Papers by Walter Scheidel
This paper investigates the economic aspects of slavery in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Existin... more This paper investigates the economic aspects of slavery in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Existing evidence reveals significant variation in the relative cost of slaves compared to unskilled wages: it appears that at different times and places, a typical slave could be purchased for prices equivalent to wages paid from 150 to 1000 days of unskilled labor. To explain this great disparity, we develop a principal-agent model that predicts the return on slaves relative to wages, which varies as a function of the prevalence of slavery in the labor force. This model implies that slavery may have increased aggregate labor productivity by reallocating workers from less productive to more productive regions within the Greco-Roman world.
This paper investigates the economic aspects of slavery in the Ancient Greco-Roman world. Existin... more This paper investigates the economic aspects of slavery in the Ancient Greco-Roman world. Existing evidence reveals significant variation in the relative cost of slaves compared to unskilled wages: it appears that at different times and places, a typical slave could be purchased for prices equivalent to wages paid from 150 to 1000 days of unskilled labor. To explain this great disparity, we develop a principal-agent model that predicts the return on slaves relative to wages, which varies as a function of the prevalence of slavery in the labor force. This model implies that slavery may have increased aggregate labor productivity by reallocating workers from less productive to more productive regions within the Greco-Roman world.
What is Ancient History?
Daedalus, Apr 1, 2016
Every society has told stories about ancient times, but contemporary ancient history was the prod... more Every society has told stories about ancient times, but contemporary ancient history was the product of two main developments. The first was the invention of writing, which made scholarly study of the past possible, and the second was the explosion of knowledge about the world from the eighteenth century onward. Europeans responded to this explosion by inventing two main versions of antiquity: the first, an evolutionary model, was global and went back to the origins of humanity; and the second, a classical model, treated Greece and Rome as turning points in world history. These two views of antiquity have competed for two hundred and fifty years, but in the twenty-first century, the evidence and methods available to ancient historians are changing faster than at any other time since the debate began. We should therefore expect the balance between the two theories to shift dramatically. We close by considering some possible areas of engagement.
In my 2017 book "The Great Leveler," I argued that over the course of recorded history, only four... more In my 2017 book "The Great Leveler," I argued that over the course of recorded history, only four kinds of violent disasters – state collapse, severe pandemics, mass mobilization warfare and transformative revolution – had greatly reduced inequality of income and wealth. I survey relevant scholarship that has appeared since then and find that it is generally compatible with my thesis. Recent research offers revisions regarding the scale and other specifics of historical leveling events and draws attention to previously neglected processes such as natural disasters. Studies that emphasize peaceful mechanisms of equalization do not contradict my findings and may not pay enough attention to the long-term distributional consequences of violent crises.
Slavery's Rome, 2024
Scholars have produced a great many studies of slavery in the Roman world. What we lack are studi... more Scholars have produced a great many studies of slavery in the Roman world. What we lack are studies of the history of Rome in the context of enslavement, of the Roman history that enslavement made – of slavery’s Rome. I took the invitation to deliver the inaugural “X-lecture on economic power and dominance in the ancient world” at the University of Buffalo in 2023 as an opportunity to sketch out the contours of such an approach, which calls for new ways of looking at Roman history as a whole.
Studying fiscal regimes
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 23, 2015
The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume One: The Imperial Experience
TYCHE – Contributions to Ancient History, Papyrology and Epigraphy, 1989
Zuschriften und Manuskripte erbeten an: Redaktion Y HE 10 Institut für Alte Ge chichte, Universit... more Zuschriften und Manuskripte erbeten an: Redaktion Y HE 10 Institut für Alte Ge chichte, Universität Wien, Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 1, A-L010 Wien. Beiträge in deut eher engli eher, französischer, italienischer und lateinischer S)rache werden angenommen. Eingesandte Manuskripte können nicht zurückgesendet werden. I Bei der Redaktion einlangende wi enschaftliche Werke werden besprochen.
This survey of citation scores provides a rough measure of the relative impact of scholarship pub... more This survey of citation scores provides a rough measure of the relative impact of scholarship published by the most frequently cited active and retired ancient historians in the United States and Canada. The paper provides gross and annualized scores and briefly discusses representation by gender, race, and institutional affiliation.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a... more Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents. Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity.
Macro-models make a significant contribution to our understanding of economic performance and eco... more Macro-models make a significant contribution to our understanding of economic performance and economic inequality in the Roman empire. Comparative framing is essential for guiding our thinking on these matters by imposing some discipline on our conjectures. The application of Bayesian modeling improves on earlier estimates of Roman imperial GDP. The scope for estimating Roman income inequality is strongly constrained by GDP estimates and historical comparanda.
Graeber and Wengrow's sprawling new history of freedom has considerable strengths: its emphasis o... more Graeber and Wengrow's sprawling new history of freedom has considerable strengths: its emphasis on formative processes that unfolded before literate civilizations appeared, its global reach, and its skepticism about the connection between state power and civilization. But it also suffers from serious shortcomings: the authors' commitment to an excessively idealist view of historical dynamics, their use of rhetorical strategies that misguide their audience, and their resultant inability to account for broad trajectories of human development.
Ostrakismos-Testimonien I die Zeugnisse Antiker Autoren, der Inschriften und Ostraka über das Athemsche Scherbengericht aus Vorhellenistischer zeit (487-322 V. …
Historia. …, 2002
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This paper surveys recent trends in the study of economic development and human well-being in the... more This paper surveys recent trends in the study of economic development and human well-being in the Roman world.
This paper discusses the location of slav ery in the Roman economy. It deals with the size and di... more This paper discusses the location of slav ery in the Roman economy. It deals with the size and distribution of the slave population and t he economics of slave labor and offers a chronological sketch of the development of Roman sl very. © Walter Scheidel. scheidel@stanford.edu
What is comparative history good for? Doe s it pose special challenges? In our time of accelerati... more What is comparative history good for? Doe s it pose special challenges? In our time of accelerating globalization, are we ready to embrace a n w inter-discipline, Comparative Classics? © Walter Scheidel. scheidel@stanford.edu
This paper presents a new model of the main exogenous and endogenous determinants of real income ... more This paper presents a new model of the main exogenous and endogenous determinants of real income growth in Italy in the last two centuries BC. I argue that war-related demographic attrition, emigration and the urban graveyard effect converged in constraining the growth of the freeborn population despite increased access to material resources that would otherwise have been conducive to demographic growth and concomitant depression of real incomes; that massive redistribution of financial resources from Roman elites and provincial subjects to large elements of the Italian commoner population in the terminal phase of the Republican period raised average household wealth and improved average well-being; and that despite serious uncertainties about the demographic and occupational distribution of such benefits, the evidence is consistent with the notion of rising real incomes in sub-elite strata of the Italian population. I conclude my presentation with a dynamic model of growth and decl...
Ancient societies were shaped by logistic al constraints that are almost unimaginable to mode rn ... more Ancient societies were shaped by logistic al constraints that are almost unimaginable to mode rn observers. “ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World” (http://orbis.stanford.edu) for the first time allo ws us to understand the true cost of distance in bu ilding and maintaining a huge empire with premodern techno logy. This paper explores various ways in which this novel Digital Humanities tool changes and enri ches our understanding of ancient history. © Walter Scheidel. scheidel@stanford.edu
ANCIENT HISTORY AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES - (H.) Beck, (G.) Vankeerberghen (edd.) Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece, Rome, and China. Pp. xxvi + 453, ills, maps. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Cased, £90, US$120. ISBN: 978-1-108-48577-7
The Classical Review
Two common themes loosely connect the fourteen chapters in this collection: the relationship betw... more Two common themes loosely connect the fourteen chapters in this collection: the relationship between rulers, elites and governments on the one hand and the general public on the other; and the formation of identity at different scales ranging from specific societal groups (such as nobilities and civic associations) to entire civilisations (insiders vs ‘barbarians’). Taken together, these contributions not only advance our understanding of historical similarities and differences, but also highlight the potential and limitations of the comparative perspectives on display. A number of chapters embrace and reinforce the (conventional) view that political power was more centralised and ‘top-down’ in early China than in Greece or Rome. The editors, in their joint overview of how ‘the people’ were conceptualised in those three systems, note the absence of the notion of citizenship from early China and the intensely paternalistic image of its rulers. Vankeerberghen, in a stimulating discussion of how aristocrats expressed their status in the Roman Republic and the Western Han Empire, observes stronger familial discontinuities in the latter case even as – unlike in the former – elite status was formally hereditary. Autocratic intervention explains this difference. Unfortunately, Vankeerberghen does not address what she considers the ‘fascinating’ question (p. 47) of whether this changed under the Roman monarchy, which would have allowed her to compare like with like (i.e. the position of nobles under a monarchy). M. Brown and Z. Zhang study how local notables were honoured – with inscriptions and statues in Roman-era Greece and with stelae in the Han Empire – by giving parallel accounts of the attributes and popularity of these types of monuments in each setting. In Greece, these artefacts were public-facing and focused on the local community, rooted as they were in the polis tradition and the ‘strength of local identity’. In Han China, by contrast, they were connected to tombs and familial commemoration, the ‘byproduct of personal networks’ that were trans-regional in nature and reflected the primacy of the empire over local relations and the ‘pull’ of its capital (pp. 85–6). C.F. Noreña stresses the same features in a comparative assessment of associations of craftspeople and merchants. Common in the Roman world, where they represented a default template for corporate identity and collective action in urban contexts, they were far less prominent in Han China, in as much as they existed at all. He identifies both genetic and structural reasons for this difference, which shaped the lived experience of urban middle strata: the deep roots of the city-state format and the ‘upward pull’ self-governance by local elites exerted on middling groups in Roman cities, and the ‘downward push’ the THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 432
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Papers by Walter Scheidel