From Democracy to Empire

Transgression and Substitution in Thucydides’ Periclean Narrative

Bibliographic Data

ID6356891
AuthorsRachel Templer (Goucher College, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume47
Issue2
Pages147-174
Publication date2015-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3497 • E-ISSN: 1744-1684
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1057/pol.2015.7
OpenAlexW2243820049
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

This article investigates the imperial resonances of a transgressive, or revolutionary, conception of democracy. In the narrative that Thucydides constructs in his History, Pericles appropriates for an imperial project a revolutionary democratic self-understanding from the available resources of Athenian civic ideology. His appropriation privileges the beginnings of Athens' democratic regime over its ongoing practice. Pericles, thereby, obscures both the monologic character of his rule and the deep diversity within the democratic institutions of Athens. The study closes with an examination of the erotic images of citizenship that Pericles employs in his various speeches in the History and with a discussion, as a counterpoint, of the practices of lot and rotation that he ignores

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Character (mathematics · Citizenship · Counterpoint · Democracy · Empire · Epistemology · Ideology · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Transgressive · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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