Stanford scholar debunks long-held beliefs about economic growth in ancient Greece
Using a pioneering digitization project that maps out details of life in the ancient world, classics Professor Josiah Ober links the democratic politics and surprisingly robust economy of classical Greek society.
At a certain point, Ober explained, the team compiled "a critical amount of evidence and recognized that the old story couldn't be right."
So why was ancient Greece so prosperous compared to its contemporaries? In his new book, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, Ober links this unexpected prosperity to a relatively democratic, decentralized state system that allowed for innovation and cultural development.
"Basically the answer to that is politics," Ober argues. "The Greek world is distinctive in having this dispersed structure so that there are many, many independent states rather than a single empire – or rather than a few big and powerful states."
Visualizing ancient data
Ober, whose research focuses on ancient Greek institutions and political systems, had been puzzled for years by the contradictions of a flat Greek economy. "Why is it that a society that was thought to be relatively poor and not growing was able to do so remarkably much with culture?"
In his office, the professor has an imposingly thick volume that thuds heavily when he sets it down. Ober realized that the massive Inventory of Archaic and Classical Greek City-States (2005) could be used to get answers for some of his questions. However, it was in the form of an encyclopedia, with no searchable data, graphs or tables.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário