This book is a collection of sixteen papers, originally published between 1982 and 2007. The papers retain their original form and structure, although occasional minor revisions have been made to take account of recent work. The book is not then a systematic account of the ‘crescita e declino’ of the Roman economy, but the papers nevertheless form a coherent whole, and the book is internally consistent. Several themes are prominent throughout the papers. Lo Cascio contends, for example, that pre-industrial economies were diverse, dynamic, and far from static in nature, with the Roman economy in particular experiencing periods of growth (both in aggregate and per capita terms) and contraction. The market is also given a prominent rôle in shaping the changing nature of the Roman economy, and Lo C. places a strong emphasis on the relationship between population and resources, principally in Italy; this focus on Italy is one that recurs throughout the book.

The book opens with a general introduction that places the study of the Roman economy in historical perspective, considering the influence of Finley and the post-Finleyan approach characterized by the recent publication of the Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (2007). The introduction also sets out Lo C.'s particular approach to the Roman economy and establishes his central themes. He marshals the now familiar proxy data of pollution levels, shipwrecks, and skeletal analysis to argue for a period of economic growth in the late Republic and into the imperial period, facilitated by various factors such as the diffusion of money and instruments of credit, the integration of markets, the development of urbanism, and the subsequent reduction in transaction costs; in Lo C.'s view, the Roman economy was operating at the upper limits of an organic economy. He also argues that there was a corresponding period of economic decline, linked primarily to demographic factors, particularly in Italy; he identifies the Antonine plague as a key turning point.

The main body of the book is divided into four sections, beginning with Roman agriculture. This section opens with a lengthy survey of the development of Italian agriculture from the archaic period to Late Antiquity, highlighting the continued regional diversity of agricultural practice in the Italian peninsula. The following chapter considers the structure and dynamics of tenant farming in the imperial era, and while the focus is on the experience of Italy, this is contrasted with the situation in Africa. In both of these chapters Lo C. links changes in agricultural practice and labour organization to the influence of the market and the increased commercialization of agriculture. Further chapters analyse Varro's classification of agricultural workers and the definition of obaerarii, and consider what the letters of Pliny suggest about the mentality of a Roman landowner and his approach to agricultural production and labour organization.

The second section of the book considers the relationship between population and resources in the ancient world. The first paper opens with a discussion of the evidence for ancient population figures, before focusing on the Italian census figures of the late Republic. Lo C. is a well-known proponent of the ‘high-count’ scenario, and this paper puts forward his arguments for population growth in late republican Italy, which he contends was part of a long-term Mediterranean trend. This population growth continued into the second century a.d. and in Italy at least resulted in increasing pressure on land and resources, a situation which was to some extent reversed by the Antonine plague. This argument is revisited in the following chapter which concerns population and land in rural Italy, and population growth is in fact the scenario which underlies much of Lo C.'s reasoning throughout the book. A final paper critiques chapter 4 of Finley's Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, arguing that demography must be taken into account when considering the development of both slavery and the coloni of Late Antiquity. While Lo C. highlights the important rôle played by the relationship between land and population in shaping the organization of Italian agriculture and the performance of the Italian economy in the Roman period, he also recognizes that there are other factors to consider; different institutional infrastructures, for example, meant that while agricultural labourers in Western Europe were able to move in order to maximize their incomes after the Black Death, the coloni of late antique Italy lacked the necessary mobility to take advantage of a shortage of labour to increase their wages.

A third section deals with goods, markets, and prices. The first chapter in this section contends that the monetization of the Empire was one of the most significant factors in lowering transaction costs and facilitating exchange, while the second paper challenges Jongman's 1988 assessment of the Pompeian economy (The Economy and Society of Pompeii), arguing that production and commerce played a much more significant rôle than Jongman allows; this paper was first published in 1992 and it should perhaps be noted that Jongman's own views on the Roman economy have substantially altered since his 1988 work (see, for example, his contribution to the CEHGRW, which proposes a substantial rise in living standards in early imperial Italy). Other papers in this section consider the issue of inflation in the second, third and fourth centuries; the circulation of money, prices and taxes in fourth-century Egypt, as evidenced by the price declarations in the Oxyrhynchus papyri; and the important rôle played by the market in the supply of the Roman army, and also in setting prices, even in Late Antiquity. A final short section explores the influence of Weber on studies of the Roman economy.

Overall, this is a coherent collection of important papers, which reflects Lo C.'s significant contribution to scholarship on the Roman economy over the last three decades.