Athenian art was more or less dominant in the visual culture of the Greek world in the classical period but not in all areas. We explore here the influence of Athens on the art and architecture of regions that had developed their own local traditions. Thishappened in times of crisis, political as well as social. Such crises can be detected in the last decades of both the fifth and the fourth centuries BCE. We will begin by examining the impact of the Peloponnesian War on the artistic development of Arcadia and Laconiaand conclude with the aftermath of the Macedonian conquest of Athens after the Lamian War. It appears that in the last twenty years of the fourth century the Macedonians hired Attic masons to reproduce Athenian buildings in Macedonia, and the ban on luxurious grave monuments imposed on Athens by Demetrios of Phaleron drove Athenian artists to emigrate to Macedonia.

The drawing of lots in ancient Greece was an institution that expressed the egalitarian values, practices, and mindset apparent for three centuries before the emergence of the Athenian democracy. Constituted by a large-scale mixture lottery, classical Athenian democracy with its choice of magistrates by lot, would never have seen the light of day without the broad spectrum of drawing of lots that preceded it. The first part of this article, by Irad Malkin, presents drawing lots’ distributive (e.g., land, booty, catch, inheritance, colonial plots), selective (e.g., magistrates), procedural (e.g., taking turns), and mixture functions. The concept of ‘equal portions’ moves from the concrete equal sharing of portions (isomoiria) to the abstract sharing of equal portions of the law, isonomia. A mindset with strong egalitarian features is revealed with a tendency to make equality and equity as close as possible: Equal chances before the lot and, when possible, equal outcomes. The role of the gods is mostly not to determine results, but to grant validity and legitimacy to a procedure under their auspices. The following section, by Josine Blok, examines why drawing lots for office created difficulties not encountered in the other, common uses of lots, how nonetheless this practice spread across the Greek world and due to the variety of political systems of the poleis came to highlight the diversity in ancient Greece.

In ancient Greece, a metropolis and its apoikiai constituted a form of kinship unity. In Thucydides’ view, at least in his era, particular bonds of kinship connected the Corinthian apoikiai on, or in the vicinity of, the Ambracian Gulf with Corinth itself, and literary tradition endowed Ambracia, Leucas and Anactorion with a special cultural unity. Modern research ranging over political institutions, foreign policy, ideology, economic factors, cults, myths, calendar and burial customs has shown that these poleis regarded themselves as members of a Corinthian colonial family. Initially highly dependent on Corinthian policy during the archaic period, by the end of this period the western apoikiai had admittedly begun to diverge from a Corinthian-centred economy and to move away from Corinthian traditions. Internal social diversification also caused these poleis to move away from Corinthian institutions and habits. Nevertheless, despite various political fluctuations, western Corinthian apoikiai remained within the Corinthian sphere of influence and after Timoleon’s campaign they revived old Corinthian traditions and institutions. Indeed, other Greeks of late classical times regarded the citizens of these poleis as if they were indeed Corinthians. The area remained under Corinthian economic influence throughout Hellenistic times and memories of affinities with and ties to Corinth survived in her apoikiai. Lastly, Hellenistic monarchs and even Augustus himself took advantage of the peculiar Corinthian identity of these apoikiai for their own ends.

This paper explores the relationship between Dorian metropoleis of Sicily and their colonies there during the archaic and early classical periods. We will concentrate on three case studies and different topics such as political organization, attitude towards the indigenous populations, alphabet, foreign relations, burials, and material culture. The three case studies are the following: (a) Syracuse and its three colonies, Akrai, Kasmenai and Kamarina, (b) Megara Hyblaea and Selinous, and (c) Gela and Akragas.

Alciphron’s books of imaginary letters depict both the rural and urban environment of Attica in the 4th century BC, in miniature and from the perspective of lowerclass characters. Alciphron uses all the rhetorical options offered by the epistolary form to illustrate the thoughts, feelings and experiences of his characters. The aim of this paper is to discuss the use of threats, and their function as rhetorical devices and/or means of expressing emotions in Alciphron’s letters. I will demonstrate that the author may not only have been inspired by New Comedy and other literary genres, but also by his contemporary private correspondence in which various threats towards the addressee are used as a rhetorical strategy, as shown by the preserved papyri and ostraca from Egypt.

This paper focuses on groups of Romans and Italians attested outside Italy, in all parts of the Roman oecumene, from the Iberian Peninsula and Britain to Asia Minor and the eastern frontier in Syria as well as from the Rhine and Danube to northern Africa. Groups of Romans and Italians are attested at different times in various places, in towns of varying legal status, of various size and importance, even in villages or settlements next to camps of legions. The duration of their presence and the terms adopted for their (self-)definition also display a certain variety. Out of an abundant source material and numerous local particularities that require a closer examination, I will attempt to focus on those data that could elucidate the nature, the legal status, and the organizationof these groups. Taking all this into account, I will reassess the possibility to classify groups of Romans and Italians abroad as private associations, as they are often mentioned in the related bibliography, the term used either consciously or just with the intentionto show that these groups were clearly visible and identifiable in the host-societies.

The special significance of Plataia already before the famous battle of 479 BC (in the mythical tradition connected with its site) and afterwards in the vicissitudes of the inter-Greek developments after the Persian Wars is analyzed to illustrate the bipolar importance of site and city as both a celebrated, dexterously manipulated symbol of unity and a bitter paradigm of practical disunity in Greek history.

In the twentieth century there were several works that assumed the essential unity of Greek Law: Griechisches Bürgschaftsrecht by J. Partsch, Griechisches Privatrecht auf rechtsvergleichender Grundlage by E. Weiss, and The Greek Law of Sale by F. Pringsheim. In a review of Pringsheim’s book, and in an essay on the topic, however, M.I. Finley challenged the notion of the unity of Greek Law. Finley observed that the Greek world was divided into hundreds of different city-states, each with its own political institutions, laws, and legal procedures. According to Finley, there was just too much diversity in the laws of the Greek city-states to justify any discussion of ‘Ancient Greek Law’ as a unified body of statutes and legal concepts. He did however allow that there might have been some unity in commercial law. More recently, M. Gagarin has claimed in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law that there was unity in the laws of the Greek poleis in respect to procedure but not in respect to substantive provisions. This essay revisits this issue and shows that there was a considerable amount of unity in the laws of the Greek poleis in substantive and constitutional matters. The article examines several areas of unity: marriage law, contracts, real security, the status of freed persons, the accountability of officials, and the relationship between Council and Assembly. It will also examine the unity of Greek law in regard to legal terminology. On the other hand, it will show that there was considerable diversity in legal procedures, which often varied according to the political constitution of a state.

Plataiai is a lieu de mémoire, and the Eleutheria, an athletic agon held every fourth year, played an important part in activating and reshaping the memory of the battle of 479 BC. According to Strabo, Plutarch and others, the agon had been founded directly after the battle, but this is an invention; the earliest reliable evidence dates back to the third century BC. From this time onwards, the Eleutheria formed an important event in the Greek agonistic system, the festival being attested in numerous agonistic inscriptions. In addition to the usual gymnic disciplines, a race apo tou tropaiou was held, in which the contestants had to run a long distance of 15 stadia with heavy armour. Sucha race was unique in Greek athletics, and Philostratos writes about a very peculiar rule: athletes who had won this race and tried to repeat their victory were killed if they failed. The Eleutheria refer both to the battle of Plataiai and to the unity of the Greeks and are thus of crucial importance for the topic of this volume. This contribution collects the scattered evidence and discusses, first, the position of the Eleutheria in the system of Greek athletics and, second, the symbolic power of the peculiar hoplite race mentioned by Philostratos.

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