This volume is a companion to the editors' Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404-323 BC. It presents a selection of important Greek inscriptions from the fifth century BC alongside English translations, commentaries, and photographs in an accessible reference text for scholars and students of all aspects of Greek history of this period.
Thoroughly updated and revised, the second edition of this successful and widely praised textbook offers an account of the ‘classical’ period of Greek history, from the aftermath of the Persian Wars in 478 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Two important new chapters have been added, covering life and culture in the classical Greek world Features new pedagogical tools, including textboxes, and a comprehensive chronological table of the West, mainland Greece, and the Aegean Enlarged and additional maps and illustrative material Covers the history of an important period, including: the flourishing of democracy in Athens; the Peloponnesian war, and the conquests of Alexander the Great Focuses on the evidence for the period, and how the evidence is to be interpreted
This volume is a successor to the second volume of M. N. Tod's Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (OUP, 1948). It provides an up-to-date selection - with introduction, Greek texts, English translations, and commentaries which cater for the needs of today's students - of inscriptions which are important for the study of Greek history in the fourth century BC. The texts chosen illuminate not only the mainstream of Greek political and military history, but also institutional, social, economic, and religious life. To emphasize the importance of inscriptions as physical objects, a number of photographs have been included.
Provides a thorough examination of Greek and Roman urbanism in a single volume A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World offers in-depth coverage of the most important topics in the study of Greek and Roman urbanism. Bringing together contributions by an international panel of experts, this comprehensive resource addresses traditional topics in the study of ancient cities, including civic society, politics, and the ancient urban landscape, as well as less-frequently explored themes such as ecology, war, and representations of cities in literature, art, and political philosophy. Detailed chapters present critical discussions of research on Greco-Roman urban societies, city economies, key political events, significant cultural developments, and more. Throughout the Companion, the authors provide insights into major developments, debates, and approaches in the field. An unrivalled reference work on the subject, A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World: Offers wide-ranging thematic and multidisciplinary coverage of Greco-Roman urbanism Focusses on both the archaeological (spatial, architectural) as well as the historical (institutions, social structures) aspects of ancient cities Makes Greco-Roman urbanism accessible to scholars and students of urbanism in other historical periods, up to the present day Integrates a uniquely broad range of topics, themes, and sources, all enriched with coverage of the very latest work in the field Discusses topics such as urbanization, urban development, warfare, socio-economic structures and literary and philosophical representations of cities Part of the authoritative Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World is an excellent resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and lecturers in Classics, Ancient History, and Classical/Mediterranean Archaeology, as well as historians and archaeologists looking to update their knowledge of Greek or Roman urbanism.
Plutarch traces the fortunes of Athens through nine lives - from Theseus, its founder, to Lysander, its Spartan conqueror - in this seminal work What makes a leader? For Plutarch the answer lay not in great victories, but in moral strengths. In these nine biographies, taken from his Parallel Lives, Plutarch illustrates the rise and fall of Athens through nine lives, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades, to the razing of its walls by Lysander. Plutarch ultimately held the weaknesses of its leaders responsible for the city's fall. His work is invaluable for its imaginative reconstruction of the past, and profound insights into human life and achievement. This edition of Ian Scott-Kilvert's seminal translation, fully revised with a new introduction and notes by John Marincola, now also contains Plutarch's attack on the first historian, 'On the Malice of Herodotus'.
Decree-making is a defining aspect of ancient Greek political activity: it was the means by which city-state communities went about deciding to get things done. This two-volume work provides a new view of the decree as an institution within the framework of fourth-century Athenian democratic political activity. Volume 1 consists of a comprehensive account of the literary evidence for decrees of the fourth-century Athenian assembly. Volume 2 analyses how decrees and decree-making, by offering both an authoritative source for the narrative of the history of the Athenian demos and a legitimate route for political self-promotion, came to play an important role in shaping Athenian democratic politics. Peter Liddel assesses ideas about, and the reality of, the dissemination of knowledge of decrees among both Athenians and non-Athenians and explains how they became significant to the wider image and legacy of the Athenians.
Money, Warfare and Power in the Ancient World offers twelve papers analysing the processes, consequences and problems involved in the monetization of warfare and its connection to political power in antiquity. The contributions explore not only how powerful men and states used money and coinage to achieve their aims, but how these aims and methods had often already been shaped by the medium of coined money typically with unintended consequences. These complex relationships between money, warfare and political power both personal and collective are explored across different cultures and socio-political systems around the ancient Mediterranean, ranging from Pharaonic Egypt to Late Antique Europe. This volume is also a tribute to the life and impact of Professor Matthew Trundle, an inspiring teacher and scholar, who was devoted to promoting the discipline of Classics in New Zealand and beyond. At the time of his death, he was writing a book on the wider importance of money in the Greek world. A central piece of this research is incorporated into this volume, completed by one of his former students, Christopher De Lisle. Additionally, Trundle had situated himself at the centre of a wide-ranging conversation on the nature of money and power in antiquity. The contributions of scholars of ancient monetization in this volume bring together many of the threads of those conversions, further advancing a field which Matthew Trundle had worked so tirelessly to promote.
This book offers the first comprehensive study of drawing lots as a central, ubiquitous institution of ancient Greek society. Led by an egalitarian mindset, Greeks drew lots as a matter of course to distribute inheritance, booty, sacrificial meat, and lands, to mix groups, select individuals, and set turns. Lot-oracles were used for divination; otherwise, the gods guarded the justice of the procedure but rarely determined the outcome. When drawing lots was gradually applied to polis governance, classical Athens made sortition the basis of the first democracy in human history. A Greek innovation, drawing lots for governance inspires new democratic politics today.
Many histories of Ancient Greece center their stories on Athens, but what would that history look like if they didn’t? There is another way to tell this story, one that situates Greek history in terms of the relationships between smaller Greek cities and in contact with the wider Mediterranean. In this book, author Joshua P. Nudell offers a new history of the period from the Persian wars to wars that followed the death of Alexander the Great, from the perspective of Ionia. While recent scholarship has increasingly treated Greece through the lenses of regional, polis, and local interaction, there has not yet been a dedicated study of Classical Ionia. This book fills this clear gap in the literature while offering Ionia as a prism through which to better understand Classical Greece. This book offers a clear and accessible narrative of the period between the Persian Wars and the wars of the early Hellenistic period, two nominal liberations of the region. The volume complements existing histories of Classical Greece. Close inspection reveals that the Ionians were active partners in the imperial endeavor, even as imperial competition constrained local decision-making and exacerbated local and regional tensions. At the same time, the book offers interventions on critical issues related to Ionia such as the Athenian conquest of Samos, rhetoric about the freedom of the Greeks, the relationship between Ionian temple construction and economic activity, the status of the Panionion, Ionian poleis and their relationship with local communities beyond the circle of the dodecapolis, and the importance of historical memory to our understanding of ancient Greece. The result is a picture of an Aegean world that is more complex and less beholden narratives that give primacy to the imperial actors at the expense of local developments.
How the interactions of non-elites influenced Athenian material culture and society The seventh century BC in ancient Greece is referred to as the Orientalizing period because of the strong presence of Near Eastern elements in art and culture. Conventional narratives argue that goods and knowledge flowed from East to West through cosmopolitan elites. Rejecting this explanation, Athens at the Margins proposes a new narrative of the origins behind the style and its significance, investigating how material culture shaped the ways people and communities thought of themselves. Athens and the region of Attica belonged to an interconnected Mediterranean, in which people, goods, and ideas moved in unexpected directions. Network thinking provides a way to conceive of this mobility, which generated a style of pottery that was heterogeneous and dynamic. Although the elite had power, they were unable to agree on the norms of conspicuous consumption and status display. A range of social actors used objects, contributing to cultural change and to the socially mediated production of meaning. Historiography and the analysis of evidence from a wide range of contexts—cemeteries, sanctuaries, workshops, and symposia—offers the possibility to step outside the aesthetic frameworks imposed by classical Greek masterpieces and to expand the canon of Greek art. Highlighting the results of new excavations and looking at the interactions of people with material culture, Athens at the Margins provocatively shifts perspectives on Greek art and its relationship to the eastern Mediterranean.
