‘Sacred wealth’ as an economic category in ancient Greek thought and practice
By Evan Vance, University of California, Berkeley
Scholars of Greek history have long debated the bifurcation between sacred and public wealth in the Greek polis (e.g., Fouchard 1998; Jacquemin 1998; Macé 2012; Rousset 2013; Sassu 2014). However, our use of the term “sacred wealth” entails an under-examined conceptual leap. Philosophical writing may speak of sacred wealth as an abstract category, but epigraphic sources tend to conceive of wealth as sacred to a specific deity rather than sacred in a more general sense.
Quantifying the Expenditures of Local Governments during the Roman Principate
By James Macksoud, Stanford University
In recent decades, attempts to quantify the expenditures of the Roman Imperial state have reached a consensus figure of per annum outlays near 1 billion sesterces during the 2nd century CE (Duncan-Jones 1994; Wolters 1999; Scheidel 2015).
“Learning from the Enemies”: Institutional Learning and Mimetic Isomorphism in Imperial Fiscal Institutions
By Umit Ozturk, Stanford University
The study of institutional diffusion and isomorphism is an undertheorized topic of inquiry in ancient history, partially due to endemic data scarcity. The traditional narratives of diffusion primarily operate on a center-periphery model, assume one-way diffusion from the center to the periphery through coercion, and neglect any mode of local adaptions of or reactions to the institutions imposed by imperial systems.