Revenge in Athenian Culture

Revenge in Athenian Culture PDF Author: Fiona McHardy
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0715635697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Revenge was an all important part of the ancient Athenian mentality, intruding on all forms of life - even where we might not expect to find it today. Revenge was of prime importance as a means of survival for the people of early Greece and remained in force as a ‘cultural emotion’ during the rise of the poleis, even when the socio-political situation allowed people to live together more peaceably. A key reason for this was the concept of revenge as ‘justice’, which survived strongly in Athens even after the rise of the law-courts. Only the radical thoughts of Plato suggested that revenge was immoral and did not constitute justice. Nevertheless, this does not mean that all forms of revenge were seen as equally acceptable in Athens. Through a close examination of the texts, a more complex picture of how the Athenian people viewed revenge emerges.

Revenge in Athenian Culture

Revenge in Athenian Culture PDF Author: Fiona McHardy
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 147250254X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Revenge was an all important part of the ancient Athenian mentality, intruding on all forms of life - even where we might not expect to find it today. Revenge was of prime importance as a means of survival for the people of early Greece and remained in force during the rise of the 'poleis'. The revenge of epic heroes such as Odysseus and Menalaus influences later thinking about revenge and suggests that avengers prosper. Nevertheless, this does not mean that all forms of revenge were seen as equally acceptable in Athens. Differences in response are expected depending on the crime and the criminal. Through a close examination of the texts, Fiona McHardy here reveals a more complex picture of how the Athenian people viewed revenge.

Revenge in Athenian Culture

Revenge in Athenian Culture PDF Author: Fiona McHardy
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472502531
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Revenge was an all important part of the ancient Athenian mentality, intruding on all forms of life - even where we might not expect to find it today. Revenge was of prime importance as a means of survival for the people of early Greece and remained in force during the rise of the 'poleis'. The revenge of epic heroes such as Odysseus and Menalaus influences later thinking about revenge and suggests that avengers prosper. Nevertheless, this does not mean that all forms of revenge were seen as equally acceptable in Athens. Differences in response are expected depending on the crime and the criminal. Through a close examination of the texts, Fiona McHardy here reveals a more complex picture of how the Athenian people viewed revenge.

Revenge in Athens

Revenge in Athens PDF Author: Rick Garnett
Publisher: Bookbaby
ISBN: 9781483568591
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Revenge in Athens" is the second novel by Rick Garnett, the author of "I, Paris", a critically acclaimed retelling of the story of Helen of Troy. Set in Athens in the turbulent years immediately following the war with Sparta, "Revenge in Athens" recounts the efforts of Lysias, the greatest of contemporary Athenian "lawyers", to defend a poor farmer accused of killing Eratosthenes, the aristocratic lover of his beautiful young wife. Beginning with two of the most dramatic of Lysias' surviving works, the book draws on numerous other sources, and on the author's imagination, to paint a non-idealized picture of a radically male-dominated society filled with passionate antagonisms and litigious zeal. In this framework Lysias, strives to extricate his client from the deadly toils of the complex Athenian legal system, and thereby also to achieve partial revenge for the death of brother at the hands of the same Eratosthenes. Lysias is aided in this effort by Timon, his skillful man-Friday, and his alluring, perspicacious mistress, Metaneira. Throughout the story the author weaves informative set pieces, revealing vignettes of often-neglected aspects of Athenian society, and vivid glimpses of the inner lives and relations of his characters, leading to a surprising finale.

Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature

Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature PDF Author: Maria Liatsi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110699613
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Interpretation of ancient Greek literature is often enough distorted by the preconceptions of modern times, especially on ancient morality. This is often equivalent to begging the question. If we think e.g. of aretê, which has different meanings in different contexts, we shall think in English (or in Modern Greek or in French or in German) and shall falsify the phenomena. If we are to understand the Greek concept e.g. of aretê we must study the nature of the situations in which it is applied. For it is an important fact in the study of Greek society that the Greeks used the one word (e.g. aretê) where we use different words. If we are to understand properly the texts, we have to view them in their historical and social context. Ancient Greek thought needs to be studied together with politics, ethics, and economic behaviour. Moreover, the best insights can be found in those who confine themselves to the terms of each ancient author's analysis. From this principle each of the contributions of the volume begins.

Revenge, Punishment and Anger in Ancient Greek Justice

Revenge, Punishment and Anger in Ancient Greek Justice PDF Author: Joe Whitchurch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350451568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Anger was the engine of justice in the ancient Greek world. It drove quests for vengeance which resulted in a variety of consequences, often harmful not only for the relevant actors but also for the wider communities in which they lived. From as early as the seventh century BCE, Greek communities had developed more or less formal means of imposing restrictions on this behaviour in the form of courts. However, this did not necessarily mean a less angry or vengeful society so much as one where anger and revenge were subject to public sanction and sometimes put to public use. By the fifth and fourth centuries, the Athenian polis had developed a considerably more sophisticated system for the administration of justice, encompassing a variety of laws, courts, and procedures. In essence, the justice it meted out was built on the same emotional foundations as that seen in Homer. Jurors gave licence to or restrained the anger of plaintiffs in private cases, and they punished according to the anger they themselves felt in public ones. The growing state in ancient Greek poleis did not bring about a transition away from angry private revenge to emotionless public punishment. Rather, anger came increasingly to move into the public sphere, the emotional driver of an early state that defended its community, and even itself, through its vengeful acts of punishment.

The Ideology of Revenge in Ancient Greek Culture

The Ideology of Revenge in Ancient Greek Culture PDF Author: Fiona Mary McHardy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy

Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy PDF Author: Anne Pippin Burnett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
We who live among tired and demystified political institutions are afraid that individuals unrestrained by the influence of the community may resort to crime and violence. Yet in an Attic vengeance play, a treacherous "criminal" triumphs over a victim. How could the city of Athens show its citizens Medea's murder of her children? Orestes' killing of his mother? Anne Burnett reveals a larger reality in these ancient plays, comparing them to later drama and finding in them forgotten and powerful meaning.

War and Violence in Ancient Greece

War and Violence in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Hans van Wees
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
The study of Greek warfare should involve much more than reconstructing the experience of combat or revisiting the great wars of the classical period. Here, a distinguished cast of international scholars explores beyond the usual thematic and chronological boundaries. Ranging from the heroes of Homer to the kings and cities of the hellenistic age, the contributors set war in the context of other forms of Greek violence, private and public. At every turn they challenge received ideas about the causes and conduct of war, its development and its place in Greek society and culture.

Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy

Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy PDF Author: Anne Pippin Burnett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520919955
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 745

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Book Description
Modern readings of ancient Athenian drama tend to view it as a presentation of social or moral problems, as if ancient drama showed the same realism seen on the present-day stage. Such views are belied by the plays themselves, in which supremely violent actions occur in a legendary time and place distinct both from reality and from the ethics of ordinary life. Offering fresh readings of Attic tragedy, Anne Pippin Burnett urges readers to peel away twentieth-century attitudes toward vengeance and reconsider the revenge tragedies of ancient Athens in their own context. After a consideration of how our view of Elizabethan drama has obscured an accurate view of the ancient tragedies, Burnett reviews early Greek notions of vengeance as expressed in the Odyssey, Heracles' tales, Pindar's odes, Attic judicial processes, and the legend of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Then, setting aside post-Platonic and Judeo-Christian notions of criminality, she provides new interpretations of all the Attic tragedies in which revenge is a central theme: Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Sophocles' Ajax, Electra, and Tereus, and Euripides' Children of Heracles, Hecuba, Medea, Electra, and Orestes. Burnett shows that for the ancients, revenge meant a redress of imbalances in both human and divine worlds, achieved through human actions. The vengeful heroines thus appear in a new light. Electra, Hecuba, Medea, and others cease to be the picture of depravity in dramas that are grotesque and sensational, and are instead representative human figures who respond with grandeur to the outsize demands of necessity and supernatural powers.

Ancient Greek Law in the 21st Century

Ancient Greek Law in the 21st Century PDF Author: Paula Perlman
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477315217
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The ancient Greeks invented written law. Yet, in contrast to later societies in which law became a professional discipline, the Greeks treated laws as components of social and political history, reflecting the daily realities of managing society. To understand Greek law, then, requires looking into extant legal, forensic, and historical texts for evidence of the law in action. From such study has arisen the field of ancient Greek law as a scholarly discipline within classical studies, a field that has come into its own since the 1970s. This edited volume charts new directions for the study of Greek law in the twenty-first century through contributions from eleven leading scholars. The essays in the book’s first section reassess some of the central debates in the field by looking at questions about the role of law in society, the notion of “contracts,” feuding and revenge in the court system, and legal protections for slaves engaged in commerce. The second section breaks new ground by redefining substantive areas of law such as administrative law and sacred law, as well as by examining sources such as Hellenistic inscriptions that have been comparatively neglected in recent scholarship. The third section evaluates the potential of methodological approaches to the study of Greek law, including comparative studies with other cultures and with modern legal theory. The volume ends with an essay that explores pedagogy and the relevance of teaching Greek law in the twenty-first century.