The ancient economy

by Moses I. Finley

Paper Book, 1973

Status

Available

Tags

RICH CLA 4

Series

Sather Classical Lectures (43)

Collection

Library/Biblioteca - Paolo Emilio Pecorella

Publication

London Chatto & Windus 1973

Description

"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.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member PaulFAustin
The subject matter is fascinating but Finley's writing is inaccessible. For an academic, that's praise. For me, it means that I still haven't managed to wade through it.
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LibraryThing member haeesh
This book was immensely influential in its day. I use "in its day" to point to the out-of-date approach of Finley and his subsequent eclipse. He states that there is essentially no "ancient economy" and that we can't use economic yardsticks to measure what was essentially a status, non-market based
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 economy. He states on page 23: "There was no business cycles in antiquity; no cities whose growth can be ascribed, even by us, to the establishment of manufacture..." I think modern archaeology would disagree with his statement. His method of analysis is textual literary analysis and he even uses remarks uttered by Trimalchio to support his conclusions! Things have come along way. Perhaps better is "The Archaeology of the Roman Economy" by Green. In any case, it's amazing how much classical studies have changed in 35 years.
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LibraryThing member timspalding
A fascinating book. Some of the per-se economics is wrong, or at least out of date. But, like everything Finley wrote, it's briliant, forcing intellectual daring and rigor on a discipline--at best--too accustomed to lazy, unreflective "common sense" reasoning.
LibraryThing member thcson
A sensible book on economic life in ancient Greece and Rome. As always with Finley, he carefully emphasizes how limited the historical evidence is on these topics, how limited the reach of historians' conclusions consequently should be and how modern concepts like "economics" easily become
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 anachronistic when applied to the ancient world. And such lessons are in my opinion an important part of understanding ancient history.
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LibraryThing member gael_williams
A surprisingly interesting book, given its title. The main argument is that modern theories of economics don't aways apply. The author keeps the social and world view of the ancients themselves firmly in the forefront, discussing topics such as agriculture, trade, provincial administration, etc.
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 Deals mainly with the Greek and Roman worlds particularly Classical Greece and Imperial Rome.
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Subjects

Economic history To 500
Greece Economic conditions
Rome Economic conditions

Awards

Wolfson History Prize (Shortlist — 1974)

Language

English

Original publication date

1973

ISBN

0701119683 / 9780701119683

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