Exploring Intercommunity Political Activity in Fourth-Century Greece

2018 ◽  
pp. 405-432
Author(s):  
Peter Liddel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
City States ◽  
Cultural Structure ◽  
Inter State

It might seem reasonable to take the view that the study of ancient Greek political behaviour could plausibly focus upon exchanges that went on inside the polis: after all, the word ‘politics’ derives from the Greek politika (‘polis affairs’). However, the concerns of ancient Greek polis-communities were not merely introspective: communities (regardless of size or military clout) were obliged to face the consequences of the decisions and activity of other communities. Human representatives of city-states performed necessary interactions with outsiders: they fought as soldiers, and staked political or ideological claims as ambassadors and politicians. On their return to their home communities, these individuals proclaimed to their audiences the significance of their activity away from home. Furthermore, the overlaps in social and cultural structure of different Greek city-states, as well as the existence of shared modes of decision-making, might lead us to anticipate the value of trans-community forms of political activity. At the heart of this question, therefore, is an overall debate about the degree of ‘unity’ of Greek political institutions and behaviour, a debate explored in this chapter with particular reference to the contested transferability of the decree (psephisma) in Greek inter-state politics of the fourth century.

Athens, Sparta, and Persia

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
International Power ◽  
City States ◽  
Open States

This chapter considers the rise of Athens in the ancient world and its competitions against its rivals, Persia and Sparta. It argues that its democratic institutions were a key to its success. Athens was the world’s first democracy, and it rose to become the leader of the Greeks, with an empire that stretched from North Africa to Crimea. It was a major trading and naval power and forged a formidable alliance of Greek city-states to defeat the mighty Persian Empire. It then fought a legendary series of wars against its oligarchic rival for ascendancy in Greece, Sparta. In the end, Athens’s form of direct democracy and decision-making through tyranny of the majority was its undoing. But not before Athens reigned as a liberal leviathan for nearly a century and showcased an enduring model for how other open states could acquire international power and influence.

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 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.

Agricultural Production

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-141
Author(s):  
Alain Bresson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Rangeland Ecology ◽  
City States ◽  
Age Constraints ◽  
Regional Types ◽  
Greek World

This chapter examines the growth of agricultural production in the Greek city-states. It traces the evolutions and mutations of agriculture in the ancient Greek world as well as the consequences of these changes, first by discussing the so-called Mediterranean trilogy that comprised ancient Greek agriculture: grain, olives, and grapes. While cereals, grapes, and olives constituted the heart of agricultural production in ancient Greece, the role played by other products such as fig, vegetables, roses and other flowers, and honey is also considered. The chapter goes on to explore animal husbandry in the Greek city-states, focusing on the debate on “pastoralism” in the Early Iron Age, constraints in livestock raising, and the three main regional types of stock raising that extended from the southern Aegean to Thessaly, the Peloponnese, and the vast migratory areas of western Greece. Finally, it analyzes rangeland ecology and management during the period.

Greek Warfare beyond the Polis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Blome
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Military History ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Defensive Strategies ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
City State ◽  
The Military ◽  
Greek World

This book assesses the nature and broader significance of warfare in the mountains of classical Greece. Based on detailed reconstructions of four unconventional military encounters, the book argues that the upland Greeks of the classical mainland developed defensive strategies to guard against external aggression. These strategies enabled wide-scale, sophisticated actions in response to invasions, but they did not require the direction of a central, federal government. The book brings these strategies to the forefront by driving ancient Greek military history and ancient Greek scholarship “beyond the polis” into dialogue with each other. As it contends, beyond-the-polis scholarship has done much to expand and refine our understanding of the ancient Greek world, but it has overemphasized the importance of political institutions in emergent federal states and has yet to treat warfare involving upland Greeks systematically or in depth. In contrast, the book scrutinizes the sociopolitical roots of warfare from beyond the polis, which are often neglected in military histories of the Greek city-state. By focusing on the significance of warfare vis-à-vis the sociopolitical development of upland polities, the book shows that although the more powerful states of the classical Greek world were dismissive or ignorant of the military capabilities of upland Greeks, the reverse was not the case. The Phocians, Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Arcadians in circa 490–362 BCE were well aware of the arrogant attitudes of their aggressive neighbors, and as highly efficient political entities, they exploited these attitudes to great effect.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Tonio Hölscher
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Primary Condition ◽  
The World ◽  
City States

The societies of ancient Greek city-states can be defined as communities of “immediate acting” in which all social interaction is brought about in the presence of its members. In this context, seeing and being seen becomes a primary condition of social and political life. The basic thesis of the book is that the world human beings live in, the “Lebenswelt,” is characterized by its visuality, like images, and that the visual world, together with images, constitute the “conceptual reality” the Greeks and Romans lived in.

The Logic of Growth

2018 ◽  
pp. 199-222
Author(s):  
Alain Bresson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Western World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Greek Economy ◽  
City States

This chapter examines the logic of growth in the Greek city-states. It first considers the relationship between self-consumption and economic growth, focusing on the roles played by self-consumption and the market in agriculture and in the ancient Greek economy more generally. It then explains how the Greek cities managed to become the dominant culture in the Mediterranean between about 700 BCE and 300 BCE after experiencing negative growth at the end of the Bronze Age and probably very slow growth during the Early Iron Age. It also explores the notion that the ancient Greek economy did not manage to achieve “capitalist revolution” or “industrial revolution”; the economic impact of technological innovation; and how innovation is associated with supply and demand. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the transition to modernity, arguing that such transition makes ancient Greece's economic history part of the long history of the western world.

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