wealth, attitudes to
wealth, attitudes toClassical societies developed a range of responses to the universal ambition of individuals to amass property and possessions. One extreme response, characteristic of societies where the wealthy had retained or regained preponderant influence in public affairs, was to impose little or no restriction on accumulation: early Hellenistic Sparta and late republican Rome were examples. Conversely, Greek colonies were often founded on an ‘equal and like’ basis, and Roman colonial foundations regularly assigned the same land-area to each colonist. However, few colonies remained egalitarian for long (Diodorus Siculus 5. 9. 4–5 for an exception, Lipara, one of the Eolian islands). See colonization, Greek and Roman.
More normally, attitudes oscillated unsystematically within such extremes. Amassing wealth, possessing it, and spending it aroused differing responses, and...
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