Lending And Borrowing In Ancient Athens

This is a book about the social and economic history of ancient Greece and has as its core a detailed study of credit relations in Athens during the fourth century BC. It looks at ancient economy and society in their own terms and demonstrates that the very different system of credit in Athens had its own complexity and sophistication.

In this classic study of the social and economic aspects of landcredit relationships in ancient Athens, first published in 1952, Moses Finley presents a systematic account of the guarantee aspects of credit. He examines the outward forms of credit transactions, the legal instruments employed, the kind of real property customarily used to guarantee debts, and the parties engaged in these transactions.

Provides an interesting insight into the individuals who conducted business in a great civilization of antiquity.

This highly detailed investigation of Athenian cash-using institutions is based on a database, presented in the appendix, of silver mine leases, land leases and records of private loans. Shipton's aim is to establish a firm foundation on which to analyse the role of the individual, and social concerns as a whole, in the Athenian economy.

Historians since Herodotus and Thucydides have claimed that the year 483 BCE marked a turning point in the history of Athens. For it was then that Themistocles mobilized the revenues from the city's highly productive silver mines to build an enormous war fleet. This income stream is thought to have become the basis of Athenian imperial power, the driving force behind its democracy and the centre of its system of public finance. But in his groundbreaking new book, Hans van Wees argues otherwise. He shows that Themistocles did not transform Athens, but merely expanded a navy-centred system of public finance that had already existed at least a generation before the general's own time, and had important precursors at least a century earlier. The author reconstructs the scattered evidence for all aspects of public finance, in archaic Greece at large and early Athens in particular, to reveal that a complex machinery of public funding and spending was in place as early as the reforms of Solon in 594 BCE. Public finance was in fact a key factor in the rise of the early Athenian state – long before Themistocles, the empire and democracy. 'With this important book Hans van Wees is the first historian systematically to approach ancient Greek economy and society along the lines of the "new fiscal history". The results are highly rewarding, and go far beyond the area of public finance. In addition to a fresh perspective on key aspects of the archaic Greek world, the author provides numerous insights into the elusive process of state formation in Athens and elsewhere.' - Paul Millett, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Cambridge, author of Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens

In this ground-breaking analysis of the world's first private banks, Edward Cohen convincingly demonstrates the existence and functioning of a market economy in ancient Athens while revising our understanding of the society itself. Challenging the "primitivistic" view, in which bankers are merely pawnbrokers and money-changers, Cohen reveals that fourth-century Athenian bankers pursued sophisticated transactions. These dealings--although technologically far removed from modern procedures--were in financial essence identical with the lending and deposit-taking that separate true "banks" from other businesses. He further explores how the Athenian banks facilitated tax and creditor avoidance among the wealthy, and how women and slaves played important roles in these family businesses--thereby gaining legal rights entirely unexpected in a society supposedly dominated by an elite of male citizens. Special emphasis is placed on the reflection of Athenian cognitive patterns in financial practices. Cohen shows how transactions were affected by the complementary opposites embedded in the very structure of Athenian language and thought. In turn, his analysis offers great insight into daily Athenian reality and cultural organization.

This fascinating book focuses on the character and culture of ancient Athens, lending the reader a wonderful insight into the day to day life of an Athenian in the Classical Period, from slaves to children to women.