Le document et l'histoire économique de l'Antiquité

Documentary Aspects of Ancient Economic History There are no statistics in antiquity, and any attempt to reconstruct them is doomed to failure, Contrary to what is sometimes stated, our helplessness is not due to the fact that too many economic documents have been lost, but to the very nature of those documents. In this respect, the Middle Ages marked a decisive turning-point. Numerical data are collected and calculated in response to a society's specific needs : the examination of selected economic documents from antiquity reveals a painstaking attention to detail coupled with a surprising lack of comprehensive accounting. Such documents were a response to day-to-day needs; they fulfilled a "police function", but were not intended to provide data for policy-making or economic forecasting. Whenever possible, the historian of antiquity should attempt to establish data series with a view to a quasi- or pseudo-statistical analysis.Finley Moses I. Le document et l'histoire économique de l'Antiquité. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 37ᵉ année, N. 5-6, 1982. pp. 697-713