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Pliny's Roman Economy - Natural History, Innovation, and Growth
Loot Price: R575
Discovery Miles 5 750
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Pliny's Roman Economy - Natural History, Innovation, and Growth
Series: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World
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Loot Price R575
Discovery Miles 5 750
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The first comprehensive study of Pliny the Elder’s economic
thought—and its implications for understanding the Roman
Empire’s constrained innovation and economic growth The elder
Pliny’s Natural History (77 CE), an astonishing compilation of
20,000 “things worth knowing,” was avowedly intended to be a
repository of ancient Mediterranean knowledge for the use of
craftsmen and farmers, but this 37-book, 400,000-word work was too
expensive, unwieldy, and impractically organized to be of
utilitarian value. Yet, as Richard Saller shows, the Natural
History offers more insights into Roman ideas about economic growth
than any other ancient source. Pliny’s Roman Economy is the first
comprehensive study of Pliny’s economic thought and its
implications for understanding the economy of the Roman Empire. As
Saller reveals, Pliny sometimes anticipates modern economic theory,
while at other times his ideas suggest why Rome produced very few
major inventions that resulted in sustained economic growth. On one
hand, Pliny believed that new knowledge came by accident or divine
intervention, not by human initiative; research and development was
a foreign concept. When he lists 136 great inventions, they are
mostly prehistoric and don’t include a single one from
Rome—offering a commentary on Roman innovation and displaying a
reverence for the past that contrasts with the attitudes of the
eighteenth-century encyclopedists credited with contributing to the
Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, Pliny shrewdly recognized
that Rome’s lack of competition from other states suppressed
incentives for innovation. Pliny’s understanding should be noted
because, as Saller shows, recent efforts to use scientific evidence
about the ancient climate to measure the Roman economy are flawed.
By exploring Pliny’s ideas about discovery, innovation, and
growth, Pliny’s Roman Economy makes an important new contribution
to the ongoing debate about economic growth in ancient Rome.
General
Imprint: |
Princeton University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
The Princeton Economic History of the Western World |
Release date: |
December 2023 |
Firstpublished: |
2022 |
Authors: |
Richard Saller
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Dimensions: |
216 x 140mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
216 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-691-22956-0 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-691-22956-2 |
Barcode: |
9780691229560 |
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