University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1983 The Greek origins of the idea of revolution. Geoffrey Morrison University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Morrison, Geoffrey, "The Greek origins of the idea of revolution." (1983). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1395. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1395 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE GREEK ORIGINS OF THE IDEA OF REVOLUTION A Dissertation Presented by GEOFFREY MORRISON Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 1983 Department of History To George and Theodora Kirk Geoffrey Morrison All Rights Reserved * ABSTRACT The Greek Origins of the Idea of Revolution (May 1983) Geoffrey Morrison B.A., M.A. , Amherst College Directed by Winfred Bernhard Among all the concepts of political philosophy which have been studied by modern western intellectual historians "revolution" is one of the few never to have received a thoroughly empirical and diachronic linguistic analysis. Its modern history from the Renaissance to the present is well known, but its history in the medieval and ancient periods is only imperfectly understood, while its pre- history--the semantic elements from which it and its lin- guistic relatives were composed--has never been explored.