Historians have long argued about the place of trade in classical antiquity: was it the life-blood of a complex, Mediterranean-wide economic system, or a thin veneer on the surface of an ...underdeveloped agrarian society? Trade underpinned the growth of Athenian and Roman power, helping to supply armies and cities. It furnished the goods that ancient elites needed to maintain their dominance - and yet, those same elites generally regarded trade and traders as a threat to social order. Trade, like the patterns of consumption that determined its development, was implicated in wider debates about politics, morality and the state of society, just as the expansion of trade in the modern world is presented both as the answer to global poverty and as an instrument of exploitation and cultural imperialism. This 2007 book explores the nature and importance of ancient trade, considering its ecological and cultural significance as well as its economic aspects.
Markets emerge in recent historical research as important spheres of economic interaction in ancient societies. In the case of ancient Egypt, traditional models imagined an all-encompassing ...centralized, bureaucratic economy that left practically no place for market transactions, as many surviving documents only described the activities of the royal palace and of huge institutions?mainly temples. Yet scattered references in the sources reveal that markets and traders were crucial actors in the economic life of ancient Egypt.In this perspective, this volume aims to discuss the role of markets, traders and economic interaction (not necessarily organized through markets) and the use of "money" (metals, valuable commodities) in pre-modern societies, based on archaeological, anthropological and historical evidence. Furthermore, it intends to integrate different perspectives about the social organization of transactions and exchanges and the different forms taken by markets, from meeting places where exchanges operated under ritualized procedures and conventions, to markets in which profit-seeking activities were marginal in respect with other practices that stressed, on the contrary, community collaboration. The book also deals with social forms of pre-modern exchanges in which trust and ethnic solidarity guaranteed the validity of commercial operations in the absence of formal codes of laws or accepted authorities over long distances (trade diasporas, guilds, etc.). Finally, the volume analyzes a critical aspect of small-scale trade and markets, such as the commercialization of agricultural household production and its impact on the peasant economic strategies.In all, the book covers a diversity of topics in which recent research in the fields of economic sociology, archaeology, anthropology, economics and history proves invaluable in order to analyze the role of Egyptian trade in a broader perspective, as well as to suggest new venues of comparative research, theoretical reflection and dialogue between Egyptology and social sciences. The book will also address pre-modern social organizations of trade activities in which trust and ethnic solidarity guaranteed the validity of commercial operations in the absence of formal codes of laws or accepted authorities over long distances, particularly trade diasporas, guilds, etc. This book will be the first in the new series from Oxbow, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies.
This book explores the social institutions, the prevailing social values, and the ideology of the ancient city-state as revealed in Roman Comedy . The very essence of comedy is social, writes David ...Konstan, and in the complex movement of its plots we may be able to discern the lineaments and contradictions of the reigning ideas of an age. David Konstan looks closely at eight plays: Plautus's Aulularia , Asinaria , Captivi , Rudens , Cistellaria , and Truculentus , and Terence's Phormio and Hecyra . Offering new interpretations of each, he develops a typology of plot forms by analyzing structural features and patterns of conventional behavior in the plays, and he relates the results of his literary analysis to contemporary social conditions. He argues that the plays address tensions that were potentially disruptive to the ancient city-state, and that they tended to resolve these tensions in ways that affirmed traditional values. Roman Comedy is an innovative and challenging book that will be welcomed by students of classical literature, ancient social history, the history of the theater, and comedy as a genre.
Poiesis Acton, Peter
2014, 2014-11-12, 2014-09-23
eBook
Poiesis summarizes the literary and archaeological evidence and the recent work of subject experts on each of the major sectors of manufacturing in which the residents of Athens engaged. By applying ...a conceptual framework derived from contemporary business strategy, it identifies the probable structure of each industry: which lent themselves to the employment of large gangs of slaves, which remained the province of small craftsmen and which provided the best returns to capital and labor. The book relates the opportunities provided by various types of engagement in manufacturing to the social and physical needs of different wealth and status groups and shows the importance of manufacturing to different groups of Athenian residents.
The science called 'harmonics' was one of the major intellectual enterprises of Greek antiquity. Ptolemy's treatise seeks to invest it with new scientific rigour; its consistently sophisticated ...procedural self-awareness marks it as a key text in the history of science. This book is a sustained methodological exploration of Ptolemy's project. After an analysis of his explicit pronouncements on the science's aims and the methods appropriate to it, it examines Ptolemy's conduct of his investigation in detail, concluding that despite occasional uncertainties, the declared procedure is followed with remarkable fidelity. Ptolemy pursues tenaciously his novel objective of integrating closely the project's theoretical and empirical phases and shows astonishing mastery of the concept, the design and the conduct of controlled experimental tests. By opening up this neglected text to historians of science, the book aims to provide a point of departure for wider studies of Greek scientific method.
This book is an historical-critical study of Jewish slavery in antiquity, comparing the Jewish discourse on slavery with Graeco-Roman and Christian attitudes, and the first comprehensive analysis of ...Jewish attitudes towards slavery in Hellenistic and Roman times. It subverts many traditional views of Jews and slavery in antiquity; for example, showing against the traditional opinion that after the Babylonian Exile Jews refrained from employing slaves, that slavery remained a significant phenomenon of ancient Jewish everyday life, and generated a discourse which resembled Graeco-Roman and early Christian views while at the same time preserving specifically Jewish nuances. It examines the impact of domestic slavery on the ancient Jewish household and on family relationships, discusses the perceived advantages of slaves over other types of labor, and evaluates their role within the ancient Jewish economy. The ancient Jewish experience of slavery seems to have been so pervasive that slave images also entered theological discourse. Like their Graeco-Roman and Christian counterparts, ancient Jewish intellectuals did not advocate the abolition of slavery, but they used the biblical tradition and their own judgements to ameliorate the status quo.
Understanding terence Goldberg, Sander M; Goldberg, Sander M
2014., 20140701, 2014, 1986, Letnik:
441
eBook
Instead of seeing Terence primarily as an adapter of Greek New Comedy, Sander Goldberg treats him as an innovative dramatist writing for a specifically Roman audience. His book will interest not only ...students of classical literature but also those concerned with wider problems of critical theory and the comic tradition.
Originally published in 1986.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The economies of classical and Mediterranean antiquity are currently a battleground. Some scholars see them as lively and progressive, even proto-capitalist: others see them as static, embedded in ...social action and status relationships. Focusing on the central period of the Mediterranean 330-30 BC, this book contributes substantially to the debate, by juxtaposing general questions of theory and model-building with case-studies which examine specific areas and kinds of evidence. It breaks new ground by distilling and presenting new and newly-reinterpreted evidence for the Hellenistic era, by opening the debate on how we should replace Rostovtzeff's classic view of this period, and by offering a compelling new set of interpretative ideas to the debate on the ancient economy.
