Management in Antiquity: Part 2 – Success and Failure in the Hellenic and Roman Worlds

Abstract

In this second chapter on management in antiquity, we focus on the economic and managerial success and failure of Greece, the Hellenic world, and Rome. As in the first chapter, we argue that, in the final analysis, these societies were managerial failures. Greece and Rome proved only marginally more successful than ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in breaking the bonds imposed by a preindustrial economy. Many of the basic technological attributes that characterized Medieval Europe – cast iron, crop rotation, the wheeled plough, windmills – were conspicuous by their absence. In Rome, notable achievements in construction (aqueducts, sewers, roads, concrete) were not matched by productivity-enhancing in either agriculture or manufacturing. In the western Roman Empire, the most significant economic development – which did temporarily improve rural per capita output – was the slave-operated latifundia, an institution founded in suffering and misery. As time went on, Rome failed to even maintain the mining output necessary to support its gold and silver coinage. By AD200, in consequence, Rome was sliding back into a barter-based economy. The key legacies of ancient Greece and Rome are thus not found in material achievements but rather in their intellectual insights; insights that emphasized such concepts as democracy, citizenship as a system of rights and responsibilities, representative government, organizational checks and balances, and equality before the law.