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.

'Compact and clever collection of essays.' -Journal of Hellenic StudiesThe subject of this collection is the articulation of law and social status in classical Athens. More particularly, the work concentrates on the way in which the law of Athens constructed and sustained social status by enshrining privileges for some citizens and disabilities for metics and slaves. As a whole, it reinforces the reality of three juridically defined status groups whose role in society and whose personal lives were deeply affected by their place in the prevailing hierarchy.

In this original and rewarding combination of intellectual and political history, Ryan Balot offers a thorough historical and sociological interpretation of classical Athens centered on the notion of greed. Integrating ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, and drawing on modern political thought, the author demonstrates that the Athenian discourse on greed was an essential component of Greek social development and political history. Over time, the Athenians developed sophisticated psychological and political accounts of acquisitiveness and a correspondingly rich vocabulary to describe and condemn it. Greed figures repeatedly as an object of criticism in authors as diverse as Solon, Thucydides, and Plato--all of whom addressed the social disruptions caused by it, as well as the inadequacy of lives focused on it. Because of its ethical significance, greed surfaced frequently in theoretical debates about democracy and oligarchy. Ultimately, critiques of greed--particularly the charge that it is unjust--were built into the robust accounts of justice formulated by many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. Such critiques of greed both reflected and were inextricably knitted into economic history and political events, including the coups of 411 and 404 B.C. Balot contrasts ancient Greek thought on distributive justice with later Western traditions, with implications for political and economic history well beyond the classical period. Because the belief that greed is good holds a dominant position in modern justifications of capitalism, this study provides a deep historical context within which such justifications can be reexamined and, perhaps, found wanting.

Scholarly investigations of the rich field of verbal and extraverbal Athenian insults have typically been undertaken piecemeal. Deborah Kamen provides an overview of this vast terrain and synthesizes the rules, content, functions, and consequences of insulting fellow Athenians. The result is the first volume to map out the full spectrum of insults, from obscene banter at festivals, to invective in the courtroom, to slander and even hubristic assaults on another's honor. While the classical city celebrated the democratic equality of "autochthonous" citizens, it counted a large population of noncitizens as inhabitants, so that ancient Athenians developed a preoccupation with negotiating, affirming, and restricting citizenship. Kamen raises key questions about what it meant to be a citizen in democratic Athens and demonstrates how insults were deployed to police the boundaries of acceptable behavior. In doing so, she illuminates surprising differences between antiquity and today and sheds light on the ways a democratic society valuing "free speech" can nonetheless curb language considered damaging to the community as a whole.

The various manifestations of coerced labour between the opening up of the Atlantic world and the formal creation of Haiti.

What would it be like if you were transported back to Athens 420 BCE? This time-traveler’s guide is a fascinating way to find out . . . Imagine you were transported back in time to Ancient Greece and you had to start a new life there. What would you see? How would the people around you think and believe? How would you fit in? Where would you live? What would you eat? What work would be available, and what help could you get if you got sick? All these questions, and many more, are answered in this engaging blend of self-help and survival guide that plunges you into this historical environment—and explains the many problems and strange new experiences you would face if you were there.

In this book, James Sickinger explores the use and preservation of public records in the ancient Athenian democracy of the archaic and classical periods. Athenian public records are most familiar from the survival of inscribed stelai, slabs of marble o

This book argues that citizenship in Athens was primarily a religious identity, shared by male and female citizens alike.

The democratic revolution that swept Classical Athens transformed the role of law in Athenian society. The legal process and the popular courts took on new and expanded roles in civic life. Although these changes occurred with the consent of the "people" (demos), Athenians were ambivalent about the spread of legal culture. In particular, they were aware that unscrupulous individuals might manipulate the laws and the legal process to serve their own purposes. Indeed, throughout the Classical Period, when Athenians gathered in public and private settings, they regularly discussed, debated, and complained about legal chicanery, or sukophantia. In The Litigious Athenian, Matthew Christ explores what this ancient discussion reveals about how Athenians conceived of and responded to problematic aspects of their collective legal experience. The transfer of significant judicial power from the elite Areopagus Council to the popular courts was a crucial step in the establishment of Athenian democracy, Christ notes, and Athenians took great pride in their legal system. They chose not to make significant changes to their legal institutions even though they could have done so at any time through a majority vote of the Assembly. Determining that the term sykophant was applied rhetorically rather than, as some have believed, to describe a specific subclass, Christ shows how the public debates over legal chicanery helped define the limits of ethical behavior under the law and in public life.

When does democracy work well, and why? Is democracy the best form of government? These questions are of supreme importance today as the United States seeks to promote its democratic values abroad. Democracy and Knowledge is the first book to look to ancient Athens to explain how and why directly democratic government by the people produces wealth, power, and security. Combining a history of Athens with contemporary theories of collective action and rational choice developed by economists and political scientists, Josiah Ober examines Athenian democracy's unique contribution to the ancient Greek city-state's remarkable success, and demonstrates the valuable lessons Athenian political practices hold for us today. He argues that the key to Athens's success lay in how the city-state managed and organized the aggregation and distribution of knowledge among its citizens. Ober explores the institutional contexts of democratic knowledge management, including the use of social networks for collecting information, publicity for building common knowledge, and open access for lowering transaction costs. He explains why a government's attempt to dam the flow of information makes democracy stumble. Democratic participation and deliberation consume state resources and social energy. Yet as Ober shows, the benefits of a well-designed democracy far outweigh its costs. Understanding how democracy can lead to prosperity and security is among the most pressing political challenges of modern times. Democracy and Knowledge reveals how ancient Greek politics can help us transcend the democratic dilemmas that confront the world today.