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...

This is a collection of essays in the social and economic history of Greece and Rome by a leading historian of classical antiquity. They are grouped in three overlapping sections, covering the economy and society of cities; peasants and the rural economy; and food supply and famine. The essays, all previously published, are presented together with bibliographical addenda by Walter Scheidel that summarize and assess scholarly reaction to the author's work. The range of subject matter and approach is wide and the treatment original and provocative.