and moral, these exhortations were usually issued by the town weary poets who recommend that people go back to the land. To be free implied no sense of economic well-being of the freedman.
This brings us to additional ruptures between the modern and ancient economic frameworks can be found in looking at labor. According to Finley, forcing labor into three strict categories—slave, serf, free—is impossible and a meaningless exercise. Slaves and freemen often did the same sorts of work (moneylending, shopkeeping) as each other, yet did not feel in competition with one another since the institution of wage-labor came only much later. The intellectual abstraction of one’s labor as an entity to be sold was not immediately apparent. Neither was the proper measurement of “labor time.”
In fact, it was often unclear what the benefits of being a free person was. The *ordo-plebeiorum* included both beggars, skilled and unskilled workers, domestics, administrators, all those who made possible luxury consumption of all the upper orders of both modest and immodest circumstances. Sometimes, especially in the late ancient world, the freer the peasant the more difficult life was, what with variables like bad harvests, or obligations like army service and domestic flareups. An acceptance of dependent status could sidestep some of these challenges. In Finley’s own words:
“The client of the archaic period or the *colonus* of the later Empire may have been variously oppressed, but he was also protected by his patron from dispossession, from the harsh laws of debt, and on the whole from military service. The genuinely free peasant had no protection against a run of bad harvests, against compulsory army service, against the endless depredations in civil and foreign wars.”
Indeed the acceptance of dependent status “became the rule in the course of the Roman Empire.”
Finely notes that in the eastern empire,
“the decline of slaver was a reversal of the process by which slavery took hold. Once upon a time the employers of labour in these regions imported slaves to meet their requirements. Now their own lower classes were available, as they had not been before, from compulsion, not from choice, and so there was no need for a sustained effort to keep up the slave supply, nor to introduce wage-labour.”
Not a thought was put towards greater productivity, for the social structure and cultural attitudes that birthed the puzzling relationship between slave and freeperson never gave cause to technological innovations necessary for an economy which mirrors our own values of growth, productivity and efficiency. Our own demons aside, the acquisitive economy had obvious limitations. It was an economy based upon greater and greater acquisition in concert with idleness and leisure of the gentleman. The trend of the later empire was a steady increase in the size of landholdings by fewer and fewer landholders. Finley notes that,
“Large incomes, absenteeism and its accompanying psychology of the life of leisure, of land ownership as a non-occupation, and, when it was practiced, letting or sub-letting in fragmented tenancies all combined to block any search for radical improvements.”
And so it inevitably all came apart, not in an explosive fashion, but a slow and decadent rot that took hundreds of years.
“A vicious circle of evils was in full swing. The ancient world was hastened to its end by its social and political structure, its deeply embedded and institutionalized value system, and, underpinning the whole, the organization and exploitation of its productive forces.”
It’s stimulating (and depressing) to wonder at our own limitations. Many have said that the bell has tolled for capitalism but I don’t think that people have seriously considered what this might mean. I think many people think some sort of “revolution” will take place, bringing people to their knees in a state of chaos or ushering in some sort of paradise. I think the truth is closer to Finley’s own analysis of the slow decay of the ancient world. While history and the present rhyme rather than repeat, I think it’s clear that asset holding is becoming a greater and greater share of wealth throughout the world in our own time. Mental habits of free market fundamentalism remain unassailable in ruling circles and a similar idleness is settling in… and with the weakening of labor, a growing underclass that opts for the security of dependency over the wilderness of freedom may seem increasingly likely… Whether this takes place as becoming a part of some *oikos* or living in debt peonage as a Uber driver… well I see little difference. Has the decadent rot begun?
I’ll leave many of Finley’s other themes alone since I’m not qualified to remark on them. Whatever limitations I encountered here are probably exponents of my own… There’s no doubt a simper introduction to this topic… but this was a fascinating book nevertheless, particularly the second chapter on masters and slaves.
February 23, 2025
"Neither in Greek nor in Latin was there a word with which to express the general notion of 'labour' or the concept of labour 'as a general social function.' The nature and conditions of labour in antiquity precluded the emergence of such general ideas, as of the idea of a working class. 'Men never rest from toil and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night,' said Hesiod (Works and Days 176-8). That is a descriptive statement, a statement of fact, not of ideology; so is the conclusion, that it is therefore better to toil than to perish, and better still to turn to the labour of slaves if one can. But the world was not one of toil and sorrow for everybody, and there lay a difficulty. The expulsion from Eden had the saving feature that it embraced all mankind, and hence, though it linked work with sin and punishment, it did not degrade labour as such. A fate which is everyone's may be tragic, it cannot be shameful. Sin can be washed away, not natural moral inferiority. Aristotle's theory of natural slavery in the first book of the Politics was an extreme position, but those who did not accept it merely turned the doctrine round: men who engaged in the mean employments or in the slavish conditions of employment were made inferior by their work. Either way there was no consolation.
All this, it will be objected, is based on the views of the upper classes and their spokesmen among the intellectuals, not on the views of those who worked but were voiceless. But they were not wholly so. They expressed themselves in their cults, for example, and it is to be noted that though Hephaestus (the Roman Vulcan), the craftsman among the gods, was in a sense a patron of the crafts, and especially of the metallurgists, he was an inferior deity in heaven and he received little formal worship and few temples on earth. The most 'popular' classical cults were the ecstatic ones, particularly that of Dionysus/Bacchus, the god of intoxication (in more senses than one). Through Dionysus one did not celebrate toil, one obtained release from it. Those who worked also expressed their views in their demands for land, already noticed, and in their failure to ally themselves with the slaves on those relatively rare occasions when the latter revolted."
All this, it will be objected, is based on the views of the upper classes and their spokesmen among the intellectuals, not on the views of those who worked but were voiceless. But they were not wholly so. They expressed themselves in their cults, for example, and it is to be noted that though Hephaestus (the Roman Vulcan), the craftsman among the gods, was in a sense a patron of the crafts, and especially of the metallurgists, he was an inferior deity in heaven and he received little formal worship and few temples on earth. The most 'popular' classical cults were the ecstatic ones, particularly that of Dionysus/Bacchus, the god of intoxication (in more senses than one). Through Dionysus one did not celebrate toil, one obtained release from it. Those who worked also expressed their views in their demands for land, already noticed, and in their failure to ally themselves with the slaves on those relatively rare occasions when the latter revolted."
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March 30, 2020Sir Moses I. Finley's "The Ancient Economy" is one of the best books for studying the ancient economies of Greek and Roman Societies. Sir Moses I. Finley uses the modern historiographical methodology to conceptualize the ancient economies in his "The Ancient Economy" - Adam Smith's "rationalist" and "realist" methodology, Marx's "dialectical and historical materialist" methodology and Braudel's historiographical methodology. For describing the ancient economic structures, changes and relations, Sir Moses I. Finley uses the ancient documents, the ancient "primary and secondary" sources, and the modern works about the ancient history. Sir Moses I. Finley thinks about "the slavery economy", "the ancient production relations" and "the ancient political and bureucratic structures which relate to the ancient slavery economy". Sir Moses I. Finley uses the ancient historians', the ancient politicians' and the ancient philosophers' works to produce a modern understanding of the ancient societies in his history writing.
August 21, 2023
This book fills an interesting gap in my knowledge, but its a really specific niche. It didn't tell me that much about Roman or Greek society, only about how they thought about land and money. I will have to look elsewhere for the rest. It was clear, and mostly easy to understand, although I lost track a bit when he was talking about land ownership and the hierarchy of slave to emperor, too many sub-categories of poor people to keep track of. I appreciated his attitude towards missing documents: he was always clear about what could or couldn't be inferred, and his 'final thoughts' section was quite scathing about some other historians: basically saying I'll take a small amount of data from the empire's second city rather than a lot from some piddly little backwater in Egypt, but you do you!
January 4, 2021
I ordered this book because the premise seemed interesting; but the edition I got in the mail seems much more boring than the blurb highlighted on this page. Mine states:
"In the Ancient Economy Professor Finley makes the first attempt at a systematic formulation of concepts through which the economy of the ancient Greeks and Romans can be analysed and for which modern categories - capital, labor, investment, market, cannot be automatically employed. Topics discussed include: class, order and status, master and slaves, landlords and peasants, town and country, and the state and the economy."
The book is not as mindblowing or radical as the updated, more exciting summary makes it out to be. Disappointing.
"In the Ancient Economy Professor Finley makes the first attempt at a systematic formulation of concepts through which the economy of the ancient Greeks and Romans can be analysed and for which modern categories - capital, labor, investment, market, cannot be automatically employed. Topics discussed include: class, order and status, master and slaves, landlords and peasants, town and country, and the state and the economy."
The book is not as mindblowing or radical as the updated, more exciting summary makes it out to be. Disappointing.
November 23, 2024
Actually pretty good, helped me write a research paper on the ancient Roman economy. Provides completely new perspectives on ancient economics that most wouldn't even consider. Does tend to yap a lot, but provides well-rounded evidence and critically analyzes all sources. Probably would only recommend to read if you hate yourself or are obscenely interested in Rome, or are writing a research paper about the Roman economy, then its a must-read.
August 4, 2021
Very well written. If you are interested in the ancient economy, it is a good start. But be aware that it is not significantly considering archaeological evidence. But mostly use ancient literary (elite) sources. Furthermore, the archaeological work performed since its writing has revealed a much higher level of Roman trade and manufacturing along with good evidence of innovation.
April 27, 2023
This book is both fascinating and extremely dense. I learned a lot from reading it, but it also felt like I was missing content for a a lot of it. Reading this book feels like listening in on academics argue about their topic of interest with each other. It is fun and you learn cool things, but also sometimes you have no idea what is going on.
March 12, 2021
3.75 estrellas
Una lectura de lo más interesante (al menos para mí). Pierde estrellas por la acostumbrada información desactualizada sobre la que no me pronuncio, y por algunas elecciones de escritura y/o traducción.
Una lectura de lo más interesante (al menos para mí). Pierde estrellas por la acostumbrada información desactualizada sobre la que no me pronuncio, y por algunas elecciones de escritura y/o traducción.
May 11, 2020
This is a very good book. I found the chapter on master and slave to be really intriguing, and how Finley related the information to other chapters on status and the very informal economy.
May 25, 2021
Tenho que reler esse livro de novo depois, principalmente a segunda metade.
April 27, 2024
I like his reasoning and writing style. Good presentation on the economy of antiquity.
February 17, 2017
This read more like a collection of essays than a coherent book (which may have been the intent?). However, there was still a lot of great information here, and I was able to learn a good amount about the economy of the ancients. In some ways, the economy of the time was much more sophisticated than I would have imagined but in other ways not nearly as much. Overall, very interesting book.
January 6, 2018
This was the first book by Moses Finley that I have read till now. Despite not being very familiar with classical Roman and Greek history, I found the essays to be extremely articulate and cogent. One also appreciates Finley's point that the ancient economy has to be understood in its own historical and political context, instead of forcibly trying to analyze it from our present understanding of economy and capital. Certainly a must read for any amateur historian, particularly for Finley's style of reading and interpretation of primary sources.
July 7, 2022
The essential work in the “primitivist” interpretation of the ancient Mediterranean economy. In short, Finley argues that the ancient economy cannot be properly analyzed through the prism of modern economics. He argues for an agricultural, hand-to-mouth economy with little economy of scale, mass markets, or per capita growth.
While this is an important read, Finley relies almost exclusively on literary evidence where archeology, a field where the evidence continues to mount, tends to support a more “modernist” view of the ancient economy.
While this is an important read, Finley relies almost exclusively on literary evidence where archeology, a field where the evidence continues to mount, tends to support a more “modernist” view of the ancient economy.
April 13, 2008
An excellent diagnosis of a problem that far too many assumptions have been made about in the past. This study looks at the ancient mindset of what an economy was (and was not). It provides a very important foundation for understanding the medieval economy and mindset. Kudos to a brilliantly researched and original hypothesis.
February 4, 2016
Not a light read and requires extensive background knowledge but a great way for modern readers to understand how the "economy" worked in ancient times.
July 10, 2024
Interesting chapter on slavery, this is a really useful work for people studying ancient history.
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