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The Ancient City: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and Beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

M. I. Finley
M. I. Finley
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University of Cambridge
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Extract

The Graeco-Roman world, with which I am concerned to the exclusion of the pre-Greek Near East, was a world of cities. Even the agrarian population, always a majority, most often lived in communities of some kind, hamlets, villages, towns, not in isolated farm homesteads. It is a reasonable and defensible guess that, for the better part of a thousand years, more and more of the inhabitants of Europe, northern Africa and western Asia lived in towns, in a proportion that was not matched in the United States, for example, until the Civil War. (Admittedly only a guess is possible, since statistics are lacking for antiquity.) The ancients themselves were firm in their view that civilized life was thinkable only in and because of cities. Hence the growth of towns as the regular and relentless accompaniment of the spread of Graeco-Roman civilization; eastward after the conquests of Alexander as far as the Hindukush, to the west from Africa to Britain with the Roman conquests, until the number of towns rose into the thousands.

Type
The Urban-Rural Connection
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 305 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1977

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References

This is a considerably revised and enlarged version of a paper I read to the annual conference of the Urban History Group in Churchill College, Cambridge, on 7 April 1976. For helpful criticism I am grateful to Peter Garnsey, Keith Hopkins and C. R. Whittaker, all of whom dislike the “intellectual history” framework of the analysis.

1 This subject has not been properly investigated; as a beginning, see Peč´irka, J., “Homestead Farms in Classical and Hellenistic Hellas,” in Probiemes de la terre en Grece ancienne, Finley, , ed. (Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1973), pp. 113–47;Google ScholarWightman, E. M., “The Pattern of Rural Settlement in Roman Gaul,” in Aufstieg und Nieder-gang der römischen Welt, ed. Temporini, H. and Haase, W., vol. 11 4 (Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 1975), pp. 84–657.Google Scholar

2 There are important nuances distinguishing Plato and Aristotle, especially with respect to internal trade: see my “Aristotle and Economic Analysis,” Past and Present, no. 47 (1970), 3–25Google Scholar, reprinted in Studies in Ancient Society, Finley, , ed. (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 26–52.Google Scholar

3 See Berry, B. J. L., ed., City Classification Handbook (New York: Wiley, 1972)Google Scholar. A French inquiry managed to achieve a total of 333 variables; see Lefebvre, Henri, La Revolution urbaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), p. 67.Google Scholar

4 Current discussion of the problématique of urban culture “is concerned in fact with the cultural system characteristic of industrial society, and, for the majority of distinctive traits, of capitalist industrial society”: Castells, M., “Structures sociales et processus d'urbanisation: analyse comparative intersocietale,” Annales (E. S. C), XXV (1970), 1155–99Google Scholar, at p. 1157. Cf. the opening chapter of Lefebvre, op. cit.

5 (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 2.

6 “Reflections on the New Urban History,” Daedalus, C (Spring 1971), 359–75Google Scholar, reprinted in Historical Studies Today, Gilbert, F. and Graubard, S. R., eds. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), pp. 320–36Google Scholar, at p. 324.

7 English ed. of Parts I and III, by R. Pascal (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1938), p. 8. The work was completed in 1846, and the fact that this part was not published in Marx's lifetime is irrelevant to my argument.

8 The view that all pre-industrial cities, of the ancient East, classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, resemble one another closely has been projected by Sjoberg, G., The Preindustrial City (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1960), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar In his pursuit of “structural universals,” Sjoberg divides society into three types, “folk,” “feudal” and “industrial-urban'” (p. 7), and asserts that in “feudal” societies (among which he includes the ancient), “relative to the total population, urban residents are few” (p. 11). From that complex of false starts there is no possible recovery.

9 Thus, Hammond, Mason, The City in the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, carries the identification of city with city-state so far as to exclude from his “preliminary definition” the “administrative center, however much built up, of a state which is organized socially and politically throughout its occupied territory. The capital of such a state is merely the nucleus of the united territory without any characteris tics peculiar to itself as against the rest of the state” (p. 6). Perhaps the potential reader should also be warned that Hammond begins by saying that “the impetus of this book was the question whether the emergence of cities in Italy resulted from a natural development of the Indo-Europeans or whether it reflected Greek institutions planted in South Italy.”

10 See, e.g., Ucko, P. J. et al., eds., Man, Settlement and Urbanism (London: Duckworth, 1972);Google ScholarAdams, R. McC., The Evolution of Urban Society (Chicago: Aldine, 1966);Google ScholarWheatley, Paul, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Origin and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Chicago and Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

11 See especially Martin, Roland, L'urbanisme dans la Grece antique (2ed., Paris: A. & J. Picard, 1975)Google Scholar. Cf. Wycherley, R. F., How the Greeks Built Cities (2 ed., London: Macmillan, 1973);Google ScholarHomo, L., Rome impériale et l'urbanisme dans l'antiquité (Paris: Albin Michel, 1951).Google Scholar

12 “La citta anticadi Fustel de Coulanges,” Rivista storica italiana, LXXXII (1970), 81–98Google Scholar, reprinted in his Quinto contributo alia storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico (2 vols., Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1975), I 159–78.Google Scholar

13 “The English Manor,” an introductory essay to the English translation of Fustel's The Origin of Property in Land (London 1891), p. ix.Google Scholar The latter was first published in the Revue des Deux Mondes (1872), and was then reprinted in his Questions historiques, Jullian, C., ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1893), pt. II.Google Scholar

14 On the latter, see the important inaugural lecture (1913) by Arangio-Ruiz, V., Legenti e la citta, reprinted in Scritti giuridici per il Centenario della Casa Editrice Jovene (Naples, 1954), pp. 109–58.Google Scholar

15 P. 78 of the American translation mentioned in the text, p. 69 of the 2nd French ed. (Paris, 1866).

16 See Lukes, S., Emile Durkheim (London: Allen Lane, 1973), pp. 58–63.Google Scholar

17 Ancient City, p. 28 English ed. (p. 20 French).

18 Preface to vol. I of L'Année sociologique (1896/7).

19 Introduction to Hertz, R., Death and the Right Hand, R, . and Needham, C., trans. (London: Cohen and West, 1960), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

20 Quoted from Meek, R. L., Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 162.Google Scholar Perhaps surprisingly, Werner Sombart had already called attention to this particular passage half a century ago in a short essay on “The Beginning of Sociology,” and regretted the neglect of Millar's Origin of Ranks, “one of the best and fullest sociologies we possess,” containing the kernel of what is now known under “the unfortunate rubric, ‘materialist conception of history’”: Erinnerungsgabe fur Max Weber, Palyi, M., ed. (2 vols., Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humbolt, 1923), 1 11, 13–14.Google Scholar

21 P. 1 of the English translation (seen. 13above). Inch. 4 of this essay, acritique of Laveleye, E. de, De la propriété et ses formes primitives (Paris, 1874), Fustel demonstrated his ability to deal with ethnographic data when pressed. This chapter is actually entitled “Of the Comparative Method.”Google Scholar

22 Op. cit., pp. xlii–xliii.Google Scholar

23 My quotations appear on pp. 191 and 194 of vol. II.

24 Ibid., p. 191.

25 I 128. The second edition was a radically rewritten, restructured and enlarged work, but the chapter on the city was not significantly altered in substance. All subsequent editions of the original two-volume core of Der moderne Kapitalismus were merely photographic reprints of the second.

26 lst ed., II 194.

27 Bücher had published an earlier version of his theory in an obscure journal as far back as 1876, but it received no attention until the appearance of Die Entstehung; see Below, G. v., “Ueber Theorien der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung der Völker …,” Historische Zeitschrift, LXXXVI (1901), 1–77, at p. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 See Will, E., “Trois quarts de siecle de recherches sur Peconomie grecque antique,” Annales (E.S.C.), IX(1954), 7–22;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFinley, M. I., “Classical Greece,” Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Economic History,Aix-en-Provence 1962, vol. I(Paris and The Hague:Mouton, 1965), pp. 11–35.Google Scholar

29 The three articles are reprinted in the posthumous 2-volume Pirenne collection, Les villes et les institutions urbaines (Paris and Brussels: Felix Alcan, 1939), I 1–110.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p. 32.

31 Lyon, Bryce, Henri Pirenne (Ghent: E. Story-Scientia, 1974), p. 146.Google Scholar

32 Pirenne, “Les periodes de l'histoire sociale du capitalisme,” Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres, Académie Royale de Belgique (1914), 258–99, at p. 264. An English translation appeared in the American Historical Review, XIX (1914), 493–515Google Scholar, but with much of the annotation omitted.

33 Lyon, , op. cit., p. 199. Weber was hardly noticed in the paper, and Lyon himself manages to confuse Bücher, Weber and Marx (e.g. p. 176).Google Scholar

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35 Op. cit., p. 33.Google Scholar See also his review-article on the 1st ed. of Sombart, , Der moderne Kapitalismus, in Historische Zeitschrift, XCI (1903), 432–85.Google Scholar

36 Bücher, , Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tubingen, 1922), p. 3.Google Scholar

37 “Zur griechischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte,” Festgabe für A. Schäffle (Tiibingen, 1901)Google Scholar, enlarged and reprinted as the 100-page first chapter of his Beiträge, a completely neglected work.

38 Bücher, K., Die Entstehungdes Volkswirtschafts (5th ed.,Tubingen, 1906), pp. 370–1Google Scholar (cf. pp. 441–4). The quotation in my text does not appear in the English translation, made from the 3rd ed., by Wickett, S. M. under the grossly misleading title, Industrial Evolution (London and New York, 1901). My other reference, however, will be found in the latter, pp. 371–4.Google Scholar

39 Op. cit., I 142–3. In the first edition there is only a fleeting hint of the concept: II 222–3.Google Scholar

40 See, e.g., Weber's references to Sombart in The Protestent Ethic, the references in Weber, Marianne, Weber, Max. Ein Lebensbild (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1950),Google Scholar and Sombart's introduction to the 2nd ed. of Der moderne Kapitalismus.

41 Biücher's importance for Weber is still more evident and more explicit in the second chapter of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, “Soziologische Grundkategorien des Wirtschaftens.” I shall cite this work in the 4th ed. by Winckelmann, J. (2 vols., Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1956).Google Scholar

42 “Der Stadt” first appeared in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, XLVII (1921), 621–772.Google Scholar In the 4th ed. of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft it is reprinted, II 735–822, and I shall cite that edition. On the “three layers” within the work, see Mommsen, W.J., The Age of Bureaucracy: Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar

43 Weber, Marianne, op. cit., p. 375. The 1897 version does not refute my remarks.Google Scholar

44 Alfred Heuss in the opening pages of his centenary article, “Max Webers Bedeutung für die Geschichte des griechisch-romischen Altertums,” Historische Zeitschrift, CCI (1965), 529–56. Heuss' account would have been more complete, though perhaps only a little less gloomy, had he been less parochial and looked outside Germany.Google Scholar

45 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, II 736–9.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., II 805–9; cf. Agrarverhältnisse, especially pp. 139–6, 256–7.Google Scholar

47 Agrarverhaltnisse, pp. 143–4.Google Scholar

48 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, II 739.Google Scholar

49 That this was Weber's own schema is shown by the most recent editors: see J. Winckelmann in his introduction to the 4th ed. of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, I xi–xii;Google Scholar cf. G. Roth in his introduction to the 3-vol. English translation, Roth and C. Wittich, eds. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), I lxxvii n. 87, xci-xciv.

50 The lecture is reprinted as the first essay in his Gesammelte Politische Schriften, Winckelmann, J., ed. (3rd ed., Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1971).Google Scholar

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52 Marcuse, H., “Individualism and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber,” Negations, Shapiro, J. J., trans. (London: Allen Lane, 1968), ch. 3, at pp. 201–3;Google Scholar cf. Habermas, J., “Technology and Science as Ideology,” Toward a Rational Society, Shapiro, J. J., trans. (London: Heinemann, 1971), ch. 6.Google Scholar

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57 The Ancient Economy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), p. 137.Google Scholar

58 See Kocka, H. J., “Karl Marx und Max Weber. Ein methodologischer Vergleich,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, CXXII (1966), 328–57, at pp. 329–35. An excellent starting-point on Marx and Weber, with good bibliography, is provided by Mommsen, Age of Bureaucracy, ch. 3.Google Scholar

59 Grundrisse, Nicolaus, M., trans. (Penguin Books, 1973), p. 256.Google Scholar

60 The texts are conveniently assembled byWelskopf, E. Ch., Die Produktionsverhaltnisse im alten Orient und in der griechisch-romischen Antike (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957), ch. 10.Google Scholar

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62 Mommsen, , Age of Bureaucracy, pp.50–1.Google Scholar

63 I quote from the Penguin translation by Ben Fowkes (1976), p. 472.

64 I write “ideal types” deliberately. On important similarities in the approach of both Marx and Weber, see Ashcraft, R., “Marx and Weber on Liberalism as Bourgeois Ideology,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, XIV (1972), 130–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Grundrisse, p. 484.Google Scholar

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69 Frederiksen, M. W., reviewing my Ancient Economy in Journal of Roman Studies, LXV(1975), 170–1.Google Scholar

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71 In one field, the Greek “colonies” of southern Italy and Sicily, the persistent efforts of E. Lepore to introduce a proper conceptual approach should be noted: “Strutture della colonizzazione focea in Occidente,” Parola del Passato, XXV (1970), 19–54Google Scholar; “Napoli Greco-Romana. La vita politica e sociale,” in Storia di Napoli, I (Naples 1968), pp.141–371;Google Scholar“Per un fenomenologia storica del rapporto citta-territorio in Magna Grecia,'' in La città e il suo territotio [Atti del 7° Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia (Naples, 1968)], pp. 29–66.Google Scholar

72 See e.g. Alford, R. R., “Critical Evaluation of the Principles of City Classification,” in Berry, , ed., City Classification Handbook, ch. 11;Google ScholarFrisch, M. H., “L'histoire urbaine americaine: réflexions sur les tendances récentes,” Annales (E.S.C.), XXV (1970), 880–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 For the evidence, see Kahrstedt, U., Das wirtschaftliche Gesicht Griechenlands in der Kaiserzeit (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1954), pp. 132–6.Google Scholar

74 Galsterer, H., Herrschaft und Verwaltung im republikanischen Italien [Miinchener Beitrdge zur Papyrusforschung …, no. 68 (Munich: Beck, 1976)], pt. I;Google Scholar see Gabba, E., “Urbanizzazione e rinovamenti urbanistici nell’ Italia centro-meridionale del I. sec. a.C,” Studi classici e orientali, XXI (1972), 73–112.Google Scholar

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76 These figures are taken from the best modern account of the city in the later Empire, Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G., Antioch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), ch. 2.Google Scholar

77 See my Ancient Economy, ch. 5; Jones, A. H. M., The Roman Economy, Brunt, P. A., ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), ch. 1–2.Google Scholar

78 Magie, David, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (2 vols., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 181.Google Scholar

79 Alföldy, G., Noricum, Birley, A., trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 43.Google Scholar