This book was immensely influential in its day. I use "in its day" to point to the out-of-date approach of Finley and his subsequent eclipse. He states that there is essentially no "ancient economy" and that we can't use economic yardsticks to measure what was essentially a status, non-market based economy. He states on page 23: "There was no business cycles in antiquity; no cities whose growth can be ascribed, even by us, to the establishment of manufacture..." I think modern archaeology would disagree with his statement. His method of analysis is textual literary analysis and he even uses remarks uttered by Trimalchio to support his conclusions! Things have come along way. Perhaps better is "The Archaeology of the Roman Economy" by Green. In any case, it's amazing how much classical studies have changed in 35 years. ( )

A fascinating book. Some of the per-se economics is wrong, or at least out of date. But, like everything Finley wrote, it's briliant, forcing intellectual daring and rigor on a discipline--at best--too accustomed to lazy, unreflective "common sense" reasoning. ( )

The subject matter is fascinating but Finley's writing is inaccessible. For an academic, that's praise. For me, it means that I still haven't managed to wade through it. ( )