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46 results in The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World

Page 1 of 3

  • 25 - The Eastern Mediterranean

  • from Part VII - Regional Development in the Roman Empire
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 671-697

  • Summary

    This chapter, covering the period from roughly 200 BC to AD 300, sketches out some of the structural determinants of the eastern Mediterranean's economic performance, and then traces that performance through the processes: production, distribution, and consumption. Isolating these very closely interwoven elements is helpful for the purposes of this particular type of overview; ultimately, however, the interaction of the three requires reconciliation and synthesis in other, more targeted studies. The chapter also visits the issue of relative growth across the empire. Agriculture was central to the Roman economy but agricultural production was uncertain in the eastern Mediterranean. Land-ownership in the Roman east offered avenues to security and status, and the preeminent means to garner wealth in the ancient world. Regional distribution of goods was very active in the eastern Mediterranean. An inland city such as Sagalassos appears to enjoy fewer imported wares than coastal cities such as Anemurion or Perge, but has the usual signs of conspicuous consumption.

  • 2 - Ecology

  • from Part I - Determinants of Economic Performance
    • By Robert Sallares, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 13-37

  • Summary

    This chapter presents Mediterranean ecology as a determinant for economic performance in the ancient Greek and Roman era. It focuses on the geography, climate, environment and agriculture in the region, and health of the people and disease occurrence in the region during the ancient Greco-Roman era. The lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea are generally hilly or mountainous. Dendrochronological evidence from the Parthenon in Athens provides evidence for a pattern of climatic variability in the fifth century BC which resembles the modern pattern. In addition to being subject to regular climatic cycles, ancient Mediterranean region was a world of sudden, unpredictable catastrophes. Mt. Vesuvius played a prominent role in the Roman period, destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79. A combination of agricultural crops had existed in the Near East since at least circa 3000 BC. There is evidence to support that ancient populations suffered from a substantial disease burden, consisting of both endemic and epidemic diseases.

  • 28 - The Transition to Late Antiquity

  • from Part VIII - Epilogue
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 741-768

  • Summary

    Despite the existence of recent pessimistic interpretations of the economy of late antiquity, there is now a widespread conviction that whereas concepts such as decline are ideologically charged and consequently misleading, the use of the concept of prosperity is more respectful of the empirical evidence as interpreted by impartial scholars. Chronology shows that the crisis of the slave mode of production did not lead directly to the development of the late antique colonatus. The exhaustion of the villa system should be considered as an antecedent to the process of transition to late antiquity. The active, mature phase of the transition to late antiquity is set in the third century, and involves the whole of the Roman world. Christian reflections regarding work and profits accompany the economic transition to late antiquity, attaining further completion and elaboration in the process.

  • 22 - The Early Roman Empire: Consumption

  • from Part VI - The Early Roman Empire
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 592-618

  • Summary

    Roman society of the early empire presents a confusing and ambiguous image that we cannot easily situate in unidirectional accounts of European economic history. Clearly, public monuments in marble or other precious stone, military security, the urban food supply, roads, aqueducts and gladiatorial games testify to public consumption on a grand scale. On the other hand, the signs of poverty, misery, and destitution are no less obvious. Many inhabitants of the Roman empire only eked out a meager living, their skeletons grim testimonies to malnutrition and disease. Growth occurred because the wealth of the elite may have been a sign of effective exploitation of the poor. Roman National Income was indeed larger than that of any preindustrial European state. One of the requirements for an economy is to provide enough subsistence for its population to survive. The economic and social achievements of pre-industrial societies can be measured if standard of living of the masses exceeds bare subsistence levels.

  • 20 - The Early Roman Empire: Production

  • from Part VI - The Early Roman Empire
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 541-569

  • Summary

    Commerce and manufacturing certainly occupied a significant place in the early Roman economy. Large landowners and small farmers depended for their livelihoods on the production of surpluses for the market. In Roman agriculture, most common method for cultivating wheat was the two-field system. The Roman empire also witnessed construction of modest sized-estates which regularly included a pars urbana, an often lavishly adorned farmhouse, and a pars rustica, included farming facilities such as those for pressing grapes. Sometimes, many landowners used the institution of farm tenancy to organize the management and labor on their estates. To answer the question of what extent wealth generated from agriculture contributed to an expansion of production in the non-agricultural sectors of the Roman economy, the economic role of cities in the Roman empire and their relationship with the countryside, has to be evaluated. Archaeological evidence indicates that mining was conducted on a widespread basis in many regions of the Roman empire.

  • 12 - Classical Greece: Production

  • from Part III - Classical Greece
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 331-361

  • Summary

    Many tangible objects were created and used in classical Greece ranging from installations such as houses, temples, public buildings, and infrastructure, through weaponry, ceramics, coins, textiles, and the normal furnishings and equipment of a dwelling house or a farm, to the more exotic and high-value products of the sculptor or the silversmith. For most landscapes occupied by Greeks, varying depths of soil and the imminence of uncultivable mountains generate a clear distinction between cultivable and uncultivable zones. This chapter provides a sketch of ancient Greece's various productive capacities. Scholarship attention has focused not only on crops and yields but also on wider questions of land-use but also on wider questions of land-use, notably the market-oriented specialization and the integration of differing types of terrain. All the same, agrarian production was absolutely primary. Land-ownership remained the principal determinant of status, though, there is evidence of land being bought as an investment, to improve and resell.

  • 10 - Archaic Greece

  • from Part II - Early Mediterranean Economies and the Near East
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 277-301

  • Summary

    Under all the major indicators of economic change, that is, population, growth, urbanization, production and exchange, institutions, and stock of knowledge, there are reasons to believe that the period between 700 and 500 BC in archaic Greece saw significant developments. This chapter analyzes those developments in more detail by comparing and contrasting the archaeological evidence relating to circa 700 BC and circa 500 BC. It explores how the picture that one can create on the basis of archaeological evidence relates to the picture of the economy offered by one further resource making its dramatic appearance in this period: literary texts. Athenian Solon puts a value upon the individual citizen, whose political capacity is determined by his wealth. That there was a transition from gift to commodity during the period from the eighth to the sixth century has often been suggested. The chapter traces both the economic background to that change and its political origins.

  • 18 - Early Rome and Italy

  • from Part V - Early Italy and the Roman Republic
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 485-510

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with Italy in the period from the beginning of the Greek colonization through 133 BC. It focuses on the Italian peninsula, touching only briefly on northern Italy and the islands, or the world of non-Roman indigenous cultures. For addressing the question of the rise of Rome to the most powerful polity in Italy and a leading Mediterranean power, the chapter examines the impact of wars, treaties, and the founding of colonies, Greek as well as Etruscan and Roman, reciprocal influences, forced or spontaneous transformations. It distinguishes three major periods: from the earliest Greek contacts with Italy to the middle of the fourth century BC; from the middle of the fourth century, which saw Rome's military and political ascent and its rise to economic power, to the Second Punic War; and finally, from the Second Punic War, which caused profound upheavals in the Roman economy, to the period of the Gracchi.

  • 9 - The Iron Age in the Western Mediterranean

  • from Part II - Early Mediterranean Economies and the Near East
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 242-276

  • Summary

    The economic history of the Iron Age in the western Mediterranean is a complex tale in which encounters and entanglements between diverse indigenous peoples and foreign agents from several expanding states of the eastern and central Mediterranean played a recurrent and crucial role. This chapter presents a highly compressed, and inherently partial, synthesis of the current state of research on the economic history of the western Mediterranean during the Iron Age. In very general terms, the chapter deals with indigenous societies constituting three broad linguistic groupings: Iberian, Celtic, and Ligurian, as well as, three different major sources of external traders and colonists: Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan. The basic global repertoire of cereal crops and domestic animals was quite similar for both colonists and indigenous societies in the western Mediterranean, although there were significant variations in the relative importance of different elements in the diet as well as in the culinary practices used to prepare food.

  • 5 - Law and Economic Institutions

  • from Part I - Determinants of Economic Performance
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 113-143

  • Summary

    The landscape of the Greek and Roman economies is invariably configured of individuals, and also of institutions, the organized activity of production and commerce. This chapter explores, within the ancient world, to what extent was economic growth fostered or impeded by the institutional and legal framework within which the Greek and Roman economies operated. The question may be at least formally addressed through modern scholarly methods associated especially with Law and Economics and with the New Institutional Economics. The chapter provides an overview of the methods themselves, and then suggests several ways in which these methods can be applied to come to a deeper understanding of economic organization and the possibilities for economic growth in the Greek and Roman worlds. Adverse selection is an example of how asymmetrical information can affect entry into a market. A cardinal implication of the Coase theorem is that markets cannot and do not exist in isolation from their institutional context.

  • 17 - Hellenistic Greece and Western Asia Minor

  • from Part IV - The Hellenistic States
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 460-484

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on old Greece; the southern Balkans, the Aegean islands, and western Asia Minor. Greek-speakers had settled here many centuries earlier. The act of concentration in a new urban center created a new locus of demand for food and other essentials, and new markets. Agriculture remained the chief economic activity for most people in Greece. Outside of the northern kingdoms (Macedon, Epirus), this took place on land belonging to poleis. Many Hellenistic exchanges were mediated through money. States needed coined money to pay troops, war indemnities, and numerous other expenses. The Hellenistic world inherited from classical times a wide array of institutions that served central economic functions but subsequently also saw some changes. The chapter explores the changes to pre-existing institutions, and whether they reflect new economic conditions. Military technology is one area where the Hellenistic world saw major innovations, from siege warfare, to the use of elephants, to the construction of ever-larger ships.

  • 7 - The Aegean Bronze Age

  • from Part II - Early Mediterranean Economies and the Near East
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel, Stanford University, California, Ian Morris, Stanford University, California, Richard P. Saller, Stanford University, California
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    29 November 2007, pp 173-210

  • Summary

    This chapter explores economic activity in the Aegean Bronze Age (circa 3000-1000 BC), focuses on the palatial societies of Late Bronze Age Crete and mainland Greece, and provides an outline of prior developments, on which they were based. It concentrates on what might be termed as the core of the Mycenaean world (mainland Greece from southern Thessaly to the southern Peloponnese, the islands of the Aegean, including Crete, plus much of coastal southwest Anatolia). There are two ways of conceiving the relationship between the Aegean Bronze Age and later periods of Greek history. The first suggests a radical discontinuity, and the second imagines a seamless continuity. Neither of them is likely to be accurate, but it is certainly incorrect to isolate the Bronze Age with artificial barriers between the modern disciplines of history and prehistory. Life continued, however much it had changed, in most areas of the Aegean from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age.

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