Demetrios Poliorketes, Kallias of Sphettos, and the Panathenaia (original) (raw)
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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.
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"Demetrius Poliorcetes, Kairos, and the Sacred and Civil Calendars of Athens," Historia 67.3 (2018) 258-87
This paper demonstrates that Demetrius Poliorcetes repeatedly scheduled to arrive in Athens during important religious festivals. The commemoration of these instances of kairos enshrined Demetrius in the calendars of the city and furthered his program of divine self-fashioning. The recognition that Demetrius and his Athenian partisans were attentive to timing helps to explain the nature of the divine honors the king received in Athens as well as his desire to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries in irregular fashion. When the relationship between city and king soured, timing was a central component of the effort to remove Deme-trius from the cults and calendars of Athens.
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During the turbulent last years of the fifth century BC, Athens twice suffered the overthrow of democracy and the subsequent establishment of oligarchic regimes. In an in-depth treatment of both political revolutions, the volume examines how the Athenians responded to these events, at the level both of the individual and of the corporate group. Interdisciplinary in approach, this account brings epigraphical and archaeological evidence to bear on a discussion which until now has largely been based on texts. It particularly focuses on the recreation of democracy and the city, both ritually and physically, in the aftermath of the coups and demonstrates that, whilst reconciliation after civil strife is difficult and contentious, it is also crucial for rebuilding a united society. Theories of remembering and forgetting are applied and offer a new way of understanding the dynamics in Athens at this time. Shortlisted for the Runciman Award 2012.