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The Wiles Lectures
Η πολιτική στον αρχαίο κόσμο
Τα δημοκρατικά πολιτεύματα των αρχαίων ελληνικών πόλεων θεωρούνται οι πρόγονοι των σημερινών αστικών δημοκρατιών. Όπως συχνά συμβαίνει με τέτοιες ιδεολογικές καταγωγές, οι επίγονοι κατασκευάζουν την εικόνα των προγόνων δίνοντας έμφαση στα στοιχεία που τους είναι περισσότερο κατανοητά ή αποδεκτά. Αντίθετα, χάνεται η κοινωνική διάσταση και η ιδιαίτερη λογική της πολιτικής στον αρχαίο κόσμο. Το βιβλίο του Moses Finley μας δίνει σημαντικές πτυχές των πολιτικών ανταγωνισμών στον αρχαίο κόσμο, τοποθετώντας τες στο δικό τους κοινωνικό και ιδεολογικό πλαίσιο. Η είσοδος των ελεύθερων από τις κατώτερες τάξεις στην πολιτική, οι επιπτώσεις του πολέμου και των κατακτήσεων καθώς και οι ιδεολογικοί παράγοντες που επηρέασαν τις εσωτερικές έριδες, είναι μερικά από τα κεντρικά θέματα αυτής της βασικής μελέτης για την κατανόηση της φύσης της διακυβέρνησης στην Αρχαία Ελλάδα και τη Ρώμη.
Περιεχόμενα:
1. Kράτος, τάξη και εξουσία
2. Aυθεντία και πατρωνεία
3. Πολιτική
4. Λαϊκή συμμετοχή
5. Πολιτικά ζητήματα και πολιτικοί ανταγωνισμοί
6. Iδεολογία
Περιεχόμενα:
1. Kράτος, τάξη και εξουσία
2. Aυθεντία και πατρωνεία
3. Πολιτική
4. Λαϊκή συμμετοχή
5. Πολιτικά ζητήματα και πολιτικοί ανταγωνισμοί
6. Iδεολογία
200 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 1983
4 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Moses I. Finley
72 books64 followersSir Moses I. Finley was an American and English classical scholar. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy (1973), where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 29, 2015
“Politics In The Ancient World” is a short work, a compilation and modification of a series of lectures given in 1980 by the Communist classicist M. I. Finley. Each lecture is a chapter, and while each chapter explores a different area of Greek and Roman politics, they are linked within an over-arching theme. The book’s audience is professional historians; you can be an amateur and appreciate it, but you will be immediately and totally lost if you are not already fairly well versed in classical history.
Finley’s focus is on classical Greece of the fifth to third centuries B.C., and on the Roman Republic until the last century before its replacement by the Empire (so up until about 120 B.C.). This is the “Ancient World.” That said, Finley freely admits that there is next to zero detailed information on any topic in this book from any Greek state other than Athens, with the exception of Sparta, which had such a unique system that it does not illuminate any other Greek state.
Finley repeatedly rejects the “modern” trend, which has doubtless gotten much worse since 1980, to believe that “it is wrong to speak of democracy, rights or freedom at any time in ancient history,” because of slavery and restrictions on citizenship to a minority of male inhabitants of any given polity. “That seems to me to misconceive the nature of historical inquiry, to reduce it to a game of awarding credits and demerits according to the historian’s own value system.” Finley died in 1986, but he would doubtless be horrified by the politically correct approach to history so much in evidence today (even though the Frankfurt School he was associated with, creator of the abominable “critical theory,” spawned that precise malign approach).
It seems to me this book is not fully complete in itself. While Finley writes gracefully, the book is so short and covers so many expansive concepts that most can only be touched on. From what I can tell, though, from footnotes and other sources, Finley wrote at great length on these topics in other books. So perhaps this book is a gateway drug for those keenly interested in the topics.
In any case, Finley begins, in the first chapter, by laying the groundwork of “state, class and power.” As to the state, he defines it as equivalent to the government; possessing power; and having a form resulting from the society from which it springs. As to class, Finley’s explicit premise is that ancient politics was in essence the management of conflict between the rich and poor. His focus is on “class divisions.” This is of course an orthodox Marxist approach to any historical analysis, and unsurprising given Finley’s own political background. As to power, Finley focus is power in the sense of legitimized violence, as it relates to the internal functioning of the state, especially in crisis situations (as opposed to common street crime). Finley concludes that in crisis situations involving organized opposition to the state, given the total absence of any kind of regular police force, and given that a high percentage of men had military experience “armed men could be summoned as volunteers” to enforce the will of the state. This is interesting in its own right, but Finley’s purpose in this brief first chapter analysis is to lay the groundwork for a discussion of how power functioned in daily life, in those circumstances (the vast majority) when a crisis situation did not exist.
Finley next discusses the source of authority of the state. Or, phrased another way, why did the state have any authority, such that citizens obeyed its laws, for centuries of stability (and returned to obeying them even after periods of instability)? (I learned in this book that the Greek word “stasis” actually means “civil strife,” which is pretty much the opposite of its modern English meaning.) And how did they do so over long periods of great changes in the laws, while maintaining flexibility and without becoming “petrified”? Finley rejects religion as the source of state authority, noting that ancient religions did not themselves provide justification for the state, and religious beliefs were not used as a source for political decisions. He rejects or downgrades other sources such as patriotism and the mos maiorum. After discussion, Finley locates the ultimate source of authority in a combination of “community patronage,” the system (particularly in Greece) whereby the rich were formally expected to spend lavishly for the benefit of all; and in an extensive web of client-patron relationships. Both devices favored the political power of the rich, but permitted stability and benefits for the poor—who in turn supported the wealthy in their individual quests for political power. Finley says, “inquiry into the ancient state and government needs to be lowered from the administration of rarefied concepts, by a consideration not only of ideology, ‘national’ pride and patriotism . . . but also of the material relations among the citizens or classes of citizens as much as those more commonly noticed between the state and citizens.”
The next chapter discusses politics as such, defining it as binding, enforceable state decisions reached by discussion and voting (frequently with a sizeable element of popular, lower-class participation). Finley notes that by this definition politics was rare in the pre-modern world, and therefore how inventive the Greeks and Romans were and had to be, though that is not always immediately obvious looking backward. He also notes the lack of separation between civil and military aspects of government, the constancy of war, and that those individuals who decided to go to war frequently “went straight into battle themselves.” He finally notes the frequent “breakdown of politics in favor of open civil war, [which was] a price paid for the incorporation of the lower classes into the political community.”
From there Finley expands on popular participation in politics, emphasizing here (as he does in several places in the book) how both Greece and Rome were very much “face-to-face societies,” and persuading others was done by verbal contact (and removing a person by exile therefore necessarily broke his political power). Many political struggles revolved around attempts by the upper classes to limit popular participation, usually more successful in Rome than in Greece (but ending more frequently in violence in Greece than in Rome).
Finley finally examines political issues, conflict, and ideology. Here he returns again to his class focus, theorizing that the mass of citizenry were most interested in the ability to defend themselves and their rights formally at law, and to prevent debt from having drastic effects on their lives, particularly in the area of land tenure and debt-bondage. As to ideology, Finley traces beliefs of the ancient world to a universal “the essential condition for a genuine political society, for a true polis and therefore for the good life, is ‘Rule by laws, not by men.’” This was true both for democracies and for oligarchies, and even for some monarchies. Politics, then, is what the laws are, and “who in principle shared in the law-making machinery.” For us today, this concept as a central pillar of political life is probably the single most important inheritance from the ancient world.
This book is worth reading, if narrow in interest. What is unclear to me, and probably unclear to anyone but a professional academic, is if Finley’s work in general is infected with Marxism such that it clouds his historical judgment. He explicitly denies that it is, although there is a “protests too much flavor” about his disclaimers. On the other hand, to my eye there is very little evidence in this book that the book is so infected, other than a constant focus on class conflict for which much specific evidence is adduced (and only a historical illiterate would deny that class conflict was indeed extremely common throughout the ancient world). So I would not let Finley’s dubious politics count against the value of this book
Finley’s focus is on classical Greece of the fifth to third centuries B.C., and on the Roman Republic until the last century before its replacement by the Empire (so up until about 120 B.C.). This is the “Ancient World.” That said, Finley freely admits that there is next to zero detailed information on any topic in this book from any Greek state other than Athens, with the exception of Sparta, which had such a unique system that it does not illuminate any other Greek state.
Finley repeatedly rejects the “modern” trend, which has doubtless gotten much worse since 1980, to believe that “it is wrong to speak of democracy, rights or freedom at any time in ancient history,” because of slavery and restrictions on citizenship to a minority of male inhabitants of any given polity. “That seems to me to misconceive the nature of historical inquiry, to reduce it to a game of awarding credits and demerits according to the historian’s own value system.” Finley died in 1986, but he would doubtless be horrified by the politically correct approach to history so much in evidence today (even though the Frankfurt School he was associated with, creator of the abominable “critical theory,” spawned that precise malign approach).
It seems to me this book is not fully complete in itself. While Finley writes gracefully, the book is so short and covers so many expansive concepts that most can only be touched on. From what I can tell, though, from footnotes and other sources, Finley wrote at great length on these topics in other books. So perhaps this book is a gateway drug for those keenly interested in the topics.
In any case, Finley begins, in the first chapter, by laying the groundwork of “state, class and power.” As to the state, he defines it as equivalent to the government; possessing power; and having a form resulting from the society from which it springs. As to class, Finley’s explicit premise is that ancient politics was in essence the management of conflict between the rich and poor. His focus is on “class divisions.” This is of course an orthodox Marxist approach to any historical analysis, and unsurprising given Finley’s own political background. As to power, Finley focus is power in the sense of legitimized violence, as it relates to the internal functioning of the state, especially in crisis situations (as opposed to common street crime). Finley concludes that in crisis situations involving organized opposition to the state, given the total absence of any kind of regular police force, and given that a high percentage of men had military experience “armed men could be summoned as volunteers” to enforce the will of the state. This is interesting in its own right, but Finley’s purpose in this brief first chapter analysis is to lay the groundwork for a discussion of how power functioned in daily life, in those circumstances (the vast majority) when a crisis situation did not exist.
Finley next discusses the source of authority of the state. Or, phrased another way, why did the state have any authority, such that citizens obeyed its laws, for centuries of stability (and returned to obeying them even after periods of instability)? (I learned in this book that the Greek word “stasis” actually means “civil strife,” which is pretty much the opposite of its modern English meaning.) And how did they do so over long periods of great changes in the laws, while maintaining flexibility and without becoming “petrified”? Finley rejects religion as the source of state authority, noting that ancient religions did not themselves provide justification for the state, and religious beliefs were not used as a source for political decisions. He rejects or downgrades other sources such as patriotism and the mos maiorum. After discussion, Finley locates the ultimate source of authority in a combination of “community patronage,” the system (particularly in Greece) whereby the rich were formally expected to spend lavishly for the benefit of all; and in an extensive web of client-patron relationships. Both devices favored the political power of the rich, but permitted stability and benefits for the poor—who in turn supported the wealthy in their individual quests for political power. Finley says, “inquiry into the ancient state and government needs to be lowered from the administration of rarefied concepts, by a consideration not only of ideology, ‘national’ pride and patriotism . . . but also of the material relations among the citizens or classes of citizens as much as those more commonly noticed between the state and citizens.”
The next chapter discusses politics as such, defining it as binding, enforceable state decisions reached by discussion and voting (frequently with a sizeable element of popular, lower-class participation). Finley notes that by this definition politics was rare in the pre-modern world, and therefore how inventive the Greeks and Romans were and had to be, though that is not always immediately obvious looking backward. He also notes the lack of separation between civil and military aspects of government, the constancy of war, and that those individuals who decided to go to war frequently “went straight into battle themselves.” He finally notes the frequent “breakdown of politics in favor of open civil war, [which was] a price paid for the incorporation of the lower classes into the political community.”
From there Finley expands on popular participation in politics, emphasizing here (as he does in several places in the book) how both Greece and Rome were very much “face-to-face societies,” and persuading others was done by verbal contact (and removing a person by exile therefore necessarily broke his political power). Many political struggles revolved around attempts by the upper classes to limit popular participation, usually more successful in Rome than in Greece (but ending more frequently in violence in Greece than in Rome).
Finley finally examines political issues, conflict, and ideology. Here he returns again to his class focus, theorizing that the mass of citizenry were most interested in the ability to defend themselves and their rights formally at law, and to prevent debt from having drastic effects on their lives, particularly in the area of land tenure and debt-bondage. As to ideology, Finley traces beliefs of the ancient world to a universal “the essential condition for a genuine political society, for a true polis and therefore for the good life, is ‘Rule by laws, not by men.’” This was true both for democracies and for oligarchies, and even for some monarchies. Politics, then, is what the laws are, and “who in principle shared in the law-making machinery.” For us today, this concept as a central pillar of political life is probably the single most important inheritance from the ancient world.
This book is worth reading, if narrow in interest. What is unclear to me, and probably unclear to anyone but a professional academic, is if Finley’s work in general is infected with Marxism such that it clouds his historical judgment. He explicitly denies that it is, although there is a “protests too much flavor” about his disclaimers. On the other hand, to my eye there is very little evidence in this book that the book is so infected, other than a constant focus on class conflict for which much specific evidence is adduced (and only a historical illiterate would deny that class conflict was indeed extremely common throughout the ancient world). So I would not let Finley’s dubious politics count against the value of this book
May 31, 2024
Finley is an very interesting historian. He was driven into academic exile in the UK during the oppression of McCarthy's hunt for communists. Yet he has become a landmark classic historian. You cannot study classical history seriously without tackling Finley. Finley had a sharp pen and didn't shy away from criticising the political lens in which historians of his day (and ours) view ancient greek and roman history through. This book is a short and concise work where he does just that. He lifts the lower classes of the ancient world up from the obscurity they are placed in by historians who accept the upper class views most of the written sources we can read have. This book will make you reflect and consider new viewpoints whether you are a learned classical historian or a beginner with a passing interest!
May 8, 2021
Solid history book, but I wonder...what about the blues and greens? Surely that was political in the lay meaning...but perhaps it wasn't political enough in Finley's context enough to warrant mention, or I missed it.
January 18, 2016
Very readable for academic writing. I got pretty excited when Finley started talking about class early in the book - I thought I was about to get an unofficial sequel to Michael Parenti's The Assassination of Julius Caesar. This turned out not to be the case, but I still learned a lot about what the title says, politics in the ancient world. There was a throwaway line Finley used when talking about Greek city states during the ancient period "oscillating between oligarchy and democracy." That made me sit up in my chair. Reminds me of another democracy. Hmm...
June 27, 2013
If you study ancient Rome and dont know Finley, you dont study ancient Rome.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews