Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

economic decline: some conclusions 391
marked effect on the material conditions of peasants and kings alike, and
whose influence reached beyond the purely ‘material’ into all areas of life
that are affected by levels of prosperity (as diverse as the size of the state
or the scale of artistic production). 79 Furthermore, the unravelling of the
centuries-old Roman (indeed, often pre-Roman) system raises the fundamental
question of whether the complex material and economic world
which we take for granted today could, in the right circumstances, also
come unstuck. 80
79 For this reason I often find myself out of sympathy with modern historiography, which is fascinated
by ideological and intellectual change, and often treats these as though they took place in an economic
vacuum.
80 Very many people have helped me with ideas, criticisms, comments and references, for both ch.
12 and ch. 13; but I must thank, for their particularly generous help, Jairus Banaji, Sam Barnish, Gian
Pietro Brogiolo, Thomas Charles-Edwards, Ros Faith, Sauro Gelichi, Peter Heather, Simon Loseby,
Peter Sarris, Michael Whitby, Chris Wickham and Greg Woolf.
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