Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

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Today's July 30, 2012, and my guest is Josiah Ober, Professor of Classics and Political Science

at Stanford University. Josh, welcome to econtalk. Thanks very much Russ, delighted to be with you.

Our topic for today is the Economy of Ancient Greece, and your recent paper on the topic titled

Wealthy Hellus. You say in that paper that ancient Greece has always been perceived as very poor.

Why was that the standard view?

Well, I think there are really two reasons. The first reason, and the one that's most obvious,

if we think about it, from the point of view of classical studies, is that the Greeks themselves

described themselves as poor. So if we read in a couple of classic passages by carotitis or various

other places in the Greek tradition, the Greeks are constantly describing themselves when they

compare themselves to the great empires of the Middle East as in a condition of poverty.

The problem is, of course, they're comparing themselves not against the ordinary people of these

great empires, but against the kings and the courts of these great empires. So it's certainly

true that compared to, say, crisis of Lydia or Darius of Persia, any Greek was indeed relatively poor,

but compared to an ordinary individual, a subject of crisis of Lydia or Darius of Persia,

the ordinary Greek was actually quite wealthy. So I think it's for us, the relevant measure

is trying to ask ourselves what was the ordinary individual, what was the conditions of their lives.

The other reason that I think that Greece is considered poor is that the Greeks were poor,

...