Politics and Society in Ancient Greece PDF Download

Author: Nicholas F. Jones
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313054118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Western democracies often trace their political roots back to Ancient Greece. While politics today may seem the dusty domain of lawmakers and pundits, in the classical era virtually no aspect of life was beyond its reach. Political life was not limited to acts of a legislature, magistrates, and the courts but routinely included the activities of social clubs, the patronage system, and expression through literature, art, and architecture. Through these varied means, even non-enfranchised groups (such as women and non-citizens) gained entry into a wider democratic process. Beyond the citizen world of traditional politics, there existed multiple layers of Greek political life-reflecting many aspects of our own modern political landscape. Religious cults served as venues for female office-holders; private clubs and drinking parties served significant social functions. Popular athletes capitalized on their fame to run for elected office. Military veterans struggled to bring back the good old days much to the dismay of the forward-thinking ambitions of naive twenty-somethings. Liberals and conservatives of all classes battled over important issues of the day. Scandal and intrigue made or ended many a political career. Taken collectively, these aspects of political life serve as a lens for viewing the whole of Greek civilization in some of its characteristic and distinctive dimensions.

Author: Sarah B. Pomeroy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199846047
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A Political, Social, and Cultural History is a comprehensive and balanced history, covering the political, military, social, cultural, and economic history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Era.

Author: Sarah B. Pomeroy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
The story of the ancient Greeks is one of the most improbable success stories in world history. A small group of people inhabiting a country poor in resources and divided into hundreds of quarreling states created one of the most remarkable civilizations ever. Comprehensive and balanced, A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture, Second Edition is a shorter version of the authors' highly successful Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History, Second Edition (OUP, 2008). Four leading authorities on the classical world offer a lively and up-to-date account of Greek civilization and history in all its complexity and variety, covering the entire period from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Era, and integrating the most recent research in archaeology, comparative anthropology, and social history. They show how the early Greeks borrowed from their neighbors but eventually developed a distinctive culture all their own, one that was marked by astonishing creativity, versatility, and resilience. Using physical evidence from archaeology, the written testimony of literary texts and inscriptions, and anthropological models based on comparative studies, this compact volume provides an account of the Greek world that is thoughtful and sophisticated yet accessible to students and general readers with little or no knowledge of Greece.

Author: Mark Golden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521497909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Sport and Society in Ancient Greece provides a concise and readable introduction to ancient Greek sport. It covers such topics as the links between sport, religion and warfare, the origins and history of the Olympic games, and the spirit of competition among the Greeks. Its main focus, however, is on Greek sport as an arena for the creation and expression of difference among individuals and groups. Sport not only identified winners and losers. It also drew boundaries between groups (Greeks and barbarians, boys and men, males and females) and offered a field for debate on the relative worth of athletic and equestrian competition. The book includes guides to the ancient evidence and to modern scholarship on the subject.

Author: Richard A. Bauman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000082938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
During the inspired years of the Athenian empire, through the tragedy of its collapse, to the more prosaic era that followed, most of the great names in Athenian history were involved in the procedures of criminal law. Political Trials in Ancient Greece, first published in 1990, explores the relationships between historical process, constitution, law, political machinations and foreign policy, concentrating on fifth and fourth century Athens and on Macedonia. These trials contribute significant details to our knowledge of such towering figures as Aeschylus, Pericles, Thucydides, Alcibiades, Socrates, Demosthenes and Aristotle, as well as a diverse collection of Macedonian defendants. The jurisdiction of the Areopagus, trials of communities, and the personal jurisdiction of the Macedonian king are also examined. Richard Bauman’s original account broadens our understanding of Greek legal institutions and of the ancient Greek approach to the law, as well as the general ethos of Athenian and Macedonian society.

Author: Paul Cartledge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113948849X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Ancient Greece was a place of tremendous political experiment and innovation, and it was here too that the first serious political thinkers emerged. Using carefully selected case-studies, in this book Professor Cartledge investigates the dynamic interaction between ancient Greek political thought and practice from early historic times to the early Roman Empire. Of concern throughout are three major issues: first, the relationship of political thought and practice; second, the relevance of class and status to explaining political behaviour and thinking; third, democracy - its invention, development and expansion, and extinction, prior to its recent resuscitation and even apotheosis. In addition, monarchy in various forms and at different periods and the peculiar political structures of Sparta are treated in detail over a chronological range extending from Homer to Plutarch. The book provides an introduction to the topic for all students and non-specialists who appreciate the continued relevance of ancient Greece to political theory and practice today.

Author: Johann P. Arnason
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118561678
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy presents a series of essays that trace the Greeks’ path to democracy and examine the connection between the Greek polis as a citizen state and democracy as well as the interaction between democracy and various forms of cultural expression from a comparative historical perspective and with special attention to the place of Greek democracy in political thought and debates about democracy throughout the centuries. Presents an original combination of a close synchronic and long diachronic examination of the Greek polis - city-states that gave rise to the first democratic system of government Offers a detailed study of the close interactionbetween democracy, society, and the arts in ancient Greece Places the invention of democracy in fifth-century bce Athens both in its broad social and cultural context and in the context of the re-emergence of democracy in the modern world Reveals the role Greek democracy played in the political and intellectual traditions that shaped modern democracy, and in the debates about democracy in modern social, political, and philosophical thought Written collaboratively by an international team of leading scholars in classics, ancient history, sociology, and political science

Author: Georgios Anagnostopoulos
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319963139
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The original essays in this volume discuss ideas relating to democracy, political justice, equality and inequalities in the distribution of resources and public goods. These issues were as vigorously debated at the height of ancient Greek democracy as they are in many democratic societies today. Contributing authors address these issues and debates about them from both philosophical and historical perspectives. Readers will discover research on the role of Athenian democracy in moderating economic inequality and reducing poverty, on ancient debates about how to respond to inborn and social inequalities, and on Plato’s and Aristotle’s critiques of Greek participatory democracies. Early chapters examine Plato’s views on equality, justice, and the distribution of political and non-political goods, including his defense of the abolition of private property for the ruling classes and of the equality of women in his ideal constitution and polis. Other papers discuss views of Socrates or Aristotle that are particularly relevant to contemporary political and economic disputes about punishment, freedom, slavery, the status of women, and public education, to name a few. This thorough consideration of the ancient Greeks' work on democracy, justice, and equality will appeal to scholars and researchers of the history of philosophy, Greek history, classics, as well as those with an interest in political philosophy.

Author: Sara Forsdyke
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691140057
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The author argues that various forms of popular culture in ancient Greece--including festival revelry, oral storytelling, and popular forms of justice--were a vital medium for political expression and played an important role in the negotiation of relations between elites and masses, as well as masters and slaves, in the Greek city-states. Although these forms of social life are only poorly attested in the sources, she suggests that Greek literature reveals traces of popular culture that can be further illuminated by comparison with later historical periods. By looking beyond institutional contexts, she recovers the ways that groups that were excluded from the formal political sphere--especially women and slaves--participated in the process by which society was ordered.

Author: Dr John Rich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113480783X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The role of warfare is central to our understanding of the ancient Greek world. In this book and the companion work, War and Society in the Roman World, the wider social context of war is explored. This volume examines its impact on Greek society from Homeric times to the age of Alexander and his successors and discusses the significance of the causes and profits of war, the links between war, piracy and slavery, and trade, and the ideology of warfare in literature and sculpture.