The Crowning of Demosthenes

1969 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. Cawkwell
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
National State ◽  
City States ◽  
The City ◽  
Greek World

In the course of Demosthenes' lifetime, indeed within a mere decade, the whole balance of power in the Greek world was destroyed. By 338 the city states were completely overshadowed by the national state of Macedon, and it is the concern of all students of Demosthenes to analyse this dramatic change. The task is not easy. The evidence is most unsatisfactory. None of the great historians of the age has survived in other than a few precious fragments, and in the absence of Ephorus, Anaximenes, Theopompus, and the Atthidographers the pale reflections of some of them in Book XVI of Diodorus are poor consolation. It is on the Athenian orators that we have to rely, the very men most concerned in the politics of Athens, in the act of glossing over and denying their own share in the disaster and of misrepresenting that of their opponents. Memories were no longer then than they are today. In 343 both Demosthenes and Aeschines in discussing the events of a mere three years past denied all responsibility for the making of the Peace of Philocrates; one, at least, was lying, confidently. The formal documents were, generally speaking, merely heard, and only in part at that, and the orators were well practised in exploiting such material. If Aeschines and Demosthenes could lie so freely within three years of the events, what they had to say at a longer interval must be much more suspect.

scholarly journals Hellenism and Christianity

1908 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Frank Byron Jevons
Keyword(s):  
National State ◽  
Village Community ◽  
Long Period ◽  
World Power ◽  
Social Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
City States ◽  
City State ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City

The long period of helpless infancy through which the human being who is to survive in the struggle for existence must pass is proof conclusive that from the time when first men were men—and from an even earlier time—they must have lived together in groups. Whether those groups were, as in the case of the gorilla, patriarchal in kind, or matriarchal, as they are seen to be, or may be conjectured to have been, in the case of some tribes very low in the social scale, is still a disputed question. The tendency of those groups, however, was in the patriarchal direction; this tendency strengthens even in times when the tribe is still migratory, and is fully established by the time when the tribe settles down in a fixed habitation as a village-community. From the village-community the city-state develops; an amalgamation of city-states may produce a national state; a national state may become a world-power, and even seek to establish itself as a world-empire.

The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Reus-Smit
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Society ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Interstate Relations ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
City States ◽  
The City

Modern states have constructed a multiplicity of issue-specific regimes to facilitate collective action. The majority of these institutions are specific instances of the deeper institutional practices that structure modern international society, notably the fundamental institutions of contractual international law and multilateralism. Two observations can be made about fundamental institutions. First, they are “generic” structural elements of international societies. That is, their practice transcends changes in the balance of power and the configuration of interests, even if their density and efficacy vary. The modern practices of contractual international law and multilateralism intensified after 1945, but postwar developments built on institutional principles that were first endorsed by states during the nineteenth century and structured international relations long before the advent of American hegemony. Second, fundamental institutions differ from one society of states to another. While the governance of modern international society rests on the institutions of contractual international law and multilateralism, no such institutions evolved in ancient Greece. Instead, the city-states developed a sophisticated and successful system of third-party arbitration to facilitate ordered interstate relations. This institution, which operated in the absence of a body of codified interstate law, is best characterized as “authoritative trilateralism.”

Institutional Change through Innovation: The URBAN Community Initiative in Berlin, 1994–99

10.1068/c0416 ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 697-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Halpern
Keyword(s):  
Urban Policy ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
Government Structure ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Community Initiative ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City

Reunification profoundly challenged the local government structure inherited from the Cold War period in Berlin. Yet this sudden socioeconomic and political change did not produce any immediate impact on institutional arrangements or policy instruments within the urban policy field. In this context, the implementation of the European Community Initiative URBAN, between 1994 and 1999, offered an opportunity to actors who were willing to challenge the existing balance of power to contest the legitimacy of preexisting interests and representations. The author argues that, in a context of competing interpretations of the issues raised by segregation processes which have left pockets of poverty in both parts of the city, the URBAN programme has managed to become an important driving force behind an underlying process of change. Its innovative approach to urban poverty and social exclusion exerted an impact on the parameters of this process of change, exacerbating existing political and organisational conflicts and challenging local networks, sources of legitimacy, and policy instruments.

Austerity urbanism: Rescaling and collaborative governance policies in Athens

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis Chorianopoulos ◽  
Naya Tselepi
Keyword(s):  
Urban Politics ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Collaborative Governance ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Partnership Approach ◽  
The City ◽  
Opening Up

This paper explores the urban politics of austerity in Greece, paying particular attention to ‘local collaboration’. It revisits the key austerity periods noted in the country since accession to the European Union (1981), and marks their impact in redefining central–local relations, amidst a broader rescaling endeavour. A direct link is identified between austerity-oriented pre-occupations and the introduction of territorial regulatory experimentations that rest heavily on local-level collaboration and competitiveness. The overall record of partnerships, however, has been appraised, up until recently, as underdeveloped. From this spectrum, we look at the latest re-organization of state spatial contour (2010). The influence of this rescaling attempt on local relational attributes is explored in Athens, in light of the emergent re-shuffling in the scalar balance of power rendering austerity pre-occupations a firm trait of the emerging regulatory arrangement. Examination focuses on key social policy programmes launched recently by the City in an attempt to ameliorate extreme poverty and social despair. In Athens, it is argued, a financially and regulatorily deprivileged local authority is opening up to the influence of corporate and third sector organizations. It adopts a partnership approach that is best understood as a form of ‘elite pluralism’, undermining local political agency and falling short in addressing social deprivation.

Art and an Archaeology of Embodiment: Some Aspects of Archaic Greece

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Shanks
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Contemporary Poetry ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Archaic Greece ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
Culture Production ◽  
City States ◽  
And Control ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Ceramic Decoration

This article seeks to gain an understanding of distinctive changes in certain artefacts produced in Corinth in the late eighth and seventh centuries BC. The focus is the development of figurative imagery on miniature ceramic vessels (many of them perfume jars) which travelled from Corinth particularly to sanctuaries and cemeteries in the wider Greek world. Connections, conceptual and material, are traced through the manufacture and iconography of some 2000 pots, through changing lifestyles, with juxtapositions of contemporary poetry from other parts of the Greek world. Aspects of embodiment are foregrounded in a discussion of stylization and drawing, the character of monstrosity (appearing in ceramic decoration), experiences of risk in battle, discipline and control. Techniques of the self (leading through the floral to wider lifestyles) also feature in this context, together with perfume, and the consumption or deposition of the pots in circumstances of contact with death and divinity. The argument is made that the articulation of an ideological field lay at the core of the changes of the early city states such as Corinth. The article is offered as a contribution to a contextual and interpretive archaeology. It attempts to develop concepts for dealing with power relations in an understanding of material culture production which foregrounds human agency and embodied experience.

scholarly journals Breach of Contact: An Intercultural Reading of China Miéville's 'The City and The City'

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Elizabeth Hanna ◽  
Peter Cowley
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intercultural Training ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Intercultural Encounters ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
City States ◽  
City Relations ◽  
The City ◽  
Two Populations

China Miéville’s 2009 'Weird' detective novel The City and The City is a tale of two city states, culturally distinct, between which unpoliced contact is forbidden. While residents of each city can learn about the other’s history, geography, politics, see photographs and watch news footage of the other city, relations between the two are tightly monitored and any direct contact requires a series of protocols, some of which might seem reasonable, or at least familiar: entry permits, international mail, international dialing codes, intercultural training courses. What complicates these apparently banal measures is the relative positioning of the two cities, each one around, within, amongst the other. The two populations live side by side, under a regime which requires ostentatious and systematic disregard or 'unnoticing' of the other in any context but a tightly regulated set of encounters. For all that interculturality is endemic to everyday life in the 21st century, what is striking is that critical and popular uptake of this novel so frequently decries the undesirability, the immorality even, of the cultural separation between the two populations, framing it as an allegory of unjust division within a single culture, and thus by implication endorsing the erasure of intercultural difference. We propose an alternative reading which sees this novel as exploring the management of intercultural encounters, and staging the irreducibility of intercultural difference. We examine how the intercultural is established in the novel, and ask how it compares to its representations in prevalent theoretical models, specifically that of the Third Place.

The Athenian Reconciliation Agreement of 403 bce and its Legacy for Greek City-States in the Classical and Hellenistic Ages

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Political Forgiveness ◽  
The Law ◽  
City States ◽  
Robust Procedures ◽  
Greek World

This chapter surveys amnesty agreements throughout the Greek world in the Classical and Hellenistic ages and argues that in many the principle of political forgiveness was both important and necessary when reconciling communities in the aftermath of civil conflict. The most successful amnesties were those which made use of the law and prohibited the revisiting of old grievances which led to or stemmed from a period of internal strife. Where and when exceptions were made to this rule they normally had to be spelled out in the terms of a treaty. The methods by which individual cities put this principle into effect varied widely, but the most famous and enduring example, the Athenian amnesty of 403 BCE, illustrates that a community could only successfully reconcile if its citizens were willing to forgo vindictive instincts which otherwise would have destabilised it. Robust procedures were put in place to restrain vengeance and protect the rights of individuals.

City as a Text: Narratives, Toponymy and Language Competences of the Modern Jerusalem

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-63
Author(s):  
Lusine Gushchyan ◽  
◽  
Valentina Fedchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
National State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Old City ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
The City

This paper analyses the processes when the ancient multilingual and multicultural city becomes a modern capital of the national state on the example of the cultural‑historical phenomenon of Jerusalem during the decline of a centuries‑old era. Now, due to political and cultural circumstances, the image of the city shifts into a different, tourist business sphere, which, in the current era of postmodernism, accumulates symbolic paradigms. Until recently, Jerusalem remained the last Middle Mediterranean municipal commune in the antique‑medieval sense of the word by virtue of its sacral and supranational status. Over the period from the second half of the 20th century and until 2017, there can be distinguished a process of subordination to the national state, as the owner of the territories and rights in the old city, which is demonstrated by changes in the languages used and in the subjects of the narratives displayed. Being a fragment of empires included in the Balkan‑Levantine area, Jerusalem, in the second half of the 20th century, forms a new local text, gradually losing the topics, inherited from the past.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document