Ancient Political and Economic Ideas
Introduction
Although some of the beliefs that were present about both politics and the economy
originated in the ancient world they laid the foundation for the future forms of governance and
economic structures. Greece: Plato and Aristotle were two philosophers who discussed justice,
government, and the ideal state; The republic by Plato describes the philosophical state in which
all necessary philosophical values will govern while the Politics by Aristotle argues that the best
form of government is one that has aspects of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Republican
Rome was at the heart of political reflection and focused on the building of the Republic and the
Empire, including the subjects of citizenship, law, and responsibility to society; Roman law
remains one of the foundations of Western legal tradition. Economically, both Greece and Rome
depended on agriculture although trade was also a significant activity being in the ancient world.
Sparta and Athens, which were the two veteran city-states of Greece, demonstrated a clear
difference in economic makeup whereas Rome attained a more complex economy through
provisions for trade networks, infrastructures, currency, and taxation. These early concepts
provided the basis for today’s political philosophy and economic affairs, like democracy,
monarchical republics, constitutions and laws, and commerce.
Political Ideas in Ancient Civilizations
Ancient Egypt
The political system of ancient Egyptian was however relatively developed and in this
system there was high level of centralization and the system can also be termed as theocratic as
explained above. It is therefore evident that insofar as the king, who is deified, needed to have
complete control over the territory and its inhabitants in the context of ancient Egyptian culture.
These thoughts of divine kingship were because the pharaoh was considered as the one who had
to mediate the relationship between the gods and the people, who was the guardian of ma ’at,
referring to the principles of order in this world. Marat thus included all aspects of life and in the
legal process under the contemporary law, the parties were at the behest of the pharaoh.
The strong bases of the rule of the pharaohs whose beginning should be traced to the kings of the
third dynasty were the officers, ministers, deputies, secretaries and other administrative
personnel. Such officials oversaw the task of collection of revenues, judiciary and general
management of state business such as operation of water supplies and constructions of
architectural projects. Our arguments in this thesis are as follows: The Nile resource in the
Egyptian context, the prudent governance model and stability and centralized features were
paramount in managing the availability of Nile resources and the resulting agriculture.
Mesopotamia
Political thought in Mesopotamia was developed and influenced solely by the political
archival history defined by city- states and empires. The Mesopotamian concept of kingship is
very similar to that of the Pharaohs of Egypt, as both Mesopotamian and Egyptian kings were
considered to be semi divine entities, which brand attached to the king helped to legitimize him.
Nevertheless, whereas Egypt had a centralized politics as seen through its political hierarchy, the
political systems of Mesopotamia city-states such as Sumer, Akkad, and Babylonia, for instance,
were relatively ‘diverse – and say, more competitively inclined most of the time.
The laws or their formalization became one of the most important elements of the
Mesopotamian political thought which deserve to be identified and studied. Even though they
are of historical background and composed before the Roman law, there are several codes which
include the 'Code of Hammurabi,’ of the 18th century B. C. , which is probably one of the most
elaborated codes in the world. It established a formal legal order, which stated the principles of
the ‘function of justice and reprisal,’ which delineated most aspects of production, property,
marriage, and sex, criminal justice. In this tradition the king would have been deemed solely
responsible for making legal decisions in order to maintain justice thereby taking that
responsibility here as well.
Ancient Greece
According to the type of governance, the Greece of that time shows an array of political
map of polis as the means of exercising governance within cities. The ancient Greek period is
said to have unanimously two distinct city-states: Athens and Sparta; whilst the former grew into
a style of politics that was new, the latter did not merely have a different type of politics but was
seen as more conventional.
It is a fact that since earlier time, Athens once had a very crude taste of democracy in a
certain period within its history. While analyzing Athenian democracy it must be stated that it
was much closer to the direct democracy model where everyone, or at least the literate male
citizens, directly voted and made decisions instead of electing representatives into certain
legislating or executing body, unlike the modern democracy types where people elect the
representatives into the parliament or any other legislative body. Those political ideas, which
were developed at the Attic level, include Citizenship and the political Equality before the law
and how the political forums for the metics and Full citizenship for political discourses and
policy making. Sophists defined and elaborated them into arguments and discourse, and
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle penned their own theories on Justice, state, and the flawless state as
the ultimate form of a state or civilization.
Ancient Rome
Focusing on the proposed thesis that Politics could have been defined differently for the
ancients of Rome, the paper aims to investigate and establish the changes discernible in the
conception of the political structures and consequently the development of the manifold forms of
politics in different epochs of the ancient Rome that started from the republican phase right up to
the empire phase. While the political structure of the Roman Republic was Democracy,
Oligarchy and Monarchy in one way, Senators had the authority to exercise power. Other chief
agencies mentioned are the Senate; this implied that it was indeed playground of aristocracy; the
popular assemblies that both electorally and legislatively performed; besides other few
acknowledged state functionalities/105/ like the consuls, the tribunes and the hippocampus.
The main Roman political ideas, which are considered significant, can be listed as
follows Some of the most important political ideas of Rome are: Political responsibilities of
Roman citizen and aspect of the legal systems; The ‘Check and Balance’ principle which means
a government requires the approval of people and mainly governs within the laws was mainly
adopted by Romans. Cicero can be an example; though he belonged to Latin, he at least was
able to articulate concern with justice and natural law as well as common good.
It rises enormously in the Empire that emperors equally as kings or regress, and autocrats.
However, some constructive aspects or some sections of the Republic’s legal and administrative
capital were preservative during the empire period of governance. The legal systems of the
modern countries were greatly influenced by Roman law: However, it is noteworthy to mention
here that one of the major resources which are considered in the course and to which lots of
attention has been paid is the Corpus Juries Civilis, the Body of Civil Law, codified under the
direction of the Byzantine emperor Justinian.
Ancient China
During the period, the political thought of China received the impact from major schools
of thoughts including the Confucianism, Legalism and Daoism. Confucianism was developed by
Confucius or Kong Fuzi who played the role of a teacher and philosopher, and “learned
gentlemen” into the shape of a valuable political and social idea that meant moral virtue, filiality,
and strict observance of the five cardinal relationships. The typical governmental structure
represented by Confucian thought was based on a real ruler, a sage-king with moral authority to
control rather than through the use of force.
Legalism, on the other hand, characterized itself as a centralized state with laws that
were, strict, and punishment that was severe. This is perfectly illustrated in works of Han Feizi,
one of the most prominent Zhou Legalists who believed that people are innately selfish, and that
only the state possessing a strict bureaucratic structure and utilizing the legalist methods of
governance can maintain order. This philosophy was highly embraced during the adaption of Qin
dynasty were China was united with a centralized bureaucratic state.
Another Chinese philosophy, Daoism, which was developed by Laozi, constitutes the
opposite approach and reflects such key Daoist concepts as the concept of the harmony with
seasons, wu-wei (non-action or action without action). Daoist political idea entailed the approval
of a smaller level of interference from the side of the government and less regulation, thus
allowing people to do as they wished referring to Dao.
Economic Ideas in Ancient Civilizations
Ancient Egypt
The economy of the early Egyptians was most undisputedly agricultural with the Nile
valley and its surroundings being the productive grounds. If there is an Egyptian ethic that
applies to economic life, it would be Ma’at, which in many ways, the state controlled the flow of
resources and bodies. Even in farming, which was the principal economic activity in Egypt, the
pharaoh had overall control through state owned farms and the corvée system in which people
were compelled to work for the state.
Another institution that Egyptians made a significant investment on was trade. Its
favorable position in the region made it possible for the country to trade with other oriental
regions by importing products such as timber, copper, and luxuries while export products
included grain, papyrus, and linen among others. Trade was controlled and taxed in some ways
by the state, to be exchanged for goods and services/bribe, for the sustenance of the bureaucracy
and the military, as well as for funding construction projects.
Mesopotamia
The organization of the economy of Mesopotamia Egypt is in lines with the principles of
the society which had a developed agricultural, trade and craft sector. Hearths also emerged in
Fertile Crescent which is a region less defined by a modern country but a region in the Middle
East between the Tigris and Euphrates river that provided good land for crop growing and animal
herding. This was evident with reference to water management in the farming process this
indicated that the irrigation systems used had to be maintained and this could be done through
team work.
There were also other features of the Mesopotamian city-state that they served as the
place of trade and commerce. They also had an active long distance trading with areas like the
Indus and Mediterranean belt among others. Clay tablets could be use and cuneiform writing
could be adopted to preserve records and this way the bureaucracy of trade and other significant
realms of the economic system was kept unintermitted. Writing also supported the commercial
practices in a way that helped towards the formation of reliable means of measurement in the
sense that there was formulation of standardized weight and measure.
Other than Mesopotamia, the greatest economical concept that came from the
Mesopotamia civilization was that of debt and credits. For instance, the temples and palaces
were not just places to worship and the royal king as well as other rulers, respectively, but they
were institutions that engaged in extending credit to farmers and merchants. Policies were
having in the area of interest rates and debts written on clay tablets . They also once used to
implement the forgiveness of debt every fifty years, known as the Jubilee emancipation so as to
prevent imbalance in economy becoming a major source of social unrest.
Ancient Greece
Despite the fact that Ancient Greece had a highly diverse political system compared to
the neighboring countries, they all had some pretty common occupations like farming,
commerce, and slavery. Because the mountain in Greece and its geography, agriculture could
not take much and opted to trade in order to get things that were essential such as grains, wood,
and metals. This was due mainly to the access to sea as it gradually transformed into the
economic hub which favored Athens. The Zulu people also developed a very complex economy
on trading, making of metals especially iron and other metallic elements coupled with sea piracy,
trading as well as other sea related activities. . As earlier mentioned the first known use of
coinage was the Lydia and later the Greeks took a copy of it to enrich their trade and their
economy of the countries where those coins were being circulated. Like many other
civilizations, Ancient Athenians also engaged in slave-related undertakings, that is, slaves were
an integral part of the lives and the economy where they performed various tasks ranging from
housekeeping and mining to arts.
The theory and practice that characterized the ancient Greeks’ ways of thinking about
economy can be said to have stemmed from philosophers like Xenophon and Aristotle. This
includes the great Socrates’ student, Xenophon, in his book the “Oeconomicus” where is
discusses issues arising out of the household and the manner the riches should be employed.
Aristotle, in his writing that includes “Politics” and “Ethics Nichomachean”, was able to
distinguish what could pass for an identification of wealth, how the oikos featured in the
economy, and most importantly, the natural and the unnatural ways of acquiring wealth as
considered by Aristotle.
Ancient Rome
The whole economy of Rome began growing side by side with agriculture, trade,
industrial relations and use of slaves. There were no barriers of walls and other separations and
the geographical expanse of Rome also facilitated simple and fast circulation of commodities,
persons and knowledge in different parts of the empire. The overseas trade as well as the
imperial mail were included within the context of the food supply, as well as all other necessities
through means of the effective system of Roman roads and Mediterranean Sea. The central
source of capital for the Romans was the agricultural field the greater portion of it was produced
by the latifundia farms that sold its excess produce to the roman inhabitants of the cities and
other export markets. Trade was also equally important to Romans, here the Roman state
originated where raw materials such as luxury, spices and other products were imported from
different areas of the empire and rest of the world. Later that was mostly in the form of coins
and imperial coinage which helped in facilitating trade and collection of taxes.
The Roman conception concerning the economy was rational and was mainly concerned
with the ideas like ownership of wealth or land, investment in purchase on products and services,
or regulation by authority. The first mentioned literatures are Columbus, Cato de Elter, Varro,
Columella and others who provided information on agriculture, how to manage the estate and the
idea of ’cognitive impulse’ or sustaining oneself. Melanie Pitts showed that the concept of
reciprocity when those who were wealthier sponsored and supported their friends and clients
receiving the same in return as well as their services and loyalty was one of the fundamentals of
the Roman economy.
Ancient China
The old economy of Chinese was to certain extent an agricultural one because agriculture
still constituted the main occupation of most Chinese in the ancient period. In the south,
specializing in agriculture, the plains along Yellow and Yangtze rivers were main areas of rice,
millet, wheat and others crops intensively farming due to the alluvial soil fertility. A similar
observation can also be made concerning the state interventiveness in the management of
irrigation, land and grain coefficients for supplying the population and to prevent turmoil.
Trade and or business was also a busy focus in the ancient Chinese populace too during
such time. Another form of transport was through the Silk Road which was a network of
caravans which transported goods through China and connected with other regions in Asia,
Middle East and Europe. Silk and ceramics in this form, alongside other Chinese goods, were
used in other distant markets as well. Confucianist came to economic analysis with agriculture
and propriety together with virtues within undertakings. According to Confucian model of self-
organized ideal society, the required economy is stated to be kept by a ruler, besides improving
the welfare, fairness, and ethic respect of the people. On the other hand, Legalist economic
thought aimed at asserting state control over economic activities, bureaucratic order-P
outrageous_ping, and reward and punishment ranging policies for dealing with the economy.
Conclusion
The political and economic systems of many ancient civilizations were founded on the
current political and social environments of the period. Some of them started even in prehistoric
ages, some continued into more recent civilizations such as from the centralized theocracy of
ancient Egyptian to the democratic experiments of Athenians, the Mesopotamian laws, Roman
republics, and china’s philosophy. Several concepts, which were originally developed in Arts,
are of significant background for modern political and economical theories; studying such ideas
also enlightens one on the variety of human civilizations all around the globe. There is no doubt
that with such ideas being advanced, even touching on some long gone historical epochs, these
theories are indeed helpful in orienting people to present day issues and defining the future.
