Description

Max Weber is widely recognized as the greatest of the founders of classical sociology. The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations,written in four months of intense creative work
during 1908; represents a sustained historical synthesis of a type unlike anything else in Weber’s writings. The author starts with a general introduction that explores the necessary concepts for relating ‘economic theory’ and ‘ancient society. He then proceeds to a chrono
logically ordered study of the agrarian character of the socioeconomic structures of Mesopotamia and Egypt – the two great riverine civilizations of High Antiquity; of Hebrew society in Israel, from its tribal to its royal forms of the
classical city-states of Greece, of the imperial Hellenistic realms which succeeded them in the Near East; and, finally, of the evolution of Roman society, from the Republic to the Empire.
The book concludes with a magisterial
explanatory essay on the social and economic reasons for the ultimate fall of the Roman Empire and, with it, of the close of Antiquity itself. Published here for the first time in paper-back, this great, neglected work will reveal a new Max Weber to students of classical history
and of sociology alike.In science, each of us knows that what he has accomplished will be antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years’. Such was Max Weber’s somewhat poignant view of a scholar’s work, but in fact the fate of his own writings shows that he was too optimistic about the advance of scholarship. The present book, in particular, was not studied or used for over fifty years. As late as 1965 a distinguished ancient historian could call it still the most original and penetrating account ever written of Antiquity’s social and economic development Analysis had till then largely held the field. Now,however, there is a renewed interest in theory and synthesis, and this work should at last gain the audience it deserves. Readers will find here a remarkable survey of 3,000 years, one which traces the institutional framework within which political and intellectual developments took place. They will find more if they know something about the author and his premises, methods, and purpose. What follows aims to give the essential information on these matters together with references for further study.