Historical Agency and the ‘Great Man' in Classical Greece
Abstract
The 'great man' of sd later Greek historical thought is the long product of traceable changes in ancient ideas about the meaning and impact of an individual life. At least as early as the birth of the Athenian democracy, questions about the ownership of the motion of history were being publicly posed and publicly challenged. The responses to these questions, however, gradually shifted over time, in reaction to historical and political developments during the fifth and fourth centuries BC. These ideological changes are illuminated by portrayals of the roles played by individuals and groups in significant historical events, as depicted in historiography, funerary monuments, and inscriptions. The emergence in these media of the individual as an indispensable agent of history provides an additional explanation for the reception of Alexander 'the Great': the Greek world had long since been prepared to understand him as it did.
This article offers the first comprehensive presentation of a monumental funerary lion found approximately 60 years ago in Thebes. Remarkably, the stone lion’s breast is inscribed with the name of the deceased, Ϝαστίας. On numismatic, epigraphic and historical grounds, I identify this Wastias as the homonymous magistrate appearing on staters of the Boiotian koinon in ca . 400 BC, but also as Astias, one of the leading Laconizing Theban politicians on the eve of the Corinthian War ( Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 20.1–2). Wastias’ death can be very plausibly placed in 395 BC, the year of the battle of Haliartos. The proposed association is supported by a stylistic analysis of the monument, which thus becomes one of the best-dated sculpted lions of the Classical period. My contextual analysis of the monument reaffirms the notoriously oligarchic orientation of Theban politics. It also prompts a re-examination of other funerary lions, most notably its regional successor in the lion of Chaironeia. It concludes with a reflection on the nature of individual versus collective commemorative practices.
In an attempt to bring together the Global North-West and the Global South-East, the authors explore leadership:followership models across time and cultures that challenge the reader to shift perspectives and paradigms. When integrated and applied to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an approach incorporating the disciplines of history, leadership-followership, sustainability studies, cultural and anthropological approaches can reorient our thinking in a post-colonialist world. Three historical leaders, Xenophon, Cabeza de Vaca, and Cândido Rondon, are examined using transdisciplinary narrative against a backdrop of leadership thought, primarily informed by the work of Peter F. Drucker. These leaders are examined because of their time, context, and universal appeal as individuals who thought and acted for and on behalf of a collective while working across differences. In addition, their individual complexities as military men who adapted consistently to some very “un-military” situations and environments introduces an additional intriguing factor to the leadership portfolio of each. They were from a military culture but not defined by it. They were not perfect leaders, and, in many ways, have been and would be criticized for various obvious flaws, including paternalism, misogyny, and/or aligning with rather than radically challenging the powers/elites of which they were a part. At the core of Drucker’s leadership thinking are three key areas: work, responsibility, and trust earned. This retelling provides an approach to understanding purpose-driven leadership in the past to better integrate leadership and followership values, education, and practices towards transforming our world. Although history remembers and raises Xenophon, Cabeza de Vaca, and Cândido Rondon in general as leaders exemplar, it can be demonstrated that their singular focus on their work, the manner in which they exercised personal responsibility, and their attempt to develop trust in their followers, provided a complexity that can help consider an approach needed for the future.
Our conception of the culture and values of the ancient Greco-Roman world is largely based on texts and material evidence left behind by a small and atypical group of city-dwellers. The people of the deep Mediterranean countryside seldom appear in the historical record from antiquity, and almost never as historical actors. This book is the first extended historical ethnography of an ancient village society, based on an extraordinarily rich body of funerary and propitiatory inscriptions from a remote upland region of Roman Asia Minor. Rural kinship structures and household forms are analysed in detail, as are the region's demography, religious life, gender relations, class structure, normative standards and values. Roman north-east Lydia is perhaps the only non-urban society in the Greco-Roman world whose culture can be described at so fine-grained a level of detail: a world of tight-knit families, egalitarian values, hard agricultural labour, village solidarity, honour, piety and love.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This article considers whether the grave stele of Myrrhine, the first priestess of the cult of Athena Nike on the Acropolis, belongs to the same Myrrhine pictured on a marble lekythos in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. After examining the dates of the monuments, the iconography of the lekythos, and its suitability for the representation of a priestess, this article argues that the lekythos and the stele both date to ca. 420 B.C. and commemorate the same historical personage. Finally, it analyzes the importance of the commemoration of Myrrhine within its historical context of the Peloponnesian War, particularly the period of the Peace of Nikias (421-415 B.C.).
Résumés
Cet article étudie la nature proprement délibérative de la démocratie athénienne. De nombreux travaux se sont intéressés à la cité antique d’Athènes en tant qu’exemple plus ou moins réussi de démocratie participative, en soulignant l’importance de la délibération collective dans son système politique. Partant de cette hypothèse, l’article tente d’abord de déterminer si les Athéniens ont réellement recherché et mis en œuvre, à travers leurs institutions, l’idéal délibératif et la recherche du consensus ; il s’interroge également sur la compatibilité de ces derniers avec les idéaux modernes de démocratie délibérative prônés par les théoriciens politiques contemporains. Après avoir dressé un panorama des études sur la démocratie délibérative et participative, l’article examine les similitudes trompeuses qui peuvent exister entre le modèle plébiscitaire actuel et la démocratie directe athénienne à laquelle il est souvent comparé. Il s’attache ensuite au dispositif institutionnel délibératif dans lequel s’inscrit la prise de décision politique à Athènes, en se concentrant sur le fonctionnement concret de l’Assemblée et sur les idées que les orateurs et le public y défendaient explicitement, à travers leur comportement. Cette analyse se fonde en particulier sur la relecture attentive des récits d’Assemblée et sur les considérations normatives que l’on trouve chez les orateurs (en particulier dans les Prologues de Démosthène). Enfin, l’article analyse un cas de débat prolongé au sein de l’Assemblée – celui sur l’expédition de Sicile – pour démontrer que la prise de décision s’est efforcée d’accomplir l’idéal délibératif afin de lui donner toute sa légitimité – que cette délibération démocratique ait abouti, ou non, à un choix politique judicieux.
In 1944 Rudolf Kastner made a deal with Adolf Eichmann to save 1685 Jews from deportations to Auschwitz, which led to one of the most contentious trials in Israel’s history in 1954. Kastner, a civil servant at the time sued one Michael Gruenwald for defamation, after Kastner was accused of being a collaborator due to his contentious deal. The claims that he saved those close to him from his hometown in Cluj, and the fact he allegedly did not warn Hungarian Jewry from their imminent deportation to Auschwitz led to the head judge Benjamin Halevi to proclaim that he had “sold his soul to the devil.” This thesis analyzes the means by which the stories of individuals from the Cluj ghetto, Kastner’s deal with Eichmann and eventually the trial and its political connections were narrowed down into the conceptual paradigm of the ‘victimhero,’ as well as its wider implications in connection to Israeli and Jewish identity. The conceptual frameworks of identity, the impact of memory, and trauma are essentially used as foundations in order to examine why Kastner was and is vilified. By examining this affair this thesis ascertains how that very process played into wider conceptual frameworks.
Demokratische und republikanische Gemeinschaften, deren politisches System auf der Freiheit des Einzelnen bzw. auf der Beteiligung vieler an der Politik fußt, benötigen mythologisierte Gründungsakte, die erinnert und rituell erneuert werden, um einen Grundkonsens ihrer Mitglieder und die kollektive Identifikation mit dem politischen System zu gewährleisten. Wird ein solcher Gründungsakt personalisiert als Tat einzelner Menschen, die als Befreier von einer nicht-freiheitlichen Ordnung verehrt werden, so liegt eine Heroisierung vor. Als Freiheitsheld bezeichnen wir einen Menschen, dem man eine solche Tat zuschreibt. Dies geschah zuerst in den demokratisch werdenden bzw. republikanischen Gemeinschaften der griechisch-römischen Antike. Der Artikel beleuchtet die Fälle der Athener Tyrannenmörder Harmodios und Aristogeiton und der römischen Freiheitshelden Lucius Iunius Brutus und Marcus Iunius Brutus.
The debate about the identification of the house of Augustus on the Palatine hill or the controversy surrounding the occupant of Tomb 2 at Vergina or the recently excavated funerary complex at Amphipolis offers more than sufficient evidence for a public fascination with important historical personalities. Yet, at the same time, disciplinary trends in archaeology have sought to emancipate the material record from historicizing narratives and to occlude or decanter the knowing subject. The archaeology of the individual has become, at best, a quaint, antiquarian pursuit and, at worst, a celebration of neo-conservative ideology. This article will consider a series of case-studies from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds with the aim of illuminating the viability - and desirability - of practicing an archaeology of famous individuals.
Xenophon provides the historical background to Socrates’ trial and execution in the Hellenica, but notoriously does not mention these events anywhere in it. Nevertheless, a re-examination of specific episodes from the early part of the Hellenica reveals that he does offer very pointed political commentary on the trial and execution of Socrates, even without mentioning them explicitly. In addition, deliberate parallels with and verbal echoes of Xenophon’s apologetic Socratic works suggest that the Hellenica is intended to be read as a defence of Socrates and a condemnation of the Athenian democracy.
Xenophon lived in interesting times: he saw the end of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) and, as a young adult, was involved in the terror regime imposed by the Spartans on the Athenians after the latter capitulated. Leaving aside his greatest adventure, narrated in his Anabasis, Xenophon witnessed the rise and fall of Spartan naval power, the Diktat that goes by the name of the “King's Peace” and represented the high point of Persian dominance in the Aegean, the astonishing defeat that the army of the Boeotian League inflicted upon the Spartans at Leuctra in 371 BC, and then, immediately thereafter, the foundation of the Arcadian “big city,” Megalopolis, and of Messene, which crippled Spartan power once and for all. In many cases he was very close to key events as they unfolded – he saw the battle of Coronea, some scholars think he even fought in it, and was probably personally present at Sparta, when the envoys of the Greeks swore allegiance to the King's Peace, and later, when the news came of the defeat at Leuctra. His lifespan also coincided with one of the most crucial periods in the history of Greek historiography, a period that saw momentous developments in aspects ranging from the use of source material and research techniques in general to the thematic definition of historiography, the purposes and style of history writing. To mention but the tip of the iceberg, Xenophon was a contemporary or a near-contemporary of two of the most widely acclaimed historians of ancient Greece, Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chius. His activity as a historian could hardly have taken place in a more vibrant context. For us, modern readers of his works, the task of appreciating Xenophon's specific place in the general trajectory of Greek historiography is made more difficult by the loss of almost the whole of Greek historical writing between Thucydides (died ca. 399 BC) and Polybius (died ca. 118 BC).
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
Xenophon was a wide-ranging author who wrote in a great variety of literary genres. He published historical and biographical works, political, economic, and technical treatises, and philosophical dialogues as well, refusing to confine himself to any one genre in particular. To the extent that he was a “philosopher” – a title that the ancients never denied him – even a serious philosopher – something that very few moderns have been willing to concede – his relation to the philosophical tradition is quite significant. The goal of the following study is to highlight the depth and diversity of Xenophon's philosophical connections both to his predecessors and to his contemporaries, and to briefly indicate the reception of his work among philosophers connected with Stoicism.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
Introduction: Interpreting Xenophon's Views on Sparta Xenophon's affection for Sparta ran so deep that he was willing to introduce deliberate distortions into his writings in order to present Sparta and its leaders in a favorable light. Xenophon's ostensible praise for Sparta masks a deep-seated dislike for Sparta and its leaders. Both of these opinions have been voiced in the modern scholarship on Xenophon's writings. It may seem odd that there could be such fundamental disagreement about the views of an author who wrote at length about Sparta and whose corpus of work survives in its entirety. However, as we shall see, Xenophon's writings present significant interpretive challenges. Some facets of Xenophon's relationship with Sparta are reasonably clear. Around 400 BC Xenophon, who was born and raised in Athens, joined a group of mercenary soldiers assembled by Cyrus the Younger, a pretender to the throne of Persia. Those soldiers subsequently entered Spartan employ and fought in a series of campaigns against the Persians in Asia Minor. Xenophon occupied important positions of command during that period and seems to have seen much of Agesilaus, the Spartan king who was in control of Spartan forces in Asia Minor. When Agesilaus and his forces were recalled to Greece in 394, Xenophon accompanied him. At some point (the timing remains unclear), Xenophon was exiled from Athens, possibly because of his service in a Spartan-led army. Upon his return to Greece, Xenophon took up residence on an estate at a place called Scillus in the northwestern Peloponnese; this was almost certainly made possible by the good graces of the Spartans, who had taken control of the area from the Eleans. Xenophon remained there until 371, when the Eleans, in the wake of the Spartans’ crushing defeat at the battle of Leuctra, regained control of Scillus. Xenophon thus had good reason to be grateful to Sparta, and, at least while at Scillus, may have been reluctant to criticize Sparta openly.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
Introduction Of the many texts that demonstrate the importance of Xenophon in the Greek literary culture of the Roman Empire, few do so better than Dio of Prusa's recommendations to a rising politician who already had a good education but apparently wanted to raise his oratorical game. After proposing that he study certain orators and historians, Dio recommends Xenophon as a model in several genres: I shall now turn to the Socratics, writers who, I insist, are quite indispensable to every man who aims at oratory. For just as without salt no food is gratifying to the taste, so no genre of literature, it seems to me, could possibly be pleasing to the ear if it had no share in Socratic grace. It would be a long task to praise the others, and to read them is not something everybody can do. But I think that Xenophon, and he alone of the ancients, can suffice for a man in public life. Whether one is commanding an army in time of war, or is guiding the affairs of a city, or is speaking in a popular assembly or the council chamber, or even if one were addressing a court of law and desired, not merely as an orator, but as a city statesman or imperial figure, to say what is appropriate to such a person in a court case, the best model of all, it seems to me, and the most profitable for all these ends is Xenophon. For his ideas are clear and simple and can be seen easily by everyone, and the character of his style is attractive, pleasing, and convincing, carrying much conviction and exercising much charm and impact, so that his power seems not like cleverness but actually like magic. If, for instance, you were willing to read his work on the Anabasis very carefully, you will find no argument among those which it is possible you will use which he has not analyzed and could present as a kind of norm to any man who wishes to go in his direction or imitate him.
This Companion, the first dedicated to the philosopher and historian Xenophon of Athens, gives readers a sense of why he has held such a prominent place in literary and political culture from antiquity to the present and has been a favourite author of individuals as diverse as Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, and Leo Tolstoy. It also sets out the major problems and issues that are at stake in the study of his writings, while simultaneously pointing the way forward to newer methodologies, issues, and questions. Although Xenophon's historical, philosophical, and technical works are usually studied in isolation because they belong to different modern genres, the emphasis here is on themes that cut across his large and varied body of writings. This volume is accessible to students and general readers, including those previously unfamiliar with Xenophon, and will also be of interest to scholars in various fields.
This paper examines ideas of individual freedom in the Hellenistic city-states (c. 323–31 BC). It concentrates on the civic ideas expressed in the laws and decrees of Hellenistic cities, inscribed on stone, comparing them with Hellenistic historical and philosophical works. It places different Hellenistic approaches alongside modern liberal, neo-Roman republican and civic humanist theories of individual liberty, finding some overlaps with each of those modern approaches. The argument is that the Hellenistic Greeks developed innovative ways of combining demanding ideals of civic virtue and the common good with equally robust ideals of individual freedom and ethical choice. They did so not least by adapting and developing traditional Greek approaches close to modern civic humanism, in ways very relevant to modern debates about how to reconcile civic duty, the common good and pluralism.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Polybius’ work is the frequency with which the historian pauses his historical narrative and embarks upon digressions, including entire books devoted to the topics of geography (Book 34), historiography (Book 12) and, most famously, the discussion of the Roman constitution in Book 6. Such digressions have naturally drawn the attention of modern scholars, but in the past the tendency in Polybian scholarship had been to read such digressions in isolation, and even to deny their relevance outside of their immediate context. While it is true that these digressions cannot be regarded as strict blue-prints upon which Polybius’ historical narrative is to be precisely mapped, more recent scholarship has suggested that such passages are not as irrelevant to this narrative as they had for a long time appeared. Moreover, a parallel trend in Polybian scholarship is currently calling for a renewed focus into the composition of his historical narrative in order to apply the level of scrutiny to the text of Polybius previously reserved, for example, for his more famous predecessors, Herodotus and Thucydides. An appropriate recognition of the relationship between the more famous passages of Polybius’ work found in his digressions and the broader narrative of historical events will help to alleviate this deficiency. Careful study of the text of Polybius in this manner will reveal that his historical narrative does not simply represent a bare record of historical facts but is rather composed by the historian in a way that demonstrates and reinforces the principles presented in the more abstract digressions, which have attracted more attention.
This paper builds on recent work that has focused on the interplay between Xeno- phon the narrator and Xenophon the character in the Anabasis. It illustrates how crucial the divine is in the construction of Xenophon’s character and the overall shape of the narrative. By referring to oracles, dreams and sacrifices, as well as his divine estate at Scillus, Xenophon the narrator contributes substantively towards wider thematic concerns in the narrative: the meaningful rôle of the divine in warfare; Xenophon’s stellar record during this opaque foreign campaign, and the signal connection between piety and good leadership.
It is quite remarkable that the study of Greek economic history has been long pursued in the absence of any overall synthesis. The revised translation of Alain Bresson's The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy , originally published in French in 2007, is undoubtedly a major contribution that will have a significant impact on how the subject is taught and studied in the Anglo-Saxon world. The volume is effectively divided into two parts. The first situates Greek economies in their environment, by exploring demography, sources of energy, agriculture, pastoralism, and non-agricultural production. The second part focuses on the nature of ancient markets, by examining internal and external markets, the international division of labour, and the role of currency, credit, and taxation. While the first part is primarily a useful summary of current research, the second part is an original contribution to our understanding of Greek markets. Not only are we given for the first time a detailed analysis of how the agora and the emporion functioned, but Bresson is able to fully document the existence of complex networks creating an international division of labour. These are major advances, but the work has two major problems. Despite its size, it is a lopsided analysis. It is remarkable, for example, that there is not a single chapter devoted to labour, and that its nineteen-page index lacks any reference to terms such as wages, class, exploitation, poverty, or consumption. And, while Bresson offers an excellent description of many economic aspects, the book is distinctly unconvincing whenever it tries to explain patterns or the nature of Greek economic growth. It will be essential for any future work in Greek economic history, but for a comprehensive framework that can actually explain things, we will unfortunately have to wait.
Oappl ied to Herodotus' Histories themselves: Is the con-clusion of Herodotus' work a fitting and satisfying one? Older interpretations tended to criticize the final stories about Ar-tayctes and Artembares as anticlimactic or inappropriate: Did Herodotus forget himself here, or were the stories intended as interludes, preludes to further narrative? 2 Entirely opposite is the praise accorded Herodotus in a recent commentary on Book 9: "The brilliance of Herodotus as a writer and thinker is mani-fest here, as the conclusion of the Histories both brings together those themes which have permeated the entire work and, at the same time, alludes to the new themes of the post-war world." 3 More recent appreciation for Herodotus' "brilliance," then, is often inspired by the tightly-woven texture of Herodotus' narrative. Touching upon passion, revenge, noble primitivism, 1 Hdt. 1.32: skop°ein d¢ xrØ pantÚw xrAEmatow tØn teleutAEn, kª épobAEsetai (text C. Hude, OCT). 2 For summaries of earlier assessments (Wilamowitz, Jacoby, Pohlenz, et al.
Forty four years elapsed between the successive full-length treatments of the campaign and battle of Leuctra by J. Wolter, in: J. Kromayer, Antike Schlachtfelder IV, Berlin 1931, 290-316, and J.K.Anderson, in: Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1970, chapter 10. After only another fifteen years it is perhaps not yet time for a new comprehensive discussion. In this article I merely wish to consider four specific problems connected with the campaign upon which various scholars have attempted to cast light in the last two decades.
In the continuing discussion and debate over the development of letter-forms in fifth-century Athens, the official casualty lists from the public cemetery have played little part. One of them, however, the so-called ‘Koroneia’ epigram and related fragments (SEG x. 410; xxi. 123; and IG i ² . 942), has been used in the argument by H. B. Mattingly, who has assigned it to Delion and claims its tailed rho for the 420 s. But, the epigraphical argument aside, it seems to me that in so doing he has ignored two important characteristics of the lists—characteristics that are not apparent from these fragments by themselves but that can be seen from all the inscriptions of this class taken as a group. No summary of our knowledge of these lists has been written for almost 50 years, during which time the number known has almost doubled. In this paper I should like to outline the present state of our knowledge and to give some impressions of them gained from examining all known fragments and preparing them for publication. I wish to stress that these impressions were formed slowly, with no parti pris , no idea of their being used in any debate over letter-forms, but merely with the purpose of understanding as much as possible about the lists as a group.
Homer thrice alludes to the Trojan horse near the Iliad's end: Epeios knocks out an unwary opponent (23.68-91); Priam commands his people to haul lumber into the city without fear of ambush (24.778-9); the poem's final word suggests Troy's inability to survive without Hector hippodamos.
The London fragment of the Oxyrhynchus historian begins with a narrative of the voyage of Demaenetus to Conon and the reaction which it provoked. This is the last incident with which P deals under the winter of 396/5, and he describes it as approximately contemporaneous with some other incident, not improbably the mission of Timocrates. With one ship Demaenetus sailed off to join Conon, lacking the authorisation of the people, but not before secretly communicating his plan to the boule . The language of the following section gives the impression that the boule was taken aback by the extent and vigour of the outcry, which might indicate that prior anti-Spartan acts had not created such a disturbance. The action of Demaenetus was less trivial than it may at first seem; it was also more concrete, less easy to excuse or minimise than what had gone before. One of the twelve ships which Athens was allowed, and which could easily be counted, was gone, and Sparta would know perfectly well where it had gone. She had recently suffered a serious reverse in her struggle with Persia, the loss of Rhodes, whilst the apparently unconcealed object of Timocrates had been the incitement to war of the cities of Greece. In the circumstances Sparta would perhaps be more likely than before to treat the least unfriendly move by Athens as an act of war, especially if it took the form of assistance to Persia, whilst at Athens meditation on the possibility of war, inspired by Timocrates' appeal, would create an acuter awareness of the likely results of defeat and so promote greater caution and respect for Spartan sensibilities among prudent men.
Early in Book 1 of Herodotus' Histories, Solon speaks to Croesus about the jealousy of the gods and the ephemeral nature of human happiness (1.29-33). Since Solon's speech is so prominently placed, and since it introduces themes that recur throughout the Histories, it has traditionally been seen as programmatic, i.e., as expressing Herodotus' own views about the gods and human happiness. Although the assumption that Solon speaks for Herodotus has long been the standard view, it has recently been challenged on the grounds that Herodotus himself never directly affirms his agreement with what Solon says. On the other hand, many scholars have noted that Herodotus does not always state his views directly: he often uses literary devices such as analogy, juxtaposition, and the repetition of narrative patterns to indicate his views. After isolating the three main principles of Solon's speech (the jealousy of the gods, the instability of human fortune, and the consequent need to see how a man has ended his life before judging his happiness), this paper examines the direct and indirect evidence for Herodotus' acceptance of these principles. After examining the evidence in Books 1-9 of the Histories, the paper concludes that Herodotus does indeed agree with the views of his character Solon, and that he makes his agreement clear both explicitly and implicitly, through analogy, repetition, and juxtaposition. Moreover, the position of Solon's speech indicates that Herodotus meant it to be programmatic, setting forth basic assumptions about the nature of human life and its relation to the gods which could then provide a philosophical framework for the Histories as a whole.
Many studies of the campaign and the battle of Marathon have suffered from conflicts between scholars in the field of hypothesis. The article by J. Kromayer illustrates this admirably. He concerned himself mainly with the rival hypotheses of Curtius and Delbrück, the former maintaining that the Persians embarked most of their force and all the cavalry just before the battle, and the latter that the Persians did not do so at all but delivered a full-scale but unsuccessful attack up the Vraná valley, which resulted in a counter-attack by the Greeks. Neither hypothesis rests upon the ancient evidence. Yet Curtius has been followed by Munro, Grundy and others, and recently by Gomme, Pritchett and Burn; and Delbrück has been followed by Meyer, De Sanctis and others. Other hypotheses are made about the duration of the engagement. They vary from Munro's matter of ‘minutes’ to Delbrück's three phases of hard-fought action, although they are both in conflict with the evidence of Herodotus. Again, hypotheses have been advanced in an attempt to dispense with the topographical evidence, for instance of the Mound at Marathon, e.g. the hypothesis that it existed before the battle. In a paper delivered in 1920 and published in this Journal in 1964, Whatley expressed his doubts about the value of such hypotheses; but he himself became involved in drawing analogies between the massive, complicated and many-fronted First World War and the one-day battle of Marathon—analogies which are quite misleading. In this paper I propose to be as economical as possible in making hypotheses and to keep to the ancient evidence first. This leads to a different order of exposition; for most scholars have begun with the campaign, formed their theory of the aims of the Persians and of the Greeks, and tried to make the battle conform with the theory, but I shall begin with the battle itself, for which we have much evidence, and treat the campaign afterwards.
Greece is widely acknowledged, but the subject has often been approached in a rather limited way. Attention has focused on democratic Athens, and interpretations of the available evidence have, in turn, concentrated on its function in creating and reinforcing a specifically Athenian and specifically democratic ideology. This article attempts to broaden that focus. Concentrating on late fifth-century monuments from three anti-democratic, and anti-Athenian, city-states (Megara, Tanagra, and Thespiae), it explores the complex pattern of similarity and difference which is visible in these monuments, and suggests that this pattern must be explained with reference to an equally complex network of social, cultural, and ideological factors. War memorials, by their nature, encourage monologic interpretations, but a closer engagement with a broader range of Greek commemorative material reveals the fluidity that underlies those dominant narratives.
Fustel de Coulanges' thesis that ancient society was founded upon the cult of ancestral tombs has had, for a thoroughly self-contradictory argument, a remarkably successful career. Neither Fustel himself nor the many subsequent scholars who have quoted his views with approval faced clearly the difficulty of deriving a social structure dominated by corporate descent groups from the veneration of tombs placed in individually owned landed property. On the whole, historians have tended to play down Fustel's insistence on the relation between ancestor-cult and property and to exaggerate the role of the corporate kin group. This tendency, which assimilates Fustel to Sir Henry Maine and other lawyers interested in the reconstruction of Indo-European institutions (e.g. Bonfante) has in my view considerably impeded understanding of the role of kinship in early Greek society; it also obscures one of the most individual aspects of Fustel's work which, thanks to the researches of Philippe Ariès (II) on the development of the modern tomb-cult in the nineteenth century, can now be placed in its historical context.
When Mardonius sailed along the coast of Asia and arrived in Ionia, something happened that will seem very wondrous to those Greeks who find it impossible to accept that Otanes proposed to the seven Persians that Persia ought to have a democratic government: for Mardonius suppressed all the Ionian tyrannies and established democracies in the cities. (Herodotus 6.43.3)
Among early Greek historians, Herodotos and Thukydides, owing to their survival, inevitably dominate our attention. But of course they were not alone. We have some substantial citations and numerous shorter fragments of many contemporaries. Difficulties of interpretation and the authority of their greatest modern interpreter, Felix Jacoby, have for many years prevented a thorough re-evaluation of early historiography and the position of Herodotos within it. The present paper is a contribution to this effort. In the first section, the list of Herodotos’ contemporaries is drawn up as a necessary starting-point. We shall find that Jacoby's assessment of the evidence, and in particular his late date for some historians, is to be rejected, and that his conclusions about Herodotos’ position in the development of historiography, which still dominate the field, lack at least part of their foundation. In section II an alternative method, in the absence of certain chronology, is developed for identifying the salient characteristics of the individual historian; the method owes something to narratology. It is illustrated from the fragments of the authors listed in section I, together with those of other historians down to the beginning of the fourth century. Section III then focuses on Herodotos; it will emerge that the most distinctive thing about him is his constant talk about sources and how to assess them. Other historians (and, indeed, poets) knew that sources contradict each other, but Herodotos first realised that this situation exists as a theoretical problem requiring the development of new methods. His is a second-order, or meta-cognitive awareness. Section IV goes on to deal, as seems necessary, with Detlev Fehling's theory about Herodotos’ sources, since if he is right Herodotos is not really serious about them. An epilogue draws attention to a fifth-century passage in the Theognidean corpus with striking parallels to a passage in Plato's Protagoras; the two together throw light on Herodotos’ proem, and confirm the picture drawn in this paper of his historical activity. © 1996, The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. All rights reserved.
This study of the Ten Thousand on their way home will consider, with regard to some important aspects of their social behaviour, whether they were adopting and adapting the Greek city way of life, or that of a mercenary army, and whether other possible models may help us to understand their problems and their success.
The Ten Thousand had been part of an army and many of them would form part of one again. The assumption that in the meanwhile they were really just like an army justifies the space given to them by Parke, by Marinovich and by Griffith in books which are studies of Greek mercenary warfare. Of course the men's aim when they were Cyrus's mercenaries (like the aims of other mercenaries) had been to follow what instructions had come to them from above and to take home, individually, what pay and profit they could. But once Cyrus was killed they were no longer mercenaries nor employed by any authority, and their aim, decided by themselves, was to find a way home. Their entirely different status, and their ability to succeed in these new circumstances, mean that it is unwise in investigating the patterns of behaviour either of mercenaries or of the Ten Thousand to assume without question that the two patterns will be the same.
On a fall night before Issus in 333 BC, we are told by Curtius Rufus, Alexander ascended by torchlight to the summit of a lofty mountain, and in accordance with ancestral custom performed sacrifices to the chief guardian deities of the place: an intriguing historical remnant, the more challenging because Curtius provides no other details, and no other Alexander account gives reliable information about this particular display of piety. Consequently the gods in question remain unknown. The purpose of this study is to establish the likelihood that Alexander did in fact perform these rites, and to determine the probable identities of the deities in the light of what is known about religious cults at Issus before he arrived.
The shadow of Hecataeus, magni nominis umbra if ever there was one, constantly obstructs our attempts to assess and understand Herodotus' principles, objectives and achievements. Perplexing and elusive as the details of Hecataeus' work may be, no-one disputes his importance as an intermediary between catalogue-poetry such as we associate with Hesiod, with its clear subordination of geography to genealogy, and the more sophisticated method of synthesising knowledge about the oikoumene demonstrated by Herodotus; some have even argued that the great Milesian has a better claim than Herodotus to the title of pater historiae .
The goal of this paper is to increase our understanding of what archaic verse epitaphs meant to contemporary readers. Section I suggests their fundamental message was praise of the deceased, expressed in forms characteristic of poetic encomium in its broad, rhetorical sense, i.e., praise poetry. In section II, the conventions of encomium in the epitaphs are compared to the iconographic conventions of funerary art. I conclude that verse inscriptions and grave markers, not only communicate the same message of praise, but do so in a formally parallel manner. Section III, drawing on Pindar as a preserver of archaic thinking, attributes the parallelism between verse epitaph and grave marker to their common debt to funerary ritual. The epigrams will be seen to share with their monuments the goal of memorializing this ritual.
In recent years classicists and ancient historians have devoted renewed attention to the Archaic Age in Greece, the period from approximately the eighth century to the fifth century BC. Important articles, excavation reports and monographs, as well as books by Moses Finley, L. H. Jeffery, Oswyn Murray, Chester Starr and others, not to mention a recent volume of the Cambridge Ancient History , bear witness to the vigor of recent scholarship in this area. Among many of these treatments of the period, moreover, is evident an increasing recognition of the close connection between social and economic developments and the political life of the Greek cities of the period. At the same time that this renewed interest in the Archaic Age has become so prominent in classical studies, a group of scholars working in more modern periods has developed a fresh approach to the role of ritual and ceremonial in civic life, especially during the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. Deeply influenced by cultural anthropology, they have found in the often surprisingly rich documentation about festivals, processions, charivaris etc. important insights into the societies in which these activities took place. Classicists looking upon this movement may be inclined to undervalue its originality and perhaps its controversiality, pointing out that a serious interest in ancient festivals has long been prominent in classical scholarship and is well represented in recent books such as those by Mikalson, Parke and Simon and such older works as Martin Nilsson's frequently cited Cults, myths, oracles and politics in ancient Greece (Lund 1951). Yet there is a great difference both in method and in results between the traditional approaches to ceremonial represented in the study of ancient Greece and those being developed in more recent fields.
This paper examines Herodotus' use of words of the ἀνάγκη family in order to determine which external or internal constraints the historian represents as affecting the causality of events. M. Ostwald's Ἀνάγκη in Thucydides (1988) provides a foundation for examining the more restricted application of these terms in Herodotus (85 occurrences vs. 161 in Thucydides). In Herodotus, divine necessity (absent in Thucydides) refers to the predictable results of human wrongdoings more often than to a force constraining human choices. This represents an especially ambiguous Herodotean category, however, and is expressed by a wider range of terms than those with ἀνάγκη-stems. The analysis of natural ἀνάγκη yields more clear-cut results. (1) In Herodotus (and not in Thucydides) ἀνάγκη often qualifies an aggressive compulsion applied by a personal agent. (2) Victims of this despotic ἀνάγκη are partially excused, but those who resist it earn Herodotus' praise. (3) Most importantly, Herodotus (unlike Thucydides) never in turn applies ἀνάγκη words to circumstances that motivate imperialistic actions, especially starting a war. (4) Whereas in Thucydides agents are ‘compelled’ to act also by fear and other internal impulses, the only psychological factor to which Herodotus applies ἀνάγκη words (and this time mostly in a positive sense) is moral obligation.Herodotus' concept of ἀνάγκη is moralistic, and consistent with his unwillingness to justify imperialism, his practice of assigning responsibility, and his high regard for nomos, on the one hand, and freedom on the other. The narrator's involvement in these principles is reflected in Herodotus' use of ἀνάγκη terms in self-referential statements of the type ‘I am compelled/not compelled to say x.’ These statements represent the narrator as the opposite of an imperial subject and analogous to the most admirable of his characters on the receiving end of compulsion. He is a free agent, who disregards political pressure and is exclusively compelled by the rules that apply to him as researcher and truthful recorder.
Since the late nineteenth century it has been almost universally accepted that Sophocles gave lodging to the cultic snake or statue of Asclepius when it was brought to Athens in 420 BC, that he raised an altar or altars for the god, and that in recognition for these services as the so-called ‘Receiver’ of Asclepius he was heroised after his death under the name Dexion. This story derives chiefly from a Byzantine dictionary article, the earliest known form of which dates from the second half of the ninth century.
Euthymos was a real person, an Olympic victor from Locri Epizephyrii in the first half of the fifth century BC. Various sources attribute to him extraordinary achievements: he received cult in his own lifetime; he fought with and overcame the ‘Hero of Temesa’, a daimon who in ritual deflowered a virgin in the Italian city of Temesa every year; and he vanished into a local river instead of dying (extant iconography from Locri shows him as a river god receiving cult a century after his death). By taking an integrative approach to Euthymos' legend and cult iconography, this article proposes a new interpretation of the complex. It is argued that Euthymos received cult already in his lifetime in consequence of his victory over the Hero and that he took over, in a modified form, the Hero's cult. Various considerations, including the role of river gods as the recipients of brides' virginity in prenuptial rites, point to an identification of the Hero as a river deity. In this light it is suggested that the contest between Euthymos and the Hero was conceived as a deliberate emulation of Herakles' fight with Acheloos. The case of Euthymos at Locri, for all its peculiarities, draws our attention to some important aspects of the heroization of historical persons in the Classical period. First, the earliest attested cult of a living person in Greece is to be placed around the middle of the fifth century. Second, heroized persons in the Classical period were not always passive in the process of their heroization, but could actively promote it. And third, a common pattern in the heroization of contemporaries in the Classical period was to accommodate them into existing cults.
In the Hellenica , Xenophon prefaces his account of the liberation of Thebes from Spartan occupation by making the following gnomic observation:
One could tell also of many other incidents, both Greek and barbarian, showing that the gods are not unmindful either of those who are impious or of those who commit unholy acts. Now, at any rate, I shall tell only of the events at hand.
The Thracian rider monuments are either funerary or dedicated to various deities. The inscriptions provide the only certain way to identify the deities or the monument's type. After examining the relationship between inscriptions and iconography, I suggest in the present study that the horseman is an iconographical convention for a god/hero, and that his iconography is borrowed from Greek art. Interpreting the horseman as a conventional image obviates the current view that he represents a multifunctional god conflated with nearly every Greek, Roman, Thracian, or Eastern divinity, and produces a better understanding of both the monument type and cult.
Focusing on the analysis of Athens' relations with both Greeks and non-Greeks as recorded in extant fourth-century decrees, this paper challenges the applicability of the notion of Greek/barbarian antithesis to the interpretation of formal diplomatic exchanges between Athens and the non-Greek states. A comparison of the types of decrees and honors reveals a remarkable uniformity in the forms of Athens' foreign relations irrespective of the ethnicity of honorands. The distribution of honors among individuals and groups of recipients within single decrees further demonstrates that the Athenian honorific system typically elevated individuals over communities they represented, suggesting that political differences between Athens and non-Greek states did not adversely influence the methods of exchanges between them. Apart from the provisions contained in the decrees, this paper also considers their function within the city as monuments that attest to the important place of philobarbaric discourse and practice in fourth-century Athens.
Current orthodoxy considers the proliferation of architraval inscriptions naming the donors of architectural dedications in the middle of the 4th century a striking departure from Greek practice of the High Classical period, when modest self-effacement is supposed to have been the rule. I argue, however, that a comprehensive view of the evidence suggests substantial continuity rather than drastic change: that inscribing personal names on the architraves of Greek buildings is not the product of foreign influence or royal arrogance, nor an appropriation by individuals of rights previously exercised only by the state, but rather a natural and predictable manifestation of widespread Greek votive and epigraphical habits of long standing.
An oath on a 4th-century B.C. stele from Acharnai has previously been identified as the Oath of Plataia, the oath taken by the Greeks before they fought the Persians at Plataia in 479. In this article the author identifies it as the Oath of Marathon, rather than as the Oath of Plataia, and suggests that Lykourgos's reference (1.80) to "the oath that was traditional among you [Athenians]" is to this Oath of Marathon.
A passage of Plutarch's biography of Alcibiades (Alc. 33.2) invites us to explore the way Athens rewarded its benefactors in the fifth and fourth century, especially the first awards of crowns to citizens. This article challenges the widespread assumption that Alcibiades' crowning with gold when he came back to Athens from his exile is an invention by Plutarch or a previous source. First, there is evidence that the crowning was known to other ancient authors. Furthermore, if one takes into consideration not only inscriptions, but also literary sources, Plutarch's report is not an isolated piece of information. It fits well in the history of the Athenian practice of bestowing honors. It has precedents in Athens, continuity after Alcibiades, parallels in other cities, and corresponds to the behavior one would expect from the dêmos as well as from a benefactor at the end of the fifth century. When viewed in this light, Plutarch's information may help us to understand the first stages of the institution of honoring fellow citizens, which was to become so important in later times.
This article looks at the ways we can use networks in the study of the history of Greece. At the level below the polis, networks take the form of associations (koinoniai) that bring together people of various statuses and backgrounds. Studying these koinoniai allows us to move beyond structuralist approaches into the study of real social interactions. When looking at the level below the polis, we have to adopt a world-system perspective, and study the networks that move people, goods and ideas/technologies, and the world centres that organize these networks. This approach allows us to move beyond Hellenocentric and Athenocentric approaches, and insert the Greek world into the wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern world-system.
Propaganda and history are often inseparable. Most governments are in a position to control the dissemination of evidence, and if an event is embarrassing or damaging, the relevant evidence is certain to be distorted or withheld. Moreover the writers of history, however innocent their motives, cannot disregard the official apologia of their rulers. One notes with interest that the learned authors of the official Soviet history of the world portray the invasion of eastern Poland on 17 September 1939 as a crusade of liberation. Of course it might be true that the people liberated by the Red Army were glad to be rid of ‘the arbitrary despotism of the Polish Pans’ and that in the subsequent elections there was absolute freedom of choice and overwhelming support for union with the Ukraine, but the fact remains that it was impossible for membersof the Moscow Academy to contradict their government's justification of the invasion.
The Periegesis of Pausanias has finally entered the world of serious literature. Long after the way was first shown, the Magnesian has arrived and duly taken his place in the intellectual world of the second century: a pilgrim to the past. Yet he was no bookish, library-bound bore. Recent studies have transformed our opinion of him as a recorder of the sites and treasures of what was, even to him, antiquity, ‘His faithfulness in reporting what he saw has, time and time again, been proven at a large number of sites and could easily be demonstrated at a good many others.’ ‘The very fact that the second-century A.D. traveller Pausanias wrote at such length about the sites and monuments of Greece is itself indicative of his most important attitude towards antiquities. That is, he thought them of sufficient value to be worth recording and thought it worth travelling extensively in mainland Greece over a period of many years to see them for himself.’ And so inevitably, as respect for the author has grown, the desire to lay bare his soul has followed. Critics are unanimous in their view of a man sensitive to the resonance of the ancient and power of the past. On occasion a Herodotean fascination with the mutability of man's lot bubbles to the surface, indeed we may surmise Herodotus to have been an important influence on the Periegesis in several fundamental respects. Above all he was a man of deep learning and keen interest in the past and a faithful recorder of its remains. Archaeologists and art-historians concur.
The political unification of the Mediterranean world in the last epoch of the Roman Republic doubtless provided the stimulus for the composition of world histories. One of these is the only universal history written in Latin, under the title Historiae Philippicae , by Pompeius Trogus in the time of Augustus. The original work is lost, but we have an Epitoma produced around the year A.D. 200 by Iustinus. The prologi , which contain summaries of the original work, have been preserved, but there is no indication of authorship.
This paper, concerning one element in the ancient biographical tradition of Philip II of Macedon, demonstrates the manner in which facts—that the Macedonian monarch was gravely wounded in the right eye, in the collar bone, and in the leg—become the basis of fictitious fabrications entered into the biographical tradition and accepted as elements of Philip's ‘life’. A diachronic analysis of the complete literary testimonia which convey information concerning these traumata attempts to determine when and how the biographical facts were altered and embellished over the centuries following Philip's death. Since the stunning discovery by Andronicos at Vergina in 1977 of the tomb designated Royal Tomb II, identified by the excavator as the tomb of Philip II, considerable interest has been focused on the wounds of Philip II in linking items recovered from the tomb and the physical remains of the male decedent with the great king of Macedon. A diachronic review of the literary traditions regarding Philip's injuries, useful to those arguing the identification of the occupant of Royal Tomb II, reveals a great deal about ancient biographical practices. Particularly in the case of the blinding wound to Philip's right eye, it is evident that the facts are very soon obscured by an overlay of fictitious embellishments, frequently amusing, which were created to heighten interest in an occurrence of lasting impact on Philip and became stock items in his βίος.