Sir Moses I. Finley CBE, FBA (May 20, 1912–June 23, 1986) was an American and English classical scholar. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy (1973), where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations.

Early life and career [link]

He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.

The Dictionary of National Biography says: "About 1936 he took the surname Finley. He had no second forename, but used the initial ‘I’." ^[1]

He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.

So, as a result of

having come under attack for his left-wing opinions in the notorious committee run by Joseph McCarthy, Finley emigrated to Britain. Here he was appointed university lecturer in classics at Cambridge (1955–64)and, in 1957, elected to a fellowship at Jesus College. ... He was reader in ancient social and economic history (1964–70) and professor of ancient history (1970–79), and from 1976 to 1982 master of Darwin College, Cambridge.^[1]

He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979. He was a doctorate adviser to Paul Millett, now also a Classics professor at Cambridge.

Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954, revised ed. with additional essays 1978) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's work can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".^[2]

Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analyzed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns. This text has come under scrutiny in recent years with varied criticism coming from, amongst others, Kevin Greene ^[3] who argues that Finley underplays the importance of technological innovation, and Whittaker,^[4] who refutes the concept of a 'consumer city'.

Marriage and death [link]

From 1932 Finley enjoyed a happy and mutually reinforcing marriage with his wife Mary (née Moscowitz, who later changed to her mother's surname, Thiers), schoolteacher. They had no children. On the day of her death he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and he died the following day on 23 June 1986 at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge.^[1]

Bibliography [link]

• Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens, 500–200 B.C.: The Horos Inscriptions (1951).
• Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (1953).
• The World of Odysseus (1954).
• The Ancient Greeks: An Introduction to Their Life and Thought (1963).
• A History of Sicily: Ancient Sicily To The Arab Conquest (1968).
• Aspects of Antiquity: Discoveries and Controversies (1968).
• Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages (1970).
• The Ancient Economy (1973).
• Democracy Ancient and Modern (1973).
• Studies in Ancient Society, editor (1974).
• The Use and Abuse of History (1975).
• Schliemann's Troy: One Hundred Years After (1975).
• Studies in Roman property, editor (1976).
• The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years, with H.W. Pleket (1976).
• Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (1980).
• The Legacy of Greece: A New Appraisal (1981).
• Authority and Legitimacy in The Classical City-State (1982).
• Politics in the Ancient World (1983).
• Ancient History: Evidence and Models (1985).

Finley was also the editor of numerous volumes of essays on ancient history.

Notes [link]

Further reading [link]

• Derks, Hans. "The Ancient Economy: The Problem and the Fraud," The European Legacy, Vol. 7, No. 5. (2002), pp. 597–620.
• Hornblower, Simon. "A gift from whom?: [Moses Finley's book The World of Odysseus: Critical Essay]," Times Literary Supplement, December 24, 2004, pp. 18–19.
• Morris, Ian. "Foreword [to the updated edition]," The Ancient Economy by Moses I. Finley. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1999 (paperback, ISBN 0-520-21946-5), pp. ix–xxxvi.
• Nafissi, Mohammad. "Class, embeddedness, and the modernity of ancient Athens," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 46, Issue 2. (2004), pp. 378–410.
• Nafissi, Mohammad. Ancient Athens and Modern Ideology: Value, Theory and Evidence in Historical Sciences. Max Weber, Karl Polanyi and Moses Finley (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement; 80). London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2005 (paperback, ISBN 0-900587-91-1).
• Shaw, Brent D.; Saller, Richard P. Editors' introduction to Economy and society in ancient Greece (with Finley's up-to-date bibliography). London: Chatto & Windus, 1981 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7011-2549-7); N.Y.: The Viking Press, 1982 (hardcover, ISBN 0-670-28847-0); London: Penguin Books, 1983 (paperback, ISBN 0-14-022520-X).
• Silver, Morris. Review of The Ancient Economy, edited by Walter Scheidel and Sitta von Reden", Economic History Services, January 3, 2003.
• Watson, George. "The man from Syracuse: Moses Finley (1912–1986)," Sewanee Review, Vol. 112, Issue 1. (2004), pp. 131–137.

External links [link]

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