Status in Classical Athens

Status in Classical Athens PDF Author: Deborah E Kamen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical Athens--citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah 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. Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.

Status in Classical Athens

Status in Classical Athens PDF Author: Deborah E Kamen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical Athens--citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah 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. Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.

Status in Classical Athens

Status in Classical Athens PDF Author: Deborah Kamen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691195978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
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.

Law and Social Status in Classical Athens

Law and Social Status in Classical Athens PDF Author: Virginia J. Hunter
Publisher: Oxford [England] : Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199240111
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
'Compact and clever collection of essays.' -Journal of Hellenic StudiesThe subject of this collection is the articulation of law and social status in classical Athens. More particularly, the work concentrates on the way in which the law of Athens constructed and sustained social status by enshrining privileges for some citizens and disabilities for metics and slaves. As a whole, it reinforces the reality of three juridically defined status groups whose role in society and whose personal lives were deeply affected by their place in the prevailing hierarchy.

Insults in Classical Athens

Insults in Classical Athens PDF Author: Deborah Kamen
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299328007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Scholarly investigations of the rich field of verbal and extraverbal Athenian insults have typically been undertaken piecemeal. Deborah Kamen provides an overview of this vast terrain and synthesizes the rules, content, functions, and consequences of insulting fellow Athenians. The result is the first volume to map out the full spectrum of insults, from obscene banter at festivals, to invective in the courtroom, to slander and even hubristic assaults on another's honor. While the classical city celebrated the democratic equality of "autochthonous" citizens, it counted a large population of noncitizens as inhabitants, so that ancient Athenians developed a preoccupation with negotiating, affirming, and restricting citizenship. Kamen raises key questions about what it meant to be a citizen in democratic Athens and demonstrates how insults were deployed to police the boundaries of acceptable behavior. In doing so, she illuminates surprising differences between antiquity and today and sheds light on the ways a democratic society valuing "free speech" can nonetheless curb language considered damaging to the community as a whole.

The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420-AD 1804

The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420-AD 1804 PDF Author: David Eltis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521840686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 777

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Book Description
The various manifestations of coerced labour between the opening up of the Atlantic world and the formal creation of Haiti.

Citizenship in Classical Athens

Citizenship in Classical Athens PDF Author: Josine Blok
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521191459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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

Children and Childhood in Classical Athens

Children and Childhood in Classical Athens PDF Author: Mark Golden
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421416875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
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.

Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens

Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens PDF Author: Ryan K. Balot
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691220158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
In this original and rewarding combination of intellectual and political history, Ryan Balot offers a thorough historical and sociological interpretation of classical Athens centered on the notion of greed. Integrating ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, and drawing on modern political thought, the author demonstrates that the Athenian discourse on greed was an essential component of Greek social development and political history. Over time, the Athenians developed sophisticated psychological and political accounts of acquisitiveness and a correspondingly rich vocabulary to describe and condemn it. Greed figures repeatedly as an object of criticism in authors as diverse as Solon, Thucydides, and Plato--all of whom addressed the social disruptions caused by it, as well as the inadequacy of lives focused on it. Because of its ethical significance, greed surfaced frequently in theoretical debates about democracy and oligarchy. Ultimately, critiques of greed--particularly the charge that it is unjust--were built into the robust accounts of justice formulated by many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. Such critiques of greed both reflected and were inextricably knitted into economic history and political events, including the coups of 411 and 404 B.C. Balot contrasts ancient Greek thought on distributive justice with later Western traditions, with implications for political and economic history well beyond the classical period. Because the belief that greed is good holds a dominant position in modern justifications of capitalism, this study provides a deep historical context within which such justifications can be reexamined and, perhaps, found wanting.

Democracy in Classical Athens

Democracy in Classical Athens PDF Author: Christopher Carey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474286372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
For two centuries classical Athens enjoyed almost uninterrupted democratic government. This was not a parliamentary democracy of the modern sort but a direct democracy in which all citizens were free to participate in the business of government. Throughout this period Athens was the cultural centre of Greece and one of the major Greek powers. This book traces the development and operation of the political system and explores its underlying principles. Christopher Carey assesses the ancient sources of the history of Athenian democracy and evaluates criticisms of the system, ancient and modern. He also provides a virtual tour of the political cityscape of ancient Athens, describing the main political sites and structures, including the theatre. With a new chapter covering religion in the democratic city, this second edition benefits from updates throughout that incorporate the latest research and recent archaeological findings in Athens. A clearer structure and layout make the book more accessible to students, as do extra images and maps along with a timeline of key events.

Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens

Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens PDF Author: James P. Sickinger
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807861162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
In this book, James Sickinger explores the use and preservation of public records in the ancient Athenian democracy of the archaic and classical periods. Athenian public records are most familiar from the survival of inscribed stelai, slabs of marble on which were published decrees, treaties, financial accounts, and other state documents. Working largely from evidence supplied by such inscriptions, Sickinger demonstrates that their texts actually represented only a small part of Athenian record keeping. More numerous and more widely used, he says, were archival texts written on wooden tablets or papyri that were made, and often kept for extended periods of time, by Athenian officials. Beginning with the legislation of Drakon in the seventh century B.C., Sickinger traces the growing use of written records by the Athenian state over the next three centuries, concluding with an examination of the Metroon, the state archive of Athens, during the fourth century. Challenging assumptions about ancient Athenian literacy, democracy, and society, Sickinger argues that the practical use and preservation of laws, decrees, and other state documents were hallmarks of Athenian public life from the earliest times.