The Influence of Eduard Meyer on the Work of Moses Finley

This paper examines the historiographical influence of the nineteenth-century German historian Eduard Meyer on the work of Moses Finley, and argues that Meyer was a critical influence on many of Finley´s innovative views, from ancient slavery to the Homeric question and the interpretation of archaic Greece. This debt to Meyer has been ignored by contemporary historians, partly because Meyer´s work has been forgotten, but mainly because Finley himself concealed it. In order to clarify the development of twentieth-century historiography - in which Finley played a protagonist role - this paper argues that it is essential to break with the legend that Finley made of himself and that historians naively believed.