Demagogues and Demagoguery in Hellenistic Greece

This paper introduces scholars of Greek political thought to the continued existence of the phenomenon of demagoguery, or ‘(mis-)leadership of the people’, in the Hellenistic period. After summarizing Classical elite discourse about demagoguery, I explore three areas in which political leaders continued to run afoul of elite norms in Hellenistic democratic poleis: 1) political persecution of the wealthier members of a political community; 2) ‘pandering to’ the people in a way considered infra dignitatem; and 3) stoking bellicosity among the common people. I show that considerable continuities link the Classical and Hellenistic periods and that demagoguery should be approached as a potential window onto ‘popular culture’ in Greek antiquity.

Introduction

This introduction describes the surprisingly frequent invocation of circumcision and uncircumcision as a multifaceted metaphor from antiquity, through the medieval period, into modernity. Circumcision as a signifier of sacrality figures heavily in Jewish thought, while in classical and Hellenistic Greece, the presence of an intact foreskin signified self-control and the avoidance of excess. These conceptions influenced novel Christian theological and literary invocations of the prepuce throughout antiquity and the European Middle Ages, persisting down to the modern era, as in the notable case of Ezra Pound musing that he had gestated Eliot’s “The Waste Land” in his foreskin.

The Rule of Law and Economic Growth in Ancient Greece

The rule of law was very important for the expansion of markets and economic growth in Classical and Hellenistic Greece. The Greek city-state enforced regulations about weights and measures, ensured peace and order, built infrastructure (agoras, roads and ports), granted foreigners access to courts, gave honours, privileges and protection from seizure (asylia), and concluded treaties with other communities. The state also protected the property rights of individuals and created records to ensure title and to resolve disputes about ownership. Finally, the state created third-party enforcement of contracts, such as lease, sale, lending and borrowing and the accessory contracts of personal security and real security. This allowed economic transactions to expand beyond the narrow confines of family, friends, and neighbours and to expand markets.

Time in Ancient Stories of Origin

Greek and Roman stories of origin, or aetia, provide a fascinating window onto ancient conceptions of time. Aetia, which pervade ancient literature at all its stages, are inherently about time: they connect the past with the present by telling us which aspects of the past survive “even now” or “ever since then”. Yet while the standard aetiological formulae remain surprisingly stable over time, the understanding of time that lies behind stories of origin undergoes profound changes. By studying a broad range of texts and by closely examining select stories of origin from archaic Greece, Hellenistic Greece, Augustan Rome, and early Christian literature, this book traces the changing forms of stories of origin and the underlying changing attitudes to time: to the interaction of the time of gods and men, to historical time, to change and continuity, as well as to a time beyond the present one. The book provides a model of how to analyse the temporal construction of aetia, by combining close attention to detail with a view towards the larger temporal agenda of each work. In the process, the book provides new insights both into some of the best-known aetiological works of antiquity (e.g. by Hesiod, Callimachus, Vergil, Ovid) and lesser-known ones (e.g. Ephorus, Prudentius, Orosius). Aetia, it is shown, do not merely convey factual information about the continuity of the past, but they implicate the present in ever new complex messages about time.

Lyre shaped motif and its origins

Lyre shaped ornament is a common motif of ornamental and folklore applied art. But, unfortunately, the origins of the lyre shaped motif are still not well investigated. In the paper we review the literature devoted to the study of the emergence and spread of a lyre shaped motif and analyze museum exhibits from catalogs and published sources. The aim of the study is to define the сenters of the lyre motif origin and the paths of its distribution. Material and methods. Article analyzes lyre shaped motifs in museum artifacts, folk arts and crafts using materials presented in published literature and catalogs of museum exhibits. A spiral motif originated in Egypt. The origins of the lyre motif in ancient Egypt are probably connected with the iconography of the Egyptian god of Hathor, who was depicted as a woman with a headdress decorated with lyre shaped horns and a solar disk between them. It should be noted that the tradition of depicting a human face with cow horns has connections with the Neolithic period of the Nile Valley, where cattle breeding arose in the 6-5th millennium BC. The first cases of using a lyre shaped motif occured in scarab-like seals of Egypt and Minoan culture. Artifacts with a lyre shaped motif were observed related, dating from the Minoan and Mycenaean periods, during to the period of classical Hellenistic Greece. A lyre shaped motif was spread along trade routes from Crete to the Danube, the Elbe, the shores of the Baltic Sea and, together with the Celts, penetrated into Britain, from the Greek colonies of the Black Sea to the Scythians. In the Asian part of the Eurasian steppes, this motif symbolized the image of the eagle totem animal depicted like a griffin, especially in the early Scythian and Hunnic period. The origins of the lyre shaped motif in the Asian steppe, apparently, were the ancient motifs “taotie” in China and “masks” in the Russian Far East. The popularity of the lyre shaped motif in the folk arts and crafts of the Turkic peoples was probably due to the spread of this motif within the Scythian community, when there was a cult of the eagle-like griffin and totem.

Piracy and Slave Trading in Action in Classical and Hellenistic Greece

Most slaves in the Greek world were imported non-Greeks and their offspring. Yet little is known of the entry into slavery of individuals from the non-Greek periphery. Far more promising for studying entry into slavery is a less numerically significant process, piracy, where the capture and sale of individuals – mainly Greeks - is extensively documented. Piracy was both a form of labour in itself, and a means of acquiring labour. The aim of this article is to explore the pragmatic aspects of capture and sale, as well as the extent to which the practice of ransoming prisoners kept captives away from entering the slave supply, by studying the pirate crew’s work, the technology at its disposal, and the fate of its victims.

Christians in Conversation

Christians in Conversation: A Guide to Late Antique Dialogues in Greek and Syriac deals with a particular form of writing by Christians in late antiquity, the prose dialogue. To study late antique dialogues means to recognize that the dialogue form, notably employed by Plato and Aristotle, did not exhaust itself with the philosophical schools of Classical and Hellenistic Greece, but emerged transformed and reinvigorated in the religiously diverse world of late antiquity. The Christians’ use of the dialogue form within religious debate resulted in a burgeoning activity of composition of prose dialogues, which often opposed a Christian and a Jew, a Christian and a pagan, a Christian and a Manichaean, an Orthodox and a heretic, or, later, a Christian and a Muslim. The present work offers the first comprehensive analysis of Christian dialogues in Greek and in Syriac from the earliest examples in the second century up to the end of the sixth century. It shows that several Christian authors chose the dialogue form to convey fundamental theological views, and argues that dialogues were intended as tools of opinion formation in late antique society, thus opening up this vast strand of literature to the interests of the cultural and intellectual historians. Most Christian dialogues are little studied, and often in isolation, but they vividly evoke the religious debates of the time, and embody the cultural conventions and refinements that late antique men and women expected from such debates.

The evolution of property rights in Hellenistic Greece and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt

In the present paper we trace the development of property rights during the Hellenistic period (3rd–2nd centuriesbce), focusing on Athens, the democratic Hellenistic federations and the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. Property rights had been already well developed and protected by courts and state laws during the previous Classical period in ancient Greece, but we argue that they further evolved during the Hellenistic period due to the introduction of a series of new political and economic institutions. We found that there was a causal relationship between the evolution of property rights and the further development of economic institutions in Hellenistic Athens and the Hellenistic federations. We finally argue that the development and adoption of market-oriented economic institutions by the Ptolemaic Kingdom should be attributed to the great influence that these institutions had in the entire Hellenistic world, which resulted in their diffusion from the democratic states to kingdoms.