Economy Articles

Agriculture was the foundation of the Ancient Greek economy. Nearly 80% of the population was involved in this activity. Agriculture permeated the Greek world to such an extent that it gave birth to a way of life which persisted throughout Antiquity.During the early part of Greek history, as shown in the Odyssey, Greek agriculture - and diet - was based... [continue reading]

Much of the craftsmanship of ancient Greece was part of the domestic sphere. However, the situation gradually changed between the 8th and 4th centuries BC, with the increased commercialization of the Greek economy. Thus, weaving and baking were done only by women before the 6th century BC. After the growth of commerce, slaves started to be widely used... [continue reading]

Trade was a fundamental aspect of the ancient Greek world and following territorial expansion, an increase in population movements, and innovations in transport, goods could be bought, sold, and exchanged in one part of the Mediterranean which had their origin in a completely different and far distant region. Food, raw materials, and manufactured goods... [continue reading]

How prosperous were the Romans? Their individual experiences ranged from wretched poverty to fabulous wealth, and that variety makes generalizations difficult. Many kinds of evidence can be used to address this question. Three approaches to the problem are particularly direct and encompassing. The first approach is to calculate the average income. This... [continue reading]

Rome’s dependence upon slaves has been well established in terms of economics and general society. This paper, however, seeks to demonstrate this dependence, during the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, through detailed examples of slave use in various areas of Roman life. The areas covered include agriculture, industry, domestic... [continue reading]

Few occurrences in antiquity are as widely discussed by a diverse, ancient authorship as transcontinental commerce between the Mediterranean Sea and East Asia. Yet modern historians remain profoundly divided over long-distance trade’s origin, operation and effect with regard to the governance of the Roman Principate. There is broad consensus, however... [continue reading]

Archaeology provides the most important source for interpreting the ancient past and it is considerably richer than the limited and finite written sources. A traditional approach has been to use historical texts simply to “confirm” archaeology and vice versa. In the last decades there has been a growing awareness that epistemological developments... [continue reading]

This study is based on the analysis of texts coming from several dispersed archives and collections referring to the activity pursued by private families in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Periods. We chose to classify the documents according to types, taking for granted that documents referring to «goods» and “currency»... [continue reading]

In this paper I use a theoretical hierarchy of financial sources to evaluate the effectiveness of financial markets in the early Roman Empire. I first review the theory of financial intermediation to describe the hierarchy of financial sources and survey briefly the history of financial intermediation in pre-industrial Western Europe to provide a standard... [continue reading]

This overview examines the impact of horsepower on Old World society over the last 6,000 years. Analysis of man’s symbiosis with the domesticated horse necessarily takes the reader to regions remote from urban centers and pays special attention to mobile elements of nomadic society, too often deemed marginal or transitory. The discussion first grapples... [continue reading]