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Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens
In his On the Glory of Athens, Plutarch complained that the Athenian people spent more on the production of dramatic festivals and \"the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians.\" This view of the Athenians' misplaced priorities became orthodoxy with the publication of August Böckh's 1817 book Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener [The Public Economy of Athens], which criticized the classical Athenian dēmos for spending more on festivals than on wars and for levying unjust taxes to pay for their bloated government. But were the Athenians' priorities really as misplaced as ancient and modern historians believed?Drawing on lines of evidence not available in Böckh's time, Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens calculates the real costs of religion, politics, and war to settle the long-standing debate about what the ancient Athenians valued most highly. David M. Pritchard explains that, in Athenian democracy, voters had full control over public spending. When they voted for a bill, they always knew its cost and how much they normally spent on such bills. Therefore, the sums they chose to spend on festivals, politics, and the armed forces reflected the order of the priorities that they had set for their state. By calculating these sums, Pritchard convincingly demonstrates that it was not religion or politics but war that was the overriding priority of the Athenian people.
eBook
The transformation of Athens : painted pottery and the creation of classical Greece
\"Why did soldiers stop fighting, athletes stop competing, and lovers stop having graphic sex in classical Greek art? The scenes depicted on Athenian pottery of the mid-fifth century BC are very different from those of the late sixth century. Did Greek potters have a different world to see - or did they come to see the world differently? In this lavishly illustrated and engagingly written book, Robin Osborne argues that these remarkable changes are the best evidence for the shifting nature of classical Greek culture. Osborne examines the thousands of surviving Athenian red-figure pots painted between 520 and 440 BC and describes the changing depictions of soldiers and athletes, drinking parties and religious occasions, sexual relations, and scenes of daily life. He shows that it was not changes in each activity that determined how the world was shown, but changes in values and aesthetics. By demonstrating that changes in artistic style involve choices about what aspects of the world we decide to represent as well as how to represent them, this book rewrites the history of Greek art. By showing that Greeks came to see the world differently over the span of less than a century, it reassesses the history of classical Greece and of Athenian democracy. And by questioning whether art reflects or produces social and political change, it provokes a fresh examination of the role of images in an ever-evolving world.\"--Jacket flaps.
Book
Die Hadriansbibliothek in Athen: Ein historisch-archäologischer Überblick
Die Hadriansbibliothek in Athen gibt der Altertumsforschung zahlreiche Rätsel auf. Trotz zahlreicher Ausgrabungen und einiger antiker Quellen ist bis heute noch nicht gesichert, zu welchem Zweck das prachtvolle Gebäude von Kaiser Hadrian errichtet wurde: Diente der Gebäudekomplex als Kaiserforum, zur göttlichen Verehrung des Hadrian oder wurde er als kulturelles Zentrum von Athen erbaut? Aktuelle Grabungsergebnisse bringen nun Licht ins Dunkel.
Journal Article
Kleidung und Nacktheit im frühen Athen: Körper- und Rollenentwürfe auf Keramik
Im Bild des menschlichen Körpers werden für eine Gesellschaft bedeutsame Wertsetzungen verhandelt – der Körper wird zum Aussageträger. Besonders prägnant lässt sich diese kulturelle Codierung des Körpers am nackten bzw. bekleideten Körper ablesen. Dies gilt bereits für die frühesten Körperdarstellungen des griechischen Kontextes, die auf Athener Tongefäßen des 8. Jhs. v. Chr. zu sehen sind.
Journal Article
Machtkämpfe unter Aristokraten: Die Lösung innergesellschaftlicher Konflikte im archaischen Athen
Die archaische Epoche war eine sehr konfliktreiche Zeit in Athen. Zahlreiche innergesellschaftliche Konflikte unter Aristokraten erschütterten immer wieder das ganze Gemeinwesen. Die Athener versuchten diese mit verschiedenen Mitteln zu lösen, beispielsweise mit Gedichten oder Gesetzen. Die Entstehung und Verfestigung der Polis stellte dabei die umfangreichste Veränderung dar.
Journal Article
Polytheism and society at Athens
This book makes use of recently discovered archaeological and epigraphical evidence to give an account of the religious life of ancient Athens. The city's many festivals are discussed in detail, with attention to recent anthropological theory; so too, for instance, are the cults of households and of smaller groups, the role of religious practice and argumentation in public life, the authority of priests, the activities of religious professionals such as seers and priestesses, magic, and the place of theatrical representations of the gods within public attitudes to the divine. A final section considers the sphere of activity of the various gods, and takes Athens as a uniquely detailed test case for the structuralist approach to polytheism.
eBook
Athens, Thrace, and the Shaping of Athenian Leadership
From the mid-sixth to the mid-fourth century BCE a nexus of connections to Thrace defined the careers of several of Athens' most prominent figures, including Pisistratus, Miltiades, Alcibiades and Iphicrates. This book explores the importance of Thrace to these individuals and its resulting significance in the political, cultural and social history of Athens. Thrace was vitally important for Athens thanks to its natural resources and access to strategic waterways, which were essential to a maritime empire, and connections to the area conferred wealth and military influence on certain Athenians and offered them a refuge if they faced political persecution at home. However, Thrace's importance to prominent individuals transcended politics: its culture was also an important draw. Thrace was a world free of Athenian political, social and cultural constraints – one that bore a striking resemblance to the world of Homeric epic.
eBook
The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory
In ancient Athenian courts of law, litigants presented their cases before juries of several hundred citizens. Their speeches effectively constituted performances that used the speakers' appearances, gestures, tones of voice, and emotional appeals as much as their words to persuade the jury. Today, all that remains of Attic forensic speeches from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE are written texts, but, as Peter A. O'Connell convincingly demonstrates in this innovative book, a careful study of the speeches' rhetoric of seeing can bring their performative aspect to life. Offering new interpretations of a wide range of Athenian forensic speeches, including detailed discussions of Demosthenes' On the False Embassy, Aeschines' Against Ktesiphon, and Lysias' Against Andocides, O'Connell shows how litigants turned the jurors' scrutiny to their advantage by manipulating their sense of sight. He analyzes how the litigants' words work together with their movements and physical appearance, how they exploit the Athenian preference for visual evidence through the language of seeing and showing, and how they plant images in their jurors' minds. These findings, which draw on ancient rhetorical theories about performance, seeing, and knowledge as well as modern legal discourse analysis, deepen our understanding of Athenian notions of visuality. They also uncover parallels among forensic, medical, sophistic, and historiographic discourses that reflect a shared concern with how listeners come to know what they have not seen.
eBook