This paper has been peer-reviewed and will appear in shortened form in

R. Osborne (ed.), The Impact of Moses Finley, Cambridge University Press.

M.I. FINLEYS STUDIES IN LAND AND CREDIT IN ANCIENT ATHENS

RECONSIDERED*

Keith Hopkins Meets Moses Finley

In the 1980s the Institute of Historical Research commissioned a series of video-recordings in which

senior historians were interviewed for posterity by more junior colleagues. In October 1985, Keith

Hopkins, who had recently taken up the Chair of Ancient History at Cambridge, interviewed Sir

Moses Finley.(1) There are plenty of flashes of the familiar Finley, including the accustomed

linguistic tropes, as he sets Hopkins to rights in his questioning. As the hour-long interview

progresses, Finley plainly tires and makes occasional slips over dates and events. He died less than a

year later, in June 1986. But it remains an intriguing encounter, suggesting how Finley viewed, or

wanted to view, his career in retrospect.(2)

Hopkins begins the discussion by asking Finley how his earlier experiences in America had

influenced his later work as an ancient historian. Finley responds by drawing a contrast: in Britain,

professional ancient historians have typically specialised in the Classics (narrowly, the Greek and

Latin languages) from the age of fifteen. He concludes: If they learnt anything else, it was on their

own. Hopkins, through a leading question, prompts Finley into asserting that this practice is killing

the subject.(3) The debate then shifts across to Finleys very different experience as an

undergraduate and graduate student in the United States, after which Hopkins turns to Finleys

relocation to Britain in the mid-1950s. Finley explains how, through a series of very

complicated coincidences, I had an opportunity to visit Oxford and Cambridge, for one term, to give

some lectures. To my astonishment, I was offered jobs in both places, without having applied. He

relates how he was offered the Cambridge job without even knowing it existed: I came back to say

good-bye. I was leaving for home. I was told I had been appointed. Literally.(4)

The discussion moves on to consider the basis of Finleys reputation, which had led to this

initial, enthusiastic acceptance in Britain, at both Oxford and Cambridge, forming the springboard

for his decisive impact on the practice of ancient history. Hopkins suggests that: The book that

made your reputation at that time, I think, was The World of Odysseus. Finley replies: Yes and no.

The book that made my reputation with people here [in Britain] was my dissertation, in fact, Studies

in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens. The World of Odysseus, people like Hugo Jones were not very

impressed with. They thought that it was pretty pop stuff. Hopkins suggests: But it burst on the

intellectual world in general?, to which Finley responds: Yes, that is right; but not among

professional ancient historians, not in this country. That exchange serves to shift the conversation

2

firmly onto Homer and the World of Odysseus, and thence to other matters, with no further mention

of Studies in Land and Credit.(5)

That piece of dialogue might seem to be representative of the place of Land and Credit in the

Finley story. It may be worth a footnote for having helped to establish Finleys reputation as a

serious scholar at a crucial phase in his career, but with nothing like the resonances of his later work

on Homer, slavery or democracy; none of which have any explicit role in Land and Credit. In fact,

the book could be presented as being for Finley an academic digression (even a dead-end), in that, in

terms of conception and presentation, it resembles nothing else he subsequently wrote. It is possible

to appreciate Finleys contribution to mainstream ancient history without any detailed knowledge of

Land and Credit.(6) In what follows, no claim will be made that the book is the neglected key to

understanding Finleys own intellectual development and the remainder of his output. But its

languishing as an undigested lump in the sequence of Finleys writings may in part be remedied by

tracing through consideration of its conception, birth and afterlife.(7) The discussion that follows

addresses three overlapping aspects of the impact of Land and Credit. These are the significance of

the making of the book for Finley himself, its impact on publication on contemporaries, and its

influence on posterity. Lurking behind this is the relationship between Land and Credit and The

Ancient Economy, which appeared twenty years later.(8)

The Making of Land and Credit

Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens, 500-200 B.C.: The Horos Inscriptions (to give the full

title) was published in 1952 by Rutgers University Press. Finley was then forty, an Assistant

Professor at Rutgers, New Jersey, where he had been employed full-time since 1950. As stated by

Finley in conversation with Keith Hopkins, Land and Credit originated as his doctoral dissertation,

which he successfully defended in the summer of 1950. The Preface to the book makes no mention

of its origins in a doctorate, but its opening sentences are revealing in terms of expressed intentions,

concepts invoked, and detailed terminology.(9)

While working on problems of money and credit, planned as the opening section of a book on

business practices in the Greek cities, I soon felt the want of a systematic modern account of the

guaranty aspects of credit, apart from purely juristic studies (chiefly German) of the law of

security. Since security is the external link between land, the basic form of wealth in the Greek

economy, and credit, a full examination of this bond appeared essential as a prelude to the larger

3

work on business practices. The social and economic aspects of land-credit relationships, in

particular, seemed to require consideration alongside the juristic. Ultimately, I found it

necessary, for reasons of substance as well as the limitations of space, to narrow the field once

again, this time to the city of Athens. Otherwise, I have tried to be as thorough as I could.

This book is intended as the first of several volumes, which will eventually embrace the

whole of the city-state world and which will examine many questions that have been excluded or

merely skimmed in the present volume.

The planned book on business practices never appeared; still less the several volumes covering

the whole of the city-state world. Both might seem to sit awkwardly with Finleys later, professed

outlook. Business, in the sense of purposeful commercial activity, makes no appearance in The

Ancient Economy. References in the index to Business practice relate to distinctly uncommercial

thinking and activity: non-involvement of Romes lite directly in trade (pp.57-8); the absence of

economic rationality from Catos De agri cultura (pp.110-11); the barrier between liquid resources

and their productive mobilization (pp.141-5).(10) Finleys subsequent antipathy to book-length

studies of individual polis-states, beyond Athens and possibly Sparta, is well attested.(11) Also,

being as thorough as I could might seem at odds with Finleys later deftness of touch, reflected in

his caricature of the write-all-you-know-about x approach to historical writing. On the other hand,

emphasis on land as the basis of wealth and on social and economic, as opposed to juristic

considerations, prefigure the direction his interests were to take.(12)

The significance of Land and Credit (with its preface) for Finleys subsequent thinking harks

back to its gestation and early evolution. There are clues in Brent Shaws valuable account of

Finleys correspondence with Fritz Heichelheim, dating from the early 1930s.(13) The exchange

began when Heichelheim, ten years Finleys senior and already established as an authority on

aspects of the ancient economy, was a lecturer at the University of Giessen. In 1933, he arrived as a

refugee in Britain; after spells at Cambridge and Nottingham Universities (interrupted by internment

as an enemy alien), he ended his career at the University of Toronto. It is clear from the letters that

Heichelheim acted as Finleys early supporter and sponsor; to the extent that, late in 1947, he

suggested that Finley apply for a research grant at Nottingham. Finley gracefully declined, offering

by way of explanation his relative age and the need to secure a full-time teaching post.

Finley (until 1946, Finkelstein) began his doctorate in 1929 at the University of Columbia, in

New York City, where, aged seventeen, he had recently taken an M.A. in public law. After a brief

and uninspiring encounter with professors in Renaissance and Medieval history, he transferred to

Ancient history; won over, so he told Keith Hopkins, by the compelling lectures of W.L.

4

Westermann. In August 1932, Finley mentioned in his first surviving letter to Heichelheim (still in

Germany) that he was, writing [under Professor Westermann] a doctors dissertation on several

problems of trade in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries. Finleys first paper on Greek history,

Emporos, naukleros and kapelos: prolegomena to the study of Athenian trade, appe