I have been thinking about and working on the subject matter of this book since I first fell in love with Greek history. That was in an introductory class at the University of Minnesota taught by Thomas Kelly, who, after overcoming his skepticism about my seriousness of purpose, sent me on to earn a Ph.D. under the direction of Chester Starr at the University of Michigan. Kelly’s high standards for writing history and Starr’s belief that Greek historians must seek to understand social, political, and cultural change (and not just continuity) have guided my studies ever since.
I have been extraordinarily lucky in my subsequent career to have colleagues eager and able to help me as I struggled to make sense of the Greek past and with the question of why it ought to matter to anyone who was not convinced, as I always have been, that it is the most fascinating possible subject of inquiry. I learned a great deal about history beyond antiquity from colleagues in the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University; about classical studies beyond history and about political theory from colleagues in the Department of Classics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton; and, most recently, about political institutions and behavior, quantitative methods, and causal inference from my colleagues in the Departments of Political Science and Classics at Stanford.
Along the way, I have been equally lucky in having the chance to teach and to learn from extraordinary students, undergraduate and graduate alike. A list of those who influenced the ideas and arguments in this book would, in its length, grossly violate the norms governing expressions of academic gratitude. Many who deserve mention here are unnamed but not unremembered.
This book began as a presidential address on the topic “Wealthy Hellas,” presented to the American Philological Association (“Wealthy Hellas” © 2010 American Philological Association). An earlier version of chapter 4 first appeared in Transactions of the American Philological Association, Volume 140, No. 2, Autumn 2010, pp. 241–286, published by Johns Hopkins University Press (Ober 2010c). “Wealthy Hellas” was then the topic of a two-term classics graduate seminar at Stanford. I learned much from the students, from Rob Fleck and Alain Bresson, who, as faculty visitors to Stanford, regularly sat in, and especially from Ian Morris, with whom I codirected the seminar. I have also had the opportunity to present work related to the book to well-informed and helpfully critical audiences at conferences and by invitation—in most detail at Cornell University as the Townsend Lectures in Classics, and also at Aarhus University, Bergen University, Cambridge University, University of Brussels (Franqui Conference), University of Chicago, University of Florence (ISNIE Conference), Fudan University, University of Indiana, Lund University, McGill University, Ohio State University, Princeton University, University of Rome (Sapienza), St. Andrews University, Stanford University, and Zheijiang University.
Special thanks are due to those who read various drafts. John Ma, Adrienne Mayor, Michelle Maskiell, Ian Morris, and an anonymous reader for Princeton University Press read drafts of the entire manuscript and made erudite, thoughtful, and detailed suggestions that have substantially improved the final result. Peter van Alfen, Ryan Balot, Sarah Ferrario, Rob Fleck, Stephen Haber, Eero Hämeenniemi, Andy Hanssen, James Kierstead, Carl Hampus Lyttkens, Emily Mackil, Walter Scheidel, Matt Simonton, Barry Strauss, David Teegarden, and Greg Woolf commented helpfully on parts of the manuscript and raised my occasionally flagging spirits with their enthusiasm. I owe special thanks to Deborah Gordon for introducing me to the world of ant science and for discussions of information exchange, evolution, and behavior; to Steve Haber and Barry Weingast for many long and deep discussions concerning institutions, economics, game theory—and much else. Eleni Tsakopoulos, Markos Kounalakis, and Yan Lin have supported my work at Stanford, both materially and through their ardent belief that Greek culture and democratic politics belong together as matters of the greatest possible import.
My profound indebtedness to the work of the Copenhagen Polis Center (CPC), and especially to its former director, Mogens Hansen, will be evident throughout. David Teegarden, Tim Johnson, and Bailey McRae entered some of the published results of the CPC onto spreadsheets, thereby making those results available as data for quantitative analysis. Those data were made publicly accessible on an interactive Web page (http://polis.stanford.edu) created and designed by Maya Krishnan, a Stanford undergraduate whose talents range from history and philosophy to computer science. Michele Angel transmogrified crude versions of the maps and figures into their present forms. Stanford University, through its School of Humanities and Science, provided substantial material, as well as intellectual, support for this project from the beginning. I hardly need say that, while whatever merit this book possesses is due in large measure to others, its errors of omission and commission are my own.
Rob Tempio, who is my editor at Princeton University Press, along with my literary agent Jill Marsal, played a formative role in the book’s genesis and a major part in its subsequent development. The editorial, production, and marketing staff at Princeton University Press have also been outstanding throughout. In an age in which scholarly books are sometimes regarded as exotic luxury goods, their passion for academic book publishing is an inspiration and offers hope for the future of a uniquely deep and powerful form of intellectual communication.
This book is dedicated to Adrienne Mayor—my life partner, intellectual companion, closest friend, my heart’s desire—who once warned me that autodidacticism has its limits and urged me to try a few university courses.