An interview with Josiah Ober , author of The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece 《古典希腊的崛起与衰落》作者 Josiah Ober 访谈 作者：Debra Liese @ 2015-5-13

译者：尼克基得慢(@尼克基得慢)

校对：Pyro，小册子(@昵称被抢的小册子)

来源：Princeton University Press网址， http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2015/05/13/an-interview-with-josiah-ober-author-of-the-rise-and-fall-of-classical-greece/ The period considered classical Greece (roughly the 4th through 5th century BC) had a profound effect on Western civilization, forming the foundations of politics and philosophy, as well as artistic and scientific thought. Why did Greece experience such economic and cultural growth—and why was it limited to this 200-year period? Josiah Ober , Professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University and author of The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece , took the time to explain the reasons behind Greece’s flourishing, and what its economic rise and political fall can tell us about our own world.

古典希腊时期（大约公元前4-5世纪）对于西方文明有着深远的影响，构建了其政治、哲学和艺术科学思想的基础。为何希腊经历了这样的经济增长和文化进步——而又为何仅限于这200年？斯坦福大学政治学和古典学教授、《古典希腊的崛起与衰落》一书作者 Josiah Ober 解释了希腊繁荣背后的原因，以及其经济崛起和政治衰落给我们现代世界的启示。 What was the rise of classical Greece and when and why did it happen? 什么是古典希腊的崛起？它于何时因何而发生？ JO: Basically, sustained economic growth lead to the rise of Ancient Greek civilization.

JO：基本上，是持续的经济增长导致了古希腊文明的崛起。

At the Early Iron Age nadir, in ca. 1000 BCE, the Greek world was sparsely populated and consumption rates hovered near subsistence. Some 650 years later, in the age of Aristotle, the population of the Greek world had increased at least twenty-fold. During that same period, per capita consumption probably doubled.

在早期铁器时代的最低谷，约公元前1000年，希腊世界人烟稀少，消费水平徘徊在生存线附近。到了约650年之后的亚里士多德时代，希腊世界的人口已经增长了至少20倍，人均消费大约翻了一倍。

That rate of growth is far short of modern rates, but it equals the growth rate of the two standout societies of early modern Europe: Holland and England in the 16 th to 18 th centuries. Historians had long thought that the Greek world was impoverished and its economy overall static –which of course made Greek culture (art, philosophy, drama, and so on) seem that much more “miraculous.”

那时的增长速度远低于现代，但是已经相当于现代欧洲早期的两个杰出社会——16到18世纪荷兰和英格兰。历史学家曾在很长时间里以为希腊世界相当贫困，其经济总体上停滞不前，这当然让希腊文化（艺术、哲学、戏剧等）看起来更加“不可思议”。

But, thanks to the recent availability and quantification of a huge mass of data, drawn from both documentary and archaeological sources, we can now trace the amazing growth of the Greek economy, both in its extent (how many people, how much urbanization, and so on), and in terms of per capita consumption (how well people lived).

但是，多亏了近来文献和考古提供的大量量化数据，我们现在可以追溯希腊经济的惊人增长，不论是在规模方面（人口数量，城市化程度等等）还是人均消费方面（人民生活水平）。 So the rise of the Greek world was predicated on sustained economic growth, but why did the Greek economy grow so robustly for so long? 所以希腊世界的崛起立基于持续的经济增长之上，但是为什么希腊经济能保持强劲增长如此之久？ JO: In the 12th century BCE, the palace-centered civilization of Bronze Age Greece collapsed, utterly destroying political and social hierarchies. Surviving Greeks lived in tiny communities, where no one was rich or very powerful.

JO：在公元前12世纪，以宫殿为中心的希腊青铜时代文明崩溃，彻底摧毁了社会和政治的等级制度。幸存的希腊人生活在小社区之内，没有人特别富裕或特别强大。

As Greece slowly recovered, some communities rejected attempts by local elites to install themselves as rulers. Instead, ordinary men established fair rules (fair, that is, for themselves) and governed themselves collectively, as political equals. Women and slaves were, of course, a very different story.

随着希腊慢慢复元，一些社区拒绝让当地精英自立为统治者。相反，普通男性们建立起公平的规则（公平仅限于他们男性自己），并在相互间政治平等的基础上实行集体自我治理。当然，女人和奴隶又是另一回事了。

But because these emerging citizen-centered states often out-competed elite-dominated rivals, militarily and economically, citizenship proved to be adaptive. Because participatory citizenship was not scalable, Greek states stayed small as they became increasingly democratic.

但是，因为这些以公民为中心的新兴城邦通常在军事和经济上胜过由精英统治的竞争对手，所以它证明了公民制度是很有适应性的。由于直接参与式的公民制度无法规模化，希腊城邦在日益民主化的同时仍保持着较小的规模。

Under conditions of increasingly fair rules, individuals and states rationally invested in human capital, leading to increased specialization and exchange. The spread of fair rules and a shared culture across an expanding Greek world of independent city-states drove down transaction costs. Meanwhile competition encouraged continuous institutional and technological innovation.

在规则日趋公平的条件下，个人和城邦均愿意对人力资本进行理性投资，从而促进了专业化和交易。在由独立城邦组成的不断扩张的希腊世界中，公平规则的传播和共同文化的建立，降低了交易成本。同时，竞争鼓励了制度和技术的持续创新。

The result was 700+ years of world-class efflorescence, marked by exceptional demographic and per capita growth, and by immensely influential ideas, literature, art, and science. But, unlike the more familiar story of ancient empires, no one was in running the show: Greece remained a decentralized ecology of small states.

其结果就是超过700年的世界级繁华盛世，史无前例的人口和人均（收入）增长，以及影响巨大的思想、文学、艺术和科学，是这一时期的标志。但是，与我们更熟悉的那些古代帝国的故事不一样的是，这齣大剧无人主导：希腊仍然是个分散的小国生态。 So what about the fall? 那衰落又是怎么回事？ JO: There are two “falls”–one political and one economic. The economic fall is the decline of the Greek economy from its very high level in the age of Aristotle to a “premodern Greek normal”of low population and near-subsistence consumption levels with the disintegration of the Roman empire. That low normal had pertained before the rise of the city-state ecology. After the fall, it persisted until the 20 th century.

JO：衰落体现在两个方面：一个是政治上，一个是经济上。经济上的衰落是指希腊经济从亚里士多德时代的高水平，随着罗马帝国解体而下降到“前现代希腊标准”——低人口和徘徊在生存线的消费水平。那种低标准还是属于城邦生态兴起 之前 的。在衰落之后，这种状态一直持续到20世纪。

But we also need to explain an earlier political fall. Why, just when the ancient Greek economy was nearing its peak, were Philip II andAlexander (“the Great”) ofMacedon able to conquer the Greek world? And then there is another puzzle: Why were so many Greek city-states able to maintain independence and flourishing economies in the face of Macedonian hegemony?

但是我们还需要解释一下更早的 政治 衰落。当古希腊经济接近巅峰时，为什么马其顿的菲利普二世和亚历山大大帝能够征服希腊世界？随之而来的是另一个疑问：为什么这么多的希腊城邦在面对马其顿霸权时能够保持独立和经济繁荣？

The city-states were overtaken by the Macedonians in part because human-capital investments created a class of skilled and mobile experts in state finance and military organization. Hired Greek experts provided Philip and Alexander with the technical skills they needed to build a world-class army.

马其顿人夺取这些城邦的部分原因，是前述人力资本投资创造出了一个富有流动性的专业阶层，他们精通城邦财政和军队组织。通过雇佣这些希腊专家，菲利普和亚历山大大帝得到了他们创建世界级军队所急需的技术。

But meanwhile, deep investments by city-states in infrastructure and training made fortified cities expensive to besiege. As a result, after the Macedonian conquest, royal taxes on Greek cities were negotiated rather than simply imposed. That ensured enough independence for the Greek cities to sustain economic growth until the Roman conquest.

但与此同时，城邦在基础设施和训练上的大力投入，也使得攻占这些坚固设防的城邦代价高昂。因此，在征服了希腊城邦之后，马其顿人并不是单方面强加，而是通过谈判来确定希腊城邦的皇家税。这确保了希腊城邦的独立性，维持了其经济增长，直至被罗马人征服。 What does the economic rise and political fall of classical Greece have to tell us about our own world? 古典希腊的经济崛起和政治衰落对我们现代世界 有何 启示？ JO: The new data allows us to test the robustness of contemporary theories of political and economic development. In the classical Greek world, political development was a primary driver of economic growth; democracy appears to be a cause rather than simply an effect of prosperity.

JO：新的数据让我们可以检验当代政治和经济发展理论的可靠性。在古典希腊时代，政治发展是经济发展的原始驱动力；民主看来是繁荣的原因而不只是结果。

The steep rise and long duration of the city-state ecology offers a challenge to neo-Hobbesian centralization theories of state formation, which hold that advanced economic and political development requires the consolidation of centralized state power. The comparatively low rate of ancient Greek income inequality, along with the high rate of economic growth, suggests that the negative correlation of sustained growth with extreme inequality, observed in some recent societies, is not a unique product of modernity.

这种城邦生态的迅速兴起和经久不衰，对关于国家构建的新霍布斯主义的中央集权化理论提出了挑战，该理论认为先进的经济和政治发展，需要中心化的国家权力的巩固。古希腊相对程度较低的收入不均和高速的经济增长并存，表明了在一些现代社会观察到的持续增长和极端不均等之间的负相关并不是现代化的独特产物。

Finally, the history of the ancient Greek world can be read as a cautionary tale about the unanticipated consequences of growth and human capital investment: It reveals how innovative institutions and technologies, originally developed in the open-access, fair-rules context of democratic states, can be borrowed by ambitious autocrats and redeployed to further their own, non-democratic purposes.

最后，古希腊世界的历史可以被解读为关于增长和人力资本投资的意外结果的警世寓言：它揭示了最初起源于对外开放，规则公平的民主政体的制度和技术创新，是如何被有野心的独裁者借用，并应用于推动他们自己的非民主目标的。 How did you get interested in the topic of rise and fall –was it just a matter of “Edward Gibbon envy”? 你是怎么对崛起与衰落这个主题感兴趣的？仅仅是由于 “ 嫉妒 Edward Gibbon ”？ 【 译注：Edward Gibbon是《罗马帝国衰亡史》的作者 】

JO: Gibbon is amazing, as a prose stylist and historian. But the origin of my project actually goes back to a quip by a senior colleague at the very beginning of my career: “The puzzle is not why the Greek world fell, it is why it lasted more than 20 minutes.”Twenty-five years ago (and fifteen years after my colleague’s quip), the historical sociologist W.G. Runcimanclaimed that classical Greece was “doomed to extinction”because the Greek city-states were, “without exception, far too democratic.”

JO：Gibbon作为一个散文家和历史学家非常优秀。但是我课题的起源要追溯到我职业生涯刚开始时一个资深同事的玩笑话：“费解的不是为何希腊世界会衰落，而是它竟然撑过了20分钟。”25年前（我同事那句玩笑话的15年后），历史社会学家W.G. Runciman声称古典希腊“注定要灭亡”，因为希腊城邦“无一例外，都过于民主。”

True enough: the classical Greek world eventually went extinct. But then, so did all other ancient societies, democratic or otherwise. The Greek city-state culture lasted for the better part of a millennium; much longer than most ancient empires. I’ve long felt that I owed my colleague a solution to his puzzle. This book is an attempt to pay that debt.

确实，古典希腊最终灭亡了。但是其他所有古代社会，无论是否民主，也都灭亡了。希腊城邦文化持续了好几百年，比大多数古代帝国都要更长。我一直感觉我欠那个同事一个答案，我想用这本书试试。 Josiah Ober is the Mitsotakis Professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University. His books include Democracy and Knowledge , Political Dissent in Democratic Athens , The Athenian Revolution , and Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (all Princeton). He lives in Palo Alto, California. Josiah Ober 是斯坦福大学政治学和古典学Mitsotakis讲席教授。他的著作包括《民主与知识》，《民主雅典的政治异议》，《雅典的革命》，《民主雅典的群众和精英》（均由普林斯顿大学出版社出版）。他现居于加利福尼亚州的帕罗奥多市。

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