Download or read book Solon of Athens written by Josine Blok and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a range of innovative approaches to Solon of Athens, legendary law-giver, statesman, and poet of the early sixth century B.C. In the first part, Solon’s poetry is reconsidered against the background of oral poetics and other early Greek poetry. The connection between Solon’s alleged roles as poet and as politician is fundamentally questioned. Part two offers a reassessment of Solon’s laws based on a revision of the textual tradition and recent views on early Greek lawgiving. In part three, fresh scrutiny of the archeological and written evidence of archaic Greece results in new perspectives on the agricultural crisis and Solon’s role in the social and political developments of sixth-century Athens. Originally published in hardcover
Download or read book Solon of Athens written by Ron Owens and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-18 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses the historical, social and political contexts within which Solon of Athens instituted wide-ranging reforms to the Athenian constitution (594-93 BCE), the impact of those reforms on the political self-awareness of the archaic Athenians themselves, and the ethical and political philosophies that drove reform.
Download or read book Solon the Athenian the Poetic Fragments written by Maria Noussia Fantuzzi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-12-10 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illuminates the authoritative voice of Solon of Athens by an integrated literary, historical, and philological approach and the use of a range of hermeneutic frameworks, from literary theory to oral poetics.
Download or read book The Birth of the Athenian Community written by Sviatoslav Dmitriev and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Laws of Solon written by D F Leão and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solon (c 658-558 BC) is famous as both statesman and poet but also, and above all, as the paramount lawmaker of ancient Athens. Though his works survive only in fragments, we know from the writings of Herodotus and Plutarch that his constitutional reforms against the venality, greed and political power-play of Attica's tyrants and noblemen were hugely influential-and may even be said to have laid the foundations of western democracy. Solon's legal injunctions covered the widest range of topics and issues: economics and labour; sexual morality; social issues; and society and politics. Yet despite their fame and influence (and Solon's life and work generated a lively reception history), no complete edition of these writings has yet been published. This book offers the definitive critical edition of Solon's laws that has long been needed. It comprises the original Greek fragments with English translations, commentaries, a comprehensive introduction and important comparative Latin texts. It will be enthusiastically welcomed by specialists in ancient Greek language and history.
Download or read book Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens written by James Fredal and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-eight illustrations are included."--Jacket.
Download or read book Solon the Thinker written by John David Lewis and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Solon the Thinker, John Lewis presents the hypothesis that Solon saw Athens as a self-governing, self-supporting system akin to the early Greek conceptions of the cosmos. Solon's polis functions not through divine intervention but by its own internal energy, which is founded on the intellectual health of its people, depends upon their acceptance of justice and moderation as orderly norms of life, and leads to the rejection of tyranny and slavery in favour of freedom. But Solon's naturalistic views are limited; in his own life each person is subject to the arbitrary foibles of moira, the inscrutable fate that governs human life, and that brings us to an unknowable but inevitable death. Solon represents both the new rational, scientific spirit that was sweeping the Aegean - and a return to the fatalism that permeated Greek intellectual life. This first paperback edition contains a new appendix of translations of the fragments of Solon by the author.
Download or read book Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens written by Ryan K. Balot and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original and rewarding combination of intellectual and political history, Ryan Balot offers a thorough historical and sociological interpretation of classical Athens centered on the notion of greed. Integrating ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, and drawing on modern political thought, the author demonstrates that the Athenian discourse on greed was an essential component of Greek social development and political history. Over time, the Athenians developed sophisticated psychological and political accounts of acquisitiveness and a correspondingly rich vocabulary to describe and condemn it. Greed figures repeatedly as an object of criticism in authors as diverse as Solon, Thucydides, and Plato--all of whom addressed the social disruptions caused by it, as well as the inadequacy of lives focused on it. Because of its ethical significance, greed surfaced frequently in theoretical debates about democracy and oligarchy. Ultimately, critiques of greed--particularly the charge that it is unjust--were built into the robust accounts of justice formulated by many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. Such critiques of greed both reflected and were inextricably knitted into economic history and political events, including the coups of 411 and 404 B.C. Balot contrasts ancient Greek thought on distributive justice with later Western traditions, with implications for political and economic history well beyond the classical period. Because the belief that greed is good holds a dominant position in modern justifications of capitalism, this study provides a deep historical context within which such justifications can be reexamined and, perhaps, found wanting.
Download or read book Famous Men of Greece written by John Henry Haaren and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece written by Kurt A. Raaflaub and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A balanced, high-quality analysis of the developing nature of Athenian political society and its relationship to 'democracy' as a timeless concept."—Mark Munn, author of The School of History
Download or read book Solon Another Leaf Press written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plutarch's classic biography of the legendary law giver. Translated by John Dryden.
Download or read book Hallowed Stewards written by William S. Bubelis and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-06-08 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students of ancient Athenian politics, governance, and religion have long stumbled over the rich evidence of inscriptions and literary texts that document the Athenians' stewardship of the wealth of the gods. Likewise, Athens was well known for devoting public energy and funds to all matters of ritual, ranging from the building of temples to major religious sacrifices. Yet, lacking any adequate account of how the Athenians organized that commitment, much less how it arose and developed, ancient historians and philologists alike have labored with only a paltry understanding of what was a central concern to the Athenians themselves. That deficit of knowledge, in turn, has constrained and diminished our grasp of other essential questions surrounding Athenian society and its history, such as the nature of political life in archaic Athens, and the forces underlying Athens' imperial finances. Hallowed Stewards closely examines those magistracies that were central to Athenian religious efforts, and which are best described as "sacred treasurers." Given the extensive but nevertheless fragmentary evidence now available to us, no catalog-like approach to these offices could properly encompass their details much less their wider historical significance. Inscriptions and oratory provide the bulk of the evidence for this project, along with the so-called Constitution of Athens attributed to Aristotle. Hallowed Stewards not only provides a wealth of detail concerning these hitherto badly understood offices, but also the larger diachronic framework within which they operated.
Download or read book Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens written by Edwin Carawan and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive book on judicial review in Athens from the 5th through the 4th centuries BCE. The power of the court to overturn a law or decree—called judicial review—is a critical feature of modern democracies. Contemporary American judges, for example, determine what is consistent with the Constitution, though this practice is often criticized for giving unelected officials the power to strike down laws enacted by the people's representatives. This principle was actually developed more than two thousand years ago in the ancient democracy at Athens. In Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens, Edwin Carawan reassesses the accumulated evidence to construct a new model of how Athenians made law in the time of Plato and Aristotle, while examining how the courts controlled that process. Athenian juries, Carawan explains, were manned by many hundreds of ordinary citizens rather than a judicial elite. Nonetheless, in the 1890s, American apologists found vindication for judicial review in the ancient precedent. They believed that Athenian judges decided the fate of laws and decrees legalistically, focusing on fundamental text, because the speeches that survive from antiquity often involve close scrutiny of statutes attributed to lawgivers such as Solon, much as a modern appellate judge might resort to the wording of the Framers. Carawan argues that inscriptions, speeches, and fragments of lost histories make clear that text-based constitutionalism was not so compelling as the ethos of the community. Carawan explores how the judicial review process changed over time. From the restoration of democracy down to its last decades, the Athenians made significant reforms in their method of legislation, first to expedite a cumbersome process, then to revive the more rigorous safeguards. Jury selection adapted accordingly: the procedure was recast to better represent the polis, and packing the court was thwarted by a complicated lottery. But even as the system evolved, the debate remained much the same: laws and decrees were measured by a standard crafted in the image of the people. Offering a comprehensive account of the ancient origins of an important political institution through philological methods, rhetorical analysis of ancient arguments, and comparisons between models of judicial review in ancient Greece and the modern United States, Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens is an innovative study of ancient Greek law and democracy.
Download or read book Athenian Democracy written by Peter John Rhodes and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Athens' democracy developed during the sixth and fifth centuries and continued into the fourth; Athens' defeat by Macedon in 322 began a series of alternations between democracy and oligarchy. The democracy was inseparably bound up with the ideals of liberty and equality, the rule of law, and the direct government of the people by the people. Liberty means above all freedom of speech, the right to be heard in the public assembly and the right to speak one's mind in private. Equality meant the equal right of male citizens (perhaps 60,000 in the fifth century, 30,000 in the fourth) to participate in the government of the state and the administration of the law. Disapproved of as a mob rule until the nineteenth century, the institutions of Athenian democracy have become an inspiration for modern democratic politics and political philosophy. P. J. Rhodes's reader focuses on the political institutions, political activity, history, and nature of Athenian democracy and introduces some of the best British, American, German, and French scholarship on its origins, theory, and practice. Part I is devoted to political institutions: citizenship, the assembly, the law-courts, and capital punishment. Part II explores aspects of political activity: the demagogues and their relationship with the assembly, the maneuverings of the politicians, competitive festivals, and the separation of public from private life. Part III looks at three crucial points in the development of the democracy: the reforms of Solon, Cleisthenes, and Ephialtes. Part IV considers what it was in Greek life that led to the development of democracy. Some of the authors adopt broad-brush approaches to major questions; others analyze a particular body of evidence in detail. Use is made of archeology, comparison with other societies, the location of festivals in their civic context, and the need to penetrate behind what the classical Athenians made of their past.
Download or read book Horos written by Thea Potter and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2022-01-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Horos, Thea Potter explores the complex relationship between classical philosophy and the ‘horos’, a stone that Athenians erected to mark the boundaries of their marketplace, their gravestones, their roads and their private property. Potter weaves this history into a meditation on the ancient philosophical concept of horos, the foundational project of determination and definition, arguing that it is central to the development of classical philosophy and the marketplace. Horos challenges many significant interpretations of ancient thought. With nuance and insight, Potter combines the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer and archaic Greek inscriptions with the twentieth-century continental philosophy of Heidegger, Derrida and Walter Benjamin. The result is a powerful study of the theme of boundaries in classical Athenian society as evidenced by boundary stones, law and exchange, ontology, insurgency and occupation. The innovative book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of ancient Greek social history, philosophy, and literature, as well as to the general reader who is curious to know more about classical life and philosophy.
Download or read book Athens on Trial written by Jennifer T. Roberts and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-23 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Athenian Revolution written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.
