Honor and Profit

This is a new assessment of the ancient Athenian economy relying on fresh documentary evidence. ""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.