Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The Rural Landscape of the Late Empire; 2. Weber, Mickwitz, and the Economic Characterization of Late Antiquity; 3. The Monetary Economy of the Late Empire and its Social Presuppositions; 4. Existing Accounts of the Byzantine Large Estate; 5. The Changing Balance of Rural Power AD 200-400; 6. A Late Antique Aristocracy; 7. Estates; 8. Wage Labour and the Peasantry; 9. Conclusion; Appendix 1: Tables 1-12; Appendix 2: CJ X. 27.2.1-9: A Translation
Summary
In a critique of Max Weber's influential ideas about the Mediterranean region in late antiquity, Jairus Banaji shows that the fourth to seventh centuries were in fact a period of major social and economic change, bound up with an expanding circulation of gold. - ;The economy of the late antique Mediterranean is still largely seen through the prism of Weber's influential essay of 1896. Rejecting that orthodoxy, Jairus Banaji argues that the late empire saw substantial economic and social change, propelled by the powerful stimulus of a stable gold coinage that circulated widely. In successive ch
Notes
Previous edition: 2001
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-302) and index