The Ancient Economy (Volume 43) (Sather Classical Lectures) by M. I. Finley (PDF)

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“Technical progress, economic growth, productivity, even efficiency have not been significant goals since the beginning of time,” declares M. I. Finley in his classic work. The states of the ancient Mediterranean world had no recognizable real-property market, never fought a commercially inspired war, witnessed no drive to capital formation, and assigned the management of many substantial enterprises to slaves and ex-slaves. In short, to study the economies of the ancient world, one must begin by discarding many premises that seemed self-evident before Finley showed that they were useless or misleading. Available again, with a new foreword by Ian Morris, these sagacious, fertile, and occasionally combative essays are just as electrifying today as when Finley first wrote them.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “A splendid contribution to the economic history of classical antiquity. It compels the reader to recognize the depth of the transformation from the ancient consumer economy based on slave and serf labor to the modern capitalist, investment, production, profit economy.”–Floyd Sewer Lear, “Business History Review From the Inside Flap “The Ancient Economy holds pride of place among the handful of genuinely influential works of ancient history. This is Finley at the height of his remarkable powers and in his finest role as historical iconoclast and intellectual provocateur. It should be required reading for every student of pre-modern modes of production, exchange, and consumption.”–Josiah Ober, author of Political Dissent in Democratic Athens From the Back Cover “The Ancient Economy holds pride of place among the handful of genuinely influential works of ancient history. This is Finley at the height of his remarkable powers and in his finest role as historical iconoclast and intellectual provocateur. It should be required reading for every student of pre-modern modes of production, exchange, and consumption.”―Josiah Ober, author of Political Dissent in Democratic Athens About the Author M. I. Finley, who died in 1986, was Professor of Ancient History and Master of Darwin College at Cambridge University. Ian Morris is the Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor in Classics and Chair of the Classics Department at Stanford University. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I read this after the brilliant World of Odysseus..

⭐A wonderful book, still relevant and full of interesting perspectives and details.

⭐Finley may be a great classical scholar, but his application of economic theory is flawed. Somebody should have taught him about money supply and velocity. Finley’s major thesis is just wrong.

⭐This is a boring book about the Roman economy. Not at all interesting. Might be useful for research,otherwise avoid it.

⭐In their work, “A Concise Economic History of the World,” Rondo Cameron and Larry Neal devote 400 pages to the economic history “From Paleolithic Times to the Present.” That said, the Paleolithic to Fall of Rome garner a grand total of 23 pages. We are left to question, why have they dedicated so little to such a huge time period? Why do we know so little about the economics of the classical period? Sixteen years before Cameron & Neal’s work M.I. Finley offered some insight into that. The very notion of modern economics did not exist to the Romans and the Greeks. According to Finley, the structure of the ancient society was one with rich landowners at the top who controlled the one generally accepted wealth creating production input – land. The land was used for extraction of minerals (silver, gold, iron, etc.), extraction of clay and the raising of crops. The ancients lived in a zero-sum world, where only by taking land and labor from other states could you create growth. While the idea of “profit” was important the ancients, the idea of “growth” was non-existent. Like growth any other modern economic ideas are absent. The ancient world was one where the status of the wealthy citizens was that of comfort. From their land the wealthy were able to live in comfort from poverty by directing the labor of the lower classes (whether slave, serf, free or some mixture). Some amateur economists have challenged Finley because he doesn’t take into account very simple mechanisms such as money supply and velocity of money in the ancient economy. Yet, he does answer these critics. In an economy based solely on silver coin such an analysis would be an anachronism. The money supply could only be the amount of silver available. While I would have liked to see more investigation into possible export led production – such as Archaic Korinthos – the work was an incite into the ancient economy. Based on the data (almost none) and literature (scanty) Finley has developed a reasoned argument. Land was the source of wealth for the upper classes. The lower classes (whether slave or free) made goods largely for local production. Governments never developed an “economic system” for growth of their economy. And, any trade was basically for exchange of needed goods and luxuries not for growth of the economy. This is definitely not a must read and really only fits in a niche readership, but it was good.

⭐This is one strange book. I read it carefully, without jumping from page to page, although I was really tempted to do so at times. My feeling is that the author, very famous in this field, is truly knowledgeable about his subject, yet the way he describes it to the reader is very poor. The feeling I had reading this short book was akin to opening a dictionary about ancient Rome and reading randomly. No clear ideas, just information (but ironically, good information), in endless circles, you are left, as a humble reader, with the idea “what on Earth does he want to say, after all”? I think this is a pity, since the author is famous and he knows his stuff. Yet, when in comes to explaining all this interesting material to keen readers, the job is very poorly done. Reading the book I got the feeling it was written by the author FOR the author, without any care about the reader.Here is a simple example. He refers to a famous coin maker named Euainetos, who lived in Syracuse. To tell the truth, I checked his coins, they are a true piece of art! But in this book, the author just says something like “coins were not that special, and just because Euainetos made them it did not make them any more valuable”. OK, but as a reader, I had no idea about that coin let alone Euainetos. It would have been nice to say something like “Syracuse, the most powerful Greek colony in the west, saw the best coins made by a certain artist named Euianetos.” etc etc. The author just doesn’t care about the reader, which makes me think, to whom was he addressing this book, after all?I learned a few good things from this book, but I had to work for it. It was not an easy read. And that’s a shame, because you can tell the author knows his stuff. Maybe he did not care about the reader.

⭐Drawing on Max Weber’s Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations, this is still the definitive work on ancient socio-economic structure. The book does not apply modern economic models to the ancient world, but rather argues that the ancient economy can only be fully understood by examining the social and political structures it was enmeshed within.

⭐Briliant!

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