El patronazgo rural en la Atenas clásica (original) (raw)

Recent works have questioned the idea of an absolute replacement of private patronage by a kind of community patronage in Pericles’ times. These reconsiderations have limited the ex-tent of this change, differentiating the urban habitat from the rural one, or have indicated the continuity of patronage but with a language that would notice not the asymmetry but the reci-procity between both parts. This article attempts to consider the effects of the development of democracy on the institution of patronage, especially from the second half of the fifth century B.C. According to this, it is postulated that, even granting certain continuity of the relations of patronage, from that moment political practices and a genuine popular participation made the patronage to decrease in the same way as aristocratic leadership had to be adapted to the political framework imposed by the Athenian democracy.