He recognizes the place of labor in production, and the importance of material wealth as the basis for all higher development.58 He also has some appreciation of the true nature of capital. In his description of the undeveloped condition of early Greece, which lived from hand to mouth, he writes like a modern economist describing primitive conditions in Europe in contrast to the capitalism of his own day.59 Cornford’s attempt60 to discredit Thucydides as a historian, and to show that he missed the true cause, economic, of the Peloponnesian War, is not convincing. Cornford both exaggerates the influence of commercial interests in fifth-century Athens and belittles the economic insight of Thucydides. The Greek writer is, however, like Herodotus, a historical source for the actual economic conditions in Greece, rather than an economic theorist.
Aside from the fragmentary hints presented above, Greek economic thought begins with the Socratics, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle, and is continued, in a very incidental way, in the orators, and in the Stoics and their contemporaries. As we shall see, however, even in the Socratics, no real science of wealth is developed, in the modern sense. The reason for this lack, which is most commonly emphasized since it is closest at hand, is that the phenomena of actual production were but slightly developed. This explanation is well summarized by Haney as follows: ( a ) that economic relations between individuals and states were far simpler than now; ( b ) that international commerce was not encouraged by ancient states, whose ideal was rather national exclusion; ( c ) that public finance was then very limited and unimportant; ( d ) that division of labor was not extensive; ( e ) that the relative lack of security of life and property discouraged exchange and saving;