This is the first book to present a synthetic view of Roman banking and financial life from the fourth century BC to the end of the third century AD. It describes the business deals of the elite and the professional bankers and the interventions of the state.

It shows to what extent the spirit of profit and enterprise predominated over the traditional values of Rome, what economic role these financiers played, and how that role compares with that of their later counterparts.

"The judicious surveys of research in the book provide an excellent introduction to the major issues of contention in the field by a master who thoroughly understands the implications of individual pieces of evidence."

Allen Kerkeslager, Saint Joseph's University

"With Banking and Business in the Roman World Andreau, who is working on a comprehensive history of banking from antiquity through the medieval period, has given us an excellent, wieldy introduction to the financial activities of the Roman Republic and the first three hundred years of the Empire.”

“Substantivists will especially appreciate Andreau's approach, but I repeat that Andreau's exceptional openness and generosity toward divergent points of view leaves something, or rather everything, for everyone. Economic historians of all periods and of all dispositions will reap benefit from this survey of the practices of the ancient Romans...every serious economic or sical historian should buy it."

Janet Lloyd is Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese at the School of Languages, University of Salford.