M. I. Finley An Ancient Historian and his Impact

An assessment of how the most famous ancient historian of the twentieth century achieved his impact.

M. I. Finley (1912–86) was the most famous ancient historian of his generation. He was admired by his peers, and was Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. His unmistakable voice was familiar to tens of thousands of radio listeners, his polemical reviews and other journalism were found all over the broadsheets and weeklies, and his scholarly as well as his popular works sold in very large numbers as Penguin paperbacks. Yet this was also a man dismissed from his job at Rutgers University when he refused to answer the question of whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. This pioneering volume assesses Finley's achievements and analyses the nature of the impact of this charismatic individual and the means by which he changed the world of ancient history.

1. Introduction: Finley's impact - a balance sheet Daniel Jew, Robin Osborne and Michael Scott; 2. The making of Moses Finley Daniel P. Tompkins; 3. The impact of Studies in Land and Credit Paul Millett; 4. Finley's impact on Homer Robin Osborne; 5. Finley's slavery Kostas Vlassopoulos; 6. Finley and Sicily Jonathan R. W. Prag; 7. Finley and the teaching of ancient history Dorothy J. Thompson; 8. Finley's journalism Mary Beard; 9. Finley and the University of Cambridge Geoffrey Lloyd; 10. Finley and other scholars: the case of Finley and Momigliano Peter Garnsey; 11. Finley's democracy Paul Cartledge; 12. Finley and the ancient economy Alessandro Launaro; 13. Finley and archaeology Jennifer Gates-Foster; 14. Finley's impact on the continent Wilfried Nippel; 15. Measuring Finley's impact Walter Scheidel.

Daniel Jew is a Lecturer at the National University of Singapore, College of Alice and Peter Tan, and was formerly Finley Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge.
Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and of the British Academy. His work ranges widely over Greek history, archaeology and art history. His most recent books are Athens and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge, 2010), The History Written on the Classical Greek Body (Cambridge, 2011), and Greek History: the Basics (2014).
Michael Scott is a former Finley Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, and is now Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. His publications range across Greek and Roman history and archaeology and include Delphi and Olympia (Cambridge, 2010) Space and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 2012), Delphi: Centre of the Ancient World (2014) and Ancient Worlds (2016). He has also written and presented a number of documentaries and radio programmes about the ancient Mediterranean world for the BBC, ITV, National Geographic and the History Channel.