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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 821 of 1200

  • 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.

  • 16 - Hellenistic Egypt

  • 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 434-459

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with the internal economic history of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, the longest lived of the Hellenistic successor states. It addresses the question of the extent to which the Ptolemaic state effected economic development, and to what extent was development driven by demographic change. The foundation and growth of urban centers, the development of roads out to the Red Sea, and the reclamation of new land in the Fayyum, are enough to suggest that the early Ptolemaic period experienced aggregate economic growth, and the increased farming of wheat (at least in some areas) resulted in greater agricultural productivity. The chapter focuses on money and prices, the taxation system, the role of social status, and state revenue. Ptolemaic institutions were a mixture of old and new. The taxation policy above all gradually shifted emphasis away from traditional Egyptian social hierarchies toward the new realities of urban, Greek life.

  • 13 - Classical Greece: Distribution

  • 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 362-384

  • Summary

    A society's ability to adapt to changing outside parameters and to adjust its institutions determine the performance of its distribution system. In classical Greece, distribution had grown to such an extent that urban elite had no difficulties in consuming delicacies. Production of certain goods clearly exceeded local needs in some regions: Egypt, Sicily, and regions bordering the Black Sea, for instance, produced more grain than they consumed, Thasos, Chios, and the Chalcidice produced more and better wines than other parts of the Mediterranean. The Aegean connected people and the goods they needed. Transport was much easier by sea than overland. Moving goods by road required negotiations, protection money, and was impeded by deliberate obstructions, and outright violence. In classical Greece, many goods circulated through reciprocity, the mutual exchange between social equals. Friendship reduced transaction costs. On the revenue side, the interests of the citizens and the polis corresponded: both needed prosodoi, revenues or income.

  • 23 - The Early Roman Empire: The State and the Economy

  • 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 619-648

  • Summary

    This chapter explores whether the higher level of economic activity during the first two centuries of the Principate in comparison with the preceding and following periods, and the possible modest growth then, were, at least in part, the result of the existence of a single political entity embracing the Mediterranean, or were achieved despite it. In the first two centuries of the Principate, taxation enhanced market exchanges and promoted growth. The emperor set the rules of the game at the level of the central and provincial administration, but his actions extended in various ways to the level of the individual urban communities. The creation of a single monetary area may have contributed most to the reduction in transaction costs: a centrally produced coinage circulated almost everywhere. In order to account for massive output of the Roman mint it is necessary to assume structural imbalance between tax and public expenditure.

Page 821 of 1200