Both literary accounts and material remains, however, indicate that there was a certain amount of specialization. The study of a religion’s history includes the study of the history of those who espoused it, together with their spiritual, ethical, political, and intellectual experiences. This is the era when Greece emerged from the Dark Ages. In Athens, a full day on the Acropolis and in the ancient Agora. Agricultural trade was of great importance because the soil in Greece was of poor quality which limited crop production. Liturgies also targeted large sums of wealth, and these taxes went to supporting public works. alone continued the full germ of the child. It is first necessary to distinguish between the public and private sectors of the economy. Such activities were not to be undertaken simply to make a profit and certainly not to obtain capital for future investment and economic growth. Hasebroek, J. Although the ancient Greek word oikonomia is the root of our modern English word “economy,” the two words are not synonymous. Finley, M.I. For peasants themselves, the importance of commercial farming created an commercial arrangements, despite the ambiguous status of merchants themselves. Social structure became In addition, reference will be made to some recent scholarly trends in the field. Ancient Greek Economy According to the Ancient Greek Economy did mean the same thing as it does to us. Such men had little interest in manufacturing, business, and trade and, like their society as a whole, did not consider the economy as a distinct sphere separate from social and political concerns. But it is clear that there were significant innovations in some places and sectors on account of the collision and fusion of Greek notions of the economy with those of the newly won lands of the Near East. Greek and Roman Technology. In most cases described by the orators, the traders typically borrowed money from a citizen lender to finance the venture. The economy of ancient Greece relied mainly on fishing, farming, and making cloth. In addition, religious sanctuaries frequently inscribed accounts of monies and other assets, such as produce, land, and buildings, under their control. The former was used in building the Parthenon and the other structures of the Athenian acropolis while the latter was often used for the most famous ancient Greek free-standing and relief sculptures. Kurke, L. Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece, 1999. technology than either China or India displayed. Classical Greece was a 200-year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5 th to the 4 th centuries BCE. Ancient Greece relied heavily on imported goods. But to the Greeks, economy meant something like “rules of a household” (the “eco” part of economy is from the Greek word for house, oikos.And the “nomy” part is from nomos, their word for law).So the economy was the way a household ran. Or are good institutions only made possible by the prior development of a thriving economy? Hence, other tools of analysis, namely “substantivist” economics, must be employed to understand them. Greek architectural orders. Classical economic theory was developed shortly after the birth of western capitalism. In Athens the typical wage for a skilled laborer was one drachma per day at the end of the fifth century and two and a half drachmai in 377. Although the ancient Greeks achieved a high degree of sophistication in their political, philosophical, and literary analyses and have, therefore, left us with a significant amount of evidence concerning these matters, few Greeks attempted what we would call sophisticated economic analysis. Primary crops were grains, mostly barley but also some wheat, which were usually sown on a two-year fallowing cycle. Being only 35 feet long and 15 feet wide with a capacity of 30 tons, it is probably the kind of merchant vessel that made short hauls and kept within sight of the coastline. 1994. Several volumes. The price of wheat in Athens at the end of the fifth century was 3 drachmai per medimnos. Kraay, C.M. Greek society emphasized the importance of a tight family structure, with At the same time many farmers were independent, owning their plots of Hence, in comparison with agriculture, manufacturing comprised a small part of the ancient Greek economy. But - again in a common pattern - the Greek economy evolved, Finley’s model also holds that there was neither a “market mentality” nor interconnected markets that could operate according to impersonal price-setting market mechanisms. of homosexual impulses limited neurosis among adults, without conflict with people in later life emphasized heterosexuality. Argues that the numismatic policies of Athens may indicate a state interest in exports. Garnsey, P. Famine and Food Supply in the Greco-Roman World. Not only were the olives cultivated on state-controlled lands by peasant labor, but the oil was extracted by contracted labor and sold at the retail level by licensed dealers at fixed prices. A mural inspired by life under lockdown is gathering attention in the northern city of Drama, Greece, where the piece was painted on an apartment building. For the most part in ancient Greece, prices were set in accordance with local conditions, personal relationships, and haggling. On the other hand, slaves who worked in households assisting the matron of the family in her household tasks were probably treated much better as a rule. which had unusually fertile land, tried to downplay trade altogether. Within the agora economic activities were segregated by types of goods, services, and labor so that there were specific places where one could regularly find the fishmongers, blacksmiths, money changers, and so on. The degree of specialization varied. Takes the new cultural history approach to analyzing the poetry of Pindar and how it represents money within the social and political value system of ancient Greece. Given, however, the fact that Athens is the best documented and most studied place in ancient Greek history, the various sectors of the ancient Greek economy during the Classical period will be discussed primarily as they existed in Athens, despite the fact that it was in many ways exceptional. Other cultural divisions complicated Greek society. Pearson, 3-11. in classical Greece and to the ultimate decline in the political stability of Slaves comprised an undeniably large part of the labor force of ancient Greece. The upper class symbolized a good civil character, good artistic taste, and highly socialized individuals.The people from this class handled … Imports of basic foods were more extensive here than in India or Although this was offset to some degree by political instability and warfare during the Hellenistic period, in general we do see economic activity on a larger scale and increased specialization as some places, such as Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia, became renowned for particular products, in this case purple dye and glassware respectively. Pre-Classical Greece前古典希腊_幼儿读物_幼儿教育_教育专区 2人阅读|次下载 Pre-Classical Greece前古典希腊_幼儿读物_幼儿教育_教育专区。Early Aegean Civilization October 3, 2019 Minoans ? helots, or unfree labor, extensively for agricultural work. silver mines, which hastened the progress of Athens's empire and commercial Nevertheless, documentary and archaeological evidence attests to a wide variety of manufactured items and some in large quantities. Both Leslie Kurke and Sitta von Reden have argued that the advent of a monetized economy employing coinage need not have undermined traditional values or led to a disembedding of the economy. colonies it sent out around the Mediterranean, had many features in common Humphreys, S.C. “Economy and Society in Classical Athens.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 39 (1970):1-26. In some cases we see contractors carrying out a variety of tasks, whereas in others we see them specializing in only one. spreading Hellenistic culture and its urban monuments. It adheres to the Finley model in general. There were no assembly lines and no big factories. Of the approximately 270,000 According to the Finley model, there was no network of interconnected markets to form a price-setting market economy in the ancient Greek world. Female metics and slaves did similar work and also comprised the majority of the prostitutes of Athens, which was a legal profession. White, K.D. Translated by L.M. Also, after the invention of coinage in Asia Minor in the early sixth century B.C., even though various other forms of money and barter continued to be employed throughout the course of ancient Greek history, the Greeks were quick to adopt coinage and it became the predominant means of exchange from the end of the sixth century onward. Unfortunately, the grip of the old parameters has been very strong and the debate has never completely freed itself from their influence. Both approaches are useful and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Greek and Hellenistic societies, particularly as these societies became more Mattingly, D.J. The Ancient Economy. Finley’s model has had a great impact on those who study the ancient Greek economy and is still widely accepted today. The Hellenistic period is known for its technological innovation and some new technologies did have an impact on the economy. Moreover, gift exchanges in accordance with social traditions were as prominent if not more so than impersonal exchanges for profit. With the exception of Sparta and a few other city-states, women in ancient Greece, free citizens or otherwise, could not control land. for the necessity of slavery to a proper society, for without slaves how would Reinforces the Finley model by arguing that lending and borrowing was primarily for consumptive purposes and embedded among traditional communal values in Athens. Such a policy attests to a state interest in production and exports, at least in this sector of the economy. During the Classical period of ancient Greek history (480-323 B.C. in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. There was the relatively more liberal and democratic city of Athens, which was able to accommodate a thriving sphere of business and craft endeavors within a spontaneous order of social cooperation based on respect for and equality before the law. A number of queens exercised great power, Athens had an abundance of silver and we know much about its mining industry from surviving inscriptions of government mine leases to private entrepreneurs. Yet they did not develop a “work ethic” and did not consider work to be ennobling, but simply necessary. Basically, given the quantity and the quality of the available evidence, our attempts to understand the ancient Greek economy are greatly affected by the perspective from which we approach it. Highlights include Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi. The ships appear to have been generally small by modern standards. Throughout these periods of ancient Greek civilization, the level of technology was nothing like it is today and values developed that shaped the economy in unique ways. The Ptolemies of Egypt dominated agriculture to such an extent that they instituted an official planting schedule for various crops and even loaned out the tools used by farmers on state-owned lands. As is evidenced by the extant accounts for the construction of the buildings of the Athenian acropolis, the work was normally contracted out in small units to private individuals who either worked alone or in charge of others to do anything from quarrying marble to transporting wooden beams to sculpting facades. Thus, most manufactured products were literally hand-made with simple tools. The state ensured the affordability of key goods, such as bread, by fixing its retail prices relative to the wholesale price of grain. same period. Athens was also motivated to encourage trade to obtain revenue from taxes. It was much smaller in scale and differed in quality as well, since it generally lacked the productive growth mentality and the interconnected markets that are so characteristic of most of the world economy today. Traditional ancient historians who relied on philology and archaeology tended to side with the modernist interpretation, whereas historians who employed new methods drawn from sociology and anthropology tended to hold to the primitivist view. A review article of Meadows and Shipton, 2001, and Scheidel and von Reden, 2002, that argues for the mutual compatibility of broad and detailed studies of the ancient Greek and Roman economies. The pronounced aristocratic tone persisted in society as well as Athenians used slaves for household service and also as workers in their vast Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Skydsgaard. Necessities were also traded, however, for without long-distance trade, many Greek cities would not have been able to obtain metals, timber, wine, and slaves. Trade lessened an… The latter, which is typical of economic analysis today, is appropriate only for market economies. Ancient Greek Agriculture: An Introduction. A comprehensive survey of the principal Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic sites in mainland Greece. separate rooms. From Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War, second edition. The ideal was for women to get married, have children, raise them, and carry out the indoor tasks of the household, such as cooking and textile production. Stone for building and sculpture was another valuable natural resource of Greece. Michell, H. The Economics of Ancient Greece, second edition. The finest, most numerous, and widely dispersed of these were made in Corinth, Aegina, Athens, and Rhodes. for their own needs, except in the early period before civilization fully Rural Archibald, Z.H., J. Davies, and G. Oliver. Translated by E. Fischoff et al. One talent was the equivalent of around nine year’s worth of wages for single skilled laborer working five days a week, 52 weeks a year, according to the wage rates we know from 377 B.C. A sourcebook of documents translated into English. life. The Ptolemies instituted a tax on imported olive oil of 50 percent that was essentially a protective tariff. to think about better ways to produce because many of the hardest tasks were There is enough evidence for slaves being freed to make us believe that manumission was not uncommon and many slaves could probably hope for freedom, even if most of them never actually obtained it. of food or manufactured goods did not figure largely in this civilization. Highlights include Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi. Athens and Sparta are famous examples of two almost polar opposites in their social and political organizations and this is no less true with regard to their economic institutions. Most “roads” between cities were single track and suitable only for pack animals, though there were some on which wheeled carts could be pulled by oxen, donkeys, or mules. These terms are clearly normative in character so that essentially the argument was about whether the ancient Greek economy was like our “modern” economy, which was never carefully defined, but apparently assumed to be a free enterprise, capitalistic one with interconnected price-making markets. Despite the fact that much of the Greek mainland is mountainous and the rivers generally small, there was enough fertile land and winter rainfall so that agriculture could account for the bulk of economic production, as it would in all civilizations before the modern industrial era. Your Trailfinders travel consultant will be able to find the best flights to suit you and … vital role in the early politics of the Greek city-states. The Archaeology of Ancient Greece provides a synthesis of research on the material culture of Greece in the Archaic and Classical periods (1000–300 BC). Today, as a chronically weak Greek economy immiserates millions and threatens the financial stability of Europe, historian Josiah Ober looks back on ancient Greece and its prosperity. Kraay, editors. Ancient Greek trade was important to the economy. religious practices imported from the Middle East, which provided more color Laws such as these were merely extensions of traditional political policies, like conquest and plunder, but in which a less violent form of acquisition would now be undertaken. Agriculture was carried out primarily on small family farms, though the Homeric epics indicate that there were also some larger estates controlled by the elite and worked with the help of free landless thetes whose labor would be needed especially at harvest time. But although being a farmer was the social ideal, good land was scarce in Greece and it is estimated that in Athens about a quarter of the male citizens did not own land and had to take up other occupations for their livelihoods. of the goddess of fertility from the lower world, an event that was seen as a The mines were extremely productive, providing Athens with an income of 200 talents per year for twelve years from 338 B.C. Finley, M. I. Classical Greece. Athens used its coinage to pay for its military operations abroad and even issued the “Standards Decree,” which for a few decades of the fifth century required the many cities of the Aegean Sea under its control to discontinue their local types and use only Athenian coinage. Thus, Polanyi opened the door through which scholars could begin to examine the ancient Greek economy free from the normative parameters originally imposed on the debate. Overall, the ancient Greek economy was very different from our own. In 1968 the well-preserved wreck of a merchant ship from c. 300 B.C. The fundamental political unit, the polis or independent city-state, appears at this time as do non-monarchal governments allowing for at least some degree of political participation among a broad swath of citizens. March 12, 2019. that, like oikonomia on the household level, were consumptive in nature and fulfilled traditional social and political needs, not strictly economic ones. States were much more involved in economic affairs, both in controlling production and in collecting taxes on countless items and activities, but mostly just to extract as much revenue from them as possible. There was not much direct taxation in Ancient Greece. Thus, despite over a century of investigation, scholars are still debating the nature of the ancient Greek economy. Some of the most spectacular and informative finds in recent years have been made under the waters of the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Seas by what is known as marine (or nautical) archaeology. The tie of the Greek monetary system to the supply of precious metals limited the ability of governments to influence their economies through the manipulation of their money supplies. Yet wages appear to have been adequate to make a living. Yet for all its interference in the economy, the Ptolemaic government did not assemble a state merchant fleet and instead contracted with private traders to transport grain to and from public granaries. Xenophon, an Athenian writer from the fourth century, noted that Athens could always be assured of traders bringing their goods into Athens, because traders knew they could always get a valuable trade commodity, namely silver in the form of Athenian coinage, in exchange. property ownership. Moreover, thousands of amphorae whose handles were stamped with names of issuing magistrates have been found that, if nothing else, reveal a very high volume of pottery production and may also allow scholars some day to reconstruct in more detail other aspects of the economy, such as agricultural production, land tenure, and trade patterns. Significant variations from the Athenian example will be noted, however, as will some recent trends in scholarship. Classical Greece had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and on the foundations of Western civilization. unusually frequent in the Mediterranean world compared to China and India. Von Reden, S. “Money, Law, and Exchange: Coinage in the Greek Polis.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 107 (1997): 154-176. The most influential book on the subject since its initial publication in 1973. service. Perhaps the seminal cultural accomplishments of classical Greece bias some of us to look for “special” causes of the expansion. A substantial population of free farmers played a vital for their trading economy. The goal of the government seems to have been to protect the profits of its state-run business. Abundant slave labor probably discouraged concern for more efficient During the Mycenaean period, the ancient Greeks had primarily a Near Eastern style palace-controlled, redistributive economy, but this crumbled on account of violent disruptions and population movements, leaving Greece largely in the “dark” and the economy depressed for most of the next 300 years. Ancient Greek city-states regulated the economic activities that took place in their markets to a certain degree. With limited technology and no understanding of economies of scale, cities were not hubs of industry, and manufacturing existed only on a small scale. Class tension was encouraged by special features of Greek agriculture. Philosophical works, especially those of Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, provide us with an insight into how the ancient Greeks perceived and analyzed economic matters. Thus, many exchanges were performed in kind rather than in cash, even though value was always expressed in cash equivalents. The presence, in particular, of pottery and precious goods such as gold, copper, and ivory, found far from their place of production, attests to the exchange network which existed between Egypt, Asia Minor, the Greek mainland, and islands such as Crete, Cyprus, and the Cyclades. Greece's main exports were olive oil, wine, pottery, and metalwork. political pamphlet that argues that the life-blood of Athenian democracy is the economic exploitation of the so-called “allies” of Athens. Not only was the ancient Greek economy much smaller in scale than economies today, it also differed greatly in quality. The system also helped generate the surpluses needed for It takes a synchronic approach to the Greek and Roman economies and argues that they cannot be analyzed or understood in terms appropriate for modern economic analysis. Whittaker. However, to give you a general idea of prices, flights to Athens currently cost from £220 in Economy and £344 in Business Class. Wage earning was very much looked down upon, since working for another person was thought of as an impingement on freedom and akin to slavery. However, the state probably had no intention to improve efficiency or to provide better quality olive oil at lower prices to its citizens. Families burdened with too many children sometimes put female infants and “Dark Age” (c. 1100-776 B.C.E.). “The Ancient Economy Twenty Years after The Ancient Economy.” Classical Philology 89 (1994): 351-366. Older men sometimes took Unfortunately, some of the most impressive technological innovations of the Hellenistic period, such as Heron’s steam engine, were never applied in any significant way. In addition to chattel slavery, there were other forms of dependent labor in the ancient Greek world. One aspect of ancient Greek slavery that is often cited as evidence for it being more “humane” than other slavery regimes is manumission. Cattle, horses, and donkeys, though less numerous, were also significant. A comprehensive survey of the principal Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic sites in mainland Greece. History of Greece: Classical Greece . Even in bustling Athens, most merchants were foreigners (mainly from The Finley model is probably right in general to hold that the essentially consumptive nature of the economy in the traditional Greek homelands changed little during this time. Argues for the diversity of those responsible for trade involving Classical Athens. Garnsey, P., K. Hopkins, and C.R. praised as a means of training the young in practical wisdom. The new classical macroeconomics is a school of economic thought that originated in the early 1970s in the work of economists centered at the Universities of Chicago and Minnesota—particularly, Robert Lucas (recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1995), Thomas Sargent, Neil Wallace, and Edward Prescott (corecipient of the Nobel Prize in 2004). Throughout most of ancient Greek history before the Hellenistic period, a free enterprise economy with private property and limited government intervention predominated. Palace a A good survey with an important discussion of ancient Greek attitudes toward economic growth. London: Routledge, 1992. Slavery was another key ingredient of the classical Mediterranean revolved around farmers' attempts to preserve their independence and shake off Cohen, E. E. Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective. This was so in part because of the Greek socio-political emphasis on self-sufficiency (autarkeia), but also because the physical environment and industry of the eastern Mediterranean tended to produce similar goods, so that there were few items that a city-state needed which could not be obtained from within its own boundaries. Fisher, N.R.E. Introduction to ancient Greek art. adequate grain supplies. 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