Classical Greek World Research Articles

The Cretan way of war: status, violence and values from the Classical period to the Roman conquest

AbstractThe tactics of Cretan citizen armies differed markedly from those utilized in most regions of the Classical and Hellenistic Greek world: instead of fighting in phalanxes, Cretans fought in open order, specializing in archery, skirmishing, ambushes and night actions. These tactics (and the cultural attitudes that went with them) were disparaged by mainland Greeks such as Polybios and explained in terms of moral deviancy: a sign of the duplicitous nature of the Cretans. This article demonstrates that these descriptions of Cretan tactics and behaviours are factual, but argues against the idea that they derive from moral deviancy. Rather, they represent the outcome of a different line of historical development than that followed in mainland Greece. Cretan tactics and attitudes stand far closer to those described by archaic poets (especially Homer, Archilochos and Kallinos); in this regard, Cretan city states displayed strong continuities with archaic social practices and values, detectable in other areas of Cretan society and culture. The stability of Cretan sociopolitical organization from the late seventh century down to the Roman conquest fostered the endurance of such practices and attitudes, leading to cultural divergence from mainland Greece and, accordingly, a generally hostile representation of Cretans in our main historiographical sources.

Metics and Freedmen: Conflicts of Social and Juridical Status in the Classical and Hellenistic Greek World

Abstract Ancient Greek city-states, or poleis, had a bewildering number of terms for people who lived in them. In Athens, freedmen seem to be assimilated juridically to the status of metics (resident aliens), although socially there were ways of both denigrating freedmen and obscuring the distinction between metic and freed. Elsewhere we can see that under some circumstances distinctions between metic and freed were made, but not in ways that point to strong juridical differences. By looking at the development of both statuses historically, I propose that the juridical assimilation occurred in Athens because metic status was created first, in an historical context in which distinctions between citizens and foreigners was crucial: an imperial power with a strong economy was attracting many foreigners to the mother city. This line drawn between citizens and foreigners was expressed through the law in both the fifth and fourth centuries bce. But the social perception of metics changed in the fourth century, for historical reasons deriving from the assimilation of metics and freed into one category. Other areas of the Greek world with both metics and freedmen may have assimilated the two statuses initially, but over time split them apart.

Why Markets? The Provisioning of Classical Greek Military Forces on the Move through Friendly, Allied, and Neutral Territory

SummaryClassical Greek armies and navies moving through the territory of friendly, allied, and neutral city-states provisioned themselves through markets organized and controlled by those city-states. No scholar has ever explained why this was so. By placing this practice within a comparative framework, this article demonstrates that the protocol of the provision of markets bypoleisto passing armies developed in the way it did in the late Archaic and early Classical Greek world because Greek states in this period lacked the logistical structures to exert sustained coercive power against other states. Once the protocol was established, however, it continued in use throughout the Classical period even after fifth-century Athenian navies gained the logistical capacity to apply prolonged strategic pressure on coastal and islandpoleis. Use of the protocol continued because traditions of autonomy as well as long-standing customs governing relations between states restrained even the Aegean-dominating Athenians from using more forceful means of acquisition than markets to acquire their food from otherpoleis.

Sailors, Soldiers, and Market Exchanges in the Classical Greek World: The Constraints on Opportunism

Modern discussions of the markets in which classical Greek military forces participated commonly state that traders regularly exploited sailors and soldiers in these markets. This article demonstrates that the ancient texts usually cited in support of this view have been misinterpreted by modern scholars and do not represent usual practices. Rather, the markets in which Greek sailors and soldiers took part possessed an efficient and stable institutional infrastructure. This institutional framework, which provided the same protections to sailors and soldiers against opportunistic behavior by traders as those provided to all other participants in markets in the Greek world, deterred and limited their exploitation.

The Techne of Nutrition in Ancient Greek Philosophy

The preparation of food and nutrition is a pervasive techne in the classical Greek world. Indeed, food technology may be a defining characteristic of humanity (Levi-Strauss, 1964). We begin with a glimpse of a tension in the use of the word techne in relation to the preparation of food in Plato’s Gorgias 462d-e. Turning to the Presocratics, we discern three distinct perspectives on food, those of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the treatise Regimen (Περὶ Διαίτης). In Regimen, we find an anticipation of the distinctions made by Plato in the Gorgias passage, and trace some of the implications in what we may call the “food technology” of this treatise that manages to be both philosophical and technically informative.

The Village beyond the Village: Communities in Rural Landscapes in Ancient Greek Countrysides

Villages in the Classical Greek world consisted of more than a nucleated settlement: the human relationships of rural village communities linked together a variety of spaces and locations in the wider countryside. This means that no one site or location in the landscape makes sense without reference to others with which it was entwined. Moreover, these relationships, and hence the uses of particular sites and places, changed rapidly over time. These aspects of the Classical village are most evident in the occupation histories of excavated small, rural sites. Five such sites from across the Greek world are Pyrgouthi (Berbati Valley, near Mycenae), Sant'Angelo Vecchio and Fattoria Fabrizio (chora of Metaponto, Basilicata), the Vari House (Mt. Hymettus, Attica), and the Umbro Greek site (Bova Marina, southern Calabria).

Arkaik ve Klâsik Hellen Toplumlarının Mekâna Bağlı Köken ve Kuruluş Mitosları

Klâsik Dönem Hellen dünyasının ayırt edici nitelikleri Atina polis'i üzerinden tespit edilse de bu kültürün çerçevesi, Arkaik Dönem Hellen siyasi coğrafyasında bulunan tüm toplumların iletişim dünyası içinde belirlenmiştir. Erken Hellen toplumlarının iletişim dünyasının en önemli ortak birikimi olarak, Homeros'a atfedilen şiirler gösterilebilir ki Hellen siyasi, sosyolojik ve mitolojik hafızasına özgü birçok unsur, nitelikleriyle birlikte ilk defa bu dizelerde kendini gösterir. Konumuz bağlamında, özellikle dizelerde belirlenen mitolojik hafıza önem arz eder. Öyle ki, Hellen toplumları açısından mitolojinin yüklendiği tarihsel rol, burada ve diğer aktarımlarda konu edilen mitolojik kahramanların ya da olayların çoğunlukla siyasal nedenlerle Arkaik ve Klâsik Dönem ozanlarınca yeniden kullanılmasına, ekler görerek yeniden biçimlendirilmesine neden olmuştur. Bu çalışmada; Arkaik ve Klâsik Hellen toplumlarının kuruluş ve köken iddiaları aşamasında yoğunlukla kullanılarak öne çıkarılan mitoslar belirlenecek, toplumların mitoloji üzerinden izlediği diplomasinin iç ve dış politikalardaki etkileri ve sonuçlarına değinilecektir. Son olarak ise, Arkaik Hellen toplumlarının hafızasında olgunlaşmaya başlayan bu geleneğin, Hellenistik Dönem'le birlikte toplumlara kimlik oluşturma ve kültürel bütünlük kurma aşamasında üstlendiği işlevsel rol özetle konu edilecektir.

The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

To include or exclude? Marginalization of the deformed in the Classical Greek World

In the Classical period (c. 480–323 BC), the ideal Athenian citizen was kalos kai agathos – beautiful and good (Plato Charmides 154e, Gorgias 474d–475e). In order to be both beautiful and good, the ideal citizen must embody a panoply of noble personality traits. He must be free, civic-minded, selfless, courageous, loyal, honorable, helpful, truthful, hardworking, just, careful, practical, intelligent, reasonable, self-controlled, and moderate in all things. In addition to these intangible qualities, the ideal citizen must also possess important tangible ones: physical beauty and perfection.

The Rise of the Sage in Greek and Jewish Antiquity

AbstractThis article explores the emergence of the sage as an exemplar in Greek and Jewish antiquity. Greek philosophical writings and Jewish literary accounts are analysed, the latter including texts written in both Hebrew and Greek. The Greek and Jewish sources are compared in order to highlight (dis)similarities between them. It will be argued that the conception of the sage as an idealized figure and object of emulation originates from the classical Greek world, but it becomes integrated into the Jewish discourse on wisdom and good life in the later Hellenistic period. In spite of this shared element, the portrayals of the sage vary regarding the amount of concreteness and the discursive strategies in which his exemplarity is constructed.

Girls Playing Persephone (in Marriage and Death)

AbstractArguably, the most famous myth told about Persephone is her abduction and marriage to Hades. The story clearly articulates the strong connection between marriage and death, and this episode became significant in both literature and religious practice in the wider classical Greek world. Reference to the story of Persephone’s abduction came to be used as a shorthand for evoking this connection, particularly in myth. This paper discusses two particular ways in which Persephone’s narrative was used in marriage and death. I examine the pre-marriage offerings to Persephone at Lokroi Epizephyrioi, in southern Italy, and the tradition of Athenian girls who died unmarried being buried as brides. These cultic instances frame a discussion of Brides of Hades, particularly in tragedy. Overall, I conclude that these girls do not attempt to replace Persephone, but rather to imitate her: they ‘play the role’ of Persephone at various stages of her own abduction and marriage story.

TOWARDS A MULTI-SCALAR, MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO THE CLASSICAL GREEK CITY: THE OLYNTHOS PROJECT

Research on the cities of the Classical Greek world has traditionally focused on mapping the organisation of urban space and studying major civic or religious buildings. More recently, newer techniques such as field survey and geophysical survey have facilitated exploration of the extent and character of larger areas within urban settlements, raising questions about economic processes. At the same time, detailed analysis of residential buildings has also supported a change of emphasis towards understanding some of the functional and social aspects of the built environment as well as purely formal ones. This article argues for the advantages of analysing Greek cities using a multidisciplinary, multi-scalar framework which encompasses all of these various approaches and adds to them other analytical techniques (particularly micro-archaeology). We suggest that this strategy can lead towards a more holistic view of a city, not only as a physical place, but also as a dynamic community, revealing its origins, development and patterns of social and economic activity. Our argument is made with reference to the research design, methodology and results of the first three seasons of fieldwork at the city of Olynthos, carried out by the Olynthos Project.

Hiring Mercenaries in the Classical Greek World. Causes and Outcomes?

Hiring Mercenaries in the Classical Greek World. Causes and Outcomes?

Classical Greek Oligarchy: A Political History by Matthew Simonton

400 PHOENIX elsewhere instead of leading unwary students astray with this distorted teleological account of the interpretation of myth.3 Bryn Mawr College Radcliffe Edmonds Classical Greek Oligarchy: A Political History. By Matthew Simonton. Princeton, New Jersey, and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2017. Pp. xvi, 355, 1 map. The work under review is the first full-length monograph on the subject of Greek oligarchy since the publication of Leonard Whibley’s Greek Oligarchies in 1896. The subtitle reveals that the historical phenomenon of ancient Greek oligarchy will be examined through the lens of modern political science theory. The long first chapter, “Problem, Background, Method” (1–74), lays the groundwork for the rest of the book in a series of sections. Section 1.0 looks at the “Problem of Oligarchy,” asking first why it has been neglected and misunderstood by historians. Then, rejecting the view that oligarchy was inevitable, the author instead advances the opinion that it was exceptional, a manifestation of authoritarianism that evolved as a specific response to demokratia. He states that it was not designed to be popular with the masses, which leads him to the question why in that case it succeeded for so long in the classical and Hellenistic Greek world, which, in his view, became steadily more and more democratic. His answer is that it survived through institutions, which he will examine through the recent political science theory of “New Institutionalism.” This theory holds that effectively designed institutions enable unpopular authoritarian regimes to coerce and control unsympathetic populations. Sections 1.1, “From Archaic Regimes to Classical Oligarchy,” and 1.1.1, “Elite and Demos in Archaic Sources,” put forward the view that classical oligarchy was different from the elite (he prefers this label over aristocratic) regimes of the archaic period. He argues that, while classical oligarchy was an attack upon the participation of the demos, archaic regimes had complex constitutional structures of councils, magistrates and assemblies, in which the demos, although dominated by the elite, did have a function. Only when the growth of democracy in the late sixth and early fifth centuries signaled an increased role for the demos in political affairs, did the elite feel threatened and oligarchia result. Section 1.1.2, “The Emergence of Democracy,” analyses the three conditions for the breakdown of elite regimes in the archaic period and the emergence of democracy: 1) the times were bad enough for the demos to risk attempting a change; 2) members of the elite were for one reason or another alienated enough from their fellows that they were prepared to break ranks and lead the revolution; 3) members of the demos felt ready for a mass movement, as a result of increased wealth and urbanization. Section 1.1.3, “Early Elite Reactions to Demokratia,” argues against the view that oligarchia was a late fifth-century concept, and reinforces the author’s argument (stated 3 Perhaps L. Brisson, “Aristotle and the Beginnings of Allegorical Exegesis,” in id., How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology (tr. C. Tihanyi; Chicago 2004) 29–40. BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 401 above) about how and when it evolved. Unlike the elite regimes of the archaic period, which tolerated the demos and allowed it some space, the new phenomenon of oligarchia, out of hatred of the people, aimed to cut the demos out of political activity altogether. The next four sections (1.2–1.2.4) treat the “World of Classical Oligarchic Politics.” Rejecting Aristotle’s “hyper-analytical” classification of four types of oligarchies, the author believes that there are common characteristics to all ancient oligarchies. In the first place (section 1.2.1) all oligarchs were elites from the class of the leisured wealthy, “the horse-owning upper crust” (37). These were the men eligible for election to the magistracies in the assembly. Provocatively, the author argues that classical oligarchies, like those of Phokion and Demetrios of Phaleron, “retained a popular assembly open to all free adult males” (40, argued in more detail at 121–133), asserting that all those who were disfranchised under those constitutions were not excluded from the assembly. Section 1.2.2, “The Myth of the ‘Hoplite Republic’,” explores the possibility that...

The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece by Josiah Ober

The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, by Josiah Ober. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2015. xxviii, 416 pp. $35.00 (cloth). For much of history, politics has centred on autocrats and monarchs. In his new book, Josiah Ober seeks to explain both how the ancient Greeks created democracy and how their civilization failed. The efflorescence is Ober's term for the Greek phenomenon of growing populations, high standards of living, as well as sophisticated art, architecture, and literature which has come down to us, despite the collapse of ancient Greek wealth and autonomy. Ober proposes theories to answer the questions of both and fall, while also offering a new nuanced narrative for ancient Greek history. Ober approaches his task using the methodology and language of social science, relying heavily on political science, anthropology, and sociology, together with a dash of literature. His use of quantitative data is detailed in graphs and charts dealing with demographics, fame scores, and economic growth. He even appends a probability game that is designed to help students understand options open to kings and city governments during the Hellenistic Age. When it comes to political theory, Ober draws on Aristotle's study of animals, with man, of course, as the most political. Ober suggests that encouragement of constant exchange of information between individualistic citizens allowed the Greeks to operate in a decentralized cooperative culture, avoiding the need for monarchs. He regularly contrasts this theory with that of Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century, who argued for the advantages of centralized monarchy. As Ober explains in his first few chapters, the key to the efflorescence was the exceptional politics of democracy and oligarchy, which gave rise to a sustained economic growth. During their period of expansion and colonization beginning in the eighth century, the Greeks gained certain advantages. They settled around the like ants around a pond (a phrase adopted from Plato), within a dry, but not too dry, climatic niche suitable for growing wheat and barley, grapes, and olives (a Mediterranean triad, 27). Further, their poleis shared language, religion, art, and architecture. From these foundations of polis ecology, the Greeks engaged in certain practices that by the sixth century had fueled their success. Ober's work tests two hypotheses. First, the Greeks encouraged fair rules, capital investment, [and] low transaction costs, which connected the poleis in a network primed for commercial growth. Second, competition, innovation, and rational cooperation allowed both creative destruction of political institutions that no longer fit their needs and the establishment of more effective governments (120). Ober tests these proposals in the rest of his chapters by weaving together his hypotheses, propositions, experimental models, counterfactuals, and theories with a narrative of the histories of the classical Greek world, focusing especially on Athens, Sparta, and Syracuse. …

Balancing Acts Between Ancient and Modern Cities: The Ancient Greek Cities Project of C. A. Doxiadis

This paper examines the inception and development of the Ancient Greek Cities (AGC) research project (1963–77) of Constantinos A. Doxiadis and addresses the novelty of its methodological approach to the study of classical urbanism. With the AGC project, Doxiadis launched a comprehensive study of the ancient Greek built environment to provide an overview of the factors involved in its shaping. The project produced 24 published volumes — the first two laying out the historical and methodological parameters of the ensuing 22 monographs with case studies — as well as 12 unpublished manuscripts, and through international conferences initiated a wider dialogue on ancient cities beyond the classical Greek world. It was the first interdisciplinary study that attempted to tackle the environmental factors, together with the social and economic ones, underpinning the creation, development and operation of ancient Greek cities. Doxiadis’s innovative approach to the analysis of the ancient city was indebted to his practice as an architect and town planner and was informed by his theory of Ekistics. His purpose was to identify the urban planning principles of ancient Greek settlements in order to employ them in his projects. This paper examines the concept and methodology of the AGC project as well as the ways in which Doxiadis used the study of ancient cities in relation to his contemporary urban/architectural agendas, and explains this important moment in the historiography of ancient Greek urbanism.

Political Knowledge and Right-Sizing Government

ABSTRACTIlya Somin's Democracy and Political Ignorance proposes an original, epistemic argument for decentralizing and downsizing democratic government. Somin's argument does not produce a plausible real-world program for government reform, nor does he exhaust the universe of what voting is for, or possible democratic solutions to the epistemic problem of rational ignorance and cognitive limitation. But his proposal is of considerable interest as an advance in political theory. The historical example of the classical Greek world of decentralized authority and small city-states suggests that democracy does benefit, in epistemic ways, from decentralization, reduced scale, and simplification of procedural rules. The tradeoff is, however, increased responsibility on the part of individual citizens to undertake civic services of various kinds.

The invention of infertility in the classical Greek world: medicine, divinity, and gender.

The article examines the understandings of, and responses to, reproductive failure in the classical Greek world. It discusses explanations and treatments for non-procreation in a range of ancient Greek medical texts, focusing on the writings of the Hippocratic Corpus, which devote considerable energy to matters of fertility and generation, and places them alongside the availability of a divine approach to dealing with reproductive disruption, the possibility of asking various deities, including the specialist healing god Asclepius, for assistance in having children. Though the relations between these options are complex, they combine to produce a rich remedial array for those struggling with childlessness, the possibility that any impediment to procreation can be removed. Classical Greece, rather than the nineteenth century, or even 1978, is thus the time when "infertility," understood as an essentially reversible somatic state, was invented.

A Selection of New Irish Poets

A Selection of New Irish Poets Kelly Sullivan (bio) Since Éire-Ireland last printed a selection of new Irish poets in 2005, the cultural landscape of the country has experienced dramatic change. After the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, the economic bust and bailout leave ghost estates and empty shop fronts in their wake. This staggering rise and fall forms the backdrop for the early twenty-first century, the period during which the poets here gathered published their first collections. Perhaps even more notably for literary culture, new media and digital technologies have reshaped the very way that we receive news, communicate with each other, network professionally and personally, and even read poetry. In addition to established and influential print-based journals like Poetry Ireland and The Stinging Fly, poets can now publish in Irish-based online journals like Southword and Poetry Proper, or in a variety of new print journals including Iota (Scotland), and The Moth, a magazine designed and edited by Rebecca O’Connor, whose work appears in these pages. Geographical boundaries have never much hampered the publication of poetry, but the last decade’s worldwide rise of online journals and print journals with a web presence provides Irish poets with a truly global community. A shift in economics means that in the years since the Celtic Tiger went bust, Ireland is once again a country of emigrants, even as its own population reflects new waves of diverse immigration as never before. The poets featured in these pages represent this globalized Ireland, with some of them living in Massachusetts, Indiana, New York, Scotland, and England. The work gathered here also reflects a broad stylistic range and diversity of subject matter; all of these poets display sophisticated formal and technical skill, and, perhaps in keeping with a world of geographical boundlessness and boundless digital information, all push and pull at language’s boundaries. From the rich amalgamation of images in Ciaran Berry’s long poems, through [End Page 303] the slangy conversation of David McLoghlin’s “Dublin, 1989,” to the playful verbal acrobatics of Miriam Gamble’s “The Mare Spikes a Glassy Loch,” these are poets who adeptly use the logic of sound in order to create sense. Formal and stylistic range here also translates into a dynamic variety of subject matter, with these voices taking us through the classical Greek world, nineteenth-century Ulster, the dark landscape of the Irish Civil War, and into the little rooms and interior spaces of personal revelation. Nor does this group shy from the clamor and modernity of our times; Ailbhe Darcy’s “Service Not Included” situates familial connection in the Dundrum Shopping Centre, and Andrew Jamison deftly blends the underworld existing under Hades’s gaze with mojitos and binge-drinking in student pubs. The urgency of the private lyric holds us transfixed in Michelle O’Sullivan’s quiet couplets and in Leanne O’Sullivan’s sonnet “Sparrow.” Rebecca O’Connor makes the nursery-rhyme language of her “Lullaby” go suddenly strange, “all buzziness,” enacting for us what these poets all do: they transform the familiar and the known so that we see it anew. These poets represent just a handful of the many new voices writing in Ireland, for limitations of space permit only a small selection from a vibrant generation of writers. All chosen for this portfolio have grown up in Ireland and have published two or fewer collections.1 Finally, these are writers whose work is both challenging and aesthetically pleasing—the qualities of enduring poetry. [End Page 304] Kelly Sullivan Kelly Sullivan is a Ph.D. candidate at Boston College, where her dissertation looks at the role of epistles in the fiction and poetry of late-modernist Irish and British writers. She is also the editorial assistant at Éire-Ireland. She has recently published essays on Irish visual artists Harry Clarke and Gerard Dillon. Her novel Winter Bayou appeared in 2005. Footnotes 1. An exception is Leanne O’Sullivan, whose third full-length collection was just released in Ireland in April 2013. Copyright © 2013 Irish American Cultural Institute

P. J. Rhodes: A History of the Classical Greek World 478–323 BC

P. J. Rhodes: A History of the Classical Greek World 478–323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell 2005. XII, 407 S. zahlr. Abb. (Blackwell History of the Ancient World.) 50 £ HB 19.99 £ PB.