{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Mark R. Thatcher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The conclusion uses the Second Punic War as a test case for the results reached throughout the book. Hannibal attempted to insert himself into Croton’s polis identity by associating himself with Hera Lacinia, even as Croton itself asserted its Greekness in opposition to the Bruttians. Multiple identities thus impacted the politics of the city and the region, just as they had for centuries. The remainder of the conclusion recapitulates the main arguments and suggests avenues for further research.","PeriodicalId":408044,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115639973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Continuity and Change in the Third Century","authors":"Mark R. Thatcher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter uses two case studies to explore how identities both changed and stayed the same under the changing conditions of the Hellenistic period. First, in southern Italy, Hellenic identity gained increasing prominence, especially at Taras, which understood the growing presence of non-Greeks (including Rome) as a barbarian invasion and invited Pyrrhus to assist it in support of Greekness. This discourse was not universal, however, since other cities such as Thurii were more concerned with local identities and resisting Tarantine imperialism. Second, Syracusan identity in the age of King Hieron II was articulated by three major factors: its sense of Greekness, emphasizing its role as defender of the Sicilian Greeks against barbarian enemies; the memory of the city’s past greatness, especially under the Deinomenids; and pride in its Dorian, Corinthian, and Peloponnesian origins.","PeriodicalId":408044,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126009252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ruling Grain-Rich Sicily","authors":"Mark R. Thatcher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the articulation and political valences of Sicilian regional identity. Although Sicily as a region was defined according to geographical criteria, namely, the boundaries of the island, a subjective sense of Sicilian-ness developed that relied in part on two goddesses, Demeter and Kore (or Persephone). Myths described them as patrons of the whole island, making Sicily the location of key events in their biographies, and their cults were widespread there, including among non-Greeks. Sicilian leaders and tyrants from the Deinomenids onward used the two goddesses to create legitimacy for themselves. Moreover, a second criterion also contributed to Sicilian identity: a sense of contrast with Greeks of the mainland, especially Athens, beginning around the time of the Persian Wars and culminating with Athens’s Sicilian Expeditions. By excluding mainland Greeks and possibly including non-Greeks on the island, Sicilian identity cut across familiar ethnic categories.","PeriodicalId":408044,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122916202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shifting Identities in Thucydides’s Sicily","authors":"Mark R. Thatcher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the politics of identity in the Sicilian theater of the Peloponnesian War. Initially, most poleis in Sicily formed alliances based on ethnicity (either Dorian or Ionian), a form of kinship diplomacy that was typical in Greek politics. Camarina, however, allied with the Ionians despite being Dorian due to its unique polis identity, which had been shaped by hostility toward its mother city, Syracuse. Political decisions were thus conditioned by identities, and these, in turn, were often shaped by political rhetoric. An analysis of two speeches of the Syracusan politician Hermocrates, as rewritten by Thucydides, reveals a series of arguments, based on different identities in different contexts, that persuaded poleis to follow his recommendations. Identity thus played a central role in Greek politics, since the changing salience of different identities enabled poleis to make decisions on the basis of multiple identities over a short time.","PeriodicalId":408044,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128755075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Syracusan Tyranny and Identity Politics","authors":"Mark R. Thatcher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter looks at how tyrants of Syracuse—the Deinomenids, Gelon and Hieron, in the fifth century and Dionysius I in the fourth—manipulated and reshaped three different identities to create legitimacy for their positions: Syracusan polis identity, Dorian ethnicity, and Greekness. Hieron emphasized Dorian ethnicity as a way of unifying his expansive domains. He also reoriented Syracusan polis identity to focus on the city’s urban landscape, especially the island of Ortygia and the spring of Arethusa, to incorporate new citizens within the community and to inscribe himself within it. The Deinomenids also emphasized their victory over Carthage at Himera in 480, encouraging their subjects to privilege their identities as Greeks over other self-perceptions, and Dionysius did much the same during wars against Carthage in the late fifth century. The chapter closes by examining how citizens responded to tyrants’ identity politics when the tyrants lost power.","PeriodicalId":408044,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128089646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Becoming Achaean in Italy","authors":"Mark R. Thatcher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197586440.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the Achaeans of southern Italy through case studies of two communities, Croton and Metapontion. It first examines the creation of Achaean ethnicity, which occurred not through a single shared process but rather through a series of conflicts between different Greek communities in Italy. Croton articulated its ethnic and polis identities in intertwining ways, through a series of foundation myths, coins, and a prominent cult of Hera, which worked together to claim ethnic origins both in the northern Peloponnese and from the Homeric Achaean heroes and, at the same time, to define a distinctively Crotoniate polis identity. Metapontion followed a similar process but with different materials and shaped by different circumstances, since its identity was defined partly by outsiders using it for their own purposes. The two cities did not form a single unified ethnic group but rather used Achaean ethnicity to articulate their identities separately.","PeriodicalId":408044,"journal":{"name":"The Politics of Identity in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133779927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}