Volume 29, Number 19 · December 2, 1982
Marx in the Agora
By Ernst Badian
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests
by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix
Cornell University Press, 732 pp., $49.50
When Cyrenus Osborne Ward, that interesting figure in early American socialism, wanted to publish his two-volume work The Ancient Lowly, he had to arrange to do so (essentially) himself, since no established publisher would touch such a work. Ward took his task of telling the history of the ancient lower classes seriously. He traveled widely and was introduced by leading scholars to documents in the original languages. Unfortunately his intentions were more laudable than his training for the work, and despite his devoted labors, it remains a curiosity, more important in the history of ideas in the US than in the historiography of the ancient world. Ste. Croix does not cite it in his book on class struggle in the ancient world.
Review, 4725 words
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