Athenian Democratic Origins: and Other Essays

In these interconnected essays 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. A 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. Ste. Croix also argues 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, he works out these general positions with the utmost 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 Though written in the 1960s, these hitherto unpublished essays by a great radical historian will still constitute a major contribution to contemporary debate. The editors and other specialists have supplied an updating Afterword to each chapter, and the book contains a thorough index.

Table of Contents:
Editors' Introduction 1: The Solonian Census Classes and the Qualifications for Cavalry and Hoplite Service 2: Five Notes on Solon's Constitution 3: Solon, the Horoi and the Hektemoroi 4: Cleisthenes I: The Constitution 5: Cleisthenes II: Ostracism, Archons, and Strategoi 6: The Athenian Citizenship Laws 7: Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia and Early Athenian History 8: The Metra in Aristotle, Eth. Nic. V.vii.1134b 35-35a3 9: How Far was Trade a Cause of Early Greek Colonization? 10: But What About Aegina? 11: Herodotus and King Cleomenes of Sparta

About the Author :
The late Geoffrey de Ste. Croix was Fellow of New College, Oxford. Robert Parker is Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, University of Oxford. David Harvey was formerly Lecturer in Classics, University of Exeter.

Review :
`Review from previous edition an unusual book on every level ... Here then are missing pieces of two interconnected jigsaws: one, that of the intellectual biography of one of the most striking figures in classical scholarship in the second half of the twentieth-century; the other, that of his contributions to 'Athenian Democratic Origins' and other problems in Greek history ... anyone with a serious interest in either or both of these fields will rejoice in this volume and be grateful to its editors for allowing us to hear again the inimitable scholarly voice of Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review `no serious reader, converted or not, could emerge unimpressed by the sheer command of evidence and calibre of argument on display here. [Chapter 1 is] the jewel of the volume.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review