Ancient History: Key Themes and Approaches

Neville Morley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415165082
• eBook ISBN: 9781134709830
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire antique

Ancient History: Key Themes and Approaches is a sourcebook of writings on ancient history. It presents over 500 of the most important stimulating and provocative arguments by modern writers on the subject, and as such constitutes an invaluable reference resource. The first section deals with different aspects of life in the ancient world, such as democracy, imperialism, slavery and sexuality, while the second section covers the ideas of key ancient historians and other writers on classical antiquity. Overall this book offers an invaluable introduction to the most important ideas, theories and controversies in ancient history, and a thought-provoking survey of the range of views and approaches to the subject.

Part 1

KEY THEMES
AND DEBATES

Administration

See also State

1 Government without bureaucracy.

Title of chapter in Peter Garnsey & Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: economy, society, culture, London, Duckworth, and Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1987, p. 20. Copyright © 1987 Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller.

2 Tax rates could be low principally because the services offered by the Roman administration were rudimentary By this I do not mean to underestimate the benefits of Roman peace, prosperity and justice—although they have often been exaggerated. One telling index is the extremely sparse presence of élite administrators in the provinces outside Italy. Contrast, for example, the Roman empire with the Chinese. In the second century A.D., to govern a population estimated at 50–60 million people, there were only about 150 senatorial and equestrian administrators in the Roman provinces, that is one élite administrator for every 350,000–400,000 persons. In southern China, in the twelfth century, with a population of a similar size, there were 4,000 gentry officials working in about 1,000 administrative areas outside the capital (compared with forty-five Roman provinces), that is one Chinese élite administrator for roughly every 15,000 people. The scale of difference outweighs any quibbles about the difficulties of comparison.

Keith Hopkins, ‘Taxes and trade in the Roman Empire (200 B, C.–A.D. 400)’, Journal of Roman Studies, 70 (1980), pp. 120–1.

3 The Romans did not normally garrison cities or appoint high commissioners with power of constitutional control or nominate to the important magistracies. Instead they so arranged the constitution of the cities that the power rested with the wealthier classes… Having established in power persons likely to watch over her interests, Rome left them in practice with a fairly free hand.

A.H.M.Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian, Oxford, OUP, 1940, pp. 120–1.

Agriculture

See also Peasants

1 None of this can be translated into quantitative terms…We must therefore rest content with the vague but sure proposition that most people in the ancient world lived off the land, in one fashion or another, and that they themselves recognized the land to be the fountainhead of all good, material and moral.

M.I.Finley, The Ancient Economy, London, Hogarth Press, 2nd edn 1985, p. 97.

2 All Greek cities were fundamentally dependent upon their countryside, but there was enormous variation in the particular land-forms available to individual cities…The variety of the countryside and the rigours of the climate imposed different conditions in different places and demanded different agricultural strategies. These strategies enabled the country to be highly productive, but not reliably so. Both the form and the success of the strategies directly affected the nature and structure of society and hence the course of much of military and political history.

Robin Osborne, Classical Landscape with Figures: the ancient Greek city and its countryside, London, George Philip, 1987, p. 27.

3 What we call land is an element of nature inextricably woven with man’s institutions. Traditionally, land and labor are not separated; labor forms part of life, land remains part of nature, life and nature form an articulate whole. Land is thus tied up with the organization of kinship, neighborhood, craft, and creed—with tribe and temple, village, gild, and church.

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time, Boston, Beacon Press, 1944, p. 178.

4 The economic basis of Greek and Roman civilisation in the first millennium BC was provided by a new and more productive agricultural system, permitting human population growth. What was new about it was not that there was any great technological progress—a false perspective—but that a whole range of new crops, especially the olive, vine and the modern types of wheat, besides a whole host of other plants of lesser significance, either were domesticated or else enormously expanded their geographical range.

Robert Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World, London, Duckworth, and Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1991, p. 14.

5 Most descriptions of traditional Mediterranean farming recognize the influence of two distinctive features of the Mediterranean natural environment—climate and relief. The climate of the coastal lowlands, where most human settlement is concentrated, is characterized by an alternation between mild winters and hot summers and by a winter rainfall regime. Annual crops like wheat take advantage of the mild winters to complete their growth cycle by early summer, while perennial crops like the olive are adapted to surviving the summer drought. The relief is heavily broken, such that the plains and hills of the lowlands usually lie within days, if not hours, of high mountains which are snow-bound in winter but cool and well-watered in summer. The flocks of sheep and goats which overwinter in the lowlands can thus escape the summer drought by moving to the high pastures of the mountains and there are ‘transhumant’ pastoral communities which undertake such a pattern of twice-yearly movement between lowland and mountain throughout the Mediterranean.

Paul Halstead, ‘Traditional and ancient rural economy in Mediterranean Europe: plus ça change?’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 107 (1987), p. 77.

6 The sparse contemporary sources mention the biennial system alternating between fallow and crop; systematical growing of specialized fodder plants does not appear to have been commonly practised, and consequently animal farming on a greater scale has been limited to special ecological niches. More generally speaking, Eric Wolf has contrasted ‘mixed farming’ or ‘balanced livestock and crop-raising’ with the so-called ‘Mediterranean ecotype’, which fits fairly well with the picture to which our analysis leads us.

Signe Isager & Jens Erik Skydsgaard, Ancient Greek Agriculture: an introduction, London and New York, Routledge, 1992, p. 108.

7 The catch of the situation is that animals compete with people for scarce resources. A small peasant could increase his labour productivity by using work animals, but would thereby make his family’s labour redundant. A decent standard of living and a high population density are mutually exclusive in this case. To have enough land to own a plough and oxen must therefore have been one of the most distinctive elements of social differentiation within the peasantry.

Wim Jongman, ‘Adding it up’, in C.R. Whittaker (ed.), Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, Cambridge Philological Society, 1988, p. 211.

8 The Roman agricultural writers do not describe just one type of agricultural system. To state this does not mean only that they discuss vineyards as well as oliveyards and cereal cultivation, but that in a discussion of each such topic, they recognize different systems of cultivation. Thereby the complexity of the Roman rural economy and agriculture is revealed.

M.S.Spurr, Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy, London, Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1986, p. 117.

9 In the Roman period the type of husbandry practised on the large farm and the smallholding had much in common. Ultimately the explanation of this lies in the fact that the Romans in Italy were not alien conquerors imposing exotic ideas upon a subjugated population: rather their strong military and political power was built upon an indigenous agricultural and pastoral tradition. The owner of the villa was drawing upon a fund of knowledge and practice built up by generations of small farmers.

Joan M.Frayn, Subsistence Farming in Roman Italy, Sussex and London, Centaur Press, 1979, p. 148.

Alexander the Great

1 Alexander was in most things a Macedonian through and through, only in part a Greek by blood and education, and primarily a man of war whose genius is seen mostly clearly on the field of battle.

N.G.L.Hammond, Alexander the Great: king, commander and statesman, London, Chatto & Windus, 1980, p. v.

2 In Alexander it is tempting to see the romantic’s complex nature for the first time in Greek history. There are the small details, his sudden response to a show of nobility, his respect for women, his appreciation of eastern customs, his extreme fondness for his dog and especially his horse.

Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great, London, Allen Lane, 1973, p. 497. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London, on behalf of Robin Lane Fox. Copyright © Robin Lane Fox 1973.

3 In brief, he had many of the qualities of the noble savage.

Hammond, Alexander the Great, p. 270.

4 Alexander was fortunate in his death. His fame could hardly have increased; but it might perhaps have been diminished. For he died with the real task yet before him. He had made war as few have made it; it remained to be seen if he could make peace.

W.W.Tarn, Alexander the Great, Cambridge, CUP, 1948, p. 121.

5 The king’s name and image were invoked as his conquests were renounced and dismembered. The debate over legitimacy lasted a mere generation. After that Alexander was a symbol and nothing else. For subsequent ages he typified the world conqueror, and his territorial acquisitions were a standing inspiration and challenge to successive dynasts.

A.B.Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: the reign of Alexander the Great, Cambridge, CUP, 1988, p. 181.

6 Determined to astound contemporaries and awe future generations with his unique arete, Alexander exploited mankind and god with relentless perseverance. In the process, his hybris offended a deity capable of revealing and expiating mortal deficiencies with artful brutality. Dionysus chose wine as the vehicle through which he would unveil and magnify the defects of a brilliant man who was spiritually blind.

John Maxwell O’Brien, Alexander the Great: the invisible enemy, London and New York, Routledge, 1992, pp. 229–30.

7 Alexander the Great partly conquered Greece, and then Asia; therefore he was filled with a lust for conquest. He acted from lust for fame and conquest, and the proof that these were his motives is that his actions brought him fame. What schoolmaster has not demonstrated of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar that they were impelled by such passions and were therefore immoral characters?—from which it at once follows that the schoolmaster himself is a more admirable man than they were, because he does not have such passions (the proof being that he does not conquer Asia or vanquish Darius and Porus, but simply lives and lets live). These psychologists are particularly apt to dwell on the private idionsyncrasies of the great figures of history. Man must eat and drink; he has relationships with friends and acquaintances, and has feelings and momentary outbursts of emotion. The great men of history also had such idiosyncrasies; they ate and drank, and preferred this course to another and that wine to another (or to water). ‘No man is a hero to his valet de chambre’ is a well known saying. I have added—and Goethe repeated it two years later—‘not because the former is not a hero, but because the latter is a valet’.

G.W.F.Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction [1840], trans. H.B.Nisbet, Cambridge, CUP, 1975, pp. 87–8.

8 I shall call this third subdivision, ‘autobiographical documents in the guise of scholarly books.’ The genre should not be unfamiliar. Most Alexander books belong to it.

William M.Calder III, ‘Ecce Homo: the autobiographical in Wilamovitz’ scholarly writings’, in Calder, Men in their Books: studies in the modern history of classical scholarship, J.P.Harris & R.S.Smith (eds), Hildesheim, Zürich and New York, Georg Olms, 1998, p. 33.

Archaeology

1 It is self-evident that the potential contribution of archaeology to history is, in a rough way, inversely proportional to the quantity and quality of the available written sources.

M.I.Finley, ‘Archaeology and history’, in The Use and Abuse of History, London, Chatto & Windus, 1975, p. 93.

2 The expression of archaeological results may call for nicely written historical narrative but this is a matter of choosing one particular vehicle to convey results obtained by quite alien methods. The danger of historical narrative as a vehicle for archaeological results is that it pleases by virtue of its smooth coverage and apparent finality, whilst the data on which it is based are never comprehensive, never capable of supporting but one interpretation and rest upon complex probabilities. Archaeological data are not historical data and consequently archaeology is not history.

David Clarke, Analytical Archaeology, London, Methuen, 1968, p. 12.

3 Classical archaeology, a subject dominated for some time past by various kinds of positivism, has in the process succumbed to a form of ‘positivist fallacy’. The fallacy consists in making archaeological prominence and historical importance into almost interchangeable terms; in equating what is observable with what is significant.

Anthony M.Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece: the present state and future scope...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Ancient History: Key Themes and Approaches
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART 1. Key Themes and Debates
• PART 2. Key Writers
• Name Index
• Subject Index