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"Woolmer, Mark"
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Athenian mercantile community : a reappraisal of the social, political and legal status of inter-regional merchants during the fourth century
This quotation from Plato's Laws has often been seen as representative of the perception of inter-regional trade and traders held by the majority of classical Greeks. Plato and Aristotle dominate the moral philosophy of the classical world for modern scholars because their works survive in a fairly complete form, whereas, in contrast, the writings of other philosophers of the same era are frequently fragmentary. However, the quality and immediacy of the evidence presented by Plato and Aristotle can be dangerously seductive and, as a result, these works have been given disproportionate importance in previous studies of mercantile operations in the Greek world. In general the picture of merchants and inter-regional exchange that these two men present is very negative. One underlying reason for this negativity is their belief that wealth generated through trade unsettled the balance of society and, in certain circumstances, led to stasis. Rather than being based on the principles of equality and fair exchange, inter-regional commerce was seen as centred on the more aggressive concept of profit maximisation. Plato and Aristotle both saw inter-regional merchants as a symbol of failure for the polis, in its attempts to achieve what they viewed as the ideal state of complete self-sufficiency. Aristotle was to take this a step further, suggesting that the world was regulated by a natural order, an order that was centred on balance and equilibrium. Profit-orientated trade, in Aristotle's opinion, stood opposed to the normal state of equality found in nature, as it sought to upset the natural balance by demanding more for something than it was worth. As a result Aristotle accused inter-regional merchants of perverting the natural order of the world.
Dissertation
A short history of the Phoenicians
The Phoenicians present a tantalizing face to the ancient historian. Latin sources suggest they once had an extensive literature of history, law, philosophy and religion-- but all now is lost. Offering new insights based on recent archaeological discoveries in their heartland of modern-day Lebanon, Mark Woolmer presents a fresh appraisal of this fascinating, yet elusive, Semitic people. Discussing material culture, language and alphabet, religion (including sacred prostitution of women and boys to the goddess Astarte), funerary custom and trade and expansion into the Punic west, he explores Phoenicia in all its paradoxical complexity. Viewed in antiquity as sage scribes and intrepid mariners who pushed back the boundaries of the known world, and as skilled engineers who built monumental harbour cities like Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenicians were also considered (especially by their rivals, the Romans) to be profiteers cruelly trading in human lives. The author shows them above all to have been masters of the sea: this was a civilization that circumnavigated Africa two thousand years before Vasco da Gama did it in 1498.
Book
PUNIC AND PHOENICIAN
Woolmer reviews The Punic Mediterranean. Identities and Identification from Phoenician Settlement to Roman Rule edited by J. C. Quinn and N. C. Vella.
Book Review
Book Review: Bringing Carthage Home. The Excavations of Nathan Davis, 1856-1859
[...]to previous scholarship, subsequent chapters offer a more forgiving analysis of Daviss archaeological strategies including the style and consistency of his record keeping, his use and understanding of stratigraphy, and his relationship with his native workforce. [...]a more sympathetic view of Daviss achievements underpins much of the volume: thus, although recognising his inherent flaws as an archaeologist and as an academic, F. is keen to demonstrate that there is much to be admired about his work. [...]edition.
Book Review
Governmental Intervention in Foreign Trade in Archaic and Classical Greece
Governmental Intervention in Foreign Trade in Archaic and Classical Greece by E. M. A. Bissa is reviewed.
Book Review