James Roy

Polis and Oikos in Classical Athens

This paper is intended to discuss the household in which Classical Athenians typically lived, and the interest in it shown by the polis . Aristotle saw the household – in his vocabulary the oikos , or sometimes the oikia – as the basic social unit of the polis . He defines the primary relationships within the household as: master and slave, husband and wife, father and child. Clearly for Aristotle the household was paradeigmatically made up of the nuclear family together with whatever slaves the family owned. Modern scholars, while often differing about the roles of the members of the household, have generally accepted that the polis , and in particular Classical Athens, was indeed made up of a number of such households. The slaves role in the household, though important, was obviously different from the roles of the members of the nuclear family, and slaves will be left out of account in this paper.

Lepreon and Phyrkos in 421-420

Summary This paper examines the tension between Sparta and Elis in 421–420 over Lepreon and the fort at Phyrkos, reported principally by Thucydides. Sparta sent Brasideioi and neodamodeis to garrison Lepreon some months before the Olympic Games of 420. The Eleans objected to this garrison as a breach of the hieromenia (rather than the shorter ekecheiria) of the Games, and both the garrisoning and an attack on the fort at Phyrkos seem to have been part of a single military operation. Phyrkos was situated in the territory of Lepreon, probably near the River Neda. Thucydides presents as parallel Mantinean control of southern Parrhasia with a fort at Kypsela near the Lakonian frontier, and Elis desire to control Lepreon with a fort at Phyrkos near the Messenian frontier. He shows Sparta acting in 421 to remove unfriendly control of access to Spartas frontiers and to neutralise forts posted near the frontiers.