Paul Cartledge

Hellenistic and Roman Sparta : a tale of two cities

Preface Maps Part I. Hellenistic Sparta, Paul Cartledge 1. In the shadow of empire: Mantinea to Charonea 2. Resistance to Macedon: the revolt of Agis III 3. The new Hellenism of Areus I 4. Reform - or revolution? Agis IV and Cleomenes III 5. Sparta between Achaea and Rome: the rule of Nabis 6. Sparta from Achaea to Rome (188-146 BC) Part II. Roman Sparta, antony Spawforth 7. Sparta between sympolity and municipality 8. Sparta in the Greek renaissance 9. Pagans and Christians: Sparta in late antiquity 10. The Roman city and its territory 11. Local government I: machinery and functions 12. Local government II: the social and economic base 13. High culture and agonistic festivals 14. The image of tradition 15. Epilogue: Sparta from late antiquity to the Middles Ages Appendices I. The monuments of Roman Sparta II. Catalogues of magistrates III. Hereditary tendencies in the Curial Class IV. Foreign agonistai at Sparta

Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?

The neologism ‘sexist’ has gained entry to an Oxford Dictionary, The Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English , third edition (1974), where it is defined as ‘derisive of the female sex and expressive of masculine superiority’. Thus ‘sexpot’ and ‘sex kitten’, which are still defined in exclusively feminine terms in the fifth edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1976), have finally met their lexicographical match. This point about current English usage has of course a serious, and general, application. For language reflects, when it does not direct, prevailing social conceptions. Thus it is not accidental that there is no masculine counterpart to the word ‘feminism’. ‘Male chauvinism’, the nearest we have come to coining one, is more emotive than descriptive and so involves ambiguity; while ‘sexism’, even when it is given an exclusively masculine connotation, is still, formally, sexually neutral. ‘Feminism’, by contrast, unequivocally denotes the striving to raise women to an equality of rights and status with men. It has been suggested, it is true, that there were inchoate feminist movements or tendencies in the ancient Greek world, for example in the Classical Athens of Aristophanes and Plato (where, as we shall see, they would certainly have been in place). But feminism in the modern sense did not really emerge before the eighteenth century; and in Britain, for instance, it was only with the passage in 1975 of the Employment Protection, Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts that women raised themselves on to an all but equal footing with their male fellows — at any rate in the technical, juridical sense.

Literacy in the Spartan oligarchy

Somewhere in the first half of the eighth century B.C. the ‘graphic counterpart of speech’ (Diringers nice expression) and a fully phonetic alphabetic script were respectively reintroduced and invented in Greek lands. Thus the Greeks achieved the feat, unique among European peoples, of rediscovering (after an interval of more than four centuries) the literacy they had lost. The alphabet of course marked an enormous advance on the clumsy ‘Linear B’ syllabic script, in the sense that it made it possible ‘to write easily and read unambiguously about anything which the society can talk about’. However, as Harveys exhaustive study demonstrated, even in Classical Athens, where popular literacy attained the highest level hitherto known in the Greek world, there were still significant areas of illiteracy or at best semi-literacy. Widespread literacy cannot simply be deduced (as it was by Goody and Watt) from the mere availability of a phonetic alphabetic script of the Greek type. Further factors must be taken into account. One of these, Harvey suggested, is the political system. For although ‘democracy and literacy do not necessarily go hand in hand’ (p. 590), the high level of literacy at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries was perhaps ‘not entirely unconnected with the fact that she was a democracy’ (p. 623).

Ancient Greek political thought in practice

Ancient Greece was a place of tremendous political experiment and innovation, and it was here too that the first serious political thinkers emerged. Using carefully selected case studies, Professor Cartledge investigates the dynamic interaction between ancient Greek political thought and practice from early historic times to the early Roman Empire. Of concern throughout are three major issues: first, the relationship of political thought and practice; second, the relevance of class and status to explaining political behaviour and thinking; and, third, democracy – its invention, development and expansion, and extinction, prior to its recent resuscitation and even apotheosis. In addition, monarchy in various forms and at different periods, and the peculiar political structures of Sparta, are treated in detail over a chronological range extending from Homer to Plutarch. The book provides an introduction to the topic for all students and nonspecialists who appreciate the continued relevance of ancient Greece to political theory and practice today.

Hellenistic constructs : essays in culture, history, and historiography

CONTRIBUTORS: S. Alcock, R. Bagnall, K. Bringmann, P. Cartledge, A. Eckstein, P. Garnsey, P. Green, E. Gruen, G. Herman, J.L. Ferrary, H. Mattlingly, F. Millar, D. Thompson

Like a worm I' the bud? A heterology of classical Greek slavery

‘Classical’ Greece? The very term exudes stability, permanence, confidence, authority, excellence, perfection (in a teleological sense), even possibly glory – as in ‘The Glory that was Greece’. Consider, for instance, the following paean of eulogy pronounced in 1914: ‘The Greeks were explorers in every field of knowledge and art, where they showed in the highest degree the desire for truth and the love of the beautiful’. All of them, always? In any case, to quote that well-known philosopher Pontius Pilate (John 18. 37–8), what is Truth, and is not Beauty in the eye of the beholder?

What is Social History Now

I have at the outset two confessions, or at any rate statements, to make. First, I am not myself a social historian, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I would not so label myself. Second, I am an ancient historian, specifically a historian of ancient Greece, and therefore belong to a happy breed not exactly notorious for its devotion to critically reflexive historiography. There are, however, exceptions; indeed, as one of them, the late Sir Moses Finley, was fond of saying, there are always exceptions.1

Classical Greek agriculture: Recent work and alternative views

When the economic basis of a great civilisation is at issue, historians are bound to disagree strongly, and controversy can only be intensified when the available primary evidence is inadequate in both quantity and quality. Such is the case with the recent study of agriculture in the ancient Greek world. The two very different general books under review here nicely complement each other both in scope and approach, and provide an excellent introduction to the many unresolved, and too often irresolvable, questions concerning the ideology and practice, political, economic, social and religious, of ancient Greek agriculture. Ancient Greek Agriculture: An Introduction, by Signe Isager and Jens Erik Skydsgaard. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Pp.x + 234. £40 (hardback). ISBN 0 415 00164 1 Land and Labour in the Greek World, by Alison Burford. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Pp.x + 290. £28.50 (hardback). ISBN 0 8018 4463 0

Slavery in the Roman Republic

INTRODUCTION The Republican period of Romes history occupied half a millennium, from the late sixth century to the late first century bc . It was characterised by a form of government that distributed public rights and responsibilities among a group of interdependent entities – magistrates, senate, citizens – in a cohesive system intended to prevent the monopolisation of political power by a single individual. At the beginning of the period Rome was a small city-state, comparable to and no more distinctive than many other communities in peninsular, especially central, Italy. By the end of the period it was by far the largest city in the ancient Mediterranean world – larger than any other European city until the modern era – with a population conventionally estimated at close to one million. It controlled a vast empire embracing much of continental Europe, parts of North Africa, and regions in the Near East, and indirectly its influence extended further still. The preservation of political freedom within the civic community was a hallmark of Republican government, but it did not deter or prevent Romans from subjecting others to their will. There are no contemporary sources to show with any certainty how the Republican form of government was instituted. Later Romans believed that it came into existence as a reaction against tyrannical rule exercised in the sixth century by a sequence of overlords of foreign, especially Etruscan, origin (which modern scholarship denies). At no point, however, was the constitution given written form.

Slaves in Greek literary culture

INTRODUCTION Slaves are as conspicuous in the culture of the classical Greeks as they were important in their society. The action of the Iliad begins with a quarrel over a captive slave woman. In the Odyssey , Odysseus must re-establish his relationship with his slaves as well as with his wife to complete his homecoming. Philosophers and tragedians explored the relationship of luck and character using enslavement as a paradigm of catastrophe. The ‘clever slave’ in New Comedy took over important and subversive aspects of the comic hero of Old Comedy. Only in the genre of history with its increasingly narrow focus on politics and war were slaves largely absent. But even Greek historiography – and political discourse in general – though mainly devoid of actual slaves, cannot be understood without reference to the central concepts of political freedom or slavery. And politics was not the only place: Greeks used the metaphor of slavery in an astonishingly wide variety of contexts. This mass of evidence is, however, obviously one-sided. The surviving literature of classical Greece was almost all written by slave masters and for its free, male citizens. Slaves – like women – are represented, especially in epic and drama, but they do not represent themselves. Even if we confine ourselves to the views and attitudes of the free and of masters, the burning questions modern interlocutors would ask do not find ready answers: how did they justify and defend slavery?