Politics in the Ancient World

by Moses I. Finley

Book Overview

Sir Moses Finley explores politics in the city states of Greece and republican Rome and their impact on our understanding of the ancient world. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521275709
• ISBN13: 9780521275705
• Release Date: July 1983
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Insightful, but difficult

Very thoughtful and careful study of the available data on what political life was really like in the democracies and oligarchies of classical Greece and Rome. Finley tries very hard to avoid the sorts of mistakes of analysis that come from projecting modern ideas and values into the past. It's a difficult book though, probably because written for professional historians (which I am not). Finley tends to assume that you already know most or all of the important facts (not just some of them!), and his job is to add his particular interpretations. For us run-of-the-mill history buffs, it would help if he fleshed out his examples with a few more details - a complete anecdote, or two, rather than just an "as the case of Demosthenes shows..." (I wasn't even sure WHICH Demosthenes he meant, let alone which case.) Still, for a slender book, it gives much good food for thought. His calculation that in any given decade, nearly a quarter of the citizens of Athens above the age of 30 served on the Council was eye opening, for example. "Citizen", of course, meant free, male, Athenian born. Still, that's a degree of participation that is inconceivable in most modern contexts.