Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400820510
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian "constitution," he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to address these large bodies of ordinary citizens in terms understandable and acceptable to the audience. This book probes the social strategies behind the rhetorical tactics employed by elite speakers. A close reading of the speeches exposes both egalitarian and elitist elements in Athenian popular ideology. Ober demonstrates that the vocabulary of public speech constituted a democratic discourse that allowed the Athenians to resolve contradictions between the ideal of political equality and the reality of social inequality. His radical reevaluation of leadership and political power in classical Athens restores key elements of the social and ideological context of the first western democracy.

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (994 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens written by Josiah Ober and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks an important question often ignored by ancient historians and political scientists alike: Why did Athenian democracy work as well and for as long as it did? Josiah Ober seeks the answer by analyzing the sociology of Athenian politics and the nature of communication between elite and nonelite citizens. After a preliminary survey of the development of the Athenian ""constitution, "" he focuses on the role of political and legal rhetoric. As jurymen and Assemblymen, the citizen masses of Athens retained important powers, and elite Athenian politicians and litigants needed to addr.

Mass and Elite in the Greek and Roman Worlds

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Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 131706688X
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass and Elite in the Greek and Roman Worlds by : Richard Evans

Download or read book Mass and Elite in the Greek and Roman Worlds written by Richard Evans and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume has its origin in the 14th University of South Africa Classics Colloquium in which the topic and title of the event were inspired by Josiah Ober’s seminal work Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989). Indeed the influence this work has had on later research in all aspects of the Greek and Roman world is reflected by the diversity of the papers collected here, which take their cue and starting point from the argument that, in Ober’s words (1989, 338): ‘Rhetorical communication between masses and elites... was a primary means by which the strategic ends of social stability and political order were achieved.’ However, the contributors to the volume have also sought to build further on such conclusions and to offer new perceptions about a spread of issues affecting mass and elite interaction in a far wider number of locations around the ancient Mediterranean over a much longer chronological span. Thus the conclusions here suggest that once the concept of mass and elite was established in the minds of Greeks and later Romans it became a universal component of political life and from there was easily transferred to economic activity or religion. In casting the net beyond the confines of Athens (although the city is also represented here) to – amongst others – Syracuse, the cities of Asia Minor, Pompeii and Rome, and to literary and philosophical discourse, in each instance that interplay between the wider body of the community and the hierarchically privileged can be shown to have governed and directed the thoughts and actions of the participants.

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400822718
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Dissent in Democratic Athens by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book Political Dissent in Democratic Athens written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why did the Western tradition of political theorizing arise in Athens during the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C.? By interweaving intellectual history with political philosophy and literary analysis, Josiah Ober argues that the tradition originated in a high-stakes debate about democracy. Since elite Greek intellectuals tended to assume that ordinary men were incapable of ruling themselves, the longevity and resilience of Athenian popular rule presented a problem: how to explain the apparent success of a regime "irrationally" based on the inherent wisdom and practical efficacy of decisions made by non-elite citizens? The problem became acute after two oligarchic coups d' tat in the late fifth century B.C. The generosity and statesmanship that democrats showed after regaining political power contrasted starkly with the oligarchs' violence and corruption. Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality. Ober offers fresh readings of the political works of Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, by placing them in the context of a competitive community of dissident writers. These thinkers struggled against both democratic ideology and intellectual rivals to articulate the best and most influential criticism of popular rule. The competitive Athenian environment stimulated a century of brilliant literary and conceptual innovation. Through Ober's re-creation of an ancient intellectual milieu, early Western political thought emerges not just as a "footnote to Plato," but as a dissident commentary on the first Western democracy.

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781400817368
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens written by Josiah Ober and published by . This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Democracy and Knowledge

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400828805
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Democracy and Knowledge by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book Democracy and Knowledge written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When does democracy work well, and why? Is democracy the best form of government? These questions are of supreme importance today as the United States seeks to promote its democratic values abroad. Democracy and Knowledge is the first book to look to ancient Athens to explain how and why directly democratic government by the people produces wealth, power, and security. Combining a history of Athens with contemporary theories of collective action and rational choice developed by economists and political scientists, Josiah Ober examines Athenian democracy's unique contribution to the ancient Greek city-state's remarkable success, and demonstrates the valuable lessons Athenian political practices hold for us today. He argues that the key to Athens's success lay in how the city-state managed and organized the aggregation and distribution of knowledge among its citizens. Ober explores the institutional contexts of democratic knowledge management, including the use of social networks for collecting information, publicity for building common knowledge, and open access for lowering transaction costs. He explains why a government's attempt to dam the flow of information makes democracy stumble. Democratic participation and deliberation consume state resources and social energy. Yet as Ober shows, the benefits of a well-designed democracy far outweigh its costs. Understanding how democracy can lead to prosperity and security is among the most pressing political challenges of modern times. Democracy and Knowledge reveals how ancient Greek politics can help us transcend the democratic dilemmas that confront the world today.

Ideology of Democratic Athens

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Author :
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474466443
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Ideology of Democratic Athens by : Matteo Barbato

Download or read book Ideology of Democratic Athens written by Matteo Barbato and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate on Athenian democratic ideology has long been polarised around two extremes. A Marxist tradition views ideology as a cover-up for Athens' internal divisions. Another tradition, sometimes referred to as culturalist, interprets it neutrally as the fixed set of ideas shared by the members of the Athenian community.

The Athenian Revolution

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691217971
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis The Athenian Revolution by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book The Athenian Revolution written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

Athenian Legacies

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 069119016X
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Athenian Legacies by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book Athenian Legacies written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do communities survive catastrophe? Using classical Athens as its case study, this book argues that if a democratic community is to survive over time, its people must choose to go on together. That choice often entails hardship and hard bargains. In good times, going on together presents few difficulties. But in the face of loss, disruption, and civil war, it requires tragic sacrifices and agonizing compromises. Athenian Legacies demonstrates with flair and verve how the people of one influential political community rebuilt their democratic government, rewove their social fabric, and, through thick and thin, went on together. The book's essays address amnesty, civic education, and institutional innovation in early Athens, a city that built and lost an empire while experiencing plague, war, economic trauma, and civil conflict. As Ober vividly demonstrates, Athenians became adept at collective survival. They conjoined a cultural commitment to government by the people with new institutions that captured the social and technical knowledge of a diverse population to recover from revolution, foreign occupation, and the ravages of war. Ober provides insight into notorious instances of Athenian injustice, explaining why slaves, women, and foreign residents willingly risked their lives to support a regime in which they were systematically mistreated. He answers the question of why Socrates never left a city he said was badly governed. At a time when social scientists debate the cultural grounding necessary to foster democracy, Athenian Legacies advances new arguments about the role of diversity and the relevance of shared understanding of the past in creating democracies that flourish when the going gets rough.

The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521542135
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (421 download)

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Book Synopsis The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia by : Peter Wilson

Download or read book The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia written by Peter Wilson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major study of a central cultural institution of classical Athens.

Xenophon and the Athenian Democracy

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108495761
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Xenophon and the Athenian Democracy by : Matthew R. Christ

Download or read book Xenophon and the Athenian Democracy written by Matthew R. Christ and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how Xenophon instructs his elite readers concerning the values and skills needed to lead the Athenian democracy.

The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199899169
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens by : Edward M. Harris

Download or read book The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens written by Edward M. Harris and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Law in Action in Democratic Athens is the first extensive study of the importance of the rule of law in Athenian democracy.

Demopolis

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316510360
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Demopolis by : Josiah Ober

Download or read book Demopolis written by Josiah Ober and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did democracy mean before liberalism? What are the consequences for our lives today? These questions are examined by this book.

Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316062430
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens by : Alex Gottesman

Download or read book Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens written by Alex Gottesman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first in-depth study of the classical Athenian public sphere. It examines how public opinion was created by impromptu theatrics and by gossip, and how it flowed into and out of the civic institutions. Athenians did not have hookah bars or coffee shops but they did socialize in symposia, gymnasia and workshops, and above all in the Agora. These represented the Athenian 'street', an informal political space that was seen as qualitatively different from the institutional space of the assembly, the council and the courts where elite orators held sway. The book explores how Athenians of all sorts, such as politicians, slaves and philosophers, sought to exploit the resources of the 'street' in pursuit of their aims.

Ancient Greek History and Contemporary Social Science

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Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474421784
Total Pages : 591 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis Ancient Greek History and Contemporary Social Science by : Mirko Canevaro

Download or read book Ancient Greek History and Contemporary Social Science written by Mirko Canevaro and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-06 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length academic study to deal exclusively with female stardom in British cinema.

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece

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Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520258096
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece by : Kurt A. Raaflaub

Download or read book Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece written by Kurt A. Raaflaub and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-10-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A balanced, high-quality analysis of the developing nature of Athenian political society and its relationship to 'democracy' as a timeless concept."—Mark Munn, author of The School of History

That Tyrant, Persuasion

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691221006
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis That Tyrant, Persuasion by : J. E. Lendon

Download or read book That Tyrant, Persuasion written by J. E. Lendon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How rhetorical training influenced deeds as well as words in the Roman Empire The assassins of Julius Caesar cried out that they had killed a tyrant, and days later their colleagues in the Senate proposed rewards for this act of tyrannicide. The killers and their supporters spoke as if they were following a well-known script. They were. Their education was chiefly in rhetoric and as boys they would all have heard and given speeches on a ubiquitous set of themes—including one asserting that “he who kills a tyrant shall receive a reward from the city.” In That Tyrant, Persuasion, J. E. Lendon explores how rhetorical education in the Roman world influenced not only the words of literature but also momentous deeds: the killing of Julius Caesar, what civic buildings and monuments were built, what laws were made, and, ultimately, how the empire itself should be run. Presenting a new account of Roman rhetorical education and its surprising practical consequences, That Tyrant, Persuasion shows how rhetoric created a grandiose imaginary world for the Roman ruling elite—and how they struggled to force the real world to conform to it. Without rhetorical education, the Roman world would have been unimaginably different.