Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens PDF Author: Josiah Ober
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400820510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian "constitution," he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to address these large bodies of ordinary citizens in terms understandable and acceptable to the audience. This book probes the social strategies behind the rhetorical tactics employed by elite speakers. A close reading of the speeches exposes both egalitarian and elitist elements in Athenian popular ideology. Ober demonstrates that the vocabulary of public speech constituted a democratic discourse that allowed the Athenians to resolve contradictions between the ideal of political equality and the reality of social inequality. His radical reevaluation of leadership and political power in classical Athens restores key elements of the social and ideological context of the first western democracy.

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens PDF Author: Josiah Ober
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400820510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian "constitution," he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to address these large bodies of ordinary citizens in terms understandable and acceptable to the audience. This book probes the social strategies behind the rhetorical tactics employed by elite speakers. A close reading of the speeches exposes both egalitarian and elitist elements in Athenian popular ideology. Ober demonstrates that the vocabulary of public speech constituted a democratic discourse that allowed the Athenians to resolve contradictions between the ideal of political equality and the reality of social inequality. His radical reevaluation of leadership and political power in classical Athens restores key elements of the social and ideological context of the first western democracy.

Greek Tragic Theatre

Greek Tragic Theatre PDF Author: Rush Rehm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134814143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Emphasizing the political nature of Greek tragedy, as theatre of, by and for the polis, Rush Rehm characterizes Athens as a performance culture; one in which the theatre stood alongside other public forums as a place to confront matters of import. In treating the various social, religious and practical aspects of tragic production, he shows how these elements promoted a vision of the theatre as integral to the life of the city - a theatre focussed on the audience.

Actors & Audience

Actors & Audience PDF Author: David Bain
Publisher: Oxford [etc.] : Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description


Actors in the Audience

Actors in the Audience PDF Author: Shadi Bartsch
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674003576
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal all figure in Bartsch's shrewd analysis of historical and literary responses to the brute facts of empire; even the Panegyricus of Pliny the Younger now appears as a reaction against the widespread awareness of dissimulation.

Art in the Hellenistic Age

Art in the Hellenistic Age PDF Author: Jerome Jordan Pollitt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521276726
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This 1986 book is an interpretative history of Greek art during the Hellenistic period.

The Art of Acting in Antiquity

The Art of Acting in Antiquity PDF Author: Klaus Neiiendam
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 9788772892191
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Provides greater insight into the dramatic art of antiquity by analysing three major groups of iconographical material in context with the written sources. As a theatre historian, the author's object was to discuss some fundamental scenic questions, from the viewpoint of theatre history, in an attempt to shed fresh light on performance tradition in ancient drama.

The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition

The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition PDF Author: Margaret Alexiou
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742507579
Category : Funeral rites and ceremonies
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The only generic and diachronic study of learned and popular lament and its socio-cultural contexts throughout Greek tradition in which a great diversity of sources are integrated to offer a comprehensive and penetrating synthesis.

Burial and Ancient Society

Burial and Ancient Society PDF Author: Ian Morris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521387385
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This study of the changing relationships between burial rituals and social structure in Early Iron Age Greece will be required reading for all archaeologists working with burial evidence, in whatever period. This book differs from many topical studies of state formation in that unique and particular developments are given as much weight as those factors which are common to all early states. The ancient literary evidence and the relevant historical and anthropological comparisons are extensively drawn on in an attempt to explain the transition to the city-state, a development which was to have decisive effects for the subsequent development of European society.

Plutarch: Life of Antony

Plutarch: Life of Antony PDF Author: Plutarch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521284189
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This edition will be of interest to all Greek scholars, ancient historians, and also the students of English literature since the relevant discussions require no knowledge of Greek.

The Death Rituals of Rural Greece

The Death Rituals of Rural Greece PDF Author: Loring M. Danforth
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691218196
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This compelling text and dramatic photographic essay convey the emotional power of the death rituals of a small Greek village--the funeral, the singing of laments, the distribution of food, the daily visits to the graves, and especially the rite of exhumation. These rituals help Greek villagers face the universal paradox of mourning: how can the living sustain relationships with the dead and at the same time bring them to an end, in order to continue to live meaningfully as members of a community? That is the villagers' dilemma, and our own. Thirty-one moving photographs (reproduced in duotone to do justice to their great beauty) combine with vivid descriptions of the bereaved women of "Potamia" and with the words of the funeral laments to allow the reader an unusual emotional identification with the people of rural Greece as they struggle to integrate the experience of death into their daily lives. Loring M. Danforth's sensitive use of symbolic and structural analysis complements his discussion of the social context in which these rituals occur. He explores important themes in rural Greek life, such as the position of women, patterns of reciprocity and obligation, and the nature of social relations within the family.