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Athenian Democratic Origins: and Other Essays

Online ISBN:
9780191719844
Print ISBN:
9780199255177
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Athenian Democratic Origins: and Other Essays

Geoffrey de Ste. Croix,
Geoffrey de Ste. Croix
(late) Fellow of New College, Oxford
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David Harvey (ed.),
David Harvey
(ed.)
formerly Lecturer in Classics, University of Exeter
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Robert Parker (ed.)
Robert Parker
(ed.)
Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, University of Oxford
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Published online:
1 September 2007
Published in print:
25 March 2004
Online ISBN:
9780191719844
Print ISBN:
9780199255177
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book presents a number of interconnected essays, in which the late Geoffrey de Ste. Croix defends the institutions of the Athenian democracy, showing that they were much more practical, rational, and impartial than has usually been acknowledged. One major essay provides a new view of Aristotle's use of sources in The Constitution of the Athenians, on which so much of our knowledge of Athenian constitutional history depends. The essays also argue that commercial factors had much less influence on Greek politics than modern scholars tend to assume, and that there was no such thing in any Greek state as a ‘commercial aristocracy’. As always, Ste. Croix works out these general positions with lucidity and pungency, and in meticulous detail. Though written in the 1960s, these hitherto unpublished essays by a great radical historian will still constitute a major contribution to contemporary debate.

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