Greek Polis Research Articles

“¿Es la "demokratía" semejante a la democracia? Lecturas contemporáneas de la democracia ateniense

En este artículo analizaré dos importantes aproximaciones contemporáneas a la democracia ateniense. Se trata de las interpretaciones enfrentadas de dos helenistas que han arrojado nueva luz sobre el conocimiento de la democracia clásica. Mogens H. Hansen se ha centrado especialmente en el estudio de las instituciones como fundamento del poder democrático, mientras Josiah Ober, basándose en los textos retóricos, pretende reconstruir la ideología popular a la que hace responsable del dominio político del dêmos sobre la elite. Intentaré, a su vez, trazar las líneas de filiación teórica de ambas posturas y, para ello, abordaré una segunda cuestión, la de qué es la polis griega, un estado o una sociedad sin estado. Mi conclusión es que la lectura de Hansen está muy cercana a la historiografía liberal de G. Grote, mientras que la de Ober no es ajena a las lecturas antropológicas y comunitaristas.

DA POLIS GREGA AOS JOGOS SEM FRONTEIRAS: CINCO NOTAS SOBRE O ESPAÇO NA POLÍTICA EUROPEIA

O presente artigo compara as formas políticas da polis grega, do Império e do Estado moderno. A partir desta comparação, defende-se que se trata de pensartambém uma quarta forma política, a qual eclode no século XX sob configurações quer democráticas quer totalitárias, nas suas possibilidades e limites.

Diplomacy Of Classical Greece And Inscriptions

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of inscriptions for study of some Greek diplomatic procedures such as concluding treaties and exchange of envoys between the Greek poleis themselves and the Greeks and the barbarians. The scholars usually study the diplomacy of classical Greece primarily on the basis of literary sources involving inscriptions only for comparing with the evidence of narrative material. The inscriptions provide us with information on the development of treaties’ vocabulary. They allow to determine main features of the Greek allied and peace treaties which were in existence during two centuries in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. It is concluded that the inscriptions when comparing with the narrative sources, on the one hand, allow to study the Greek vocabulary of diplomacy, on the second hand, to understand the Greek diplomatic procedures and their development, on the third hand, to compliment other sources relating to the Greek diplomatic events.

Politocratic communitarianism, immanentist sociology and sphere sovereignty

Politocratic communitarianism supports the historic revival of ancient Greek notions of social life in opposition to the nominalist trends in modernistic philosophy of society. The need for a penetrating normative philosophy of society from an integral non-dualistic angle to social life is manifest from Danie Goosen's and Koos Malan's pursuit of the neo-Aristotelian philosophical revival of the Greek polis: their formalistic approach to sociology, the dialectical tension between "normativity" and "factuality", and the juxtaposing of the "general" and the "specific" in their approach to social phenomena. In this article the shortcomings of politocratic communitarianism are traced to its immanentist approach to social theory with all the ensuing dialectical tensions emanating from its social philosophy and its views on the role of the state in society.

The Political Worlds of Boxen and Narnia

C. S. Lewis is not generally considered a political writer. However, the Boxen tales, written when Lewis was between the ages of six and fourteen, depict an adult world of political intrigue and stultifying small talk. This paper offers a reading of Boxen, alongside George Orwell’s political writing and Lewis’s own mature work, to argue that political commentary underpins much of Lewis’s writing—a commentary that begins in the Boxen stories but does not end there. If the Boxen stories depict political scheming and negligent leadership, the Narnia Chronicles describe a paracosm founded on the Greek polis, or the ideal state. The two worlds complement one another, and both are important to a full appreciation of Lewis’s political thought.

Państwo i jego ustroje w starożytnej literaturze oraz filozofii greckiej

The paper presents the political system of the Greek poleis between the 8th century BC and 2nd century AD. It analyzes the standpoints of ancient thinkers and poets from the point of view of the development of studies on the state, the manner of its description, the approach to its tasks and the limitations imposed on the state, as well as how political systems were defined, perceived and transformed, aiming towards democracy.

Design, Demos, Dialectics

The main focus of this paper is to examine the analysis offered of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia by Max Raphael in his study dedicated to the remains of the temple. The temple of Zeus at Olympia is often cited as the canonical example of Doric temple architecture and Raphael examines how a particular design can have such far ranging influence, to which end he elucidates the relationship of design to the activity of a participatory and democratic process specific to the Greek polis. By bringing to bear a highly dialectical analysis of the various forces at play in both construction and the elaboration of the temple, Raphael advances a brilliant interpretation which takes account of the social, spiritual and material dimensions at play and dissolves older academic understandings of the achievement of ‘classical art’.

Note su religione e Gestalt politica nel primo Hegel

SOMMARIO: 1. “La grande tragedia del popolo ebraico” - 2. Il superamento della scissione tra religione, filosofia e politica - 3. La “terza forma di religione” e la ricostruzione dell’ethos pubblico. Notes on religion and political Gestalt in the young Hegel ABSTRACT: The young Hegel identifies in the Jewish theocracy a model based on the split between divine and human, finite and infinite which confines man in an irrecoverable subordination and separation from nature and the rest of mankind. Hegel contrasts it with the idea of the Greek polis and its religion as a strengthening of ethical and political unity. Christ hasn’t succeeded in bridging the rift which marks not only the Jewish culture but also reproduces itself in modern intellectualism, which proceeds by separations and oppositions and culminates in the abstractness of modern law. Christ founded a community of love, renouncing the confrontation with reality, supinely accepted; nevertheless, the Christian idea of incarnation, together with the Greek suggestion of the unity of the being as a whole, seems to be decisive for the Hegelian attempt to think of the philosophical unity of opposites, indicating a way that is also religious (as visible union of the community in the cult) and political (as sacrificing of that which is particular and egoistic). In the transition from the Frankfurt to Jena, Christianity is recovered by Hegel as a premise for a new religion that ought to overcome the oppositions of modern intellectualism and rediscover the unity of the popular ethos .

INDIVIDUALISM ALLOWED ACCESS

The purpose of the article is to identified the origin and essence of Western individualism. Methods of research. I used the methodology of post-nonclassical metaphysics of history, as well as the methods of epistemological polytheism and com parative. Results. The first sprouts of individualism can be detected in Greek poleis. It is the crisis of the polis system in Ancient Greece that predetermined the disappointment of the Greeks in the old collectivist ideals. Roman collectivism quite naturally got along with ideas about civil liberties and the dignity of an individual citizen. The idea of citizenship was brought to the theoretical perfection by moving it beyond the boundaries of city walls. The Christian ideal is not a self-sufficient person, but the community of believers. It is the weakening of the church’s position and the strengthening of the influence of Antiquity that led to the formation of the Western style of thinking, which became the basis of the new European civilizational project. John Locke rethought the Hobbesian «Roman» theory of the social contract, thereby laying the foundations of liberalism, and hence of individualism. However, radically changing the hierarchical society, even the shaken revolution and the restoration of the Stuarts, no theoretical work could not. But in the New World, free from class barriers, Locke’s ideas found a much more fertile soil. Conclusions. The Western version of individualism emerges as a civilizational ideal at the junction of two completely different paradigms — the Ancient (Greek and Roman) and the Christian. Being present in the «body» of the West, individualism could not access its code. The latter was guarded by numerous barriers, among which the Catholic collectivism and the class divisions of hierarchical society were the most powerful guards. In American society, security barriers were significantly weaker, which allowed individualism to develop in the United States. Then American individualism returned to Europe and is now perceived as an integral element of Western civilization.

Democracy’s Slaves: A Political History of Ancient Greece by Paulin Ismard

Reviewed by: Democracy’s Slaves: A Political History of Ancient Greece by Paulin Ismard James P. Sickinger Paulin Ismard. Democracy’s Slaves: A Political History of Ancient Greece. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. x, 188. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-674-66007-6. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. This book, which first appeared in French under the title La démocratie contre les experts: les esclaves publics en Grèce ancienne (Paris 2015), explores the origins, duties, and status of public slaves, dēmosioi, in classical Athens and the ancient Greek polis. It is not, however, a systematic treatment of dēmosioi, the tasks they performed, or the variations in public slavery that existed throughout the Greek world. Instead, Ismard’s main argument is that public slaves, by virtue of their specialized knowledge and marginalized status, played a significant role in both the administration and the ideology of the ancient Greek city. Dēmosioi possessed the skills and expertise that allowed city-states to function, but their status as slaves kept them from exploiting that knowledge to their own advantage and against the interests of the citizen body. Not only did democracy depend on slavery, “slavery was the price to be paid for direct democracy” (135). The argument is grounded in a comparitivist approach that introduces examples from Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world (6–8, 57–58, 78–79, 100–102) to elucidate the distinctive character, vis-à-vis private slaves, of dēmosioi. It also considers evidence for public slaves from numerous Greek cities, so that its picture is not confined to Athens alone. Moreover, Ismard relies not only on inscriptions and prose authors typically encountered in studies of Greek political institutions, but also on texts less traditionally cited, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (112–17), Plato’s Phaedo (117–20), and even the New Testament Acts of the Apostles (120–25). These strengths, however, are often offset by a casual approach to evidence. Examples from Athens and elsewhere are mingled indiscriminately, as if public slavery were an unchanging entity exhibiting little if any variation across time and space. Democracy too is regarded as the standard form of polis government in all periods and regions, and although Ismard looks beyond Athens, that city in its classical guise is the model through which the ancient Greek city-state in all its complexity is understood. Conclusions often rely on evidence open to multiple interpretations, where additional clarification and supporting argument would be welcome. The case of the Athenian Nicomachus is representative of this loose style of argument (66–67, 88–90). Nicomachus had served as one of the anagrapheis responsible for revising Athens’ laws at the end of the fifth century, and he was subsequently prosecuted for misconduct in office. The speech (Lysias 30) on which our knowledge of Nicomachus depends claims that his father was a public slave and that Nicomachus himself had acquired citizenship illegitimately. Charges of servile origins are, of course, commonplace in the speeches of the orators and possess limited historical value. Here, however, they are taken seriously: Ismard regards the plight of Nicomachus as “emblematic” of the “expert slave” in Athenian society (90). And yet Nicomachus was an Athenian citizen, not a slave, as Ismard himself concedes. So too were the others (nowhere mentioned by Ismard) who served alongside him. Surely their appointment as anagrapheis shows that the Athenians did rely on citizens, including ones of allegedly low status, to carry out important administrative tasks. All this is not to deny the importance of public slavery in ancient Greece or to suggest that the role of dēmosioi was limited at Athens or elsewhere, and [End Page 273] Ismard performs a valuable service by calling attention to their contributions to polis government. Even if all his conclusions are not accepted, his book should provoke further debate on ancient slavery, democracy, and their indisputably close relationship. James P. Sickinger Florida State University Copyright © 2018 The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Inc

Jasna Jeličić Radonić and Miroslav Katić. Faros – osnivanje grčkog grada – I, (Pharos - the foundation of the ancient city – I).

This review would not have been necessary if this book did not have an extensive English summary, almost as long as the entire text in Croatian (the book’s cover lacks the English title). The aim of Jeličić-Radonić and Katić’s book is to introduce us to ten years (1994-2004) of archaeological excavations conducted at Stari Grad on the Adriatic island of Hvar in Croatia, where the remains of Pharos (a Greek polis founded in the early 4th century BC) are located. Their book has fourteen unnumbered chapters as well as an Introduction, Conclusions, a Bibliography and an Index. I will only mention here some of the problems found in this book, whose publication has long been announced and awaited.

Logos and paideia

The aim of this paper is to reconsider the meaning of two title concepts of essential importance for the development of the European thought. The author makes an attempt to reconstruct the origin of Greek reflection referring to Paideia written by Werner Jaeger, German classicist and philosopher from the first half of the twentieth century. Starting with the mythical sources of education, connected with the Minoan tradition reinterpreted by Zbigniew Herbert, the author goes on to present the mnemonic sense of the epic Catalogue of Ships from the second book of Iliad by Homer and subsequently discusses cathartic educational tradition and its reference to Pythagoreanism and Heraclitism. He subsequently discusses the stage of education constituted by the Athenian sophists connected with the utilitarianism of Protagoras and its development and transgression achieved by Socratic elenchus and maieutic. Platonian proposal of turning paideia into the integrity of the Greek polis culture was presented as the culmination of the idea of the Hellenic education. It had to prepare the soul of the disciple for the acceptance of the uttermost pattern of arete. For Plato it was the affection for ideas, notably noble virtue of aspiration to triple unity (trinity) of the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Wilhelm von Humboldt renewed classical paideia and established the idea of Bildung to join education with inner self‑development and not only personal but also cultural maturation. The importance of connection between paideia and Bildung was also underlined by two quoted writers: Karl Jaspers (German co‑founder of existentialism) and W.H. Auden (English‑American poet). In conclusion, the author poses a question whether postmodern contesting of classical and enlightenment ideals of education (paideia and Bildung) has any purpose and whether the quest for the principle of the universe based on the universal logos can be still considered reasonable. He also wonders whether traditional search for the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness can actually compete with narrowly understood, effective technological practice. In his humble opinion this question must be left without any conclusive answer.

ABOUT SEX. VIBIUS GALLUS OF AMASTRIS

Sex. Vibius Gallus, trecenarius, primus pilus and praefectus castrorum legionis XIII Geminae, a highly decorated soldier who had served under Domitian and Trajan, chose to settle down in the small Greek polis of Amastris in the province of Pontus et Bithynia. His descendants and wider family are to be found among the elites of this city and at least one other, Abonuteichos, holding high office, sponsoring buildings, granting benefactions. It is generally assumed that Vibius Gallus was an Amastrian by birth and that, after completing his military service, he chose to return and settle in his home city. This paper attempts to disprove this assumption. It discusses his military career, his family, the language of his inscriptions and details of the several monuments set up by himself and his family, in order to show that he was originally from one of the Western provinces and that his choice of Amasra as his home turned him into the ancestor of a new family among the elites of a Greek city.

Paradigm Opposite of Nature of Ancient Greek Polis (reciprocal) and Roman Imperial (redistributive) Tax Law

The article substantiates: the ancient Greek reciprocal (tax) law and the ancient Roman redistributive one are paradigmatic opposite phenomena. They have nothing in common but some external formal features. The ancient Greek reciprocal law was that of the citizens of the ancient Greek polises. The ancient Roman redistributive law was the law of the ancient Roman Empire as a substantial state. The most fundamental among the causes of paradigmatic distinction between the ancient Greek reciprocal law and the ancient Roman redistributive law became the late-Antique mental, in particular, and the worldview on the whole, revolution in the ancient Roman imperial society and its legal thinking compared to the ancient Greek polis mentality and consciousness. As a result of that revolution the ancient Greek polis tradition discontinued and the ancient Roman, imperical tradition arrived. It became one of the most fundamental milestones in the evolution of human societies, states and law. The idea, dominant till nowadays in the minds of the most scientists, of the organic unity and direct continuity of Hellenism and Romanizm, of the existence of a unified ancient civilization is not more than a myth, a methodological error. The roots of this myth dates back to great antiquity and are simultaneously (but at different times in varying proportions) both, the consequence of incredible complexities of the process of sociogenesis, politogenesis, genesis of the state, anthropogenesis, genesis of law and other, regular and random evolutionary changes, and ordinary human, including cognitive, errors, and to some extent the result of a profound, precily considered and handled in a masterly way disinformation. This myth is so enduring that even today it is still practically impossible to predict, more or less reasonably, the time of its collapse. By virtue of that, everybody has to consider it while seeking to cognize the Antiquity and, through it, to learn the modernity.   Keywords: the ancient Greek reciprocal law; the ancient Roman redistributive law; the ancient Greek human-centered mentality; the ancient Roman state-centered mentality; late-Antique worldview revolution. https://doi.org/10.31861/ehrlichsjournal2017.01.013

Une nouvelle attestation du substrat « sicule » en Sicile ?

A coin from Himera (in the Sicanian area of Sicily) bears on its reverse the legend ΚΙΜΑΡΑ. This form was already understood as a pun based on the Greek name of the he-goat (χίμαρος), the animal which appears on the obverse of the coin. The presence of a pun without a direct connection with the official name of the city would be highly surpris-ing on a coin, as coins are an official expression of the political power of the Greek polis. Therefore, it is much more likely that ΚΙΜΑΡΑ reflects first of all a rendering of the indig-enous name of the city, which was used in parallel with the standard form (Η)ΙΜEΡΑ. As it appears so rarely, this variant must have been considered less prestigious than (Η)ΙΜEΡΑ. The widespread use of the he-goat image on the coins of Himera could have triggered the use of the variant ΚΙΜΑΡΑ. This variant was then even accepted as a coin legend. It is not possible to establish whether ΚΙΜΑΡΑ was the direct Greek adaptation of the indigenous name or there were some intermediate phases, e.g. *ΧΙΜΑΡΑ. Nevertheless, the absence of the aspiration in ΚΙΜΑΡΑ (and probably in *κίμαρος) brings to mind the Sicilian loss of initial aspiration (tenuis aspirata), typical of the Siculian Greek area. As shown by recent research, it is impossible to clearly separate Sicanian and Siculian cultures from a linguistic and epigraphic point of view. The case of ΚΙΜΑΡΑ shows that the lin-guistic continuum between the two areas was more extended than previously thought.

Kant, autonomy and bioethics

Summary The concept of autonomy has played a pivotal role in bioethics discourse since the 1970s. Yet, prior to the emergence of bioethics, autonomy had received scant mention in twentieth-century philosophy and was conspicuous by its absence from discussions of healthcare. The term was not even mentioned in the 1967 edition of the Encyclopedia of philosophy . The emergence of bioethics in the early 1970s coincided with increased attention across the western world to civil and human rights; with the rise of this new discipline the liberal emphasis on individual rights was recast in terms of respect for patient autonomy. Although its legal appeal was based on the ease with which autonomy was operationalized in the doctrine of informed consent, the power of the concept of autonomy lay in what it symbolized: the right of an individual to resist coercion or compulsion in the context of a relationship of power. Most commentators in the field of bioethics are familiar with autonomy as one of the four principles of biomedical ethics laid down by Beauchamp and Childress in their canonical text, The principles of biomedical ethics (1979) . ‘Principlism’ is a mid-level theoretical tool, which has had broad appeal in facilitating analysis of ethical dilemmas in biomedicine, grasped in the abstract as conflicts between two or more of the four principles. Yet the principle of autonomy, which has had such an extraordinary influence in contemporary bioethics bears only, passing resemblance to the concept of autonomy, which emerged in early modern philosophy. Although the bioethical redrawing of autonomy owes a large debt both to the philosophical tradition and to the social upheavals of the twentieth century, the relationship between contemporary interpretations of the concept of autonomy in bioethics and its historical origins is rarely examined. The purpose of this paper is to trace the evolution of the concept of autonomy from its emergence in modern moral theory to contemporary debates about its relevance for bioethical analysis. The roots of the principle of autonomy can be traced back to the political theory of ancient Greece. Originally used to describe the capacity of the Greek polis or city-state to govern itself, the concept of autonomy received its first modern expression – and its first application to the individual – in the moral theory of Immanuel Kant. For Kant, autonomy stood for the ideal of free will: a human will be driven to action, not by appetite or desire, but by identification with a ‘higher’ or rational self. At the heart of Kant's ethics is the close association of moral action with human rationality; for Kant, autonomous action – action which is deliberately and self-consciously motivated by moral reasons – is the quintessential expression of human rationality. Although the moral universalism Kant sought to defend is no longer philosophically tenable, his insights about many of the core features of autonomous action remained influential until well into the twentieth century. This paper falls into four parts: in the first section I will explore the contextual factors which influenced the emergence of autonomy as a principle appropriate for bioethical analysis. From there, I will examine the hugely influential definition of autonomy put forward by Beauchamp and Childress in the Principles of biomedical ethics and trace the philosophical foundations of this concept. I will then provide a brief account of the concept of autonomy so central to Kant's moral theory and I will conclude by examining recent accounts of personal autonomy in contemporary philosophy with the aim of arriving at a richer understanding of autonomy, which can perhaps be of greater service to bioethics.

Mycenaean e-pi-ko-wo and alphabetic Greek ἐπίκουρος revisited

Abstract This paper revisits the etymology of Greek ἐπίκουρος, which for over a century has been analyzed as a compound of ἐπί and an otherwise non-extant verbal root *κορσο-, from an Indo-European root familiar in Latin currō ‘run’. After reviewing the linguistic, epigraphic, and philological evidence, I conclude that this etymology is untenable. From here I turn to the Linear B data and demonstrate that the e-pi-ko-wo of the Pylian o-ka texts (ca. 1200 B.C.) should be interpreted as /epikor woi/; this presents us with the linguistic antecedent of ἐπί- κουρος, which should be etymologized as a prepositional Rektionskompositum, where ἐπί governs κόρϝος (‘he who is in close proximity to the κόρϝος (warrior)’ / ‘he who is attached to/accompanying the warriors’). Early in the Archaic period, this older Mycenaean term was replaced by a new coinage - σύμμαχος - which more appropriately described a military relationship binding one Greek polis to another. These conclusions are supported by early epic usage, historical linguistic analysis, and a full study of the Linear B texts in question. This new etymology has stimulating archaeological correlates and exemplifies the importance and broad applications of the Linear B texts for the reconstruction of Greek prehistory and society and our understanding of the epic tradition

The Claim of Right to Property: Social Violence and Political Right

Abstract This article offers a close reading of The Order of Things by Michael Foucault and The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, to argue that the positioning of the Human within scientific and political thought necessitates an underscoring of violence as it relates to blackness. This position interrogates how Arendt positions slavery in the Greek polis and the Roman res republica to establish her foci on modern political life. I offer an analysis of Prigg v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as complicating Arendt’s political dichotomy, by shifting focus to the legal history of US American slavery. Prigg rewrites and establishes the demarcations of US Federal and State law. However, the majority opinion and dissents make fleeting reference to the fugitive slave in question, Margaret Morgan, and the possibility that she may have been sexually violated while being forcibly returned to slavery. I conclude that the contours of this case, specifically the erasure of sexual violence, demonstrate how racial slavery provides contexts to modern political life not explored by Arendt’s primary concern with slavery in antiquity.

LiDAR-guided Archaeological Survey of a Mediterranean Landscape: Lessons from the Ancient Greek Polis of Kolophon (Ionia, Western Anatolia).

In 2013, an airborne laser scan survey was conducted in the territory of the Ionian city of Kolophon near the western coast of modern Turkey as part of an archaeological survey project carried out by the Mimar Sinan University of Istanbul (Turkey) and the University of Vienna (Austria). Several light detection and ranging (LiDAR) studies have been carried out in the temperate climate zones of Europe, but only a few in Mediterranean landscapes. Our study is based on the first LiDAR survey carried out for an archaeological purpose in Turkey and one of the first in the Mediterranean that have been planned, measured and filtered especially for archaeological research questions. The interpretation of LiDAR data combined with ground‐observations proved extremely useful for the detection and documentation of archaeological remains below Mediterranean evergreen vegetation and dense maquis. This article deals with the methodological aspects of interpreting LiDAR data, using the Kolophon data as a case study. We offer a discussion of the strengths and limitations of LiDAR as an archaeological remote sensing method and suggest a best practice model for interpreting LiDAR data in a Mediterranean context. © 2017 The Authors. Archaeological Prospection published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Let's Go to the Movies! Using Film to Illustrate Basic Concepts in Public Administration

Although both the practical and philosophical roots of modem public administration rise from the Egyptian and Chinese dynasties, as from the Greek polis and Roman imperium, the academic discipline of public administration has to a large extent developed directly pursuant to Wilson's Study of Administration. The use of films as teaching tools enriches teaching by framing pedagogic content in ways that enable students to discover the relationship of academic concepts to their own life experience. To use movies and other popular art forms as tools for teaching, and to invite students to explore them as tools for learning, is a risky venture. It requires that academicians move away from the forms of communication at which we tend to excel to those in which we also become students. But isn't this what real teaching is about?