Books by Tim Sorg
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This dissertation is a comparative history of imperial land allotment in the ancient Mediterranea... more This dissertation is a comparative history of imperial land allotment in the ancient Mediterranean world. Living in a profoundly agrarian world, the Athenians c. 510-413 BCE, Syracusans c. 483-380, and Romans c. 396-264 each created imperial territories by dividing up, or “allotting,” land they confiscated in war. They also experimented with forms of republicanism: as citizens, they participated in popular assemblies, fought together, and shared access to imperial land. By exploring the historical links between land allotment and shared governance, I reconstruct how the citizen communities at Athens, Syracuse, and Rome developed alongside new ideas about imperial territory, mobility, and the value of labor.
Because land allotment moved people to and from confiscated land, and in and out of each republic, it also reorganized, concentrated, and displaced people within each empire. However, the way the Athenians, Syracusans, and Romans allotted land had drastically different effects on how people moved across the three empires: the Athenians went to great lengths to keep their citizen lotholders at home in Attica, whereas the Syracusans brought the people they dispossessed back to Syracuse to become citizens, and the Romans sent their citizens away from Rome, all across central Italy. I develop a new heuristic model for historians to explain why each group allotted land as they did by drawing on recent trends in Francophone political geography and the macroeconomic concept of human capital. By reframing historical texts with archaeological case studies, I show how each group collectively drew lessons from their own political culture to imagine their imperial territory, and then how they used land allotment to find their citizens’ place within it. As such, land allotment was a means to an end, more self-reflexive than aimed at imperial control: instead, I argue that the three patterns of land allotment can be distinguished, first and foremost, in the way each community valued and accumulated human capital.
Comparing the three approaches to land allotment allows us to confront and turn on its head the consensus among historians that people in antiquity allotted land primarily as a state-strategy of imperial control. Altogether, it recaptures some of the many ways people in antiquity reconciled empire with citizenship and, in doing so, how land allotment helped shape the political and economic history of the ancient Mediterranean world.
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Publications by Tim Sorg
Ageless Aretē, 2022
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Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2021
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Conflict and Competition: Agōn in Western Greece, 2020
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Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2020
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Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2019
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In light of the emerging institutionalist economic history of Athens, this study explores the pol... more In light of the emerging institutionalist economic history of Athens, this study explores the political and economic resilience of Athens at the center of the Second Athenian League by linking the imperial pedigree of cleruchies to a new sensitivity for the performative components of fiscal policy. The paper argues that Agyrrhios’ Grain-Tax Law of 374/3 BC was a necessary part of imperial recovery and that the Aiakeion was a monument to a rebranded imperial project. It develops along the way the practical importance of foreign merchants to the collection of cleruchic taxes from the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros.
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Talks & Presentations by Tim Sorg
AIA Ottawa Society
Classical Syracuse was a city of immigrants. Some came seeking work and high wages, others as ref... more Classical Syracuse was a city of immigrants. Some came seeking work and high wages, others as refugees fleeing the Carthaginians’ advance across Sicily. But most arrived by force after being defeated by the Syracusans and dispossessed of their land. Since the late Archaic period, the Syracusans regularly forced the people they conquered to relocate to Syracusan territory as citizens and then gave away the land they left behind to people from outside of Syracusan society. In this talk, we explore how the Syracusans competed with their rivals in the Classical period by forcing the people they conquered to become unwilling immigrants at Syracuse, a tumultuous history that saw the Syracusans rapidly uproot much of Magna Graecia. We will examine excavation assemblages from the ancient sites of Naxos, Leontinoi, and Syracuse to see what was so distinctive about Syracusan imperialism in the ancient world and what set them apart from their imperial contemporaries at Athens and Rome. Through it all, we will see how the Syracusans were on their way to constructing one of the Mediterranean’s first quasi-planned economies—an empire in a city.
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Abstract: This talk will explore competing ideas about human and ecological aretē in archaic Sici... more Abstract: This talk will explore competing ideas about human and ecological aretē in archaic Sicily, and show why the Syracusans came to value the aretē of skilled labor over the aretē of fertile land. In antiquity, Sicily’s natural landscape was known for its excellence and cultivability: poets and prose authors praised the region for its ecological virtue (e.g. Pind. Nem. 1.13-16; Thuc. 6.20.4; Cic. Verr. 2.2.2; Diod. 23.1.1). Syrakousai, for example, was more than twice as cultivable as Attica: though under half the size of Attica at the end of the archaic period, it could actually sustain a much larger population. Yet for over a century, the Syracusans regularly gave away land they confiscated in eastern Sicily to their Kalabrian allies and Peloponnesian mercenaries without asking for agricultural rents in return. It remains unclear why, if Sicilian land was so good, the Syracusans gave it away so regularly.
I argue that, by the beginning of the fifth century, Syrakousai remained an underpopulated “frontier economy,” which meant that there was more available land than people to work it. Since there was already plenty of good land around Syracuse, they learned that the land they confiscated beyond it was expendable. What they lacked was the skilled labor to compete with their rivals in eastern Sicily and beyond. To explain this trend, I begin by exploring the “archaic origins” of the Syracusan agricultural economy, a time when Syracusan society was fluid and elites became immensely wealthy exchanging agricultural surpluses for imported manufactured goods. Next, I show how the archaic frontier economy was good for creating agricultural surpluses, but not good for creating a competitive economy. Finally, I present archaeological and ecological data from Naxos (depopulated in 403 BCE) to show how the Syracusans willingly gave away good land so they could relocate skilled labor.
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This talk will explore how the Syracusans shaped their empire in eastern Sicily and southern Ital... more This talk will explore how the Syracusans shaped their empire in eastern Sicily and southern Italy in the early fourth century BCE. Since the Archaic period, Syracusan tyrants regularly forced the people they conquered to relocate to Syracusan territory as citizens and then allot the land they left behind to people from outside of Syracusan society. Time and time again, the Syracusans gave away imperial land and concentrated imperial labor so they could compete economically with their contemporaries at Athens and Carthage. In recent years, historians have drawn comparisons to autocrats in the ancient Near East, concluding that Syracuse was a variation on a common theme—that Syracusan tyrants did the same kinds of things as kings in the Near East. In this talk, I show that analogies from the Near East hide what really set apart Syracusan imperialism in the ancient world: the Syracusans considered imperial land to be less a source of wealth than the people taken from it.
First, I show that the Syracusans’ history of relocating the people they dispossessed back to Syracuse with citizenship and land was without precedent in the ancient world. Rather, the Syracusans drew from, and repurposed, a Greek political culture of allotment and citizenship to drive economic specialization. Second, I use the archaeological case study of Leontinoi to chart the movement of people to Syracuse. Even though Dionysios allotted the Leontines’ land to his mercenaries, I show that the process undercut non-agricultural production at Leontinoi to the benefit of Syracusan economic networks. Finally, I show how agricultural intensification at Syracuse went hand in hand with economic specialization. We see that the Syracusans thought about empire as a zero-sum competition among neighboring states where they could redirect non-agricultural production, trade networks, and economic activity to force along the growth of their metropole.
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Books by Tim Sorg
Because land allotment moved people to and from confiscated land, and in and out of each republic, it also reorganized, concentrated, and displaced people within each empire. However, the way the Athenians, Syracusans, and Romans allotted land had drastically different effects on how people moved across the three empires: the Athenians went to great lengths to keep their citizen lotholders at home in Attica, whereas the Syracusans brought the people they dispossessed back to Syracuse to become citizens, and the Romans sent their citizens away from Rome, all across central Italy. I develop a new heuristic model for historians to explain why each group allotted land as they did by drawing on recent trends in Francophone political geography and the macroeconomic concept of human capital. By reframing historical texts with archaeological case studies, I show how each group collectively drew lessons from their own political culture to imagine their imperial territory, and then how they used land allotment to find their citizens’ place within it. As such, land allotment was a means to an end, more self-reflexive than aimed at imperial control: instead, I argue that the three patterns of land allotment can be distinguished, first and foremost, in the way each community valued and accumulated human capital.
Comparing the three approaches to land allotment allows us to confront and turn on its head the consensus among historians that people in antiquity allotted land primarily as a state-strategy of imperial control. Altogether, it recaptures some of the many ways people in antiquity reconciled empire with citizenship and, in doing so, how land allotment helped shape the political and economic history of the ancient Mediterranean world.
Publications by Tim Sorg
Talks & Presentations by Tim Sorg
I argue that, by the beginning of the fifth century, Syrakousai remained an underpopulated “frontier economy,” which meant that there was more available land than people to work it. Since there was already plenty of good land around Syracuse, they learned that the land they confiscated beyond it was expendable. What they lacked was the skilled labor to compete with their rivals in eastern Sicily and beyond. To explain this trend, I begin by exploring the “archaic origins” of the Syracusan agricultural economy, a time when Syracusan society was fluid and elites became immensely wealthy exchanging agricultural surpluses for imported manufactured goods. Next, I show how the archaic frontier economy was good for creating agricultural surpluses, but not good for creating a competitive economy. Finally, I present archaeological and ecological data from Naxos (depopulated in 403 BCE) to show how the Syracusans willingly gave away good land so they could relocate skilled labor.
First, I show that the Syracusans’ history of relocating the people they dispossessed back to Syracuse with citizenship and land was without precedent in the ancient world. Rather, the Syracusans drew from, and repurposed, a Greek political culture of allotment and citizenship to drive economic specialization. Second, I use the archaeological case study of Leontinoi to chart the movement of people to Syracuse. Even though Dionysios allotted the Leontines’ land to his mercenaries, I show that the process undercut non-agricultural production at Leontinoi to the benefit of Syracusan economic networks. Finally, I show how agricultural intensification at Syracuse went hand in hand with economic specialization. We see that the Syracusans thought about empire as a zero-sum competition among neighboring states where they could redirect non-agricultural production, trade networks, and economic activity to force along the growth of their metropole.
Because land allotment moved people to and from confiscated land, and in and out of each republic, it also reorganized, concentrated, and displaced people within each empire. However, the way the Athenians, Syracusans, and Romans allotted land had drastically different effects on how people moved across the three empires: the Athenians went to great lengths to keep their citizen lotholders at home in Attica, whereas the Syracusans brought the people they dispossessed back to Syracuse to become citizens, and the Romans sent their citizens away from Rome, all across central Italy. I develop a new heuristic model for historians to explain why each group allotted land as they did by drawing on recent trends in Francophone political geography and the macroeconomic concept of human capital. By reframing historical texts with archaeological case studies, I show how each group collectively drew lessons from their own political culture to imagine their imperial territory, and then how they used land allotment to find their citizens’ place within it. As such, land allotment was a means to an end, more self-reflexive than aimed at imperial control: instead, I argue that the three patterns of land allotment can be distinguished, first and foremost, in the way each community valued and accumulated human capital.
Comparing the three approaches to land allotment allows us to confront and turn on its head the consensus among historians that people in antiquity allotted land primarily as a state-strategy of imperial control. Altogether, it recaptures some of the many ways people in antiquity reconciled empire with citizenship and, in doing so, how land allotment helped shape the political and economic history of the ancient Mediterranean world.
I argue that, by the beginning of the fifth century, Syrakousai remained an underpopulated “frontier economy,” which meant that there was more available land than people to work it. Since there was already plenty of good land around Syracuse, they learned that the land they confiscated beyond it was expendable. What they lacked was the skilled labor to compete with their rivals in eastern Sicily and beyond. To explain this trend, I begin by exploring the “archaic origins” of the Syracusan agricultural economy, a time when Syracusan society was fluid and elites became immensely wealthy exchanging agricultural surpluses for imported manufactured goods. Next, I show how the archaic frontier economy was good for creating agricultural surpluses, but not good for creating a competitive economy. Finally, I present archaeological and ecological data from Naxos (depopulated in 403 BCE) to show how the Syracusans willingly gave away good land so they could relocate skilled labor.
First, I show that the Syracusans’ history of relocating the people they dispossessed back to Syracuse with citizenship and land was without precedent in the ancient world. Rather, the Syracusans drew from, and repurposed, a Greek political culture of allotment and citizenship to drive economic specialization. Second, I use the archaeological case study of Leontinoi to chart the movement of people to Syracuse. Even though Dionysios allotted the Leontines’ land to his mercenaries, I show that the process undercut non-agricultural production at Leontinoi to the benefit of Syracusan economic networks. Finally, I show how agricultural intensification at Syracuse went hand in hand with economic specialization. We see that the Syracusans thought about empire as a zero-sum competition among neighboring states where they could redirect non-agricultural production, trade networks, and economic activity to force along the growth of their metropole.
The goal of the project is to preserve and make broadly accessible a collection of important and fragile squeezes (paper impressions) that were created in Ankara, Turkey during the Cornell Expedition to the Assyro-Babylonian Orient in 1907. This will be a valuable online resource in the study of Roman history and epigraphy, made available to a large audience through digitization (and preventing deterioration of the original items that comes from unnecessary handling of the objects). It will furthermore represent an extension of past projects funded by the Arts and Sciences Grants, in particular the documentation of the Cornell Cast Collection and the Cornell Numismatic Collection.