NOTES

PREFACE

1. Centralized, autocratic “natural state”: North, Wallis, Weingast 2009. Empires and godlike kings: Morris and Scheidel 2009. Tribal identities and unaccountable leaders: Fukuyama 2011.

2. Recent work, led by scholars at Australian universities, notably Benjamin Isakhan, Stephen Stockwell, and John Keane, seeks to uncover a “secret history of democracy” by searching for “democratic tendencies” (limits to the absolute authority of elite rulers) and ephemeral or local “democratic moments” across a number of historical societies typically regarded as autocracies: Keane 2009; Isakhan and Stockwell 2011, 2012. This research is valuable insofar as it reminds us that the categories “democracy” and “domination” are ideal types and that the historical reality is more complex. But highlighting and celebrating “tendencies” and “moments” risks obscuring fundamental differences between autocracy and democracy as a system of collective self-governance by citizens, sustained over generations by a complex of formal institutions and a widely shared political culture.

3. Morris 2010.

4. Value of democracy: Ober 2007, 2012. Reasons for the preference may be instrumental (democracy brings desired outcomes) or intrinsic (democracy valued for its own sake).

5. Murray 1990.

6. Runciman 1990: 364.

7. Rejection of quantification: Hobson 2014.

8. Big history, at various scales: Diamond 1999; Morris 2010; Christian 2011.

9. Ginzburg 1980 is an influential early example of microhistory.

10. Conjunction of quantitative and qualitative approaches to social science: King, Keohane, and Verba 1994.

11. Goldstone 2013 critically reviews recent literature on the supposed “great divergence” of East and West. This book addresses Goldstone’s call (p. 59) for the study of “smaller divergences that arose in different times and places.”

CHAPTER 1 The Efflorescence of Classical Greece

1. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto II, stanza 73.

2. Byron 1812. Byron in Greece: Minta 1998; Beaton 2013. Greece in the Roman Empire: Alcock 1993. Poorest European country before World War II: Allbaugh 1953: 15. The recent Greek economic crisis: Lynn 2010. Greece did experience other, if less remarkable, efflorescences in the middle Bronze Age and in the early Byzantine era of the later fifth and sixth centuries CE. See note 3 in this chapter.

3. Goldstone 2002: 333–334: An efflorescence is “a relatively sharp, often unexpected upturn in demographic and economic indices, usually accompanied by political expansion and … cultural synthesis and consolidation.” Efflorescence is, however, “distinct from Kuznetzian ‘modern’ economic growth founded on the continual and conscious application of scientific and technological progress to economic activity.” Cf. de Vries and van der Woude 1997, who call Golden Age Holland of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries “the First Modern Economy.” Relative brevity (to date) and possible fragility of the nineteenth to twenty-first century efflorescence: Deaton 2013: 78.

4. Figure 4.3 breaks out population and consumption estimates. Dates at which modern Greek development achieved classical peak levels: figure 4.1. Figures 1.1, 4.1, and 4.3 are restricted to core Greece because an exceptionally full body of documentary and archaeological evidence, discussed in chapter 4, allows rough estimates of population and consumption rates for this territory over the long run (1300 BCE–1900 CE). For a comparison of the population of core Greece and the wider Greek world, see figure 2.1, with further discussion in chapter 4.

5. Cultural features are detailed in chapter 2. Because of “Hellenization”—the tendency of non-Greek communities to adopt Greek cultural features, especially in the fourth century BCE (see chs. 9–10)—some Greeks had non-Greek ancestors; others could claim a Greek ancestry back to the Bronze Age. It is meaningless to speak of a “Greek race.”

6. By “middle class” I mean a demographic category of people who fall below elite levels of consumption but who are able to consume at levels comfortably above subsistence; see ch. 4. I do not mean to imply anything substantive about self-identification, class consciousness, or place in the mode of production.

7. Precocious modernity of Athens: Carugati, Ober, and Weingast forthcoming.

8. Hansen and Nielsen 2004.

9. Bintliff 2012.

10. The Inventory (Hansen and Nielsen 2004) is the source of many of the numbers concerning size, prominence, persistence, and regimes of Greek states that are cited in this book. The Inventory was the culmination of the work of the Copenhagen Polis Center, which produced many important studies of individual Greek states and addressed a wide range of historical issues. For some of the limitations of the Inventory’s framework, see the critical review of Fröhlich 2010. de Callataÿ 2012, 2014a surveys recent quantitative work on ancient Greek and Roman economies and its effect on the study of ancient economic history. Morley 2014 critically assesses the uses of quantification in ancient history, pointing both to its potential and its limits.

11. Unitary, essentially unchanging ancient economy: Finley 1999, with foreword by Ian Morris. New institutional economics: North 1981, 1990. North and Weingast 1989 (on why England was able to raise more money to fight wars than was France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and Acemoglu, Johnnson, and Robinson 2002 (on the “reversal of fortune” of rich and poor colonized regions of the New World from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries) are classics of the institutional economics field. Bresson 2007 is an impressive example of recent ancient-historical work in institutional economics. See further Christensen 2003; Eich 2006; Scheidel, Morris, and Saller 2007; Osborne 2009a; Ober 2010c; Halkos and Kyriazis 2010; de Callataÿ 2014a, and the works cited in ch. 4. On the other side: Hobson 2014 urges a poststructuralist, postcolonialist approach to archaeology and ancient history. He argues that quantification and institutional economics should be “exorcize[d]” (p. 13), along with deductive reasoning and hypothesis testing, on the grounds that they are neo-liberal, imperialist, ideological “relics” (p. 12) that import “concerns from outside the discipline” (p. 14) of ancient history. De Ste. Croix 1983 and Rose 2012 offer Marxist accounts of economic development in the Greek world, predicated on structural conditions of exploitation and class struggle; each presents a detailed argument for the applicability of Marx’s economic theory to the Greek world.

12. Forsdyke 2012.

13. Encyclopedic surveys of ancient Greek culture: Brunschwig and Lloyd 2000; Grafton, Most, and Settis 2010. The genetic impact of ancient Greeks on populations in Sicily, Italy, Corsica, and southern France: King et al. 2011, with literature cited.

14. Number of poleis and population of Hellas: Hansen 2006b, 2008; with discussion in this book, chs. 2 and 4. As we will see (table 2.4), about four-fifths of the states listed in the Inventory as “Greek poleis” were unambiguously Greek communities; some scholars would not count all or even many of the remaining one-fifth as Greek. But reducing the total Greek population by 20% would not change the overall picture in any substantial way. Today’s population of the nation of Greece is about 11.3 million.

15. Peer polity interaction: Renfrew and Cherry 1986; Ma 2003. On the Greek world as a decentralized network of states, see further Malkin 2011.

16. Definition and primary features of the polis: Hansen 2006a. While most Greek poleis lacked some features found in the most highly developed modern nation-states, the attempt to define the polis as an “acephalous society” rather than as a state (Berent 1996, 2000) is misguided (Rhodes 1995, Hansen 2002b). Disappearance of poleis: Inventory pp. 120–123, Index 20.

17. Small-state systems: Spruyt 1994. Comparative studies of city-state cultures: Molho and Raaflaub 1991; Hansen 2000, 2002a; Parker 2005. Long duration of the polis ecology: Ma (in progress b). Ancient Phoenicia: ch. 5. Tilly 1975: 15 notes that Europe in 1500 had some 500 more or less independent political units, but by 1900 only 25. For Tilly, the challenge was explaining consolidation. For a historian of ancient Greece, the challenge is explaining persistent decentralization. Comparison of Rome and China as cases of Successful imperial states: Scheidel 2009b.

18. Problem of violence as central to social order: North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009.

19. Hobbes 1996 [1651], with discussion here in ch. 3. Contemporary Hobbesianism: Anderson 2009; Morris 2014. Contrast van der Vliet 2011.

20. Logic of centralized authority systems and godlike rulers, and role of war: Morris 2014. Empire as the standard ancient form of large-scale state organization: Morris and Scheidel 2009.

21. Scheidel 2006, with discussion here, ch. 3 note 15.

22. Cooptation or destruction of deliberative associations at all levels by centralizing royal authority, during in the seventeenth century: Tilly 1975: 21–22.

23. Natural state: North, Wallis, Weingast 2009; proportionality of violence potential and privilege: Cox, North, and Weingast 2012. Development and emergence of large, centralized states, and their association with development: Tilly 1975, 1990; Morris 2010, 2014; Fukuyama 2011. The question then becomes, Whence modern democracy (and its associated values and rights)? Acemoglu and Robinson 2006 develop an influential theory, based on rational bargaining and elite choice, for how democracy arises from autocracy. We consider the Greek case of democratic emergence in detail in chapters 6–7.

24. Importance of exchange: Bresson 2000. Harris 2002 discusses the prevalence of horizontal specialization in the Greek world but underestimates vertical specialization in some important Greek industries, e.g., pottery, architecture, shipbuilding, and mining. Greek understanding of core principles: Ober 2009.

25. Schumpeter 1942. On innovation, as opposed to rent-seeking, as the engine of growth, see Baumol 1993, 2004. Baumol and Strom 2010 underline the essential role of historical examples (and counterexamples) in studying the history of entrepreneurship.

26. Role of Mediterranean microclimates and geographic diversity in building networks of exchange: Horden and Purcell 2000. Role of rainfall in political development: Haber 2012; Haber and Elis 2014. Beneficial location relative to nearby societies: Ian Morris personal communication. See, further, ch. 5.

27. Tilly 1975: 18 points to Europe’s “vital and prosperous cultural homogeneity” in ca. 1500, noting the “ease it gave to the diffusion of organizational models, to the expansion of states into new territories, to the transfer of populations from one state to another, and to the movement of administrative personnel from one government to another.” For Tilly, cultural homogeneity is a background condition that fostered consolidation of large states; insofar as that is right, cultural homogeneity does not provide us with an adequate explanation for the persistence and efflorescence of a small-state ecology.

28. Smith 1776. Ford, Taylorism, and industrial production: Rothschild 1973.

29. Contemporary knowledge-based organizations and the polis as a knowledge-based organization: Manville and Ober 2003. Common knowledge: Chwe 2001. Wisdom of the crowd: Landemore 2012; Landemore and Elster 2012.

30. Aggregation, alignment, codification as collective knowledge processes, and their association with political institutions: Ober 2008. Stock of knowledge, modern science, and modern development: Mokyr 2002.

31. Civic rights, immunities, and risk-taking: Ober 2012.

32. Incentive compatibility and choice of amateurism in Athenian courts: Fleck and Hanssen 2012.

33. This epistemic approach to the question of why democratic institutions are positively correlated with economic growth weighs in on the long-standing debate, inaugurated by Lipset 1959, over whether democracy causes growth (and if so, how) or vice versa; cf. metastudy by Doucouliagos and Ulubaşoğlu 2008. For a recent argument that democracy does cause growth, see Acemoglu et al. 2014; for the other side: Boix 2011.

34. Plato, Republic, especially book 6, with discussion of Reeve 1988. Expertise in democratic systems of aggregated knowledge: Ober 2013a. See further, ch. 9.

35. “Opportunist” states and their adoption of Greek expertise: Davies 1993 (ch. 12), 2004; Pyzyk forthcoming. See further ch. 10.

36. The long history of the postclassical Greek polis: Ma in progress b.

CHAPTER 2 Ants around a Pond

1. On the demography of the Greek world, see Hansen 2006b, 2008, with discussion here, ch. 4. Roman population; world population: Scheidel 2007. The population of the United States is currently about 4.25% of the world’s population.

2. Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson 2011: Table 1.

3. West of Sicily: 4 poleis in region 1 (total population under 20,000); south of Crete: 6 poleis in region 45 (total population under 100,000); Black Sea (including Marmara): 92 poleis (total population just under one million).

4. The only noteworthy exception is region 30: Inland Thrace—where a half-dozen towns were sufficiently Hellenic by the later fourth century BCE to qualify as poleis. See discussion here, ch. 10.

5. Overall correlation of elevation/size = Pearson–0.19; elevation/prominence: Pearson–0.13. In Sicily, the correlations of both elevation to size and prominence = Pearson–0.48. Pearson correlations are common statistical measures of the linear relationship between data sets, ranging from–1 (complete negative correlation) to 1 (complete positive correlation); correlations greater than 0.5 (or less than–0.5) are considered quite strong. Note that polis location, where precision is possible, is measured at the center of the central city; large poleis, like Athens, included in their regions considerable high-elevation territory, and some villages lay at elevations considerably higher than the main city.

6. Designated “Csa” (temperate/dry summer/hot summer) in the standard Köppen-Geiger climate classification system: Peel, Finlayson and McMahon 2007. Per below, “dry summer” includes rainfall averages up to about 5 cm per month. Total average precipitation across most of the Greek world ranges from ca. 20 to 50 cm (Attica, Cycladic islands, parts of Sicily and Cyprus), to 50–75 cm (Argolis, Laconia, Corinthia, Boeotia, Thessaly, Thrace, Sporades and Dodecanese islands, Macedonia, Eastern Crete), and up to 75–125 cm (Western Peloponnese, Epirus, Acharnania, Adriatic islands, Rhodes, Western Crete, Caria). Source: http://www.bestcountryreports.com. Precipitation maps for Greece, Italy, Turkey. Accessed November 7, 2013.

7. Source: http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/DrySummerClimates=PacificBulbSociety. Map of Mediterranean summer rainfall: http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/00_others/Europe_climate.gif (accessed Sept. 23, 2013). On this map, the range of Mediterranean climates is subdivided from A (“extreme desert”: 5–15 cm total annual rainfall) to G (“wetter”: rainfall of more than 2.3 cm/month in 2 summer months but less than 5.1 cm in the driest month), and from 1 (“frigid”: winter lows average below–1°C) to 4 (“temperate”: lows average 7–15°C). Greeks outside the Black Sea region inhabit almost uniquely zones C3, C4, D3, D4, E2, E3, E4, F2, F3, F4. Notable exceptions to the “very dry summer” rule are Neapolis and Massalia, both in zone G2. Bresson 2014 argues that the Mediterranean climate of ca. 500–1 BCE was on the whole cooler and wetter than in the twentieth century CE. On long-term climate change, see, further, ch. 5.

8. The relationship between specific climatic and/or agricultural regimes and the potential for the historical emergence of specific political and economic outcomes is the subject of important ongoing research; see Haber 2012; Haber and Elis 2014. The Greek world scores high in three measures (storability of crops, absence of aggregate shocks, and easy transport) that seem to open the way (while not determining it) to democracy, law, and growth.

9. The question of when Greek-speakers first arrived in mainland Greece (i.e., when mainland Greece became “the Greek homeland”) need not concern us here: the arrival was in any event before the Late Bronze Age.

10. Steppe nomads: Morris 2014; Mayor 2014. The ancient geographer Strabo (11.3–5) notes that in the Caucasus region fertile land went uncultivated because of systematic raiding by nomads.

11. Of a total of 1,035, 84 poleis are known to have employed a street grid (Inventory Index 22), but since the street plan of many urban centers remains archaeologically undetermined, this number certainly underestimates the total number of grid-planned Greek cities. See further Cahill 2000, 2002. Greek houses: Nevett 1999, 2005.

12. Food ways: Foxhall and Forbes 1982; Dalby 1997; Davidson 1997; Garnsey 1999.

13. Greek religion: Parker 1996; Cole 2004.

14. Greek warfare: Strauss 1996; van Wees 2000a, 2000b, 2004, 2013a; Pritchard 2010; Kagan and Viggiano 2013.

15. Aside from Vatican City, the smallest independent modern nation-states, Nauru and Tuvalu, have populations around 10,000; some 10 other countries have populations under 100,000. China’s population is in excess of 1.3 billion. Alesina and Spolaore 2003 discuss (with reference to modern states) the trade-off between the economic and security advantages of large size and the costs associated with diverse preferences among large populations.

16. Hansen 2006b and 2008.

17. Regional variation in size: Inventory 70–73 with Index 9. Hansen 2008 adds 32 poleis to the “plausibly estimated size” group; four others were added by Emily Mackil (personal communication). Distribution of population into small, medium, and large poleis: table 2.1.

18. Herodotus 8.25.1–2 tells a similar story, in which Belbina (i326: size 1, fame score 2) plays the role of the obscure polis.

19. Although a diverse array of scholars wrote the individual Inventory entries, editorial oversight ensured a good level of consistency in treatment. Comparison of the space allotted to a sample of poleis in the Inventory and two other recent and distinguished encyclopedic works on Greek antiquity shows high correlation: Ober 2008: Appendix.

20. Coin data: see note 24. The evidence of coins as a category of archaeological evidence: de Callataÿ 2011b; van Alfen 2012. Victories: Inventory Index 16.

21. Scheidel 2006 offers a helpful discussion of the terms hegemony and empire in the context of ancient Mediterranean city-states. He suggests that hegemony is (at a minimum) a state’s control over the foreign policy of other, autonomous, polities. An empire, by contrast, is (at a minimum) a very large state, generally created by conquest, divided between a dominating central core and subordinate peripheries.

22. On the challenges of finding a balance between the most prominent poleis and the rest, see Gehrke 1986; Brock and Hodkinson 2000.

23. Mackil 2013: 1.

24. Discussion of certainty of polis attribution and “hellenicity” and definitions for each category: Inventory 7.

25. Silver coinage: 340 poleis (of 1,035) are known to have minted silver coins, 94 of these by the end of the sixth century; 285 poleis also issued bronze coins. Coinage figures: Inventory, Index 26, with corrections of Peter van Alfen (American Numismatic Society, personal communication). Coinage and autonomous state identity: Martin 1986.

26. Most local Greek historiography has failed to survive intact; the very substantial fragments are collected in Jacoby et al. 1957 (and following), now available with English translation, in e-form as Brill’s New Jacoby.

27. Greek colonization: Graham 1964; Malkin 1987, 1994, 2011. Osborne 2009c: 106–123, 220–230, while rejecting the term “colonization” in favor of “settlement abroad,” offers a concise survey; his figure 32 and table 5 helpfully tabulate and map major Greek settlments outside core Greece. Data: Inventory Index 27.

28. Frederiksen 2011: 1.

29. Frederiksen (2011: 111) counts 121 poleis with evidence of having had fortifications by 480 BCE. Per table 2.5, by 323 BCE the count (based on Hansen and Nielsen 2004) was 537. On Greek fortifications and their historical development, see Maier 1959; Winter 1971; Lawrence 1979; Ober 1985, 1991; McNicoll 1997; Camp 2000.

CHAPTER 3 Political Animals

1. On the science of emergence, see for example Jensen 1998; M. Mitchell 2009; S. Mitchell 2009.

2. Couzin et al. 2005.

3. Olson 1965:2 (original emphasis).

4. See, for example, Bowles and Gintis 2011; Boehm 2012a.

5. Ober 2013b seeks to demonstrate that these “useless” arguments do not render Aristotle’s naturalistic political theory as a whole useless for contemporary political theory. I do not seek to “save Aristotle” by claiming he did not make bad arguments (he certainly did), but I show that the bad arguments are not fundamental for a recognizably Aristotelian (as opposed to “Aristotle’s own”) political theory. Ryan 2013 offers an assessment of Aristotle’s political thought along similar lines.

6. Aristotle’s work in the Politics makes better sense when read in light of certain of his works on biology; see Depew 1995.

7. Aristotle’s king bee (History of Animals 5.21) was actually the queen: i.e., the common mother of all bees in the hive; but queen bees no more direct the activity of a hive than do queen ants in a nest. And the cooperating individuals are females, not, as Aristotle apparently thought, males. On the surprisingly complex forms of cooperation achieved by honey bees, notably in the vital project of finding a new nest site, see Seeley 2010.

8. Aristotelian fair distribution is predicated not only on need but also on the differential levels of virtue possessed by different individuals, and by different categories of people. His theory is not egalitarian in an “equal shares to each” sense. It notoriously allows for very unequal distributions of certain goods to slaves and women, based on Aristotle’s peculiar beliefs about moral psychology. See further Ober 2013b.

9. On these questions, see Murray 1993b and Ober 2005a.

10. In the real world, of course, all other things are not held constant—so that it is not the case that every citizen-centered community has outperformed, or even provided a better environment for individual or collective flourishing, than rival autocratic or hierarchical communities.

11. The Aristotelian approach sketched here is admittedly incomplete, in that it focuses primarily on the choices and behavior of adult male citizens. If we are fully to grasp the workings of the Greek polis, more work is needed on the roles played by women (wives of citizens), foreigners (long- and short-term), and slaves in the production of public goods (e.g., security, welfare) through shared knowledge, and in the consumption of those public goods.

12. Agonistic competition as definitive of Greek society: Burckhardt 1998 [1898]; Lendon 2005, 2010; Skultety 2009. Duplouy 2006 places agonism at the center of Greek social life. He focuses on the various strategies used to acquire prestige by those aspiring to elite status. He argues that the agon was generalized insofar as there was no ossified Greek aristocracy, meaning that elite status could potentially be attained by non-elite competitors.

13. Yoffee 2004 criticizes “neo-evolutionary” approaches to the study of early states (notably in Mesopotamia). He rejects the idea that rulers of early states are adequately characterized as godly despots and urges a greater focus on social relationships outside the realm of the state, while accepting (ch. 2) that early states were indeed typically organized around centralized authority of a ruler with special relationship to the gods, and (p. 3) “new ideologies … that insisted that such leadership was not only possible but the only possibility.”

14. Egyptian royal authority: Frankfort 1948; O’Connor and Silverman 1994. In practice, of course, things were not so seamless: The Egyptian king faced principal-agent problems (misalignment among the incentives of those taking and giving orders), struggled to keep a big bureaucracy in line, and faced pushback from powerful priesthoods. See further Manning 2003, 2010; Kemp 2006.

15. Phoenician cities and Carthage: Aubet 1993; Krings 1998; Niemeyer 2000: 101–109; Ameling 2013. Stockwell 2011, 2012 seeks democratic elements in Phoenician political organization. Etruscan aristocracy and oligarchy: Torelli 2000: 196–205. Scheidel 2006: 6, drawing on the evidence collected in Hansen 2000: 619 nn. 81 and 82, notes the historical prevalence of republican (oligarchic and democratic) government in city-state ecologies and the fact that monarchical city-states sometimes feature deliberative assemblies and voting. Scheidel 2006 also notes the relative rarity of city-state empires. Etruscan imports of Greek vases: Osborne 2001.

16. We must always keep in mind that even in democratic poleis—where citizenship was held by almost all resident adult native males—citizens were a minority of the total resident population (see for example, population model for fourth century BCE Athens: table 4.4). In oligarchic poleis, empowered decision-makers were a minority of the resident native adult males. And yet, even Greek oligarchies appear strikingly “citizen-centered” when compared to most premodern societies; see Simonton 2012.

17. In practice, of course, it is more complicated: see n. 14, on the practical problems faced by Egyptian kings. What follows describes an ideal type of monarchical authority; in chapters 7–10 we consider some of the problems that ancient kings (notably the king of Persia) actually faced in asserting their unitary will across time and space.

18. In social choice theory, rationality is defined as a preference ordering among three choices, A, B, and C, taking the form A > B > C but not C > A. The impossibility of eliminating C > A in voting systems under plausible rules (Arrow 1963) is the basis of a large literature arguing that democracy is unworkable; see Riker 1982.

19. Morris 2014 is a notable example of an explicitly Hobbesian argument by a prominent historian (who happens to be my friend, colleague, and collaborator) who seeks to explain economic growth in the very long term. On Hobbes and the “personality” of the polis, see Anderson 2009.

20. The effort by Tuck 2008 to show that free riding is a uniquely modern idea seems to me to be wrong on the face of it; see Ober 2009. Likewise, Tuck’s (2007) attempt to show that Hobbes embraced an Aristotelian conception of democracy is chimerical: Hoekstra 2007; Skinner 2007.

21. Performance of Greek states: Ober 2008. Tyranny and state performance in the Greek world: Fleck and Hanssen 2013, showing how tyrants inadvertently promoted conditions favorable to democracy.

22. Gordon 1999, 2010, 2014. My thanks to Deborah Gordon for many helpful and enjoyable discussions of ant behavior and how it might help us to think about features of ancient Greek history.

23. Forel 1930 offers an entrancing and detailed (if now outdated in its science) description of the varied “social worlds” of many different ant species.

24. Bernard Werber’s engaging sci-fi fantasy, Empire of the Ants (1996), in which ants from many nests and across species do indeed form an empire under the leadership of a charismatic queen, points to the strength of the Hobbesian idea.

25. Gordon’s breakthrough, demonstrated through careful observation of individuals and now generally accepted by ant scientists, was that the same ant did different tasks—individuals are not genetically programmed to do just one task—tasks are assigned by “collective intelligence” rather than by genetic distinctions among conspecifics. This is, of course, what makes harvester ants a good analogy for real Greek poleis and a poor analogy for Plato’s ideal state.

26. From different perspectives, see Horden and Purcell 2000; Bresson 2000.

27. See, in detail, Ober 2008.

28. As Hoekstra (forthcoming) demonstrates, despite Hobbes’ memorable rhetoric about human life being “solitary” in the state of nature, local cooperation is possible in the Hobbesian state of nature (in the form of gangs: which is why even the most powerful individual must live in fear), but large-scale cooperation, necessary to advance beyond the state of nature, requires Leviathan—that is, a third-party enforcer.

29. Before a new nest is established, the future queen mates with several males in a swarm, reserving the sperm of these short-lived founder-males for the remainder of the life of the queen and nest.

30. On Greek ethnic identity and fictive kinship in the classical period, see Hall 1997, 2002.

31. Altruistic punishment: Gintis et al. 2004, with literature cited.

32. Allen 2000.

CHAPTER 4 Wealthy Hellas

1. Demographics of modern Greece: Valaoras 1960. Impoverished conditions 1880–1912: ibid. 136. Poorest nation in Europe: Allbaugh 1953: 15. The question of efflorescence in the Hellenistic period of the third and second centuries BCE is more complex: See, for example, Reger 1994, 2007: 481–482. We return to this question in chapter 10. This chapter and the next are adapted and expanded from Ober 2010c.

2. The economy of core Greece in the Roman period of the first century BCE to fourth century CE: Alcock 1993 and 2007. Medieval Greece: Cheetham 1981; relative poverty of medieval Greece, compared to antiquity: Morris 2013b: 66–73; fifteenth to eighteenth century (Ottoman era) Greek economic conditions, with special reference to rent-seeking by the Turkish overlords and subsistence agriculture: Asdrachas 2005. Greek development from the Roman era to the nineteenth century, with special reference to archaeological evidence: Bintliff 2012: chs. 13–22. Populations of Peloponnese and Boeotia in ca. 1600: ibid. 438–439, 441. The drop in population of the Peloponnese by 1685 but the Aegean islands doing relatively better in this period: ibid. 447–448. Choniates quote: cited by Minta 1998: 119.

3. Survey of LBA economy: Bennet 2007; cf. Bintliff 2012, ch. 7. Numbers and sizes of LBA states; population estimates and levels of imports in LBA and Early Iron Age (EIA) Greece: Murray 2013: 134–145. See, further, ch. 6.

4. Minoan material culture: Shelmerdine 2008, chs. 5B, 6, 8, 9; Minoan palace administration: ibid. ch. 7. For the later history of Crete (twelfth to fifth centuries BCE), which diverged markedly, both politically and economically, from the norms of the wider Greek world, see Wallace 2010.

5. Murray 2013 effectively refutes earlier arguments for a larger LBA population of around 1 million people and also demolishes arguments that the EIA decline, following the LBA collapse, was less than severe, demographically and economically. See, further, Bintliff 2012, ch. 8 and in this book, ch. 6.

6. Non-elite populations in premodern economies typically hover near subsistence: Scheidel 2010, with discussion below, this chapter, section on “equitable distribution.”

7. Zimmern 1931: 219. Zimmern’s line about the “doom of Athens” is borrowed from a comment about poverty and impossibility attributed by Herodotus to the self-description of residents of the Aegean island-polis of Andros/i475 (Histories 8.111.3). Ironically, the Andrians were explicitly contrasting their own impoverished situation with that of “great and prosperous” Athens. Modern citations of Herodotus 7.102.1 and collection of the “standard ancient premise” in Greek writers: Desmond 2006. Not all historians of Greek antiquity bought into the standard modern premise: Chester Starr (1977) believed that economic growth was a key factor in Greek social history, but the no-growth argument, canonized in Finley 1999 [1973], largely carried the day. The “standard modern premise” is a staple of contemporary political theory: Ryan 2012: vol. 1, p. xii.

8. Athenian exemplarity or exceptionalism: Ober 2008: 276–80. Athenian performance compared to other leading poleis: Ober 2008: ch. 2.

9. Long recognized: e.g., Morris 2004: 22.

10. Economies in modern developed countries compared to ancient economies: Saller 2005, Morris 2010.

11. Wages: Scheidel 2010, discussed below, this chapter. The prosperous sixth century Babylonian period was terminated by 500 BCE, presumably at least in part by the focused rent-seeking of the ruling Persian imperial ethnoelite; see Ma 2013c and in progress a.

12. Ancient Middle Eastern economies: Bedford 2007; Babylonia in the late seventh to early fifth centuries BCE: Jursa 2010. Babylonia in the fourth–first centuries: van der Spek and van Leeuwen 2014. Roman economy: de Callataÿ 2005, 2014b; Bang 2007; Hopkins 2009; Bowman and Wilson 2009, 2011, 2013; and parts V–VIII of Scheidel, Morris, and Saller 2007. It is important to keep the diversity of the Roman Empire in mind; certain regions of the Roman Empire, including Italy, North Africa, and western Anatolia, were highly urbanized (Wilson 2011) and prosperous; these regions might have outperformed the Greek economy on the measures noted above.

13. Allen 2001 is a detailed study of wages, prices, and welfare levels in a number of early modern European cities. His conclusions (2001: 427–430, 433–435; cf. Allen 2009: 338, adding Delhi and Beijing) are clear: between 1500 and 1800, only Holland and England managed to avoid the Malthusian trap in which a rising population led to falling wages and lower welfare for most people.

14. Morris 2004, 2005, 2007; cf. Reden 2007; Kron 2014. It is important to keep in mind that no estimate of ancient economic change (aggregate or per capita) is fine grained. What can be estimated is change over relatively long periods of time. These long periods would certainly have included short-term eras of negative growth as well as eras of positive growth. For the mix of positive-growth and negative-growth years in modern societies, see North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009: 5–6 with Table 1.2. Thus, although the general trend of Greek economic growth was positive over the 500-year period 800–300 BCE, a given generation might have experienced substantial overall negative growth.

15. Beloch 1886, 1993 [1889]. Quote, Morris 2004: 727; high rate of growth: Morris 2004: 728; cf. Scheidel 2003.

16. Hansen’s (2006b, 2008) estimation method is based, like that of many other ancient demographers, on calculating intramural (urban) areas and extramural (rural) areas and estimating settlement densities for each category. Price 2011 argues for substantially lower settlement densities for ancient Greek sites than those used by Hansen and other archaeologists, in part by employing Cretan and Ottoman-era comparanda. But, per above, there is good reason to believe that Ottoman-era Greek populations were much lower than the classical peak, and Cretan economic development was quite different from that of most of the rest of the ancient Greek world.

17. As noted in chapter 1, Hansen’s figures are reduced by about 20% if we exclude partially Hellenized communities (table 2.4). This leaves a total “culturally Greek” population of ca. 6.6 million, and thus a 20-fold nadir-to-peak increase.

18. Change in house size: Morris 2004: 721; quote, 723–724. Morris has recently (2013b: 66–73) estimated Greek growth by energy capture; see ibid. 72–73 with literature cited, 279 n. 48, for the stark contrast in quality of housing and artifacts between classical and medieval/early modern Greece.

19. Saller 2005.

20. Morris 2004: 728.

21. My thanks to Elaine Matthews of the Lexicon for Greek Personal Names, who provided access to beta versions of the on-line database; see http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/. Breakdown of numbers by century BCE (men/women): seventh: 75/9, sixth: 1,062/124, fifth: 5,234/436, and fourth: 14,714/2,424.

22. Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards: Thompson, Mørkholm, and Kraay 1973. These data were collected and analyzed, beginning in 2005, by David Teegarden and me; cf. discussion in Ober 2008: 285–286. Much more accurate data on Greek coins in hoards are currently being compiled at the American Numismatic Society. See http://admin.numismatics.org/igch/.

23. Turchin and Scheidel 2009.

24. Urbanization and total population as proxies for economic growth: Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2002; Wilson 2011: 161; Stasavage 2014: 344–345.

25. Hansen 2006b, 2008.

26. By my lower bound estimates (based on a variation of Hansen’s shotgun method, but somewhat lower than Hansen’s, for the relevant regions: appendix I in this book for figures), the regions apparently included in the Morris 2004 estimate of 4 million would have had a population of more than 5 million. Hansen 2008 offers new empirical evidence that suggests that his original “shotgun method” estimates, offered in Hansen 2006b, were too low, both in the number of poleis and in the total population of the Greek world.

27. As noted above, Hansen’s “catchment area” for mainland Greece is different from that of Morris (2004: Aegean, south Italy, and Sicily). My own lower bound estimate for the late fourth-century BCE population of the1889 census region is 2.75 million people, but that figure would increase to within Hansen’s on the assumption of a total Greek population of about 9 million (the median of Hansen’s “probable total” population figures). Hansen’s estimate of the population of mainland Greece in the classical era is not radically different from that of earlier demographers: Scheidel 2008b. Densities: ch. 2 with note 2.

28. Valaoras 1960, with discussion above.

29. My lower bound estimate of 2.75 million would leave a surplus of 450,000.

30. Other Greek states, including Corinth, Megara, Aegina, and Samos, as major grain importers: Bissa 2009: ch. 9. Definition of rents: Krueger 1973.

31. Hansen 2006b: 24, 28. For size ranges and distributions, see table 2.1 in chapter 2. For the Malthusian trap, see Clark 2007; Goldstone 2002 notes examples of ancient societies that escaped the “trap” for extended periods of time.

32. Hansen 2006b: 26–29.

33. Roman urbanization: Wilson 2009, 2011. Of course, because the Roman world was much larger, the total number of Romans living in towns (ca. 7–8.5 million) was much greater than the number of urban Greeks (ca. 2.5–3 million); as noted above, some regions of the Roman Empire may have been more urbanized than Hellas overall. Moreover, the largest Roman cities, Rome and Alexandria, were much larger than any classical Greek city. Premodern comparisons: Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson 2011: Table 1, and below, table 4.3.

34. The alternative demographic standard for measuring urbanization is the percentage of total population living in cities of more than 10,000 people. Assuming (based on table 2.1) that about a third of size 4 poleis, most size 5 poleis, and all size 6 and 7 poleis had total populations over 20,000, if Hansen’s intramural estimate is correct, then some 20–24% of Hellas’ late fourth century population lived in 100–113 cities of 10,000 or more. Based on de Vries 1984, Table 3.7 (p. 39), figures for European urbanization in 1600 (at the 10,000+ standard), Hellas was comparable to Holland (24.3%: 19 cities: de Vries 1984, Table 3.1), which was the most urbanized part of Europe in 1600. Hellas was substantially more urbanized at the 10,000+ standard than any other European region in 1600: Northern Italy = 16.6% (30 cities); Mediterranean = 13.7% (101 cities); Europe overall = 7.6% (220 cities).

35. Bresson 2000, 2007. Horden and Purcell 2000 characterize ancient Mediterranean trade as defined by intricate networks of interdependent regional exhange, based on a multiplicity of microenvironments.

36. Bloom, Canning, and Fink 2008.

37. Population growth leads to substantially lower living standards in most of the cities of Europe in 1500–1800: Allen 2001; Deaton 2013: 94–95. Disease: Scheidel 2007. Squalid conditions in the advanced economies of England and Holland: Kron forthcoming. Greek life expectancy: Morris 2004: 714–720, Kron 2005; von Reden 2007: 388–390. Improved life expectancy for those surviving childhood: Morris 2004: 715, Fig. 2.

38. On the question of life expectancy at birth, see Morris 2004: 7; Scheidel 2009a. Kron 2005, 2012 argues for longer life expectancies at birth for Roman and especially Greek populations than have other investigators. Deaton 2013: 82–83, drawing on exceptionally fine-grained data, shows that disease, rather than nutrition, was the primary limit to life expectancy in England in 1550–1850.

39. See, by way of contrast, Mayne and Murray 2002, on the archaeology of modern slums; Scobie 1986 on Roman slums.

40. Scheidel and Friesen 2009: 72–73 discuss the literature on egalitarian distribution of income and economic growth. Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson (2011) examine inequality in 28 premodern societies (not classical Greece) on the basis of the the “extraction frontier,” thus measuring inequality by how close elites in a given society approached the feasible maximum of resource extraction, beyond which the non-elite would perish.

41. Morris 2004: 722–723.

42. Kron 2014, forthcoming. For Olynthos houses, Kron 2014: 129, table 2 estimates the Gini coefficient of inequality at 0.14, considerably lower (i.e., more equal) than later Hellenistic and Roman era Greek cities.

43. Cost of houses: Morris 2004: 723.

44. Kron 2011, 2014. Calculation is based on Athens citizen male population of ca. 31,000. Of these, 9,000 met the 2,000 drachma census in 322 BCE. Cost of a typical large Greek house: ca. 1,000–2,000 dr; house prices in inscriptions range as low as 200 dr.

45. Kron 2011, 2014. It is important to keep in mind that the overall Gini wealth index for Athenian society as a whole, including slaves and metics, would surely be substantially higher—I cannot say how much higher because I know no way to calculate wealth of metics or slaves. Wealth inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is typically much higher than income inequality, which is considered below.

46. Foxhall 1992, 2002; Osborne 1992.

47. Morris 1998: 235–236. Quote, ibid. 236.

48. Scheidel and Friesen 2009: 84–85. By way of early modern comparisons, Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson 2011 (Table 2) report the income Gini for Tuscany in 1427 = 0.46; Holland in 1561 = 0.56; England and Wales in 1688 = 0.45; France in 1788 = 0.56.

49. Scheidel 2010, figures p. 452; Scheidel and Friesen 2009. Of course, most people were not paid in wheat, and in many ancient societies they may not have eaten wheat as a staple. The method is similar to the converting of modern incomes from different countries and over time into, e.g., “1990 dollars per annum.”

50. Scheidel 2010: 454. Scheidel and Friesen 2009: 83 posit a bare subsistence minimum level of 335 kg of wheat equivalent per annum (i.e., 429 L wheat wage) per person in a tax-free environment, which translates to 1,716 L (4 × 429) for a family of four. This comes to 4.7 L/day/family. These figures are consistent with the calculations of Markle 1985, who argued that 3 obols/day (a juror’s pay in Athens = a wheat wage of ca. 4.5 L) was adequate to sustain a nuclear family at a subsistence level. Allen 2009 uses a somewhat different calculation (assuming a family as three rather than four “adult-consumption equivalents” and 250 rather than 365 wage-days per year), but he arrives at similar results for what he describes as a “bare bones” existence (2009: 340). In sum, an adult male wage earner at the “floor of the core” 3.5 L/day level might provide about two-thirds to three-quarters of his family’s minimum subsistence, meaning that women’s and children’s contributions to family income would be essential; see further, Scheidel 2010: 433–435, 454. Foxhall and Forbes 1982 offer a detailed examination of the role of grain in ancient diets—a key factor in any attempt to calculate actual subsistence minima.

51. Scheidel and Friesen 2009.

52. Scheidel and Friesen 2009: 71. Cf. Scheidel 2014, concluding, p. 191: “What little evidence we do have strongly suggests that Roman rule failed to deliver substantial benefits to workers in developed parts of the Mediterranean…. Roman economic development would not have differed greatly from that of most other pre-modern economies.” Allen 2009: 42–43 reaches similar results, based on the figures in Diocletian’s price edict of 301 CE. It is clear, however, that at least some regions of the Roman Empire in some eras of Roman rule performed well when compared to other ancient economies. The Roman economy is currently a very active research area; Scheidel’s conclusions are more pessimistic than those of some other scholars: see Bowman and Wilson 2009, 2011, 2013; Scheidel 2012a, 2012b; Temin 2013.

53. Scheidel and Friesen 2009: 74, 90.

54. Athenian figures cited and discussed by Scheidel 2010: 441–442, 455–456 are taken from epigraphic and literary sources collected and discussed in Loomis 1998: 111–113 and Markle 1985.

55. Scheidel 2010: 441–442, 453–458; Scheidel 2014: 188.

56. In Delos in the third century BCE, the wheat wage was 8 L/day—thus a multiplier of 2.3—just below the “middling” floor: Scheidel 2010: 442–443.

57. Half-day meetings: Hansen 1999: 136–137. Pay for assembly service: Hansen 1999: 150. Pay for other kinds of public service: Gabrielsen 1981; Hansen 1999: 314; Pritchard 2014.

58. Data summed up in Scheidel 2010; Allen 2009.

59. Optimistic and pessimistic estimates: Scheidel and Friesen 2009: 84–87. I focus on the late fourth century population because Hansen’s (2006b, 2008) “shotgun method” demographic model focuses on that period. Moreover, Athens did not have an empire in the late fourth century and was thus, in this way at least, more similar to other large poleis. For detailed discussion of fourth century Athenian demography, see Hansen 1986a, 1988, 2006c.

60. Definition: Davies 1971: xx–xxiv.

61. The limitation on rents and taxes exacted from farmers in Athens is emphasized by Wood 1988.

62. On Greek labor markets and interpolis movement of workers, see Davies 2007. My thanks to Barry Weingast for discussion of the labor market problem.

63. See, further, Whitehead 1977 (on Athenian metics), 1984 (on foreign residents in other Greek poleis, arguing that most poleis did have long-term foreign populations and that the conditions of their residency were formalized); McKechnie 1989.

64. Correlation: Bloom, Canning, and Fink 2008.

65. Roman growth rate: Saller 2005.

66. The estimates in Figure 4.3 are quite different from those suggested for Greece from 1—1900 CE by Angus Maddison (http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Maddison.htm: accessed 2014.05.04). Maddison estimates long term historical population, total GDP, and GDP per capita for many countries, including Greece. His estimates for the population of Greece in 1000, 1500, 1700, 1800, 1900 seem to me much too high for “core Greece,” based on the archaeological and tax record information cited in Bintliff 2012 and on actual census data from the nineteenth century (it is unclear what geographic area Maddison’s Greece data is meant to cover). Maddison’s Greek GDP per capita estimates for ca. 1500 to the mid-twentieth century also appear too high, and the basis for his early GDP estimates is mysterious. The standard CNTS data (Banks and Wilson 2013) for per Greek capita GDP begins only in 1940, when annual per capita GDP was $90 (in 1940 dollars), which converts to $840 in 1990 dollars. Using Geary-Khamis 1990 dollars (which factors in power of purchasing power parity: PPP), Maddison estimates annual per capita GDP for Greece in 1940 at $2223. Allowing for a PPP rate of 1:1.5 (based on comparing CNTS and Maddison figures for 1990) brings the CNTS 1940 figure close to $1300. But Maddison’s 1940 figure of $2223 still seems too high. Maddison’s population and GDP per capita figures for later decades of the twentieth century converge with the CNTS data, suggesting that his overestimates may be more extreme in the earlier, pre-twentieth century data.

CHAPTER 5 Explaining Hellas’ Wealth

1. The important role of action-guiding rules (institutions and political culture) in regulating market exchanges, and thereby addressing the failure of markets to deal adequately with “negative externalities” (e.g., toxic waste produced as a side effect of manufacturing being dumped into public waters) is a central feature of the “new institutional economics” (ch. 1). Valuing rules and regulation distinguishes institutional economics from free market fundamentalism, which generally rejects the idea of market failure, holding that negative externalities will be adequately dealt with by the market itself (i.e., people who can afford to will move away from the toxic zone; cheap enough real estate will attract less affluent others). Osborne 2009a goes further in embedding economics in social relations by positing that changes in ideas about political entitlement, citizenship, and elite standing can explain ancient Greek and Roman economic growth. This notion has obvious similarities to the arguments developed here, and Osborne rightly underlines the importance of the substitution of social capital for material wealth (e.g., through euergetism: voluntary public payments and services by the wealthy, who thereby gain in public esteem). But the mechanisms and microfoundations of the “changing ideas drive growth” theory remain underspecified. Bresson 2014 argues that assessing ancient economies in the terms of “capitalism” is justified.

2. Harris 2002. Cf. chapter 1 on the issue of the degree of horizontal vs. vertical specialization in the Greek world. I know of no comparable list for other ancient societies. Unfortunately, even if such lists were available, given the nature of the literary sources of the evidence for many of Harris’ specializations, and the lack of similar sources for most other ancient cultures, comparison would be difficult.

3. Cartledge 1998: 13.

4. List and Spiekermann 2013 demonstrate that a methodological focus on individuals as choice-making agents (in the form of “supervenience individualism”) is compatible with some forms of causal-explanatory “holism” in respect to considering institutions as collective actors. My two hypotheses assume that their compatibility thesis is correct.

5. Rawls 1999 [1971].

6. Emergence and the relationship between microlevel and high-level phenomena: Petitot 2010.

7. The reasons that a severe, long-duration collapse of civilization at the dawn of the Iron Age, in the context of distinctive geography, resource endowments, and climate, produced conditions especially conducive to the emergence of many small states (rather than a unitary empire) and of a norm of citizen-centered government (rather than monarchy) are discussed in chapter 6.

8. Here, I use “nature” in the thin sense employed by game theorists: exogenous facts about the world that set the framework in which human agents make strategic choices.

9. Meta-study: Finné et al. 2011.

10. Causal role of climate change in the EIA collapse: Kaniewski et al. 2010; Drake 2012. Cline (2014: 143–147) provides an excellent review of recent literature, concluding (2014: 170) that climate change was one of a number of factors that conjoined into a “perfect storm” to sink the Bronze Age.

11. Roman Warm: McCormick et al. 2012.

12. See further, Morris 2013b: 71 and literature cited; Bresson 2014: 51–52 suggests that climatic conditions cooler and moister than recorded for modernity could have favored agriculture in the Aegean by 500 BCE. My thanks to Ian Morris for bibliography and helpful discussion of these issues. He points out that we still need to explain why populations from Spain to China increased substantially in the first millennium BCE. Both climate studies and population estimates for the relevant periods are multiplying, and it is to be hoped that new data will enable us to better specify the extent, timing, and causes of population growth beyond the Greek world.

13. The modern Greek state’s coastline is 13,676 km. Among European countries, Greece’s coast/area ratio (104.68); is second only to Denmark (172.4); contrast Italy (26.0), Spain (9.95), and the United States (2.17): source of data: World Factbook, cited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_coastline. About 80% of Greece is mountainous; see discussion of polis elevations in chapter 2: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Europe/Greece-TOPOGRAPHY.html. Mediterranean climate: ch. 2. Diversity and networks: Horden and Purcell 2000. Geophysics and the art of not being governed: Scott 2009.

14. Advantages in respect to location and climate: Xenophon Poroi 1.6–8 (specifically Athens). Aristotle Politics 7.1327b29 notes Hellas’ central location between Asia and Europe; Pseudo-Plato. Epinomis 987d regards the Greek climate, balanced between summer and winter, as optimal for the development of virtue.

15. Independence is, of course relative; per table 2.3; divergences in prosperity within regions of Hellas, in some cases linked to independence or its lack, are discussed in Chapters 6–11.

16. On the problem of endogeneity in explanation, see King, Keohane, and Verba 1994: 185–194. Another test would be to ask if other, non-Greek, societies that shared the advantageous location were also standouts in 800–300 BCE (or other periods); Cyprus, Thrace, and Sardinia are possible test cases.

17. Slavery and unfree labor: Scheidel 2005a, 2008a; Bang 2009.

18. Athenian empire and rents: Morris 2009; and this book, ch. 8.

19. Thrace and Athenian rents: Moreno 2008; and this book ch. 9.

20. Scheidel 2008a: 123–125.

21. My neologistic phrase “rule egalitarianism” (conceptually similar to what North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009 call “impersonality”) is modeled on the term “rule consequentialism,” commonly used by ethicists. The rule consequentialist focuses on social rules (as opposed to individual acts) that maximize aggregate welfare (or alternatively, aggregate preference satisfaction).

22. Eighth century egalitarianism: Morris 1987; and this book, ch. 6.

23. Greek egalitarianism: Morris 1996; Raaflaub 1996; Cartledge 1996. Runciman 1990 emphasizes the historically remarkable level of Greek egalitarianism. Foxhall 2002: 218 by contrast, regards “substantial inequalities in landholding” as a “paradox” that “I have never been able to resolve in my own mind.” The paradox arises, of course, if one supposes that egalitarianism requires either equal outcomes or equal opportunities (measured by equal access to all valuable resources). But, per above, rule egalitarianism assumes neither.

24. There is, of course, a good deal of specialization in centralized hierarchies—the complex monarchical civilizations of, e.g., Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia would have not been possible without specialists. Rational people may specialize because they are ordered to do so or because they are born into a social group traditionally assigned some specialized task. Such systems may work well, but they lack the marketlike features that, so I argue, drove classical Greek era innovation and creative destruction.

25. Histories 5.78. This passage is discussed in more detail in chapter 7.

26. Strategic calculation based on formal rationality in Greek thought: Ober 2009. Cf. North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009, who emphasize the behavioral implications of individuals being treated impersonally in institutional contexts. Note that I assume here not only formal equality of standing but also some degree of freedom of choice in respect to occupation. Obviously in practice the extent of free choice varied considerably, but it is the overall effect of differences in opportunities and incentives that produces the result of relatively greater investment in human capital. See further Ober 2012.

27. Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7.7–10, esp. 2.7.10. Whether the women themselves would have concurred with Socrates’ assessment, we cannot say.

28. See, for example, Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7.3–6.

29. This sort of investment in political, rather than specifically economic, skills may be a driver of increased use of slaves and other forms of unfree labor: Scheidel 2008a: 115–123. On the other hand, Xenophon (Memorabilia 3.4) points out that certain skills required for success in private business affairs are also valuable for managing public affairs. Public goods are in general nonrival (i.e., not a fixed quantity, so that that their use is not subject to zero-sum competition) and nonexclusionary (i.e., all relevant people have free access).

30. Hansen 1999: 314, and ch. 9 in this book.

31. Bankruptcy laws that limit personal losses and rules of incorporation that protect individual investors are familiar modern examples. Patron–client relationships and voluntary associations (e.g., burial societies) provided alternative, civil society, routes to similar ends in some ancient societies.

32. Gallant 1991 assumes high levels of risk aversion on the part of ancient Greek subsistence farmers and suggests possible family risk-buffering strategies, based in part on evidence from subsistence farming in early modern Greece. However, if the arguments presented here are correct, the classical Greek economy was not predicated on the risk aversion of families of subsistence farmers. Public insurance and risk: Burke 2005; Möller 2007: 375–383; Ober 2008: 254–258. Mackil 2004 shows how a somewhat similar risk insurance mechanism operated in some interpolis relations.

33. Numeracy: Netz 2002; banking and credit instruments: Cohen 1992; rhetoric etc. and social networks: Ober 2008 ch. 4.

34. Transaction cost economics applied to antiquity: Frier and Kehoe 2007; Ober 2008: 115–116, 214–220, 234–239; Kehoe, Ratzan, and Yiftach-Firanko forthcoming.

35. North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009, with discussion above, ch. 1.

36. Innovation and growth: Baumol 1993. Energy capture and growth: Morris 2010. Technology in the Greek world: Greene 2000; Schneider 2007; Oleson 2008. Oil lamps, terra cotta lamps, and wine: Ian Morris, personal communication.

37. High stakes of interstate conflict: Ober 2008: 80–84. Prevalence and costs of ancient Greek civil wars: Gehrke 1985. Thucydides on Corcyra’s civil war: Ober 2000; Thucydides on rational cooperation and competitive advantage: Ober 2010b.

38. Institutions and coordination: Weingast 1997; Greek awareness: Ober 2009, 2012.

39. Greek embrace of novelty: D’Angour 2011, arguing against, especially, van Groningen 1953.

40. Ober 2010b, and ch. 8 in this book.

41. Interstate learning among democracies: Teegarden 2014a. Among oligarchies: Simonton 2012. Institutional borrowing by non-Greek authoritarian states, especially in the fourth century, and role of mobile experts: Pyzyk forthcoming, and this book, ch. 10.

42. Athens’ imperial coinage policy: Figueira 1998, and this book, ch. 8.

43. Modern impediments: Laitin 2007.

44. Innovative adaptations of the institution of coined money is a good case in point; for some particularly interesting innovations in this domain, see Mackil and van Alfen 2006.

45. Stasavage 2014. We lack time-series data for the populations of independent or dependent cities of antiquity, but, per chapter 4, we have proxies for measuring Greek economic growth over time, including intensive per capita proxies as well as extensive demographic proxies. It is certainly the case that some individual Greek cities did not continuously increase their populations from 800 to 300 BCE. But the overall population of the ecology of independent Greek cities certainly did grow across that period, and there is good reason to believe that per capita income did as well. We consider the economic trajectory of some dependent Greek cities in chapters 9 and 11.

CHAPTER 6 Citizens and Specialization before 500 BCE

1. For a general history of the ancient Greek world, see Morris and Powell 2009. Dillon and Garland 2010 is a useful collection of documents in translation; Erskine 2009 and Kinzl 2010 offer introductory essays on many relevant topics. The historical era covered in this chapter is treated in depth by Snodgrass 1971, 1980a; Murray 1993a; Hall 2006; Osborne 2009c; Rose 2012. See also note 17, this chapter.

2. Invention of new forms of citizenship and civic identity: Manville 1990.

3. Greece in the Bronze Age: CAH vols. 2.1, 2.2; Bennet 2007; Shelmerdine 2008; Burns 2010; Cline 2010, 2014: chs. 2, 3; Demand 2011.

4. Thuesen 2000 traces the the cycles of development (from small towns, to independent states, to city-state-empires, to domination by external empires) of the Bronze and Early Iron Age city-states of western Syria—including the major cities of Ugarit, Elam, and Hama.

5. Lupack 2011 surveys the economic role of the palace, relative to sanctuaries and local towns, calling for an adjustment of the view, represented by Killen 2008, of the Mycenaean palace as the unique center of political authority and economic redistribution. But the adjustment to the standard model still leaves the Mycenaean state as economic entity very different from the classical Greek polis. Natural state: North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009, and see ch. 1.

6. Bronze Age collapse and Greek migrations: Morris 2006 (disputing “gradualist” accounts of the EIA); Wallace 2010; Middleton 2010. Cline 2014: chs. 4, 5 offers a detailed account of the collapse and a balanced discussion of the multiple factors contributing to it.

7. Early Iron Age history and social structure: CAH vol. 3.1; Snodgrass 1971; Whitley 1991; Morris 2007. Continuity not collapse: Raaflaub and van Wees 2009: ch. 3 (by C. Morgan), but contrast ibid. ch. 4 (by I. Morris).

8. Control of cult by EIA chiefs: Mazarakis Ainian 1997.

9. Political leadership and war in EIA Greece: Donlan 1985; van Wees 1992.

10. Lefkandi hero: importance and rarity: Morris 2000, ch. 6

11. By way of contrast, Tilly 1975: 25 notes that Europe in 1500 had a very long tradition of royal power, stretching back to the Roman Empire, that almost all Europeans in this era were already subject to one crown or another, and that European state makers were usually kings or their agents.

12. Snodgrass 1980b.

13. I assume that the shock was violent enough to knock Greek communities back to the norms of rough egalitarianism that presumptively pertained in human communities until the development of large-scale agriculture and that persisted until recently in some foraging and pastoral societies: Boehm 2012b.

14. The coordination mechanism was developed as a theory of democratic collective action by Weingast 1997 and was applied to classical Athenian law by Ober 2012. Early Greek law: Gagarin 2005, 2008. The assumption of considerable variation in early polis social organization, ranging from elite domination (van Wees 2004, 2013a) to protocitizenship (Hanson 1995, 2013), accommodates sharply contrasting scholarly views on the nature of the early polis.

15. Superior mobilization and morale are identified as causes of the statistical advantage modern democracies have held over autocracies: Reiter and Stam 2002. See, further, Ober 2010b. The relationship between military and social development in Greece is often described in terms of either relatively quick archaic-era “hoplite revolution” or a longer (EIA to early classical) process of “hoplite gradualism”; see Kagan and Viggiano 2013 for the debate. I agree with the gradualists in considering mass infantry fighting as already important in the EIA, while accepting the revolutionaries’ claim that hoplite equipment and tactics crystallized into a more disciplined and standardized form some time in the seventh to sixth centuries BCE.

16. Greek state formation at the end of the EIA: Runciman 1982; van der Vliet 2011; Karachalios 2013.

17. Starr 1977. History of archaic Greece and cultural accomplishment: CAH vol. 3.3. Snodgrass 1980a; Murray 1993a; Osborne 2009c; Fisher, van Wees, and Boedeker 1998; Mitchell and Rhodes 1997; Raaflaub and van Wees 2009. Ancient evidence for archaic Greek history is collected in Crawford and Whitehead 1983; Fornara 1983; Stanton 1990. Climate change, ch. 5.

18. Scheidel 2003: 120–126, writing before the Inventory data were available (and thus assuming a lower “core Greece” late classical population of ca. 2 million), offers a useful model of population change in the Greek world from the Bronze Age through the late classical era. The War of the Lelantine Plain, mentioned by both Herodotus and Thucydides, among other ancient sources: Inventory 652; detailed study: Parker 1997; Hall 2006: 1–7. While the emergence of Greek states in this period conforms to Charles Tilly’s (1975: 42) famous maxim that “War made the state, and the state made war,” the question remains why the Greek state-formation process did not result in the consolidation of Hellas into a handful of large states, on the model of Europe 1500–1900.

19. Greek colonization and its motivations: Graham 1964; Malkin 1987; Dougherty 1993; Osborne 1998 (emphasizing entrepreneurial initiative). Scheidel 2003: 131–135 analyzes the demographics of overseas colonization, concluding that emigration could have had only a moderate effect on the whole of core Greek population growth but could have had substantially stronger effects locally in regions (e.g., Euboea).

20. Sicily’s relative advantage in respect to agriculture (especially grain): De Angelis 2000, estimating that classical era Sicily had the capacity to produce twice the food its own population required. Metapontum and agricultural production: Carter 2006. Genetic impact: King et al. 2011, with discussion above, ch. 1 n. 13.

21. Egyptian and west Asian effects on early Greek culture: Burkert 1992, 2004; West 1997. New crops and agricultural techniques: Sallares 1991. De Angelis 2006 contests earlier accounts of Sicilian–mainland exchange based on a colonialist model of Sicilian inferiority but reiterates the importance of agricultural exports to the Sicilian economy.

22. Seventh century BCE developments in Greek religion: Osborne 2009c: 190–201, concluding (p. 201) that stone temples and large statues, “will have been beyond the means of individuals to produce on their own and so were increasingly the preserve of a community.” Greek religion and priests: Zaidman and Schmitt-Pantel 1992; Hägg 1996; Parker 1996; Price 1999.

23. For differing interpretations of the motivation and chronology of hoplite warfare and armor, see, for example, Hanson 1991; van Wees 2004; Schwartz 2009. Kagan and Viggiano 2013 is a helpful recent survey; see note 15.

24. Hesiod, Works and Days, in Edwards 2004. Of course, Tellus’ wealth may have placed him in (say) the upper quintile of Athenian society; the question of exactly how deep mobilization would need to go in order to ensure state security was certainly answered differently at different times and places in the Greek world; the point is that Greek military development generally favored greater inclusivity.

25. Early Greek tyrants: Kinzl 1979; McGlew 1993; Raaflaub and van Wees 2009 ch. 6 Early Greek mercenaries: Parke 1933; Trundle 2004; Luraghi 2006; their employment by Greek tyrants: van Wees 2013b: 69–73. Hale 2013 emphasizes the entrepreneurial character of early Greek mercenaries and argues that mercenaries fighting abroad for pay, rather than citizen-warriors fighting for their poleis, were responsible for key innovations in Greek warfare.

26. Sparta and Laconia, politics, economics, and general history: Cartledge 1979, 1987, 2001; Hodkinson and Powell 1999; Hodkinson 1983, 2000. As we will see, economic specialization was limited at Sparta, and thus there was less room for demographic growth from the seventh to fourth centuries BCE than there was in some other parts of the Greek world.

27. Helots: Ducat 1990; Hodkinson 2000: ch. 4, 2008. Cartledge 2001 ch. 10; Luraghi and Alcock 2003. Bare subsistence: Cartledge 1987: 174. Hodkinson (2000: 135) argues for some “better off helots,” but also notes that Spartan masters were fined by the state if any of their helots were not stunted in growth (presumably as a result of systematic malnutrition): Hodkinson 2000: 114 with reference cited. On the role of systematic violence in lowering labor costs in agricultural regimes, and in the formation of long-lasting social attitudes (with special reference to the southern United States post-1865), see Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen 2014, with literature cited.

28. Spartan army: Lazenby 1985. Spartan “mirage”: Tigerstedt 1965; Cartledge 2001 ch. 12.

29. It is fairly certain that after the Spartan victory in the Messenian wars, the land of Messenia was made public, somehow divided among the Spartans (Hodkinson 2000: 104), and that the population of Messenia was enslaved as helots. Hodkinson 2000 argues at length that after (as before) the Messenian conquest, Spartan land was privately owned by individual Spartans, rather than collectively by the state and that women could inherit land. Helots were managed by individual Spartans, although they were collectively controlled by the Spartan state, and they could not be exported from Spartan territory. Many residents of Laconia were helots; whether they were native Laconians, conquered early on by the Spartans, or imported Messenians, is debated.

30. I am assuming that the combined population of Laconia and Messenia was distributed somewhat as follows: Spartans and their families: 35,000–40,000; perioikoi and Spartan slaves: 50,000–60,000; helots: 150,000–160,000. Obviously these are very rough estimates, but the basic point of relatively low helot-labor rents per Spartan is robust to quite substantial adjustment of the figures, which are in any event quite close to those that other scholars have reached by other means. Hodkinson 2000: 385–386, estimates 162,000–187,000 helots; Cartledge 1987: 174 estimates 175,000–200,000. Rents were further reduced by problems of supervision: Fleck and Hanssen 2006 (many kleroi [lands distributed by the state to individual Spartans] were distant from Sparta, and Spartans were unlikely to be deeply involved in day-to-day management) and by the fact that helots had negative incentives to innovate or produce extra surplus through extraordinary efforts: Helots thought to stand out in any way made themselves targets for state terror killing. The proportion of helots to Spartans would have increased as the numbers of Spartan citizens declined; see further ch. 9.

31. A reference in a poem by the archaic Spartan poet Tyrtaeus (F 6 West) implies that fully half of a helot family’s agricultural production was paid in rent to the Spartans; Hodkinson 2000: 126–127 argues that helots were sharecroppers and that they were Indeed made to give over at least half their produce.

32. Spartan austerity: Holladay 1977. Spartan egalitarianism might be understood as a perverted (based on violence-enforced social inequality between citizens and helots) variant of John Rawls’ (1999 [1971]) well-known egalitarian “difference principle,” which holds that inequality should be tolerated only insofar as it benefits the least advantaged citizen.

33. Sparta’s social panopticon: Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus; Hodkinson 2000: ch. 7. The term panopticon is taken from Jeremy Bentham’s late eighteenth century design for a prison in which the prisoners believe themselves to be under constant scrutiny.

34. Spartan education: Ducat 2006.

35. On ways in which the state discouraged economic activity and limited circulation of coinage within Spartan territory, see Hodkinson 2000: 154–179.

36. Disappearance of ambitious helots: Thucydides 4.80.3.

37. Spartan demography: Cartledge 1979 ch. 14, and ch. 9 in this book.

38. Natural state and proportionality principle: ch. 1.

39. Sixth century Spartan imperialism and the formation of the Peloponnesian League: Cawkwell 1993.

40. Athenian cult centers: Parker 1996. Contrast with Argos: de Polignac 1995.

41. Eleusis (i362), which was a polis briefly, in 403–401 BCE, is the exception. Salamis (i363) and Athenai Diades (i364), despite their inclusion in the Inventory, did not have polis status in the classical era.

42. Pre-Solonian Athens, and the evidence of burials: Morris 1987. Treasurers of Athena: Bubelis 2014.

43. Solon and his patriotic poetry: Anhalt 1993. van Wees 2013b: 53–61 surveys the history of Athenian conflicts with neighbors and seeks to show that early Athens was somewhat more militarily formidable than is often assumed, but the evidence he musters primarily relates to the sixth century BCE.

44. Self-enslavement and sale abroad of Athenians: Lewis 2004. Athens was not yet minting coins; wages for labor could have been either in kind or in monetary silver (cut fragments of bullion, found in some early Greek coin hoards). Kroll 2008 (and in earlier work) has argued that monetary silver was widely used in the archaic Greek world, including early sixth century Attica. Davis 2012 argues, against Kroll, for the dominance of in-kind exchange until the mid-sixth century BCE.

45. Kylon and Drakon: Ober 1989: 55–60.

46. Solon’s reforms and his aims: Linforth 1919; Blok and Lardinois 2006; Lewis 2006; Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace 2007 ch. 3.

47. Solon between elite and mass: Loraux 1984; Ober 1989: 60–65.

48. Solon and the invention of Athenian citizenship: Manville 1990.

49. Solon and the horoi: Ober 2006a.

50. Hubris law: Ober 2005b ch. 5. Cf. the use of intimidation, violence, and legal chicanery to create slavelike peonage (“neoslavery”) in parts of the U.S. south after 1865: Blackmon 2009.

51. Assembly as law court (Heliaia): Hansen 1999: 30. On the profound significance of imposing legal equality on magistrates, see Gowder 2013.

52. The denomination of “measures” (200/300/500) defining the three upper classes is very tightly grouped: Foxhall 1997. The distribution makes sense, however, if we assume that Solon was seeking to carve out a middling class with an identity that was distinct from that of the wealthiest members of the elite.

53. Kelcy Sagstetter, in unpublished work in progress, has emphasized the lack of property equalization in Solon’s laws and its potential consequences.

54. Solon’s political and economic reforms: Blok and Lardinois 2006, chs. 9, 13–16. Exactly how quickly the reforms might have had substantial economic effects remains unclear. Cf. note 44, on the debate over the use of monetarized silver in exchanges in Attica before the Peisistratid era of the later sixth century BCE.

55. Solon’s poetry: Blok and Lardinois 2006: chs. 1–6.

56. Peisistratid era: Lavelle 1993, 2005; Sancisi-Weerdenburg 2000. Panathenaic prizes: Shear 2003. Athenian pottery industry: this book, ch. 7 n. 3. Oil and wine production: Amouretti and Brun 1993.

57. Fleck and Hanssen 2013. Fleck and Hanssen’s formal model and empirical demonstration, using a version of the Inventory data, is different in method from earlier attempts, based on the literary record, to link tyranny with specific political and economic changes.

58. Chios and other experiments with strong citizen regimes: Robinson 1997. Intraelite rivalry: Forsdyke 2005; Duplouy 2006.

CHAPTER 7 From Tyranny to Democracy, 550–465 BCE

1. The ancient literary and documentary evidence for the events of this chaper is collected in Crawford and Whitehead 1983; Fornara 1983; Stanton 1990. Athens’ twin: this book, ch. 8.

2. “Natural state”: this book, ch. 1. The Greek word tyrannos: tyrant was borrowed by the Greeks from an Anatolian language; early usage lacks the moral opprobrium of later fifth century literary usage, e.g., by Herodotus.

3. Athenian pottery industry: Arafat and Morgan 1989; Cook 1997: 259–262, concluding (p. 262) that the total of workmen in the painted pottery industry was “in the order only of hundreds”; Osborne 2001.

4. On the Peisistratid tyranny at Athens, see Lavelle 1993, 2005; Sancisi-Weerdenburg 2000. Athenians in the northern Aegean and the drive to control strategic resources: Davies 2013; Kallet 2013: 52–54. Trireme building: van Wees 2013b.

5. Persian Empire: Briant 2002; Kuhrt 2007; Ma in progress a, drawing on documents in Ma, Tuplin, and Allen 2013, on the violence and rent-seeking of the Persian ruling elite. Carthage and the Greeks: Krings 1998.

6. The tyrant killers: Taylor 1991.

7. The end of the Peisistratid tyranny is related by Herodotus 5.62–65 and by Pseudo-Aristotle Ath. Pol. 18.2–19.4.

8. Athenian revolution: Ober 1996 ch. 4, 2007, drawing on Herodotus and Pseudo-Aristotle, Ath. Pol. The Council that resisted Isagoras was either the Areopagus, a Solonian Council of 400, or a newly instituted Council of 500, on which, see this chapter, section “Democratic Federalism.” Teegarden 2014b reviews the literature on the Solonian law on stasis, concluding that it is not genuinely Solonian.

9. For a range of views on Cleisthenes, the revolution, and the reforms, see Lévêque and Vidal-Naquet 1996 [1964]; Siewert 1982; Fornara and Samons 1991; Anderson 2003 with review of Pritchard 2005; Hammer 2005; Azoulay and Ismard 2012.

10. Regional population estimates are from the fourth century data: appendix I; late sixth century numbers were probably lower in each case.

11. The fundamental works on the Attic demes and deme/trittys/tribe organization are Traill 1975, 1986; Osborne 1985; Whitehead 1986. The geography of the demes has now been modeled in a brilliant new study: Fachard 2014.

12. Rhodes 1985a remains the fundamental account of the historical development and functioning of the Council of 500. On the Council’s role in building social networks and useful knowledge, see Ober 2008, ch. 4, with literature cited.

13. In 462 BCE, the Areopagus was relegated to a court that tried certain murder cases; see ch. 8.

14. The word demokratia was probably coined some time in the early to mid-fifth century, although it is not impossible that it was used as a slogan during the revolution itself; see Hansen 1986b.

15. On the evidence for other early Greek democracies, some of which might antedate Athens, but none of which is well documented, see Robinson 1997.

16. The events of 506: Herodotus 5.74–78. No regular Athenian army before this date: Frost 1984. My mental image of the Athenian army of 506 is the ragtag thirteenth century Russian peasant army that confronts Teutonic invaders on a frozen lake in Sergei Eisenstein’s great 1938 Soviet propaganda film, Alexander Nevsky.

17. A slightly different claim is made a few chapters earlier, at Herodotus 5.66.1: “Athens, which had been great before, now grew even greater when her tyrants had been removed.” While, in the earlier passage, Herodotus seems to offer a more positive assessment of Athens’ earlier standing, the association of growth with liberation is the point of both passages.

18. The puzzlement has quite often led to mistranslations, or even to philologically unwarranted emendations of the Greek text.

19. The developed “Cleisthenic” constitution: Hansen 1999. On the boom in Athenian public building after 508 BCE, see Paga 2012.

20. Battle of Marathon: Herodotus 6.94–117, with Krentz 2011. Importance: Mill 1846. The decision about the silver windfall: Herodotus 7.144.1–2 with Labarbe 1957. van Wees 2013b: 66–67 argues that Athens had built a navy of 50 triremes in the era of the Cleisthenic reforms and thus that the decision of 483 was a continuation of earlier policy, rather than a change of direction.

21. Athenian decision-making in 481: Ober 2013a; the battle of Salamis and its historical context: Strauss 2004.

22. Civic associations and trust: Kierstead 2013. Oath-taking: Teegarden 2012. The regional “thirds” by which each tribe was constituted remained essential administrative units but never developed strong identities of their own. Olson (1965, quoted in ch. 3) notes the relative ease with which collective action is achieved within groups small enough to ensure mutual monitoring.

23. Athens as a polis defined by its social networks: Ober 2008, ch. 4 (building on the fundamental work of Granovetter 1973 and Burt 1992); Ismard 2010. Absence of patronage in classical Athens: Millett 1989.

24. The discussion of knowledge and expertise in this section draws on Ober 2008, 2013a. The problem of (rational) collective ignorance: Caplan 2007. The problem of how best to use expert judgments along with “collective wisdom” within a democratic framework continues to be a research frontier; see for example http://www.goodjudgmentproject.com/.

25. Collective wisdom drawing on elite experts without elite capture, with reference to the decision of 481: Ober 2013a: 115–118.

26. This is the argument of Forsdyke 2005, the best and fullest recent discussion of ostracism and its origins. Notably, the ostracized man’s family was not expelled with him, nor was his property confiscated, and he resumed full citizen status upon his return.

27. Histories of ancient Greek Sicily: Finley 1968; Berger 1992; Luraghi 1994; De Angelis 2003. The most important single source for ancient Sicilian history before the late fifth century is the historian of the first century BCE, Diodorus Siculus; on Diodorus as a historian and his sources, see Sacks 1990. Thucydides and Herodotus are earlier and vitally important but less comprehensive sources. The history of Greek Sicily is augmented by rich numismatic and archaeological evidence, but the Greek cities of Sicily left very few inscriptions.

28. Sicilian agriculture and its role in economic and political development: De Angelis 2000, 2006, 2010.

29. History of the tyrants of fifth century Sicily and their epicracies: CAH 4 ch. 16 (by D. Asheri), 5 ch. 7 (by D. Asheri); Luraghi 1994.

30. Meiggs and Lewis 1988, no. 27.

31. Simonides F 106 Diehl. See note by W. Oldfather on pp. 194–195 of the (1946) Loeb edition of Diodorus.

32. Meiggs and Lewis 1988, no. 29.

33. Pluralistic ignorance as a goal of modern authoritarian governments: Kuran 1995; pluralistic ignorance as a problem that ancient democracies sought to overcome: Teegarden 2014a.

34. Koinon dogma: Teegarden in progress. Rise of rhetoric in Sicily: Kennedy 1994.

35. On the fifth century democracy at Syracuse, see Rutter 2000; Robinson 2000, 2011: 67–89. Syracuse instituted a lottery for some offices in a constitutional reform in 412 BCE and instituted a council in the mid-fourth century: ch. 9.

36. D. Asheri in CAH 5 p. 167 estimates Syracuse’s mid-fifth century population as 20,000 citizens, with a total population of ca. 250,000. Syracuse seems to have employed the three traditional Dorian tribes in organizing its army (i47: p. 228), but these did not have the civic functions of the Cleisthenic tribes in Athens. Contrast the establishment of Athens-like demes, grouped into tribelike organizations, at Eretria: Knoepfler 1997; Fachard 2014, and this book, ch. 9.

37. The generally salutary role played by public speakers at Athens: Ober 1989; see also this book, ch. 9.

38. Forsdyke 2005, Appendix 2, pp. 285–289, suggests first (contra Diodorus), that petalism might have been an independent Syracusan invention and, next, that petalism might have been used whenever the Syracusan demos felt that a public figure was acting inappropriately. She surveys possible evidence for ostracism and ostracismlike institutions at Argos, Miletus, Megara, Ephesus, Chersonesus, and Kyrene.

39. As we see (this book, ch. 9), the contrary proposition, that eastern Greece could not have foregone grain production at a level high enough to feed its population without Sicily, is false: in the mid-fourth century, when Sicilian production declined, the eastern Greek poleis found a ready supply of grain from other sources.

CHAPTER 8 Golden Age of Empire, 478–404

1. History of Greece in the fifth century BCE: CAH 5. Ehrenberg 1973; Osborne 2000; Hornblower 2002; Rhodes 2010. Ancient sources: Crawford and Whitehead 1983; Fornara 1983. Meiggs and Lewis 1988.

2. Wreckage of Athens: Thucydides 1.89.3; Athenian minting, 480–449 BCE: Starr 1970.

3. The ordinary equipment and training of hoplites were not well suited to siege operations: Ober 1991. The role of mobilization and fortifications in sustaining state independence is a recurring theme in this book: see especially ch. 11.

4. Persian wars and Athenian strategy: Strauss and Ober 1990: ch. 1.

5. The conflicted relationship of Persia’s sometime Greek subjects with the Persian Empire: Starr 1975; Debord 1999; see further this book, ch. 9.

6. Some of Sparta’s Peloponnesian League allies did, however, command considerable naval forces: Kelly 1982.

7. The concept of escalation dominance is applied to Roman history by Luttwak 1976.

8. Foundation of the Delian League, first tax assessment: Meiggs 1972 chs. 3–4; funding ship-building and naval operations with taxes on allies: van Wees 2013b: 104–106.

9. Kallet 2013 surveys the early history of the Delian League and emphasizes that the league’s naval forces were, from the beginning, employed to further specifically Athenian interests, notably in the northern Aegean.

10. Early operations against defectors from the Delian League: Meiggs 1972 ch. 5; Kallet 2013.

11. Azoulay 2014 is an excellent biography of Pericles, covering his political career and opponents in detail. Intensification of democracy: Fornara and Samons 1991; Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace 2007: ch. 5.

12. Ostracisms of the fifth century: Forsdyke 2005: 165–177.

13. The high imperial era of the 450s and 431: Meiggs 1972 chs. 6–10.

14. On the empire as a “greater Athenian state,” see Morris 2009, 2013a, emphasizing smallness of scale and ethnic homogeneity of rulers and ruled. Scheidel 2006: 8–9 describes Athens’ relationship with subject poleis as a hybrid of hegemony and empire (see this book, ch. 2 n. 21 for definitions), suggesting that the completion of Athens’ development as an imperial state was preempted by military defeat in the course of the Peloponnesian War. Important studies of the empire include Meiggs 1972; Rhodes 1985b; Mattingly 1996; Boedeker and Raaflaub 1998; Constantakopoulou 2007; Ma, Papazarkadas, and Parker 2009.

15. Persian influences in fifth century Athens: Miller 1997. Raaflaub 2009 goes further, arguing (p. 97): “with few exceptions, the entire range of Athenian instruments of empire was derived from Persian models.” Athenian emulation of some Persian techniques is plausible, but the instruments in question (tribute, garrisons, destruction as punishment for rebellion, imposition of officials and regimes, use of naval power) are common to empires very widely separated in time and space.

16. Some 51, or about 1/6 of the poleis of the Delian League are ranked as less than fully Hellenic, i.e., “Hellenicity” β or γ. See table 2.4 for discussion.

17. The principal-agent problem, first identified as an issue in the management of business firms, has been generalized to a wide range of both economic and political environments: Stiglitz 2008. Cf. Xenophon (Anabasis 1.5.9): The king’s empire is strong in size and population yet weakened by the fact that it is “dependent on the length of roads and the inevitable dispersion of defensive forces.” See further Starr 1975: 69–71.

18. Ionic ideology: Connor 1993; Morris 2009. Greek ethnic identity: Hall 1997.

19. Roman citizenship: Sherwin-White 1973. Difficulties in creating city-state Empires and distinctiveness of the Roman approach: Scheidel 2006.

20. The Athenian citizenship law: Patterson 2005; Blok 2009. Girls born to mixed marriages might be offered in marriage with a dowry but were very unlikely to find an Athenian husband.

21. Simonton 2012. De Ste. Croix 1954 inaugurated a long scholarly debate (discussed in De Ste. Croix 1972) by arguing that democracy, as protection against exploitation by oligarchs, was more valuable to most people within the empire than was local autonomy.

22. Athenian imperial policy and democracy: Brock 2009; Robinson 2011: ch. 4.

23. Mediterranean piracy in antiquity and its effects on economic activity: De Souza 1999; Gabrielsen 2003.

24. Hedrick 1994 discusses the monumental nature of the “first stele” and its role as an imperial monument, but, to my knowledge, its potential role as a long-horizon signaling device has not been noticed.

25. Of the 318 known states of the Delian League, 209 have size estimates. Of these, 154 were size 3 or below; 55 were size 4 or above. Eteokarpathians: Anderson and Dix 2004.

26. Rational calculation in classical Greek thought: Ober 2009. Economics of the empire: Finley 1978; Kallet-Marx 1993; Kallet 2001, 2007; Figueira 1998; Samons 2000; Erickson 2005.

27. Assuming total imperial taxes at 1,000 T (talents) (Xenophon Anabasis 7.1.27); ca. 550,000 families with daily income of 0.5–1.0 dr/day. Morris 2009, using different figures, suggests that Athens’ subjects paid for security about half of what was paid by the subjects of imperial Rome.

28. Value of trade and markets: Bresson 2000, 2007. Cabotage: Horden and Purcell 2000.

29. Standardized weights, measures, and coinage: Figueira 1998; Johnstone 2011: ch. 3. Minting: van Alfen 2011; Ober forthcoming: n. 16 with references cited.

30. Greek navies were not good at large-scale and sustained naval blockades for operational reasons discussed by Gomme 1937; Harrison 1999.

31. Athens’ imperial cleruchy system: Meiggs 1972: ch. 14; Moreno 2009.

32. Imperial era Athenian building: Boersma 1970; Wycherley 1978; Camp 2001: 59–116. Labor and wages: Loomis 1998.

33. Athenian mining and industry: Hopper 1953, 1979; Conophagos 1980; Bissa 2008.

34. Athenian demography in the fifth century: Hansen 1986a, 1988, 2006c.

35. Ehrenberg 1973; Harris 2002.

36. Culture in imperial Athens: Boedeker and Raaflaub 1998.

37. Morris 2009; Netz in progress.

38. Warships: Ober 2010b. Finance: Davies 1994; Kallet-Marx 1993, 1994; Samons 2000.

39. Sophists and their claims to expertise: de Romilly 1992; Cole 1991. Pyzyk forthcoming considers the question of Greek theories of expertise in detail.

40. Thucydides as a political scientist: Ober 2006b; Ober and Perry 2014. Cf. Reynolds 2009 for Thucydides’ epistemology.

41. Chance and intelligence in Thucydides: Edmunds 1975.

42. Newness of Athenian power and its conditions: Ober 2001.

43. These Periclean speeches are analyzed in more detail in Ober 1998: ch. 2.

44. Limits of Pericles’ authority: Ober 1996: ch. 6 On Pericles leadership, see further Azoulay 2014.

45. Pseudo-Xenophon, Ath. Pol. The arguments of the “Old Oligarch” are analyzed in more detail in Ober 1998: 14–27.

46. The “Corinthian assessement” is discussed in detail in Ober 2010b. Different evaluations of the origins of the war and the events leading up to it: Kagan 1969; De Ste. Croix 1972; Hanson 2005; Lendon 2010.

47. Pericles’ strategy: Ober 1996: ch 6. The early stages of the war: Kagan 1974.

48. The Athenian plague was identified as typhoid on the basis of DNA tests by Papagrigorakis et al. 2006, but their identification has been challenged by other specialists; see Littman 2009 for discussion.

49. Mytilene was among the handful of states within the empire that still contributed ships rather than tribute. It was also, like Chios (i840) and Miletus (i854), for example, both big and oligarchic.

50. Thucydides notes that this summer (428) saw a record number of Athenian ships in service, some 250 in all, and that the expense was immense (3.17): The passage is regarded by some as spurious or misplaced. Cf. discussion by Hornblower 1991 ad loc.

51. On the high level of skills demanded of the trireme rower, see Coates, Platis, and Shaw 1990; Rankov 1993; Strauss 1996.

52. The ideology of the fifth century Athenian hoplites is sometimes imagined as sharply distinguished from the ideology of the lower class citizens who served as rowers, e.g., by Raaflaub 1996 and Samons 1998. But see Hanson 1996; Pritchard 1998; Strauss 2000.

53. See, further, Ober 2010b, from which the previous several paragraphs on the Mytilenean campaign are adapted.

54. See further Price 2001.

55. Development of the tribute system under the empire: Meiggs 1972: chs. 13, 18; internal eisphora war tax on Athenians: Thucydides 3.19.1.

56. Kelly 1972 explores the complex maneuvers by various parties interested in renewing hostilities.

57. On the Melian dialogue, see Morrison 2000.

58. The destruction of Melos was long remembered by the Greeks as a particularly brutal moment in Athens’ imperial history, but it was not unique: Skione (i609, size 2) had been treated similarly after a revolt five years before (421 BCE): Thucydides 5.32.

59. Kahneman 2011: ch. 26, and Ober and Perry 2014 on Thucydides as a prospect theorist avant la lettre. On the Melians’ choice, see further Orwin 1994: ch. 5, emphasizing the emotion of shame (at the prospect of loss of independence).

60. Thucydides on the Sicilian debate: Ober 1998: 104–113.

61. Similarities of Athens and Syracuse: Thucydides 7.55.2 and Ober 1996: 79–80.

62. Campaign in Sicily and the role of Gylippos: Thucydides books 6–7 and Kagan 1981.

63. Athens in the wake of the Sicilian disaster, and the oligarchic interlude: Thucydides book 8 and Kagan 1987.

64. Xenophon Hellenica 1.6.31 claims that in 406 Bce Athenian crews were inferior to the Peloponnesian counterparts: It is unclear whether the change was due more to the loss of skilled rowers on the Athenian side, or the growing experience of their opponents.

65. The late stages of the Peloponnesian War: Xenophon Hellenica Books 1–2.

66. Athens in the immediate aftermath of the war: Strauss 1986.

CHAPTER 9 Disorder and Growth, 403–340 BCE

1. Detailed histories of the Greek world in the fourth century include Hammond and Griffith 1979; Tritle 1997; Rhodes 2010; CAH 6; Buckler 2003. Documents: Harding 1985; Rhodes and Osborne 2003.

2. New poleis on Anatolian coast: 19/115 (9%). Island poleis: Rutishauser 2012.

3. Knoepfler 1997; Fachard 2012: 47–49, 2014. Like Athens, each citizen was a member of a deme and tribe, citizens were called by their demotic, deme membership was hereditary, and each deme was governed by a demarchos.

4. Greek federalism: Shipley and Hansen 2006; Mackil 2013. Role of market-preserving federalism in economic development: Weingast 1995.

5. Expertise and mobility: Pyzyk forthcoming. Artillery: Marsden 1969; Campbell 2011. Military architecture responds to artillery: Ober 1987. Military innovations of the fourth century and rural fortifications in Attica: Ober 1985; rural fortifications in Eretria: Fachard 2012. Rational foreign policy at Athens: Hunt 2010. Interstate cooperation: Ryder 1965; Low 2007.

6. The diffusion of Greek science in the fourth century. Netz in progress.

7. Individual expression: Morris 1992: 128–144. Individuals as opposed to collectivities regarded as agents of change: Ferrario 2014. Spread of democracy: Teegarden 2014a. Honors to individuals: Shear 2011. Individual responsibility, example of the trial of Socrates: Ober 2010a.

8. History of Persia to 334 BCE: Briant 2002; Kuhrt 2007; Llewellyn-Jones 2013.

9. The expedition is described, in first-person detail and with great verve, by Xenophon, Anabasis. See further Lee 2007.

10. Imperial Sparta: Cartledge 1987; Hamilton 1991; Debord 1999: 233–253.

11. Evagoras was later to prove another untrustworthy agent, but for the time being was doing the king’s bidding.

12. Corinthian War: Hamilton 1979; Debord 199: 253–258.

13. Athenian operations in the north Aegean: Badian 1995; Heskell 1997. Taxes: Xenophon Hellenica 4.8.27 and Figueira 2005. The 10% tax is mentioned again in 355 by Demosthenes 20.60.

14. King’s Peace: Ryder 1965.

15. Second Athenian naval league: Cargill 1981. Income from the league ca. 195 talents per annum in the 370s, down to about 66 talents by 346: Brun 1983: 138–141. Costs of warfare in this period: Cook 1990. Harding 1995: 112–119 argues that Athenian foreign policy in the fourth century was consistently defensive, rather than imperialistic.

16. Aristotle, Politics 2.1270a. According to Aristotle, the situation was worsened by inheritance laws that allowed women to gain control over large tracts of real estate, claiming that by his time some two-fifths of Spartan territory was owned by women.

17. Sparta’s succeses and failure in the fourth century: Cartledge 1987. Rise of Thebes and foundation of Messene: Buckler 1980; Buckler and Beck 2008.

18. Quick recovery: French 1991. The Thirty: Krentz 1982, Wolpert 2002; Németh 2006. Amnesty: Carawan 2013; Ober 2005b: ch. 5.

19. Constitutional reforms at Athens: Harrison 1955; Ostwald 1986; Hansen 1999: ch. 7; Carugati forthcoming. Public archive: West 1989; Sickinger 1999.

20. Athenian critics of democratic rhetoric: Ober 1998: esp. chs. 2, 4.

21. Fleck and Hanssen 2012 show how Athenian courtroom procedure provided clear information about collective preferences and thereby allowed for closer alignment of incentives.

22. The previous paragraphs, on democratic discourse as a serious game played by masses and elites, and its social and political effects, draw on Ober 1989. See further Lanni 2009 on the role played by jurors in Athenian law courts in enforcing social norms.

23. Theban league as a koinon unusually dominated by a central state: Mackil 2013; the error of describing fourth century Thebes or the Boeotian League as democratic: Rhodes 2010: 291. History of the Theban attempt at hegemony: Buckler 1980; Buckler and Beck 2008.

24. Persian threat, fourth century Athenian cleruchies, and the “ghost of empire”: Rhodes 2010: 229; Griffith 1978; Cargill 1995; Badian 1995. Special relationship with Samos: Rhodes and Osborne 2003 no. 2.

25. Satraps’ Revolt: Weiskopf 1989 with review of Graf 1994. Origins and growth of the satrapy of Caria in early fourth century: Debord 1999: 357–358. Mausolus: Hornblower 1982. Mausolus and Hellenization: Ma 2014.

26. Theban belligerence and expansionism to 362: Buckler 1980; Philip at Thebes: Aymard 1954; Hammond 1997.

27. The complex international situation of 362–352: Buckler 2003.

28. Descent narrative: Pečírka 1976; descent narrative questioned: Eder 1995. The confusing name “Social War” derives from the Latin term for allies (socii), not from any role played by social class in the conflict.

29. Grain trade and state emergence: Moreno 2008. Imitation owls: van Alfen 2005. Selective Hellenization: Boardman 1994 and further discussion, this chapter and ch. 10.

30. This section draws on Mackil 2013. Focusing on the examples of Boeotia, Achaea, and Aetolia, and with reference to studies of federalism by contemporary institutional economists, Mackil’s book is the best available history of Greek federalism.

31. On the analytic distinction between limited-access “natural states” and open-access orders, and the conditions necessary for moving to and across the “doorstep” of open access, see North, Wallis, and Weingast 2009. This section draws on Carugati, Ober, and Weingast forthcoming, as well as on Ober 2008, 2010c.

32. Banks: Cohen 1992; Shipton 1997. Invisible wealth: Gabrielsen 1986. Lyttkens 1992 and Gabrielsen 2013 are helpful treatments of Athenian taxation and finance.

33. Athenian finances: Ober forthcoming. See further, Pritchard 2012, forthcoming; Lyttkens 2012; Rhodes 2013. Piraeus history: Carugati forthcoming.

34. Isoteleia: Whitehead 1977; enktesis: Pečírka 1966; naturalization: Osborne 1981. On the many variations in legal and social status in Athens, see Kamen 2013. Approvers: Stroud 1974; Ober 2008: 220–240.

35. Dikai emporikai: Cohen 1973, 1992; Lanni 2006: ch. 6 The doubts raised by Todd 1994 do not change the picture substantially.

36. Civil associations: Ismard 2010; Kierstead 2013. Religious association charters: Ober 2008: 252.

37. Philosophical schools as civil associations: Kierstead 2013. Formal bylaws and officials: Lynch 1972. Criticism of democracy by founders of these schools: Ober 1998.

38. Rutishauser 2007, 2012: ch. 6

39. Osborne 2009b: 341, “the Olbians observe practice in another Greek city, see its relevance to their own particular interests and concerns, and adapt it for their own use.” Adoption of Athenian taxation practice in Thespiai: Schachter and Marchand 2013.

40. Aeneas’ text is translated and helpfully annotated by Whitehead 1990.

41. Ephebeia and other changes in Athenian military organization: Ober 1985: ch. 5. Changing roles of politicians and generals: Hansen 1983. Hamel 1998: 194–195 shows that a fifth century BCE Athenian general “in charge of ships” is a fiction of modern scholarship.

42. Disputes over attribution of owls to mints: Ober 2008: 237–238. The reminting of owls in 354: Kroll 2011a and 2011b. The stone on which the law mandating the recall was inscribed is badly damaged and the law still awaits definitive publication. Grain tax law: Stroud 1998, and Ober 2008: 260–263.

43. Merismos, first attested in 386 (Rhodes and Osborne 2003: no. 19): Rhodes 2013; reforms of eisphora rules: Christ 2007.

44. Financial management of Eubulus and Lycurgus: Cawkwell 1963; Lewis 1997; Davies 2004; Burke 2010. Public projects of the 330s and 320s: this book, ch. 11.

45. Rhodes 2010: 299–301. Public slaves: Ismard 2013. Nicomachus: Todd 1996; Eukles: Clinton 2005: no. 159 line 60.

46. Ober forthcoming: 500–505. GDI is, for our purposes, a reasonable proxy for GDP. Other premodern fiscal regimes: Monson and Scheidel forthcoming.

47. Transfers as risk insurance, leading to growth: Ober 2008: 254–258. Transfers in the fifth century BCE: van Wees 2013b: 144–145. Reduced political inequality in the fourth century: Taylor 2007, 2008.

48. Davies 2004, and this book, ch. 11.

49. Syracuse after 413, constitutional change and war: CAH 6 ch. 5 (by D. M. Lewis), 13 (by H. D. Westlake).

50. Reign of Dionysius I: Sanders 1987; Caven 1990. Dionysius’ pay and prize scheme is also credited by Diodorus (14.42.1) with stimulating the development of the first quadrireme and quinquereme warships—the larger and heavier versions of the trireme that became the standard “ships of the line” in the Hellenistic period. Given that there is no reliable account of their use until the second half of the fourth century, this seems unlikely. Pliny (7.207) cites a lost work by Aristotle making the quadrireme a Carthaginian invention.

51. Dionysius II and “the legend of Dion”: Sanders 2008. Dion was Dionysius I’s brother-in-law and son-in-law: Dion’s sister married Dionysius I; Dion in turn married their daughter, his first cousin.

52. Archaeological evidence of economic crisis in Sicily: Talbert 1974: esp. 146. De Angelis’ book in progress on the social and economic history of archaic and classical Sicily is eagerly awaited by historians of Greek antiquity and is likely to nuance the stark picture offered by the literary sources of mid-century crisis and recovery.

53. Warfare and agriculture: Hanson 1983.

54. Mackil 2004. On mobility of Greeks, including laborers: McKechnie 1989; Purcell 1990; Garland 2014.

55. Timoleon’s life was recorded by Plutarch, Diodorus, and the Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos. While each of these accounts is clearly intended to draw a black and white contrast between a virtuous reformer and wicked tyrants, and while we cannot say whether things would have gone otherwise had Timoleon been in full health in 337 BCE, there is good reason to associate Timoleon’s victories and his reforms with the revival of Greek Sicily: Talbert 1974; Davies 1993: 246–249.

56. Cf. sharp, although temporary (in most areas; Britain and Holland are the exceptions) rise in wages in Europe after the Black Death: Allen 2001.

57. Talbert 1974: ch. 8; cf. Smarczyk 2003. Bronze coinage: data from Inventory Index 26; another 14 Sicilian poleis had first issued bronze coins in the fifth century. By comparison, 31% (64/206) of the western Anatolian poleis and 28% (110/388) of mainland and Aegean Greek poleis began minting bronze coins in the fourth century.

58. Starr 1975: 85–87. Earlier assumption of economic decline: CAH 2, ch. 38 (by J. M. Cook: 1961). Starr was my graduate advisor at the University of Michigan from 1975 to 1980.

59. Prosperity, pro-Persian oligarchies, institutional innovations and civic population growth: Debord 1999: 397–399, 495–498. Kyme: Hamon 2008. Evidence for democracy in Anatolian Greek cities in the fourth century: Robinson 2011: ch. 3. Hellenization and its effect on Greek as well as non-Greek peoples; Ma 2014.

60. Adoption of Chian weight standard: Meadows 2011.

61. Exceptions to the fortified large-polis rule: Zeleia (i764: size 4), Prokonessos (i759: size 3), and Adramyttion (i800: size 4).

62. Diplomatic language: Ma 1999, and this book, ch. 11.

CHAPTER 10 Political Fall

1. Contrast the meteor strike that many scientists believe ended the Cretaceous period with a mass extinction of nonavian dinosaurs, among other species: Alvarez 1997.

2. Davies 1993.

3. Biographies of Philip: Cawkwell 1978; Hammond 1994; Worthington 2008. detailed histories of the era: Ellis 1976; Hammond and Griffith 1979; Buckler 1989.

4. The role of “mobile experts” in the rise of Macedon is thoroughly documented and analyzed in Pyzyk forthcoming.

5. On Macedonian resources and history before the reign of Philip II, see Hammond and Walbank 1972; Borza 1990; Hatzopoulos 1996; Roisman and Worthington 2010: chs. 4, 7, 8. Timber: Meiggs 1982; Bissa 2009: chs. 4, 5.

6. The fraught question of “how Greek were the Macedonians” in language, ethnicity, social structures, and culture is reviewed, with somewhat different conclusions, by Borza 1990 and Haztopoulos 2011. Cf. Roisman and Worthington 2010: chs. 5, 6. Elite Macedonian society: Roisman and Worthington 2010: ch. 19.

7. Pella, Aegeai, and royal burials: Lane Fox 2011a: introduction and chs. 15, 18. On the “constitutionality” of the Macedonian kingship, I follow Borza 1990 against Hammond and Walbank 1972 and earlier scholars who tended to see Philip as a constitutional monarch. Full discussion in Hatzopoulos 1996; cf. Roisman and Worthington 2010: ch. 18.

8. On Macedonian kings and the Greeks in the fifth and early fourth century, see Lane Fox 2011a: chs. 4, 10, 13.

9. On the career of Philip, his impact on the development of Macedonia, and relations with the Greek world, see works cited in n. 2; Roisman and Worthington 2010: ch. 9; Lane Fox 2011b.

10. Land grants to soldier families and logic of continuous expansionism: Samuel 1988; Borza 1990: 239. Macedonian army: Roisman and Worthington 2010: ch. 22. Millett 2010 emphasizes the driving role of the army, imperial expansion, and plunder in the Macedonian economy under Philip.

11. Philip’s wives; Satyrus apud Athenaeus 3.557b–e. Borza 1990: 206–208.

12. The standard works on Philip’s coinage and mints is Le Rider 1977, with update in 1996. See also Borza 1990: 214; Worthington 2008: 197; Kremydi 2011; Millett 2010: 492–496.

13. Philip and Chalkidike: Lane Fox 2011a: chs. 7, 8. Excavations at Olynthos: Robinson and Mylonas 1929. Architecture, town planning, houeholds: Cahill 2002.

14. Athenian–Macedonian relations to 346, and the Peace of Philocrates: Montgomery 1983; Harris 1995; Hunt 2010.

15. Montgomery 1983 remains a good introduction to the main events, although Harding 1995 correctly points out that he underestimates the consistency and coherence of Athenian foreign policy. My lower bound for the empire’s population is established by the aggregate population of the poleis of regions 24 and 26–31 (Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace) = ca. 1.25 million; (appendix I). I assume that many people in the empire lived outside poleis. Note that this estimate includes Thessaly (ca. 320,000) but excludes Epirus (ca. 230,000). The upward bound is set by extrapolating from early twentieth century census figures. In 1917, some 2 million people lived in the regions encompassed by Greater Macedonia (Lane Fox 2011b, citing Hammond and Griffith 1972: 16). In 1913 (before the incorporation of Macedonia), the population of the modern Greek state reached ca. 2.75 million, a number that matches the estimated population of the same region in the later fourth century (figure 4.1). I assume that, in contrast to central Greece, Macedonia and Thrace were somewhat less densely populated in the fourth century BCE than in the early twentieth century.

16. Philip’s Greek policy: Ellis 1976 argued for the “secure peace” interpretation; Worthington 2008, among others, against it. Demosthenes and his policies: Mossé 1994; Worthington 2012.

17. The estimated population of the entirety of regions 6, 10–12, 20, and 21 comes to just over 1 million (appendix I), but the alliance did not include all of the poleis of regions 6, 11, or 21.

18. The course of events leading up to Chaeronea: Montgomery 1983.

19. Krentz 1985 offers the basis for estimating (albeit roughly) the total combatants in major “Greek vs. Greek” infantry/cavalry battles of the fifth and early fourth centuries: Akragas (472 BCE), 40,000; Tanagra (457), 25,500; Delium (424), 14,000; Mantinea (418), 17,000; Nemea (394), 46,500; Coronea (394), 40,000; Leuctra (371), 17,000.

20. The battle of Chaeronea: Ma 2008 with full bibliography of earlier literature.

21. Alexander’s expeditionary force in 334 was of similar size. See Engels 1978 for discussion. Athens refortifies after Chaeronea: Habicht 1997: 10–12, noting (p. 11) that Philip was “wise enough not to seek further hostilities” with Athens.

22. League of Corinth: Ryder 1965; Habicht 1997: 12.

23. Allen 2003 points to the emptiness of the vengeance rhetoric.

24. Events of 337–334 BCE: Worthington 2008: 152–193. Habicht 1997: 14–15 notes that Athens came close to joining Thebes in revolt.

25. Estimated by aggregating the estimated populations of regions 4, 7, 8, 13–19, 22, 23, and 25. See appendix I.

26. Philippopolis (i655) lay 138 km (straight line) north of the site of Abdera (i640: on the south Thracian coast); Kabyle (i654) was 222 km north of Kardia (i655: northern Chersonese). Alexandropolis (i652)—reputedly founded in interior Thrace by Alexander in 34 BCE remains unlocated.

27. Philip’s advantages in warfare: Demosthenes 11.47–50. The literature on the degree to which Philip sought to portray himself as a godlike king is reviewed by Borza 1990: 248–51; Worthington 2008: 194–203.

28. Davies 2004. On the role of imported experts in the political economy of Macedonia, especially in the age of Philip, see the informative discussion by Millet 2010, esp. 479 with n. 24.

29. Career of Eumenes of Kardia: Anson 2004.

30. On possible Aristotelian, and other fourth century Greek, influences on Alexander’s demonstrated talent as a decision-maker, see Ma 2013b. Aristotle’s tracts directed to Alexander: Ober 1998: 347–3 50.

31. Pyzyk forthcoming provides a full assessment of Greek experts in Philip’s employ. Among earlier studies, see Berve 1926.

32. Isocrates’ and Speusippos’ letters: Markle 1976.

33. Lane Fox 2011b: 367–368 argues that, contrary to Theopompus (FGrH no. 115 F 224), Philip must be regarded as a very good manager of finances.

34. Debt and borrowing: Millett 2010: 495–496, with references cited. See further, Hammond and Griffith 1979 442–443, on budgeting. The problem of sovereign debt in fourth century Greek state finance: Ober forthcoming.

35. Career of Callistratus: Sealey 1956.

36. Athenian state regulation of mining, evolution of mining technology, and state minting policy: Bissa 2008; 2009: ch. 2.

37. Best 1969.

38. Markle 1977, 1978 discusses the evidence for the form and the early use of the sarissa, arguing that Philip armed cavalry with the sarissa, and that infantry sarissas were a later development. But the scholarly communis opinion is that Diodorus 16.3.2 ([Philip] “devised the compact order and equipment of the phalanx in imitation of the close-order fighting of the heroes at Troy, and he was the first to establish the Macedonian phalanx”) is evidence for Philip’s sarissa-armed infantry. See Rahe 1981 for discussion of the infantry sarissa and its relationship to fourth century Greek military developments.

39. Athenian shipbuilders sent to Macedonia to build triremes on the spot: Meiggs and Lewis 1988: no. 91. Philip’s navy: Hauben 1975, arguing that the ships were built in Macedonian shipyards. We have the names of two of Philip’s admirals: Alkimos and Demetrios, but their origins and backgrounds are unknown.

40. Philip’s artillery, siege towers, Greek experts: Marsden 1977; CAH 6, ch. 12e (by Y. Garlan).

41. Nagle 1996 suggests, reasonably, that the speech is based on Macedonian court propaganda. But the sentiments it expresses were a matter of rhetorically colored exaggeration, not simple invention.

CHAPTER 11 Creative Destruction and Immortality

1. Goldstone 2002.

2. Hellenistic literature, Second Sophistic, and preservation of classical culture: Goldhill 2001; Whitmarsh 2005; Clauss and Cuypers 2010.

3. Hellenistic polis independence: Ma 1999, 2014, both building on Gauthier 1985, 1993; Fröhlich 2010.

4. Democracy in Hellenistic poleis: Dmitriev 2005; Grieb 2008; Carlsson 2010; Mann and Scholz 2012 with Ma 2013c; Teegarden 2014a. Literature review with critical discussion: Hamon 2010.

5. Arabic engagement with Greek texts: Pines 1986; Gutas 2000. European uptake of Greek literary culture: Goldhill 2002; Grafton, Most, and Settis 2010.

6. For example, the alleged systematic destruction of the texts and teachings of the non-Legalist “One Hundred Schools of Thought” by the First Emperor in Qin China after the consolidation of the empire in ca. 221 BCE.

7. The counterfactual world: Ober 1999: “Alexander dies young.” Ironically, years later Cleitus was himself speared to death by Alexander in the course of a drunken symposium. Alexander’s career and campaigns: Wilcken 1967; Bosworth 1988, 1996; Bosworth and Baynham 2000; Green 1991; Cartledge 2004; Roisman 2003.

8. Alexander’s adoption of the satrapal system; sieges of Miletus and Halicarnassus: Bosworth 1988.

9. Alexander’s arrangements in western Anatolia: Wilcken 1967: 81–95.

10. Ruzicka 1988 offers a detailed account of the sources and a plausible reconstruction of Persian strategy in 333 to 331 BCE.

11. Agis’ uprising: Wilcken 1967: 131, 138, 145; Habicht 1997: 20–21. Of the combatants, some 40,000 were on the Macedonian side. Agis’ Peloponnesian alliance would have had a population base of about 600,000, assuming that he had most of the poleis of regions 12–14, 17.

12. Lamian War and Athenian history after 322 BCE: Habicht 1997: 36–66. The population base for the Lamian War alliance was perhaps about 600,000 (assuming regions 7, 8, 20, 22, 42, and some of the states of the Peloponnesus)—thus roughly comparable in size to the estimated population base of the revolt led by Agis III in 331; see previous note. Neither alliance was equal in population base to the anti-Macedonian alliance of 338, but if (counterfactually) combined, the alliances of 331 and 322 would have had a population base substantially larger than that of the 338 alliance.

13. Hellenistic Rhodes and the siege: Gabrielsen 1997, 1999; battle of Ipsus: Billows 1990.

14. Hellenistic history and culture: Walbank 1993; Shipley 2000; Erskine 2003; Bugh 2006. Political history of the Hellenistic world: Will 1979.

15. Ma 2000, 2003, 2014a.

16. Austin 1986 concluded (pp. 465–466) that Augustine’s (City of God 4.4) description of kingdoms without justice as nothing more than “large robber bands” is “strikingly appropriate to the Hellenistic monarchies.”

17. Hellenistic economy: Reger 2007; Archibald 2001; Archibald, Davies, and Gabrielsen 2011.

18. Law of Eukrates: Teegarden 2014a, with literature cited. List of speeches preserved from this period by Aeschines, Demosthenes, Dinarchus, Hyperides, and Lycurgus: Ober 1989: 349. Public laws and decrees: Schwenk 1985.

19. History of the period: Habicht 1997: 22–35.

20. Ma forthcoming. By contrast, Tilly 1975: 24 notes that in 1500 CE governments in Europe bore considerably greater resemblance to one another than they did 200–300 years later. Tilly attributes the divergence to power struggles between kings seeking to centralize authority on one side and existing deliberative assemblies and other forms of dispersed governance on the other. The struggle was, for the most part, won by the kings, who largely succeeded in destroying or coopting deliberative institutions: ibid. 22.

21. Epigraphic dossiers: Ma 1999; public honors to generous elites: Ma 2013a; advances in military architecture: Ober 1992; McNicoll 1997.

22. Bresson 2011. What follows is based on Bresson’s interpretation of the inscription. The other two beneficiaries of grain were royal kinswomen of Alexander III: his mother Olympias, and his sister Cleopatra, who was at the time ruling Epirus.

23. This assumes that the standard was the Attic medimnos of ca. 52.4 L (as argued by Bresson 2011: 86–87); if instead it was the larger Aeginetan medimnos, then each individual’s share was about 30 L. The monetary value would be lower if the grain was barley rather than wheat. Labor value in wheat wages: table 4.6. We do not actually know how the grain was distributed in Athens or elsewhere. The 100,000 medimnoi is about 1/8 of the grain production of Attica plus Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros in 329–328 BCE—which may also have been a bad year: ibid 87.

24. Amartya Sen (1981) famously demonstrated that modern democracies respond to famine threats more reliably and effectively than autocracies, citing the open exchange of relevant information as the operative mechanism. Although we cannot be certain that the Kyrenean response prevented famine conditions, it seems certain that it at least lessened the severity of those conditions.

25. The naval base: Rhodes and Osborne 2003: no. 100, with discussion in Ober 2008: 124–133.

26. Rhodes, trade, and Aegean security: Gabrielsen 1997, 1999.

27. Hellenistic interpolis warfare: Ma 2000; interstate arbitrations: Ager 1996. Nonseizure (asylia) agreements: Rigsby 1996.

28. Refoundation of Thebes: Habicht 1997: 61–62; catapult-ready towers in the new city circuit of Messene: Ober 1987, 1992.

29. Blockmans 1989 analyzes the contest between rent-seeking “voracious states” and independence-seeking “obstructing cities” in medieval and early modern Europe, detailing the conditions (notably the level of urbanization) under which more and less favorable bargains were struck between kings and cities in different regions. Bargains in which cities retained some independence and paid relatively low taxes appear to have stimulated economic growth; arrangements that led to the complete subordination of cities appear to have depressed growth.

30. Teegarden 2014a: 221–238, illustrated on p. 223, figure A1. The other two regimes measured are kingship (peaking at 27% in the early sixth century) and tyranny (peaking at 53% in the late sixth century). Note that a given polis might experience more than one regime type in a given half century and the quantity and quality of information for regime type generally increases over time (many more observations in the fifth and fourth centuries than in the seventh and sixth centuries). But there is no reason to believe that the later data are biased in favor of democracy or that democratic interludes were especially short. The same historical trends held when Teegarden looked at the percentage of regions with at least one recorded instance of the relevant regime: ibid. Figure A2. The editors of the Inventory (Hansen and Nielsen 2004: 84) point to the continued prevalence of oligarchy and tyranny in the earlier fourth century, concluding that “it is first in the age of Alexander that democracy becomes the predominant type of constitution.”

31. See literature cited in note 4.

32. Teegarden 2014a.

33. Public languages of reciprocal generosity: Ober 1989; Ma 2013a; Athenian classical preeminence: Ober 2008.

34. Mackil 2013.

35. Marsden 1969; Winter 1971: 157; Campbell 2011; Frederiksen 2011: 94.

36. For an example, see Ober 2012.

37. Aristotle’s polis a kind of democracy: Ober 2005.

38. Ober 1998: 347–351.

39. On common knowledge, see Chwe 2001, with discussion here in ch. 1. Simonton 2012 demonstrates the importance of common knowledge for explaining ancient Greek regime change and persistence.

40. On the Roman policy of defortification of Greek towns, see Frederiksen 2011: 1 n. 6, 45–46.

APPENDIX II King, City, and Elite Game

1. Some idea of the “submission level” is suggested by the demands of the Roman senator Marcus Brutus when raising money for a war against the Caesareans in the mid-first century Bce: Brutus demanded that the cities of western Anatolia pay immediately the equivalent of 10 years of taxes. Cities that resisted were attacked. Rhodes was compelled to surrender all gold and silver in the city, public, private, or sacred. Xanthos was stormed and almost completely destroyed: Appian Civil Wars 4.63, Dio Cassius 47.33.1.

2. The negotiations between the splendidly walled Anatolian city of Herakleia under Latmos with Zeuxis, the envoy of King Antiochus III, provide an example: Ma 1999: 169–170, 185–186, 198–199.

3. It is not necessary that the actual probability be known, of course; what matters is that assumptions about the probability are shared.

4. Ma 1999.

5. On the role of information asymmetry in the origin of war in the modern world, see Fearon 1995.