Ancient Mediterranean City-State Empires

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
Walter Scheidel
Keyword(s):  
Stable Form ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Multilayered Systems ◽  
The Face ◽  
City States ◽  
City State ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Mediterranean City

Only a few ancient Mediterranean city-states managed to absorb their peers into larger empires. This chapter explores the creation of imperial structures of domination and exploitation by ancient Athens, Carthage, and Rome. It identifies crucial similarities among these cases. Empires grew out of alliances formed within existing city-state cultures. Imperial state formation driven by these three city-states produced complex, multilayered systems that sought to preserve the privileged position of the original core and resisted homogenization of status. As a result, the Athenian and Carthaginian empires failed in the face of foreign pressure, whereas Roman power structures survived much longer by assuming a more conventional and stable form of organization, that of a monarchical tributary empire.

Sleepwalking into a New World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Wickham
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Old Order ◽  
The People ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Italian City ◽  
New Form ◽  
City States ◽  
City State

Amid the disintegration of the Kingdom of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new form of collective government—the commune—arose in the cities of northern and central Italy. This book takes a bold new look at how these autonomous city-states came about, and fundamentally alters our understanding of one of the most important political and cultural innovations of the medieval world. The book provides richly textured portraits of three cities—Milan, Pisa, and Rome—and sets them against a vibrant backcloth of other towns. It argues that, in all but a few cases, the élite of these cities and towns developed one of the first nonmonarchical forms of government in medieval Europe, unaware that they were creating something altogether new. The book makes clear that the Italian city commune was by no means a democracy in the modern sense, but that it was so novel that outsiders did not know what to make of it. It describes how, as the old order unraveled, the communes emerged, governed by consular elites “chosen by the people,” and subject to neither emperor nor king. They regularly fought each other, yet they grew organized and confident enough to ally together to defeat Frederick Barbarossa, the German emperor, at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. This book reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, which would in the end make possible the robust civic culture of the Renaissance.

The Art of Psychodrama as a Public Space

FORUM ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Leif Dag Blomkvist
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Group Psychotherapy ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Other ◽  
Private Space ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Practice ◽  
City State ◽  
Reproductive Activities

- This article, inspired by the writings of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, presents the concept of ‘Public Space' and traces its origins to the practice in the Polis (City State) of ancient Athens. The author points out that Public Space is a genuinely human domain, different from goal-oriented, reproductive activities shared with animals. He underlines the importance of distinguishing public from private space. Humans live in both, neither can exist without the other, but as a rule they must be kept separate and differentiated. The author attributes to public space the freedom of diversity and expression without loyalties, to see and to be seen and to act spontaneously in cooperation with others. He recruits Hanna Arendt, Sigmund Freud and J. L. Moreno in an appeal against a rising trend to conformity and ‘recognised' methods in psychotherapeutic practice and puts forward the idea of psychotherapy as an exchange, a public space, between two or more persons with a focus on the encounter between them. These qualities are most easily reached in group psychotherapy and in psychodrama, where spontaneity is the desired instrument.

The Need for a Theory of Children’s and YA Adaptation

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-28
Author(s):  
Meghann Meeusen
Keyword(s):  
Film Adaptations ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
The Face ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Critical Movement

Serving primarily as an introduction, chapter one has two functions: explaining binary polarization and suggesting why scholars will benefit from thinking about children’s adapted film in a new way. This first chapter defines key terms, describing how film adaptations widen the divide between concepts to rework power structures. Chapter one explores why, even in the face of a critical movement away from fidelity-based studies, scholars are still drawn to hierarchical approaches, and in particular, why there may exist a particularly strong pull toward this kind of study in children’s and YA criticism. As such, chapter one not only articulates the text’s theory of children’s and YA adaptation, but also explains the need for such an approach.

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).

scholarly journals Cutting the Face

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Fitzgibbon Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Middle East ◽  
New Media ◽  
Social Control ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
New Technology ◽  
State Building ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
The Face

The local uptake of new media in the Middle East is shaped by deep histories of imperialism, state building, resistance and accommodation. In contemporary Jordan, social media is simultaneously encouraging identification with tribes and undermining their gerontocratic power structures. Senior men stress their own importance as guarantors (‘faces’), who restore order following conflicts, promising to pay their rivals a large surety if their kin break the truce. Yet, ‘cutting the face’ (breaking truces) remains an alternative, one often facilitated by new technologies that allow people to challenge pre-existing structures of communication and authority. However, the experiences of journalists and other social media mavens suggest that the liberatory promise of the new technology may not be enough to prevent its reintegration into older patterns of social control.

AZTEC-PERIOD POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE TEOTIHUACAN VALLEY

2001 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Toby Evans
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
City States ◽  
State Organization ◽  
City State

The Aztec period city-state of Otumba in the upper Teotihuacan Valley was integrated into the Acolhua domain from the early 1430s to about 1515. It then became independent, demonstrating the fragility of city-state organization as a means of regional political integration. A close look at Otumba and other city-states in the Teotihuacan Valley reveals that Acolhua strategies of social engineering welded together the potentially-autonomous city-states into an elaborate political system with impressive structural strengthening and improved flow of services and materials through it.

Communes and Despots: The City State In Late-Medieval Italy

1965 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 71-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
City States ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

It is a commonplace of political history that in the later Middle Ages the city states of north and central Italy were the scene of a conflict in the theory and practice of government between two contrasted systems: republican and despotic (or in contemporary terminology, government ‘a comune’, ‘in liberta’ etc., and government ‘a tiranno’, signoria or principato). The conflict began about the mid-thirteenth century, and in most places, sooner or later, was settled in favour of despotism.

Ecofeminist ‘lines of convergence’: Remapping the American West in Rebecca Solnit’s Savage Dreams

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Henwood
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
American West ◽  
Test Site ◽  
The United States ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Nevada Test Site ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Resistance To Power ◽  
The Military

This article examines the ways Rebecca Solnit’s Savage Dreams (1994) (re)maps two key locations in the American West. The text centres on Yosemite National Park and the Nevada Test Site, locations emblematic of histories of colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and the military in the United States. Considering how Solnit constructs a counter-map of these places, this article argues that by tracing ‘lines of convergence’ on a landscape deemed empty by the dominant culture, Solnit both documents and is part of resistance to power structures upheld by traditional cartography. Using an ecofeminist framework based on drawing connections in the face of the dominant culture’s emphasis on fragmentation and separation, I discuss how Solnit exposes the silence and violence of the map. I then consider the ways she constructs a ‘testimonial network’ that counters both. Finally, I suggest that Solnit’s textual counter-map prompts us to re-read the traditional map on connective, ecofeminist terms.

scholarly journals Measuring institutional quality in ancient Athens

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREAS BERGH ◽  
CARL HAMPUS LYTTKENS
Keyword(s):  
Economic Freedom ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Institutional Quality ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Economic Freedom Index ◽  
City State

AbstractWe use the Economic Freedom Index to characterize the institutions of the Athenian city-state in the fourth century BCE. It has been shown that ancient Greece witnessed improved living conditions for an extended period of time. Athens in the fourth century appears to have fared particularly well. We find that economic freedom in ancient Athens is on level with the highest ranked modern economies such as Hong Kong and Singapore. With the exception of the position of women and slaves, Athens scores high in almost every dimension of economic freedom. Trade is probably highly important even by current standards. As studies of contemporary societies suggest that institutional quality is probably an important determinant of economic growth, it may also have been one factor in the relative material success of the Athenians.

Values and institutions as determinants of entrepreneurship in ancient Athens

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE C. BITROS ◽  
ANASTASSIOS D. KARAYIANNIS
Keyword(s):  
Public Expenditures ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
The People ◽  
Successful Entrepreneurs ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

AbstractThis paper shows that in classical Athens, values and institutions encouraged many types of entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurs received social and political distinctions, and some entrepreneurial slaves gained their freedom. However, to deter extreme individualism, success in business was judged by the means used to acquire wealth, rather than simply the amount of wealth acquired. The system encouraged those entrepreneurs who were esteemed socially, to work hard, use ethical means, not to consume their wealth conspicuously but to share it with the rest of the people by undertaking public expenditures, and to abide by the laws and ordinances of the city-state.

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