Between ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond) (original) (raw)
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Polemos as Kinêsis: the effects of the Peloponnesian War on Athenian society and culture
2017
This is a study of war as a force for socioeconomic , demographic, and political change in late fifth-century Athens. Thucydides famously describes the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) as the greatest kinêsis, or upheaval, ever to affect the Greek world. This protracted war placed great stress on the traditional social systems and institutions of the polis and the generation-long conflict is commonly regarded by historians as the nadir of classical Greek civilization and a cause of the decline of the Greek city-state. Drawing on the testimony of Thucydides and his literary contemporaries, as well as on archaeology and epigraphy, I offer a richly textured account of the impact of the Peloponnesian War on several key aspects of Athenian life. In the first half of my thesis, I consider the material effects of the war on Athenian agriculture and food supply, investigating how the Athenians, as individuals and as a state, adapted to the economic pressures generated by the war. I argue that the material deprivation of Attica throughout the war prompted adaptive economic strategies that hastened and intensified the monetization of Athens and that the rebuilding of the agricultural economy in the aftermath of the war was a key factor in the commercialization of Athenian society in the fourth century. In the second half of the thesis, I document, diachronically, the distribution of the various burdens and opportunities engendered by conditions of protracted warfare among different citizen groups. I then demonstrate how the performance of the two essential civic obligations, military and financial service, was invoked in renegotiations of social and political privilege in the last decade of the fifth century. While there was some centralization in respect of these two areas, I argue that military mobilization and state finance in Athens continued to reflect the organizational principles and civic commitments of the democratic citizen-state into the fourth century. Thus, while offering a fine-grained account of the ways in which the Peloponnesian War was seriously disruptive to life in Athens, I demonstrate that it did not destroy the material and political conditions that provided for the flourishing of the democratic polis.
This paper re-assesses the ongoing debate on the nature of the Second Athenian League, which oscillates between two extremes: either it was an empire from the beginning or it never was. Today the majority view is probably that the League was eventually transformed into a new Athenian Empire, even if the date, the details and the reasons behind such a transformation continue to be vigorously disputed. This reassessment is based on a re-examination of the evidence for the nature of the Aristoteles decree and the status of Athenian allies from 378 to 338, for Athens’s collection of allied suntaxeis (‘contributions’) and for its establishment of cleruchies, governors and garrisons. The paper also considers the reasons for, and the consequences of, the Social War as well as the evolution of Athenian foreign policy in connection with Philip II. The paper argues that the Second Athenian League developed as Athens’s tool not only to contest Sparta’s and then Thebes’s claims to dominance in the Greek world, but also to suppress regional hegemonies. Athens’s inability to quell local centres of power and to resist the rising threat of Macedonia made her acquiesce to cooperating with the Theban Federation and other regional hegemonies in the late 340s and early 330s, thus largely undoing the League’s original purpose even before its ultimate disintegration.
fully his decision to abandon the state as a useful concept (pp. 34-6) and not to explore its implications with greater sensitivity. He rushes on too quickly without having established suffi ciently what will remain a challenging, if not insupportable, proposition for many scholars. It is a pity that I. even passes over examining the structural qualities of these associations as organisations (cf. pp. 31-2), and thus despite the abundant data that he adduces concerning them provides little sense of how a typical genos, for example, might have run its affairs in the fourth century. Lacking such analysis, not only does the social character of the groups, and thus their degree or character of solidarity, remain obscure, but the mechanics by which their leading members coordinated with elements of the state like demes can hardly be invoked to test I.'s principal thesis. We are left also to wonder at how these associations operated with regard to the principal legislative bodies of the polis, the Boule and Ecclesia, much less the courts (for which some entities appointed members to serve as advocates, synêgoroi; cf. pp. 113-14, 149), where relations might not always have been so cooperative or cordial. Consequently, on the matter of property and fi nance, I.'s treatment is perhaps least rewarding, and reveals all the more tellingly why it is necessary to distinguish clearly institutions of the state from private parties. Students of Attic law and the ancient economy, for one, will have much to ponder in I.'s claims that members of associations had collective legal responsibility, say, before euthynai conducted by the polis just as with regard to the disposition of property (pp. 152-79). But, again, I.'s mixing of state institutions with private ones bedevils his discussion of the properties in question: he struggles with the concept of that property which the Athenians labelled dêmosion and assumes that the private associations acted as managers of what can only have been land and money owned by the state properly speaking (pp. 179-83). Not only does I. disregard the clear fact that the state appointed numerous magistrates to manage the property and allocate funds or other resources accordingly, usually for particular cults or major festivals, but goes so far as to claim that the dêmosion was nothing more than an ensemble of the property held by various associations (pp. 183-5)-that is, private groups like genê and phratries. What I.'s generally impressive study so well illuminates is how extensively the multitude of private and state entities overlapped and paralleled each other's efforts to fund and perform a welter of religious rituals across Attica. As to how the Athenians utilised such complex and many-layered forms of community for so long, I.'s stimulating contribution will no doubt shape serious inquiry for much time to come.
The Glue of Democracy: Economics, Warfare and Values in Classical Greece
Essays in Contemporary Economics, 2014
In the present essay we analyse the links between the emergence of new arms and forms of war-emergence, the phalanx and its hoplites, and the trieres at sea, its economic base, and the emergence of democracy in classical Greece. We propose that the unique till then in the world phalanx formation, led to the development of particular values and ethics, which again were the necessary conditions for the emergence of democracy, then again, a unique phenomenon. We then turn to seapower, which according to our analysis was a sufficient condition for the establishment and endurance of democracy, because seapower led to a community of economic interests, on which direct democracies like Ancient Athens, were based.
In this book P. analyses the military organisation of Athens and a number of related social, economic and cultural issues. As pointed out in the preface, each chapter (except Chapter 3) expands, updates or summarises earlier publications from the author. In Chapter 1 P. convincingly locates the main reasons for Athens' fifth-century military 'revolution' in her large population, economic advantage and democratic constitution. In regard to the latter, P.'s intelligent and stimulating approach is based on recent statistical findings by political analysts, which show how modern democracies, while generally avoiding fighting each other, tend to wage wars as frequently as other forms of government and to perform better: in turn, ancient Athens provides solid comparative ground to test modern theorisations of democracy and its war-making policies. P. rejects the long-settled idea that democracy emerged from military participation, although he acknowledges that social reforms tied to (esp. naval) warfare facilitated the process. Chapter 2 analyses in detail Athens' four military 'corps' (Thuc. 2.13). P. explains how hoplites were recruited and organised by tribal affiliation, but only briefly addresses the presence of metics among their ranks (p. 52), as attested by Thuc. 2.13.7 and possibly by the non-citizens recorded on tribal casualty lists. Archers are treated as the only regular (non-tribal) light corps: P.'s analysis would have been further enriched by a proper account of the role of other light troops (whose importance is acknowledged, pp. 78-81), which were clearly distinguished from the archers (e.g. Thuc. 8.71.2). The interesting case of the cavalry, which was often regarded by ancient literature as a safer service and concerningly attached to anti-democratic sentiments, would have benefited from a more extensive discussion of the evidence provided, for example, by dedicated casualty lists (SEG 48.83, IG II 2 5221-2: see P. Low, 'The Monuments to the War Dead in Classical Athens', in P. Low, G. Oliver, P.J. Rhodes [edd.], Cultures of Commemoration [2012], pp. 13-39, at 18-19) and public dedications (IG I 3 511-12) on the peculiar status and identity of the corps. The fourth-century decline of the archers and the cavalry is addressed mainly in terms of economic and political issues: these were certainly relevant, but there were also other detrimental factors, such as poor leadership, motivation, training and physical shape (e.g. Xen. Mem. 3.3.3-4, 3.5.5-7; Hipp. 1.13-14; B. Keim, 'Xenophon's Hipparchikos and the Athenian Embrace of Citizen philotimia', Polis 35 [2018], 499-522). Lastly we find the 'sailors' or, more correctly, the navy, for which P. highlights the interactions of different roles and social classes. His argument about the navy being an unappealing corps for farmers (pp. 45-6) does not seem to consider that the fleet regularly used to embark plenty of infantry, which means that infantrymen too, not just rowers, were often destined on overseas campaigns. This chapter, the longest in the book and one of the most engaging, convincingly dismisses assumptions about Solonian classes rigidly regulating access to Classical Athens' armed forces. Chapter 3 discusses ancient comedy and the navy. P. adopts a comparative approach with tragedy, historiography and especially forensic oratory, as a reflection of widespread popular views. The chapter explains why hoplite-centred warfare figures only as a part of Aristophanes' depictions and that his positive acknowledgement of the navy is consistent with the arguments of the orators.
2006
In this paper, I address the role of Athenian grain trade policy as a driving factor of the city’s growing power in the 5 and 4 centuries. Recent explanations of increasing Athenian hegemony and dominance over other poleis during this time period have focused on the role of warfare. I present an equally important, yet often-overlooked factor: food supply. Athens was dependent on grain imports throughout the Classical Period. Through examination of the ancient sources, I demonstrate that the increasing need to secure subsistence goods for Athens significantly propelled its ambition for power, causing a fundamental shift from a noninterventionist government policy to one of heavy intervention between the 5 and the 4 centuries BCE. This shift corresponded to an increasing complexity within the mechanisms of the city’s politics. It helped propel Athenian state formation and affected the dynamic of power and politics in the ancient Mediterranean world. © Ulrike Krotscheck. ulrikek@stanfo...