Polis Histories, Collective Memories and the Greek World

Description

Greek 'local histories', better called polis and island histories, have usually been seen as the poor relation of mainstream 'great' Greek historiography, and yet they were demonstrably popular and extremely numerous from the late Classical period into the Hellenistic. The extensive fragments and testimonia were collected by Felix Jacoby and have been supplemented since with recent finds and inscriptions. Yet while the Athenian histories have received considerable attention, those of other cities have not: this is the first book to consider the polis and island histories as a whole, and as an important cultural and political phenomenon. It challenges the common label of 'antiquarianism' and argues that their role in helping to create 'imagined communities' must be seen partly as a response to fragile and changing status in a changing and expanding Greek world. Important themes are discussed alongside case studies of particular places (including Samos, Miletus, Erythrai, Megara, Athens). FM Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Note on References and Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1 What Are Polis Histories? What Are Local Histories? Popular History and Its Audiences Chapter 2 Tales for the Telling: τὸ μυθῶδες Chapter 3 Ethnography for the Greeks? The Polis as a New Subject for Historiography Chapter 4 Fostering the Community: Accumulative Historiography Chapter 5 Origins, Foundations and Ethnicity: Greeks and Non-Greeks Chapter 6 Saving the City: Political History or Paradoxa? Miletus and Lesbos Chapter 7 Polis in Flux: Dislocation and Disenfranchisement in Samos Chapter 8 Athenian Polis Histories Chapter 9 The Aristotelian Politeiai and Local Histories Chapter 10 Polis and Island Histories and the Late Classical and Hellenistic World: A New Hellenism? Appendix 1 Miletus Appendix 2 Polis, Island and Ethnos Historians Dated to the Fourth Century Appendix 3 Register of Polis, Island and Ethnos Histories: Jacoby’s Local Histories Bibliography Index Locorum Index