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INTRODUCTION: GENESIS AND ORGANIZATION THE MERE PHRASING of the title of my book could be thought to propound a fanciful interpretation of the interrelation between economic and political history during the fifth-century hegemony of the Athenians; at least, it could for anyone unversed in the scholarship on the Attic Coinage Decree. A historian innocent of that research might well protest the improbability of any classical city-state having a monetary policyin any respect. That phrase might conjure up modernizing images inconsonant with the regnant sensibility on ancient economic life. The "primitivist" spirit of much current interpretation is committed to emphasizing the disparities between Greek society and the modern "capitalist " order, while simultaneously stressing the analogies between the Greek economy and less differentiated, subsistence "peasant" economies. 1 To some interpreters of ancient economic life, the creation of an economic policy of any type would require the possession of an economic theory; to others it violates the principle that the ancient economy was "embedded" in contemporary social institutions.f Monetary policy might be taken to imply concerted efforts to promote the productivity of persons acting as private factors by manipulating characteristics of the monetary medium. Indeed, the most one would attribute to the makers of classical policy was an intention to facilitate consumption in an essential area like the procurement of foodstuffs. The accidents of discovery of ancient documents inscribed on stone have permitted the epigraphists, numismatists, and political historians to wrest the subject of classical monetary policy away from the social and economic historians of antiquity. The former have interpreted the Coinage Decree, that great document that has been found in fragments I On the continuing debate between "primitivists" and "modernists" (the two terms are meant neutrally and nonpejoratively here) on the nature of the ancient Greek economy, see E. Will, "Trois quarts de siecle sur l'economie grecque antique," Annales9 (1954) 7-22; M.I. Finley (ed.), TheBlicher-Meyer Controoersy (New York 1979). See also Figueira, Aegina13-18; Figueira, review of E.E. Cohen, AthenianEconomy andSociety: A BankingPerspective (Princeton 1992),BrynMawr Classical Review5.2 (1994) 109-13. 2 For a discussion of this terminology, see Figueira, "Karl Polanyi and Ancient Greek Trade: The Port of Trade," Ancientmrltf 10 (1984) 15-30. 2 INTRODUCTION: GENESIS AND ORGANIZATION from sites within the fifth-century Attic arkh!and sphere of influence, as an instance of drastic intervention by the Athenians into the daily economic life of their allies-nothing less than a massive reshaping of the manner in which money was used in commerce and government in the whole Aegean basin. 3 Accordingly, the scholarly consensus exhibits little hesitation in coupling Attic monetary policy and fifth-century imperialism.t Nonetheless, ambivalent points of view are vividly present in the controversies surrounding the Coinage Decree, for scholars have wavered in the face of choosing an appropriate etiology. Does monetary policy spring from observing and then conditioning economic behavior, or are the wellsprings of such decisions entirely partisan or ideological, with their ramifications for the daily business of life practically incidental? One baleful influence on ancient history of some Marxist interpretation in other historical fields-for Marxist analysis has seldom been applied systematically to the ancient world-is a legacy of economic determinism , even for philologically minded historians.P Attic monetary legislation could occupy a place of honor if one diligently prioritized economic factors in a hierarchy of causes, setting out on a search for the fundamental economic causation that shaped Athenian imperialism. That would, however, quickly become a disconcerting journey if one were then forced to conclude that the citizens of Periclean Athens showed their greatest awareness of economic conditions when they subordinated policy toward their allies to the pursuit of their own economic advantage. This posing of the problem has its own paradoxical air: by imputing economic considerations to fifth-century Athenian policy-makers, economic determinism is subverted, since we imply an articulated balancing of economic goods with other benefits. That is true unless we adduce a mode of false consciousness in which material factors win out despite the course of 3 The term arkhe'rule,' 'leadership,' or 'sway,' will be used for the allies whom the Athenians led militarily and whose foreign policy they directed, without prejudice to an assessment about the autonomy of the allies individually or in general (autonomy and coining will be addressed below). The intention is to avoid the more loaded term "empire," except where it cannot be avoided for the sake of general comprehension, as in...

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