Rhodes - Greek City States.pdf - History and archaeology(3) - michalszasz121

The Greek City States

a source book

Political activity and political thinking began in the poleis (cities) and other

states of ancient Greece, and terms such as tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy,

democracy and politics itself are Greek words for concepts ﬁrst discussed in

Greece. This book presents in translation a selection of texts illustrating the

formal mechanisms and informal working of the Greek states in all their

variety, from the state described by Homer out of which the classical Greeks

believed their states had developed, through the archaic period which saw the

rise and fall of tyrants and the gradual broadening of citizen bodies, to the

classical period of the ﬁfth and fourth centuries, and beyond that to the hel-

lenistic and Roman periods in which the Greeks tried to preserve their way of

life in a world of great powers. For this second edition the book has been

thoroughly revised and three new chapters added.

p. j. rhodes

is Honorary Professor and Emeritus Professor of Ancient

History at the University of Durham. His numerous publications in the ﬁeld

of Greek history include A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia ,

The Decrees of the Greek States (with D. M. Lewis), Greek Historical

Inscriptions, 404–323 BC (with R. Osborne) and A History of the Classical

Greek World, 478–323 BC .