The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World is an original and influential reconstruction of Classical Antiquity through a Marxist lens. Geoffrey de Ste. Croix explores the personality of the Ancient world as a slave economy. He traces the social origins of Athenian democracy and the later decline of the Greek city-states in the Roman era, and offers an innovative class-based explanation for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Comparing the late Roman political-fiscal system to a ‘vampire bat’, Ste. Croix argues that serfdom and a tightening fiscal screw left the peasant masses with an attitude of indifference to the Empire’s fate.

First published in 1981, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World was recognised by Ernst Badian in the New York Review of Books as ‘The only work in a Western language that has ever attempted to tell the story of the greatest part of the ancient world with the interests of the lower classes as its central theme’.

‘A landmark in the field of ancient history’
New Republic

‘An astonishing achievement’
Sunday Times

‘Few contributions to ancient history are read much longer than a generation. There are exceptions, such as Edward Gibbon and George Grote; Geoffrey, I suspect, will join that company.’
David Harvey, Guardian