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1 Raaflaub, Needle's Eye HO 15 Ancient Greece Ancient Greece: The Historical Needle’s Eye of Modern Politics and Political Thought Kurt A. Raaflaub Texts and Bibliographies 1. On the origins of Greek culture: Meier, Christian, A Culture of Freedom: Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe (Oxford 2011). 2. On archaic Greek history: Anthony Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (Berkeley 1980); Oswyn Murray, Early Greece (2nd ed. Cambridge MA 1993); Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200-479 B.C. (London 1996); Jonathan Hall, A History of the Archaic nd Greek World, ca. 1200-479 BCE (2 ed. Malden MA and Oxford 2014); K. A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees (eds.), A Companion to Archaic Greece (Malden MA and Oxford 2009). 3. Ancient and modern democracy: Dunn, John (ed.), Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford and New York 1992); Wood, Ellen M., “Democracy: An Idea of Ambigous Ancestry.” In J. Peter Euben, John R. Wallach, and Josiah Ober (eds.), Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Ithaca NY 1994) 59-80; Ober, Josiah, and Charles Hedrick (eds.), Dēmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern (Princeton 1996); Barry S. Strauss, “Geneaology, Ideology, and Society in Democratic Athens,” in Ian Morris and Kurt A. Raaflaub (eds.), Democracy 2500? Questions and Challenges (Dubuque IA, 1998) 141-54. 4. On criticism of democracy from antiquity to early America: Roberts, Jennifer T., Athens on Trial: The Anti-Democratic Tradition in Western Thought (Princeton 1994); Ober, Josiah, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule (Princeton 1998). 5. On the emergency of democracy and dēmokratia, and the working of democracy: Hansen, Mogens H., The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes, new, augmented ed. (Norman OK, 1999); Raaflaub, Kurt A., Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace, Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley 2007). On constitutional terminology: Meier, Christian, The Greek Invention of Politics (Cambridge MA 1990) chapter 7. On political values: Raaflaub, Kurt, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (Chicago 2004); Raaflaub, “Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy,” in Ober and Hedrick, Dēmokratia (section 3 above) 139-74. See also other chapters in the latter volume. 6. On reflections about government and 5th century debates about democracy: Kurt Raaflaub, “Archaic and Classical Greek Reflections on Politics and Government,” in Hans Beck (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Greek Government (Malden MA and Oxford 2013) 73-92; Raaflaub, “Contemporary Perceptions of Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens,” Classica et Mediaevalia 40: 33-70. 7. On cultural influences of the ancient Near East on early Greek culture: West, M. L., Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford 1971); West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic 1 Raaflaub, Needle’s Eye HO 15 Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford 1997); Burkert, Walter, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Cambridge MA 1992); Burkert, Babylon — Memphis — Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge MA 2004). 8. On Near Eastern “ancestors” of Greek democracy: Jacobsen, Thorkild, Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture (Cambridge 1970: containing essays on “primitive democracy”; for discussion, see Robinson, E. W., The First Democracies: Early Popular Government outside Athens [Stuttgart 1997] 17-22); Fleming, Daniel, Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors: Mari and Early Collective Governance (Cambridge 2004). 9. On forms of “collective governance” in the ancient Near East: Fleming (last section); Schemeil, Yves, La Politique dans l’ancien Orient (Paris 1999); Momrak, Kristoffer, Popular Power in Ancient Near Eastern and Archaic Greek Polities (Dissertation University of Bergen, Norway, 2013). 10. On the polis as a “citizen state” and its role in Homer: Hansen, Mogens H., “The Polis as a Citizen State,” in Hansen (ed.), The Ancient Greek City State (Copenhagen 1993) 7-29; Raaflaub, Kurt A., “Homer to Solon: The Rise of the Polis. The Written Evidence,” ibid. 41-105; Hansen, Polis and City-State: An Ancient Concept and Its Modern Equivalent (Copenhagen 1998). See also chapters in books listed in (1) and (2) above. On the concept of citizenship: Manville, P. Brook, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton 1990); Whitehead, David, “Norms of Citizenship in Ancient Greece,” in Anthony Molho, Kurt Raaflaub, and Julia Emlen (eds.), Athens and Rome, Florence and Venice: City-States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy (Stuttgart and Ann Arbor 1991) 135-41; Wood, E. M., “The Demos versus ‘We, the People’: From Ancient to Modern Conceptions of Citizenship,” in Wood, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge 1995) 204-37. 11. On the comparison between various types of city-states: Griffeth, Robert G., and Carol G. Thomas (eds.), The City-State in Five Cultures (Santa Barbara CA and Oxford 1981); Molho et al., Athens and Rome (section 10 above); Mogens H. Hansen (ed.), A comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures (Copenhagen 2000); Hansen (ed.), A comparative Study of Six City-State Cultures (Copenhagen 2002). 12. On “epic society” and the role of leaders, assemblies, and soldiers: Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (2nd ed. London 1977); Latacz, Joachim, Homer: His Art and His World (Ann Arbor 1986); Raaflaub, Kurt, “Homeric Society,” in Ian Morris and Barry Powell (eds.), A New Companion to Homer (Leiden 1997) 624-49; Raaflaub, “Politics and Interstate Relations in the World of Early Greek Poleis: Homer and Beyond,” Antichthon 31 (1997) 1-27; Raaflaub, “Homeric Warriors and Battles: Trying to Resolve Old Problems,” Classical World 101 (2008) 469-83. See also Finkelberg, Margalit (ed.), Homer Encyclopedia (3 vols., Malden MA and Oxford 2011). 13. On the Greek polis and its egalitarian foundations: Morris, Ian, Archaeology as Cultural History (Malden MA and Oxford 2000), part III; Raaflaub, Kurt A., and Robert W. Wallace, 2 Raaflaub, Needle’s Eye HO 15 “‘People’s Power’ and Egalitarian Trends in Archaic Greece,” in Raaflaub et al. 2007 (in section 5 above) 22-48. 14. On the Greeks’ need to find their own solutions for their own problems: Meier (section 1 above). 15. Humans are responsible for their own well-being or suffering: Homer, Odyssey 1.26-42: (Zeus is speaking in an assembly of the gods) “Ah, how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods. / From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, / but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, / compound their pains beyond their proper share…”; Solon, fragm. 4.1-6 West: “Our city will never be destroyed by the fate / of Zeus or the plans of the immortal gods, / for Pallas Athena, our protector,… holds her hands over us. / But the citizens themselves, lured by wealth, want to bring / this great city down with their recklessness.” 16. On the Greek invention of laws: Gagarin, Michael, Early Greek Law (Berkeley 1986); Gagarin, Writing Greek Law (Cambridge 2008); Thomas, Rosalind, “Written in Stone? Liberty, Equality, Orality, and the Codification of Law,” in Lin Foxhall and A.D.E. Lewis (eds.), Greek Law in Its Political Setting: Justifications not Justice (Oxford 1996) 9-31; Farenga, Vincent, Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece: Individuals Performing Justice and the Law (Cambridge 2006); Hawke, Jason, Writing Authority: Elite Competition and Written Law in Early Greece (DeKalb IL 2011). On Near Eastern and Greek Law: Raaflaub, Kurt A., “Early Greek Political Thought in Its Mediterranean Context,” in Ryan Balot (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (Malden MA and Oxford 2009) 37-56. 17. The Earliest Greek Law (from Dreros on Crete, c. 650-600 BCE): “This has been decided by the polis: When a man has been Kosmos [supreme magistrate], for ten years that same man shall not be Kosmos. If he should become Kosmos, whatever judgments he gives, he himself shall owe double, and he shall be useless [without active citizen rights] as long as he lives, and what he does as Kosmos shall be as nothing…” (#11 in Fornara, Charles W., Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War. Translated Documents of Greece and Rome, vol. 1 [2nd ed. Cambridge 1983] p.11). 18. On the lawgivers (mediators, or “straighteners”): Meier, Greek Invention (section 5 above) 40-52; Wallace, Robert W., “Charismatic Leaders,” in Raaflaub and van Wees, Companion (section 2 above) 411-26. 19. Sparta’s “Great Rhetra,” the first polis constitution: Tyrtaeus, fragm. 4 West: The god-honored kings shall be leaders of the council (or: first in debate), / they who care for the lovely city of Sparta, / and the elders of revered age, and then the men of the people, / responding in turn to straight proposals. / They shall speak what is good and do everything justly / and counsel nothing for the city (that is crooked). / Victory and power (kratos) shall accompany the mass of the people (demos). / For Phoibos has so revealed this to the city. Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 6: When you have built a temple to Zeus Sullanius and Athena Sullania, divided the people into ‘phylai’ and into ‘obai’ [civic subdivisions] and established a council of thirty members, including the ‘archagetai’ [the ‘leaders’], then from time to time hold 3 Raaflaub, Needle’s Eye HO 15 an ‘appella’ [assembly] between Babyka and Knakion [probably locations], and there introduce and rescind measures; but the people (demos) must have the deciding voice [literally: victory] and the power (kratos). Between these [locations] they held their assemblies, having neither halls nor any other kind of building for the purpose… When the masses were thus assembled, no one of them was permitted to make a motion, but the motion laid before them by the councillors and kings could be accepted or rejected by the people. [Scholars debate whether the following was part of the original rhetra or a later addition.] But if the people should adopt a distorted [“crooked”] motion, the councilors and kings shall have the power of adjournment.
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