Bibliogr. p. 222-238. Notes bibliogr. Index p. 239-244

Exchange lies at the heart of the economic process. It is also, as Aristotle maintained, an essential condition for political order. The separation of economic exchange from its social and political implications, commonplace in modern economic theory, would have been meaningless in Ancient Greece. This book is the first sustained attempt to describe the consequences of a cast of thought in which the exchange of goods and the payment of money were viewed as social and political practices. The distinction between reciprocity and redistribution on the one hand and market exchange on the other is abandoned in order to explore the social symbolism of exchange emerged as morally inappropriate behaviour against a cultural background in which the political community was seen as a sacred order similar to that of the family. Drawing on literary and archaeological evidence, including vase painting and the iconography of coinage, she emphasises the overriding importance of the Greek city-state in shaping a notion of commerce opposed to other forms of exchange.