In the fifth centuryb.c.e.the Athenians did not make any distinction between laws and decrees. The Assembly passed both kinds of measures in the same way, and both general enactments and short-term provisions held the same legal status. At the end of the fifth century, however, the Athenians decided to make a distinction between the two kinds of measures and created the rule that no decree would be superior to a law. The Assembly continued to pass decrees in the same way, (...) but a new body ofnomothetaiwas created to ratify laws. There were also two separate procedures for rescinding the two kinds of measures: one could bring agraphê paranomôn against apsêphismaand agraphê ‘nomon mê epitêdeion theinai’ against anomos. This much is clear; scholars do not agree however about the procedure for passing a new law in fourth-century Athens. (shrink)

In this volume Canevaro studies the 'state' documents preserved in the public speeches of the Demosthenic corpus. Offering a comprehensive account of the documents in the corpora of the orators and in the manuscript tradition, Canevaro summarizes previous scholarship and delineates a new methodology for analyzing the documents.

Summary This short article goes back to the problem of the authenticity of the document found at Dem. 24.20–23, with wide implications for the reconstruction of Athenian nomothesia. Without providing a comprehensive response to M. H. Hansen’s recent KLIO article on the topic (M. H. Hansen, The Inserted Document at Dem. 24.20–23. Response to Mirko Canevaro, KLIO 101, 2019, 452–472; itself a response to a previous KLIO article by M. Canevaro), it clarifies some key issues and clears up some important (...) misunderstandings, also providing new evidence against the authenticity of the document. (shrink)

This article discusses the fortune of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s famous article ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’, and reassesses its basic thesis that the Athenian Empire was popular among the lower classes of the allied cities in the light of recent developments in the field. After surveying the article’s immediate and more recent reception, and discussing its relation with The Origins of the Peloponnesian War and The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, it isolates four key new trends (...) in Greek history that, while going against some of Ste. Croix’s basic convictions, end up reinforcing his overall case. These are: a renewed attention to the mass and elite dichotomy, with recent work interpreting Greek oligarchy as a fundamentally reactive and anti-demotic regime; the recognition of the continued relevance of Persian meddling in the later fifth-century; a sea-change in Attic epigraphy which has led to the post-dating of several ‘imperial’ decrees; the new recognition of the dynamism of the Greek economy, and of the economic function of the Athenian Empire itself. Finally, the article addresses the paradigm of class struggle and stresses how democracy and economic dynamism, to which the Athenian Empire contributed, fostered the growth of slave markets and worsened the exploitation of ‘marginal’ regions as slave suppliers. (shrink)

We reply to the objections raised in Polis 40 (2023) by Ryan Balot and Manuel Knoll to our original paper ‘Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis’, published in Polis 39 (2022). We argue that Knoll is correct in arguing that Aristotle distinguishes between democratic views of distributive justice and his own, but wrong to argue that this wholly resolves a tension in Aristotle’s exposition between views of democratic justice as, in one sense, based on equality ‘according to worth’ (...) and in another based on arithmetic equality. Balot, we contend, misconstrues our original argument when he represents us as claiming that, according to Aristotle, the injustice which leads agents to engage in stasis exists entirely in their own minds. We did not and do not hold that view and therefore (pace Balot) are in no way committed to any of its alleged implications. Balot’s misunderstanding on that point entails a wholesale misrepresentation of our original argument. (shrink)

In Politics 5.1–3, Aristotle sees different conceptions of proportional equality and justice as the fundamental causes of stasis and metabolē. His account shows what happens to notions of ‘particular’ justice when they become causes of individual and collective action in pursuit of moral and political revolution. The whole discussion of the causes of stasis should be read through the filter of individual/group motivation – as a reflection of what goes on in the heads of those who engage in stasis. Movements (...) towards political change are motivated by ingrained conceptions of proportional equality and fair distribution of honour and wealth. Aristotle’s approach, therefore, may be compared to Axel Honneth’s, that social justice should be seen in terms of the distribution of dignity and respect as well as of material resources. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 323-329.

Summary This article is a response to Hansen's recent defence of the authenticity of the document at Demosth. or. 24.20–3. It discusses the methodology for assessing the authenticity of the documents in the orators, in particular the role of the stichometry and the importance of the epigraphic evidence. It provides an in-depth analysis of the evidence about the nomothesia procedure provided in Demosthenes' „Against Timocrates“, showing, first, that this procedure was one centred on the enactment of new laws, and not, (...) as the document describes, a general review of the laws of Athens; second, that the procedure described in the speech is one that can be initiated at all points of the year, whereas the document describes an annual procedure taking place only on the 11th day of the first prytany; third, that the procedure described in the speech was initiated by a simple διαχειροτονία that allowed new proposals to be made, whereas the document describes multiple initial votes „kapitelweise“ to be held in the Assembly on different groups of existing laws. The last part of the article surveys eight specific problems with the text of the document, which confirm that it cannot be an authentic Athenian law. (shrink)