Money and Freedom

What is the secret of Ancient Greece and Rome? Andrew Selkirk suggests the answer is that the Greeks invented money and the market economy. Money gives you choice, and choice gives you freedom, and freedom led to the outburst of creativity that was the miracle of Greece. Rome then used the Greek foundations to build a great empire. This book is in three parts. It begins by looking at the world before money, and it examines the Minoan Empire, the forerunner of the Greeks. The Minoans lacked money and was therefore a totalitarian state, based on palaces. The book then compares the Minoans with the Greeks, whose cities used money and were based around the marketplace. But there was one city that rejected money, and that was Sparta, which produced good soldiers, but no culture. The Romans then built up a great empire on Greek principles by learning that winning the peace was more important than winning a war. And when their politics broke down, Augustus put aside democracy and introduced peace and prosperity. Over 300 color illustrations are included to present a new, and very readable account of the Greek and Roman revolution. It shows how many of the ideas first pioneered by the Greeks have vital lessons for the modern world.