During the 1970s, left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This is the first study of the impact of that political activism ...on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth, analyzing the cultural politics of left-wing organizations alongside the actual practices of their members. Through an examination of Maoists, Socialists, Euro-Communists, and pro-Soviet groups, it demonstrates that left-wing youth in Greece collaborated closely with comrades from both Western and Eastern European countries in developing their political stances. Moreover, young left-wingers in Greece appropriated American cultural products while simultaneously modeling some of their leisure and sexual practices on Soviet society. Still, despite being heavily influenced by cultures outside Greece, left-wing youth played a major role in the reinvention of a Greek "popular tradition." This book critically interrogates the notion of "sexual revolution" by shedding light on the contradictory sexual transformations in Greece to which young left-wingers contributed.
Housing is shaped by culturally-specific expectations about the kinds of architecture and furnishings that are appropriate; about how and where different activities should be carried out; and by and ...with whom. It is those expectations, and the wider social and cultural systems of which they are a part, that are explored in this volume. At the same time, the book as a whole argues two larger points: first, that while houses, households and families have in recent years become increasingly important as objects of inquiry in Greek and Roman contexts, their potential as sources of information about broader social-historical issues has yet to be fully realised; and second, that greater weight and independence should be given to material culture as a source for studying ancient history. The book will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and scholars.
This book makes use of recently discovered archaeological and epigraphical evidence to give an account of the religious life of ancient Athens. The city's many festivals are discussed in detail, with ...attention to recent anthropological theory; so too, for instance, are the cults of households and of smaller groups, the role of religious practice and argumentation in public life, the authority of priests, the activities of religious professionals such as seers and priestesses, magic, and the place of theatrical representations of the gods within public attitudes to the divine. A final section considers the sphere of activity of the various gods, and takes Athens as a uniquely detailed test case for the structuralist approach to polytheism.
Though Greece is traditionally seen as an agrarian society, cattle were essential to Greek communal life, through religious sacrifice and dietary consumption. Cattle were also pivotal in mythology: ...gods and heroes stole cattle, expected sacrifices of cattle, and punished those who failed to provide them. The Cattle of the Sun ranges over a wealth of sources, both textual and archaeological, to explore why these animals mattered to the Greeks, how they came to be a key element in Greek thought and behavior, and how the Greeks exploited the symbolic value of cattle as a way of structuring social and economic relations.
Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical ...Athens--citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah Kamen illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy.
Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.
Thucydides, Pericles, and the Idea of Athens in the Peloponnesian War is the first comprehensive study of Thucydides' presentation of Pericles' radical redefinition of the city of Athens during the ...Peloponnesian War. Martha Taylor argues that Thucydides subtly critiques Pericles' vision of Athens as a city divorced from the territory of Attica and focused, instead, on the sea and the empire. Thucydides shows that Pericles' reconceputalization of the city led the Athenians both to Melos and to Sicily. Toward the end of his work, Thucydides demonstrates that flexible thinking about the city exacerbated the Athenians' civil war. Providing a thorough critique and analysis of Thucydides' neglected book 8, Taylor shows that Thucydides praises political compromise centered around the traditional city in Attica. In doing so, he implicitly censures both Pericles and the Athenian imperial project itself.
Humane ideals were central to the image Athenians had of themselves and their city during the classical period. Tragic plays, which formed a part of civic education, often promoted pity and ...compassion. But it is less clear to what extent Athenians embraced such ideals in daily life. How were they expected to respond, emotionally and pragmatically, to the suffering of other people? Under what circumstances? At what risk to themselves? In this book, Rachel Hall Sternberg draws on evidence from Greek oratory and historiography of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE to study the moral universe of the ancient Athenians: how citizens may have treated one another in times of adversity, when and how they were expected to help. She develops case studies in five spheres of everyday life: home nursing, the ransom of captives, intervention in street crimes, the long-distance transport of sick and wounded soldiers, and slave torture. Her close reading of selected narratives suggests that Athenians embraced high standards for helping behavior—at least toward relatives, friends, and some fellow citizens. Meanwhile, a subtle discourse of moral obligation strengthened the bonds that held Athenian society together, encouraging individuals to bring their personal behavior into line with the ideals of the city-state.
A persistent tradition existed in antiquity linking Caria with the island of Crete. This central theme of regional history is mirrored in the civic mythologies, cults and toponyms of southwestern ...Anatolia. This book explains why by approaching this diverse body of material with a broad chronological view, taking into account both the origins of this regional narrative and its endurance. It considers the mythologies in the light of archaeologically attested contacts during the Bronze Age, exploring whether such interaction could have left a residuum in later traditions. The continued relevance of this aspect of Carian history is then considered in the light of contacts during the Classical and Hellenistic periods, with analysis of how, and in which contexts, traditions survived. The Carians were an Anatolian people; however, their integration into the mythological framework of the Greek world reveals that interaction with the Aegean was a fundamental aspect of their history.
During the Persian Wars, Sparta and Athens worked in tandem to defeat what was, in terms of relative resources and power, the greatest empire in human history. For the decade and a half that ...followed, they continued their collaboration until a rift opened and an intense, strategic rivalry began. This text examines the grounds for their alliance, the reasons for its eventual collapse, and the first stage in an enduring conflict that would wreak havoc on Greece for six decades.
This book examines the history and economy of the region of the Cyclades during the late sixth through late fourth centuries bc. Although certain aspects of geography in the Cyclades remained ...constant through ancient Greek history, islanders were able to adapt to changing conditions and to changing hegemony imposed from outside the region, in order to increase their levels of economic prosperity. By the end of the Archaic period, many of these islands had constructed their own naval forces and monumental architecture, and also minted their own coins. Athens established a naval hegemony over the region during the fifth century, which eventually put an end to independent navies and coinage and set the tone for conditions in the Cyclades until the end of the Classical period. Until the Peloponnesian War the Athenians maintained stability but redirected a portion of the wealth generated from the export of local island products and from commerce to Athens, through the exaction of tribute and other forms of taxation. The end of the Peloponnesian War saw a period of shifting hegemonies during the early fourth century, the most influential being the Second Athenian League. After this second period of Athenian hegemony came to an end, the Cyclades renewed local monumental construction and the issue of local coinage during the second half of the fourth century. This took place at a time when Athens became more dependent upon grain, including grain shipped on routes through the Cyclades, and when the Athenians took steps to promote commerce. The Cyclades prospered during this period due to their mutual economic interests with Athens.
