The Law of Ancient Athens

The Law of Ancient Athens
Author: David Phillips
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2013-10-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472035916

A topic fundamental to understanding the ancient world

Status in Classical Athens

Status in Classical Athens
Author: Deborah E Kamen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-08-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691195978

In the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens, Kamen illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy.

Athenian Law and Society

Athenian Law and Society
Author: Konstantinos A. Kapparis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317177517

Athenian Law and Society focuses upon the intersection of law and society in classical Athens, in relation to topics like politics, class, ability, masculinity, femininity, gender studies, economics, citizenship, slavery, crime, and violence. The book explores the circumstances and broader context which led to the establishment of the laws of Athens, and how these laws influenced the lives and action of Athenian citizens, by examining a wide range of sources from classical and late antique history and literature. Kapparis also explores later literature on Athenian law from the Renaissance up to the 20th and 21st centuries, examining the long-lasting impact of the world’s first democracy. Athenian Law and Society is a study of the intersection between law and society in classical Athens that has a wide range of applications to study of the Athenian polis, as well as law, democracy, and politics in both classical and more modern settings.

Children and Childhood in Classical Athens

Children and Childhood in Classical Athens
Author: Mark Golden
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2015-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421416875

A thoroughly revised and updated edition of Mark Golden’s groundbreaking study of childhood in ancient Greece. First published in 1990, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens was the first book in English to explore the lives of children in ancient Athens. Drawing on literary, artistic, and archaeological sources as well as on comparative studies of family history, Mark Golden offers a vivid portrait of the public and private lives of children from about 500 to 300 B.C. Golden discusses how the Athenians viewed children and childhood, describes everyday activities of children at home and in the community, and explores the differences in the social lives of boys and girls. He details the complex bonds among children, parents, siblings, and household slaves, and he shows how a growing child’s changing roles often led to conflict between the demands of family and the demands of community. In this thoroughly revised edition, Golden places particular emphasis on the problem of identifying change over time and the relationship of children to adults. He also explores three dominant topics in the recent historiography of childhood: the agency of children, the archaeology of childhood, and representations of children in art. The book includes a completely new final chapter, text and notes rewritten throughout to incorporate evidence and scholarship that has appeared over the past twenty-five years, and an index of ancient sources.

Kinship in Ancient Athens

Kinship in Ancient Athens
Author: S. C. Humphreys
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1627
Release: 2018-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191092401

The concept of kinship is at the heart of understanding not only the structure and development of a society, but also the day-to-day interactions of its citizens. Kinship in Ancient Athens aims to illuminate both of these issues by providing a comprehensive account of the structures and perceptions of kinship in Athenian society, covering the archaic and classical periods from Drakon and Solon up to Menander. Drawing on decades of research into a wide range of epigraphic, literary, and archaeological sources, and on S. C. Humphreys' expertise in the intersections between ancient history and anthropology, it not only puts a wealth of data at readers' fingertips, but subjects it to rigorous analysis. By utilizing an anthropological approach to reconstruct patterns of behaviour it is able to offer us an ethnographic 'thick description' of ancient Athenians' interaction with their kin that offers insights into a range of social contexts, from family life, rituals, and economic interactions, to legal matters, politics, warfare, and more. The work is arranged into two volumes, both utilizing the same anthropological approach to ancient sources. Volume I explores interactions and conflicts shaped by legal and economic constraints (adoption, guardianship, marriage, inheritance, property), as well as more optional relationships in the field of ritual (naming, rites de passage, funerals and commemoration, dedications, cultic associations) and political relationships, both formal (Assembly, Council) and informal (hetaireiai). Among several important and novel topics discussed are the sociological analysis of names and nicknames, the features of kin structure that advantaged or disadvantaged women in legal disputes, and the economic relations of dependence and independence between fathers and sons. Volume II deals with corporate groups recruited by patrifiliation and explores the role of kinship in these subdivisions of the citizen body: tribes and trittyes (both pre-Kleisthenic and Kleisthenic), phratries, genê, and demes. The section on the demes stresses variety rather than common features, and provides comprehensive information on location and prosopography in a tribally organized catalogue.

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.

The Athenian Ephebeia in the Fourth Century BCE

The Athenian Ephebeia in the Fourth Century BCE
Author: John L. Friend
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2019-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004402055

Based on the comprehensive study of the epigraphic and literary evidence, this book challenges the almost universally-held assumptions of modern scholarship on the date of origin, the function, and the purpose of the Athenian ephebeia. It offers a detailed reconstruction of the institution, which in the fourth century BCE was a state-organized and -funded system of mandatory national service for ephebes, citizens in their nineteenth and twentieth years, consisting of garrison duty, military training, and civic education. It concludes that the contribution of the ephebeia was vital for the security of Attica and that the ephebes’ non-military activities were moulded by social, economic, and religious influences which reflect the preoccupations of Lycurgus’ administration in the 330s and 320s BCE.

Athenian Prostitution

Athenian Prostitution
Author: Edward E. Cohen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2015-11-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190275936

This is a pioneering study that examines the sale of sex in classical Athens from a commercial (rather than from a cultural or moral) perspective. Following the author's earlier book on Athenian banking, this work analyzes erotic business at Athens in the context of the Athenian economy. For the Athenians, the social acceptability and moral standing of human labor was largely determined by the conditions under which work was performed. Pursued in a context characteristic of servile endeavor, prostitution--like all forms of slave labor--was contemptible. Pursued under conditions appropriate to non-servile endeavor, prostitution--like all forms of free labor--was not violative of Athenian work ethics. As a mercantile activity, however, prostitution was not untouched by Athenian antagonism toward commercial and manual pursuits; as the "business of sex," prostitution further evoked negativity from segments of Greek opinion uncomfortable with any form of carnality. Yet ancient sources also adumbrate another view, in which the sale of sex, lawful and indeed pervasive at Athens, is presented alluringly. In a book that will be of interest to all students of sex and gender, to economic, legal and social historians, and to classicists, the author explores the high compensation earned by female sexual entrepreneurs who often controlled prostitutional businesses that were perpetuated from generation to generation on a matrilineal basis, and that benefitted from legislative restrictions on pimping. The author juxtaposes the widespread practice of "prostitution pursuant to written contract" with legislation targeting male prostitutes functioning as governmental leaders, and explores the seemingly contradictory phenomena of extensive sexual exploitation of slave prostitutes (male and female) coexisting with Athenian society's pride in its legislative protection of slaves and minors against sexual outrage.