Jonathan M. Hall

Polis, Community, and Ethnic Identity

Traditionally, treatments of the Archaic Greek world have been dominated by discussion of the polis - a term that is often loosely (but not entirely erroneously) translated as “city-state.” Victor Ehrenberg, who in many ways pioneered modern research into the origins of the polis , described it as the very “foundation and support of Greek culture”; more recently, Oswyn Murray has characterized it as “the dominant form of government in the Greek-speaking world for roughly a thousand years, enabling city dwellers to control directly all or much of their own government, and to feel a local loyalty to an extent which no modern society has achieved.” In reality, this emphasis on the polis has tended to obscure the fact that in numerous regions of Greece, especially in the north and west, it was not the exclusive or even dominant form of sociopolitical organization until fairly late in the Classical period. On the other hand, there is no denying that much of the literature that survives from the Archaic period betrays the perspective of poets for whom the polis constituted an important point of reference, and this should at least serve to justify continued interest in how and when this characteristically Greek institution arose. To answer these questions, however, we first need to define what the polis was. Although it would be a mistake to assume that every polis developed in the same way or as a result of the same factors, there are nevertheless certain shared defining characteristics that can be identified.

The role of language in Greek ethnicities

The subject of ethnic identity in antiquity has a long-established – if somewhat dubious – pedigree. From as early as the end of the eighteenth century, scholars such as Friedrich von Schlegel were applying themselves to the art, customs and political forms which were thought to characterise Greek Stamme such as the Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians and Athenians. It was the nineteenth century, however, which witnessed a more systematic treatment of ancient ethnicity, as scholarly intuitions were subjected to the rigorous interrogation that was demanded by the newly-established discipline of Altertumswissenschaft . Typical of the new breed of professional scholars was Karl Otfried Muller, who devoted himself to analysing the Volksgeist of groups such as the Etruscans, the Minyans and – most famously – the Dorians.

Autochthonous Autocrats: The Tyranny Of The Athenian Democracy

The purpose of this chapter is to explore why, in Aristotles eyes, the fifth-century democracy of Athens could have resembled a tyranny. In official discourse, the Athenian democracy of the fifth century construed itself as a rejection of tyranny - and,more specifically, as a reaction to the autocratic rule of the Pisistratid family which lasted from around the middle of the sixth century down to 510 BCE. The autocratic pedigree of the Athenian democracy and the ambiguous tension that this generated are encapsulated in the mythical figure of Theseus. Aristophanes is also a valuable source for the theme of democratic deception. Athens seems to have adopted a similar strategy once it found itself at the head of a hegemonic league which consisted primarily of city-states that professed an Ionian heritage. Keywords: Aristophanes; Aristotles eyes; Athenian democracy; democratic deception

A singular antiquity: archaeology and Hellenic identity in twentieth-century Greece

marketing of ‘local’ identities even as it finds genuine Otherness threatening. What appeared peculiar to this reader, at least, is that this final chapter appears to open a new space for critique of the present that the author chooses not to pursue. It questions the cosmopolitanism that has infused the European (Union) present with an acceptance of ‘difference lite’, which in Greece has resulted in a new re-valuing of Greece’s Balkan pasts. Calotychos sees in the new Greece a growing self-confidence, even though it is not clear from Calotychos’s discussion what the roots of that self-confidence may be. At the end of the final chapter, he observes that