The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens

The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens
Author: Philip Brook Manville
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2014-07-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400860830

In this unusual synthesis of political and socio-economic history, Philip Manville demonstrates that citizenship for the Athenians was not merely a legal construct but rather a complex concept that was both an institution and a mode of social behavior. He further shows that it was not static, as most scholarship has assumed, but rather has slowly evolved over time. The work is also an explanation of the origins and development of the polis. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Citizenship in Classical Athens

Citizenship in Classical Athens
Author: Josine Blok
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2017-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521191459

This book argues that citizenship in Athens was primarily a religious identity, shared by male and female citizens alike.

Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy

Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy
Author: Susan Lape
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139484125

In Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy, Susan Lape demonstrates how a race ideology grounded citizen identity. Although this ideology did not manifest itself in a fully developed race myth, its study offers insight into the causes and conditions that can give rise to race and racisms in both modern and pre-modern cultures. In the Athenian context, racial citizenship emerged because it both defined and justified those who were entitled to share in the political, symbolic, and socioeconomic goods of Athenian citizenship. By investigating Athenian law, drama, and citizenship practices, this study shows how citizen identity worked in practice to consolidate national unity and to account for past Athenian achievements. It also considers how Athenian identity narratives fuelled Herodotus' and Thucydides' understanding of history and causation.

The Birth of the Athenian Community

The Birth of the Athenian Community
Author: Sviatoslav Dmitriev
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2017-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351621440

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.

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece
Author: Kurt A. Raaflaub
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520258096

"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

Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece

Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece
Author: Alain Duplouy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2018-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192549235

Citizenship is a major feature of contemporary national and international politics, but rather than being a modern phenomenon it is in fact a legacy of ancient Greece. The concept of membership of a community and participation in its social and political life first appeared some three millennia ago, but only towards the end of the fourth century BC did Aristotle offer the first explicit statement about it. Though long accepted, this definition remains deeply rooted in the philosophical and political thought of the classical period, and probably fails to account accurately for either the preceding centuries or the dynamics of emergent cities: as such, historians are now challenging the application of the Aristotelian model to all Greek cities regardless of chronology, and are looking instead for alternative ways of conceiving citizenship and community. Focusing on archaic Greece, this volume brings together an array of renowned international scholars with the aim of exploring new routes to archaic Greek citizenship and constructing a new image of archaic cities, which are no longer to be considered as primitive or incomplete classical poleis. The essays collected here have not been tailored to endorse any specific view, with each contributor bringing his or her own approach and methodology to bear across a range of specific fields of enquiry, from law, cults, and military obligations, to athletics, commensality, and descent. The volume as a whole exemplifies the living diversity of approaches to archaic Greece and to the Greek city, combining both breadth and depth of insight with an opportunity to venture off the beaten track.

A Culture of Freedom

A Culture of Freedom
Author: Christian Meier
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2011-09-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199588031

The book takes us on a tour through the rich spectrum of Greek life and culture, from their epic and lyric poetry, political thought and philosophy, to their social life, military traditions, sport, and religious festivals, and finally to the early stages of Greek democracy. Running as a connecting thread throughout is a people's attempt to create a society based upon the concept of freedom rather than naked power.

Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece

Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece
Author: Vincent Farenga
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 499
Release: 2006-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139456784

This 2006 study examines how the ancient Greeks decided questions of justice as a key to understanding the intersection of our moral and political lives. Combining contemporary political philosophy with historical, literary and philosophical texts, it examines a series of remarkable individuals who performed 'scripts' of justice in early Iron Age, archaic and classical Greece. From the earlier periods, these include Homer's Achilles and Odysseus as heroic individuals who are also prototypical citizens, and Solon the lawgiver, writing the scripts of statute law and the jury trial. In democratic Athens, the focus turns to dialogues between a citizen's moral autonomy and political obligation in Aeschyleon tragedy, Pericles' citizenship paradigm, Antiphon's sophistic thought and forensic oratory, the political leadership of Alcibiades and Socrates' moral individualism.

The Athenian Revolution

The Athenian Revolution
Author: Josiah Ober
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691217971

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.