The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, and Richard Saller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. v, 942. $225.00.

The last few years have seen a growing interest in the urbanism of the Greek and Roman world. This has led to a consensus of sorts about some of its vital statistics, such as the sizes of the populations of the most important settlements and the size of the overall urban population, the urbanization rate (i.e., the share of individuals that lived in urban, rather than rural, contexts), and the total population. A good example comes from W. Scheidel in the Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world. According to him, it is likely that c.1.5 million people lived in the 5 largest cities of the Greco-Roman world by the 2nd c. A.D. These included Rome, which is usually agreed to have had a population of about 1 million; Alexandria, which might have had c.500,000; Antioch, which could have had at least 150,000; and Carthage and Ephesus (Scheidel does not give explicit figures for those).

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Lead pollution and the Roman economy

Journal of Roman Archaeology ◽

10.1017/s1047759420001051 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 33 ◽

pp. 354-364

Author(s):

Damian Pavlyshyn ◽

Iain Johnstone ◽

Richard Saller

Keyword(s):

Roman Empire ◽

Economic History ◽

Roman Economy ◽

Roman World ◽

Greco Roman ◽

Institutional Frameworks ◽

History Of ◽

The Impact ◽

Industrial Societies ◽

Somatic Energy

More than a decade ago, the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP)1 and the Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world put the question of the performance of the Roman economy at the center of historical debate, prompting a flood of books and articles attempting to assess the degree of growth in the economy.2 The issue is of sufficient importance that it has figured in the narratives of economists analyzing the impact of institutional frameworks on the potential for growth.3 As the debate has continued, there has been some convergence: most historians would agree that there was some Smithian growth as evidenced by urbanization and trade, while acknowledging that production remained predominantly agricultural and based primarily on somatic energy (i.e., human and animal).4 This is, of course, a very broad framework that does not differentiate the Roman empire from other complex pre-industrial societies. The challenge is to refine the analysis in order to put content into the broad description of “modest though significant growth”5 and to offer a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the economy.

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Roman Terracotta Lamps: the Organization of an Industry

The Journal of Roman Studies ◽

10.2307/299559 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 70 ◽

pp. 126-145 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

W. V. Harris

Keyword(s):

Social History ◽

Economic History ◽

Roman World ◽

Greco Roman ◽

Material Sources ◽

History Of ◽

Important Progress ◽

Made In

It should be plain that important progress is to be made in the economic and social history of the Greco-Roman world through more systematic studies of the material remains. In the field of ancient manufacture and commerce, M. I. Finley has called for ‘a more sophisticated effort to approach quantification and pattern-construction’, and other historians too are well aware of what needs to be done. Doing it, however, can be difficult, for such projects, if approached with a scholarly desire for precision, bristle with complications, and the results can often be no more than tentative. Such is the case with this study of the terracotta lamp industry. For their part, the archaeologists who have studied groups of terracotta lamps, whether from particular sites or particular museums, have not altogether succeeded in fitting the material into the known framework of Roman life (this is not to suggest a primacy of written over material sources, simply that both are indispensable in economic history).

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