Synopses & Reviews
This is the first book to present a synthetic view of Roman banking and financial life from the fourth century BC to the end of the third century AD. It describes the business deals of the elite and the professional bankers and the interventions of the state. It shows to what extent the spirit of profit and enterprise predominated over the traditional values of Rome, what economic role these financiers played, and how that role compares with that of their later counterparts.
Review
"The judicious surveys of research in the book provide an excellent introduction to the major issues of contention in the field by a master who thoroughly understands the implications of individual pieces of evidence." Allen Kerkeslager, Saint Joseph's University"With Banking and Business in the Roman World Andreau, who is working on a comprehensive history of banking from antiquity through the medieval period, has given us an excellent, wieldy introduction to the financial activities of the Roman Republic and the first three hundred years of the Empire. Substantivists will especially appreciate Andreau's approach, but I repeat that Andreau's exceptional openness and generosity toward divergent points of view leaves something, or rather everything, for everyone. Economic historians of all periods and of all dispositions will reap benefit from this survey of the practices of the ancient Romans...every serious economic or sical historian should buy it." EH.NET"With Banking and Business in the Roman World Andreau, who is working on a comprehensive history of banking from antiquity through the medieval period, has given us an excellent, wieldy introduction to the financial activities of the Roman Republic and the first three hundred years of the Empire. Substantivists will especially appreciate Andreau's approach, but I repeat that Andreau's exceptional openness and generosity toward divergent points of view leaves something, or rather everything, for everyone. Economic historians of all periods and of all dispositions will reap benefit from this survey of the practices of the ancient Romans...every serious economic or sical historian should buy it." EH.NET
Synopsis
The first synthetic view of banking and financial life in ancient Rome.
Synopsis
The first synthetic view of banking and financial life in ancient Rome.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction; 2. The financial activities of the elites; 3. Banks and bankers; 4. Other categories of financiers; 5. Dependants; 6. The tablets of Murecine; 7. The tesserae nummulariae; 8. The interest rate; 9. Rome's responses to financiers and financial crises; 10. The financial activities of the city of Rome and of the empire; 11. The problem of quantities and quantitative developments; 12. Financial life in Roman society and its economy.