2	INTRODUCTION
Boeckhj far ahead of his time both as historian and epigraphist,
had found for ancient historians the beginning of the path to
social and economic history ^l Neither Grote nor Curtius, the
best representatives of the political and idealizing schools
respectively, led in that direction Greek history (with which
alone we are concerned) had no Mommsen It was for the
time being at a standstill and needed an impulse from outside.
The ideas of political economy, and the prevalent interest in
modern social and economic history, provided that impulse
The change of outlook was as productive as it was signifi-
cant Even earlier, attempts had been made to free history
from a too rigid antiquarian outlook and to make it live by
actualizing and modernizing the past. Mommsen's History of
Rome_y with its passionate vivacity and its splendid style, was a
brilliant example of this kind of writing. The general tendency
to modernize the past coincided with the particular tendency
of economic history The historians of antiquity now learnt to
investigate entirely new spheres of life, and it is easy to under-
stand that at first m formulating their problems they adopted
the methods of their teachers, the writers of modern history
and the political economists The outstanding importance of
economics in the political and social life of their own day made
historians suppose that economics had a like importance in
antiquity. The details of economics in the ancient world were
interpreted, and the general conception of its history was ex-
pounded, in the spirit and terms of contemporary circum-
stances. Almost all the features of the modern social system
were discovered in Greece and Rome^1 industry and factories,
wholesale trade and large ship-owners, capitalists and prole-
tarians. Such, until a short time ago, was the view of ancient
economics held by historians, for instance, m Germany, France
and Italy In England and America, it was in some measure
corrected by natural common sense.^2
The prevailing view was challenged by a political economist,
^1	It is interesting to note that also the discussion of fundamental aspects of
ancient economic history began as early as Boeckh   He attacked (I, 65) Hceren's
opinion, who denied, in the same way as the modern group of scholars we shall
describe later, that there was any mutual influence between State and trade
^2	Compare Sir Alfred Zimmern's Greek Commonwealth (1931^6)    Though
its approach to the subject is primarily aesthetic, this outstanding book is a very
valuable attempt to make clear the special character and importance of Greek
economics. Cf Gnomon, I (1925),