Nino Luraghi
Biographic Data
| ID | 966383 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nino Luraghi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nino |
| FAMILY NAME | Luraghi |
| SIGNATURE | LURAGHI N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1890-4262 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Cutting Edge of Culture
This article considers the role of Greek war workers, often called “mercenaries,” in the transmission of culture from the Near East and Egypt to Greece, as well as the impact of their activities on the formulation of their own ethnic identity, from the eighth to the sixth century BCE. It opens with a discussion of the scholarly terminology applied to foreign war workers from ancient Greece to the present, showing its ambiguities and limitations. …
Les fers de lance de la culture
Cet article examine le rôle des travailleurs de la guerre grecs, souvent qualifiés de « mercenaires », dans la transmission des cultures du Proche-Orient et de l’Égypte vers la Grèce entre le viii e et le vi e siècle av. J.-C., ainsi que l’influence de leurs activités sur la construction de leur propre identité ethnique. Il s’ouvre par une discussion sur la terminologie savante appliquée aux travailleurs de la guerre étrangers, depuis la Grèce an…
Years after OPW
This short preface is meant to explain the purpose of the present volume and point to the diverse approaches and lines of argument pursued by the contributors
Oracular Tales before Historiography
Against an earlier tendency to separate out the texts of oracles from the literary works that preserve them, recent scholarship on Herodotus has increasingly focused attention on the very tight way in which oracular responses are integrated into the narrative contexts that surround them. In order better to conceptualize such phenomena, scholars are increasingly employing the category of “oracular tales,” that is, stories in which (normally Delphi…
Stairway to Heaven
This chapter argues that the idea of Athens as the ‘School of Hellas’, the origin of the Classicist intellectual tradition, was ultimately a product of the Athenians themselves, particularly of their attempts in the fourth and early third centuries BCE to fashion a self-image of their history and culture. More specifically, the chapter investigates how the Athenians, in the context of their political struggles between 323 and 269 BCE, reflected o…
The Polis in the Hellenistic World
After having been for decades the province of a relatively small group of scholars, the Hellenistic polis has become central to the research agenda of Ancient historians more broadly. This development can be traced from the early nineties of the last century, and has picked up pace in a sustained fashion at the turn of the millennium. Recent research has started approaching the Greek polis of the centuries between Alexander and Cleopatra as a spe…
The Discourse of Tyranny and the Greek Roots of the Bad King
This chapter provides a systematic discussion of the essential attributes of the tyrant in ancient Greece, whence both the term and the concept spread throughout the West. Seen against the background of Greek cultural and moral values, the tyrant emerges as a radically marginal character, a violator of the accepted norms of sociability, a monstrous aberration. Thus, tyranny was perceived and depicted not as a bad political alternative but as a pr…
Xenophon’s Place in Fourth-Century Greek Historiography
Traces of federalism in Messenia
Federalism in Greek Antiquity
The world of ancient Greece witnessed some of the most sophisticated and varied experiments with federalism in the pre-modern era. In the volatile interstate environment of Greece, federalism was a creative response to the challenge of establishing regional unity, while at the same time preserving a degree of local autonomy. To reconcile the forces of integration and independence, Greek federal states introduced, for example, the notion of propor…
The Study of Greek Ethnic Identities
The study of ancient ethnicities cannot be divorced from a study of the recent history of the concept. A product of nineteenth-century nationalist discourse, the study of ethnicity runs the risk of reifying modern concepts and reading them back into the ancient world. Modern instances of the troubled history of the concept as a heuristic tool, in the case of Bosnian War and the Rwandan civil war, reveal that ‘ethnicity’ should be treated with cau…
The Cunning Tyrant
This chapter examines the phenomenon of tyranny in ancient Greece, with special reference to the idea that tyranny is a desirable thing rather than a hated one. It asks how different generations pattern and interpret the past according to current epitēdeumata, and why scholars are reluctant to take seriously certain models or lines of thought when they involve internal contradiction. Rather than accepting the usual assumptions of historiographica…
The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone
Monarchy, that is, a political order characterized by a single ruler, is an understudied aspect of Greek politics and culture. The contributors to this e-book provide a unified scholarly framework in which to interpret the sociological as well as the ideological side of monarchic regimes from archaic Greek tyranny to Hellenistic monarchy in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. Taking their cue from Hans-Joachim Gehrke's essay on the victorious k…
The splendors and miseries of ruling alone
Laconia and Messenia
This chapter contains sections titled: The Archaeology of Laconia The Archaeology of Messenia
The Importance of Being λόγιος
This article, part of a broader investigation of the way Herodotus describes his research, discusses the meanings of the term λόγιος in Herodotus, in other Greek authors, and in modern scholarship. It argues that the word, rather unspecific in meaning, originally indicated members of the community who were seen as particularly authoritative. It probably carried an old-fashioned undertone and in time came to be used with some irony and referred al…
Meeting Messenians in Pausanias’ Greece
During the Antonine age, only very few men in the province of Achaia could match the prestige and wealth of the Messenian Tiberius Claudius Saethida Caelianus. As we know from various inscriptions in his honor, he was Helladarch of the Achaean koinon and Grand Priest of the Imperial cult for the province, both honors he held for life, besides of course being a lavish benefactor of his hometown. His son, Tiberius Claudius Frontinus, reached the co…
The Ancient Messenians
Early in the archaic period of Greek history, Messenia was annexed and partially settled by its powerful neighbour, Sparta. Achieving independence in the fourth century BC, the inhabitants of Messenia set about trying to forge an identity for themselves separate from their previous identity as Spartan subjects, refunctionalising or simply erasing their Spartan heritage. Professor Luraghi provides a thorough examination of the history of Messenian…
Le Péloponnèse d’Épaminondas à Hadrien
Les auteurs grecs et latins sont unanimes à déplorer le « déclin » des cités de Grèce continentale à l’époque hellénistique et sous l’Empire romain, hormis dans le domaine culturel. À leur suite, la tradition historiographique a accrédité l’idée qu’après la conquête d’Alexandre, il fallait se tourner vers l’est de l’Égée, en Orient et en Égypte pour retrouver des États grecs dynamiques. Ce colloque international tenu à l’Université François-Rabel…
Meta- historiē
Herodotus In general, ancient historiography consists of extended narratives in the third person, with the author only rarely intruding in the first person. Herodotus' Histories , at the very dawn of ancient historiography, represent a conspicuous exception. The presence of Herodotus the narrator1 in his text is stressed almost continuously by the occurrence of statements in the first person. They range from the rather nondescript kind, such as '…
The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus
Herodotus' Histories is the first major surviving prose work from antiquity. Its range of interests is immense, covering the whole of the known world and much beyond, and it culminates in a detailed account of the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BC. Moreover, research has shown that Herodotus is a sophisticated and at times even ironic narrator, and a pioneer and serious practitioner of historical research at a time when the Greeks' tradi…
Brill's Companion to Herodotus
Helots and their masters in Laconia and Messenia
The name evokes one of the most famous peculiarities of ancient Sparta, the system of dependent labour that guaranteed the livelihood of the free citizens. The Helots fulfilled all the functions that slaves carried out elsewhere in the Greek world, allowing their masters the leisure to be full-time warriors. Yet, despite their crucial role, Helots remain essentially invisible in our ancient sources and peripheral and enigmatic in modern scholarsh…
Helots Called Messenians? A Note on Thuc. 1.101.2
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Sparta
The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus
The origins and development of Greek historiography cannot be properly understood unless early historical writings are situated in the framework of late archaic and early classical Greek culture and society. Contextualization opens up new perspectives on the subject in The Historian's Craft in the Age of Herodotus. At the same time, such writings offer significant insights into how works of Herodotus reflect the attitude of fifth-century Greeks t…
The Discourse of Tyranny and the Greek Roots of the Bad King
This chapter provides a systematic discussion of the essential attributes of the tyrant in ancient Greece, whence both the term and the concept spread throughout the West. Seen against the background of Greek cultural and moral values, the tyrant emerges as a radically marginal character, a violator of the accepted norms of sociability, a monstrous aberration. Thus, tyranny was perceived and depicted not as a bad political alternative but as a pr…
The Importance of Being λόγιος
This article, part of a broader investigation of the way Herodotus describes his research, discusses the meanings of the term λόγιος in Herodotus, in other Greek authors, and in modern scholarship. It argues that the word, rather unspecific in meaning, originally indicated members of the community who were seen as particularly authoritative. It probably carried an old-fashioned undertone and in time came to be used with some irony and referred al…
Le Péloponnèse d’Épaminondas à Hadrien
Les auteurs grecs et latins sont unanimes à déplorer le « déclin » des cités de Grèce continentale à l’époque hellénistique et sous l’Empire romain, hormis dans le domaine culturel. À leur suite, la tradition historiographique a accrédité l’idée qu’après la conquête d’Alexandre, il fallait se tourner vers l’est de l’Égée, en Orient et en Égypte pour retrouver des États grecs dynamiques. Ce colloque international tenu à l’Université François-Rabel…
Abbreviations
Title Pages
Local Knowledge 1n Herodotus’ Histories
‘BEI wenigen alten Historikern ist die Quellenkritik so leicht, bei wenigen so unerlasslich wie bei Herodot.” In the light of the end less number of works that have appeared in the century that has passed since von Gutschmid wrote these words, reading them today may make one think that the circular movement of classical studies displays some tragic irony. But that is not the reason why I mention them. In the present study I shall try to argue tha…
The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus
The origins and development of Greek historiography cannot be properly understood unless early historical writings are situated in the framework of late archaic and early classical Greek culture and society. Contextualization opens up new perspectives on the subject in The Historian's Craft in the Age of Herodotus. At the same time, such writings offer significant insights into how works of Herodotus reflect the attitude of fifth-century Greeks t…
Helots Called Messenians? A Note on Thuc. 1.101.2
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Sparta
Helots and their masters in Laconia and Messenia
The name evokes one of the most famous peculiarities of ancient Sparta, the system of dependent labour that guaranteed the livelihood of the free citizens. The Helots fulfilled all the functions that slaves carried out elsewhere in the Greek world, allowing their masters the leisure to be full-time warriors. Yet, despite their crucial role, Helots remain essentially invisible in our ancient sources and peripheral and enigmatic in modern scholarsh…
Brill's Companion to Herodotus
Meta- historiē
Herodotus In general, ancient historiography consists of extended narratives in the third person, with the author only rarely intruding in the first person. Herodotus' Histories , at the very dawn of ancient historiography, represent a conspicuous exception. The presence of Herodotus the narrator1 in his text is stressed almost continuously by the occurrence of statements in the first person. They range from the rather nondescript kind, such as '…
The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus
Herodotus' Histories is the first major surviving prose work from antiquity. Its range of interests is immense, covering the whole of the known world and much beyond, and it culminates in a detailed account of the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BC. Moreover, research has shown that Herodotus is a sophisticated and at times even ironic narrator, and a pioneer and serious practitioner of historical research at a time when the Greeks' tradi…
Meeting Messenians in Pausanias’ Greece
During the Antonine age, only very few men in the province of Achaia could match the prestige and wealth of the Messenian Tiberius Claudius Saethida Caelianus. As we know from various inscriptions in his honor, he was Helladarch of the Achaean koinon and Grand Priest of the Imperial cult for the province, both honors he held for life, besides of course being a lavish benefactor of his hometown. His son, Tiberius Claudius Frontinus, reached the co…
The Ancient Messenians
Early in the archaic period of Greek history, Messenia was annexed and partially settled by its powerful neighbour, Sparta. Achieving independence in the fourth century BC, the inhabitants of Messenia set about trying to forge an identity for themselves separate from their previous identity as Spartan subjects, refunctionalising or simply erasing their Spartan heritage. Professor Luraghi provides a thorough examination of the history of Messenian…
Le Péloponnèse d’Épaminondas à Hadrien
Les auteurs grecs et latins sont unanimes à déplorer le « déclin » des cités de Grèce continentale à l’époque hellénistique et sous l’Empire romain, hormis dans le domaine culturel. À leur suite, la tradition historiographique a accrédité l’idée qu’après la conquête d’Alexandre, il fallait se tourner vers l’est de l’Égée, en Orient et en Égypte pour retrouver des États grecs dynamiques. Ce colloque international tenu à l’Université François-Rabel…
Laconia and Messenia
This chapter contains sections titled: The Archaeology of Laconia The Archaeology of Messenia
The Importance of Being λόγιος
This article, part of a broader investigation of the way Herodotus describes his research, discusses the meanings of the term λόγιος in Herodotus, in other Greek authors, and in modern scholarship. It argues that the word, rather unspecific in meaning, originally indicated members of the community who were seen as particularly authoritative. It probably carried an old-fashioned undertone and in time came to be used with some irony and referred al…
The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone
Monarchy, that is, a political order characterized by a single ruler, is an understudied aspect of Greek politics and culture. The contributors to this e-book provide a unified scholarly framework in which to interpret the sociological as well as the ideological side of monarchic regimes from archaic Greek tyranny to Hellenistic monarchy in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. Taking their cue from Hans-Joachim Gehrke's essay on the victorious k…
The splendors and miseries of ruling alone
The Study of Greek Ethnic Identities
The study of ancient ethnicities cannot be divorced from a study of the recent history of the concept. A product of nineteenth-century nationalist discourse, the study of ethnicity runs the risk of reifying modern concepts and reading them back into the ancient world. Modern instances of the troubled history of the concept as a heuristic tool, in the case of Bosnian War and the Rwandan civil war, reveal that ‘ethnicity’ should be treated with cau…
The Cunning Tyrant
This chapter examines the phenomenon of tyranny in ancient Greece, with special reference to the idea that tyranny is a desirable thing rather than a hated one. It asks how different generations pattern and interpret the past according to current epitēdeumata, and why scholars are reluctant to take seriously certain models or lines of thought when they involve internal contradiction. Rather than accepting the usual assumptions of historiographica…
Traces of federalism in Messenia
Federalism in Greek Antiquity
The world of ancient Greece witnessed some of the most sophisticated and varied experiments with federalism in the pre-modern era. In the volatile interstate environment of Greece, federalism was a creative response to the challenge of establishing regional unity, while at the same time preserving a degree of local autonomy. To reconcile the forces of integration and independence, Greek federal states introduced, for example, the notion of propor…
Xenophon’s Place in Fourth-Century Greek Historiography
Stairway to Heaven
This chapter argues that the idea of Athens as the ‘School of Hellas’, the origin of the Classicist intellectual tradition, was ultimately a product of the Athenians themselves, particularly of their attempts in the fourth and early third centuries BCE to fashion a self-image of their history and culture. More specifically, the chapter investigates how the Athenians, in the context of their political struggles between 323 and 269 BCE, reflected o…
The Polis in the Hellenistic World
After having been for decades the province of a relatively small group of scholars, the Hellenistic polis has become central to the research agenda of Ancient historians more broadly. This development can be traced from the early nineties of the last century, and has picked up pace in a sustained fashion at the turn of the millennium. Recent research has started approaching the Greek polis of the centuries between Alexander and Cleopatra as a spe…
The Discourse of Tyranny and the Greek Roots of the Bad King
This chapter provides a systematic discussion of the essential attributes of the tyrant in ancient Greece, whence both the term and the concept spread throughout the West. Seen against the background of Greek cultural and moral values, the tyrant emerges as a radically marginal character, a violator of the accepted norms of sociability, a monstrous aberration. Thus, tyranny was perceived and depicted not as a bad political alternative but as a pr…
Classical Antiquity Studies (22 works) · History (19 works) · Art (15 works) · Literature (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Classics (9 works) · Epistemology (7 works)