POLISPub Date : 2024-01-03DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340426
Robin Lane Fox
{"title":"OPW and de Ste. Croix: the Past and Present Views of a Pupil","authors":"Robin Lane Fox","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340426","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This survey, by a pupil of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix and eventual successor in his Oxford job, combines personal recollections of de Ste. Croix’s horizons and intellectual range with a penetrating study of his <em>Origins of the Peloponnesian War</em>, its underlying debts and detailed contentions. It addresses his, and Thucydides’, engagement with origins and causes, his central contention about votes by the Spartans and their allies on whether to go to war, the roles of Corinth, Megara and the much-discussed Megarian decree. It also presents a close reading of an Athenian involvement in Macedon and the north and its relevance to de Ste. Croix’s views on Athenian imperialism. It then sets the book’s conclusions in a wider context, ranging from modern writings on the origins of war to its concluding echo of Lenin.</p>","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139375940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2024-01-03DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340431
Stephen Hodkinson
{"title":"The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Chapter IV, and the Development of Spartan Historical Studies","authors":"Stephen Hodkinson","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340431","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the impact on Spartan historiography of Chapter <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">IV</span> of de Ste. Croix’s <em>Origins of the Peloponnesian War</em>, focusing on his discussions of Spartan politics and society in Sections v–vi. These sections fit oddly within the overall chapter, but they blew a breath of fresh air into Spartan studies through their revisionist approach, intimations of the socio-economic bases of policy-making, and extended accounts of ‘real-life’ political episodes across the classical period. Along with Moses Finley’s near-contemporary article on Sparta, <em><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">OPW</span></em> significantly influenced the following generation of British historians (including the author), although they often adopted different interpretations or developed new perspectives on Spartan society only hinted at by de Ste. Croix. <em><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">OPW</span></em> also had an important impact on Western European historiography on Spartan politics. Its combination of constitutional and societal approaches gives it an enduring currency in the context of developing Historical Institutionalist approaches to political studies.</p>","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139376104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2024-01-03DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340427
Leah Lazar
{"title":"Old Comedy and Athenian Power","authors":"Leah Lazar","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340427","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, jumping off from Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s treatment of Aristophanes and the Megarian Decree, I argue that Old Comedy is an underutilised category of evidence for the study of the popular intellectual history of Athens. My particular focus here is the Athenian empire: how does Old Comedy present Athenian power and what does this comic presentation tell us about how at least some ordinary Athenians understood it? Can one popular Athenian imaginary of the empire be constructed through analysis of Aristophanes and his contemporaries? I will argue that Old Comedy, taken as a corpus, presents a very Athenian empire, that is to say one focused on Athens and its exploitation of others. The comic poets, therefore, likely assumed parochialism and myopia on the part of their audience, but also significant topical interest in the mechanisms of Athenian power, particularly those which brought revenue to Athens. This impression of highly topical engagement with the empire is corroborated by bringing Comedy into dialogue with other sources, in particular the epigraphic record.</p>","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139376183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340417
Geoffrey Bakewell
{"title":"Mining Plato’s Cave: Silver Mining, Slavery, and Philosophical Education","authors":"Geoffrey Bakewell","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340417","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Allegory of the Cave (Pl. Resp. 514a1–520e2) is often analyzed in terms of metaphysical, epistemological, political, and psychic hierarchies that are clarified and reinforced by philosophical education. But the Allegory also contains an important historical allusion to the silver mining that took place in classical Attica. Examining the Cave in light of the enslaved miners around Lavrio leads us to reconsider the philosophical ‘liberation’ ( λύσιν … τῶν δεσμῶν , 515c4) at the Allegory’s heart in the context of Athenian slavery and Plato’s thoughts on the practice. Elsewhere in his work Plato generally uses servile metaphors in two ways: to depict ‘bad’ internal psychic subjection and ‘good’ submission to logos as manifested in various entities. This historical dimension of the Allegory works to undermine the ostensible naturalness of the slave/citizen distinction and suggest that philosophical education has the potential to ‘free’ the former and ‘subjugate’ the latter. The implication that these juridical categories are, to an extent, arbitrary and mutable reveals important differences between Plato’s views and those of his classical peers, and it adds to the dialogue’s protreptic dimension for its readers then and now.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"157 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136377839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340415
Leo Trotz-Liboff
{"title":"Writing as Pharmakon and the Limits of Law in Plato’s Statesman, Phaedrus, and Laws","authors":"Leo Trotz-Liboff","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340415","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the Statesman and Phaedrus Plato addresses the problem inherent to law of how a general rule can be applied appropriately to particular circumstances. Previous scholarship has shown the connection between these dialogues’ critiques of written law and writing, a similarity this paper argues extends to the comparison of writing to a pharmakon (‘drug’) in both dialogues. Furthermore, close textual analysis shows that the Stranger’s discussion of measure in the Statesman parallels Socrates’ concept of ‘logographic necessity’ in the Phaedrus according to which the parts of a perfect writing cohere like limbs within an organism. Logographic necessity and measure raise the possibility of overcoming the weakness of writing and written law respectively. Ultimately, the Laws recapitulates these issues to reveal an insuperable gap between legal and philosophic writing. Envisioning the ideal of perfect law is, however, necessary to see how law falls short of what philosophy as Platonic dialogue achieves.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136377840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340419
Otto H. Linderborg
{"title":"Diffusion of Political Ideas between Ancient India and Greece: Early Theories of the Origins of Monarchy","authors":"Otto H. Linderborg","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340419","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This investigation examines the question of whether the similar theories of the origins of monarchy encountered in certain early Greek and Indian literary sources should be taken as evidence of cross-cultural diffusion of political ideas. The paper argues against the alternative explanation, according to which the similarity in form in the Greek and Indian versions of the kingship theory is rooted in similar social processes, by exposing how the earliest extant Greek version of the theory seems to build on a prototype most closely mirrored in one early Indian source.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136378030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340418
Mark C. Brennan
{"title":"Aristotle on Friendship in Association","authors":"Mark C. Brennan","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340418","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper argues that Aristotle’s account of friendship can be applied equally to cases of friendship in association and personal friendship. It argues that both types of friendship are similar insofar as both are primarily concerned with the common good that serves as the basis of the friendship. This notion of the common good is what allows Aristotle to draw a connection between personal relationships, the more circumscribed associations, and the political association. This focus on the common good allows one to look to the political association to inform one’s understanding of both friendship and justice in both the smaller associations and in personal relationships.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"156 6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136377836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340413
Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, Kleanthis Mantzouranis
{"title":"Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis: a Response to Our Critics","authors":"Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, Kleanthis Mantzouranis","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340413","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We reply to the objections raised in Polis 40 (2023) by Ryan Balot and Manuel Knoll to our original paper ‘Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis ’, published in Polis 39 (2022). We argue that Knoll is correct in arguing that Aristotle distinguishes between democratic views of distributive justice and his own, but wrong to argue that this wholly resolves a tension in Aristotle’s exposition between views of democratic justice as, in one sense, based on equality ‘according to worth’ and in another based on arithmetic equality. Balot, we contend, misconstrues our original argument when he represents us as claiming that, according to Aristotle, the injustice which leads agents to engage in stasis exists entirely in their own minds. We did not and do not hold that view and therefore ( pace Balot) are in no way committed to any of its alleged implications. Balot’s misunderstanding on that point entails a wholesale misrepresentation of our original argument.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136377835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340414
Gillian Hunnisett, Sara MacDonald
{"title":"Sophoclean Epistemology: Justice in the Theban Plays","authors":"Gillian Hunnisett, Sara MacDonald","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340414","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles shows that neither individual reason nor piety are singularly sufficient for either individual happiness or the common good. Human understanding is dependent on a decentering of the individual, such that the reason of the wider community, including that of the gods, can augment the limitations of individual perspective. Sophocles shows not only the dependence of faith and reason on one another, but the degree to which both are dependent on reciprocal good will within a community.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"157 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136378028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
POLISPub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340422
Robert A. Ballingall
{"title":"Plato’s Second Republic: An Essay on the Laws, written by André Laks","authors":"Robert A. Ballingall","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340422","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136377838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}