OCD Ancient Economy

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Table of Contents
1. wages. 2. interest, rates of. 3. money. 4. finance, Roman. 5. economy, Greek. 6. trade, Roman. 7. economy, Roman. 8. economy, Hellenistic. 9. labour. 10. latifundia. 11. finance, Greek and Hellenistic. 12. trade, Greek. 13. agriculture, Roman. 14. artisans and craftsmen. 15. banks. 16. economic theory (Greek).
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1. wages
(Oxford Classical Dictionary - Third Edition)
wages, payment in cash or kind in return for labour services, are attested as early as the thetes (landless labourers) of the Iliad and Odyssey. Homeric references point to the depressed status of the thes: uncertain of receiving promised pay (Il. 21. 441 ff.) and, lacking protection of the oikos (household), they ranked even lower than slaves (Od. 11. 489 ff.). With significant exceptions, precariousness remained the characteristic of the wage-labourer through antiquity, dependent on availability of casual employment (e.g. at harvest time, on public building projects, in service as a mercenary). The divisions between different types of labour were fluid, with peasants, artisans, and slaves (see SLAVERY) potentially doubling up as wage-labourers. In late 5th-cent. Athens, the metic Simias hired himself out along with his five slaves to work on the Erechtheum. Roman law made special provision for the hiring out of slaves. In Athens, those looking for work gathered each day on a hill overlooking the agora. From the mid-5th cent., Athens was exceptional among Greek states in offering an increasing range of payment for public service (jurors, council members, minor officials, and, eventually, those attending the assembly). The relationship between Athens as emmisthos polis ('a polis in receipt of pay') and exploitation of the 5th-cent. empire is disputed. Although there is room for doubting the literal truth of Aristotle's claim that 'more than twenty thousand men' were supported from internal and external sources (Ath. Pol. 24. 3), public pay buttressed democracy (see DEMOCRACY, ATHENIAN) by enhancing participation and reducing dependence by the poor on the wealthy. Throughout the ancient world, wage rates were fixed more by custom than by demand and supply and were slow to change. Figures have little meaning without detailed knowledge of circumstances and overall cost of living. The skilled workers on the Erechtheum earning one drachma per day would not always have found employment; likewise the jurors, receiving two obols (three after c.425) for each day in court. For the city of Rome, a combination of dependence on patrons and receipt of the corn dole (see FOOD SUPPLY) distorts any overall assessment of rates of pay. Cicero's rhetorical claim (QRosc. 28) that a feeble slave could earn three sesterces per day in Rome forms a fragile basis for generalization. Diocletian's 'Price Edict' of AD 296, has as its lowest maximum wage that of the farm labourer at 25 denarii per day, with an unspecified payment in kind. Comparisons of annual pay of legionaries (1,200 sesterces in 2nd cent. AD; 1,800 under Diocletian) are similarly complicated by payments in kind, donatives, and deductions for equipment. M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (1977); A. Fuks, Social Conflict in Greece (1984), 303 ff.; J. H. Randall, AJArch. 1953, 199 ff.; P. A. Brunt, JRS 1980, 81 ff.; P. Garnsey (ed.), Non-Slave Labour in the Greco-Roman World (1980); G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981), and CQ 1975, 48 ff.; M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (1973; repr. 1985), and Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (1981), 41 ff.; M. M. Markle, in P. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey (eds.), CRUX (1985), 265 ff.; D. M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (1990), 107 ff.; R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (1974), and Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (1990), 105 ff.; S. Lauffer, Diokletians Preisedikt (1971). P. C. M.
Copyright The Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford University Press 1996, 2000
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2. interest, rates of
interest, rates of As in modern, industrial society, the ancient world had a complex of rates of interest, varying across time and space. There, however, the similarity ends: ancient interest rates are more social than economic indicators and cannot be read to reveal trends over time. Underlying rates of interest were fixed by custom and stayed stable over long periods: from the 5th to the 2nd cent. BC the temple of Apollo on Delos lent money at 10% p.a. (akin to a tithe?). In 4th-cent. Athens, the 'prevailing' rate of interest seems to have been 12% p.a. (literally, 'one drachma interest on each mina lent per month'). The major distinction in loan transactions lay between charging interest and lending interest-free: a pre-existing personal relationship between lender and borrower was thought to preclude the taking of interest (see CREDIT). A rate of 1% per month was apparently seen in Athens as reasonable for an 'impersonal' loan transaction (Dem. 27. 17; Ath. pol. 52). Particular circumstances could result in higher rates: high risk of default (3% per month: Lys. fr. 38 GernetBizos), unsecured, short-term lending of small sums (25% per day: Theophr. Char. 6. 9). As the great majority of loans was raised to cover unforeseen, often emergency expenditure, the charging of interest could be seen as exploitation of the borrower's misfortune (Dem. 45. 69); hence a part of the opposition to lending at interest from Plato (1) (Leg. 742c) and [Aristotle] (Pr. 950a28 ff.). Compound interest (anatokismos) was seen as particularly exploitative (Ar. Nub. 1155 f.; Pl. Leg. 842d). The major exception was maritime loans, from which the borrower could hope to make a profit, justifying the charging of anything between 12 and 30% (possibly more) on the sum lent for the duration of the voyage. From the Roman world, Tacitus (Ann. 6. 16) singled out lending at interest as a long-standing social problem. The fenus unciarium of the Twelve Tables may well refer to an annual interest maximum of 100%. Throughout Roman history, attempts were made to fix maximum rates of interest: the lex Genucia of 342 BC apparently banned all lending at interest. This and less extreme measures were undermined by the practical needs of borrowers (App. BCiv. 1. 54) and the power of creditors. Brutus avoided the official interest maximum of 12% in the province of Cilicia (and possibly the whole empire) by virtue of a special decree from the senate (Cic. Att. 6. 1, 2). Justinian I attempted to match annual interest maxima to specific circumstances: c.5% for cash loans, 12% for loans in kind, and 4% for loans made by senators. With greater realism, Athenian law forbade any restriction on the charging of interest (Lys. 10. 18). G. Billeter, Geschichte des Zinsfusses im griechischen-romischen Altertum bis auf Justinian (1898; repr. 1970); P. C. Millett, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens (1991); R. Bogaert, Banques et banquiers dans les cits grecques (1968); R. Parker, Miasma (1983), 173; T. Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome 15 (193340); C. Appleton, Nouvelle revue historique de droit franais et tranger (1919), 467 ff.; H. E. Finck, Das Zinsrecht der graeco-aegyptischen Papyri (1962); J. A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome (1967); Jones, Later Rom. Emp. 775, 868 f. P. C. M.
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3. money
money may be regarded as a conventional means of representing a claim or a right to goods or services. Its existence may result from everything on a scale between a tacit understanding within a society and state legislation. And a wide variety of objects may function as money in the different uses which this possessesfor payments, for storing wealth, for measuring value, and as a means of exchange. It is likely that at an early stage valuable and imperishable objects, such as metal, served to convert surplus produce into a means for the acquisition of other produce in the future; at the same time, any commodity, such as cattle, may have served for measuring value. A decisive step was taken when an organized community designated an official monetary unit, normally of precious metal, for collective purposes, whether for measuring value or for payments, for fines, or for taxes. This step had been taken in most near eastern kingdoms by the beginning of the iron age, in many Greek communities by 800 BC, in Rome by 500 BC. The production of money in the form of coinage began in western Asia Minor about 600 BC and spread rapidly in the Greek world, more slowly in the Phoenician world, in the Roman world from the late 4th cent. BC. In the Greek world, the use of spits, obeloi, as objects of value is reflected in the use of oboloi as monetary units and denominations of most Greek coinage systems. See COINAGE, GREEK and ROMAN. Despite the spread of coinage, not only in the Greek, Phoenician, and Roman worlds, but also to communities on their fringesfrom Parthia to Spaineven in the high Roman empire, there were large areas of the Mediterranean world in which coinage played a minimal role; and many areas are likely at all times to have operated without any significant use of monetary institutions. The ratio between the principal metalsgold, silver, bronzevaried over time, with such factors as the increasing transfer to the Greek world of gold from Persia or the exploitation of silver-mines in Spain; these shifts naturally affected the relationships between different monetary units and different coin denominations. The Hellenistic period saw the development of systems of paper transfers of money, mostly in connection with the levy of taxes; and the Roman state was able to a limited extent to function on anticipated revenues. But the ancient world never developed any form of paper money, let alone the use of credit mechanisms to increase the money supply. See also BANKS; CREDIT. M. H. Crawford, La moneta in Grecia e a Roma (1982); M. F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy (1985). M. H. C.
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4. finance, Roman
finance, Roman 'Taxes are the sinews of the state'. So claimed both Cicero and the great jurist Ulpian. Despite this recognition of the central importance of taxation no systematic ancient treatment of Roman public finance survives. Extended financial documents are also rare (though see now the elaborate schedule of the portoria of Asia, AE 1989, 681). Therefore many details about (e.g.) the allocation and collection of taxes or about the character of fiscal institutions (such as the fiscus, the patrimonium, and the res privata (for both the latter see PATRIMONIUM) ) remain obscure and disputed. Despite the serious deficiencies in our evidence the broad features of the history and development of Roman public finance through the republic and the Principate to the later empire can be delineated with some confidence. In the republic there were, traditionally, two major types of revenue namely the regular vectigalia and the tributum, an extraordinary (in principle) levy on the property of Roman citizens. The total size of this levy was decided by the senate and varied from year to year. The earliest detailed account of republican public finance survives in the sketch of the Roman constitution in the sixth book of Polybius (1), reflecting conditions in the mid-2nd cent. BC. The aerarium, the central depository of the state for both cash and documents, was managed by two urban quaestors; but all decisions as to payments from it were made by the senate. On setting out on campaign a consul could draw funds on his own responsibility. But further payments, for the supplies, clothes, or pay of the army, had again to be authorized by the senate. The senate also made a quinquennial grant to the censors, on the basis of which they let out contracts for building and repairs of public buildings in Rome and the municipia and coloniae of Italy and for the exploitation of public propertiesrivers, harbours, gardens, mines, and land. Ultimate control of the contracts, for instance in altering the terms, again lay with the senate. The most important development, not reflected in Polybius' account of the last two centuries of the republic, was the acquisition of a territorial empire overseas. At first resources were extracted from the conquered via booty and war indemnities, in the medium term by the imposition of regular taxation (tribute) in cash or kind. Provincial governors (and their quaestors) were responsible for the supervision of the collection of tribute and for expenditure in their province. After 123 BC in Asia certainly (and perhaps elsewhere) the process of collection of tribute was contracted out to publicani. Two prime consequences ensued from this development. First, the levying of tribute on Roman citizens in Italy was abandoned from 167 BC onwards. Secondly, the revenues of the state were greatly increased. On one speculative estimate (Frank, Econ. Survey 1. 141) annual revenues in the early 2nd cent. BC were 12.5 to 15 million denarii. By the late 60s BC they had increased to 50 million; and according to a difficult passage of Plutarch (Pomp. 45), Pompey's great conquests in the 60s further increased revenues to either 85 or 135 million. The continuing access of new revenues both meant that Rome's continuous wars were in the long term self-financing and allowed the creation of novel forms of public expenditure such as the distribution of subsidized, later free, corn to Roman citizens. (See FOOD SUPPLY.) Even so, as in many pre-industrial societies, public revenues remained modest in relation to the private wealth of the lite. So the fortune of Crassus alone amounted to 48 million denarii. The establishment of imperial rule entailed far-reaching changes in public finance and the creation of an elaborate fiscal state. First, although the senate retained the function of making routine votes of funds, effective control over the state's finances came to lie with the emperor and his agents. Under Augustus we meet for the first time the publication of general accounts (rationes) of the public funds.
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At his death full details of the state's finances were in the hands of his personal slaves and freedmen. The public post of a rationibus (first held by imperial freedmen, later by senior equestrians) soon emerged. By the late 1st cent. AD this official was responsible for estimating the revenues and expenditure of the state. Secondly, direct taxation in the provinces, in the form of the poll tax and the land tax, was placed on a new footing through the introduction by Augustus and Agrippa of periodic provincial censuses. These mapped out the human and physical resources of the provinces and formed the basis for the assessments of tribute for each city and its territory. Whenever a new province was annexed, a census was taken. Provincial governors and imperial procurators supervised the collection of tribute; the process of collection devolved on the individual civic authorities. (See DECAPROTI; DECEMPRIMI). Thirdly, Rome's revenues were vastly increased, although no secure figures survive. The annexation of new provinces (that of Egypt in 30 BC was especially important) of itself increased revenues. A new array of indirect taxes were introduced. The most important were, probably, the vicesima hereditatum (5% tax on inheritances) of AD 6 (hypothecated to the discharge payment for veterans) and the quinta et vicesima venalium mancipiorum (4% tax on the sale of slaves) of AD 7 (hypothecated to the pay of the vigiles). The first three centuries AD also saw the steady accretion of landed property (via legacies, gifts, and confiscations) in the hands of the emperor. The importance of revenue from such crown property was considerable, if unquantifiable, and is already manifest in Augustus' own account, in his Res gestae, of his expenditure on public needs. By the late 2nd cent. there were two departments of crown property, the patrimonium and the res privata, though the distinction between them remains obscure. This formidable array of revenues (tribute in cash and kind, indirect taxes, revenues from crown property) enabled the imperial state to carry out, on a routine basis, key political functions such as the distribution of the corn-dole at Rome, the upkeep of the imperial court, the construction and maintenance of an elaborate road network (see ROADS) across the empire, the payment of salaries to senatorial and equestrian officials, and, above all, the funding of the vast standing armed forces of c.350,000 men. This fiscal system was predicated, in its mature form in the 2nd cent., on a basic predictability of expenditure and revenue and on the state's ability to exercise uncontested authority over the territory of the empire. However, potential problems in the form of sudden emergencies or increases in expenditure were already apparent in the later 2nd cent. The great northern wars under Marcus Aurelius rapidly depleted the reserves of the treasury. In turn the major pay rises for the army of Severus and Caracalla were funded in part by significant debasements of the silver coinage. (See COINAGE, ROMAN.) The generalized political and military crisis, which enveloped the empire from the 230s onwards, was to shatter the fiscal apparatus and its preconditions. The state's ability to raise revenues was undermined by its failure to maintain routine central authority over the empire; the census-system collapsed, invasion and civil war destroyed accumulated capital and crops. To meet its needs the state resorted to irregular and arbitrary requisitions in kind and to runaway debasement of the coinage. By the 260s the precious-metal content of the silver coinage had been reduced to about 5 per cent. Hyper-inflation wrecked the whole monetary system. A measure of stability was only restored to the public finances with the reassertion of central authority over the empire. Diocletian, in a striking repetition of the measures of Augustus, reestablished censuses throughout the empire. Payments of tax (predominantly in kind) were assessed by units of population (capitatio) and of land (iugatio), although the principles and workings of this system, which certainly varied from area to area, are still subject to debate. The finances of the empire were now managed through three departments. The res privata dealt primarily with imperial property. The sacrae largitiones controlled mines, mints, and state factories, collected taxes and levies in cash, and paid donatives to the troops. (See DONATIVUM.) The office of the praetorian prefects, the most important of the three, was responsible for the rations of soldiers and officials, for the maintenance of the cursus publicus (see POSTAL SERVICE) and of most public buildings, and for calculating annually the required rate of the indiction to produce the supplies in kind. Frank, Econ. Survey 1 and 5; Jones, Later Rom. Emp. 411 ff.; E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners (1972); R. MacMullen, Roman Government's Responses to Crisis, AD 235337 (1986); P. A. Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes (1990).
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G. P. B.
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5. economy, Greek
economy, Greek Even if there was 'an economy' in ancient Greece (see CAPITALISM), Greece itself was not a single entity, but a congeries of more than a thousand separate communities. One should therefore speak of Greek economies rather than the Greek economy, and for simplicity's sake it is convenient to divide them into three groups, types, or models. First, there is the 'Archaic' group of which Sparta can stand as the representative instance. At the opposite extreme is Athens, distinguished both by the exceptional size and number of its economic transactions, and by the exceptional sophistication of its economic institutions. In between fall the vast range of 'normal' Greek cities or communities, differentiated from the latter chiefly in the scale, and from the former principally in the nature, of their economic arrangements. Consider the last group first. Our 'economy' is derived from the ancient Greek word oikonomia, but this meant originally and usually the management of a private household (oikos) rather than that of a 'national' economy (see HOUSEHOLD, GREEK). Ideally, for sound prudential reasons as well as ideological, moral, or political ones, each 'normal' Greek household (comprising a two-generation nuclear family, free and unfree dependants, slaves, animals, land, and other property) aimed to be as self-sufficient as possible, making all due allowance for the basic constants of the changing domestic life-cycle, and the amount and nature of available land and labour. Household economy in Greece was overwhelmingly rural economy, the number of genuine cities or even genuinely urban residential centres being countable on the fingers of a single hand. See URBANISM, GREEK. Most Greeks living in 'normal' communities were peasants of one description or another, farming a couple of hectares (say, 5 acres) planted to a mix of cereals (mainly barley, some wheat) and xerophytic crops (olives, grapevines (see WINE), figs above all). Small stock animals, especially sheep and goats (see PASTORALISM, GREEK), constituted a necessary, not a purely optional, complement to agriculture and herbiculture in the absence of artificial fertilizers. In some areas local conditions favoured specialization in one or other crop, or an exceptional amount of stockraising. In coastal settlements there were always some specialist fishermen (see FISHING), but, apart from the Black Sea, Greek waters were not especially favourable to sizeable and predictable shoals of easily catchable fish. Fish remained something of a luxury food by comparison with the staple 'Mediterranean triad' (grain, wine, olive oil) of the Greek peasant diet. In practice, of course, self-sufficiency remained for most an ideal rather than a lived actuality, so that economic exchange of various kinds was obligatory (see TRADE, GREEK). But such exchanges were typically conducted between individualsneighbours or at any rate members of the same communityeither directly and by barter in kind or through the use of some monetary medium in the local village or town market. The economy of Athens was wholly exceptional in the degree to which the very viability of the civic community depended on the exchange through long-distance trade of a staple commodity, grain (see FOOD SUPPLY). Fortunately, and not incidentally, Athens was exceptionally blessed with a near-unique means of paying for such imports in the shape of the silver (strictly, argentiferous lead) deposits in the Laurium district of SE Attica. The mines were worked almost entirely by chattel-slave labour (see SLAVERY). To ensure that the silver bullion was channelled productively into the grain trade the Athenian community instituted a wide range of preferential measures backed by severe and enforceable legal sanctions against both citizen and noncitizen miscreants. Athens was also fortunate, and unusual, in that much of Attica's soil and climate was peculiarly well suited to olive cultivation; the export of olive oil was officially encouraged from as early as 600 BC.
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These factors permitted the development in the course of the 5th cent. BC of a genuinely urban sector of the Athenian citizen population, concentrated in what was almost a second city around the port of Piraeus. But most of those directly and exclusively engaged in Piraeus commerce, as in the other nonagricultural sectors of Athenian economy, were non-Athenian and often non-Greek foreigners, resident (free metics and slaves) and transient. Both absolutely and as a proportion of the total population (which itself was hypertrophied by 'normal' Greek standards) the foreign element was sensibly greater in Athens than in any other Greek community. Sparta in its economy as in some other respects represented the opposite pole from Athens. So far from being encouraged as economically desirable or even necessary, foreignersGreek as well as non-Greekwere periodically expelled from Sparta (xenelasiai). The Spartans did regularly practise economic exchange, but within rather than outside their territory, and with a politically subordinate free population known as perioikoi, on whom they depended, not least, for supplies of iron. Agriculture and stockraising were left to, or rather forced upon, a subjugated local population of helots, Greek in speech and culture but servile in status. By dint of exploiting the helots, the Spartans themselves contrived to do no economically productive work whatsoever (except in the sense that war, 'the business of Ares', was itself a means of production). Some other Greek communities exploited workforces of a similar collective character and servile status, but none combined that exploitation with the Spartans' peculiar disdain of all non-military forms of economic activity. The Spartans were not unique in refusing to coin silver or bronze for economic or political purposes, but their retention of a non-convertible domestic 'currency' of iron spits nicely symbolizes their economic eccentricity. See COINAGE, GREEK. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (1973; 2nd edn 1985); M. M. Austin and P. VidalNaquet, Economic and Social History of Ancient Greece: An Introduction (1977); H.-J. Gehrke, Jenseits von Athen und Sparta: Die griechische Dritten Welt (1988); R. G. Osborne, Classical Landscape with Figures (1987); T. W. Gallant, A Fisherman's Tale: An Analysis of the Potential Productivity of Fishing in the Ancient World (1985), and Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece (1991); R. Sallares, Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (1991); R. Garland, The Piraeus from the Fifth to the First Century BC (1987); S. Hodkinson, 'Explorations in Classical Spartan Property and Society' (Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1992). P. A. C.
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6. trade, Roman
trade, Roman The central issue for historians has long been, and remains, how to characterize properly the scale and importance of trade and commerce in the overall economy of the Roman empire. Some seek to emphasize how different, and essentially backward, the Roman economy was in comparison to the modern. They point to the Roman lite's apparent snobbish contempt for commerce (Cic. Off. 1. 1501). The primacy of agriculture cannot be denied, and it is noteworthy that the Roman agricultural writers, with the large landowner in mind, betray both very little interest in markets and an aversion to risk which did not inspire entrepreneurial experiments. Factories in the modern sense did not exist in the ancient world (see INDUSTRY). Cities did not grow up as centres of manufacturing; far from it, they can be represented merely as centres of consumption (see URBANISM). The cost and difficulty of transport, particularly over land, are claimed to have made it uneconomic to trade over long distances anything other than luxury products. Of course, basic goods, such as wine, olive oil, and grain, also pottery of all kinds, can be demonstrated to have been carried in large quantities over long distances. But, it is argued, something other than the free-market mechanism is at work here. First, there was the considerable circulation of goods within the extensive households of the rich, from their estates to their town houses, to their retinues and clients. Further, staples could be exchanged in large quantities as gifts between members of the lite. Examples can be identified at all periods and it has been demonstrated plausibly that such a mechanism was particularly important in the later Roman empire. The circulation of goods within the household of the emperor is the same phenomenon writ large. Secondly, and more importantly, it is claimed that the movement of staples was primarily an act of redistribution, organized by the central government, and on a smaller scale by local communities, to ensure the supply of essentials to the large cities, such as Rome, and to maintain the Roman armies, precisely because the private sector was not up to meeting needs on such a scale (see FOOD SUPPLY). A different model has been proposed. While it is true that the Roman aristocracy on the whole maintained a distance from direct involvement in trade, even they can, and did, benefit from its profits through intermediaries (see e.g. Plut. Cat. Mai. 21). Besides, beyond Rome, it is much less clear that local lites shared the same distaste for trade, with investments, frequently managed by their freedmen, in potteries, mines, textile production, and the like. The landowners needed markets for their products, but were able to affect a lack of interest in trade, because the whole process, often starting with a contract to gather the crop, lay in the hands of negotiatores. The landowner was provided with a certain return, while the negotiator had to organize the trade and to take the risks (for an example of miscalculation of those risks see Plin. Ep. 8. 2). The number of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean recorded for the period 100 BC to AD 300 is much larger than for either the preceding period or the Dark Ages; this suggests a level of operation which was not to be reached again until the high Renaissance. The greatest spur to the development of this trade was the creation of a fully monetarized economy throughout the empire (see MONEY). Barter, exchanges in kind, of course, continued to exist; but it is quite clear from Egyptian papyri that the use of money in transactions was the norm. Strabo (7. 5. 5), in the early empire, could go out of his way to note the lack of use of coin among the Dalmatians, as a characteristic of barbarian peoples. The availability of coin could vary from place to place and time to time. This made the existence of bankers (see BANKS) who could provide credit to facilitate deals essential. It is true that the empire did not see the growth of large international banks; but at the local level money-lenders were the key to exchanges both large and small. There are those historians who see in the spread of the use of money the creation of a Roman unified 'world economy'. This is a clear exaggeration. The empire consisted of a range of regional economies at different stages of development, which linked up with each other in ways which
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changed with time. At the regional level regular markets (nundinae) were vital. They are found throughout the empire and were as important, perhaps more so, to the peasant as to the large landowner. The existence of these markets was strictly regulated. The senate had to be petitioned for permission to hold markets; many such requests came from large landowners who wished to hold markets on their estates. The reason for the control was probably to limit competition with well-established markets in the local towns (Plin. Ep. 5. 4, 5. 13). This suggests that at this local level the volume of trade in the countryside was somewhat limited. There are signs that some products circulated largely on a regional basis (the distribution of Roman lamps, which were traded over surprising distances, nevertheless reveals several broad regional patterns of trade) (see MARKETS AND FAIRS). At the other end of the scale came the huge cities, such as Rome. These constituted enormous markets. Much is made of the state-sponsored system for supplying Rome with corn. However, state grain met no more than a portion of the city's annual grain needs. The rest had to be supplied by the free market. Furthermore, the importation of the state grain depended upon private traders, who in times of crisis had to be offered considerable incentives to involve themselves in the trade (Suet. Claud. 18). Monte Testaccio, the dump of Spanish oil amphorae, behind the port on the Tiber in Rome, is testimony to the enormous trade in oil (estimated at some 23 million kgs. per year). The annual consumption of wine in the city has been put at between 1 and 1.8 million hectolitres. For much of the empire all this was provided by the free market. Only later did oil and wine become part of the annona (see FOOD SUPPLY). The city of Rome was an enormous stimulus to trade. The expansion of the empire itself could open up major new markets to be exploited. The most researched example is the large market among the Gauls for Italian wine, particularly from the west coast of Italy. However, it is all too easy to exaggerate the effect of these new markets on the agrarian economy of Italy. There were transformations, but they were confined largely to coastal regions within easy reach of ports, and they were limited in time. By the 1st cent. AD these regions were having to compete with expanding trade in wine from Spain and south Gaul. See AMPHORAE AND AMPHORAE STAMPS, ROMAN. Because pottery survives on archaeological sites, its importance in trade can be exaggerated. However, it is clear that the industrial scale of production of terra sigillata in Gaul presupposes something more than a local market. Pottery on the whole was not often the primary cargo of ships, but it was frequently a part-cargo and could be an important commodity for the return leg of voyages, whose primary concern was the transport of more valuable goods. See POTTERY, ROMAN. Trade was carried on beyond the limits of the Roman empire. Most notable was the trade in luxuries, spices, ivories (see ELEPHANTS; IVORY), etc. beyond the Red Sea with the East Coast of Africa and India. A Greek papyrus in Vienna (PVindob. G40822) records one such transaction, involving nard, ivory, and textiles to a value of over 130 talents. When it is realized that some of the large ships on the eastern run could carry up to 150 such cargoes, the potential profitability of the trade is amply demonstrated. However, the handbook from the 1st cent. AD, the Periplus Maris Erythraei ('The Voyages round the Red Sea': see PERIPLOI), shows that although the primary interest was in these very valuable goods, shippers were also on the look-out for more mundane staples to fill their holds. Large-scale trade continued right through the late empire. In some ways traders became less independent, more tied into work for the imperial government or for the great aristocratic houses. The patterns changed somewhat, with more regional trade and less international. This, however, should not be taken as a sign of a major decline in the system which constituted such an important part of the overall economy of the Roman empire. J. H. D'Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (1981); P. Garnsey and others, Trade in the Ancient Economy (1983); J. M. Frayn, Markets and Fairs in Roman Italy (1993); J. H. D'Arms and E. C. Kopff (eds.), The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient
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Rome: Studies in Archaeology and History (1980); K. Greene, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy (1986); R. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (1990); W. V. Harris (ed.), The Inscribed Economy, JRA suppl. ser. 6 (1993); G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (1980); P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World (1988); D. P. S. Peacock and D. F. Williams, Amphorae and the Roman Economy (1986); A. Tchernia, Le Vin de l'Italie romaine (1986); Produccin y comercio del aceite en la antiguedad 1st International Congress (1980), and 2nd International Congress (1983); J. Remesal Rodrguez, La annona militaris y la exportacin de aceite btico a Germania (1986); L. Casson, Ancient Trade and Society (1984), and The Periplus Maris Erythraei (1989). J. J. P.
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7. economy, Roman
economy, Roman The economic history of Rome from the first, like all ancient Mediterranean economies, involved the interaction of the circumstances of local agriculture with the available labour supply in the context of opportunities for interregional redistribution in which the exchange of other commodities was involved. It is now certain that from the 7th cent BC. Rome was privileged among other Tiber valley communities as a centre for the movement of people and materials from peninsular Italy out into the world of Mediterranean contacts. The Romans believed that they had imported cereals from Campania from at least the early 5th cent., and that they had freed their citizens from the risk of debt-bondage (nexum; see DEBT) at the end of the 4th. It was important to their self-image that they considered the area around their city to be of only moderate productivity, and that it had been assigned in lots from an early period to citizens who worked them independently. Historically, this enthusiasm for the lot was of more significance in the concept of public ownership of land, and the practice of dividing and assigning it (see AGER PUBLICUS). This was attested in the formation of new tribus in the 4th cent. and widely practised in the establishment of coloniae in the 3rd and 2nd cents., especially on land which had belonged to defeated opponents of Rome (see COLONIZATION, ROMAN). But the exploitation of allotted land was perhaps never intended to be in theory, and was certainly not in practice, a matter of basic household subsistence. It rapidly became linked with the formation of estate centres (see LATIFUNDIA) for the production of cash crops for mass-marketing, the villas of the late republican landscape, which were also central to the cultural life of the wealthy families which owned them. The cities grew as markets and centres of processing, administration, and consumption of the products of this agriculture, and as centres for the control and management of a mutable labour force which included, as a result in part of the victories of the 2nd cent. BC, significant numbers of slaves (see SLAVERY), though their large-scale use in agriculture was generally perceived by the Roman tradition as undesirable. From the beginnings of the large-scale export of wine from Italy in the mid 2nd cent. the network of economic exchanges involved entrepreneurs, Roman military forces in the field, more or less dependent consumers inside and outside Roman territory, and the city of Rome itself in an increasingly complicated web, in which the non-agricultural resources of the growing imperial state, especially metals (see MINES AND MINING), were an important ingredient. The development over the next centuries of this state of affairs saw frequent changes in the specifics of the geography of the centres of exchange, and the favoured places of investment in production: olive oil and wine remained important, though we should recall that they are particularly visible archaeologically, and the production of Baetica, Africa, and Tripolitania transformed these regions, with concomitant gain to their market centres and port outlets (see AMPHORAE, ROMAN). The economy of the empire included significant connections with networks of exchange reaching across northern Europe, central Asia, and the Sahara, but most importantly via the Red Sea with the increasingly complex economy of the Indian Ocean area, to which Alexandria (1) was central. Rome itself was a consumer on an enormous scale, and therefore exerted a considerable influence on Mediterranean production and exchange, which were also promoted by the need to pay state exactions in cash. But the complexity of the network, the continued local interdependence of the regions of the empire, and the existence of very many smaller centres of consumption, management, and marketing, ensured that the economic life of the Roman world was not wholly oriented on Rome. The social and political forms of economic life were sophisticated and various, though they did not much resemble the practices of early modern Europe: the role of ex-slaves (see FREEDMEN) and the public contract may be singled out, while the availability of credit and the nature of accounting deserve further investigation. See ARTISANS AND CRAFTSMEN; COINAGE (ROMAN); INDUSTRY; TRADE, ROMAN. K. Greene, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy (1986); P. Garnsey and R. Saller,
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The Roman Empire, Economy, Society and Culture (1987), 43103; A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy, ed. P. A. Brunt (1974); R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire, Quantitative Studies, 2nd edn. (1982), and Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (1990). N. P.
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8. economy, Hellenistic
economy, Hellenistic The regions brought under the control of the Hellenistic kingdoms showed little economic unity or uniformity. Land-use systems ranged from irrigation regimes in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and parts of Iran (Polyb. 10. 28) through widespread dry farming to the nomad or transhumant pastoralism of the deserts and the mountains. Land tenure arrangements included, besides private beneficial ownership at all levels of magnitude, land owned by cities, cantons, or temples but rented out to individuals or worked by 'slaves of the shrine' (hierodouloi), and above all land owned by the kings. Such land might be held in direct tenure and worked by serfs, or alienated to large-scale proprietors (e.g. Austin nos. 180 and 185), or bestowed as allotments (kleroi) in various ways on individuals in return for military service, or have its use and revenues assigned to individuals (dorea). Such lands mostly had arable and arboricultural use in producing the basic Mediterranean triad (cereals, vines (see WINE), olives) and other supplementary foodstuffs, while other land uses included pasturage, ornamental ground such as the ex-Persian paradeisoi, quarries, mines, and forests. Most foodstuff production will have been consumed locally, but some established long-distance flows continued, such as corn from Egypt to the Aegean, cattle and slaves (see SLAVERY) from the Black Sea (Polyb. 4. 38), or spices and precious stones from India to the Mediterranean. They may well have grown in importance in the Hellenistic period, thereby assisting the growth and enrichment of entrept and trading cities such as Rhodes, Alexandria (1), and Petra. Such cities seem also to have become the main centres of both the production and the consumption of fine decorative goods such as silverware (see PLATE), glass, and jewellery, while the creation and use of more basic artefacts remained local unless used, as amphorae universally were, as containers for transport and storage. The growth in the numbers of coin-hoards and of shipwrecks during the period, together with the development of institutions (e.g. public and private banks) and installations (harbours, lighthouses, etc.), suggest an increase both in the volume of trade and in the monetization of some transactions: the activities of Cretan and other pirates (see PIRACY) increased accordingly. Rulers and polities affected all such economic activities by their needs, exactions, and benefactions. Old and new Greek cities levied taxes and rents on transactions, statuses, properties, and commodities, but rarely covered expenses comfortably. They tended instead to elicit loans, donations, or endowments from wealthy and benevolent citizens or outsiders, whose services prompted honorary decrees (e.g. Austin nos. 98 and 113) and shifted power relationships in their favour (see EUERGETISM). On a larger scale kings and rulers did the same, redistributing resources via systematic taxation to pay for armies and wars, courts and bureaucracy, gifts and benefactions, disaster relief and city foundations. For fiscal reasons all royal governments showed some interest in increasing the productive capacity of their territories, e.g. by opening mines, extending the agrarian base or transplanting species, but the older picture of a managed 'royal economy' is not now accepted, even for Egypt. The political act with the biggest impact on the Hellenistic economy was probably Rome's creation of a free port at Delos in 166 BC, which moved some trade routes and badly damaged Rhodes (Polyb. 30. 31). C. Praux, Le Monde hellnistique 12 (1978), esp. 35888, 474524; R. M. Berthold, Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age (1984); CAH 72/1 (1984), ch. 5 (E. G. Turner: Egypt), ch. 8 (J. K. Davies: general survey); F. G. B. Millar, in A. Kuhrt and S. Sherwin-White (eds.), Hellenism in the East (1987), ch. 5.
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J. K. D.
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9. labour
labour, as a factor in the production of wealth, has no equivalent in Greek or Latin. Association of the terms ponos and labor with drudgery reflects the negative attitudes of ancient lites, for whom 'labour' was the antithesis of schole and otium (time available for leisure, politics, education, and culture). Consequently, the labour of theoretically free wage-earners and craftsmen tended to be assimilated to slavery (Arist. Pol. 1337b19 ff.; Cic. Off. 1. 159 f.). Wages were seen as purchasing the person as opposed to labour-power; the supposedly degrading nature of craft-work (banausia) led to the downgrading of the individual worker (see ART, ANCIENT ATTITUDES TO; ARTISANS AND CRAFTSMEN). Surviving sources reveal nothing resembling modern conceptions of unions or tradeguilds (see CLUBS), strikes, or common programmes of action; nor, aside from occasional epitaphs, is there any awareness of the 'dignity of labour'. Striking is the absence of any sustained competition or resentment between types of labour. Throughout the Greek and Roman worlds are found instead shifting, complementary relationships between different forms of exploitation. Already in Hesiod's Works and Days (less clearly in the Odyssey) there exist crude equivalents of 'free', 'wage', and 'slave' labourer, combined on the peasant farm. In quantitative terms, the dominant form of labour on the land throughout the ancient world may broadly be described as 'compulsory labour', whereby the politically weak performed obligatory labour dues for the powerful. From the Greek world, the helots are the best known of these unfree agricultural workforces 'between freedom and slavery' (Pollux). There was a similar pattern in the Roman empire, with Romans in the provinces retaining pre-existing systems of compulsory labour. In cities, the labour of independent artisans and their families would be supplemented by slaves (a permanent workforce) or wage labourers (for casual labour). Large public projects would require extensive hired labour (Plut. Per. 12. 5; Suet. Vesp. 8. 5). Exceptional were Classical Athens and Roman Italy and Sicily during the late republic, where chattel-slavery was widespread in the countryside (though supplemented by wage labour at harvest). In both cases, the citizen status of peasants made problematic their direct exploitation by landowning lites. Italian peasants, however, always remained vulnerable. As the number of chattel-slaves gradually (though never completely) diminished, the later centuries of the empire saw a lowering of peasant status and their progressive re-exploitation: tenant farmers were tied to the land as coloni (see COLONUS). The relationship of the colonate and allied forms of compulsory labour to the eventual emergence of feudalism remains obscure. See CLASS STRUGGLE; INDUSTRY. C. Moss, The Ancient World at Work (1969); J. L. Stocks, CQ 1936, 177 ff.; J. M. Andr, L'Otium dans la vie morale et intellectuelle romaine (1966); S. R. Joshell, Work, Identity and Legal Status at Rome (1992); M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (1977), Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (1981), 116 ff., The Ancient Economy (1973; repr. 1985), and Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (1980); G. E. M. de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle (1981); P. Garnsey (ed.), Non-slave Labour in the Greco-Roman World (1980); G. Nussbaum, CQ 1960, 186 ff.; P. A. Brunt, JRS 1980 81 ff.; M. K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (1978); A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy (1974), 293 ff.; C. R. Whittaker, in M. I. Finley (ed.), Classical Slavery (1987), 88 ff. P. C. M.
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10. latifundia
latifundia (large estates) 'have ruined Italy and are now ruining the provinces'. Pliny (1) the Elder (HN 18. 35) put latifundia at the centre of debate about the development of the Roman rural economy. But what were latifundia? Divergent modern definitions abound and confuse: large pastoral ranches beginning in the 3rd cent. BC; slave-staffed oil- and wine-producing villas (either single properties or the scattered estates of one owner) first described by M. Porcius Cato (1) c.160 BC (see VILLA; SLAVERY); any property above 500 iugera (125 ha.: 309 acres) of whatever period: all of which 'ruined' Italy by forcing peasants from the land. Others dismiss Pliny's remark as generalized nostalgia and refer to archaeological surveys that not only emphasize the diversity of rural settlement but also show that villas and peasant farms often existed side by side. Yet if Pliny is allowed credence and attention, the term latifundia applies strictly to extensive unitary estates, resulting from an aggregation of properties, too large to farm according to the labour-intensive methods of cultivation of the slavestaffed villas recommended by the agricultural writers (HN 18. 35; cf. Columella Rust. 1. 3. 12). Latifundia are thus to be defined not so much by crop or measurement as by management principles. Pliny refers to the reaping-machine and long-handled scythe typical of Gallic latifundia (HN 18. 261, 296), which saved time and labour but wasted grain and hay. On such large estates tenants were probably increasingly employed alongside or in preference to poorly supervised (and thus uneconomical) slaves (cf. Columella Rust. 1. 7. 6). In this interpretation latifundia 'ruined' an agriculture previously dominated by the slave-staffed villa. Some such process (modern explanations of it differ) occurred in the 1st cent. AD both in the ager Cosanus in Etruria (see COSA), where fieldsurvey and excavation indicate that medium-sized villas gave way to larger estates, and in the ager Falernus (see FALERNUS AGER) in Campania, another heartland of the slave-staffed villa. Analysis of all literary references now suggests that latifundia developed in Italy in the Julio-Claudian period. But how widespread did they become? It might be relevant that only a generation later Pliny (2) the Younger readily contemplated just such an aggregation of two large estates on the upper Tiber (Ep. 3. 19), and that an agglomeration of properties is noticeable in the contemporary alimentary tables (see ALIMENTA) from Veleia in Cisalpine Gaul (see GAUL (CISALPINE) ) and Ligures Baebiani in Samnium (see SAMNITES). As for the provinces specifically associated with latifundia, fieldwork in Sicily suggests a similar trend of amalgamation in the late 1st and early 2nd cents. AD; evidence from northern Tunisia (see AFRICA, ROMAN) points to the formation of large estates consisting of a central villa and scattered, probably tenant, farms; while sculptural reliefs of the Gallic reaping-machine have been found at Reims and near Trier (Augusta Treverorum). See AGRICULTURE, ROMAN; DOMAINS. Frank, Econ. Survey; K. D. White, BICS 1967, 6279, and with A. J. L. van Hoof, Hist. 1982, 1268; J. K. Evans, AJAH 1980, 1947; R. P. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire, 2nd edn. (1982); P. W. de Neeve, Colonus (1984); V. I. Kuziscin, La grande propriet agraria nell'Italia romana (1984); K. Greene, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy (1986); R. J. A. Wilson, Sicily Under the Roman Empire (1990); G. Barker and J. Lloyd (eds.), Roman Landscapes (1991). M. S. Sp.
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11. finance, Greek and Hellenistic

finance, Greek and Hellenistic The collective deployment of resources by the community inevitably has socio-political implications (who pays? who benefits?). But public finance in Greek states rarely had economic aims beyond the broad balancing of incomings and outgoings: demand-management through running a budget deficit or surplus was unknown. Oikonomia ('economics') as applied to state finance preserved autarkic attitudes appropriate to its original meaning of 'household management' (Xen. Mem. 3. 4). Recurring expenditure (primarily on administration, cult, ambassadors, defence, maintenance of fortifications, gymnasia, and public buildings) would be met from a variety of revenues (rents and royalties from state property, including mines and quarries, court fees and fines, taxes on non-citizens, sales taxes, excise duties and customs dues). Collection of taxes was regularly farmed out by auction to private individuals (Ath. pol. 47. 2 ff). Extraordinary expenditure (typically through warfare or food shortage; occasionally, on public building) was met through ad hoc measures: property and poll taxes, public loans, creation of monopolies, epidoseis (contributions), or confiscations ([Arist.] Oec. 2). Warfare itself was seen as potentially productive (Arist. Pol. 1256b), and might occasionally prove so. Systems of Greek public finance may be assessed in so far as they conform to or deviate from these norms. Minoan and Mycenaean communities seem to have been unique in the Greek world in their degree of direct, central control over resources. The testimony of the Linear B tablets, in conjunction with extensive storage facilities within the palaces, suggests a 'redistributive' system of economic exchange, rigidly controlled from the centre (there are parallels in temple-based economies of the near east; see MINOAN and MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION). All this ended with the onset of the so-called Dark Age (c.1100 BC). The well-stocked storerooms of the Odyssey (2. 337 ff.) may dimly recall Mycenaean palaces, but redistribution was replaced in the world of Homer by reciprocity between and within aristocratic oikoi (households). Resources were deployed by the giving of gift and counter-gift (see GIFT, GREECE): in return for their contributions to the lite, the people received protection (Il. 12. 310 ff.; Od. 13. 13 ff.). Arrangements in Archaic and even Classical Sparta resembled Homeric organization in the near absence of any centralized system of finance. The mainstay of the regime was the agricultural produce appropriated from the helots by individual Spartiates, who passed on a portion to their sussition (public mess). Details are obscure (the perioikoi may have made contributions in cash or kind), but the small scale of resources under central control helps to account for the poor showing of late 5th-cent. Sparta as a city (Thuc. 1. 10). Much the same might be said of the rudimentary systems of finance (e.g. the naukrariai and kolakretai in Athens) deployed by the aristocracies dominating early Archaic poleis. Archaic tyrants provide a stark contrast: their characteristically heavy expenditure on public buildings and central, civic institutions gave the polis a new, urban emphasis. Necessary resources were raised by a combination of personal taxes and other, extraordinary measures: in Athens, a tax on agricultural produce (Thuc. 6. 54). Also characteristic of Archaic tyranny was the effective merging of the tyrant's own resources with those of the state (Ath. pol. 16. 1). The ending of tyranny caused an immediate reaction against the tyrants' financial methods: taxes on the person became a symbol of oppression, restricted to non-citizens and those of low status. Archaic Athens broadly conformed to this pattern; as late as the 480s, it was proposed that a windfall gain of 100 talents from the silver mines at Laurium be parcelled out among the citizen body (Ath. pol 22. 7). Shortly after, Athenian finances were transformed by the acquisition of a tribute-paying empire (see DELIAN LEAGUE). Figures from the eve of the Peloponnesian War give a crude impression of scale: from a total annual revenue (internal and external) of approximately 1,000 talents (Xen. An. 7.
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1. 27) some 600 talents derived from the empire (Thuc. 2. 13). This made possible the maintenance of a massive navy, an extended programme of public building, provision of public pay, and the accumulation on the Acropolis of a strategic reserve of at least 6,000 talents (Thuc. 2. 13). Against this, expenses of war were heavy: one talent in pay to keep one trireme at sea for one month. As the Peloponnesian War progressed, there was (in addition to an upward reassessment of the tribute in 425: ML 69) increasing reliance on payments of eisphoraan extraordinary property tax falling on the wealthy. By contrast, the Spartan system was poorly placed to generate the resources needed for extended warfare. Appeals for contributions from sympathetic individuals proved inadequate (ML 67), and only massive subventions of Persian gold made possible the eventual Spartan victory. The importance of imperial revenues for Athens' democracy became apparent in the 4th cent., when the range of public payments was actually extended to include assembly pay and payments from the theoric fund (see THEORIKA). Collective aspirations may be read into the explicit aim behind the proposals in Xenophon (1)'s Poroi ('Revenues'): maintenance of the citizen body at public expense. Attempts to revive the tribute-paying empire failed and heavier burdens therefore fell on the wealthy (Xen. Oec. 2. 5 ff). The degree to which increasing demands disrupted and alienated the Athenian lite is disputed. There emerged in the course of the 4th cent. a group of financial experts (including Eubulus (1) and culminating in Lycurgus (3) ), who occupied tailor-made offices and made the most of Athens' internal resources. Characteristic of finance in Classical Athens was the liturgy system, placing the lite under an obligation to perform public services (notably the trierarchy and choregia). Liturgies were an integral part of the democratic system: in return for public services, liturgists might (or might not) receive popular consideration in politics and the courts. Significantly, Aristotle (Pol. 1321a) recommends that oligarchies attach expensive duties to high public office, so excluding all but the wealthy. The citizens of 4th-cent. Pharsalus handed over their acropolis and control of their finances to their wealthiest citizen; in return he used his fortune as a revolving loan-fund, smoothing out imbalances in income and expenditure (Xen. Hell. 6. 1. 2) This privileging of wealth ties in with the broadly postdemocratic practice of euergetism, common in Hellenistic cities. The euergetes ('benefactor') earned enhanced status, and possibly material rewards, by making donations in cash or kind to the advantage of the citizen body. Amongst the Hellenistic monarchies, Ptolemaic Egypt had a system of public finance of exceptional complexity. Revenues from farmland were assessed in painstaking detail and collected directly; collection of dues from vineyards, orchards, and gardens was farmed out. Additionally, the apomoira (a tax on wine, fruit, and vegetables) was assessed by royal officials, but the right to collect was sold to contractors. Customs dues were graduated from 20 to 59 per cent, according to the goods involved (contrast the flat 5 per cent tax from Classical Athens). There were varying rates of tax on sale and gift of property and privileges (e.g. tax concessions) and, apart from sundry minor taxes (including a poll tax), intricately organized monopolies on an extended range of goods and services. Other Hellenistic kings raised revenue from their subject cities partly by imposing specific taxes, partly by levying contributions (phoros), which were creamed off internal revenues, raised in the usual ways. A. Andreades, A History of Greek Public Finance (1933); Ventris Chadwick, Docs2; M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (1977); and Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (1981), 41 ff, 199 ff.; G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, in A. C. Littleton and B. S. Yamey (eds.), Studies in the History of Accounting (1956), 14 ff., and Classica et Mediaevalia, 1953, 30 ff.; P. Millett, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens (1991), and in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Greek World (1993), 177 ff.; L. Migeotte (ed.), L'emprunt public dans les cits grecques (1984), and Les Souscriptions publiques dans les cits grecques (1992); P. Brun, Eisphora, Syntaxis, Stratiotika (1983); S. Humphreys, in J. W. Eadie and J. Ober (eds.), The Craft of the Ancient Historian (1985), 199 ff.; P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World (1988); P. Veyne, Bread and Circuses (1990; Fr. orig. 1976); Rostovtzeff, Hellenistic World; C. Praux, L'conomie royale des Lagides (1939); A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy (1974), 151 ff.; S. von Reden, Exchange in Ancient Greece (1995).
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P. C. M.
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12. trade, Greek

trade, Greek Exchange in some form has probably existed since the emergence of the first properly human social groups. Trade, whether local, regional, or international, is a much later development. It is a certain inference from the extant documentary records in Linear B script that the world of Mycenaean age palace-economy knew all three main forms of commerce (see MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION; MYCENAEAN LANGUAGE), and a reasonable guess that a considerable portion of the long-distance carrying trade was in the hands of specialized professional traders. But whether that trade was 'administered' or 'free-enterprise' is impossible to say. It is one sign among many of the economic recession experienced by the Greek world generally between about 1200 and 800 BC that in these dark centuries regional and international trade dwindled to vanishing-point; the few known professional traders were typically men of non-Greek, especially Phoenician, origin. In book 8 of Homer's Odyssey the sea-battered hero finds his way at last to the comparative calm and safety of Phaeacia, a never-never land set somewhere in the golden west (see SCHERIA), only to be roundly abused by a Phaeacian aristocrat for looking like a sordidly mercenary merchant skipper rather than a gentleman amateur sportsman. Hesiod, composing perhaps about the same time (c.700 BC) in inland, rural Boeotia, was prepared to concede that a moderately prosperous peasant farmer might load the surplus of the grain-crop produced by himself and his small workforce into his own modest boat and dispose of it down the nearby coast during the dead season of the agricultural year immediately after the grain-harvest. But to be a full-time trader was no more acceptable to Hesiod than to Homer's Phaeacian aristocrat. Each in his way was waging an ideological polemic against the development of professional trading (emporia) and traders (emporoi). This prejudice issued from a world ruled and dominated by landed aristocrats. It was perfectly all right for a Greek aristocrat to visit his peers in other communities, then just acquiring the newfangled constitutional form of the polis, bearing gifts of richly woven garments or finely wrought metalwork, and to come home laden with comparable or even more lavish prestations. It was quite another matter to spend most of the recognized sailing season (late March to late September) plying the Mediterranean with a mixed cargo of, say, perfume flasks from Corinth, hides from Euboea, salt fish from the Black Sea (see EUXINE), and wine-amphorae from Chios, making only a humble living and precluded from participating in the military and political activities that defined the status of an lite leader of his polis. Such trading was considered an occupation suitable only for the lower orders of Greek society, the dependants (possibly unfree) of a great landlord. Yet the significance of traders in the early polis era of Homer and Hesiod must not be confused with the significance of trade, especially long-distance sea-borne commerce. Without the latter there would have been no opening from the Aegean to both east (for example, the multinational emporion at Al Mina on the Orontes) and west (notably Ischia-Pithecusae (Pithekoussai) ), beginning in the halfcentury from 825 to 775, no movement of colonization to southern Italy, Sicily, and the Black Sea (see COLONIZATION, GREEK), no comparative knowledge of other, non-Greek cultures and thus no alphabet (see ALPHABET, GREEK)and so, maybe, no Homer and Hesiod. By 600 BC the economic position and social status of traders may have improved, with the development of purpose-built saildriven, round-hulled merchantmen (see SHIPS), the creation of institutions and techniques designed to facilitate multinational commerce, and the establishment of permanent emporia in Egypt and Etruria (see EMPORION, first entry). Naucratis in the Nile delta was founded in about 630 by Greek traders from western Asia Minor, the
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adjacent Greek islands, and Aegina, under the auspices of the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus (Psamtik). In return for Greek oil, wine, and luxury goods the Greek traders of Naucratis received Egyptian grain, metals, and slaves, from which exchange the Egyptian treasury derived extra value in taxes. Permanent transnational market-centres and ports of trade were thus established under official governmental direction, linking economies of dissimilar type. Soon Naucratis had an Italian counterpart at Gravisca (see TARQUINII) in Etruria, the happy hunting-ground of one Sostratus of Aegina. This Sostratus, who may be identical with the Sostratus of Herodotus (1) (4. 152), specialized in the run between Etruria and the Aegean by way of the haulway (diolkos) built across the isthmus of Corinth in about 600. He was a free citizen, literate (in addition to his dedication to Apollo at Gravisca he used personalized merchant-marks on the pots he carried), and an independent entrepreneur who presumably owned his own merchant ship (or ships). Perhaps he knew some Etruscan, as the Phocaean and Samian merchants who traded further westwards to the south of France and Spain knew the local Celtic languages and, as surviving business letters on lead attest, employed locals in their importexport businesses. A similar lead letter of the 6th cent. has survived from the other, eastern end of the world of Archaic Greek commerce, at Berezan (Olbia) in the Black Sea. But this tells an apparently darker and possibly more typical tale of (allegedly) illicit detention and confiscation; and one of the traders involved seems to have been a dependent agent-trader not a free trader working on his own behalf. By the middle of the 5th cent. the place of Al Mina, Naucratis, and Gravisca had been taken by Athens' newly developed port city of Piraeus. It was the Athenians' famous victory at Salamis that enabled the development of Piraeus into a commercial as well as military harbour facility. A century later, Isocrates hailed its creation: 'for Athens established the Piraeus as a market in the centre of Hellasa market of such abundance that the articles which it is difficult to obtain, one here, one there, from the rest of the world, all these it is easy to produce from Athens' (Panegyricus 42). This testimony is corroborated by archaeology and echoed by writers as diverse as Thucydides (2), the Old Oligarch, and Athenian comic playwrights. As early as 421, we learn from Eupolis' Marikas, the characteristic institution of the maritime or bottomry loan (see MARITIME LOANS) had been developed to finance long-distance trade, above all in the staple necessity, grain, on the regular large-scale importation of which Athens had come to depend both economically and (since it was the poor majority of citizens who mainly benefited) politically. During the currency of her 5th-cent. empire Athens, thanks to her permanently commissioned fleet of trireme warships, was able to suppress piracy, one of the major threats to peaceful commerce throughout antiquity, as well as to direct trade towards the Piraeus on economically favourable terms. Loss of empire was among other things bad for Aegean Greek trade generally, and bad for Athens' access to staple grain and the raising of taxes and dues on shipping and goods in particular. Over the course of the 4th cent. a whole series of legal measures was enacted by Athens to compensate for loss of military power (several mentioned in Athenaion politeia). A combination of the stick (penalties for residents who contracted loans on cargoes of grain bound elsewhere than to Piraeus, or for not offloading a certain minimum percentage of a cargo there, and so on) and the carrot (establishment for the benefit of Athens-based traders of new specialized maritime courts; granting permission to foreign traders to set up on Attic soil sanctuaries for their native godsIsis and Astarte) was employed to good effect. One measure practised by trading communities in other periods was significantly conspicuous by its absence: the Athenians never discriminated in favour of their own citizen merchants. This was partly no doubt because they constituted a small minority of the trading and commercial population, but it was also because the barriers between citizen status and the status of the majority (metics, slaves) involved were high and sturdyas the exceptional breach in the case of Pasion amply proves. (See CITIZENSHIP, GREEK; SLAVERY; STATUS, LEGAL AND SOCIAL, Greek.) See also MARKETS AND FAIRS; SYMBOLON; TRADERS.
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J. Chadwick, The Mycenaean World (1976); J. D. Muhly, 'Homer and the Phoenicians: The Relations between Greece and the Near East in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages', Berytus 1970, 1964; J. Boardman, The Greeks Overseas: Their Early Colonies and Trade (1980); L. Casson, The Ancient Mariners, 2nd edn. (1992); J. B. Salmon, Wealthy Corinth: A History of the City to 338 BC (1984); F. Meijer and O. van Nijf, Trade, Transport and Society in the Ancient World: A Sourcebook (1992); R. J. Hopper, Trade and Industry in Classical Greece (1979); R. Garland, The Piraeus (1987); P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World (1988); R. Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (1991); P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981); Y. Garlan, 'Les Pirates', in Guerre et conomie en Grce ancienne (1989), 173201; J. Hasebroek, Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece (Ger. orig. 1928; Eng. trans. 1933); P. Garnsey, C. R. Whittaker, and K. Hopkins (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy (1983). P. A. C.
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13. agriculture, Roman

agriculture, Roman By modern standards Roman agriculture was technically simple, average yields were low, transport was difficult and costly, and storage was inefficient. This limited urbanization (and hence 'industrialization') and obliged the bulk of the population to live and work on the land. Nevertheless, in the late republic and earlier Principate agriculture and urbanization (see URBANISM (Roman) ) developed together to levels probably not again matched until the late 18th cent. Roman agriculture broadly fits the ahistoric pattern which is commonly seen as characteristic of the Mediterranean region: based on the triad of cereals, vines (see WINE) and olives, at the mercy of a semi-arid climate with low and unreliable rainfall, and dominated by small farms practising a polyculture aimed principally at self-sufficiency and safety. But two factorsthe geophysical diversity of Italy (let alone of Rome's provinces), and the effects of political and social developmentsled to historically important variations between areas and across time in the organization and practice of agriculture. The last 40 years have seen an enormous growth in archaeological researchsurface survey of rural areas, excavations of farmsteads, study of the ancient environment (through pollen, seeds, bones)which is taking our knowledge and understanding of Roman agriculture far beyond what could be discovered from the evidence of the literary sources. In archaic Rome the land seems to have been controlled by the lite, and the majority of Romans were dependant labourers (nexi). The concept of private ownership of land (ager privatus) had probably developed by the late 6th cent. BC, and by the later 4th cent. Rome had become a state of citizensmallholders. The political aim behind this development was the creation of a large conscript army of smallholders who could afford to arm themselves (the assidui); as this army defeated Rome's Italian neighbours the Roman state annexed tracts of their territories which were often distributed in small plots to create more assidui, although some was left as nominally 'public' land (ager publicus) and appears to have been dominated by the lite who now used enslaved enemies as their main agricultural workforce. This cycle of conquest, annexation, and settlement continued, almost without interruption, into the early second century BC, and settlement schemes, albeit thereafter using confiscated land, continued into the early Principate. The face of Italy was changed: forests were cleared and drainage schemes undertaken, as in south Etruria and in the Po valley; the territories of the ubiquitous Roman colonies were divided into small farms of similar size by rectangular grids of ditches, banks, and roads (centuriation) which are often still traceable today; these examples and the obligation on most of Rome's Italian allies to supply infantry on the Roman model encouraged the wider diffusion of this pattern of peasant smallholding. Rome's massive overseas expansion in the 2nd and 1st cent. BC boosted agricultural developments which had already begun in the 3rd cent. The large and long-serving armies of conquest required huge supplies of grain, wine, wool, and leather, the Celtic aristocracy under and beyond Roman rule enthusiastically adopted wine-drinking as a mark of status, and the city of Rome swelled as the capital of an empire and the centre for conspicuous consumption and display by its increasingly wealthy leaders. The boom in demand for agricultural produce, and the continuous supply of cheap slave labour, encouraged the lite to expand their landholdings and to invest in market-oriented production. A significant differentiation between larger and smaller farms emerges in the archaeological record, and also regional patterns of types of agriculture. While in southern Italy relatively extensive forms of agriculture, that is cereal cultivation using chain-gangs of slaves and large-scale stockbreeding with seasonal movement between upland summer pastures and winter stations in the coastal plains (transhumance), were probably predominant, central western Italy (the semicircle around Rome and
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her main ports) was dominated by the so-called 'villa system', that is intensive production on mediumsized estates (around 25 to 75 ha.; 60 to 180 acres) of wine, olive oil, and other cash crops, including wheat (see CEREALS), vegetables, fruit (see FOOD AND DRINK), and also small game and poultry, with a permanent nucleus of skilled slave labour topped up at seasonal peaks with casual labour hired from the free rural poor. These forms of agriculture flourished into the 2nd cent. AD with some reorientation: consumption by the frontier-based armies of the Principate and the Celtic aristocracy was increasingly met by the development of local Roman-influenced agricultural production, but the growth of Rome and general urbanization of Italy in the Augustan period greatly increased domestic demand in Italy. Roman estate owners showed considerable interest in technical and technological improvements, such as experimentation with and selection of particular plant varieties and breeds of animal, the development of more efficient presses and of viticultural techniques in general, concern with the productive deployment and control of labour, and, arguably, a generally 'economically rational' attitude to exploitation of their landholdings (see TECHNOLOGY). A technical literature of estate management emerged, drawing on Carthaginian and Hellenistic predecessors, which is represented to us principally by the manuals of Cato (Censorius), Varro, and Columella (see AGRICULTURAL WRITERS). The development of this estate agriculture put pressure on the peasant smallholders, although military needs led to some dramatic and bitterly opposed attempts to revive an independent peasantry in central Italy, notably the Gracchan programme (see SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS (3), TI. and SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS, C.) of the later 2nd cent. and the settlement schemes for veterans in the 1st cent. BC. The decline of the peasantry should not be exaggerated: excavated small farms show that some peasants too produced for and profited from the same markets as the large estates, and in hillier areas and the Po (Padus) valley the peasantry remained strong. But as the Roman army became mercenary and then, under Augustus, professional and more cosmopolitan, the political will to maintain an independent peasantry in Italy gradually evaporated, and it seems that peasants increasingly became tenants rather than owners of small farms. The problems of the 3rd cent. AD reduced the inflow of imperial revenues to Rome and Italy, and as the level of urbanization and demand for agricultural produce declined, so did intensive farming. Large estates were becoming more concentrated in the hands of a fewer noble families (and the Church), and the legal standing of the poor declined further. The result was a tendency, not general but widespread, to move to more extensive agriculture based on the labour of tied tenants (see COLONI), although paradoxically this was the period in which Roman-influenced estate agriculture flourished most in some of the less troubled provinces, notably Britain and Egypt. See AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS; FARM-BUILDINGS; LATIFUNDIA; PASTORALISM; PEASANTS; PLOUGHING. GENERAL K. D. White, A Bibliography of Roman Agriculture (1970); K. D. White, Roman Farming (1970); W. E. Heitland, Agricola: A Study of Agriculture and Rustic Life in the GraecoRoman World from the Point of View of Labour (1921); A. J. Toynbee, Hannibal's Legacy: The Hannibalic War's Effects on Roman Life (1965); P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 BCAD 14 (1971); A. Sirago, L'Italia agraria sotto Traiano (1958); L. Cracco Ruggini, Economia e societ nell'Italia annonaria: Rapporti fra agricoltura e commercio dal IV al VI secolo d.C. (1961). ARCHAEOLOGY T. W. Potter, The Changing Landscape of South Etruria (1979); K. Greene, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy (1986); G. Barker and J. Lloyd (eds.), Roman Landscapes: Archaeological Survey in the Mediterranean Region (1991); J. Percival, The Roman Villa (1976); A. Carandini (ed.), Settefinestre: Una villa schiavistica nell'Etruria romana (1985); R. Hingley, Rural Settlement in Roman Britain (1989); M. K. Jones and G. Dimbleby (eds.), The Environment of Man: The Iron Age to the Anglo-Saxon Period (1981).
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SPECIFIC TOPICS K. D. White, Agricultural Implements of the Roman World (1967); K. D. White, Farm Equipment of the Roman World (1975); J. Kolendo, L'agricoltura nell'Italia romana (1980); A. Tchernia, Le Vin de l'Italie romaine (1986); M. S. Spurr, Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy (1986); E. Gabba and M. Pasquinucci, Strutture agrarie e allevamento transumante nell'Italia romana (IIII sec. a.C.) (1979); J. M. Frayn, Sheep-Rearing and the Wool Trade in Italy during the Roman Period (1984); P. W. de Neeve, Colonus: Private Farm-Tenancy in Roman Italy during the Republic and Early Principate (1984); J. M. Frayn, Subsistence Farming in Roman Italy (1979); D. W. Rathbone, Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in Third-Century AD Egypt (1991). D. W. R.
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14. artisans and craftsmen

artisans and craftsmen (see ART, ANCIENT ATTITUDES TO; CLUBS, GREEK and ROMAN; INDUSTRY; MARKETS AND FAIRS). In Greece the prejudices of the (largely landowning) citizen-lites against the activities of 'mechanics' (banausoi), often slaves, freedmen, or metics, subjected artisans to formal handicaps in the oligarchic polis, including limitation of political rights (Ptolemaic Cyrene: SEG 9. 1, para. 8, unfortunately corrupt), restriction of their freedom of movement (Thessalian cities: Arist. Pol. 7. 12, 1331a315), and exclusion from the gymnasium (Beroea in the 2nd cent. BC: P. Gauthier and M. Hatzopoulos, Meletemata 1994, 21, line 29), although in the Athenian democracy their social standing was higher, notwithstanding the condescension of Athenian 'intellectuals'. Craftsmen themselves could be proud of their products, if the 'signatures' on painted pottery are really those of their makers, as too of their occupations, to judge from the Athenian artisans who stated them in their dedications, including a 'washerwoman' (pkmtqia) (A. Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Acropolis (1949), 4645), the last a reminder of the considerable involvement of women in the humbler crafts, especially textile production (see IG 22. 155378 with M. Tod, Epigraphica 1950, 3 ff.). Although entrepreneurs could prosper through artisanal activity, craftsmen as a group were largely powerless, since the citizen-group, beyond taxing sales and charging rents for market- and workshop-space, had no interest in promoting industry as such. The larger scale of the Roman economy gives greater visibility to the entrepreneurial artisan in Roman society, such as the contract-baker M. Vergilius Eurysaces, whose grandiose tomb at Rome still stands (Richardson, Topog. Dict. Ancient Rome, entry under Sep. Eurysacis), although there is little clear evidence for manufacturing enterprises of more than local significance (but see AMPHORAE (ROMAN) and LAMPS) andapart from the exceptional case of brick production (see BRICKSTAMPS)the Roman lite cannot easily be linked with manufacture. On the other hand, upperclass disdain for the crafts, as at Cic. Off. 1. 42, hardly encouraged the open admission of such links, which certainly accounted for some of the wealth of successful Roman freedmen. Roman craftsmen are widely attested in rural villages as well as cities. A. Burford, Craftsmen in Greek and Roman Society (1972); J. Morel, in A. Giardina (ed.), L'Uomo romano (1989), ch. 8 (Eng. trans., The Romans (1993) ). A. J. S. S.
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15. banks
banks in antiquity supplied a selection of the services familiar from their modern counterparts. None the less, the essential banking function, receipt of deposits which might then be lent at interest to a different set of customers, appears only fleetingly in ancient texts (Dem. 36. 11). Many temples, both Greek and Roman (e.g. Apollo on Delos, Castor and Pollux at Rome) took deposits and even lent money; but deposits remained untouched and cash was lent from the temple's own funds. Similarly, moneylenders who lent from their own resources, even on a regular basis, were not bankers; nor were usurers, specializing in short-term, high-interest loans of small sumsthe common Greek term is obolostates ('a lender of obols'). Banking in the Greek world appears to have evolved out of professional money-changing: a response to the multiplicity of state coinages (trapezites or 'banker' refers to the trapeza or changer's table). Changers, and presumably bankers, existed all over the Classical and Hellenistic Greek worlds, but our knowledge is concentrated in Athens, where, from the 4th cent. BC, the names are known of some twenty bankers. Money-changing remained important; otherwise, the emphasis and impact of the services provided by Athenian bankers is disputed. Modernizing approaches treat banks as central not only to fringe economic activity, but to the whole polis: primarily through the linked taking of deposits and extension of credit. Alternative readings, stressing differences between ancient and modern economies, see bankers (often themselves nonAthenians) as more marginal to the citizenstructure of the polis, providing a peripheral range of credit and other services (including acting as witnesses and guarantors). The majority of their clients would then be persons themselves not fully integrated into the koinonia (community) of the polis: traders, other visitors to Athens, and a minority of citizens who urgently needed money or the support of specialist banking skills. Not disputed is the wealth of the most successful Athenian bankers. Pasion, beginning as a bankers' slave, gained his freedom, took over control of his former masters' bank, and eventually became a citizen. Remarkably, his own banking slave, Phormion (2), followed an almost identical path from rags to riches (Isoc. 17; Dem. 36, 45, [46], [49], [52]). Bankers from the Greek world seem to have operated in isolation; there is no clear evidence for any integrated banking system. A letter of credit is introduced to an Athenian jury as something needing explanation (Isoc. 17. 35 ff). This is in contrast to Ptolemaic Egypt, where surviving papyri reveal a complex system of giro payments and bills of exchange. There was a range of banking institutions, changing through time: a network of royal or state banks (based on Alexandria (1) with branches in local capitals, banks operated on license, private banks, and logeuteria (royal treasuries). By the 2nd cent. BC, and into the Roman period, the scene was dominated by state and private banks. For the Roman west, literary evidence for banking operations is unsystematic. The basic problem is distinguishing between wealthy men of affairs who might offer financial services, including credit (e.g. T. Pomponius Atticus) and professional dealers in money. Whereas the former might be wealthy through ownership of land, the latter were generally of lower status, made most of their living through financial transactions, and might be organized into collegia (see CLUBS, ROMAN). Three identifiable groups had banking interests: argentarii, coactores argentarii, and nummularii. The earliest testimony from Rome and Italy (down to c.100 BC) mentions only argentarii, who resembled Greek trapezitai in offering a range of functions: changing, deposit, and credit. Specialization is evident from the 1st cent. BC, with argentarii continuing to take deposits and lend, but moneychanging becoming the province of the nummularii. There also emerge from c.50 BC the coactores argentarii, who offered credit facilities to those purchasing goods at auction. This marks a possible partial break with the tendency for credit in antiquity to be economically non-productive. Against this (as for the Greek world), there is no hard evidence for Roman bankers lending in maritime loans. Though possibly prosperous, none of these financiers came from the upper end of society: Antony (M.
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Antonius (2) ) could insult Octavian by claiming his grandfather was an argentarius (Suet. Aug. 2. 6; cf. 4. 2 for nummularius). Nor did they number among their clients the Roman lite, who generally had their own safe deposits and sources of credit. As in Athens, Italian bankers regularly crop up in connection with the affairs of merchants (as indicated by the affairs of Caecilius Iucundus, Pompeian auctioneer). This tripartite system of finance was restricted to the western empire, and possibly only to Italy. Even there, from AD 200, distinctions begin to disappear, with a return to the idea of the allembracing argentarius. A final (if problematic) perspective on Roman banking from the 6th cent. AD is provided by the Digest. See NEGOTIATORES. N. Platon, Revue historique de droit franais et tranger, 1909, 7 ff., 1911, 158 ff.; R. Bogaert, Les Origines antiques de la banque de dpot (1966), Banques et banquiers dans les cits grecques (1968), Grundzge des Bankwesens im alten Griechenland (1986), Hist. 1984, 181 ff., MH 1986, 19 ff., ZPE 68 (1987), 3575; 69 (1987), 10741; P. Millett, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens (1991); E. Cohen, Athenian Economy and Society (1992); J. Trevett, Apollodorus, the Son of Pasion (1992); C. Praux, L'conomie royale des Lagides (1939); F. Preisigke, Girowesen im griechischen gypten (1910; repr. 1971); J. Andreau, Les Affaires de Monsieur Jucundus (1974), La Vie financire dans le monde romain (1987), and in E. Frzouls (ed.), Le Dernier Sicle de la rpublique romaine et l'poque augustenne (1978), 47 ff.; C. T. Barlow, Bankers, Moneylenders and Interest Rates in the Roman Republic (1978). P. C. M.
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16. economic theory (Greek)

economic theory (Greek) It is a commonplace that the Greek philosophers had no economic theory. Three reasons are advanced for this absence: (1) the merely embryonic existence of the relevant institutions, especially the market; (2) aristocratic disdain for trade and exchange; (3) the priority assigned to ethical concerns over technical considerations of exchange and accumulation. While each of these claims contains some truth, the third assumes a modern conception of the autonomy of economics against which ancient theory may make a pertinent challenge. Plato (1)'s discussion of the market is sketchy. The Republic describes the creation of a market in the 'first city'; money will be used for internal exchange, and barter for foreign trade. In the Ideal City the lowest class, ruled by bodily appetites, is also called the moneymaking class. The ideal city of Laws 5 will have no money, and strict lower and upper limits on amount of ownership. The market legislation of bks. 8 and 11 permits money, but most transacting is done by aliens; again, the state fixes strict limits to acquisition and ownership. Economic analysis proper begins in Aristotle's Politics. Fundamental to the entire discussion is the idea that material goods are tools of human functioning. Their proper use has a limit set by those requirements. Poverty placing one beneath this limit is a problem for public planning; accumulation above this limit is 'unnatural' and morally problematic. Thus Aristotle criticizes the saying of Solon, 'Of wealth no boundary stands fixed for men'. The accumulation of goods began as a way of ensuring the presence of needed resources. Because some of these had to be imported from a distance, barter arose; barter led, in turn, to the temporary accumulation of surpluses useful for trade. Eventually coin money was introduced to facilitate deferred exchanges. This, however, gave rise to the idea of accumulating a surplus without reference to need or limit, as if wealth were an end in itself. Aristotle's analysis is pertinent to recent criticisms of welfare and development economics which appeal to notions of human functioning in interpreting economic notions such as 'the standard of living' and 'the quality of life'. Elsewhere, Aristotle analyses the relationship between level of wealth and political behaviour, arguing that the essential difference between democracy and oligarchy lies in whether rule is by the poor or the rich; it happens that in every city the poor are many and the rich are few. Hellenistic thought about money focuses on limiting the desire for possessions. Stoic teleology (see STOICISM) is the background for Adam Smith's conception of the 'invisible hand', which should not be understood apart from Stoic ideas of providence and justice. See ECONOMY, GREEK and HELLENISTIC; WEALTH, ATTITUDES TO. G. E. M. de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981), 6980; K. Polanyi, in K. Polanyi (ed.), Trade and Market in the Early Empires (1957); A. Shulsky, in C. Lord (ed.), Essays on the Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science (1991); M. Finley, P&P 1970 (= M. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society (1974), 26 ff.); M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life (1993). M. C. N.
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OCD Ancient Economy

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11. finance, Greek and Hellenistic

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12. trade, Greek

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13. agriculture, Roman

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14. artisans and craftsmen

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16. economic theory (Greek)

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