Richard Seaford

Money and the Early Greek Mind (eBook, PDF)

Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

How were the Greeks of the sixth century BC able to invent philosophy and tragedy? In this book Richard Seaford argues that a large part of the answer can be found in another momentous development, the invention and rapid spread of coinage which produced the first ever thoroughly monetised society. By transforming social relations, monetisation contributed to the ideas of the universe as an impersonal system (presocratic philosophy) and of the individual alienated from his own kin and from the gods (in tragedy). Seaford argues that an important precondition for this monetisation was the Greek practice of animal sacrifice, as represented in Homeric Epic, which describes a premonetary world on the point of producing money. This book combines social history, economic anthropology, numismatics and the close reading of literary, inscriptional, and philosophical texts. Questioning the origins and shaping force of Greek philosophy, this is a major book with wide appeal.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. März 2004
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780511189555
• Artikelnr.: 38197549

Autorenporträt

Richard Seaford is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Exeter. He is the author of commentaries on Euripides' 'Cyclops' (1984) and 'Bacchae' (1996) and of 'Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State' (1994).

Inhaltsangabe

1. Introduction
Part I. The Genesis of Coined Money: 2. Homeric transactions
3. Sacrifice and distribution
4. Greece and the ancient near East
5. Greek money
6. The preconditions of coinage
7. The earliest coins
8. The features of money
Part II. The Making of Metaphysics: 9. Did politics produce philosophy?
10. Anaximander and Xenophanes
11. The many and the one
12. Heraclitus and Parmenides
13. Pythagoreanism and Protagoras
14. Individualisation
15. Appendix: was money used in the early near East?