Athenian Empire Research Articles

The Athenian Empire and epigraphic cultures

The Athenian Empire and epigraphic cultures

From The Greek Commonwealth to The Commonwealth of Nations: Zimmern, Curtis, and a Tale of Two Titles

ABSTRACT This article analyses the development of the notion of ‘commonwealth’ within the Round Table group in relation to two books: Alfred Zimmern’s The Greek Commonwealth (1911) and Lionel Curtis’ The Commonwealth of Nations (1916). Modern historians of International Relations have argued that the title of Zimmern’s book alluded to conceptions of the British empire as a ‘commonwealth’. Drawing on previously unused archival sources and on detailed study of the different editions of The Greek Commonwealth, this article shows that Zimmern’s title did not refer to any form of political organization larger than the city-state and that IR historians have wrongly read into Zimmern’s book both the idea of commonwealth and the reading of the Athenian empire developed by Lionel Curtis. The article explores Curtis’ development of the concept of commonwealth and its reception by Zimmern and other members of the Round Table, and sets the historical narrative Curtis offers in The Commonwealth of Nations against The Greek Commonwealth. It shows that, even though Curtis used Zimmern’s work as a source, he took issue with its presentation of Athens precisely in relation to the questions of imperial organization that were the Round Table’s central concern.

Between ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond)

Abstract This article discusses the fortune of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s famous article ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’, and reassesses its basic thesis that the Athenian Empire was popular among the lower classes of the allied cities in the light of recent developments in the field. After surveying the article’s immediate and more recent reception, and discussing its relation with The Origins of the Peloponnesian War and The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, it isolates four key new trends in Greek history that, while going against some of Ste. Croix’s basic convictions, end up reinforcing his overall case. These are: a renewed attention to the mass and elite dichotomy, with recent work interpreting Greek oligarchy as a fundamentally reactive and anti-demotic regime; the recognition of the continued relevance of Persian meddling in the later fifth-century; a sea-change in Attic epigraphy which has led to the post-dating of several ‘imperial’ decrees; the new recognition of the dynamism of the Greek economy, and of the economic function of the Athenian Empire itself. Finally, the article addresses the paradigm of class struggle and stresses how democracy and economic dynamism, to which the Athenian Empire contributed, fostered the growth of slave markets and worsened the exploitation of ‘marginal’ regions as slave suppliers.

Old Comedy and Athenian Power

Abstract In this article, jumping off from Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s treatment of Aristophanes and the Megarian Decree, I argue that Old Comedy is an underutilised category of evidence for the study of the popular intellectual history of Athens. My particular focus here is the Athenian empire: how does Old Comedy present Athenian power and what does this comic presentation tell us about how at least some ordinary Athenians understood it? Can one popular Athenian imaginary of the empire be constructed through analysis of Aristophanes and his contemporaries? I will argue that Old Comedy, taken as a corpus, presents a very Athenian empire, that is to say one focused on Athens and its exploitation of others. The comic poets, therefore, likely assumed parochialism and myopia on the part of their audience, but also significant topical interest in the mechanisms of Athenian power, particularly those which brought revenue to Athens. This impression of highly topical engagement with the empire is corroborated by bringing Comedy into dialogue with other sources, in particular the epigraphic record.

Lisa Kallet / John Kroll, The Athenian Empire. Using Coins as Sources. (Guides to the Coinage of the Ancient World.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2020

Article Lisa Kallet / John Kroll, The Athenian Empire. Using Coins as Sources. (Guides to the Coinage of the Ancient World.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2020 was published on June 1, 2022 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 314, issue 3).

Compliance and Endurance. The Athenian Power Building through the Melian Dialogue

The Melian dialogue in the 5th book of Thucydides can be seen as one of the most important texts for political science. Two opposing political ideas are confronted by the historian: on the one hand Thucydides presents the Athenians as promoters of the idea of legitimacy of unlimited growth of power; on the other hand, there were the Melians who did not accept the ‘law of the stronger’. The Melians were conquered, and their arguments could not save them, but in the longer perspective the Athenian empire was destined to collapse. Through the dialogue, Thucydides compares the ‘law of the stronger’ ignoring the rights of others, and the appeal to justice by the weaker party trying to demonstrate their reasons to oppose the imperialist power.

The Turtle Bay Pivot: How the United Nations Security Council Is Reshaping Naval Pursuit of Nuclear Proliferators, Rogue States, and Pirates

Multinational action at the United Nations to combat illicit activity represents the most consequential sanctions period involving the maritime environment since the Athenian Empire’s Megarian Decree. From its inception, the Security Council has authorized measures that have led to naval approaches or boardings of more than 50,000 ships, the destruction of 3,500 vessels, and the maritime rescue of 40,000 people in the pursuit of transnational security threats. While the Security Council has addressed maritime challenges over the past seven decades, a diplomatic renaissance began in 2008 with decisions impacting naval engagements unfolding with unparalleled frequency: From 1946 to 2007, resolutions were adopted about once every 1.7 years, and since, are now approved every 2.5 months. The Turtle Bay pivot is emblematic of an increased emphasis in collaborative responses to contemporary transnational security threats, yet questions remain, such as whether the Security Council is diluting their unique authority and the vitality of law-of-the-sea principles including freedom of navigation, innocent passage, and the general concept of exclusive flag State jurisdiction. Varied interpretations of resolutions, ensuring compliance, and overcoming challenges inherent in conducting at sea boardings further complicate the coordinated pursuit of illicit activity. This Article surveys hundreds of Security Council decisions to identify six categories of resolutions that could involve the maritime environment, examines their influence and intersection with one another, discusses potential future focus areas, and concludes with recommendations to improve the utility of these mandates.

Did Thucydides Believe in Thucydides’ Trap? The History of the Peloponnesian War and Its Relevance to U.S.-China Relations

The Peloponnesian War, a conflict between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta and their respective allies, is held to be a classic example of war between a hegemon and a rising power. Graham Allison has recently coined the term “Thucydides’ Trap” to emphasize how structural forces are leading to instability in U.S.-China relations. This interpretation of history is inaccurate and reflects the influence of misleading translations. Drawing on the original Greek text of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, I argue that the concept of Thucydides’ Trap does not find support even in the case that has given it its name. Thucydides’ famous attribution of the war to “the growth of the power of Athens” actually refers to the expansion of the Athenian Empire rather than a shift in the distribution of capabilities. Structural arguments do offer valuable insights about potential sources of conflict in U.S.-China relations, but the causal mechanism has little to do with the analogy of Athens and Sparta. As exemplified by the flashpoint in the Strait of Taiwan, structural change has aggravated long-standing differences between the United States and the PRC. Beijing’s growing economic and military power has resulted in a growing threat to Taipei, which has led the United States to affirm its commitment to Taiwan’s security in ways that are inconsistent with the One-China policy. If this trend continues, it will raise the potential for a military confrontation between the great powers in East Asia.

Philosophy as Memory Theatre

Contrary to its self-proclamation, philosophy started not with wonder, but with time thrown out of joint. It started when the past has become a problem. Such was the historical situation facing Athens when Plato composed his Socratic dialogues. For the philosopher of fifth century BCE, both the immediate past and the past as the Homeric tradition handed down to the citizens had been turned into problematicity itself. In this essay, I will examine the use of philosophy as memory theatre in Plato's Republic. I shall do so by interpreting Book X of the Republic as Plato's “odyssey” and suggest that such Platonic odyssey amounts to an attempt to re-inherit the collapsed spatial and temporal order of the fallen Athenian maritime empire. In my reading, the Odysseus in the Myth of Er comes forth for Plato as the exemplary Soldier-Citizen-Philosopher who must steer between the Scylla of ossified political principles and the whirling nihilism of devalued historical values, personified by Charybdis. I shall further suggest that Plato’s memory theatre also constitutes a device of amnesia and forgetting. The post-Iliadic Odysseus must drink of forgetfulness from the river Lethe, so that the revenant soldier, Er, and those who inherited the broken historical present during and after the Peloponnesian War, would be enabled to remember in a particular way. Such remembrance, I shall conclude, may be what Plato means by philosophy, a memory theatre of psychic regulation and moral economy that sets itself decidedly apart from earlier tragic and comic catharsis.

Daring and deliberation: Virtue, rhetoric, and diplomacy in Thucydides’ account of the Athenian empire

In Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, the juxtaposition between the speeches in defense of the Athenian empire and their political effects uncovers critical insights into the need for rhetoric to balance the tasks of domestic enthusiasm and diplomatic interaction. In Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles boasts that Athens has perfected “daring and deliberation,” having built an empire through courageous deeds while maintaining a democracy in which competing interests and perspectives receive a fair hearing. These qualities justify Athenian supremacy, but actually maintaining it instead calls for Athens to be cautious and for its subjects to accept the status quo without question. As Athens perceives a decline in its wartime fortunes, it struggles to preserve a reputation for daring and deliberation without undertaking actions that would falsify its self-representation. Its virtues become a substitute for its interests, so that it can no longer act with either morally or prudently. The declining effectiveness of Athenian rhetoric speaks to Thucydides’ teaching that warfare, while presenting an opportunity for a city to display its greatest traits, is far more likely to corrupt them, which requires that orators reconcile the city’s sense of its own righteousness with the realities of its situation.

Democracy in Crisis

Studies • volume 106 • number 423 274 Democracy in Crisis Democracy in Crisis Thomas N Mitchell Democracy is an appealing form of government that recognises the dignity, equal value and basic rights of every human being. But it is also a system that is vulnerable on many fronts. Donald Kagan, in his book on Pericles, has aptly described it as ‘one of the most fragile flowers in the jungle of human experience’.1 Modern democracy is experiencing that fragility, and is going through one of the most challenging eras in its relatively short history. Before examining the state of modern democracy, it is worth reviewing democracy’s beginnings; how this radically new ideal of government emerged in Athens, the principles on which it was based, its successes and shortcomings and the lessons it has left for modern democracy. There is no better guide to a fuller understanding of the true character of the democratic ideal than the Athenian story. The Athenian revolution Before democracy’s first coming, the world knew only the rule of monarchs, tyrants and aristocratic elites, a rule that was often oppressive, unconcerned with the well-being of the many and unconstrained by a defined code of law. By the sixth century bc the abuses perpetrated by these regimes had generated widespread discontent across the Greek world. In Athens, a respected aristocrat, Solon, was appointed civil head of the state in 594 with full powers to reform the legal and political system. He succeeded in enacting laws to protect the personal freedom of all citizens and equality before the law, with rights to appeal against the so-called crooked judgments. He also marginally increased the political role of the people, but he left the wealthy and well-born firmly in control of government. After Solon’s departure, Athens was soon again mired in factional strife, which brought a populist factional leader, Peisistratus, to a position of absolute power which he held until his death in 527. More turmoil followed, but this time there emerged from it a reformist aristocrat, Cleisthenes, who was intent on radically changing the social and political order. In 507–8 he brought forward a new form of constitution based on a vision of the state as 276 Studies • volume 106 • number 423 a community of free citizens, equal in their right to freedom, equal before the law, equal in their political rights, a community governing themselves under laws of their own making and working together to advance the common good. The constitution would have a new name, demokratia, which meant that power lay with the people. The voice of the people would be sovereign, and every citizen would count as one and no one would count as more than one. This was true self-rule, trusting in the native instincts and capacities of the people themselves to decide collectively their common destiny and how best to advance the common interest. It was an inspiring vision, warmly supported by the demos, and its implementation marked an important moment in the history of human progress. Under the new order Athens flourished. It created the most powerful fleet in Greece, masterminded the rout of the invading Persian forces, established under Athenian leadership a formidable union of Aegaean states known as the Delian League, and gave the world its first age of enlightenment, which produced masterpieces of architecture, literature and foundational philosophical works, all of which have permanently shaped the character of western civilisation in fundamental ways. But, buoyed by success, the Athenian demos fell victim to what the Greeks termed hubris, an arrogant pride that moved them to set their sights on gaining dominance over all of Greece. They were chiefly led in this by one of their most gifted leaders, Pericles, a talented military commander, an exceptional orator and a visionary who had the goal of converting the Delian League into an Athenian empire and giving Athens primacy in the Greek world. He succeeded in gaining full control of the League, but the upshot of his wider ambition was a ruinous war with the other major coalition in Greece – Sparta and her allies. The war began in 431, but Pericles died soon afterwards in a deadly...

Herodotus' Persian Stories: Narrative Shape and Historical Interpretation

Herodotus' Persian stories have a distinctive shape, well-rounded, often centring on the king and his court, with women prominent. This shaping has interpretative value, and so does the 'biographical' character of the Persian books: the stories are like that because the world is like that. Greek history is messier and less linear. How far does this explain Persian imperialism? Perhaps by explaining the difficulty of persuading the king to exercise restraint, given the problems of talking straight at court. Ultimately this may be more about power than about Persia, with the might of the Great King offering the clarity of extremes. The Athenian empire was now presenting an opposite extreme of democratic freedom, and the jury was out on how that would end.

Commerce, militarism and luxury: eighteenth-century French depictions of the Athenian Empire

Commerce, militarism and luxury: eighteenth-century French depictions of the Athenian Empire

The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles: The Citizen’s Home and the Empire’s Capital

The Athens Acropolis is the public space for Athens democracy and the center of Athenian Empire. Her main buildings were built in the age of Pericles. Built as a gods’ living place, acropolis also bore the strong sense of history and humanism, which expressed the Athens’ citizens’ joy and empire’s inclusiveness. The acropolis was built by the citizens, while the building fund came from empire’s alliance. The acropolis took the multiple public functions: sacrifice, keeping the archives, treasury and public moralization.

Building an empire or not? Athenian imperialism and the United States in the twenty-first century

In order to assess whether the United States is an empire and what we could learn from such an analysis, we embark on a dual task. We evaluate American imperial tendencies based on Michael Doyle's criteria and then compare them to the Athenian informal empire of the fifth-century BC. In our comparison, we focus on how the Athenian empire was created and what are its commonalities with the US world order. We also explore their various differences at the level of international and domestic politics and their plausible consequences. The criteria we use are economic inequalities and military interventions and motives and national style. We suggest that the United States is a republic with imperial tendencies but not yet a Machiavellian imperial republic. Were this to happen, it would endanger the future of globalisation and the stability of the world.

City of suppliants: tragedy and the Athenian empire

List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Aeschylus' Eumenides: Hegemony and Justice 2. Hegemony and Empire: Presumed Origins 3. Euripides' Children of Heracles: Helping the Weak and Punishing the Strong 4. Hegemony in Crisis: Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index Locorum Index

The Origins of the Athenian Economic ARCHE

AbstractHistories of the Athenian Empire (478–404 BC) have traditionally been offered as political and military narratives. They explain the origins of a naval alliance created in 478/7 BC, the so-called Delian League under Athenian leadership and its development into an ‘empire’ (arche) sometime in mid-century. Moreover, most treat the phenomenon as comprehensible as a self-contained period of enquiry. This article takes issue with both approaches. Through close examination of a wide variety of evidence connected with Athenian activity during the formative years of the ‘Delian League’ (478 to ca. 465), it argues that the Athenians made immediate use of the League navy and funds to appropriate resources, profits and territory for themselves, especially in Thrace, beginning with the capture of Eion on the Strymon, but also that these interests explain other early activities. Finally, it argues that the Athenians' economic behaviour should be understood in the context of Athenian aims and activities in the Archaic period.

Valerie French (1941–2011)

Valerie French (1941–2011) Judith P. Hallett and Sarah B. Pomeroy Valerie French died at her home in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2011. Associate Professor of History Emerita at American University, she was born on January 16, 1941 in Toledo, Ohio, and grew up in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. During her undergraduate years at Cornell University, from which she received a BA degree in chemistry in 1964, she began the study of ancient history in courses with Donald Kagan. Valerie entered the graduate program in ancient history at the University of California at Los Angeles in the following year, mastering Greek and Latin while fulfilling the requirements for her MA and PhD degrees. Mortimer Chambers directed her 1971 d octoral thesis, entitled “The First Tribute Stele and the Athenian Empire, 455–445 b.c.” Available on microfilm under her name at that time, Valerie French Allen, it examined the first ten Athenian tribute lists inscribed on the famous First Stele, or Lapis Primus. In 1969 Valerie joined the American University faculty as a professorial lecturer, reaching the ranks of Assistant Professor and Associate Professor before retiring in 2005. As her memorial service, held at AU on January 20, 2012, emphasized, she “single-handedly sustained the study of ancient history” there. Adjusting to the expectations of the AU history department meant developing a wide spectrum of courses in ancient history itself and acquainting herself with topics in ancient Greco-Roman and later European history well beyond the circumscribed scope of her doctoral thesis. Her teaching repertoire included over twenty different courses, including Comparative Causes of War in Classical Antiquity; Silent Peoples in Classical Antiquity: Women, Children, and Slaves; Psychohistory; Treasures from Classical Antiquity, as well as the equivalent of remedial math. Valerie immensely enjoyed working in the AU history department, a strong research unit with a lively graduate program, and eventually chaired the department from 2001 through 2003. Yet her academic circumstances differed strikingly from those of her departmental colleagues. Since AU lacks a classics department, and does not even offer Latin and Greek, she had no opportunity to teach graduate students in ancient history, or even undergraduates with sufficient mastery of classical languages to tackle primary source materials in the original. Valerie returned to fifth-century b.c.e. classical studies in three Festschriften essays dedicated to her mentors Kagan, Chambers, and Truesdell Brown, but she mainly conducted her research endeavors in interdisciplinary areas of inquiry, pursuing interests, most notably those of women’s and family history, she had in common with colleagues who worked in later historical eras. Along with publishing articles and book chapters on children in the ancient Mediterranean, contraception, childbirth, midwives, early childhood, maternity and fertility cults, parenting, and mother-son relationships, she coauthored [End Page 551] Historians and the Living Past: The Theory and Practice of Historical Study (1978) with an Americanist in her department, Allan J. Lichtman. Valerie shared her pedagogical expertise, administrative talents, and witty, worldly wisdom with fellow classicists and ancient historians in varied venues: panels at the Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, the Classical Associations of the Atlantic States and Middle West and South, the American Philological Association and its Women’s Classical Caucus, as well as the Association of Ancient Historians. Winner of a yearlong fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and project grants from the US Department of Education and Fulbright Fellowship Program along with numerous teaching awards, she was a longtime officer and valued mainstay of the Washington, DC Society of the Archaeological Institute of America. Among Valerie’s proudest accomplishments was her mentoring of the journalist I. F. (“Izzy”) Stone, who launched his studies of ancient Greek, and began his research into the trial of Socrates, on the AU campus. Generous and unpretentious, upbeat and insightful, Valerie affected and indeed transformed the lives of many students and colleagues. The lengthy roster of speakers presenting personal recollections at her heavily attended memorial service attested to her vibrant and warm personality, tireless service to the AU campus, powerful influence as an educator, and significant contributions to ancient historical studies. [End Page 552] Judith P. Hallett and Sarah B. Pomeroy University of Maryland, College...

John R. Hale: Lords of the Sea. The Triumph and Tragedy of the Athenian Empire

John R. Hale: Lords of the Sea. The Triumph and Tragedy of the Athenian Empire

Périclès et l’impérialisme athénien de Thucydide à l’historiographie contemporaine

Pericles and the Athenian Imperialism, from Thucydides to contemporary historiography. The development of the Athenian Empire in the fifth century B. C. is linked to Pericles’ name. But, from Thucydides to present day historiography, this link has been the object of conflicting judgments, positive for the Athenian historian and some contemporary historians, negative among Greek philosophers and those who nowadays denounce the misdeeds of imperialism.