This is a fantastic account of an epoch in which the worlds of history and mythology merge together. The historical significance of myriad passages in Homer are discussed and elaborated on. One cannot but stand in awe of Finley's perspicuity in deciphering the historical importance of even the minutest details.

This is a superb reference guide to assist one's journey thru the archaic but wonderous historical niche of the ancient Greeks. For those who have already read the works of Homer, the present work is a very useful tool to examine more closely the subtle information provided in even the most remote passages of the epics.

This book is highly recommended to anyone who has ever read Homer, as well as anyone who would ever like to. For students of Greek history and literature, this one is a can't miss!

Finley only briefly ventures into archaeology in the beginning of _The World of Odysseus_, and only to demonstrate that Mycenean Greece is not the world of the Homeric heroes. From this conclusion he guesses that Homer is likely describing a world that existed between the Mycenean era and the poet's own time.

Finley then goes literary, eschewing anthropology and archaeology and instead analyzing the texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. From the stories of Homer, he reconstructs the sort of society in the Homeric heroes lived, in terms of its economy, its social structure, and its morals and values.

The picture he draws is interesting and compelling, above all because it is consistent. Its consistency is, of course, an argument in favor of the view that the Homeric world really did exist (i.e., that gods and magic and specific names aside, the cultural world described by Homer is authentic, and not an artistic creation). Moreover, because the culture is consistent, an understanding of it helps a reader to interpret sometimes puzzling actions on the part of Homer's heroes. This is therefore important secondary reading to accompany any reading of Homer.

Moses Finley's WORLD OF ODYSSEUS is that rarest of rarities: it is a work of historical-literary scholarship that so far hasn't dated hardly at all. As such, it makes the perfect edition to the NYRB Classics series: this nifty little study gives the reader a very informative (and mostly very accurate) overview of life during Homer's age, the so-called "Dark Ages" of ancient Greece. The iconoclasm of Finley's approach--his daring refusal to believe the Homeric epics gave accurate portraits of the Mycenaean Age they purported to describe, and his insistence that they rather spoke to Homer's own time--still seems brave and innovative fifty years later, and Bernard Knox does a superb job contextualizing the impact of Finley's study.

M.I.Finley is a distinquish scholar of the classical world and is one of the leading authorities on Aristotle. This selection of essays give some sense to the extent of his considerable learning. The most outstanding of these essays is the one that lends itself to the title of the work, the use and abuse of history. In it Finley explores the ways that politicians throughout the beginning of time have used history to force forward their own agendas. One wonders if anyone is ever concerned with implementing something new, rather than merely putting new wine in old bottles and hoping the various involved parties will construe it as the some old thing.

This is a very dishonest way to carry out business, and Finley is fairly even-handed in his condemnations. However, Finley does avoid answering the larger question, why does the practice continue?

I think anyone seeking to understand the real workings of history by one committed to a truthful exploration of the past, rather than someone's hidden agenda (and the best seller lists are frequently filled with these) should sit down and read this fascinating book.

Finley is a master of so many fields and types of scholarship. Here he has turned his talent to an introductory textbook about ancient Greece. Unlike his specialized previous work, Finley demonstrates that he can write in a clear and logical fashion. A little sparse on social history at times.

In his book, Finley recreates the ancient world of Greece from the Bronze through the Archaic Age. He does this, as historians before him have done, by examining the broad periods of history as they are associated with the tools and natural materials used in each. Then, once more knowledge is gained through further study and research, the periods in history can be broken down even further. The focal point of the book shows that, by studying ancient history and generalizing the past, one can use archeological evidence to construct a society for each place. Detail is added when facts are discovered and verified. Archeological findings are often things the ancients used, such as tools and pottery that they made out of natural substances in their local area. Historians and archeologists formulate answers to questions about who lived where, when, and why, and to discuss their relationships to other contemporaries. The author examines section by section Greece and examines it. The culture is revealed based on archeological discoveries that provide a basis for historical theories. Key to a location's survival is its relationship to other contemporary places, and exchange of goods and survival allows for growth both intellectually and technologically.
Finley originally published this book in 1970. He republished it in 1981 to incorporate new archeological discoveries. He has examined the ancient Greek world chronologically from Early Minoan to the Persian Wars from the social, economic, and political aspects.
Archeological evidence is valuable for describing and dividing changes in antiquity. Divisions were created as advancements occurred. One example of an advancement cited by Finley is the burial ritual. Much can be learned about a society by studying the way they bury their dead. The Cyclades included marble idols in the graves. The Cretans did nothing majestic with their tombs. The gold disks the Mycenaeans buried in their shaft-graves and the later pottery found in Mycenaean Tholos-tombs help to date the burial sites. By studying advancements in burial designs of these different groups, one can decipher the stages of development for a group of people. After determining who was buried in the tombs, one can interpret who and what traits were more honored by the more decorative ornamentation found.
When read along with a more in-depth and inclusive textbook designed to instruct the unfamiliar student with ancient times, this book is most helpful. It includes many terms assumed to be familiar but which are not, and therefore, definitions of these terms are needed. By reading a supplementary list of terms and committing to memory many of the characters names, approaching the text became easier.

I really enjoyed this book. The Greeks undoubtedly had a very interesting culture, and an analysis of their early scientists is an important an interesting read. Mr Lloyd has compiled a good introductory overview, outlining the major players, the development of various ideas, and some suggestions why their "science" got started in the first place. This is not an easy question to answer. I liked his idea that critical analysis of ideas about the natural world may have been a corrollary of a general environment of critical examination of political structure and ideas in difficult times. In other words, because ideas in general were subjected to critical analysis, critical examination of the natural world logically followed, more as an afterthought than a deliberate injunction. It is an interesting theory.

The book includes discussions of various differences and similarities between modern and ancient science. Ancient thinkers seemed less concerned with the practical potential of their ideas. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake, with a few notable exceptions, was a worthy enough endeavour in itself. They saw the natural world as something more to be studied than "tamed". "Science" was a more vaguely defined discipline; few people practised it much less got paid for it. The book discusses the various streams and ideas which grew about, with, and around it, such as medicine, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and biology. The Pythagorians, Platonists, Milesians, Aristotle, Thales, and Anaximander are all names which come to the fore, but unfortunately, their contribution withers away far too quickly in the history of the world. Some interesting points I noted were early suggestions that man had sprung from other organisms, (namely fish), the problem of change, theories concerning the nature of matter-you know-elements, atoms and so on.

A look into the thinking of the early Greeks is in part a mirror into the heart and nature of our society. My only complaint with the book is that we have so little remaining information about these thinkers and their times.

Please, archaeologists and the like, find much more about the Greeks in some colossal discovery of thousands of well-preserved, buried manuscripts in a buried ancient city somewhere about Greece, so we can know more about the ancient world.

Finlay is a good translator and editor (see Penguin's "Greek Historians"). The function of sensibly abbreviating long and important works down to a readable volume is an honorable and extemely useful function in its own right (see also Saunder's abridgement of Gibbon's first volume and Gaster's abridgement of "The New Golden Bough"). Such abridgements give both to students and to those of us who have little time to spare for reading unfiltered through "The World's Great Books" a taste of such books and hence of the minds of the great authors who wrote them.

However, Finlay's as author is not as satisfying.

The foreword to Finlay's book is good. It puts Finlay's contribution into a larger context and, in particular, pointing out Max Weber's influence on Finlay.

Max Weber noticed that most people are mainly interested in social prestige, not the means thereto, and, more specifically, that the modern means to prestige is not the traditional (ie., ancient) means thereto.

As a result of the foreward, I immediately ordered Weber's ostensible masterwork "Die Protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist des Kapitalismus'" (written 1904 with revision 1920).

Finlay himself does not explicity appear to recognise his debt to Weber. He refers to Weber's contemporaries (Rostovtzeff & co.).

As the author points out, very little was probably ever written in ancient times - and much less has been delivered down to us through the passage of time - regarding "economic" matters, the writing and reading public being consituted essentially by well-born persons with private incomes, who were generally interested in the (for them) more appropriate topics of poetry, rhetoric, religion, philosophy and heroic military exploits.

Hence research on this subject is difficult.

Also, the book is rather tedious and the amount of repitition and ampflication on essentially obvious points gets a bit monotonous.

Having said that, the whole subject matter was interesting, and the pointers to other authors useful.

The economic model which is developed is typical social sciences stuff: simplest ideas expressed cryptically as pseudo-mathematical charts. One can overlook this.

At the end of the day, the most worthwhile knowledge which I gained from Finlay's work was the knowledge that there was a Roman writer called Vitruvius who wrote a work on Architecture at around the time of Christ which remained the standard work on that subject for at least 1,500 years.

In the meantime I have read Vitruvius and found him to be both useful and entertaining.

Now I'll read Max Weber.

The author of this book, M.I. Finley, is a giant in the field of ancient history. The introduction paints a pretty impressive picture of the man. He graduated from college with an M.A. at the age of 17, an amazing feat for us wannabe intellectuals. His M.A. was in public law, not exactly the usual prerequisite for an amazing career in history. Finley's positions on the ancient world were based on the works of Max Weber; the sociologist who posited that status played a big role in society. In this book, Finley tries to prove that the ancient economy was largely a byproduct of status. In other words, economic systems were not interdependent; they were embedded in status positions.

Finley first examines status and statistics. What constituted status in the ancient world? For one thing, class and status were independent. A person could be of low class, but very high status. Pallas and Narcissus, the freedmen that served the emperor Claudius, come to mind here. Both were extremely high placed in society. They were rich beyond the dreams of avarice, but their class was lower than that of a senator. Finley's examination of statistics in ancient Rome is telling. In our world, it is inconceivable that the economy could be discussed without using stats. In Rome, this was not the case. Certainly, there were receipts of expenditures and interest rates on loans, but numbers just didn't hold the allure in Rome that they do today. The absence of guilds and interdependent markets, according to Finley, certainly has something to do with this. Most merchandise was locally made and consumed locally, or shipped directly to Rome. There was no need for corporations or massive transportation of goods (except grain shipments to Rome) between regions.

Finley's discussions on slavery are certainly enlightening. Finley believes slavery was necessary to the Roman world because it reinforced status. The highest strata of society disdained work, so having a dependent class of workers was essential to watch over estates and manage businesses. One of the surprising insights Finley provides is in exploding the myth that slavery is inefficient. Finley shows that the large landowners had money to burn due to the labor of slaves, as did the plantation owners in the American South. I'm not so sure I agree with this argument. To the extent that slaves were profitable in Rome, it would seem that this had much to do with the Roman system of slavery. The Romans had a process called "Peculium" in which slaves were given seed money by their masters to start businesses. Slaves could keep some of the profits from this system and eventually buy their freedom, as well as learn a trade. This is an excellent incentive to work hard, thereby increasing profits to their owners. I don't think slaves in the Americas had the same incentives.

Although the book is much more complex than the poor description I've given above, this review should provide ample initiative to read Finley. Even a beginner to Roman history could get much out of this book. Finley, despite some early hiccups, has a smooth writing style that is sympathetic to the newbie. Many a professional scholar has received inspiration from Finley. Highly Recommended.

Finley in "The Ancient Economy," presents an informed argument against the notion that ancient civilizations exhibited "modern" market behavior in the style described by Erich Roll as "an enormous conglomeration of interdependent markets." M. Rostovtzeff's notion that trade of manufactured goods was active and important in classical economies is successfully challenged, and the reader is given an interesting peek into the process by which free, landed peoples gradually replaced slave labor in the hinterlands laying the foundation for medieval serfdom. This is an excellent (and concise!!!) introduction to the economic structure of the classical world both describing the various class structures and how each class in general viewed the economic notions of land, capital, trade, and accumulation. I definitely recommend this book to any student of economic history.

Dont be confused by the relatively low ranking, this book is good. The only trouble is that it only contains fragments of the greatest historians ever. Though this is what the editor set out to do, you will feel cheated by not having the whole story to read. If all you want is a glimpse at what made the ancient historians so special, this is the book for you. However, chances are that you will want the complete story as well, something this collection cant offer.