Popular Tyranny

Sovereignty and Its Discontents in Ancient Greece

Bibliographic Data

ID19901713
EditorsKathryn A Morgan
Year2003
Publication date2003-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenuePopular Tyranny (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Texas Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7560/752764
OpenAlexW4235773920
Open LibraryOL18656707M
ISBN9780292797826
LanguageEN
Citations received11

The nature of authority and rulership was a central concern in ancient Greece, where the figure of the king or tyrant and the sovereignty associated with him remained a powerful focus of political and philosophical debate even as Classical Athens developed the world's first democracy. This collection of essays examines the extraordinary role that the concept of tyranny played in the cultural and political imagination of Archaic and Classical Greece through the interdisciplinary perspectives provided by internationally known archaeologists, literary critics, and historians. The book ranges historically from the Bronze and early Iron Age to the political theorists and commentators of the middle of the fourth century B.C. and generically across tragedy, comedy, historiography, and philosophy. While offering individual and sometimes differing perspectives, the essays tackle several common themes: the construction of authority and of constitutional models, the importance of religion and ritual, the crucial role of wealth, and the autonomy of the individual. Moreover, the essays with an Athenian focus shed new light on the vexed question of whether it was possible for Athenians to think of themselves as tyrannical in any way. As a whole, the collection presents a nuanced survey of how competing ideologies and desires, operating through the complex associations of the image of tyranny, struggled for predominance in ancient cities and their citizens

Ancient Greece · Art · Autonomy · Democracy · Historiography · Ideology · Literature · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Social science · Sociology · Sovereignty · Tragedy (event · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Studies and Philology · Classics · Globalization, Historical Perspectives, and International Relations · History · Law · Philosophy · 320.938/09/014 · Despotism · Greece · Jc381 .p66 2003 · politics and government · To 146 B.C

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