early theorists remain important but contested. Among these perhaps
the most under-rated phenomenon is the role of markets, a topic that
deserves to be considered in more detail.
Ancient historians have tended to be conservative in their use of
economic and sociological theories, following the lead set by modern
historians and to a lesser extent by anthropologists. Archaeologists have
adopted anthropological ideas much more readily, but have been less
interested in the kinds of questions that historians are preoccupied with.
This may explain why Moses Finley’s‘minimalist’approach has had, and
continues to have, an enormous appeal for students of classical antiquity,
and why Finley’s works are cited more frequently than Weber’s. In his
monographThe Bücher-Meyer Controversy, Finley retold the debates
on economic questions of the late nineteenth century through a very
particular lens, namely through the polarity of‘primitivist’, or rather
‘substantivist’and‘modernist’positions, with the‘primitivists’/‘substan-
tivists’cast as the angels, even though his own views about supposed
‘modernists’, notably Eduard Meyer, were far more complex, if not
contradictory.^6 Finley adopted Bücher’s‘substantivism’(the notion of
the fundamental‘embeddedness’of ordinary economic relations in a
social matrix), and adapted Weber’s limited form of‘capitalism’by
confining significant volumes of exchange, and significant economic
development, to a small number of large cities, which, he argued, were
effectively parasitic to the political structures that enabled exceptional
variety and exceptional quantities of foodstuffs, exotic materials, and
other manufactured commodities, to reach them.^7 The implication was
that the wealthy élites—never sufficiently explored beyond Athens and
Rome—preyed on the numerical majority of small farmers, tenants, and
dispossessed, whether slave or free. This shrewd compromise effectively
made Finley’s views more elastic than his expositions imply, allowing
subsequent studies to be measured up to his published evaluations, or
contrasted with them. The tendency to measure up scholarly contribu-
tions to Finley’s orthodoxy has given the discourse on ancient economic
analysis a distinctly Manichean sense, with little recognition that Finley’s
attitude could, at worst, simply have been misconceived, or, at best,
insufficiently nuanced.^8 The question whether Finley was justified in
arguing that theories applied to the analysis of modern economies were
irrelevant to the ancient classical world has in practice been evaded by
(^6) Nafissi 2005, 203–8, 237–47.
(^7) Finley 1985 [1999] 19–20, 23, 26–7, 32–3, 89, 106–7, 136–9, 144–6, 156–7, 192–3.
(^8) The term‘Manichean’was applied by Andreau 2002 [1995] 34; Finleyan‘orthodoxy’:
see Morris in Finley 1985 [1999] xxiv.
88 Societies and economies