Euesperides: the Rescue of an Excavation

1994 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 125-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Vickers ◽  
David Gill ◽  
Maria Economou
Keyword(s):  
Safe Haven ◽  
Greek City ◽  
The City

There was a time when the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was prosperous enough to support a venture which called itself the Ashmolean Expedition to Cyrenaica. The form this exercise took was the excavation over three seasons between 1952 and 1954 of parts of the site of the Greek city of Euesperides situated on the outskirts of Benghazi (Fig. 1 ).Euesperides does not figure large in history. We first hear of it in 515 in connection with the revolt of Barca from the Persians: a punitive expedition was sent by the satrap in Egypt and it marched as far west as Euesperides. Euesperides played a part in the downfall of the Battiads, the ruling house of Cyrene. Arcesilas IV tried to create a safe haven against the day when his regime might be overthrown, and in 462 in effect refounded the city with a new body of settlers attracted from all over Greece.

Converging Perspectives on Antiochos III

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Haubold
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The City

This chapter compares three texts about the Seleukid monarch Antiochos III: a decree of the Seleukid Greek city of Teos published shortly before the king’s war with Rome; a description of his conduct of the war written by the pro-Roman historian Polybios; and a cuneiform text from Babylon about Antiochos’ visit to the city just after the war. I argue that, despite differences in style, cultural background, historical context, and political allegiance, these texts converge around key themes of Seleukid imperial discourse, such as the king as benefactor and the importance of the royal couple. The chapter thus serves as a corrective to recent scholarship that tends to stress the differences between Greek and non-Greek perspectives on the Seleukid kings.

scholarly journals Road Noise Levels in Urban Environment Compared to Specification Limits. The Case of the City of Larissa, Greece

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanouil A. Papadimitriou ◽  
Grigorios P. Papageorgiou ◽  
Nikolaos Alamanis ◽  
Theodosia-Niki Diakosavva
Keyword(s):  
Road Traffic ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Road Traffic Noise ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Road Noise ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Limit Values ◽  
High Noise ◽  
Specification Limits ◽  
The City

Greece, as well as other developed countries, is facing the growing problem of road traffic noise. It stands for a severe problem in the urban areas of the country, including the city of Larissa. The root cause is the huge increase in traffic volume and the lack of adequate urban infrastructure planning. Estimation of the level of road traffic noise is usually conducted using acoustic meters. It is widely accepted that most of the cities’ population is exposed to high noise levels due to controversial traffic capacity. Moreover, high noise levels are strongly related to phycological and neurological diseases. Thus, it is of utmost importance, the road noise levels to be lower than dictated by relevant specification limits. To develop better noise-environment policies, relative research should focus on the measurement of in-situ noise levels, so as appropriate for each case corrective measures to be taken. The present paper examines the noise levels of a center road of the 5th Greek city, in terms of population, compared to worldwide adopted noise specification limits. The clear aim stands for finding the percentage of road noise that exceeds commonly accepted threshold values, namely limit values of European Union and World Health Organization. The results of this research strongly indicate that measured noise values override upper limit values in a certain extent.

Topography of Athens

Classics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey M. Hurwit ◽  
Ioannis Mitsios
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Plain ◽  
Aegean Sea ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
History Of ◽  
City States ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

The ancient city-state (or polis) of Athens was contiguous with the region known as Attica, a large, triangular peninsula extending southeastward from the Greek mainland into the Aegean Sea. In the western angle of Attica, on a coastal plain surrounded by four mountains (Hymettos, Pentelikon, Parnes, and Aigaleos), lay the city itself. Although the modern city has thickly spread up the slopes of the mountains as well as to the sea, the study of Athenian topography concentrates on the monuments, buildings, and spaces of the ancient urban core, an area roughly 3 square kilometers surrounding the Acropolis and defended in the Classical period by a wall some 6.5 kilometers in length. Athens is the ancient Greek city that we know best, and it is unquestionably the Greek city whose art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and political history have had the greatest impact on the Western tradition and imagination. As a result, “Athenian” is sometimes considered synonymous with “Greek.” It is not. In many respects, Athens was exceptional among Greek city-states, not typical: it was a very different place from, say, Thebes or Sparta. Still, the study of Athens, its monuments, and its culture needs no defense, and the charge of “Athenocentrism” is a hollow indictment when one stands before the Parthenon or holds a copy of Sophocles’ Antigone. This article will refer to the following periods in the history of Athens and Greece (the dates are conventional): late Bronze, or Mycenaean, Age (1550–1100 bce); Dark Age (1100–760 bce); Archaic (760–480 bce); Classical (480–323 bce); Hellenistic (323 –31 bce); and Roman (31 BCE–c. 475 ce).

Civic Institutions

2009 ◽  
pp. 196-210
Author(s):  
Sara Forsdyke
Keyword(s):  
Parallel Evolution ◽  
Formal Institutions ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
The Rich ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
Civic Institutions

This article looks at the parallel evolution of civic institutions, all of which culminated in the polis, the ‘city-state’, as the backdrop to the rich cultural legacy of the fifth and fourth centuries. Historians have demonstrated that the formal institutions of the Greek city-state are best understood as emerging from, but still very much embedded within, a much broader range of collective practices and discourses. Nevertheless, it is the dynamic interplay between the institutional structures of the state and these broader practices and discourses that has been the focus of much of the most fruitful scholarship on the ancient Greek city-state over the past thirty years. The discussion then turns to some of the most interesting areas of investigation in current scholarship on the interaction between formal institutions and broader cultural activities and norms in the Greek city-state.

scholarly journals legislation (nomothesia)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirko Canevaro
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Standard Procedures ◽  
The Government ◽  
City States ◽  
Legislative Changes ◽  
The City

From the earliest stages, the Greeks understood the distinction between legislation and day-to-day administration. They gave laws a special status and often created specific, separate procedures to enact them. In the Archaic period, specially appointed lawgivers were normally in charge of giving laws to the polis; these laws were intended to be immutable, and their stability secured through entrenchment clauses. Making laws was not considered to be among the normal tasks of the government of the polis, and there were no standard procedures to change the laws once these had been given. Assemblies in Greek city-states often enacted rules that had the force of law, but the legislative changes were not institutionally acknowledged, and the laws enacted by the lawgivers could not be changed. This gave rise to significant problems of legitimacy, and it introduced inconsistencies in the legal system of the polis, a problem that we can observe in 5th-century bce Athens. At the end of the 5th century, the Athenians introduced judicial review to vet new legislation and avoid the introduction of inconsistencies, performed a revision of the laws of the city, and finally institutionalised a distinction between nomoi (“laws,” general permanent norms) and psephismata (“decrees,” ad hoc enactments). They also created a complex new procedure, involving a board of nomothetai, to allow the demos to make new laws and change the existing ones. Similar yet not identical procedures are attested also outside Athens: Hellenistic kings often ordered the appointment of nomothetai or nomographoi to enact rules about political institutions, and nomographoi or nomothetic lawcourts are attested in various cities, with the task of “upgrading” decrees of the demos into laws, and entering them among the laws of the city.

Plato’s Phaedrus on Philosophy and the City

2018 ◽  
pp. 101-105
Author(s):  
Brian Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Class Struggle ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

This paper offers an interpretation of the dramatic setting of Plato’s Phaedrus as an allegory of the situation of the philosopher within Plato’s Athens. Following Jean-Pierre Vernant’s work on the place of class struggle and warfare within the ancient Greek city-state in his Myth and Society in Ancient Greece I decipher key passages on the Phaedrus as implicit responses to Plato’s experience of the city. The key themes that emerge are: the relation between the country and the city; the connection between leisure, luxury, and territorial expansion; the prospects for philosophical rule in the city; and the assessment of writing as a product of urban and commercial development. In my concluding paragraphs I suggest that Plato’s dialogues should more generally be regarded as a confrontation with the social conditions of the city-state as Plato experienced them. I also suggest that Platonic writings such as the Phaedrus are best interpreted allegorically as well as literally to ensure that multiple levels of meaning are drawn out through close analysis.

Assos

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clyde E. Fant ◽  
Mitchell G. Reddish
Keyword(s):  
Aegean Sea ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Delian League ◽  
City States ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town ◽  
Steep Hill

With its acropolis perched on a steep hill overlooking the Aegean Sea, the city of Assos provides a spectacular view for the visitor. From the acropolis one can look down on the ruins of the ancient buildings on the slope and also see the remains of the city’s harbor in the Aegean. On a clear day the island of Lesbos is visible approximately 7 miles south across the Bay of Edremit. From this island came the first settlers of ancient Assos. The site of ancient Assos is located in the southern part of the Troad area of Turkey, on the modern highway that runs along the Aegean coast and connects the towns of Geyikli and Ayvacïk. Assos was in the ancient region of Mysia. Today the village of Behramkale occupies the site of ancient Assos. During the 7th century B.C.E. Aeolian Greeks from the town of Methymna (modern Molivos) on the island of Lesbos crossed the Edremit Bay and founded the city of Assos. During the first half of the 6th century, King Croesus of Lydia (whose capital was at Sardis) captured and controlled Assos. Lydian domination ended in 546 B.C.E., when Cyrus of Persia defeated Croesus and brought this area of Asia Minor under Persian control. During the following century Assos gained its freedom when a coalition of Greek city-states defeated the Persians. Assos then became a part of the Delian League under the leadership of Athens. One of the rulers of Assos in the 4th century was Hermias, who had been a student, along with Aristotle, of the philosopher Plato. At the invitation of Hermias, Aristotle went to Assos and lived there from 348 to 345 B.C.E., marrying Hermias’ niece. The Persians recaptured the city and killed Hermias, but their control ended with the conquests of Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s untimely death the Seleucids ruled Assos. In 241 B.C.E. the city became a part of the Pergamene kingdom and remained under the control of the kings of Pergamum until the death of Attalus III in 133 B.C.E., at which time the city passed into Roman hands.

Building a New Horizon?

2020 ◽  
pp. 287-312
Author(s):  
Ian Worthington
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Building Program ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

Chapter 14 takes another break from the historical narrative to discuss the major Roman building projects in Athens, which some scholars argue brought about a Romanization of the city and led to its becoming a provincial one. The argument is made that despite Roman buildings, Athens remained a Greek city. The chapter discusses the Roman Agora; the Temple of Roma and Augustus in front of the Parthenon; Agrippa’s Odeum; the lesser public works under the post Julio-Claudian emperors; and Hadrian’s great building program (including the completion of the monumental Temple to Olympian Zeus (Olympieion), a library, an aqueduct), second only to that of Augustus, with a nod to the next chapter to explain why he did what he did. The funerary monument to Philopappus, not at the behest of an emperor but still part of a building program because of Roman style in its architecture, is also discussed. Finally, the chapter examines the transplanting of some temples from the Attic countryside during this period and why this occurred, and the reuse of earlier (especially Classical) statues dedicated to Romans, as part of a plan of the Athenians to keep their heritage alive and not have statues removed to Rome.

6. Priene

2018 ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
Peter Thonemann
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

In the mid-4th century bc, the small Greek city of Priene was founded in the Maeander river valley in western Asia Minor. It flourished for around 250 years, before the city’s harbours were sealed by silt from the Maeander. Most of the known Greek inscriptions and public documents (civic decrees, honorific statue-bases, letters from Hellenistic kings) from Priene date from the 1st century bc or earlier and provide an exceptionally clear and vivid picture of life in the Hellenistic city. ‘Priene’ focuses on this perfectly preserved example of an ordinary small Hellenistic town. It outlines the planning of the city, the relationship that the citizens had with the Hellenistic kings, and the changing patterns of social change.

MISQUOTING SOPHOCLES’ OEDIPVS TYRANNVS. A NEW PROOF OF THE INAUTHENTICITY OF PS.-ARISTOTLE, ON THE COSMOS

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 733-735
Author(s):  
Manuel Galzerano
Keyword(s):  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Perfect Order ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The City ◽  
The Universe

Chapters 6 and 7 of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On the Cosmos (Περὶ κόσμου = De mundo) display ‘a series of well-crafted and carefully organized analogies’ in order to represent the power of god pervading the whole universe. The last analogy (400b14–28), which is by far the most important in this section, compares the rule of god over the world to the rule of the law in a Greek city (ὁ τῆς πόλεως νόμος). As shown by the author in the previous analogies, the perfect order of the universe is the result of the continuous creation and dissolution of single things: this process—based upon the harmony of opposites—is the keystone of the eternity and equilibrium of our world. Similarly, the law is the unmoved (ἀκίνητος) mover of every activity and experience in the city: both positive and negative situations involving single citizens contribute to the supreme order and stability of the city. Positive examples include the activity of rulers, officials and members of the assemblies (ἄρχοντες, θεσμοθέται, βουλευταί, ἐκκλησιασταί), whereas negative examples include those who go to trial defending themselves (ὁ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς δικαστὰς ἀπολογησόμενος) and those who are imprisoned and destined to capital punishment (ὁ δὲ εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἀποθανούμενος). In spite of their difference, all of these actions are due to one single order (κατὰ μίαν πρόσταξιν), that is, the civic law, which ensures the stability of the city. To stress and illustrate this concordia discors, which characterizes both the city and the universe, the author of the treatise closes the passage with a quotation from Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (lines 4–5):πόλις δ' ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων γέμει,ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτωνThe author reads these verses as a perfect example of a context characterized by opposite situations: in fact, the city is full of paeans (παιάνων), which are interpreted as ‘songs of joy and relief’, and, at the same time, it is also full of laments and mourns (στεναγμάτων). The same interpretation can be found in the Latin translation of the treatise, which gives even more emphasis to the opposition between life and death: uideasque illam ciuitatem pariter spirantem Panchaeis odoribus et graueolentibus caenis, resonantem hymnis et carminibus et canticis, eandem etiam lamentis et ploratibus heiulantem.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document