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Author: James F. McGlew
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 9780801483875
DOWNLOAD EBOOKResistance to the tyrant was an essential stage in the development of the Greek city-state. McGlew (classics, Allegheny College) examines the significance of changes in the Greek political vocabulary that came about as a result of the history of ancient tyrants. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: James F. McGlew
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-09-05
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 1501728725
DOWNLOAD EBOOKResistance to the tyrant was an essential stage in the development of the Greek city-state. In this richly insightful book, James F. McGlew examines the significance of changes in the Greek political vocabulary that came about as a result of the history of ancient tyrants. Surveying a vast range of historical and literary sources, McGlew looks closely at discourse concerning Greek tyranny as well as at the nature of the tyrants' power and the constraints on power implicit in that discourse. Archaic tyrants, he shows, characteristically represented themselves as agents of justice. Taking their self-representation not as an ideological veil concealing the nature of tyranny but as its conceptual definition, he attempts to show that, although the language of reform gave tyrants unprecedented political freedom, it also marked their powers as temporary. Tyranny took shape, McGlew maintains, through discursive complicity between the tyrant and his subjects, who presumably accepted his self-definition but also learned from him the language and methods of resistance. The tyrant's subjects learned to resist him as they learned to obey him, but when they rejected him they did so in such a way as to preserve for themselves the distinctive political freedoms that he enjoyed. Providing a new framework for understanding ancient tyranny, this book will be read with great interest by classicists, political scientists, and ancient and modern historians alike.
Author: Sian Lewis
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 2006-02-22
Total Pages: 282
ISBN-13: 0748626433
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTyrants and tyranny are more than the antithesis of democracy and the mark of political failure: they are a dynamic response to social and political pressures.This book examines the autocratic rulers and dynasties of classical Greece and Rome and the changing concepts of tyranny in political thought and culture. It brings together historians, political theorists and philosophers, all offering new perspectives on the autocratic governments of the ancient world.The volume is divided into four parts. Part I looks at the ways in which the term 'tyranny' was used and understood, and the kinds of individual who were called tyrants. Part II focuses on the genesis of tyranny and the social and political circumstances in which tyrants arose. The chapters in Part III examine the presentation of tyrants by themselves and in literature and history. Part IV discusses the achievements of episodic tyranny within the non-autocratic regimes of Sparta and Rome and of autocratic regimes in Persia and the western Mediterranean world.Written by a wide range of leading experts in their field, Ancient Tyranny offers a new and comparative study of tyranny within Greek, Roman and Persian society.
Author: A. Andrewes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2023-10-27
Total Pages: 100
ISBN-13: 1003805736
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst Published in 1956 The Greek Tyrants is concerned primarily with an early period of Greek history, when the aristocracies which ruled in the eighth and seventh centuries were losing control of their cities and were very often overthrown by a tyranny, which in its turn gave way to the oligarchies and democracies of the classical period. The tyrants who seized power from time to time in various cities of Greece are analogous to the dictators of our own day and represented for the Greeks a political problem which is still topical: whether it is ever advantageous for a State to concentrate power in the hands of an individual. Those early tyrannies are an important phase of Greek political development: the author discusses here the various military, economic, political, and social factors of the situation which produce them. The book thus forms an introduction to the central period of Greek political history and will be of interest to scholars and researchers of political thought, ancient history, and Greek philosophy.
Author: Kathryn A. Morgan
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-10-11
Total Pages: 388
ISBN-13: 0292759401
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe nature of authority and rulership was a central concern in ancient Greece, where the figure of the king or tyrant and the sovereignty associated with him remained a powerful focus of political and philosophical debate even as Classical Athens developed the world's first democracy. This collection of essays examines the extraordinary role that the concept of tyranny played in the cultural and political imagination of Archaic and Classical Greece through the interdisciplinary perspectives provided by internationally known archaeologists, literary critics, and historians. The book ranges historically from the Bronze and early Iron Age to the political theorists and commentators of the middle of the fourth century B.C. and generically across tragedy, comedy, historiography, and philosophy. While offering individual and sometimes differing perspectives, the essays tackle several common themes: the construction of authority and of constitutional models, the importance of religion and ritual, the crucial role of wealth, and the autonomy of the individual. Moreover, the essays with an Athenian focus shed new light on the vexed question of whether it was possible for Athenians to think of themselves as tyrannical in any way. As a whole, the collection presents a nuanced survey of how competing ideologies and desires, operating through the complex associations of the image of tyranny, struggled for predominance in ancient cities and their citizens.
Author: Emily Katz Anhalt
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2021-09-14
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 1503629406
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn incisive exploration of the way Greek myths empower us to defeat tyranny. As tyrannical passions increasingly plague twenty-first-century politics, tales told in ancient Greek epics and tragedies provide a vital antidote. Democracy as a concept did not exist until the Greeks coined the term and tried the experiment, but the idea can be traced to stories that the ancient Greeks told and retold. From the eighth through the fifth centuries BCE, Homeric epics and Athenian tragedies exposed the tyrannical potential of individuals and groups large and small. These stories identified abuses of power as self-defeating. They initiated and fostered a movement away from despotism and toward broader forms of political participation. Following her highly praised book Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths, the classicist Emily Katz Anhalt retells tales from key ancient Greek texts and proceeds to interpret the important message they hold for us today. As she reveals, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus's Oresteia, and Sophocles's Antigone encourage us—as they encouraged the ancient Greeks—to take responsibility for our own choices and their consequences. These stories emphasize the responsibilities that come with power (any power, whether derived from birth, wealth, personal talents, or numerical advantage), reminding us that the powerful and the powerless alike have obligations to each other. They assist us in restraining destructive passions and balancing tribal allegiances with civic responsibilities. They empower us to resist the tyrannical impulses not only of others but also in ourselves. In an era of political polarization, Embattled demonstrates that if we seek to eradicate tyranny in all its toxic forms, ancient Greek epics and tragedies can point the way.
Author: Mark H. Munn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2006-07-11
Total Pages: 478
ISBN-13: 0520243498
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAmong maternal deities of the Greek pantheon, the Mother of the Gods was a paradox. Conflict and resolution were played out symbolically, Munn shows, and the goddess of Lydian tyranny was eventually accepted by the Athenians as the Mother of the Gods and a symbol of their own sovereignty.
Author: Henry Bensinger
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
Published: 2013-07-15
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 1477708731
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPerhaps the most important legacy of the ancient Greeks is their invention of the form of government we hold most dear: Democracy. Ancient Greeces various cities and their forms of government, and the birth of government by the people, are presented in simple, straightforward language. An excellent resource on both ancient Greece and the concept of democracy.
Author: Matthew Simonton
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-03-26
Total Pages: 376
ISBN-13: 0691192057
DOWNLOAD EBOOKClassical Greek Oligarchy thoroughly reassesses an important but neglected form of ancient Greek government, the "rule of the few." Matthew Simonton challenges scholarly orthodoxy by showing that oligarchy was not the default mode of politics from time immemorial, but instead emerged alongside, and in reaction to, democracy. He establishes for the first time how oligarchies maintained power in the face of potential citizen resistance. The book argues that oligarchs designed distinctive political institutions—such as intra-oligarchic power sharing, targeted repression, and rewards for informants—to prevent collective action among the majority population while sustaining cooperation within their own ranks. To clarify the workings of oligarchic institutions, Simonton draws on recent social science research on authoritarianism. Like modern authoritarian regimes, ancient Greek oligarchies had to balance coercion with co-optation in order to keep their subjects disorganized and powerless. The book investigates topics such as control of public space, the manipulation of information, and the establishment of patron-client relations, frequently citing parallels with contemporary nondemocratic regimes. Simonton also traces changes over time in antiquity, revealing the processes through which oligarchy lost the ideological battle with democracy for legitimacy. Classical Greek Oligarchy represents a major new development in the study of ancient politics. It fills a longstanding gap in our knowledge of nondemocratic government while greatly improving our understanding of forms of power that continue to affect us today.
Author: Waller R. Newell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2016-03-29
Total Pages: 263
ISBN-13: 1107083052
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA history of tyranny from Achilles to today's jihadists, this volume shows why tyrannical temptation is a permanent danger.
