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5 - THE FIFTH-CENTURY ATHENIAN EMPIRE: A BALANCE SHEET
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- By M.I. Finley, Darwin College, Cambridge
- Edited by P. D. A. Garnsey, University of Cambridge, C. R. Whittaker, University of Cambridge
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- Book:
- Imperialism in the Ancient World
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 18 January 1979, pp 103-126
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Summary
‘Every doctrine of imperialism devised by men is a consequence of their second thoughts. But empires are not built by men troubled by second thoughts.’
I start with that aphoristic formulation, the truth of which has been demonstrated in the study of modern imperialisms, as an antidote to the familiar practice of beginning a discussion of the Athenian empire with aims and motives and quickly sliding over to attitudes and even theory, thereby implying that the men who created and extended the empire also began with a defined imperialist programme and theories of imperialism. An outstanding current example of the procedure I have in mind is the attempt to date a number of Athenian laws and decrees (or to support a proposed date) by what may be called their imperialist tone. If they are ‘harsh’, it is argued, they smack of Cleon and should be dated in the 420s B.C., and not in the time of the more ‘moderate’ Periclean leadership, the 440s or 430s. Insofar as the argument is not circular, it implies the existence of an identifiable programme of imperialism, or rather of both successive and conflicting programmes, and that requires demonstration, not assumption.
A second source of confusion is the unavoidable ambiguity of the word ‘empire’. Stemming from the Latin imperium, ‘empire’ becomes entangled with the word ‘emperor’, and much of the extensive discussion throughout the Middle Ages and on into modern times ends in a tautological cul-de-sac: an empire is the territory ruled by an emperor.
6 - PRIVATE FARM TENANCY IN ITALY BEFORE DIOCLETIAN
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- By M.I. Finley, Jesus College
- Edited by Moses I. Finley
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- Book:
- Studies in Roman Property
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 13 May 1976, pp 103-122
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Summary
The delimitation of subject expressed in the title requires comment. There were many tenants on public land as well, some under legal and economic conditions comparable to those of tenants on private holdings. But the public hand introduced an additional element, at least de facto, that can only confuse the discussion, and on many imperial estates (which are examined in an earlier chapter) there were tenancy arrangements for which private parallels are unattested and, in the nature of the case, impossible. The most obvious example is the ‘Mancian tenure’ in North Africa, which, as it happens, constitutes the bulk of what we know today about tenancy on imperial estates, apart from Egypt. My concern is with one of the two ways that Roman owners of large landholdings exploited them – the other was of course ‘direct’ exploitation by slaves under a vilicus – and that can be studied only by exclusive concentration on private owners.
Restriction to Italy has a double explanation. First, the conditions and the rules in various parts of the empire differed greatly, chiefly because the Roman conquerors did not normally overthrow existing institutions, so that Roman Egypt, for example, was in this respect more like Ptolemaic, or even Pharaonic, Egypt than like Italy. Egypt provides by far the fullest and most detailed documentation, but for extremely short leases, one to three years, within a legal system which, however one chooses to label it, was not Roman, and within an inexorable irrigation system wholly alien to Italian, or European, experience.
1 - INTRODUCTION
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- By M.I. Finley, Jesus College
- Edited by Moses I. Finley
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- Book:
- Studies in Roman Property
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 13 May 1976, pp 1-6
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Summary
The dominant place of the land in the economy and society of classical antiquity is a commonplace. Yet no synoptic view of the subject has been attempted in the past half-century, none on Rome alone for more than eighty years. This book does not pretend to fill that gap. To begin with, a narrow focus was selected for the inquiry, which may be defined crudely as Roman investment in property. That ruled out some of the best known aspects of the larger theme, such as land tenure or the history of the ager publicus during the Republic – not because these are less important aspects but because, for intensive cooperative study, it was necessary to restrict the field to something which would be manageable (given our limited resources) and yet permit us to look at the same questions from several viewpoints. That is also why slavery was taken for granted, so to speak, and not investigated except as it had to be set against tenancy, for example.
Just what the notion of ‘investment’ meant in Roman society is one of the subjects of the inquiry: no presuppositions about maximization of income and the like were implicit in the choice of the word. Nor, in so far as that was possible, did we start from, or even give much attention to, the familiar and explicit Roman value judgements on the subject of land, whether in Cato or in Cicero or in anyone else.
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