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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
  • Cited by 113
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
2007
Online ISBN:
9781139054140
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521780537
Subjects:
Ancient History, Classical Studies, History, Economic History
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Ancient History & Classics
Information

Book description

In this, the first comprehensive one-volume survey of the economies of classical antiquity, twenty-eight chapters summarise the current state of scholarship in their specialised fields and sketch new directions for research. The approach taken is both thematic, with chapters on the underlying determinants of economic performance, and chronological, with coverage of the whole of the Greek and Roman worlds extending from the Aegean Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. The contributors move beyond the substantivist-formalist debates that dominated twentieth-century scholarship and display a new interest in economic growth in antiquity. New methods for measuring economic development are explored, often combining textual and archaeological data that have previously been treated separately. Fully accessible to non-specialist, the volume represents a major advance in our understanding of the economic expansion that made the civilisation of the classical Mediterranean world possible.

Awards

2008 Winner Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Reviews

Review of the hardback:‘By presenting current scholarship and its prospective future course, the editors have produced a very important work. Prodigious bibliography … Summing up: highly recommended.'

Source: Choice

Review of the hardback:‘This is certainly an extraordinary book on the Ancient Mediterranean economies that ought to be read and quoted by all historians who work in the field of pre-industrial economics. This excellent project was brought to completion by its 3 editors and 27 contributors over the span of a decade.'

Source: Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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Contents

Page 2 of 2

Contents
  • 24 - The Western Provinces
    pp 649-670
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The western provinces can be divided into two zones according to their relationship to Rome, the center of power: a Mediterranean zone in which contacts via the sea prevailed, and a continental and oceanic zone separated by the Alps from Italy. In a few provincial areas, the density of cities comes close to those of the regions of Italy and of the east that had long since been urbanized. Like the city, the villa can be seen as a factor of economic development or as a parasitic structure expressing the elites' domination of the countryside. In the role division of city and country, the political functions are carried out by the city; the productive functions are divided between villa for agricultural production, and the vicus for most craft production. Centuriated, divided, distributed or rented out, these new lands considerably increased the size of the ager (the cultivated territory within the Roman empire).
  • 25 - The Eastern Mediterranean
    pp 671-697
  • View abstract

    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.
  • 26 - Roman Egypt
    pp 698-719
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter assesses the extent, nature, and causes of economic change in Egypt in the first three centuries of Roman rule. It argues for significant aggregate and per capita growth in the first two centuries, attributable to the institutional, commercial, and behavioral impact of integration into the Roman world. Next, following the Antonine plague, some aggregate decline in production but renewed, if more differentiated, per capita growth is attributable to internal socioeconomic changes. Study of the extant census returns, the richest standardized source of demographic data from Roman Egypt, points to a high mortality and high fertility regime. Egypt was famed throughout antiquity for its amazing agricultural output, the result of the annual Nile inundation with its rich silt deposit, which, unlike the Euphrates and Tigris spates, conveniently coincided with the sowing season for arable crops. Urbanization was one of the main socioeconomic developments in Roman Egypt, as it was in most provinces of the Roman empire.
  • 27 - The Frontier Zones
    pp 720-740
  • View abstract

    Summary

    It has often been remarked that the location of the frontier lines of the Roman empire coincided roughly with the outer perimeter of the provincial territory that was occupied by peoples whose social structure was easily adapted to the Roman administrative system. Any significant measure of economic growth in the frontier zones could have been achieved only by improving agricultural efficiency or by expanding the amount of land under cultivation. There is in fact little reason to doubt that agricultural output was increased in at least some of the frontier zones, like the Rhineland, where more intensive cultivation is attested in the lower Mosel-Main, the Wetterau, and the agri decimates. Parts of northern Gaul were given over to the production of cereals for the army stationed on the Rhine. The absence of local produce among some of the frontier garrisons may have led to an increase in trade across the frontiers.
  • 28 - The Transition to Late Antiquity
    pp 741-768
  • View abstract

    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.

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