Bibliographic Information

Feeding the ancient Greek city

edited by Richard Alston & Onno M. van Nijf

(Groningen-Royal Holloway studies on the Greek city after the Classical Age)

Peeters, 2008

Available at  / 3 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Papers of the workshop organized in Athens, in Oct. 2004, as a panel in the Seventh International Conference on Urban History

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In ancient cities, 'daily bread' was a subject of prayer. Grain-harvests could be fickle, but a regular supply was a matter of survival. Food-shortage could lead to social unrest, and long-term solutions required all kinds of political an institutional resources from the authorities. Yet feeding the city was not just a problem. It was an opportunity for the political management of the poor, for competitive display among the elite, and for making money. The essays in this volume present cities and societies which responded to these challenges in very different ways, from the agro-towns in which the citizens commuted to their fields to the market-supplied towns in which an urban proletariat worked for their bread. The articles debate the food supply through all its aspects, economic, demographic, political and institutional to give a new perspective on this debate at the heart of our understandings of ancient society.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top