Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy

Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy

Author: Susan Lape

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-02-15

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1139484125

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In Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy, Susan Lape demonstrates how a race ideology grounded citizen identity. Although this ideology did not manifest itself in a fully developed race myth, its study offers insight into the causes and conditions that can give rise to race and racisms in both modern and pre-modern cultures. In the Athenian context, racial citizenship emerged because it both defined and justified those who were entitled to share in the political, symbolic, and socioeconomic goods of Athenian citizenship. By investigating Athenian law, drama, and citizenship practices, this study shows how citizen identity worked in practice to consolidate national unity and to account for past Athenian achievements. It also considers how Athenian identity narratives fuelled Herodotus' and Thucydides' understanding of history and causation.


The Alexandrian Riots of 38 C.E. and the Persecution of the Jews. A Historical Reconstruction

The Alexandrian Riots of 38 C.E. and the Persecution of the Jews. A Historical Reconstruction

Author: Sandra Gambetti

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009-09-28

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9047441915

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Scholars have read the Alexandrian riots of 38 CE according to intertwined dichotomies. The Alexandrian Jews fought to keep their citizenship - or to acquire it; they evaded the payment of the poll-tax - or prevented any attempts to impose it on them; they safeguarded their identity against the Greeks - or against the Egyptians. Avoiding that pattern and building on the historical reconstruction of the experience of the Alexandrian Jewish community under the Ptolemies, this work submits that the riots were the legal and political consequence of an imperial adjudication against the Jews. Most of the Jews lost their residence never to recover it again. The Roman emperor, the Roman prefect of Egypt and the Alexandrian citizenry - all shared responsibilities according to their respective and expected roles.


The Birth of the Athenian Community

The Birth of the Athenian Community

Author: Sviatoslav Dmitriev

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-16

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1351621440

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The Birth of the Athenian Community elucidates the social and political development of Athens in the sixth century, when, as a result of reforms by Solon and Cleisthenes (at the beginning and end of the sixth century, respectively), Athens turned into the most advanced and famous city, or polis, of the entire ancient Greek civilization. Undermining the current dominant approach, which seeks to explain ancient Athens in modern terms, dividing all Athenians into citizens and non-citizens, this book rationalizes the development of Athens, and other Greek poleis, as a gradually rising complexity, rather than a linear progression. The multidimensional social fabric of Athens was comprised of three major groups: the kinship community of the astoi, whose privileged status was due to their origins; the legal community of the politai, who enjoyed legal and social equality in the polis; and the political community of the demotai, or adult males with political rights. These communities only partially overlapped. Their evolving relationship determined the course of Athenian history, including Cleisthenes’ establishment of demokratia, which was originally, and for a long time, a kinship democracy, since it only belonged to qualified male astoi.


Citizenship in Classical Athens

Citizenship in Classical Athens

Author: Josine Blok

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-03-10

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1108165737

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What did citizenship really mean in classical Athens? It is conventionally understood as characterised by holding political office. Since only men could do so, only they were considered to be citizens, and the community (polis) has appeared primarily as the scene of men's political actions. However, Athenian law defined citizens not by political office, but by descent. Religion was central to the polis and in this domain, women played prominent public roles. Both men and women were called 'citizens'. On a new reading of the evidence, Josine Blok argues that for the Athenians, their polis was founded on an enduring bond with the gods. Laws anchored the polis' commitments to humans and gods in this bond, transmitted over time to male and female Athenians as equal heirs. All public offices, in various ways and as befitting gender and age, served both the human community and the divine powers protecting Athens.


Theater of the People

Theater of the People

Author: David Kawalko Roselli

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0292744773

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Greek drama has been subject to ongoing textual and historical interpretation, but surprisingly little scholarship has examined the people who composed the theater audiences in Athens. Typically, scholars have presupposed an audience of Athenian male citizens viewing dramas created exclusively for themselves—a model that reduces theater to little more than a medium for propaganda. Women's theater attendance remains controversial, and little attention has been paid to the social class and ethnicity of the spectators. Whose theater was it? Producing the first book-length work on the subject, David Kawalko Roselli draws on archaeological and epigraphic evidence, economic and social history, performance studies, and ancient stories about the theater to offer a wide-ranging study that addresses the contested authority of audiences and their historical constitution. Space, money, the rise of the theater industry, and broader social forces emerge as key factors in this analysis. In repopulating audiences with foreigners, slaves, women, and the poor, this book challenges the basis of orthodox interpretations of Greek drama and places the politically and socially marginal at the heart of the theater. Featuring an analysis of the audiences of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander, Theater of the People brings to life perhaps the most powerful influence on the most prominent dramatic poets of their day.


Sidelights on Greek Antiquity

Sidelights on Greek Antiquity

Author: Konstantinos Kalogeropoulos

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-03-08

Total Pages: 598

ISBN-13: 311069932X

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Nineteen contributions by eminent scholars cover topics in Greek Epigraphy, Ancient History, Archaeology, and the Historiography of Archaeology. The section on Epigraphy and Ancient History has a particular focus on Attica, whereas material from Eretria, Delphi, the Argolid, Aetolia, Macedonia, Samothrace, and Aphrodisias widens the picture. The section on Archaeology discusses cultural variation as well as matters of cult, myth, and style, especially in Attica, from the Chalcolithic to the Roman period. The final section on the History of Archaeology reviews the early history of archaeological research at sites such as Piraeus, Rhamnous, Marathon, Oropos, Pylos, and Eretria, based on unpublished archival sources as well as on preliminary sketches and architectural drawings by 19th century artists.


Status in Classical Athens

Status in Classical Athens

Author: Deborah E Kamen

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-08-27

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0691195978

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In the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens, Kamen illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy.


Serving Athena

Serving Athena

Author: Julia L. Shear

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-03-11

Total Pages: 555

ISBN-13: 1108618022

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In ancient Athens, the Panathenaia was the most important festival and was celebrated in honour of Athena from the middle of the sixth century BC until the end of the fourth century AD. This in-depth study examines how this all-Athenian celebration was an occasion for constructing identities and how it affected those identities. Since not everyone took part in the same way, this differential participation articulated individuals' relationships both to the goddess and to the city so that the festival played an important role in negotiating what it meant to be Athenian (and non-Athenian). Julia Shear applies theories of identity formation which were developed in the social sciences to the ancient Greek material and brings together historical, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence to provide a better understanding both of this important occasion and of Athenian identities over the festival's long history.