CLASSICAL LITERATURE

The classical authors usually employed as sources for Seleukid history have been exhaustively discussed by others and so will not be treated here yet again, but only referred to where appropriate. However, the source net has been spread to include those writers reporting on the Achaemenid empire (e.g. Herodotos, Xenophon, the Alexander historians), and particularly on its administrative practices, because of the considerable degree of continuity that seems to have existed in this area between it and its Seleukid successors, as will hopefully be demonstrated.

PS.-ARISTOTLE'S OIKONOMIKA, BOOK 2

This economic treatise has been attributed to the school of Aristotle and is fundamental in any study of the economy of the Hellenistic world, despite its brevity and difficulty of detailed comprehension. A short theoretical section deals with the four types of financial administrations (‘economies’) that could be observed at the time, in decreasing order of importance: those of a kingdom, a satrapy, a city and a household. This is followed by a presentation of stratagems by which rulers or administrators solved specific financial problems.

In chapter 7 the theoretical section is translated and discussed at some length, including the question of its date. In chapters 8–11 the evidence from the Seleukid period for the different aspects of the royal and satrapal economies, as referred to by ps.-Aristotle, is presented and analysed in detail.