Recent Literature on Ancient Greek Economic Thought

American Economic Association

Recent Literature on Ancient Greek Economic ThoughtAuthor(s): S. Todd LowryReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1979), pp. 65-86Published by: American Economic AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2723641 .Accessed: 15/09/2012 08:11

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Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XVII (March 1979), pp. 65-86

Recent Literature on Ancient Greek

Economic Thought

ByS. TODD LoWRY* Washington and Lee University

ECONOMISTS have smiled at the remark attributed to Keynes that "practical

men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." We delude ourselves if we do not recognize a similar bondage to the ancient Greeks.

Theodor Gomperz wrote: "Even those who have no acquaintance with the doctrines and writings of the great masters of antiquity, and who have not even heard the names of Plato and Aristotle, are, nevertheless under the spell of their author- ity. It is not only that their influence is often transmitted to us by their followers, ancient and modern: our whole mode of thinking, the categories in which our ideas move, the forms of language in which we express them, and which therefore govern our ideas,-all these are to no small extent the products of art, in large measure the art of the great thinkers of antiquity." "A thorough comprehension of these origins," he warned, "is indispensable if we are to escape from the overpowering des- potism of their influence" [49, Gomperz, 1896, pp. 528-29].

Although it is frequently contended that the science of economics began with

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or, at the earliest, with the writings of the French Physiocrats during the eighteenth century, we should not forget the remarkable fact that the name for the discipline of economics is derived from the Greek word oikonomia [108, Kurt Singer, 1958].1 The Greeks used the word for a formal discipline that dealt with an abstract subject matter (estate management and public administration), a usage that main- tained some continuity for more than two thousand years before the discipline be- came known as political economy.2 In Pla-

* An earlier draft of this paper was read at a session of the History of Economics Society, affiliated with the Allied Social Sciences Association meetings, New York, New York, 29 December 1977.

I Cassiodorus listed economics among Aristotle's classification of the sciences. It was also listed in Boethius' basic Aristotelian classification. (See Mar- shall Clagett [14, 1955].)

2 Andreas Andreades traced the term political economy to Antoine de Montchretien's TraitMde loe- conomie politique published in 1615 [88]. He wrote: "A study of this work has convinced me first that the writer knew Greek thoroughly and that apart from other writers whom he cites (e.g. Thales, Archy- tas of Tarentum) he had carefully read Xenophon and in particular Aristotle, from whom he quotes no less than six definitions; second, that he used the term political economy not in ignorance of its real meaning but because as a mercantilist he expected everything of the state, even matters in the domain of economics. The misconception is due then to later writers, who, though not sharing the views of Montchrestien as to the necessity of the continual intervention of the state in matters of social economy, nevertheless applied to this the title which he had given it" [2, Andreades, 1933, pp. 81-82]. For biographical information on de Montchretien (as well as Xenophon and Aristotle), see Jacques Wolf [122, 1973].

No one seems to have noticed the fact that what Protagoras, the leading teacher of the Periclean age,

65

66 Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XVII (March 1979)

to's dialogue, the Statesman, the point is made that the administration of either a small-sized city or a large household re- quires the same science. It is immaterial, it was said, whether the science is called "royal science, political science, or science of household management" [94, Plato, 1961].

It is not possible here to review in detail the well-known influence of the classical heritage on Western thought. Its persis- tent vitality is in large part a result of the role played by classical Greek literature in European education from the time of Thomas Aquinas with little interruption to the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 We have had both

a continual reseeding of classical ideas in successive generations for the past seven hundred years as well as some cumulative lines of formal analysis, which built on ancient foundations in their early stages. It will be remembered that Adam Smith's inaugural lecture for his chair in logic and metaphysics at the University of Glasgow was an extended exposition on Plato's theory of the ideas, later published as "The History of the Ancient Logic" [109, 1795]. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments he compared the ancient doctrines favorably with "the desponding, plaintive, and whining tone of some modern systems" [110, 1759, Part VII, Sec. II, chap. I].

Schumpeter's Distinction between Economic Analysis and Economic Thought

Any treatment of the appraisal of economic ideas during the last generation must begin with a discussion of the writings of Joseph A. Schumpeter, who specifically recognized ancient Greek contributions as initiating economic analysis [104, 1954, pp. 40, 57]. Schumpeter accepted the existence of economies or economic systems of various types in earlier times, but asserted that neither descriptions of such economic systems nor thought on economic topics in ancient times are, strictly speaking, part of the history of economic analysis. He defined economic analysis as the development of a technical mental procedure or an intellectual apparatus capable of elucidating economic problems. In his view, such analysis is not only separate from the validity of the conclusions but is also independent of the importance of the specific subject matter to which it is applied. For these reasons, he dismissed Xenophon, author of the Oeconomicus, in a footnote and took only passing notice of the economic aspects of Plato's political utopia and his jus- tification of the division of labor as being based upon differences in human capaci-

claimed to teach sounds very much like political economy: "If Hippocrates comes to me," Protagoras is quoted as saying, "he will not experience the sort of drudgery with which other Sophists are in the habit of insulting their pupils; who, when they have just escaped from the arts, are taken and driven back into them by these teachers, and made to learn calcu- lation, and astronomy, and geometry, and music . . . but if he comes to me, he will learn that which he comes to learn. And this is prudence in affairs private as well as public; he will learn to order his own house in the best manner, and he will be best able to speak and act in the affairs of the state" (Protagoras 318d-e) [92, Plato (Benjamin Jowett's translation), 1871]. Other translations of this passage do not differ significantly from Jowett's. W. K. C. Guthrie's translation has Protagoras teaching "the proper care of . . . personal affairs, so that he may best manage his own household, and also of the state's affairs . . " [91, Plato (edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns), 1961]. The most recent translation, that of C. C. W. Taylor [93, 1976], reads: "What I teach is the proper management of one's own affairs, how best to run one's household, and the management of public affairs ...." For a discussion of the rela- tionship between politics and economics, which in- cludes an analysis of the managerial perspective in Plato, see William Campbell [11, 1976-77]. See also Joseph J. Spengler [115, 1969; 113, 1955]. For a discussion of public policy in support of the arts, see William Baumol [4, 1971].

3 As an illustration of the importance of Greek economic writings in the middle ages, Josef Soudek [112, 1969] notes that no fewer than 219 fifteenth-century hand-written copies and 15 printed editions of Bruni's translation of the (pseudo-) Aristotelian Economics still survive. He states that it was nearly as popular as Sir John Mandeville's travelogue written in 1356 and Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Lowry: New Literature on Ancient Greek Economics 67

ties. He also noted Plato's specific recognition of a "cartal" or fiat system of money. These observations, of course, were reflections of economic systems and thoughts on economic subjects with no analytical content, according to Schumpeter's definition.

In Aristotle, however, particularly in Book I of the Politics and Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics,4 Schumpeter found the beginnings of formal analytic techniques applied to economic subjects, despite his general appraisal of Aristotle as

a dispenser of "pompous common sense" [104, 1954, p. 57].5 Particularly in his approach to politics, he believed Aristotle demonstrated a comprehensive grasp of a social process, which he realized could be systematically studied by the collection and explanation of comparative data. Schumpeter suggested that the first five chapters of Adam Smith's Wealth of Na- tions are essentially a recapitulation of Ar- istotle's contributions, beginning with primitive barter, exchange, and the division of labor [104, 1954, p. 60]. He found no theory of distribution, interest, or price in Aristotle and, in observing that primitive institutions are usually more complex than modern specialized structures, decried Aristotle's habitual resort to historical explanation of the development of economic relationships when the analytical aspects require attention to logical origins.

Along with his distinction between economic analysis and descriptions of given economic systems, Schumpeter made some acute observations on the role played by ideology in orienting rnental perspectives, within the confines of which analysis functions. He also suggested a role for what he called "visions" or conceptual perspectives, which operate at a broader level of generality than analysis. Although this idea was not fully developed, it provided a somewhat more comprehensive orientation from which to appraise the intellectual contributions of the ancients, i.e., in terms of those organizing ideas which are analytic in a broader sense rather than in a narrower technical sense. I would classify my own paper [79, 1974] on the archaeology of the circulation concept in economic theory as the appraisal of a "vision" or a system of imagery with analytic content.

4 Book I of Aristotle's Politics develops an evolu- tionary analysis of the essence of politico-economic society based upon the physiological and psychologi- cal characteristics of individuals who are motivated to aggregate into various groupings or affinities. The distinction between use value and exchange value is developed along with the advantages of specialization and division of labor. Usury or interest on consumer loans is decried on naturalistic grounds, and this undercurrent of naturalistic rationalization has contributed to the ignoring of Aristotle's dualistic acceptance of alternative institutional modes as illustrated by his oft cited treatment of the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of government in other parts of the Politics.

The Nichomachian Ethics is one of three extant versions of Aristotle's work in this field. As is the case with his Politics, the style of the material suggests that it evolved from notes taken by students at formal lectures. Book V of the Nichomachian Eth- ics deals with "justice" and is concerned with the determination of appropriate shares in various relationships. The perspective is administrative and judicial, with allusions to mathematical proportion as a reference base for ethical allocation. The reference to justice in exchange is a subject of much dispute, partly because it has not been approached from the judicial perspective of allocating shares in the mutual advantage resulting from trade; partly because of the failure of most modern translators and commen- tators to grasp the nuances of the reciprocal or harmonic proportion, which is alluded to as an analytical formulation of the relationships involved; and partially because of the schematic and discontinuous nature of the exposition, which suggests that the writer of the original manuscript had only a tenuous grasp of the subtleties he was trying to elaborate. The core of this vexing passage contains a fragmen- tary discussion of the bases for determining the rela- tive claims of a shoemaker and a housebuilder or carpenter who have exchanged their products in a barter situation, and the problem is then carried on into a somewhat indeterminate allusion to the com- plications resulting from the use of money in trade. I, of course, favor my own interpretation of this material presented in Lowry [78, 1969].

5 Richard Porter [100, 1965] applies Schumpeter's definition of analysis to Aristotle's distinction between use value, exchange value, and money value and suggests that these categories can be used in tracing the development of economic thought to the present.


Schumpeter took definite positions on two topics to which some subsequent attention has been given. On the question of interest or usury, he flatly denied any analytic contribution on Aristotle's part.6 On the more controversial issue of money, Schumpeter took a strong position that Ar- istotle was a metallist, interpreting his statement that money is subject to legal norms as meaning merely that the specific commodity selected as the monetary me- dium is the subject of arbitrary legislative decision. Despite the widespread acceptance of subjective relativism in the fourth century B.C., he contended that Aristotle held a commodity theory of money. This view has been effectively challenged by Barry Gordon [50, 1961]. It is strange that Schumpeter should have taken such a dog- matic view of Aristotle's monetary ideas, considering his recognition of Plato's "cartal" theory of money. Moreover, the (pseudo-) Aristotelian Oeconomicus contains various anecdotal references to fiat money systems and, whether or not this work was legitimately Aristotle's, it was a significant part of the European intellectual corpus, studied as relevant to current problems by rulers as well as by ordinary men of affairs.7

A Recent Textbook Appraisal of the Greeks

Of recent general textbooks in the history of economic thought, Henry Spiegel's [116, 1971] presents the most comprehensive discussion of ancient Greek ideas. He

takes specific note of the deeply ingrained concept of harmony as an integrating idea (or "vision" in Schumpeterian terms) and recognizes its pervasive role in ancient Greek thought. He also comments upon the concept of polarity and its role in the development of the idea of a dialectic or equilibrium process.8 Spiegel makes a contribution to the recent literature by taking note of the subjectivist position of Democ- ritus, among whose fragments survives a suggestion that improved levels of satis- faction can be achieved by reducing personal demands as well as by increasing supply.

Spiegel recognizes that Plato's approach to the division of labor was essentially one of natural efficiency through the appropriate matching of individuals with tasks for which they are best suited. With this orientation, he approaches the famous passage in Aristotle's Politics [3, 1921, Bk. I, 1256b40-1258a20], which some classical scholars and economists have interpreted as contending that commercial activity (chrematistike, or wealth-getting) is unnatural and therefore unacceptable. Spie- gel correctly recognizes that Aristotle's distinction was in terms of the importance of natural limits in a system of natural relationships (e.g., barter) and that when money becomes an intermediary element in exchange, the natural limits on physical wants cease to exercise restraint on desires and the unlimited desire for wealth results in a lack of natural restraint. The outcome is in this sense "unnatural." In the setting of an agrarian-based polis in which much of the commercial activity was conducted by metics (resident aliens), Aristotle's as- sertion that there are no natural forces restricting the desire to acquire money wealth was an effective rationalization for the introduction of price regulation, a practice that was a commonplace in the

6 It could be argued that Aristotle's position on usury was an integral part of his broader view, dis- cussed below, of an economic system in which all "surplus" should be earmarked for population expansion. This idea was developed more fully in Lowry [80, 1974].

7 See Soudek [112, 1969, pp. 66 ff] for a discussion of the circulation of Bruni's translation among pro- fessional men, the clergy, and scholars at universities. He noted that copies were in the libraries of two popes as well as those of King Charles V and King Henry IV of France. 8 See also Geoffrey E. R. Loyd [76, 1966].


grain trade at the time.9 In a recent article, Thomas Lewis [75, 1978] takes a con- trary position, speculatively analyzing this material as a concern by Aristotle with anxiety and ethical pressures associated with transactions among friends. He takes no cognizance of either Spiegel's or my own analysis of the passage.

In his treatment of Aristotle's discussion of exchange, Spiegel follows Josef Soudek's interpretation [111, 1952] of barter and money exchange in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics as an analysis of the subjective interplay between two trading partners seeking mutual benefit from commerce. As had Soudek before him, he strongly emphasizes the often repeated Aristotelian theme that mutual interac- tion is the bond that holds society together.

Although Spiegel does not present a definitional framework in terms of which we can classify ideas, it is clear that he consid- ers Aristotle to have shown great insight, particularly in his analysis of exchange. Following Spengler [114, 1955] and Emil Kauder [66, 1965], he cites the Topica and Rhetoric as indications of a grasp of marginalist concepts in Aristotle's work. The subsequent influence of these marginalist ideas is indicated by Soudek's argument that Stanley Jevons was influenced by Ar- istotle and also by William Jaff6's discussion [63, 1974] of Aristotle's work in reference to Gossen and Edgeworth.

Two Recent Major Works on the Ancients

Two recent major works give extended treatment of the economic ideas of the ancient Greeks. The first of these, Glauco Tozzi's Economisti greci e romani [118,

1961] unfortunately has not been translated into English. Tozzi divides his lengthy study between the Greeks and the Roman jurisconsults, the two primary sources of much of our conceptual orientation in the Western European tradition. He gives more systematic attention to Xe- nophon than have most historians of ideas, and he thoroughly covers Plato's contribution, emphasizing the limited character of his theory of the division of labor, namely that it is essentially a concept of the efficient use of individual capacities in an organized state through specialization of roles. He shows a clear grasp of the Greek concept of efficient administration in his treatment of Aristotle and makes the most careful distinction in the current literature between oikonomia and chrematistike in his analysis of Aristotle's Politics. He introduces the concept of the natural limit in this discussion (section 26), but fails to carry it into an interpretation of Aristotle's systematic distinction between natural and unnatural chrematistike.

In his treatment of Book V of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, he follows the text carefully, developing the concept of mutual subjective utility as the basis of exchange, free from the concerns with status and the labor theory of value promoted by some economic anthropologists and economists.'0 He fails, however, to take note of the significance of the harmonic proportion with its possible zone of moot indeterminancy and its analytic importance in the analysis of exchange, which

9 Aristotle's ideas on "natural limit" are developed in Lowry [80, 1974]. On the role of metics in the Greek economy, see Jan Pecirka [90, 1967]. On the ancient Greek attitude toward chrematistike in relation to maritime trade, see Arnaldo Momigliano [86, 1944].

'O Schumpeter interpreted the passage on exchange in Aristotle's Ethics (V, 1133) as follows: "As the farmer's labor compares with the shoemaker's labor, so the product of the farmer compares with the product of the shoemaker." He then added, with what seems to be a bit of annoyance: "At least, I cannot get any other sense out of this passage. If I am right, then Aristotle was groping for some labor-cost theory of price which he was unable to state explicitly" [104, Schumpeter, 1954, pp. 60-61, n. 1].


other writers [78, Lowry, 1969] have found relevant.

Tozzi's work is of importance on two scores, in addition to his thorough cover- age of the textual material in terms of a slightly different academic tradition from that with which English-speaking economists are primarily familiar. First, he cites a great deal of French and Italian literature on Greek economic ideas, which has never been included in the English tradition, much of it from the nineteenth century. Second, he raises the question of the logical validity of an abstract empiricist view of justice, i.e., can justice be built as a social concept from the subjective self- interest of the individual participants in the political structure? This problem was posed by Plato several times and has recently been revived by classical scholars. Its significance for social theory is that the arguments, though in a legal frame of reference, formulate many of the issues implicit in the rationalization of the competi- tive market and the fallacy of composition.

The second current work that pays significant attention to ancient thought is Barry Gordon's Economic Analysis before Adam Smith [53, 1975], of which about one-fourth, some 65 pages, is devoted to the ancient Greeks. His treatment of He- siod, drawn from an earlier article [51, Gordon, 1963], calls attention to the basic economic perspective of Hesiod's scarcity- oriented agrarian outlook. He notes He- siod's comment on the beneficial role of competition within crafts in generating improvements in skills and pride in work- manship, a remark that would no doubt have been of interest to Jacob Viner in his study of the history of laissez faire [119, 1960].11

In contrast to the short shrift given to

Xenophon by Schumpeter, Gordon finds in Xenophon's Ways and Means "observations of genuine analytical interest" [53, Gordon, 1975, p. 19]. The distinction Xe- nophon made between constant and de- creasing returns industries in his discussion of agriculture and silver mining'2 indicates a definite concept of administrative management programming, an idea that appears again in Aristotle's work as a theory of the importance of value determination in appraising the efficacy of means in achieving human objectives.'3 This anthropocentric view of resources in Aristotle's work is similar to the concept that Spiegel attributed to Democritus.

I I Among the ideas from classical times that Viner credits with supporting the conception of laissez faire doctrines are Aristotle's defense of private property, his "rule of law rather than of men" doctrine, and the idea of harmony of interests between individual and polis.

12 Gordon quotes Max L. W. Laistner's translation [73, 1923] of Xenophon's Ways and Means as follows: "For in truth, when a few persons mine and explore, the wealth that is brought to light is also small, when many are engaged, the ore is seen to be many times more prolific. Consequently this is the only commercial enterprise that I know where no one feels envi- ous towards those who try to carry out new develop- ments. Again, the landowners could all tell you how many teams and how many labourers are required for their estates. If anyone employs hands in excess of requirements, it is reckoned as a loss. But in the silver mines all the employers say that they are short of workers, for here the case is different to that in other industries" [53, Gordon, 1975, p. 19]. (See also Dionysios Kounas [70, 1972] and Margaret Crosby [20, 1950].)

13 The idea was developed more extensively in Lowry [77, 1965].

The modern system of linear programming is based on a technique for deducing optimal combina- tions of variables in the interest of quantitative efficiency. Xenophon's work was similarly aimed at achieving an optimum combination of natural phe- nomena for human benefit. Both in his treatise on Ways and Means and in his Oeconomicus, he consis- tently stressed the organization and adjustment of human and natural factors in the interest of pro- ductive and aesthetic efficiency. His approach involved an implementation of the geometric perspective, a technique that dominated ancient mathematics. The concept provided a sense of spatial congruence which helped fit morphologically conceived elements together, much as a modern would use loose inspection to begin putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The jigsaw puzzle image is especially apt, since there was a strong tendency in the classical Greek outlook to accept the existence of a natural ideal type of predetermined optimum combination which, it was thought, could be discerned by the superior individual with appropriate insight and training.


Gordon, however, does not develop the concept of harmony conspicuous in Spie- gel's and my own treatment of the Greeks.

Of particular interest is Gordon's attention to the Scholastic interpretations of Ar- istotle. Tracing this thread brings the ancient Greek material closer to later eighteenth and nineteenth century economic thought with which most economists are more familiar. He notes Aqui- nas's analysis of Aristotle's theory of the natural limit and its importance in charac- terizing money exchange as "unnatural" because unlimited by the natural con- straints of human need. The significance of this point seems to have been missed by most subsequent analysts as an explanation of how a system functions. Gordon does not elaborate Aquinas's commentary in his discussion of either Aristotle or Aquinas, but this interpretation coincides with that of my article [80, 1974] on Aris- totle's natural limit which, I argued, supports the thesis that this aspect of the economy required intervention. Abram Shulsky [107, 1974] found the same distinction between natural and unnatural exchange, as did Tozzi and Spiegel, but no one, including myself, has taken note of Aquinas's sharp formulation of this Aris- totelian analysis.

On the topic of the mutually subjective benefit analysis of exchange attributed to Aristotle by some writers, Gordon finds earlier statements of this perspective in Euripides' reference in The Suppliants of the desirability "mutually to supply by cross exchange the earth's deficiencies," an indication that it was an intellectual commonplace of the times. He then follows the mutual subjective exchange analysis endorsed by Soudek, which I also elab- orated in analyzing Book V of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Gordon does not appear to grasp the importance of the harmonic proportion, the third proportion along with the arithmetic and geometric, treated by Aristotle as illustrations of dis-

tributive, corrective, and reciprocal justice. He does, however, abandon his earlier argument [52, 1964] for a labor theory of value interpretation of this material. In fact, he does not even cite his earlier work that dealt with the exchange passage. Gor- don has recently supplemented his work with an extensive unpublished bibliography [54, 1977], which is being privately circulated.

M. L Finley, Classicist and Ancient Historian

One of the most prolific writers on the economic history of the ancient Greek world is the classicist and ancient historian, Moses I. Finley.'4 Apparently wary of cavalier theoretical generalizations from his Columbia days when he participated in the research project of the Karl Polanyi group and from the experience of the McCarthy era, which contributed to his leaving the United States, Finley has single-mindedly focused his attention upon meticulous, detailed research into the nature of ancient economic life with, at least until recently, little apparent interest in broader social or economic theory. One reviewer remarked that his "sus- picions about modernist dogma" have "a faintly nihilistic tone" [47, M. W. Freder- iksen, 1975, p. 170].

Two of Finley's most significant works dealing with the economy of the ancient Greeks are his article, "Aristotle and Eco- nomic Analysis" [38, 1970] and his book, The Ancient Economy, an amplification of his 1972 Sather Lectures at the University of California. He begins the preface of The Ancient Economy with the statement, "The title of this volume is precise." The next sentence then continues: "It is not a book one would call an 'economic history' " [40, Finley, 1973, p. 9]. If it is not economic history, it is not entirely clear

14 Among Finley's works that may be of interest to the historian of economic thought, see REFER- ENCES 30 through 43.


what it is, for neither can it be classified as dealing primarily with economic thought. As a description of an economic system, it has little theoretical content. In any case, his earlier article has much more for the historian of economic thought than the book, and it will receive major attention here.

In his article, Finley takes note of the conflicting interpretations by classicists of the famous passage in Book V of Aristotle's Ethics on the exchange of a house for shoes.'5 He admits that he himself "[does] not understand what the ratios between the producers can mean" [38, Finley, 1970, p. 13]. He follows Schumpeter's interpretation in the main, but, unlike Schumpeter, does not concede even the contribution of any analytic framework to Aristotle. He bluntly asserts: "Of economic analysis there is not a trace" [38, Finley, 1970, p. 18].

Although Finley originally held himself somewhat apart from the Polanyi school, it has been pointed out that he "has been even more insistent than Polanyi on the non-market features of the Greek economy" [61, S. C. Humphreys, 1969, p. 179]. Even so, his conception of economic analysis as being limited to elucidating the functioning of the self-regulating market system and his emphasis on status are very close to Polanyi's. Nor is Finley's negative position tempered by his own definition of the type of economy that existed in ancient Greece. Not even in The Ancient Economy does he describe the distinctive economic process in terms of which we might appraise the cogency of Aristotle's descriptions, or reflections, or analyses- whatever he might consider them to be.

Frederiksen remarks of Finley: "He likes to tell us what the ancient world was not, and his vigorous denials may sometimes mislead" [47, 1975, p. 170]. Barry Hindess has pointed out that "the fundamental concepts of Finley's analysis . . . preclude the elaboration of any concept of the ancient economy as a determinate economic structure" [58,' 1975, p. 688].

Finley's brusque rejection of any analytic content in Book V of the Ethics, a passage to which economists and legal scholars have given so much attention throughout European history, is based partly on his narrow interpretation of its mathematical content. In this, he follows F. D. Harvey [55, 1965], who found only arithmetic and geometric proportionality represented in the Ethics. Although Har- vey did take note of the harmonic proportion in his general remarks, he failed to recognize the subtleties implicit in it and did not correlate it with the reciprocal proportion alluded to in Book V of the Ethics. If Finley had considered the possi- bility that Aristotle was developing an analytical framework for achieving justice in the administrative determination of price, he might have seen that the harmonic proportion provides a model for the concept of subjective mutuality on which Aristotle relied. As I have argued [78, 1969], Aristotle's aim was not to deter- mine natural price or market price, but to explain the criteria for arriving at fair price through public decision.'6 From this perspective, Finley misses the point when he concludes that "none of [the] interpretations of what Aristotle 'really meant' an- swers the question, How are prices, just or otherwise, established in the market?" [38, 1970, p. 11].

It is a useless definitional quibble to ar- 15H. H. Joachim, he noted, found the meaning

of the ratios between the producers "in the end unin- telligible." R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif interpreted the passage to indicate some concept of personal equality. Salomon rejected the mathematics as mere "interpolation." W. F. R. Hardie, a more recent com- mentator, does not find the mathematics relevant. Karl Marx, however, conceded that Aristotle was the first to "identify the central problem of exchange value" [38, Finley, 1970, pp. 9-11].

16 It is unfortunate that this article, although dated 1969, did not actually appear until 1970 so that there was no way Finley could have commented on my analysis of Aristotle's theory of exchange in his 1970 article. A critical appraisal of my argument by a scholar of Finley's standing would have joined the issue more sharply.


gue over whether legitimate economic analysis depends upon the emergence of the self-regulating market when so many analytic patterns associated with the administrative tradition have been assimi- lated by modern political economy. Most thinkers on economic subjects up to the eighteenth century, including the Scholas- tics and Mercantilists, thought in administrative terms. Even so, the concept of the market as a process pre-dates the eighteenth century as illustrated by the observation of Epictetus, a first century Roman- ized Greek, that "Cattle and oxen are brought [to the fair or market] to be sold, and most men engage in buying and sell- ing while there are only a few who go merely to see the fair [market], how it is conducted, and why, and who are promot- ing it, and for what purpose" [28, 1925, 11.14.23]. Epictetus, however, found it difficult to believe that observers of the market, any more than observers of the universe, could presume that such a complicated process could function "in such orderly fashion by sheer accident and chance" and not by the direction of a superior intelligence. The question of the institutional origins of the market is beyond the scope of this paper. However, if, as G. L. S. Shackle suggests, "Economics might almost be defined as the art of reducing incommensurables to common terms" [106, 1972, p. 10], a result that can be accomplished by either administrative or market processes, Aristotle may be said to have contributed to economic analysis, since part of Book V of the Ethics is specifically directed to that purpose.

Finley raises the vexed question of the division of labor in Xenophon's Cyropaedia and follows Schumpeter in questioning its validity as economic analysis. He takes the position that Xenophon treats the division of labor as a source of improved craftsmanship only, with no grasp of its relation to productivity in a market context. This leap, according to Finley, was not made until Adam Smith,

with his illustration of the productivity of the pin factory, raised the discussion of specialization to the realm of economic analysis.'7 Xenophon's comments, it is al- leged, are merely commonplace observations. This assessment of Xenophon rests upon a distinction between qualitative and quantitative productivity and the in- sistence upon the latter, with its correlation with market commerce, as the sine qua non of economic analysis. Although Xenophon's discussion of the improved quality resulting from specialization was in the context of skill achieved by the king's cooks, he carries the idea into an analysis of the relation between population concentration (the extent of the market) and the development of skills through specialization. Moreover, he uses the ex- ample of a carpenter in a way that would suggest his later influence on Adam Smith's proposition that the extent of the market limits the division of labor:

For just as all other arts are developed to superior excellence in large cities, in that same way the food at the king's palace is also elaborately prepared with superior excellence. For in small towns the same workman make chairs and doors and plows and tables, and often this same artisan builds houses, and even so he is thankful if he can only find employment enough to support him. And it is, of course, impossible for a man of many trades to be proficient in all of them. In large cities, on the other hand, inas-

17 The issue of whether Smith drew on the ancient Greeks for his ideas on the division of labor is dis- cussed in the recent literature by Vernard Foley [44, 1974; 45, 1975] and Paul McNulty [83, 1975]. McNulty correctly emphasizes that Plato's theory of the division of labor, upon which Foley focused attention, was based on the concept of natural talents or skills, rather than skill acquired by specialization and organization. For further background see Ro- dolfo Mondolfo [87, 1954] and Alison Burford [8, 1972]. Stanley Diamond [25, 1964, p. 175] has noted that in the Republic ". . . Plato not only sensed the congruence of the elaborate division of labor with state organization, but carried it to its furthest reach and then gave it the name ofjustice." See also Foley's The Social Physics of Adam Smith [46, 1976], which marshals arguments for a direct classical Greek influence upon Adam Smith's overview of the social process, with primary attention to the ideas of Empedocles.


much as many people have demands to make upon each branch of industry, one trade alone, and very often even less than a whole trade, is enough to support a man: one man, for in- stance, makes shoes for men, and another for women; and there are places even where one man earns a living by only stitching shoes, another by cutting them out, another by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but only assembles the parts. It follows, therefore, as a matter of course, that he who devotes himself to a very highly specialized line of work is bound to do it in the best possible manner. [123, Xenophon, 1914, Vol. 2, Book VIII.ii.5.]

Although the significance of Smith's correlation of the division of labor with increased productivity, which Finley emphasizes, is widely accepted, the recent discovery of a detailed set of dated notes on Smith's 1762-63 lectures on jurispru- dence has focused attention on the more fundamental premise, which Ronald Meek and Andrew Skinner refer to as "the crucial principle that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market" [84, 1973, p. 1100]. They believe that the fresh evidence presented by the new set of notes has allowed them to pinpoint the precise week in which Smith made the analytical breakthrough that has been called "the methodological bridge between the first concept of labor's division and the larger scheme of [the Wealth of Nations]" [121, Garry Wills, 1978, p. 41]. Meek and Skinner note that the new material on the extent of the market intro- duced on 5 April, 1763, six days after his last lecture, was out of the normal context of exposition-we may assume as the result of some novel insight. No one knows the source of Smith's sudden linking of the extent of the market with specialization and the division of labor, but an interesting suggestion may be implicit in the comparison of the passage quoted above from Xenophon's Cyropaedia and a passage from the new notes on Smith's lecture:

We may observe . .. that as the division of labour is occasioned immediately by the market one has for his commodities, by which he is enabled to exchange one thing for every thing, so is this division greater or less according to the market. . . . The being of a market first occasioned the division of labour, and the greatness of it is what puts it in one's power to divide it much. A wright in the country is a cart-wright, a house-carpenter, a square- wright [door maker?], or cabinet-maker, and a carver in wood, each of which in a town makes a separate business. [84, Meek and Skin- ner, 1973, p. 1110.]

Although this correlation may not be specifically supported by the circumstantial presence of Xenophon's works in Smith's library at the time of his death 30 years later, the general credibility of the suggestion is supported by Charles Fay's judg- ment that both the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations "is- sued from the womb of the classics" [29, 1956, p. 1]. William Scott's work [105, 1940] also supports this thesis.

It is difficult to understand how the shoe manufacturing process found in large ur- ban centers using standard parts and as- sembly-line techniques that Xenophon described could be considered by Finley as merely a system for improving craftsmanship. Even if the purpose of the process as carried on by the ancients was only to produce shoes of superior quality, could the Greeks have been oblivious to the quantitative efficiency that necessarily re- sulted? If there were no other discussions in ancient literature that took cognizance of increased productivity through improved craftsmanship or administrative expertise, Finley's point would have been more persuasive. But, as I have pointed out [77, 1965], the whole tenor of Xeno- phon's Oeconomicus is to the effect that organization of activity in terms of spatial distributions and improved human inter- action and leadership results in greate suc- cess and output, whether from the land or from a crew of oarsmen or in aesthetic terms from a chorus (all Xenophon's illus-


trations). Moreover, in the Hiero, Xenophon [124, 1963] extolls the merits of offering prizes and public honors "by fields or villages" as a financially efficient means of stimulating increased production from agriculture.'8 Considering this material, it is difficult to explain how Finley can be so adamant in asserting that "In Xenophon . . . there is not one sentence that expresses an economic principle or offers any economic analysis, noth- ing on efficiency of production, 'rational' choice, the marketing of crops" [40, 1973, p. 19]. Only if one insists that production theory has no economic meaning unless integrated with a concept of a modern free market system can Finley's pro- nouncement be found consistent with the evidence.

Drawing on Xenophon's Ways and Means, Finley presses his conclusion that the Greeks had no theoretical grasp of the market process (therefore economics) as shown by their reliance on and encourage- ment of metics for their necessary trade and manufactures. He takes John Hicks [57, 1969, p. 48] to task for questioning their toleration of metics in the development of their economy.'9 "Hicks," he asserts, "seems to . . . have placed the ac- cent exactly in the wrong place when he writes of the metics, 'what is remarkable is that there should have been a phase in which their competition is tolerated, or even welcomed, by those already established"' [38, Finley, 1970, p. 24, n. 88]. Xenophon's proposals in the Ways and Means for increasing the number of metics (better housing accommodations, quicker settlement of disputes in the courts, and public recognition of promi- nent merchants and innovators) repre- sents a clear grasp of the importance of

administering economic activity, particularly those functions of the Athenian state which had made it a distribution center for eastern Mediterranean trade, collect- ing both import and export taxes on all goods transshipped in its port.20

On the further question of whether the ancients had an idea of progress, we can agree with Finley [38, 1970, pp. 19-21; 35, 1965] that there was not a well developed concept of material progress in terms of production and technology, but this is primarily to say that they preceded the industrial revolution.2' It is important to note that they did have an individualis- tic concept of progress as evidenced by their obsession with personal improvement (through gymnastics, music, and intellectual and moral training). Moreover, Aristotle had an analytic framework for comprehending the total disposition of the fruits of the economy in terms of which the obligation of the individual is

18 On Athenian policies for increasing agricultural production, see James Buchanan [6, 1962].

'9 Hicks argues that the Mediterranean city-state was the basis for the development of the European market system.

20 Heiman Knorringa reviews the ancient discussions on the importance of administrative control over imports and exports [69, 1926]. See especially pages 72-128 on the regulation of the corn trade. The supply of timber was controlled by some city states through a system of import and export licenses. See also Donald Hughes [60, 1975].

21 H. W. Pleket explains the indifference of the ancients to technology as being the result of the plen- tiful supply of labor and the attitude of the upper classes [95, 1967]. He notes, however, that military technology was an exception to this pattern. John Bury found no concept of progress in Greek thought [10, 1932, p. 7], while Ludwig Edelstein was convinced that the Greeks had developed most of the ideas later associated with the modern concept of progress [27, 1967, p. xxxiii]. Eric Dodds, who presents the best summary of the literature on the subject, concludes that there was a widely accepted concept of progress in the fifth century B.C., which persisted mainly in ancient scientific thought [26, 1973, pp. 1-25]. The theory of Forms, according to Dodds, was a "fundamental limitation on the idea of progress" [26, 1973, p. 14]. We may note that the notion of a perfectible ideal that is approached in the course of change carries with it the presump- tion of a slowing down in the rate of such change. However, the concept of an ideal, closed system is the necessary frame of reference for rational analysis, and the Greeks can perhaps be forgiven for emphasizing rationality at the expense of indeterminate novation.


self-improvement so that the surplus produced by the economy can be allo- cated to the support of an enlarged population. I have argued [80, 1974] that Aris- totle's conclusions in Book I of the Politics are that natural pressures of diminishing utility for consumer goods (goods of the body and external goods) direct surplus human energy toward moral self-improvement and that the increases resulting from the surpluses inherent in mutually beneficial trade should not be appropriated by middlemen who handle these surpluses in their monetized stage, but rather belong to the offspring. Aris- totle thus articulates a concept in which the proper objectives of an economy are toward the support of the expansion of population. In his view, activities of trad- ers should be restricted so as not to inter- fere with that end. This may differ from modern value judgements, which do not equate progress with population growth, but it does constitute a comprehensive analytic framework with a growth concept.

Plato and a Theory of Administered Production

It is difficult for us to attribute economic ideas to ancient Greek thinkers whose observations concerned a society with market and production facets that appear to be either inconspicuous or culturally embedded because our approach is from a perspective in which the market and production facets of modern capitalist economies are presumed to be interde- pendent parts of a separate system capable of being isolated for purposes of economic analysis. Finley found "no economic analysis rather than poor or in- adequate economic analysis" [38, 1970, p. 15] in Aristotle's attempt to analyze isolated exchange because he found Aristot- le's efforts irrelevant to the theory of the self-regulating market.

By focusing on the production rather

than the market process, C. Bradford Welles found in Plato's Republic an economic plan for an ideal state designed to bring order out of the war between the rich and the poor. "Wealth," Welles wrote, "is the central problem . . . [of the Republic].. . . It is wealth and poverty, each becoming extreme . . . that create the class war that divides each city in two. . . . In this and in other respects, it is wrong to regard the Republic as a Utopia. The state arises because men come together to satisfy their mutual needs. Pro- duction, not distribution, is the issue" [120, 1948, p. 108]. In the Laws, a work of Plato's later years, Welles found a carefully structured plan for the stability of an authoritarian state or, in modern terms, a "steady state economy."22 The goal of Plato's state was to be self-sufficient; it was to have a carefully structured and fixed population, balanced trade with fiat money, specialization of labor decreed by the state, and equal division of produce among slaves, citizens, and metics. It seems that no one has noticed the implicit confrontation between Xenophon's growth and development-oriented Ways and Means mentioned earlier, with its program for expanding the labor supply in the mines for optimum production and its policy of expanding commercial activity in the port for maximum tax revenues, and the static, conservative response in Plato's Laws, which seeks the stability of the rationally planned, administered state in balance with its defined purpose and chosen resource base.

The overview Welles presents suggests that formal thought of the time clearly encompassed both the production and redistributive phases of what has been called the redistributive state and that the economy was "embedded" only to the extent that, where economic activity is adminis- tratively controlled, it is, by definition,

22 See Glenn Morrow for a modern translation by a scholar with economic interests [89, 1960].


part of the total legal fabric or, in other words, a political economy.

Karl Polanyi, Economic Historian and Economic Anthropologist

The publication in 1957 of a collection of essays entitled Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory [99] capped an interdisciplinary research project directed by Karl Polanyi, which focused on nonmarket ancient economies. The book ignited a controversy that has ever since divided the emerging field of economic anthropology into those who share Polanyi's view that economic theory is a conceptual framework applicable only to price-oriented market economies (the substantivists or primitivists) and those who hold that economic theory can be applied to primitive or ancient economies (the formalists or modernists). Although the battle being waged between the two factions touches upon issues of basic significance for the methodology of economics, few economists have participated in the debate.23

One of Polanyi's contributions to Trade and Market, a piece called "Aristotle Dis- covers the Economy," had a different tenor from that of the other essays in the collection and was a departure from the kinds of studies of primitive economic systems anthropologists had been doing since the days of Bronislaw Malinowski [81, 1922] and Melville Herskovits [56, 1940]. It dealt, not with an economic system as such, but with the ideas of one of the ancients, which purported to analyze the economic process around him. "[Aris- totle]," Polanyi wrote, "will be seen as at- tacking the problem of man's livelihood with a radicalism of which no later writer on the subject was capable-none has ever penetrated deeper into the material or-

ganization of man's life. In effect, he posed, in all its breadth, the question of the place occupied by the economy in society" [99, 1957, p. 66]. But Polanyi's conclusions were somewhat ambivalent. In the end, he could not separate economic analysis from price analysis and con- cluded: ". . . we agree that economic theory cannot expect to benefit from Book I of Politics and Book V of the Nichomachian Ethics. Economic analysis, in the last resort, aims at elucidating the functions of the market mechanism, an institution that was still unknown to Aris- totle" [99, 1957, p. 66]. In later years, however, Polanyi [97, 1971] drew on Karl Menger's Grundsatze for a broader definition of economic analysis which compre- hends the "substantive" or "embedded" aspects of the economy, a perspective that goes beyond Lionel Robbins's definition based on scarcity.

Polanyi explained the famous passage from Book V of the Ethics analyzing barter between a shoemaker and a house builder, not as an expression of a labor theory of value or of subjective mutuality, but rather in terms of a precontract economy in which justice in exchange is still socially embedded and arrived at in terms of the status of the participants. This view had some influence in the subsequent literature.24 However, it seems somewhat incongruous for Polanyi to have attributed a dominant role to status in an economic system that had unquestionably gone beyond the primitive level of "reciprocity" and did not coincide with the "redistributive," in both of which status is classically emphasized. His hierarchy of economic systems included the two aforementioned, with partially disembedded trade evolv- ing only in the redistributive system as palace trade (trade organized among chieftains) or international commerce through "ports of trade." In one of his 23 One exception is Jacques Melitz [85, 1970], who

questions Polanyi's assumption that the modern economy uses all-purpose money and finds his monetary theory wanting.

24 For an excellent assessment of the Polanyi school see Humphreys [61, 1969].


later works [96, 1968] he added a third pre-market economic pattern, household or manorial economy which, however, he considered a primitive form of the redistributive. His hierarchy therefore included reciprocity, household management, and redistribution as the three economic systems preceding the emergence of the self-regulating market.

In general, Polanyi's dramatic picture of Aristotle with his conception of the market in embryo standing at the thresh- hold between one of the earlier systems and the modern market, which eventually emerged some 2,000 years later, cannot stand very close scrutiny. The pre-market categories adopted from anthropology may also appear somewhat strained to the historian of ideas, since reciprocity shows strong affinity to the "natural" social con- tract of Book II of Plato's Republic and the redistributive economy has parallels with the Marxian "Asiatic mode of production. "25

The Substantivist-Formalist Controversy

In search of generalizable principles of economics, which transcend the limits of modern industrial society, economic anthropologists have given considerable attention to ancient societies to supplement the limited data on the economic life of unadulterated contemporary primitive economies. Such studies have given rise to a methodological dispute labelled the substantivist-formalist (or primitivist-modernist) controversy of interest to historians of economic thought. Although contemporary work in economic anthropology is in a state of ferment, a brief summary of the issues in this controversy may shed some light on its potential contribution to work in the history of ancient Greek ideas

and to the significance of ancient economic thought generally.26

The substantivists argue that if economic behavior is "embedded" in patterns of life that are not primarily economic, economic conduct will be dominated by criteria other than pure market or maximizing decisions and abstract principles of rational choice. In- stead, economic life will be part of the total cultural fabric or a subset of some specific cultural practice pursued in terms of that larger end. By contrast, the formalists contend that economic theory treats the abstracted universal rules of choice and maximization, which motivate men in modern economic situations, and that this theory can also be found to elucidate the behavior patterns of primitives in a variety of choice-making and maximizing situations. In other words, the formalists see modern economic life as different only in degree and not in kind from the primitive.27

The impasse between these two perspectives is probably clarified somewhat by Maurice Godelier's [48, 1972] distinction between "abstract empiricism" and "functional empiricism."28 Abstract empiricists hold that a theory of economic behavior can be drawn from the aggrega-

25 Howard Becker refers to man as Homo recipro- cus [5, 1956]. See also Lawrence Krader [71, 1975], Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst [59, 1975] and Emman- uel Terray [117, 1972].

26 The literature on the controversy is extensive. See References for citations to Robbins Burling [9, 1962], Percy Cohen [15,1967], Scott Cook [17,1966], George Dalton [21, 1961], David Kaplan [65, 1968], Edward LeClair [74, 1962], Marshall Sahlins [101, 1972], Harold Schneider and Harrie van der Pas [103, 1975].

27 An older controversy generally ignored in discussions by economic anthropologists is the one between economic historians, beginning with Karl Bucher's work in the 1890's, over the primitiveness or modernity of ancient economy. For a summary of this older literature as well as recent contributions to the debate, see Humphreys [62, 1970].

28 Scott Cook [17, 1966] labels the adherents of these two methodological perspectives the "formalists" and "romanticists." On the role of exchange and the more general transaction in anthropological and sociological thought, see Bruce Kapferer [64, 1976] and Marcel Mauss [82, 1925].


tion of rational individual propensities. They thus have affinities with the Ben- thamite tradition in classical British political economy and with the formalist school in economic anthropology. Functional empiricists, on the other hand, hold that a theory of economic behavior must be functionally deduced from the patterns of conduct in a given society, which molds its members and is capable of creating a variety of value orientations and organiza- tional systems. This outlook parallels the substantivist school. It was in essence this functional theory that Polanyi associated with Aristotle's grasp of an economy. It is of interest to note that this very cleavage exists in Aristotle's Politics where he builds his explanation of political and economic process from mutually dependent units, man and wife, master and slave, fa- ther and son, forming families; families forming villages; and villages forming the city state. He then turns around and de- duces the essence of mankind from his necessary existence as a social animal and treats the polis or basic community as the beginning point of analysis.29 This repre- sents one of the earliest expressions of the micro-/macrodualism in socioeconomic thought.

The Individual, the Society, and Economic Ideas

Although contemporary literature does not spell out the main problem of the relation between economic ideas, both ancient and modern, to the economy at any given time, some work approaches this issue. Robert M. Adams [1, 1974] has emphasized the importance of recognizing

that human society is made up of human beings and that changes in social and economic activity must rest upon individual actions.30 Referring specifically to Meso- potamia, he argues that individually motivated trade probably had an underesti- mated share in the economic life of the ancient world, since private activity did not produce the public records, which document administrative trade for such periods.

What is particularly interesting to the intellectual historian, however, is Adams's argument that individual ideas are the motivating power for changes in the pre- vailing pattern of human behavior. One is put in mind of Shackle's observation that "In natural science, what is thought is built upon what is seen; but in economics, what is seen is built upon what is thought" [106, 1972, p. 66].

The problem is complicated, of course, by the existence of subjective ideas about individual pursuits and about the nature of society, as well as the interplay between a society's intellectual heritage and the "socialization" of the individual. What is particularly important for the intellectual historian in dealing with economic and social theory is the parallelism between the individualist and functionalist view of social behavior and similar types of abstrac- tions applied to theory. The contrast is between theory as the result of individual rationality, observation, or intuition, on the one hand, and theory as the product of ideology, vision, or social indoctrination on the other. Singer took note of a nascent form of these perspectives in ancient literature when he wrote, "Both the art of the ruler and of the oikonomikos in the narrower sense can be exercised with better or worse results and there are rules and

29 This latter perspective is in the tradition of the famous myth on the origin of human society in Pla- to's dialogue, Protagoras. See also Andrew Cole [16, 1967]. Thomas Deaton, Robert Ekelund, and Robert Tollison assert that "reading the masters provides perhaps as good a basis for intellectual insight as reading current scholarly periodicals" [24, 1976, p. 911].

30 For a wide-ranging and facile presentation of ancient economic life with an emphasis on intellectual patterns, see Thomas Carney [12, 1973; 13, 1975].


standards for their guidance, derived from, or justified by, reasoning. Oikon- omia thus appears under two aspects: as the description of a pattern of action, and as the norm by which those actions have to be judged. Such a duality of meaning appears to be characteristically Greek: re- ality is conceived as a well-ordered whole which finds in its idea the criterion of its own goodness" [108, 1958, p. 32].

Conclusion

The eighteenth century discovery of the apparently rational resource-allocating capacities of the self-regulating market system obscured the older administrative approach of the ancient Greek science of oikonomia from which the discipline of economics derives. That oikonomia was not based on a concept of a self-regulating market is not is dispute. Whether the administrative theory of oikonomia may be useful for modern economists, especially those concerned with market externalities and welfare premises and those in fields, both in government and in the private sector, where management science has become increasingly important and increasingly removed from market analysis, is another question. The fact that the two approaches have been assumed to be fun- damentally different even though they both have been employed in the efficient allocation of resources should draw attention to the basically ideological nature of scholarly perspective. The administrative orientation of oikonomia forces us to face the fact that, ultimately, it is human beings who are the decision-makers who must make choices with goal and value implications, a responsibility easier to avoid if decision-making is viewed simply as better or worse adjustments to some inexorable process controlled by the market. The sep- aration of the discipline of economics from its humanistic origins in oikonomia made it more similar to mechanistic disciplines like engineering and empirical science. It

did not lessen the magnitude of the choices to be made.

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Recent Literature on Ancient Greek Economic Thought