Just wanted to list some “proto - economists”. All these works can probably be found online for free. I Also wanted to see if anyone else could list surviving works that deal with ancient economic thought. I’ll try to list the chapters in longer works that deal with econ and a very brief list on issues raised.
Ancient Hellenistic Authors
Hesiod - Works and Days: discusses scarcity, work and idylness, and competition. This isn’t really economics, but I thought it would be appropriate to start with this. You may be able to find some nuggets in the plays of Aristophones as well (even if you can’t he’s funny and anti-war so he’s worth a read anyway).
Xenophon - Oeconmicus: (Economics stems from a Greek word). Talks of surplus, property management, wealth creation, value, and work ethic
Aristotle - Nicomedean Ethics and Politics:
- Ethics part H he discusses the justice in exchanges in chapter 5
2) Politics: Book I: 3 - 13 discusses “micro economics”.
Book II discusses how private property is good a critique on Plato’s views of private property and anti -individualism. chapt 7 discusses the difficulty of calculating centralized planning in distribution. The problems that arise with inequality of wealth.
Book V deals with revolutions and class
He also mentions there are many books on finance, sadly I don’t think any of them exist today
The Muslim World in the Middle Ages
Ibn Khaldun - Muqaaimah . All of chapter 5. Actually the whole thing is awesome, particularly in history, government, and sociology Everyone curious about intellectual history should read this. Ibn Khaldun is a seriously amazing and underrated scholar (in today’s Western world anyway). He is comparable to an Aristotle, and you can probably find all his writings for free online.
I know there are more surviving works of Islamic economists, as well as Byzantine, Ancient Greek, and Roman, I just haven’t read them.
While not dealing with a specific economist, I also have on order (from Amazon) this book (which can not be read for free):
A history of Phoenicians trade and politics before Carthage became significant. It particularly deals with the Phoenicians in Spain.