The Athenian Experiment

The Athenian Experiment PDF

Author: Greg Anderson

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780472113200

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This book rewrites the political and public history of Athens

Athens on Trial

Athens on Trial PDF

Author: Jennifer Tolbert Roberts

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-10-23

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1400821320

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The Classical Athenians were the first to articulate and implement the notion that ordinary citizens of no particular affluence or education could make responsible political decisions. For this reason, reactions to Athenian democracy have long provided a prime Rorschach test for political thought. Whether praising Athens's government as the legitimizing ancestor of modern democracies or condemning it as mob rule, commentators throughout history have revealed much about their own notions of politics and society. In this book, Jennifer Roberts charts responses to Athenian democracy from Athens itself through the twentieth century, exploring a debate that touches upon historiography, ethics, political science, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, gender studies, and educational theory.

Polis and Revolution

Polis and Revolution PDF

Author: Julia L. Shear

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-04-21

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0521760445

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This book explores how democracy in Athens was recreated and the city rebuilt following the oligarchic revolutions of the fifth century BC.

Kosmos

Kosmos PDF

Author: Paul Cartledge

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-08-08

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780521525930

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'Kosmos' is the word the ancient Greeks used for human social order. It has therefore a special application to the Greeks' peculiar social and political unit of communal life that they called the 'polis'. Of the many hundreds of such units in classical Greece the best documented and the most complex was democratic Athens. The purpose of this collective 1998 volume is to re-evaluate the foundations of classical Athens' highly successful experiment in communal social existence. Topics addressed include religion and ritualization, political friendship and enmity, gender and sexuality, sports and litigation, and economic and symbolic exchange. The book aims to make a major contribution, theoretical as well as empirical, towards understanding how the social order of community life may be sustained and enhanced.

The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia

The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia PDF

Author: Mark H. Munn

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2006-07-11

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 0520243498

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Among 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.

Archaic Greece

Archaic Greece PDF

Author: Anthony M. Snodgrass

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1981-11-12

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780520043732

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Until quite recently, it has been the accepted view that the Archaic period of Greek history was by definition merely a prelude to the Classical period, an era regarded as unsurpassed in its literary, intellectual, artistic, and political achievements. Lately, however, historians and archaeologists have undertaken a major reappraisal of their subject. Professor Snodgrass shows how the supremacy of Classical Greece would have been impossible without the preceding centuries of the Archaic period. It established the economic basis of Greek society; it drew the political map of the Greek world in a form that was to endure for four centuries; it set up the forms of state that were to determine Greek political history; it provided the interests and goals, not merely for Greek but for Western art as a whole, which were to be pursued over the next two and a half millennia; it gave Greece in the Homeric epics an ideal of behavior and a memento of past glory to sustain it; and it provided much of the basis of Greek religion. "Archaic Greece" gives a broad cultural history of the period. -- From publisher's description.

Democracy’s Slaves

Democracy’s Slaves PDF

Author: Paulin Ismard

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0674660072

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Challenging the modern belief that democracy and bondage are incompatible, Paulin Ismard directs our attention to ancient Athens, where the functioning of civic government depended on skilled, knowledgeable experts who were literally public servants—slaves owned by the city-state rather than by private citizens.

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity PDF

Author: Gregory Crane

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 0520918746

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Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.