Introduction:

... As far as the economic ideas of the Romans concern, may be gathered from three main sources: (1) the jurists and writers on legal matters; (2) the few writers on agriculture (de re rustica); (3) the philosophers, especially Cicero and Seneca. The present paper focuses to investigate these economic ideas of the Romans compared to the corresponding Greek economic ideas. After an overview of the literature that deals on Roman economic thought, which agrees that there is a small contribution of the Romans (section 1), we investigate the extent in which the Romans imitated or has been influenced by the Greeks in specific topics. The fundamental problem of the birth of civilization and the establishment of the political community has occupied the ancient Greek thought from Hesiod and Democritus, the Sophists, the great tragic poets, the minor tragic poets Critias and Moschion until Isocrates, Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle (Cole 1967, p. 26ff.; Karayiannis 1988). The so-called four – stage theory, which was a common issue in the Scottish Enlightenment (Skinner, 1965, Meek, 1971), and has its roots in Classical Antiquity and mainly Democritus and Plato (Karayiannis, 1992, Baloglou 2003, pp. 201-202) is investigated also by the Romans. Diodorus Siculus reflects Democritean views (Dellis, 1984-5) and influenced Vitruvius, Lucretius and Seneca (section 2). The estimation of the Greeks and Romans on the productive sectors and especially the analysis and their estimation on agriculture and commerce is the theme of section 3. The role of money and the ideas on usury are the themes of the fourth section. The role of wealth is examined in the fifth section and the economic behaviour of specific Roman politicians influenced by the Greek attitudes and values are the theme of the sixth section. The conclusions summarize the results of the present investigation.