Capital in Classical Antiquity

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. Introduction: Capital and Classical Antiquity

   Max Koedijk, Neville Morley

   Abstract

   This short essay outlines some of the issues involved in researching inequality and poverty in classical antiquity, as well as the importance of these themes. It introduces the work of the economist Thomas Piketty, and sketches both the potential of his ideas for illuminating ancient historical problems but also some of the methodological questions, in particular the definition of the key term “capital”.

3. Chapter 2. Problems in the Long-Term Accumulation of Commercial and Financial Capital in Ancient Greece

   Michael Leese

   Abstract

   Piketty’s theories are applicable to ancient Greece but must be adjusted for institutional particularities. The long-term, intergenerational hoarding of wealth by aristocrats was only possible with land and real property. Capital accumulation and dissolution patterns across generations in ancient Greek estates reveal a fundamental difference between landed and liquid, especially commercial and financial, capital. Because commercial and financial assets lacked the protection of modern corporate immortality and personality, they were often decimated by kinship institutions such as partible inheritance and dowry. Moreover, former business partners and estate guardians also depleted private non-agricultural fortunes. Liquid business capital was far more difficult to transmit across generations than real estate. Consequently, the attractions of land redirected elite investment away from commercial and financial assets to a greater extent than in the modern world. This preference for agriculture is therefore attributable not to mentality but rather insurmountable institutional structures endemic to the economic system.

4. Chapter 3. Inequality in the Peloponnesian War

   Manu Dal Borgo

   Abstract

   The revolt of member states of the Delian League during the Peloponnesian War can be described as the result of an economic phenomenon called the Tragedy of the Commons. The tragedy itself was the complete dissolution of the league caused by an increase in the inequality between the coalition’s revenue maximisers and wage earners. This article is an investigation into Thomas Piketty’s theory of the capital–labour split and whether this theoretical framework is applicable to ancient studies, employing the Peloponnesian War as a case study. First, I identify the limits of the evidence and quantification, then delve into an analysis of the labour and capital market shocks during the war. Finally, I present the economic data in terms of the likely strategic behaviour of historical figures.

5. Chapter 4. Framing Capital: Xenophon’s Economic Model and Social System

   Sven Günther

   Abstract

   Recent research has emphasised that economic growth and a comparatively low level of inequality in fifth- and fourth-century BCE Athens rested on the stability and reliability of her public democratic institutions and the vivid competition and specialisation within that framework. With Xenophon, however, we have an author who proposes an alternative—not only in his commonly cited Oeconomicus and Vectigalia but in all his extant writings—by integrating economic matters, and capital in particular, into his model of a perfectly organised and ruled society. Based on the theoretical approach of “regulatory frames”, which explains the dynamic communication process between author and audience via the extant work, I shall argue that Xenophon’s model of capital, economy and society is grounded in mainly Athenian discourses, common at that time, about utility, stability/instability, reliability/lack of trust, economic as well as social competition and risk management. Xenophon gives tentative answers to the question of how a perfect socio-economic system should work, by creating an alternative framework that tends to be extremely elastic, utility-yet community-oriented and totalitarian.

6. Chapter 5. Piketty’s Dilemma: Taxes in Fourth-Century Athens

   Dorothea Rohde

   Abstract

   Piketty’s central thesis is that accumulated property grows disproportionally in comparison to wages, because the wealthy benefit from returns on capital and inheritance. In consequence, inequality grows which causes instability. Unfortunately, Piketty omits Classical Athens—although it provides an excellent test case: The Athenian example sheds light on the social, political and economic significance of taxation in a direct democracy. Only the wealthier were under the obligation to pay eisphora and to perform liturgies. As a result, the rich had to manage their property rationally to secure their service of the polis and their socioeconomic status. Ultimately, this led to economic growth from which the non-elite also profited. From this perspective the stability of democratic Athens comes as little surprise. But this also reveals Piketty’s dilemma: at Athens, economic growth, provision of public goods and stability depended mainly on slavery and the relentless pursuit of the subordination of the individual to the community.

7. Chapter 6. Status as a Brake and Accelerant on Wealth Inequality in the Late Roman Republic

   Max Koedijk

   Abstract

   Inequality is determined by several forces of convergence and divergence. A full understanding of the nature of inequality in any given period requires us to understand as many of these forces of divergence and convergence as possible, even if we accept that Piketty’s theorem of r > g is the most significant force in the long term. This paper therefore focuses on a part of the puzzle that has largely been left outside the Pikettian model but that may offer complementary insights: human behaviour. It argues that the instinctive human drive for status interlinks with inequality. The form status competition in the late Roman Republic took acted partially as a brake on the growth of inequality but ultimately led to indebtment among the aristocracy and a consequent upwards transfer of wealth, leading to greater inequality.

8. Chapter 7. Rent Control Measures in the 40s BCE: Housing Costs, Public Intervention and Inequality in the Roman World

   Cristina Rosillo-López

   Abstract

   This paper aims to reflect on recent ideas on monetary policy, public intervention and inequality through the lens of the Roman rental market, focusing on a specific case study: exceptional initiatives that aimed at rent control in the 40s BCE, which ranged from complete cancellation of rent payments for one year to maximum prices for rents in Rome and Italy. They could be considered a new kind of euergetism that held housing to be a basic necessity. Such measures offer a fascinating opportunity for studying the political and economic rationale behind them and their prospective impact. This paper analyses them in detail, studies the existence of analogous measures in the ancient world and then estimates how rent control could have been put into practice in the Roman world.

9. Chapter 8. Capital in the Roman Empire: The Scope for Pikettian Dynamics in an Ancient Agrarian Economy

   Myles Lavan, John Weisweiler

   Abstract

   This paper explores the implications of Thomas Piketty’s Capital au vingt-et-unième siècle for Roman economic history. Following a brief discussion of analytical terms, we examine Piketty’s account of wealth accumulation and concentration and its implications for the Roman empire. We are especially interested in the insight that stochastic processes, such as interpersonal variation in the length of life or the number of surviving children, tend to increase inequality. We then turn to the limits of Pikettian dynamics in the context of an ancient agrarian empire, exploring three factors that might have restricted the scope of wealth concentration in the Roman economy: the vulnerability of ultra-large fortunes to confiscation; the role played by munificence in imperial and municipal economies and the large size of imperial, municipal and other collectively-held properties vis-à-vis private landholdings.

10. Chapter 9. Money, Capital and Inequality in the Age of Augustus

    Colin P. Elliott

    Abstract

    When Octavian returned to Rome in the summer of 29 BCE, he enjoyed a triumphal procession accompanied by a series of massive monetary pay-outs. Not only did these payments directly and disproportionately benefit elites but they did so before land values and prices could adjust to the changes in the money supply, and therefore became reflected in the overall price structure. Thus, those who owned Italian land were given a period of time in which the spending power of their cash, the returns on their capital and their expanded access to credit silently transferred real wealth away from economic consumers. The monetary intervention shifted real economic resources (labour, land and ultimately future consumption as the new investments moved down the chain of production) towards servicing elite investments and interests.

11. Chapter 10. Was r Greater Than g? Evidence from Roman Egypt

    Paul V. Kelly

    Abstract

    This paper examines whether r, the rate of return on capital, was greater than g, the rate of economic growth, in Roman Egypt. If this were the case, then, according to Piketty’s model, wealth would tend to concentrate and social inequality increase. A maximum limit on the likely average level of g is determined based on inflation estimates and comparative data for other agrarian economies. Then, using a stochastic model, the likely distribution of r is constructed, using data from financial transactions in the credit and land markets of Roman Egypt. Thus both the risk and the return on capital is assessed. The measures of r and g are compared and conclusions reached.

12. Chapter 11. Wealth, Inequality and Political Culture in the Cities of Roman Asia Minor, First to Third Centuries CE

    Arjan Zuiderhoek

    Abstract

    In Roman imperial Asia Minor, urban elites first appear to have grown steadily wealthier and to have broadened during the first and much of the second century CE, then stopped growing richer and seem to have shrunk again in the third. Alongside the elites, urban professional middling groups first grew more prosperous, then mostly seem to disappear from view during the later third century. At the same time, we can discern a profound shift in civic political culture during the first decades of the third century CE, from a situation in which urban elites appear to have been extraordinarily devoted to the flourishing of civic public life, to one in which they seem to have become aloof and more focused on predation. In this chapter I explore the connections between these various developments and highlight the effects of changing elite responses to the enduring social inequality that characterised urban provincial society.

13. Chapter 12. Oligarchy Ancient and Modern

    David Singh Grewal

    Abstract

    Oligarchy is an ancient concept that plays a central role in modern analysis. Piketty’s finding that the rate of return to asset ownership has persistently outpaced the rate of growth of the economy as a whole suggests an “oligarchic” tendency in modern liberal democracies. This modern understanding is economic and informal, whereas ancient oligarchies were understood to be structured through property qualifications. The central focus of ancient analysis was the political means by which the few subordinate the many. Moreover, the idea of “economic” inequality as the basis of oligarchy would have made little sense to ancient analysts without observing the political effects of unequal wealth. Modern political scientists are increasingly studying these effects, renewing the ancient contrast between oligarchy and democracy in the organisation of political life.

14. Chapter 13. Reflection: Beyond Capital

    Kim Bowes

    Abstract

    This essay considers what’s emphasised and what’s left out of a Roman economic history à la Piketty. In particular, and echoing some of Piketty’s critics, it suggests that another history of the 1%—Piketty’s focus as well as that of many of the essays in this volume—misses an opportunity to interrogate the well-being and economic strategies of the non-elite majority. Posing the Rawlsian question about the status of the worst off, rather than the best, forces us to confront some weaknesses of Piketty’s model, including the assumption of an economically static pre-modernity, and capital as a thing rather than a process. Rawlsian theory also leads us to ask whether the clear inequalities in the Roman world, as described in this volume, were balanced by improved conditions for the majority. The essay briefly re-examines the role of consumption, largely ignored by Piketty but emphasised in many of the articles here, as one possible path to a post-Pikettian ancient economics.

15. Chapter 14. Reflection: Piketty Among the Ancients—Capital and Beyond

    Walter Scheidel

    Abstract

    This essay reflects on the themes developed in the various chapters of Capital in Classical Antiquity, and the wider project of drawing on Piketty’s ideas to explore the structures and dynamics of Greco-Roman antiquity. It emphasises the role of ideology and institutions, such as euergetism, in determining how inequality might be constrained, and argues for further research into the role of technology.

16. Chapter 15. Afterword: Capital, from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century

    Thomas Piketty

    Abstract

    This short concluding essay reflects on the application of ideas about capital accumulation and inequality to the societies of classical antiquity, and the relevance of Greco-Roman antiquity to the broader study of capital and inequality.

17. Backmatter