The Open Sea: The Economic Life of the Ancient Mediterranean World from the Iron Age to the Rise of Rome

Description

A major new economic history of the ancient Mediterranean world In The Open Sea, J. G. Manning offers a major new history of economic life in the Mediterranean world in the Iron Age, from Phoenician trading down to the Hellenistic era and the beginning of Rome's imperial supremacy. Drawing on a wide range of ancient sources and the latest social

J. G. Manning is the William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Professor of History and professor of classics at Yale University. He is the author of The Last Pharaohs: Egypt under the Ptolemies (Princeton) and Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt, and coeditor of The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models.

"The author's scholarly heft will impress and persuade his audience as to the validity and significance of his insights and contributions; 125 pages of endnotes and bibliography buttress his case."---A.R. Sanderson, Choice "The truly new ground explored in The Open Sea lies at the intersection of environmental and economic history. . . . Manning provides a thoughtful overview of the challenges and prospects we face in integrating the paleoclimate into the study of ancient economies. . . . An expert and bracing survey."---Kyle Harper, EH.net "The list of scholars who could produce a volume of this breadth and depth is surely a short one." * Journal of Markets and Morality * "The book must be judged a success . . . . especially in its first objective of providing the reader with an idea of what the debate looks like at present, and a sense of where it might be going in the near future. Manning has digested a colossal amount of scholarship, This book deserves to be on the shelf of anyone looking to see past the disciplinary boundaries of Graeco-Roman history and to understand how these civilisations fitted into a wider world. "---David Lewis, Journal of Greek Archaeology