This elegant and provocative book is perhaps more important now than when it was first published. The three essays that comprised the first edition developed a remarkable discourse between ancient Greek and modern conceptions of democracy, in the belief that each society could help us understand the[...]

"Technical progress, economic growth, productivity, even efficiency have not been significant goals since the beginning of time," declares M. I. Finley in his classic work. The states of the ancient Mediterranean world had no recognizable real-property market, never fought a commercially inspired wa[...]