The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World is an original and influential reconstruction of Classical Antiquity through a Marxist lens. Geoffrey de Ste. Croix explores the personality of the Ancient world as a slave economy. He traces the social origins of Athenian democracy and the later decline of the Greek city-states in the Roman era, and offers an innovative class-based explanation for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Comparing the late Roman political-fiscal system to a vampire bat , Ste. Croix argues that serfdom and a tightening fiscal screw left the peasant masses with an attitude of indifference to the Empire s fate.

First published in 1981, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World was recognised by Ernst Badian in the New York Review of Books as The only work in a Western language that has ever attempted to tell the story of the greatest part of the ancient world with the interests of the lower classes as its central theme .

A landmark in the field of ancient history
New Republic

An astonishing achievement
Sunday Times

Few contributions to ancient history are read much longer than a generation. There are exceptions, such as Edward Gibbon and George Grote; Geoffrey, I suspect, will join that company.
David Harvey, Guardian