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Oikonomos[edit]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigationJump to search For the Greek association football club with the same name, see Oikonomos Tsaritsani F.C.

Oikonomos (Greek: οἰκονόμος, from oiko- 'house' and -nomos 'rule, law'), latinized oeconomus or œconomus, was an Ancient Greek word meaning 'household manager'. In Byzantine times the term was used as a title of a manager or treasurer of an organisation.

It is a title in the Roman Catholic Church.[1] In the 1983 Code of Canon Law, an oeconomus is the diocesan finance officer (c. 494).

In Ancient Greece[edit]

Xenophon's Oeconomicus is one of the earliest sources to extensively discuss the management of a wealthy agrarian estate.[2] Here, the role of the oikonomos largely concerned management of his household with the aim of accumulating and preserving wealth, rather than a relation to any modern sense of "economics". Socrates and Critobulus consider household management to be an art or science, and the former argues that the best oikonomos is the one who makes the best use of resources; one with an abundance of material wealth which is insufficient to satisfy his needs is functionally poorer than one with little wealth which satisfies him.[3] In this portrayal, though Socrates figures his own property to be worth a hundredfold less than Critobulus', he has enough to satisfy himself and friends who would help him if he did not; the latter has social obligations of sacrifice, patronage, entertaining guests, and financing potential wars. This leads Socrates to consider himself far wealthier than Critobulus[3]. Meanwhile Ischomachus, a "fair and good"[3] upper-class farmer, focuses his instructions on household managing on the importance of ensuring his wife's submissiveness and of close supervision of the house, as well as on a thorough understanding of agricultural techniques. In short, Xenophon characterizes the oikonomos as holding power over children, slaves, wife, and property[4], along with the power to delegate authority to overseers; however, this account specifically concerns wealthy estates.

Aristotle, however, argued that the role of "master of the house" is a position of nature rather than of particular skill in household management.[5] He disagrees with the notion that household management is synonymous with wealth acquisition, instead proposing that it is "the art which uses household stores". To the extent that there is a natural part of household management which concerns acquisition, it is limited to the provision of basic necessities.[5] The obligation of Aristotle's oikonomos is to use and order wealth (the most essential of which are the necessities for survival which nature provides, which are presupposed) rather than to acquire it.

Nor does Aristotle believe that wealth acquisition is furthered solely by good home management, as he argues in Rhetoric that to pontificate on growing the wealth of a country, a political speaker must understand foreign and domestic affairs.[6] Aristotle specifically objects to the sophist Alcidamas's use of oikonomos in the context of a rhetorician as "dispenser of pleasure to his audience".[6] This was part of a repudiation of Alcidamas' tendency to use excessive metaphors and "long, unseasonable, or frequent epithets".

Aristotle also emphasizes the importance of the household in tragedies and comedies. In Poetics, he writes that the tragedian Euripides is faulty in his "oikonomia",[7] translated as "management" as well as (more directly) "economy",[8] of the subject of tragedy. This is in part because the households he portrays are poorly suited to tragic plays.[9] Meanwhile, a proper tragedy, such as those pertaining to the House of Atreus or Oedipus, must involve a family or household (oikos) which elicits pity from the audience; to this end, it must be familiar to the audience but not intimately so.[9] The poet here is an oikonomos, responsible for the management and deliverance of his play, in addition to the presentation of the oikos which is the subject.

Hesiod presents in Works and Days instructions on household management, emphasizing the link between one's wealth-getting and his work ethic with respect to farming and keeping his house in order.[10] Here he appears to consider a "house" to represent the sum total of all that the oikonomos owns.

In the Seleucid Empire[edit]

The Seleucid Empire was divided into administrative regions known as satrapies. Hypotheses differ as to the role of the oikonomos. Some theorize that they were managers of the royal treasuries or even royal estates, which would have made them completely separate from any actual administrative role.[11] An oikonomos may also have been a satrapy's financial director, or perhaps an accountant for tax receipts and administrative expenses.[11] The oikonomos was probably a low-ranking figure, as accounts place them in charge of trivial local decisions and subordinate to the strategos, who functioned as governor of the satrapy.[12] An inscription of a correspondence between two priests uncovered north of Sardis references an oikonomos named Asklepiades, and suggests that it was his duty to find and set up a location for a stele to be inscribed with the names of the priests and their initiates.[13] Another inscription implies that oikonomoi were responsible for purchasing bulls for sacrifice at the Panegyreis.[14]



References[edit][edit]

  1. ^ Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Episcopal œconomus". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  2. ^ Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Xenophon, ed. Gray, Vivienne, 2010. London: Oxford University Press.
  3. ^ a b c Xenophon, Oeconomicus, from Xenophon's Minor Works, transl. 1877 by Watson, John Shelby. London: George Bell and Sons
  4. ^ Finley, Moses (1973). The Ancient Economy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 18–19.
  5. ^ a b Aristotle, Politics. Transl. Jowett, Benjamin, 1999. Kitchener, Ontario: Batoche Books
  6. ^ a b Aristotle, Rhetoric. Transl. 1954 by Roberts, W. Rhys. New York: The Modern Library
  7. ^ Aristotle, Poetics, 1453a.
  8. ^ Aristotle, Poetics. Transl. Butcher, Samuel, 1902. London and New York: MacMillan and Co.
  9. ^ a b Shell, Marc (1978). The Economy of Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 90–91. ISBN 9780801846946.
  10. ^ Hesiod, Works and Days. Transl. Evelyn-White, Hugh G., 1914.
  11. ^ a b Aperghis, G. G. (2004). The Seleukid Royal Economy: The Finances and Financial Administration of the Seleukid Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 280. ISBN 978-0521117760.
  12. ^ Aperghis, G. G. (2004). The Seleukid Royal Economy: The Finances and Financial Administration of the Seleukid Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 277–278. ISBN 978-0521117760.
  13. ^ Ed. Thonemann, Peter (2013). Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations and the State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780199656110.
  14. ^ Ed. Thonemann, Peter (2013). Attalid Asia Minor: Money, International Relations, and the State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 273. ISBN 9780199656110.
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