scholarly journals The Introduction of Coinage to the Greek World and its Effect during the Archaic Period

2010 ◽  
Vol null (27) ◽  
pp. 297-342
Author(s):  
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Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Massimo Nafissi

Lycurgus was the legendary founder of Sparta’s political order and of many of its social institutions. His legend initially developed as part of the transformation that gave Sparta its distinctive features during the Archaic period. The role that Spartan tradition attributed to Lycurgus ended up subsuming and eventually cancelling any memory of this process, and his role in the establishment of the city’s laws and customs, along with Apollo’s blessing, rendered them more legitimate and binding. As it was Lycurgus’s laws that granted Sparta her distinctive greatness, the lawgiver continued to be an influential source of civic identity throughout antiquity, and in Sparta, his legend continued to be revived through a process known as invention of tradition. Throughout the Greek world, Lycurgus and his legislation were the object of deep historical, political and ethical-philosophical interest, usually admired or idealised, but occasionally viewed more critically.


2021 ◽  
pp. 86-97
Author(s):  
Manuela Mari ◽  
Paola Stirpe

The crowns of the four major Panhellenic crown games reveal the religious and symbolic meaning of the plants of whose leaves they were made. Special attention will also be paid to the historical, political, and socio-economic reasons why these four festivals became the most prestigious and popular in the Greek world from the archaic period onwards. Texts and inscriptions reveal many organizational features of the games. The wider regional function of the festivals is evidenced even in organization. The games were also important occasions for trading, for communicating news of international relevance, for announcing military and political initiatives and building up alliances, or for advertising literary and artistic works. Victor lists, ‘archival documents’, monuments and dedications at the sites preserved public memories and created cultural unities. The prestige of crown games was shared by many local games designated as ‘isolympic’, ‘isopythian’, and so on during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.


2021 ◽  
pp. 187-222
Author(s):  
Andrew Meadows

This chapter provides a survey of the legends that appear on coins throughout the Mediterranean world before c.480 BC. It analyses them by purpose, geographical origin, and type, and compares their distribution to the overall patterns of production and circulation during the same period. It concludes (1) that after an early period of use for personal names, the overwhelming nature of the coin legend by the end of the Archaic period is to identify communities; and (2) that the Western Greek world of Italy and Sicily has a propensity for the use of such communal identifiers, and abbreviations thereof, somewhat greater than is found elsewhere in the Greek world. An appendix summarizes those coin legends discussed in Jeffery's Local Scripts and gathers legends not discussed. As far as possible all legends are illustrated.


2009 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Steiner

This article treats the verbal and physical altercation between the disguised Odysseus and the local beggar Iros at the start of Odyssey 18 and explores the overlapping ritual and generic aspects of the encounter so as to account for many of its otherwise puzzling features. Beginning with the detailed characterization of Iros at the book's start, I demonstrate how the poet assigns to the parasite properties and modes of behavior that have close analogues in later descriptions of pharmakoi and of famine demons expelled from communities in rites that are documented from different parts of the Greek world from the archaic period on; so too the account of Iros' ejection from the house and of his subsequent fate conforms to the patterns observable in these rituals. The second part of the discussion examines the ways in which the beggars' quarrel anticipates the enmities that the Ionian iambographers would construct with those whom they cast as their echthroi and rivals, and suggests that we see in the Homeric scene an early instance of an iambic-style confrontation presented in poetic form for performance at the symposium. The iambographers' own deployment of the scapegoat and famine demon paradigms for the vilification of their targets promotes the overlap between the epic and iambic material. In both portions of the argument, the discussion observes how the several frames informing the episode in Book 18 coincide with and promote the Odyssey's larger themes.


1996 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 319-328
Author(s):  
†Julia Vokotopoulou

This paper summarizes recent excavations in Chalkidike. The ancient city of Mende has yielded evidence of houses and other structures, an archaic cemetery, and Mycenaean to late classical finds. At Polychrono (ancient Neapolis or Aige?) there are archaic and classical structures on terraces, and a cemetery with early infant burials. Three archaic–classical sanctuaries have also been found: (1) at Poseidi, a temple of Poseidon (identified from inscribed votives), robbed and reused in hellenistic and Roman times; (2) at Nea Roda-Sane, a temple to a female deity, with sculptures; and (3) at Parthenonas, a peak sanctuary of Zeus with evidence of animal sacrifice. The implications for Chalkidian relationships with other parts of the Greek world and for the strength of local culture are briefly examined.


2021 ◽  
pp. 497-508
Author(s):  
Nigel Kennell

The article sketches the development of the gymnasium from its origins in the archaic period to the later Hellenistic period when, in addition to its military function, the gymnasium was a multi-use complex numbering among a city’s largest buildings. Epigraphical and archaeological evidence provide insights into the gymnasium’s infrastructure, user groups, and contests which were peculiar to it. Its administrator, the gymnasiarch, was a prominent official, whose position provided opportunities for displays of competitive generosity. The gymnasium also received benefactions from the local elite, kings, and dynasts, who thereby burnished their reputations as supporters of Hellenic culture. Gymnasia were also equipped with instructors in athletic and military subjects, with lectures or courses in the liberal arts mostly provided by travelling teachers. The homogeneity of its programme throughout the Greek world made the gymnasium an effective vehicle for transmitting Hellenic culture to non-Greeks, although Jewish society was ambivalent about its benefits.


Author(s):  
François De Polignac

This chapter examines the forms, process, and meaning of urbanization in the early Archaic Period in Greece. It explains that the Greek world is particularly suitable for a study of the processes of urbanization in the Archaic Mediterranean. Prime candidates for the essential traits of a Greek town are the clear functional distinctions between different types of space, and one such distinction is that between exterior and urban space.


2015 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 43-64

An interest in speech and an admiration for those capable of speaking well was a recurrent feature of the Greek world from its most archaic period. Contrary to a certain stereotyped image, the Homeric hero is not celebrated only for his strength and beauty; his ability to express himself is also fundamental: Achilles is the most famous hero, and Phoenix's duty was to teach him how to be ‘both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds’ (Iliad, 9.442–3). In times of war and peace, authority largely depended on one's skill in rhetoric, which allowed one to settle disputes and provide suitable advice (see, for example, Hesiod, Theogony, 83–7). Later on, the development of the institution of the polis further increased the importance of this skill, which became even more crucial in Athenian democracy, in an age in which courtrooms and assemblies shaped men's lives and careers. Hence the sophists’ success, which reflects the fame they enjoyed as masters of the art of speech: it is because he ‘makes you a clever speaker’ that the young Hippocrates wishes to rush off to visit Protagoras in Plato's dialogue of the same name (Protagoras, 312d–e).


Author(s):  
Jan N. Bremmer

In the Archaic period the Greeks did not yet conceptualize the difference between a divinity and its statue. Therefore, stories that stressed the agency of statues separate from their divinities must have seemed less strange at that time than when the statues had become independent, so to speak, from their gods or goddesses. The latter started to happen in the transitional period to the Classical era when the well-known triad of divinities—heroes—mortals came into being, and philosophers began to criticize the worship of statues. All these changes together led to a development in which the agency of statues increasingly became noteworthy. After the 5th century BC we keep hearing about the agency of statues but we can also notice a growing critique of the worship of statues by different philosophical schools. In both Greece and Rome divine statues manifested themselves in particular during moments of crisis or of a decisive political character. In the Greek East the belief in the agency of statues lasted until the 3rd century AD, as Archaic statues represented a kind of cultural capital for the Greeks under Roman rule. Yet, in the end the continuing philosophical critique, which had been radicalized by the Christians, made the agency of statues intellectually unacceptable.


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