G.E.M. de Ste. Croix

Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix (Macau, February 10, 1910-Oxford, February 5, 2000) was an historian who loosely can be said to have specialized in ancient History. He was a Marxist and an atheist. His 'archnemesis' within the circles of classical scholarship was Sir Moses Finley, an advocate of Weberian societal analysis. The two often exchanged letters and their disagreements were always of the most gentlemanly character.

The two books for which he is best known are The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972) and The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (1982). He was also a noted contributor on the issue of Christian persecution between the reigns of the Roman Emperors Trajan and Diocletian.

The Origins of the Peloponnesian War made several major contributions to scholarship on the subject, the major one being a reinterpretation of the Megarian Decree, passed by the Athenian Ekklesia in 432 BC. Most scholarship hitherto had considered the decree to involve economic sanctions by excluding the Megarian state and Megarian traders from access to ports throughout the Athenian Empire. De Ste. Croix instead interpreted it as a religious sanction, drawing an analogy to the Spartan demand (in response to the Megarian Decree and other Athenian policies) that Athens expel some religiously tainted citizens (the Alcmaeonidae, one of whom happened to be Perikles son of Xanthippus). He maintained that the sanction was exercised not to hurt the Megarians - which it could not do, given the nature of trade and economics in the Ancient World, but on religious grounds felt to be genuine by the Athenians. This argument has not achieved general acceptance among historians: One reviewer described it as "superb in its argumentation and wrongheaded in its thrust." (Chester Starr, in The American Historical Review Vol. 78 no. 3, p. 663)

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World stands as a hitherto unparalleled quest to establish the validity of Marxist analysis of the ancient world. It begins with the attempt to define exactly what terms such as 'class,' 'exploitation' and 'means of production' are in their Marxist sense. Sweeping through a vast space of history it covers questions as diverse as the emergence of democracy in Classical Athens and the social importance of the decline of the Greek city-state during the Roman Empire.

External links

*Obituary in The Guardian (UK)
*Obituary in the Weekly Worker (UK)
*An exchange on G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, historian of Ancient Greek society