In these expanded lectures originally given at Berkeley, Finley
(his The Ancient Greeks and The World of Odysseus are on college
reading lists) has a helpful hint for historians - they should
interpret institutions according to the functions they served
within their own societies and language in the context of its
culture. (For instance, in ancient Greece oikonomikos referred to
"the rights and duties of a family," or the management of all
persons and property on an estate). True to his own methodology, in
speaking of the "economy" of the Mediterranean Axis between 1000 BC
and 500 AD, this accomplished scholar - he can quote from classic
tragedies and obscure German scholarly theses in a single breath -
focuses on the traditions, habits and rules of thumb by which a
stratified, land-owning, largely agrarian society maintained its
favored life-style of leisured public service. In the ancient world
Finley declares - and such interpretations are his stock in trade -
"the prevailing mentality was acquisitive, but not productive":
slaves, foreigners and others of low status supplied the labor
while trade, taxes, war-booty and patrician largess filled the
public coffers. But when what was essentially a collection of
city-states became the Roman Empire this static social order could
not ultimately accommodate the costs of an expanding army or
bureaucracy and the Empire fell. Despite the enormous erudition
Professor Finley brings to the podium, he has said it all before,
more sharply, in his other books. (Kirkus Reviews)
"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.
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