Table of Contents

Expanded Contents vii List of Figures xv List of Tables xvii Introduction xxi I The Economy of Ancient Greece: A Conceptual Framework 1 Structure and Production II People in Their Environment 31 III Energy, Economy, and Transport Cost 71 IV The Polis and the Economy 96 V Agricultural Production 118 VI The Economy of the Agricultural World 142 VII Nonagricultural Production, Capital, and Innovation 175 VIII The Logic of Growth 199 Market and Trade IX The Institutions of the Domestic Market 225 X Money and Credit 260 XI City-States, Taxes, and Trade 286 XII The Emporion and the Markets 306 XIII International Trade Networks 339 XIV Strategies of International Trade 381 XV The Greek Cities and the Market 415 Appendix: Weights, Measures, and Currency Units 439 Abbreviations 443 Notes 449 Sources 531 Bibliography 535 Index 603

About the Author

Alain Bresson is professor of classics at the University of Chicago.

Reviews

"This book must surely sweep the field. Whether one is an undergraduate student, an early-career scholar, has been chewing over the ancient economy for a career, or is simply a general reader with a curiosity about how the ancient economy worked, this is now the go-to work. [Bresson] has produced a book that is at the same time something of an encyclopaedia of the ancient Greek economy, full of in-depth discussions about more or less every product and every economic phenomenon, a sourcebook of texts, particularly epigraphic texts, illustrating economic phenomena, and a book with an argument."--Professor Robin Osborne, Classics for All "This authoritative introduction to and survey of the ancient Greek economy translates, updates, expands, and combines the author's original two-volume French edition. Bresson documents the unprecedented and unparalleled economic growth of the Greek world from the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods... [A] thoroughly informed masterwork."--Choice