Toutain J. - The Economic Life of the Ancient World

THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION

THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE
ANCIENT WORLD

The History of Civilization

General Editor C. K. Ogden

The History of Civilization is a landmark in early twentieth Century publishing. The aim of the general editor, C. K. Ogden, was to "summarise in one comprehensive synthesis the most recent findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists and all conscientious students of civilization." The History , which includes titles in the French series L'Evolution de I'Human it , was published at a formative time in the development of the social sciences, and during a period of significant historical discoveries.

A list of the titles in the series can be found at the end of this book.

J. Toutain

Translated by
M. R. Dobie

London and New York

First published in 1930 by Routledge, Trench, Trubner
Reprinted in 1996, 1998, 2002 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
&
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1996 Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or utilized in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN: 0-415-15585-1
ISBN Roman Civilization (6 volume set); 0-415-15613-0
ISBN History of Civilization (50 volume set): 0-415-14380-2

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

TO MY DEAR WIFE
PAULINE TOUTAIN-BLANCHET
IN MEMORY OF OUR FATHER
D. BLANCHET

HERE is a volume of great importance in our general plan. In it we reach back to the volume on Prehistoric Man, in which we saw the part played by the hand, the continuations of the hand, the making of the first tools, the birth of industry and its expansion, the appearance of agriculture, and the beginnings of trade and its development by the mutual relations of human groups .

As we said in the Foreword to that volume, our lamented friend Paul Lacombe was to have written an introduction establishing the connexion between these two works; he was to have dwelt on the evolution of technique, on the part played by economics in the history of mankind. At one time Paul Lacombe, who afterwards admitted the superior importance of the intellectual element, was inclined to place economic activity in the forefront of history. As far as the beginnings were concerned, he was absolutely right. Without ceasing, " the air devours man"; he has to repair himself, to remake himself. Sun, rain, and wind compel him to cover himself with a roof, with a garment. " Only when the work of economics has been done do the other desires unfold, and, according to the amount of effort which has been required for economics to reach their end, there is more or less time and will left for all the rest." spiration from him, on the part played by work, on the succession of inventions, " on the infinite development of tools, born of the hand, the consequences of which are infinite in themselves, often quite unforeseeable; tools have made man like a god."

After Prehistoric Man, in which M. de Morgan, with his immense knowledge, embraced primitive civilization in all its fumblings and all its extension, a certain number of volumesthose of MM. Febvre and Pittard, which dealt with physical environment and racial migrations, and those of MM. Morel and Davy, Moret, Delaporte, and Glotz, which brought Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the gean on to the historical scene have contributed to revealing the part played in the remote past by the need to keep alive, and then by the desire to better material life. Here, in a specially economic study, in a huge general picture, M. Toutain, who knows the Grco-Roman world thoroughly, shows hoiv classical antiquity, taking over the achievements of other times and places, strove to turn the terrestrial environment to better and better accountdown to the days of disaster, ruin, and a temporary retrogression of collective life.

To write the economic history of societies is, indeed, as has been seen and as will be seen more fully here, to follow the work done by man to improve his dwelling , to make use of his domain, to profit by its various resourcesobjects and their properties, superficial or deeper, and energies of all kindsto increase the number of " goods," of " values," and to form plentiful reserves of them; and it is, at the same time, to study the distribution of those goods among men.

Many problems arise from a study of this kindthe fart played in economic development by accident in its various forms; also, and chiefly, the part played by the social factor, the logical factor, individual inventiveness; the methods of organization governing the production and circulation of goods or their distribution; the effects of luxury on civilization and the relationship of economic progress to human happiness. In economics, as in other things , comparison, based on the facts recorded by the historian, entails generalization.

M. Toutain, like some others of our collaborators, would write purely as a historian. In the setting of the Mediterranean basin and the outlying regions which were attached to it by the Roman Empire in its greatest days, from the beginnings of Greek history to the fall of the Empire, he describes " economic life in all its forms, in its almost infinite variety and complexity he sets forth " facts, hard, definite facts, with reference to their place and date as far as possible."

But the mere extent of the subject gives rise to comparisons and, by the nature of things, general ideas force themselves upon the author or upon the reader. They are all the more valuable for not being preconceived. The philosophy of history, in its generalizations, is inclined to be impatient; historical synthesis, as we have preached often enough and have endeavoured to illustrate in our practice, proceeds cautiously and safely, from the particular to the general.

While, then, this book is a remarkably accurate historical treatise, which, by the host of details which it gives about material life, enables one to conjure up the daily existence of the ancients in all classes of society, we shall here dwell not so much on that aspect of the book as on the results which emerge from it; we shall systematize, in spite of M. Toutainand with his help.

First of all, what our fellow-worker's general plan and the manner in which he has carried it out show brilliantly, is the close connexion between economic life and social morphology, or the changes which take place in the size and densitu of societies.

Often, in previous Forewords, we have called attention to the fundamental identity, the innate sympathy, the disposition to help one another, which tend to bring human beings into association, and also to the unifying process, largely due to war A whole economic life, what may be called an economic complex, can only be studied and defined in relation to social structures, which are themselves bound up with a logic and also with a host of contingent circumstances. This emerges clearly from M. Toutairt's account.