Ancient Greek History Gift Guide (Part 3): The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece
Seeing as though we are nearing the Christmas period, a time when many of our readers will likely be giving gifts to their families and friends, I thought I would offer a kind of guide to some books about ancient Greek history that are available.
Buying books can be very difficult. You must account for the recipient’s personal taste and, in this case, their level of familiarity with the subject matter. In order to properly offer readers a gift guide, these reviews examine these books not just through a historical lens but also through a consumer’s lens, looking at the price and quality of the book, so you can tailor your choice to fit whoever it is you’re getting a gift for, whether that is for someone on their way to study it at university or an enthusiast. In this installment of the Ancient Greek History Gift Guide, we will be taking a look at The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece by Josiah Ober.
Unlike the previous installments of this blog series, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece is not a narrative history of the Greek world, despite its name. Instead, the book is an attempt to explain why ancient Greece experienced what historical sociologist Jack Goldstone calls ‘efflorescence’ (2002), defined by Ober as “increased economic growth accompanied by a sharp uptick in cultural achievement” (p. 2). Since, after antiquity, Greece did not experience similar levels of development to the Classical period, this efflorescence is not simply the result of geographic determinism, although, as Ober notes, “Geography and climate are certainly one part of the answer” (p. 13). Rather, Ober argues, it is the Classical Greeks’ citizen-centered, (relatively) open-access political institutions of the polis, which meant a more equitable distribution of wealth compared to centralised, politically closed systems, that is the cause of this efflorescence. In order to demonstrate this, Ober first explains, in detail, the political and economic organisation of the world of the Greek polis (ethne, such as the Aetolians, are not mentioned) through the lens of New Institutional Economics, before applying his findings in a narrative history of the Classical Greek world.
While Ober’s argument is attractive, it is not without quite serious issues. Any attempt at an economic study of a pre-modern society is hampered by a lack of data necessary for an in-depth academic study, and ancient Greece is no exception. So, to avoid this pitfall, Ober uses a set of proxy data, such as population growth, house sizes, and the size of coin hoards (see pp. 81–100). Coming to an understanding of ancient Greek population growth and density is hampered by the same problem as understanding the Greek economy – a lack of hard data. Instead, population figures are only estimates based on things such as the size of areas enclosed by walls. Indeed, the fact that academics have arrived at such wildly varying figures as a ten- to 25-fold increase in population between 1000 and 300 BC should give us pause (Morris, 2004; Hansen, 2006; 2008). As for house sizes, which are used as a proxy for per capita consumption, there is no indication in The Rise and Fall of Ancient Greece that Ober considered the existence of synoikiai, which were, effectively, single houses divided between several families (see Ferrucci, 2011, 403–4). As such, even if house sizes appear to increase over this period, the existence of such multi-family dwellings skews the correlation between this increase and an increase in per capita consumption. Regarding coin hoards, here used as evidence for economic growth, Ober does note the limitations, as how “Short-term growth in hoarding may, in fact, indicate economic crisis” (pp. 83–84). However, over the Classical period as a whole, the number of hoards and the number of coins within them doubles, which Ober takes as reflecting “a world in which more people were living substantially above the level of bare survival” (p. 84). This doubling of coin hoards need not necessarily indicate economic growth, however. It could, alternatively, indicate a combination of increased monetisation and political volatility over the same period. Coinage was only introduced to the Greek world in the sixth century BC, so we should expect to see a growth in monetisation of the succeeding centuries. The rise of the Athenian Empire and its forced tribute in coined silver, resistance to the empire, the wars that stemmed from the empire’s fall, and Persia’s financial backing of candidates in this period would also have both driven increased monetisation and increased the region’s political instability, thereby making coin hoards more prevalent.
Finally, another serious issue with The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece is the near total lack of any discussion about the impact of slavery as a driver of the ancient Greek economy. Whenever Ober does mention slavery, it is usually to dismiss it as a part of ancient Greek society we should not seek to emulate. The lack of engagement with the role of slavery ultimately undermines Ober’s argument, since it was a huge part of the ancient Greek economy. According to Ober, part of why the open-access polis system facilitated economic efflorescence was because it allowed individuals greater specialisation, including “industrial processes” (p. 12), such as the production of pottery. Based on the evidence of vase paintings, a single pottery workshop is commonly thought to have been composed of around four to six people (Acton, 2014, pp. 82–84).
Of these people, it is likely that most of them were slaves: for example, some names of potters and painters, like Syrikos (‘Little Syrian’) and Skythes (‘Scythian’) certainly imply a servile status (Sparkes, 1996, pp. 110–111); and slaves were employed in other areas of specialised labour, like shield construction (Demosthenes, 36.11; Lysias, 12.8). At times, it seems as though Ober even deliberately omits any mention of slavery. When discussing certain measures from Xenophon’s Poroi to increase the wealth of Athens, for instance, Ober focuses on Xenophon’s ideas to attract foreign merchants to come to Athens (p. 248), yet does not mention the fact that Xenophon considered all of these measures secondary to acquiring more slaves to work the silver mines in Laurion (Poroi 4). On the previous page, Ober had even noted that, while silver mining likely contributed to Athens’ fourth-century recovery, open-access institutions were a factor in the economy’s strength (p. 247) – Xenophon clearly disagrees.
Besides these more serious faults, Ober’s narrative history also has a share of minor issues. At times, despite, like Hall, explicitly disavowing the notion of Greek exceptionalism (see, for example, p. xix), Ober comes close to doing so. One example is the idea that, “with the establishment of Massalia in the early sixth century, the ancestors of the French first learned to drink wine” (p. 133), except the Etruscans appear to have been trading wine with Gaul since at least the seventh century BC (see Briggs, 2003). The Greeks certainly were engaged in the wine trade with Gaul, but they did not initiate it, and to suggest otherwise favours Greek agency over that of non-Greek groups. Ober also oversimplifies Sparta’s social system, trusting to outdated notions of a warrior-society in which “Spartan citizens were full-time warriors” and “helots were full-time farmers” (p. 142). Rather than full-time warriors, the Spartiates are better characterised as a mass landed elite, while simply calling all helots farmers overlooks their activities as house servants, nursemaids, servants on military campaigns, and even hoplites themselves (see Hodkinson, 1997).
Despite these faults, Ober should be commended for attempting to explain why it seems that the ancient Greeks were an especially productive culture and why that same level of productivity has not been replicated in Greece since. That said, these faults undermine Ober’s overall argument, regardless of how attractive it might be. Moreover, while the book’s title makes it seem like an introductory work on Classical Greek history, it is predicated on the reader have a close familiarity with the period – major events are glossed over and even entirely omitted in the narrative history part of the book. As such, readers unfamiliar with the subject are unlikely to have a proper basis from which to make their own judgement of Ober’s argument. On the other hand, readers who do have a familiarity with ancient Greece might appreciate his novel interpretation of Classical Greek history and society, even if it is flawed.
References:
Acton, P. Poiesis: Manufacturing in Classical Athens. Oxford, 2014.
Briggs, D.N. “Metals, Salts, and Slaves: Economic Links Between Gaul and Italy from the Eighth to the Late Sixth Centuries BC,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22 (2003), 243–259.
Ferrucci, F. “Houses in the Household II: From Gortyn to Athens and Back,” Hesperia Supplements 44 (2011), 401–408.
Goldstone, J.A. “Efflorescences and Economic Growth in World History: Rethinking the “Rise of the West” and the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of World History 13 (2002), 323–389.
Hansen, H.M. The Shotgun Method: The Demography of the Ancient Greek City-State Culture. Columbia, MO, 2006.
Hansen, H.M. “An Update on the Shotgun Method,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 48 (2008), 259–286.
Hodkinson, S. “Servile and free dependants of the classical Spartan oikos.” In Schiavi e Dipendenti nell'ambito dell'Oikos and della Familia, edited by M. Moggi and G. Cordiano, 45–71. Pisa, 1997.
Sparkes, B.A. The Red and the Black: Studies in Greek Pottery. London, 1996.
The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece by Josiah Ober (ISBN: 9780691173146) is available from Princeton University Press.