Book Review: The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political and Economic Study by Paul Erdkamp

The title of Erdkamp\u27s new book fails to do it justice. This study looks at much more than the grain market. Indeed, the first three chapters are a wide-ranging discussion of-and excellent introduction to-Roman agriculture. They also examine the cultivation of olives and grapes, and the economic strategies of peasants, as well as those whose production was geared more toward the market. In order to understand the grain market, Erdkamp looks far beyond the marketplace to the constraints placed upon producers, the problems of storage and transportation, and the impacts of taxation, geography, and public food distribution on supply and demand

Risky Business: Traders in the Roman World

There has been tremendous growth in the study of the Roman economy since M. I. Finley penned his rather gloomy Further Thoughts on the topic in 1984. The sheer amount of material now available is both impressive and intimidating. Generally speaking, the New Institutional Economics approach, which views institutions as the primary determinants of economic performance because of their effect on transaction costs, has come to dominate Roman economic history. This is a positive development, but attempts to answer macroeconomic questions, such as the nature and extent of growth in the Roman economy, sometimes obscure the role of the individual economic actor: much has been published recently on trade and markets, not enough on traders and merchants .2 This chapter approaches the Roman economy from the perspective of the trader. I begin by asking who traders were, where, with whom, and under what conditions they worked, what they traded, as well as the environmental, social, and technological factors constraining their behavior. Then I turn to two narrower questions. First, to what extent did Roman traders compete with one another? Second, what can Roman discourse about business ethics tell us about the market context in which traders operated? Because substantial changes· took place in the late antique economy ,3 this chapter focuses on the late Republican and early Imperial periods. In addition to illustrating the world inhabited by the Roman trader, I hope to demonstrate that modern economic approaches do help us understand the Roman economy, in part because modern traders continue to grapple with many of the same challenges faced by their ancient colleagues

Thirty Tyrants Rule Athens for Eight Months

Following its defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Athens was ruled by thirty oligarchic, pro-Spartan tyrants, whose despotic behavior quickly led to civil war and the restoration of the democracy

Biometrics and the Public Realm: Urban Sustainability During the COVID Pandemic

Prof. Hollander will speak about the ways that sustainability scholars and professionals need to approach the design of the public realm differently today. These new requirements are due to social distancing requirements of the pandemic and in light of recent advances in psychology and neuroscience that help us understand better how people experience urban space. Professor Hollander will discuss some of the key findings from his forthcoming book on these topics, co-edited with Ann Sussman: Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm (Routledge, 2021)