Economy and society in ancient Greece

The work of Sir Moses Finley on the social and economic history of the ancient world, and particularly the world of the Greeks, has now become so well known that it needs little introduction. General readers and college students are probably most familiar with the books he has written or edited since the publication of his pathbreaking World of Odysseus in 1954: The Ancient Greeks, Aspects of Antiquity, The Ancient Economy, and Democracy Ancient and Modern, to name a few. However, readers may not be acquainted with the special studies of Greek social and economic institutions that have laid the groundwork the books themselves. Sometimes, because of the use of Greek and Latin sources, they are not easily understood by the general reader, and often they have appeared in journals not ordinarily consulted by the student of the classics. Also, the simple fact that they are widely dispersed in time and through a large number of journals makes access to them difficult, even for the professional historian.

With these ideas in mind we decided to present the general reader, the student, and the scholar with a representative collection of what we believe to be Sir Moses Finley's most important papers in three areas of his research: the community of the Greek city or polis, the problem of slavery and dependent labour in the ancient world, and the Mycenaean and Homeric worlds of early Greece. As with most selections, this one has been somewhat arbitrary, but generally we were guided by consid erations of relevance to current student interests and the degree of accessibility of the original publications.