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This book is about the recurrent problems of food shortage in the ancient world and how the Mediterranean states, more particularly Athens and Rome, faced them. Since most inhabitants of the modem world are no less concerned with the necessity of procuring sufficient nourishment for themselves and their families than were these ancient populations, it is a work that can be recommended not only to the student of classical antiquity, but to anyone interested in the interaction of economy, politics and society. Dr. Garnsey (University Lecturer in Ancient History and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge,) distinguishes between famine and less critical shortages. Man was helpless in the face of famine which the author defines as a catastrophic food crisis responsible for a dramatic rise in mortality rates in a given population. He establishes that famines were rare in antiquity but less serious food shortages were common. Public responses to the risk and presence of food crisis were possible and can, to an extent, be traced in primary sources. Where ancient evidence is meagre, the author has recourse to modern data on climate, agricultural yield and population density relevant to the area – an interesting method which partly relativates figures given in earlier literature. Peasant farmers had to compete for the food they produced with urban consumers. Risk-minimisation by mixed farming and the establishment of community exchange and support systems were thus essential survival strategies. Peasants further sought to maintain a balance between their resources and the size of the family by adopting certain control strategies, in particular infant exposure. Sex discrimination applied here no less than when allotting rations in times of shortage. As urban populations grew too large for their agrarian bases, they either had to export surplus consumers or import additional food supplies. As long as Athens was an attractive trading partner and remained in control of the sea, which was the case particularly in the inter-war period (480-431), food short ages were rare. But, as ever, war aggravated an already insecure food supply and with the rise of the Macedonians in the latter half of the fourth century B.C., food crises became common. It is surprising to find that city governments devised very little in the way of permanent institutions for alleviating food shortage. Athens and Rome did deviate from the general practice among ancient states of minimal government intervention with regard to food supplies and their distribution, but in the case of the former city hardly effectively before the fourth century, when its supremacy was already on the decline. In Rome, a regular food supply was only developed from the turn of the third century B.C. The key role in the resolution and alleviation of food crises was left to local men of wealth. However, as Dr. Garnsey notes, "euergetism, the public generosity of the wealthy, was an institution devised by the rich in their own interests." The most that governments did in times of crisis was to order the release and sale of private grain stocks – which hardly prevented speculation by wealthy landowners. The rise of Rome presented no important innovations in the mechanisms for coping with food crisis. Where the Romans commanded food resources superfluous to their needs, Egyptian grain for example, they disposed of them profitably and did not fund schemes of poor relief outside Italy. On the whole, Rome’s subjects "were expected to help themselves, and they did so in time-honoured ways. Hungry peasants combined belt-tightening with drawing on their stores, looking to kin, friends and neighbours, and where necessary to patrons or moneylenders. In the cities euergetism continued to be the main shield of the common people against adversity." Dr. Garnsey’s book presents a wealth of information. It paints a picture not entirely unknown – of the inequalities reigning between urban and rural dweller, between conqueror and conquered, between man and woman. Scholars will welcome the seventeen pages of bibliography. While looking forward to the author’s promised treat of religious responses to food crisis at a later occasion, the reviewer hopes that today’s world will unite in seeking more efficacious means of coping with the eternal problems of need than propitiation of the gods! ELIZABETH FRIDRICH | ||||||