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The Economic Evolution of the Hellenistic States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
The problem to which this article tries to supply an answer, in any case for the time being, is the following: was the political collapse of the Greek world the result of a slow internal disintegration or of the destructive action of the Roman conquest?
In other words: did the Graeco-Macedonian states, constituted after the conquest of Asia by Alexander, die ‘their own splendid deaths’ or were they ‘assassinated’ by Rome?
1 This article summarises conclusions which will be more amply expounded in a further book. I have recalled some of the problems posed by the decline of Hellenism in a lecture on the destiny of the Roman world delivered last March at the Institut de Science Economique Appliquée under the presidency of M. André Piganiol.
2 These expressions are used by André Piganiol; see L'Empire Chrétien (Paris 1947, p. 422).
3 For the bibliography as a whole and the various sources, the most recent and best informed work is that of H. Bengtson: Griechische Geschichte in the collection Handbuch der Altertums wissenschaft by Ivan von Müller and Walter Otto (Munich 1950), pp. 341 et seq.
4 This point has been well brought out by Mr. Rostovtzeff in a series of works (e.g., Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates, Leipzig and Berlin, 1910; A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century B.C. (Madison, 1922), reprinted in his monumental work published in 1941 : The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 3 vols. Cf. also the re markable account by F. Heichelheim: Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Altertums (Leyden, 1938), I, 596 et seq., and, generally, chapter VII (pp. 420 et seq.).
5 This holds good especially for the Egypt of the third century. One finds, however, analogous forms of organisations, if less developed, in South Russia, in Iran, at Carthage and in Sicily. Cf. Heichelheim, op. cit., pp. 612 et seq.
6 The most determined supporter of a ‘capitalist' conception of Greek economy is E. Meyer; cf. Blüte und Niedergang des Hellenismus in Asien (1925). See also on the same lines, F. Munzer: ‘Die politische Vernichtung des Griechentums' (Das Erbe der Alten [1925], II, 95); H. Berve, Griechische Geschichte (1933), II, 393 et seq., and above all, U. Kahrstedt, ‘Die Grundlagen und Voraussetzungen der römischen Revolution' (Neue Wege zur Antike (1927), IV, 94 et seq.).
7 Cf. the works already cited and, in addition, ‘The Hellenistic World and Its Economic Development' (American Historical Review 41, 1936, pp. 23 1 et seq.).
8 Rostovtzeff: The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World II, 913.
9 In Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1926, p. 97; 1928, p. 484.
10 Cf. W. W. Tam: La Civilisation hellénistique, Paris, 1936; Heichelheim, op. cit., I, 1 et seq. The method (and consequently the presentation) of Heichelheim, inspired by the sociological works of A. Spiethoff and Oppenheimer, seems open to question.
11 F. Altheim: Alexandre et l'Asie, Paris, 1954.
12 Cf. Rostovtzeff: ‘A large Estate', etc., pp. 43 et seq., for a careful analysis of the existing papyrological sources of which he gives a complete extract (Index IV, 205).
13 Rostovtzeff, op. cit., p. 141.
14 On the political history of the Hellenistic period there are numerous works; together with that of Bengtson quoted above, to be consulted are volumes VII and VIII of the ‘Cambridge Ancient History', published under the direction of S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock and M. D. Charlesworth (with important biblographies) and P. Jouguet: L'Impérialisme Macédonien et l'hellénisation de l'Orient. (Coll: ‘L'Evolution de l'Humanité', vol. XV, Paris, 1926.)
On the history of prices the chief work is by F. Heichelheim: Wirtschaftliche Schwankun gen der Zeit von Alexander bis Augustus (1930), whose conclusions are summarised in the Wirtschaftsgeschichte, des Altertums, I, 420 et seq. Valuable information can also be obtained from the articles by G. Glotz in the Journal des Savants, 1913, pp. 16 et seq.; from the Revue des Etudes grecques for 1916, pp. 281 et seq.; 1918, 207 et seq. (on prices at Delos); from the Bulletin de la Société Archéologique alexandrine (1930), pp. 80 et seq. (on the price of papyrus). Cf. also H. Michell: Economics of Ancient Greece, 1937.
15 Cf. the commentary given by Rostovtzeff in his Economic Social History, I, 440 et seq.
16 On this point we are in entire agreement with the conclusions drawn by W. Wilcken in his Alexandre le Grand (Paris 1929), passim.
17 On the Roman conquest, its causes and its consequences, cf. the admirable account by A. Piganiol: La Conquête Romaine (Coll. ‘Peuples et Civilisation’), Paris, 1927, to be com pleted by l'Histoire de Rome by the same author (Coll. ‘Clio', No 3, Paris, 1939), pp. 110 et seq. Lastly: Giannelli-Mazzarino: Trattato di Storia Romana, II (1954).
18 Heichelheim: Wirtschaftsgeschichte, I, 452.
19 Heichelheim, op. cit., pp. 440-57; ibid., p. 605; Rostovtzeff, Economic and Social History, II, 1185.
20 Well brought out by E. Will in Annales d'Histoire Sociale (March, 1954).
21 Mass production implies that the early stage of individual handicraft has given way to the factory, a fact which the defenders of ‘capitalism' seem not to have always grasped (e.g., F. Oertel in R. von Pohlmann: Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt (third edition, Munich, 1925). Nor is it possible for me to agree with the too ‘archaistic' conclusions of J. Bassebrook, above all concerning classic Greece. (Cf. Staat und Handel in alten Griechenland, Tübingen, 1928.)
22 On the commerce in slaves, cf. the well documented article by W. L. Westermann in the Real Enzyklopedie of Pauly-Wissow-Kroll: ‘Sklaverei' (supplement VI).
23 Cf. Tarn: La civilisation hellénistique, pp. 273 et seq.
24 It is to be noted that the evidence of prices at our disposal concerns chiefly wheat, wine and oil.
25 With the exception of the partes, societies of tax-gatherers, who, however, played no essen tial role until the second century. Cf. the important text of Polybius referred to by A. Piganiol in his Conquête Romaine.
26 Cf. M. Rostovtzeff, Economic and Social History, I I, 841 et seq., 870 et seq., 955 et seq. Perhaps he does not insist enough on the decisive and specific role played by inflation in a funda mentally agrarian economy. It not only accelerates the concentration of property and the unequal distribution of the revenues, but it also increases hoarding; hence the plethora of purely monetary ‘capital'.
27 Cf. the excellent development of the subject by F. Altheim: Alexandre et l'Asie, pp. 194 et seq.
28 Cf. once again the masterly development of the subject by Rostovtzeffin his Economic and Social History, I I, 756. Although violently anti-Marxist, Rostovtzeff definitely seems to me the historian of classic antiquity who comes nearest to Marx by the importance he attaches to the class conflicts and by the care with which he seeks out the strictly social and political origin of racial opposition. Symptomatic also seems the small importance he attaches on the whole to monetary phenomena; cf. also the works of Kahrstedt, Meyer, Tarn, mentioned above.
29 On the role of the stoa, cf. R. von Pöhlmann, op. cit., and H. Bengtson, op. cit.
30 Altheim: Alexandre et l'Asie, p. 406.
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