An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis
An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis

Author: Mogens Herman Hansen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2004-11-11

Total Pages: 1416

ISBN-13: 0191518255

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This is the first ever documented study of the 1,035 identifiable Greek city states (poleis) of the Archaic and Classical periods (c.650-325 BC). Previous studies of the Greek polis have focused on Athens and Sparta, and the result has been a view of Greek society dominated by Sophokles', Plato's, and Demosthenes' view of what the polis was. This study includes descriptions of Athens and Sparta, but its main purpose is to explore the history and organization of the thousand other city states. The main part of the book is a regionally organized inventory of all identifiable poleis covering the Greek world from Spain to the Caucasus and from the Crimea to Libya. This inventory is the work of 47 specialists, and is divided into 46 chapters, each covering a region. Each chapter contains an account of the region, a list of second-order settlements, and an alphabetically ordered description of the poleis. This description covers such topics as polis status, territory, settlement pattern, urban centre, city walls and monumental architecture, population, military strength, constitution, alliance membership, colonization, coinage, and Panhellenic victors. The first part of the book is a description of the method and principles applied in the construction of the inventory and an analysis of some of the results to be obtained by a comparative study of the 1,035 poleis included in it. The ancient Greek concept of polis is distinguished from the modern term `city state', which historians use to cover many other historic civilizations, from ancient Sumeria to the West African cultures absorbed by the nineteenth-century colonializing powers. The focus of this project is what the Greeks themselves considered a polis to be.

The Cambridge Ancient History
The Cambridge Ancient History

Author: John Boardman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1988-11-24

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780521305808

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This volume complements the publication of the second edition of the text volume of The Cambridge Ancient History Volume IV, but can also be used as an independent, illustrated account of the period (c. 525 to 479 BC), and of the evidence for the life and arts of Greeks and Persians in the years when they first crossed swords with one another, and the freedom of Greece was at stake. It presents a full pictorial survey, with detailed commentary, of the art and archaeology of the Persian empire and its provinces, from Thrace to India. The section on Greece concentrates on Athens of the late Archaic period, immediately before the Persian Wars, with consideration of progress in the arts and of the archaeological evidence for various aspects of Greek life and society. The fortunes of the Western Greek, colonial area and of the Etruscan and Italic peoples are similarly treated, and the volume ends with a study of the invention of coinage and its use in Greece and the Persian empire. This book should be consulted by ancient historians, archaeologists and art historians and also by the general reader interested in the ancient world.

The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily
The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily

Author: R. Ross Holloway

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-11

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1134557736

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First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily
Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily

Author: Franco De Angelis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-02-02

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0199721556

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Ancient Greek migrants in Sicily produced societies and economies that both paralleled and differed from their homeland. Explanations for these similarities and differences have been hotly debated. On the one hand, some scholars have viewed the ancient Greeks as one in a long line of migrants who were shaped by Sicily and its inhabitants. On the other hand, other scholars have argued that the Greeks acted as the main source of innovation and achievement in the culture of ancient Sicily, a culture that was still removed from that of mainland Greece. Neither of these positions is completely satisfactory. What is lacking in this debate is a basic framework for understanding ancient Sicily's social and economic history. Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily represents the first ever systematic and comprehensive attempt to synthesize the historical and archaeological evidence, and to deploy it to test the various historical models proposed over the past two centuries. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines classical and prehistoric studies, texts and material culture, and a variety of methods and theories to put the history of Greek Sicily on a completely new footing. While Sicily and Greece had conjoined histories from the start, their relationship was not one of periphery and center or of colony and state in any sense, but of an interdependent and mutually enriching diaspora. At the same time, local conditions and peoples, including Phoenician migrants, also shaped the evolution of Sicilian Greek societies and economies. This book reveals and explains the similarities and differences between developments in Greek Sicily and the mainland, and brings greater clarity to the parts played by locals and immigrants in ancient Sicily's impressive achievements.