This is a fluently written history of ancient Greece seen from the perspective of localism and the origins of the Greek City-State. Much like our own time, from the 8th century BCE until and even beyond its imperial end, the Greek world was constantly expanding and experiencing growing connectivity with the world at large. Conquest, exploration and exchange all grew Greece's global presence and helped develop an expanded world where a need to define and cherish the local would (...) inevitably arise. Beck draws on a breathtaking range of materials: texts, some of them rare, by both well-known and obscure writers; numismatics, visual culture, pottery analysis, landscape and traditional field archaeology. He brings all this together in developing fine-grained case studies about tensions between metropolis and local communities such as Miletus, Ithaca, and rural Attica in relation to Athens and other major centers. (shrink)

Although it is a common trope that Hegel’s philosophy marks a seminal shift in the historical orientation of philosophical thought in general, some of the historical problems confronting the reader of the Science of Logic remain relatively neglected. This is not to say that there is any lack of historical work on various dimensions of the Logic. Rather, what remains neglected are the hidden difficulties involved in construing how historical materials contribute to the logical project developed in Hegel’s Science of (...) Logic. These difficulties play an important role in determining the heterogeneous significance of these historical materials, because the role they play in the logical developments is markedly different in different portions of the text being examined. This essay (1) demonstrates that a reader must keep in mind this lack of uniformity when developing a critical interpretation of the Logic, and (2) develops guidelines to facilitate this approach. (shrink)

This book is a translation into English of La religion grecque by Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel, described by Dr Simon Price as 'an excellent book, by far the best introduction to the subject in any language'. It is the purpose of the book to consider how religious beliefs and cultic rituals were given expression in the world of the Greek citizen - the functions performed by the religious personnel, and the place that religion occupied in individual, social (...) and political life. The chapters cover first ritual and then myth, rooting the account in the practices of the classical city while also taking seriously the world of the imagination. For this edition the bibliography has been substantially revised to meet the needs of a mainly student, English-speaking readership. The book is enriched throughout by illustrations, and by quotations from original sources. (shrink)

This paper briefly examines the concept of the ancient mode of production as expressed in Karl Marx’s Formations. It looks at how twentieth-century Marxist historiography picks up this concept in its characterisation of the Greco-Roman city-state. It explores the feasibility of the use of the concept in relation to the advancement of knowledge of the city-state, especially through the development of archaeology. It examines how social classes are structured and relations of exploitation are presented. And it analyses (...) the need for politics in the organisation of this socio-economic form in terms of how it is joined up with the social relations of production. (shrink)

This book is a translation into English of La religion grecque by Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel, described by Dr Simon Price as 'an excellent book, by far the best introduction to the subject in any language'. It is the purpose of the book to consider how religious beliefs and cultic rituals were given expression in the world of the Greek citizen - the functions performed by the religious personnel, and the place that religion occupied in individual, social (...) and political life. The chapters cover first ritual and then myth, rooting the account in the practices of the classical city while also taking seriously the world of the imagination. For this edition the bibliography has been substantially revised to meet the needs of a mainly student, English-speaking readership. The book is enriched throughout by illustrations, and by quotations from original sources. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has held that De ciuitate Dei was aimed primarily at Christians. Through a comprehensive study of Augustine’s correspondence with known readers of De ciuitate Dei, this article argues that he in fact intended it for practical outreach. Beginning with the exchange with Volusianus and Marcellinus, it argues that the “circle of Volusianus” was not comprised of self-confident pagans but of a dynamic group of locals and émigrés, pagan and Christian, who had briefly coalesced around Volusianus and Marcellinus. The (...) Carthaginian social situation did not greatly change, therefore, after Marcellinus’s execution and Volusianus’s departure. Neither did Augustine’s aims, of which the same picture emerges from Augustine’s later correspondence with Macedonius, Evodius, Peter and Abraham, Firmus, and Darius, and from Orosius. Augustine intended, from the first inception of De ciuitate Dei to the eve of his death, to use it to equip Christians with arguments and, through those Christians’ efforts in turn, to convince once-reluctant pagans to embrace the truth of its claims. (shrink)

This book argues that political philosophy is central to early Stoic philosophy, and is deeply tied to the Stoics' conceptions of reason and wisdom. Broad in scope, it explores the Stoics' idea of the cosmic city, their notion of citizen-gods, as well as their account of the law.

List of Participants Ernst Badian is Professor of Ancient History at Harvard University. Johnny Christensen is Professor of Classical Philology at the ...

In this study we intend to investigate the ancient city as the state unable to guarantee the protection and enforcement of justice between individuals and the birth of the Republic undemocratic libel resultant of the failure and the decay of the old city. Plato tries to convince men that it is life in a community that makes it possible to happiness in our short roaming in the world. The ontology of the property falls here as a strategy (...) of persuasion on the insistence of preserving the unity of the city as institutional correlate the individual's fully integrated itself. (shrink)

The polis, the dominant political form around which ancient Greeks structured their lives and activities, is perhaps their most fundamental creation and enduring legacy. It was a highly successful form of social organization in which Greek culture thrived, including architecture, literature, and philosophy. In this book, ancient historian John Ma offers a new history of the polis from its origins in the Early Iron Age through its eclipse in Late Antiquity. He aims to answer a few big questions (...) about it-Why did it emerge? What needs did it fulfill? How did it work? In addition, it is often assumed that the polis, along with the concomitant values of democracy and freedom, came to an end with the Classical period. Taking a contrary view, Ma explores how it endured under imperial control (the Persian Achaimenids, the Hellenistic kings, the Roman Empire), as well as why and how it eventually ended. In addressing these questions, Ma examines not only the most well-known ancient city-states like Sparta and Athens but also many lesser-known ones. He shows how complex the relations of power, access, and membership between the city, the territory, and the members of the polis were. Ma also examines the polis's significance as a social form and looks to the people who constitute the polis, from free adult men-stakeholders in institutional power, slaveowners, or heads of households-and elites to women, foreigners, and enslaved peoples, however disempowered. He draws on recent work on gender and slavery to evaluate the place of domination and violence in the polis. In doing so, Ma shows how the composition of the citizen body is both a political and social issue. The powerful combination of central political ideas and conflict around the issues of autonomy and social power led, Ma argues, to a "great convergence" of polis forms, producing a relatively uniform, stable organism, centred on communitarian, democratic forms and bargains between the community and its elites. This convergence led to the diffusion and harmonization of polis forms, both within and beyond the Aegean, and which allowed them to endure for almost a thousand years with an even longer legacy. (shrink)

This is a book about the religious life of the Greeks from the eighth century BC to the fifth century AD, looked at in the context of a variety of different cities and periods. Simon Price does not describe some abstract and self-contained system of religion or myths but examines local practices and ideas in the light of general Greek ideas, relating them for example, to gender roles and to cultural and political life (including Attic tragedy and the trial of (...) Socrates). He also lays emphasis on the reactions to Greek religions of ancient thinkers - Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian. The evidence drawn on is of all kinds: literary texts, which are translated throughout; inscriptions, including an appendix of newly translated Greek inscriptions; and archaeology, which is highlighted in the numerous illustrations. (shrink)

Greek cities in the imperial period provided the fullest expression of their own communal identity through the medium of inscriptions. This chapter examines Hellenistic texts that provide better understanding about the history of Greek cities under Roman rule, and how these cities have dealt with their complex relationships with Roman governors and political institutions. Looking at these inscriptions, it assesses the immediate effect of colonisation—introducing Roman, and Latin, elements into a Greek social and cultural environment.

A Reply P. Flensted-Jensen/M. H. Hansen: Pseudo-Skylax' Use of the Term Polis M. H. Hansen: City-Ethnics as Evidence for Polis Identity .

In City of the Good, Michael M. Bell, a moral sociologist, makes a plea for an open, “multilogical” dialogue amongst the different absolutistic faiths in the world to try and put an end to the prob...

This book is a collection of 26 previously published essays on ‘Olympic philosophy,’ both ancient and modern. Because the essays were published over the past 20 years in various journals and books,...

The Political Philosophy of the European City offers a wide-ranging panorama of urban political culture in Europe. Its historical scope ranges from the ancient polis through Italian city-states to the ideal of “small is beautiful” in the 20th century. As a political theory, it offers an analysis of conservative, urban republicanism.

Almost single-handedly, Ernest L. Fortin resuscitated the study of political philosophy for Catholic theology. Fortin's interests were vast: the Church Fathers, Dante and Aquinas, modern rights, ecumenism. All of these are in Ever Ancient Ever New, the fourth and final volume of Fortin's collected essays. Edited by Michael Foley, the volume contains articles never before published and is for anyone wishing to continue their education from Ernest Fortin or to begin learning from him for the first time.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God by Veronica Roberts OgleAaron C. EbertPolitics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God by Veronica Roberts Ogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), x + 201 pp.Politics is not a word in Augustine's lexicon—at least, it's not something he speaks of, in the abstract, in his great work of political theology, the (...) class='Hi'>City of God. This curious omission from Augustine's late magnum opus et arduum has given rise to many a divergent reading of his political thought. Lacking an express account of the very term in question, his politics can seem to admit of a wide range of interpretations. On one side of the spectrum, it has been described as anticipating the religious neutrality of modern liberalism. On the other side, it has been interpreted as consolidating politics into religion by transposing political philosophy into the key of ecclesiology and making the Church the new realm of politics.1 In her elegantly written and insightful new book, which builds on the work of her 2014 dissertation at the University of Notre Dame and on a few published articles, Veronica Roberts Ogle charts a new interpretive path for reading Augustine on politics. She does this by means of two principal interventions.The first is by elucidating City of God's rhetorical purpose, what Ogle calls its "psychagogic character" (6). Psychagogy, "the art of leading [agô] souls [psychai] to a state of health," was the rhetorical aim and genre of much ancient philosophy (3). It took its cue from the philosopher's perception that his readers were sick with the disease of unhealthy attachment to the things of the world. Philosophers were physicians of the soul: they applied "the medicinal art of contraries" to their sick patients. This meant that their literary curatives often met patients/readers with the bitter taste of a poison (4). But—and this is the crucial point for Ogle—the poison was given for the purpose of health. What this means for Augustine's City of God, Ogle argues, is that we ought not take the work's biting and at-times-venomous rhetoric as evidence that Augustine is trying to poison his reader's vision of politics. Rather, he is trying to cure them of their attachment to the myths and delusions of politics-according-to-Rome and, instead, "to help us see the world, even the political world, anew: as part of a created order that is good, but that points beyond itself all the same" (4). Augustine's descriptions of Rome—indeed his frequent equations of Rome with the civitas [End Page 1426] terrena—are indeed meant to shock. But, so Ogle argues, they are meant to shock us out of destructive attachments so that we can learn to make the right attachments, first to Christ, and then, through Christ, to our earthly communities as pilgrims. City of God's pessimistic rhetoric is not Augustine simply denouncing the natural project of politics. It is a bitter medicine for a people deathly ill with an addiction to earthly glory.The second intervention of Ogle's book lies in its attention to what she calls City of God's "sacramental ethos" (5). This, I would argue, is the book's most important contribution. It is also the insight on which the heart of the book's argument depends. Sacraments, for Augustine, are signs that point us to God. Understood in this broad sense, the whole created order—that is, everything that is not God—has the quality of a sacrament by virtue of its very existence. This is connected closely to Augustine's understanding of evil as privatio boni: all that exists, to the extent that it exists, is good; and all that exists is, by nature, a sign (signum) pointing beyond itself to the Lord.These are not new insights into Augustine's doctrine of creation, but Ogle's application of them to the question of politics and the earthly city is suggestive. For what emerges is a new account of the relationship between politics and the earthly city. The whole created order... (shrink)

In the ancient Greek city, was sacred land distinct from public land? Were there points of intersection or areas of overlap between the two or was there no distinction at all? First, evidence from Athens is examined through a discussion of N. Papazarkadas' recent monograph, Sacred and Public Land in Ancient Athens. Three criteria for classifying landed property as sacred are proposed in that study: the prohibition or authorization to cultivate sacred land; the use of revenues for (...) cultic purposes; and the inalienability of sacred land. But this trio of criteria does not in fact allow us to establish a clear division between sacred land and public land. The evidence from other cities shows the existence of land defined simultaneously as and the possibility of co-ownership and joint possession between god and city; a distinct place within the city's total property could also be reserved for sacred property (either land or funds). (shrink)