Honor and Profit

Honor and Profit offers a welcome corrective to the outmoded Finleyite view of the ancient economy. This important volume collects and analyzes economic evidence including government decrees for all known occasions on which Athens granted honors and privileges for services relating to trade. The analysis proceeds within the intellectual framework of substantive economic theory, in which formal market behavior and institutions are considered to be but a subset of a larger group of economic behaviors and institutions devoted to the production, distribution, and exchange of goods. Honor and Profit merges theory with empirical historical evidence to illustrate the complexity and dynamism of the ancient Greek economy. The author's conclusions have broad implications for our understanding not only of Athens and environs but also of the social and political history of Greece and the ancient Mediterranean world. Darel Tai Engen is Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Marcos. Also of interestAn Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods from Alexander the Great down to the Reign of Constantine (323 B.C.---A.D. 337)By B. H. McLeanThe Athenian Empire Restored: Epigraphic and Historical StudiesBy Harold B. MattinglyThe Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508---490 B.C. By Greg Anderson