STATUS AND RANK
Finley’s analysis of‘the ancient economy’stemmed from a number of
unproven assumptions: that the propertied élites of antiquity were
motivated mainly, if not exclusively, by a simple desire to maintain
their inherited rank or status;^53 that these élites were in effect unchan-
ging, stable social phenomena, with stable sources of revenue; that they
effectively had an unchallenged control over negotiation in transactions;
and that status or rank always trumped other ways of accruing or
acquiring power, including new sources of knowledge and technology.
Finley did notfind it necessary to argue all these points in detail, whilst
rejecting any alleged encroachment on the monopoly of economic power
by non-élite groups, particularly in cities.^54
It is not difficult tofind examples of Roman exploitation, in view of the
fact that Italy alone of the imperial provinces was free of tribute collec-
tion after 167bc. Finley’s chapter on‘Landlords and peasants’focuses
on a select set of comparatively unusual landowners and their estates—
that of Apollonios in the third-centuryadFayum; of the Apion family in
sixth-century Egypt; or of Herodes Atticus in second-centuryadMara-
thon. There was, he claimed, a progressively widening gap between small-
holders and these sorts of big players. While the big players, including
informative individuals, such as Cato the Elder, Columella, or Pliny the
Younger, may have had all kinds of ideas about how to run estates, they
(^53) Finley 1985 [1999] 35–61, esp. 41–7, 60; 144.
(^54) Finley 1985 [1999] 59 (Lyons); 193 (Arezzo, Patavium, Marseille); 177–207,‘Further
Thoughts’; cf. Finley 1980, 88:‘Without a sufficient cash-income, the Athenian élites could
not have acquired the necessities for even their relatively low life-style, for their indispens-
able weaponry, or for the taxes which paid for public works, public festivals and public cults.
None of this requires a revival of the Beloch-Meyer“modernism”; it requires merely an
acceptance of some commodity production, in particular by the élites, and of the notion
that members of the élites did not personally perform all the requisite labour, aided solely by
members of their individual families.’Contra: Davies 1981, 73:‘That the liturgical class was
not a caste is a truism. The evidence set out inAPF[= Athenian Propertied Families,1971]
helps to make clear both the fact that its composition did change through the generations
and the extent to which this change falls into a predictable pattern. Such change has two
aspects, a family’s biological continuity and the stability of its economic position.’...‘There
is one family members of which are attested in the liturgical class forfive generations;five
families are attested for four generations; 16 families are attested for three generations; 44
families are attested for two generations; and no fewer than 357 are attested in a single
generation only’(Davies 1981, 86). Davies goes on to explore the statistical evidence within
the better-documented generations of the mid and late fourth century and concludes that,
whatever the exact reliability of these survivingfigures in relation to historical family
histories, they seem consistent with the ephemeral nature of inherited wealth expressed
by the author of [Dem.] 42.4.
106 Societies and economies