Classical Athens Research Articles

A Note on the Equipment and Machinery for Democracy in Classical Athens: A Rhetorical Perspective on Material Evidence

The relationship between democracy and literacy is a longstanding topic of interest both to contemporary communication scholars as well as historians of rhetoric. Democracy and literacy are both social activities. Focusing on the Classical Period of Athens ( ca. 480–323 BCE) as a specific site of study, this essay argues that the dynamic interaction of these two activities was facilitated by the development and application of technological equipment. That is, technology, in this case, refers to the equipment and machinery ancient Athenians utilized that enhanced their literate skills in order to facilitate the performance of democratic activities. Archaeological excavations over the last century, especially at the Agora, have yielded artifacts that provide evidence of the technological implements used in democratic activities. This study offers an analysis of recently excavated artifacts arguing that Athenians developed and employed equipment that utilized literacy in order to enhance the civic processes of democracy. This field study advances the conclusion that the relationship between democracy and literacy in classical Athens requires an understanding of a third factor: the impact of technology.

Democracy Ancient and Modern?

Abstract The idea that democracy is in crisis is nothing new; ancient Greek commentators like Plato and Thucydides argued that political instability was baked into democracy as a regime type. Can examples drawn from classical Athens make a useful contribution to discussions of the failings of contemporary democracy? This article considers a range of interventions from the past decade in the United States and the United Kingdom, carried out at different scales and through different methods. It considers the strengths of working with material from the distant past – its non-partisan nature offering a safe space to discuss political conflict without engaging in it – and also the weaknesses, such as the limited franchise of ancient democracies like classical Athens, and the need to consider specific historical issues in their own context. It also considers the unfamiliarity of ancient history and the way in which knowledge of the classical past can itself be perceived as class-bound and exclusionary.

An Eteocypriot-Greek bilingual inscription and the meaning of Cypriot eupatridai

Abstract This paper investigates the eupatridai of Cyprus and their roles on the island. It examines the only two attestations of the Greek term eupatridēs in inscriptions from Amathous and Kafizin, namely IG XV 1.1 n° 7, an original Eteocypriot- alphabetic Greek monumental decree and IG XV 2.1 n° 67, an alphabetic Greek private dedication. Contrary to previous scholarship, which claims that Cypriot elites easily assimilated into the emerging Ptolemaic administrative apparatus, a deeper analysis of the title eupatridēs demonstrates that the integration process was protracted and uneven. While the assimilation of the upper class did occur, it only happened at a later stage. The study shows that this title was introduced to the island in the late Classical period, likely from Greece, retaining primary meanings it had in Classical Athens. It designates members of local elites who fought to maintain their superior status and preserve the traditional Cypriot socio-political structure - which entailed their great prestige and privileges - during a transitional period from the end of the 4th century BCE until the second half of the 3rd century BCE. During those years, the wars among the diadochi, who aimed to take possession of Cyprus, threatened the traditional subdivision of the island into city-kingdoms, which ultimately dissolved under Ptolemaic rule (c. 294-258 BCE). The appearance of the title eupatridēs in late Classical and early Hellenistic inscriptions may be a significant testimony to the Cypriots’ initial reaction against contemporary political upheavals and the introduction of a new administration.

The uses of stools in classical Athens: diphrophoroi in the Parthenon frieze, old comedy, Attic vases and beyond

Abstract The following article discusses the significance of a stool carried by persons referred to in ancient Greek sources (from Old Comedy to Plutarch) as diphrophoroi. As I argue, the iconography suggests that this piece of furniture was often used by attendants responsible for their mistresses’ outfit, make-up and hairstyle. By extension, the most famous representation of two girls with stools on their heads on the east Parthenon frieze can be interpreted as an allusion to the ritual dressing and embellishing of Athena's statue.

Gender and the Performance of Death Rituals in Classical Athens 480–332 BCE

Abstract Death rituals play a significant role in maintaining the cultural system of different societies by providing a specific form of behaviour in response to death. To that end, the significant role of women as patrons of culture can be identified by studying their role in the performance of death rituals. Classical Athens provides a good case study as women performed most phases of the mortuary treatment, and their role is recognised in both the textual and material evidence. This gives us the opportunity to diverge from the ‘typical male perspective’-approach to the mortuary evidence, which focuses on the socio-political and economic dimensions, and shed light on the agency of women. The female agency was responsible for the continuity of some ancient rituals despite the laws made to restrict them. Moreover, relatively wealthier women were indirect agents influencing the Athenian public life by using excessive death rituals to reallocate power in society after the loss of powerful individuals.

The Economy of Classical Athens. Organization, Institutions and Society by Emmanouil, Marios, L. Economou

The Economy of Classical Athens. Organization, Institutions and Society by Emmanouil, Marios, L. Economou

The Women of Trachis Jealousy, Hatred and Revenge in Sophocles' Tragedy Intrafamilial Marriage and the Husbands' Widow's Wills the Famous Oracle

In this tragedy by Sophocles, the real theme is the treatment of "prey women" and their influence on the psychological family situation and society in classical Athens. "The Women of Trachis" as well as "Oedipus Rex" and "Oedipus on Colonus" show what an enormously perceptive, in today's terms, psychologist and sociologist Sophocles was. In the fifth century BC, many wars were waged in Greece and prisoners were turned into slaves. Classical Greece thrived on slavery, which also included so-called prey woman. In The Women of Trachis Sophocles describes the jealousy of a wife, with the resulting actions, when the marriage is overstretched and the jealousy is increased through corresponding insults (over the decades). How hatred and revenge then gain the upper hand, ultimately leading to death. The intra-family marriage policy in Athens, which often leads to emotional and social unhappiness, is also a clear theme in the "Women of Trachis", long before Sophocles' two Oedipus tragedies. In his tragedies, Sophocles dealt with sociological themes and human suffering. The poets changed the mythology according to the requirements of their desired intention of the tragedy. The transformation of the myth consists in its integration into the polis and its new reference systems. The fact that the tragic poet sets the problems of his time in a past contributes to the possibility of the tragedy's reception. In the tragedies Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, for example, a reference to the social reality in Athens at the time is assumed. The tragedies that were performed at the Dionysia (festival) are characterized by an interpenetration of present and past. Tragedies were organized as competitions, so that the poets had to take the audience's sensitivities into account. Classical philologists are often prevented from producing realistic text analyses and interpretations by idealizing and glorifying Greek tragedies and thus not taking into account the social customs and laws of the time. If we think, that the Greeks had no interest in such a psychological process as how a decision comes about, we are seriously mistaken and we do not do justice to the great, psychologically astute tragedians. Without a sociological, psychological and medical approach, applied to the tragedies that contain such themes in Sophocles and also Euripides in excellent execution, we will not do justice to these brilliant poets. We are left with interpretations without a sociological and psychological understanding of Greek classicism.

Athens Seen from Praeneste: Reforming the Image of the Prestigious City Sketched in Claudius Aelianus’ Miscellaneous Compilations

This article addresses the question of how the prestigious city of Athens, so central in the literary movement of the Second Sophistic, was represented in Claudius Aelianus’ miscellaneous compilations. These texts are the product of his readings and demonstrate the choices he made when selecting those facts that he thought worth remembering from the sources of which he made use. Therefore, the image of Athens reconstructed through the analysis presented in this article demonstrates how Aelianus refers to some well-chosen aspects of the city’s past and communicates them to his readers while reforming a specific image of the city. Indeed, the emphasis he uses when resorting to the use of literary practices, such as selection or collecting information, illustrates the cultural values of his time, characterized by a predilection for classical Athens.

Can Classical Athens Offer Lessons for a Large, Pluralistic Society?

Abstract Recoiling from the power that Athenian democracy placed in the hands of the poor, the founding fathers of the United States took Athens as primarily an anti-model, whereas nineteenth-century defenders of slavery found Athens a very congenial model indeed, seeming as it did to lend a mantle of legitimacy to an unspeakable practice. After a “honeymoon period” in which democracy was idealized as the only legitimate form of government, now at the outset of the twenty-first century the alliance of democracy with a capitalism that often proves heartless to the less fortunate has raised some troubling questions about democracy itself. Despite its small size, classical Athens offers valuable guidance for tempering current difficulties in both the United States and elsewhere by adopting and adapting the selection of some officials by sortition, direct election by popular vote of elected officials, a rigorous system of accountability, and the fostering of civic and community values.

The service sector in the classical world: focus on entertainment and well-being

PurposePredicting effects of artificial intelligence on service occupations can be supported by a long historical perspective. Historical databases and archaeology help reconstructing the service sector in ancient societies. Here, the purpose of this paper is to analyse occupational specialization within services in cities of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, as well as how the service sector is reflected in architectural remains, to identify differences and similarities with today’s Europe.Design/methodology/approachOccupational titles are traced in epigraphical and literary sources, sorted according to ISCO-08. Secondary sources are used for the architectural evidence of service activities, as well as for the role of contests and entertainment in antiquity.FindingsCompared to current European service employment, professionals were fewer in classical Athens and imperial Rome, which had a greater proportion of specialized salespersons. There were few office buildings and no civic hospitals, but heavy investment in facilities for entertainment and well-being. Quality assessments for goods were little developed; contests for cultural and sports activities assessed entertainment service quality.Research limitations/implicationsThis study covers two periods in classical antiquity and is restricted to Mediterranean cultures, although findings may help understanding the service sector in poor countries with informal employment.Originality/valueWhile particular services provided in ancient cities have been studied, there has been no broad comparative overview of their service occupations. Services in earlier societies with primitive information and communication technologies can provide clues for current developments.

A Perilous Sailing and a Lion: Comparative Evidence for a Phoenician Afterlife Motif

Abstract This essay introduces new evidence for an eschatological Phoenician motif that alludes to a final sailing and its perils, represented by a monstrous lion attacking or sinking a boat. The lion-and-boat motif was, so far, only documented in a Phoenician funerary stela from late classical Athens, the Antipatros/Shem stela. Excavations at the fifth-century BCE Tartessic site of Casas del Turuñuelo in southwestern Spain has revealed a set of ivory and bone panels that decorated a wooden box, bearing relevant iconography in the so-called orientalizing style. Additional comparanda from the Levant, Iberia, and Tunisia in various media (coins, ivories, amulets), add weight to this interpretation. Our analysis highlights how the artists behind the Athenian and Tartessic artifacts were innovative in their way of representing a theme that was not codified iconographically. Most remarkable is the use of an ivory-carving convention (the Phoenician palmette motif) to portray the stylized boat, a choice corroborated by a painted pottery sherd from Olympia. This “palmette-boat” depiction, in our view, is coherent with Egyptian Nilotic boats, but also with the use of flat or shallow river-boats in the Tagus and Guadiana region, illustrating mechanisms of local adaptation of Phoenician sailing and life-death “passing” symbolism. If, as we suggest, this representation can be added to that in the Athenian document, we now have testimonies of two different local adaptations of a Phoenician theme at the two ends of the Mediterranean oikoumene between the archaic and late classical periods.

THE PRYTANEION DECREE (IG I3 131) AND SITÊSIS FOR ATHLETES

AbstractIn the 150 years since Schöll's seminal work, the Prytaneion Decree has been studied frequently. Of the groups of honourees mentioned in the decree, the agonistic victors have received the least attention. Most scholars have simply attributed them, without further discussion, to the sphere of war or to the sphere of religion. In this article, athletics is understood as a sphere of action with its own logic: the passages on athletes in the decree are examined in detail and situated within the debate in classical Athens about whether victors of the Panhellenic Games should be honoured by the polis and to what extent. The strange duplication in the decree, which first regulates honours for agonistic victors in general and, in a second paragraph, honours for hippic victors, is related to some texts that viewed hippic victories more critically than gymnic ones. A precise dating of the decree is not possible, but there were several events in the fifth century that might have created the desire among Athenians for a general regulation of sitêsis for athletes.

Marginalising Maternity: Iconography as Evidence for Social Ideologies in Classical Athens

ABSTRACT Representations of motherhood are rare on Athenian painted pottery from the fifth century BC. This lack of representation is surprising given producing and caring for children was one of a woman’s key duties in ancient Athenian society, and other evidence demonstrates the close bonds women had with their children, especially infants who were all the more in need of care and attention. In this article we explore the entangled lives of mothers and the youngest children – infants – in fifth century Athens to understand reasons for this under-representation. Images of childcare in iconography are surveyed to determine how women and infants are characterised in both private and public spheres. The devaluation, demonisation and appropriation of mothering within the context of fifth century Athenian society is then discussed to understand the impact of the institutional apparatus of motherhood on the experience of mothering.

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts

Education in the city through laughter and tears: sophistic speeches in Euripides' “Medea” and Aristophanes' “Clouds”

During the time of Euripides and Aristophanes, innovative pedagogical ideas were discussed in an equally innovative man-ner. The intellectuals of that era played a significant role in cre-ating an ironic pedagogical triangle consisting of Euripides, Aris-tophanes, Socrates, and the sophists in classical Athens. Employ-ing tragedy and comedy in varying degrees, Euripides and Aris-tophanes drew attention to the contrast between traditional and sophistic education, portraying it as a complex problem that could not be easily resolved by an average person. A comparative historical and pedagogical analysis of Euripides' tragedy “Me-dea” and Aristophanes' comedy “Clouds” revealed another direc-tion for studying the possibilities of mutual penetration of gen-res. Through the depiction of families with children who were divided into speakers and listeners in the spatial coordinates of the city and home, Euripides and Aristophanes participated in the ongoing debate regarding Socrates and the sophists. Euripides and Aristophanes include in their works agons between the advo-cates of just (non-sophistic) and unjust (sophistic) speeches, which touch upon educational issues. The main characters lose in these agons and realize that their problems cannot be solved even when they use sophistic techniques. This comprehension compels them to transition from words to actions, resorting to criminal acts to demonstrate the perilous consequences of sophistic educa-tion to the polis. A simultaneous historical and pedagogical anal-ysis of Euripides' tragedy “Medea” and Aristophanes' comedy “Clouds” is accompanied by references to other works of Euripi-des and Aristophanes, as well as by Plato and Xenophon, which contain explicit or implicit references to the teaching methods of Socrates and / or the sophists.

Revisiting the Hill of Pnyx: The Physical, Rhetorical, and Sociocultural Contexts

This paper offers a holistic reconsideration and reexamination of what the transmitted texts say about the political and rhetorical processes on the hill of Pnyx in classical Athens. It has three specific aims: (1) to explore existing ancient literature references to the Pnyx as a physical and constitutional/political place; (2) to identify and discuss a wide range of aspects of rhetoric in action, or performance, in a suitable sample of symbouleutic (or political) speeches – specifically, the three Olynthiacs and the four Philippics of Demosthenes; and (3) to offer answers to the question about the how physical conditions and the architectural form of the Pnyx might have affected acoustics and delivery of speeches, and why the hill was chosen to be the location of the Athenian Assembly meetings.

Envy, Jealousy, and Class Conflict in Classical Athens: φθόνος and the Manipulation of Unacceptable Emotions

Envy, Jealousy, and Class Conflict in Classical Athens: φθόνος and the Manipulation of Unacceptable Emotions

Insults in Classical Athens, written by Deborah Kamen

Insults in Classical Athens, written by Deborah Kamen

Military Crimes in Classical Athens according to the Speeches of Attic Orators

The article addresses the problem of military crimes in classical Athens based on the analysis of the speeches of Attic orators. First of all, the attention is drawn to the classification of crimes mentioned in speeches. In particular, the starting point for this study is the fragment from Andocides listing various types of military crimes: service evasion, desertion, cowardice, abandoning of shield, and non-participation in a naval battle. The article also examines cases related to violations of military discipline, which, apparently, stood apart from other types of crimes, which may be due to their lesser severity and punishment. In general, the issues under study in the article are considered from two perspectives: firstly, the reasons for the orators’ appeal to the topic of military crimes, and, secondly, the analysis of the cases of crimes themselves and their interpretation by the orators. The authors come to the conclusion that the orators did not specifically address the topic of military crimes, with the exception of Lysias, whose two speeches are devoted to accusing Alcibiades the Younger of evading service and of desertion. The facts of military crimes, as a rule, were used to create a negative characterization of a person or were part of an accusation of another crime. In addition, a very free interpretation of these facts could take place, when orators made an attempt to accuse a person of several crimes at once, as, for example, with regard to Alcibiades the Younger and Leocrates. The case of Demosthenes, is, in fact, unfounded accusation of desertion by his political opponent Aeschines. However, according to the sources, the allegations of abandoning of arms could be regarded as slander, for which punishment was provided. There are no cases associated with non-participation in a naval battle referred to by orators, which may be due to the difficulty in identifying these facts and a small number of naval campaigns compared to those on land.

PLAY AND THE ATRICALITY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS (plots, masks, and characters)

The main objective of this study is the metaphysics of the urban space of Athens in the classical age. It determined the forms of transition of the social behavior of citizens from ancient religious algorithmic rituals to creative theatricality. Both poles comprised various aspects of human life - private and public, political and psychological, legal and religious. However, transitivity was not exhaustive: the poles, although modified, persisted for a long time. This made the Athenian community multi-dimensional, which was quite evident in the landscape of the city. We decided to overcome the usual formality of the architecture of the City, highlighting its metaphysical features on the background of political philosophy and mathematics, moral theory, and aesthetics. In this regard, the following points of the Athenian landscape are subject to analysis and interpretation - the City walls and gates, the Areopagus, the Agora, the Acropolis, and the Theater of Dionysus.