1st Edition
The Extramercantile Economies of Greek and Roman Cities New Perspectives on the Economic History of Classical Antiquity
Recent work on the ancient economy has tended to concentrate on market exchange, but other forces also caused goods to change hands. Such nonmarket transfers ranged from small private gifts to the wholesale confiscation of cities, lands, and their peoples. The papers presented in this volume examine aspects of this extramercantile economy, particularly benefaction and the role of associations, as well as their impact on the market economy.
This volume brings together ancient historians, New Testament scholars, and classicists to assess critically the New Institutional Economics framework. Combining theoretical approaches with detailed investigations of particular regions and topics, its chapters examine Greek economic thought, the benefits of membership in private associations, and the economic role of civic euergetism from classical Athens to the municipalities of Roman Spain.
The Extramercantile Economies of Greek and Roman Cities will be of use to those interested in the economic context of ancient religions, the role of associations in the economy, theoretical approaches to the study of the ancient economy, labor and politics in the ancient city, as well as how Greek philosophers, from Xenophon to Philodemus, developed ethical ideas about economic behavior.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
John T. Fitzgerald, David B. Hollander, and Thomas R. Blanton IV
1. The Extramercantile Economy: An Assessment of the New Institutional Economics: Paradigm in Relation to Recent Studies of Ancient Greece and Rome
Thomas R. Blanton IV and David B. Hollander
2. Early Greek Economic Thought
John T. Fitzgerald
3. Benefactors, Markets, and Trust in the Roman East: Civic Munificence as Extramercantile Exchange
Arjan Zuiderhoek
4. Euergetism and the Embedded Economy of the Greek Polis
Marc Domingo Gygax
5. The Economic and Cognitive Impacts of Personal Benefaction in Hispania Tarraconensis
Rachel Meyers
6. New Institutional Economics, Euergetism, and Associations
John S. Kloppenborg
7. The Economics of Solidarity: Mutual Aid and Reciprocal Services between Workers in Roman Cities
Nicolas Tran
Epilogue
David B. Hollander and Thomas R. Blanton IV
Index
Biography
David B. Hollander is Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University, USA.
Thomas R. Blanton IV is Auxiliary Professor in New Testament Studies at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, USA.
John T. Fitzgerald is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame, USA.