ABSTRACT

Quantitative data which are suitable for economic analysis become more readily available from the Hellenistic period onwards. This paper is based on a particularly rich source of inscriptional evidence which has survived on the island of Delos. The author, Gary Reger, builds on his own ground-breaking analysis of the temple accounts of the Delian sanctuary of Apollo. In emphasising the essentially regional character of the economy of the island, he takes issue with Rostovtzeff’s modernistic model of the Hellenistic economy and seeks to bring his data to bear on the more recent debate on the integration of the ancient economy. The latter is a complex controversy raised in various chapters of this volume. Much depends on our definition of the term ‘economic integration’: does it refer to the free movement of goods, labour or money and the compatibility of different currencies, or to the synchronised and parallel variation of prices, wages and interest rates in different markets across large regions? Reger adopts the latter view when he argues that prices for different commodities developed independently over time, and denies that general economic trends determined price formation on Delos. Even so, attempts to identify the underlying causes of significant local price changes remain problematic. For example, as Reger himself concedes, he cannot exclude the possibility that the prices of goods were affected, but in different ways, by broader inter-regional developments. Nor can his analysis control for a variety of other factors that might have been responsible for changing price levels in the records of the Delian priests. Reger’s argument effectively undermines earlier assumptions about a single, fully integrated market economy of the Hellenistic world in the