Irad Malkin

For the first time, this volume by two leading historians offers a comprehensive study of drawing lots as a central institution of ancient Greek society. Drawing lots expressed an egalitarian mindset that guided selection, procedure, and distribution by lot and was eventually introduced for polis governance, a Greek innovation that appears to be of increasing relevance today. The authors explore the egalitarian, "horizonal," mindset expressed in using the lot instead of a top-down vision of authority and sovereignty. Drawing lots presupposed equality among participants deserving equal "portions" and was used for distributing land, inheritance, booty, sacrificial meat, selecting individuals, setting turns, mixing and reorganizing groups, and divining the will of the gods. Lot-oracles were used for divination; otherwise, the gods guarded the justice of the procedure but only rarely determined the outcome. It was a self-evident method broadly and ubiquitously applied. Drawing lots would crystallize community boundaries and emphasize its sovereignty. The book further investigates the transposition of the drawing of lots to the governance of the polis. The implied egalitarianism of the lot often conflicted with top-down perceptions of society and the values of inequality, status, and merit. Drawing lots was introduced into oligarchies and democracies at an uneven pace and scale. Its wide use in the democracy of classical Athens was an exceptional case, eye-catching both in antiquity and today. The book concludes with a discussion about the meaning of the Greek examples for drawing lots today and the increasing interest in using random selection in politics as a possibility for modern democracies around the world. The appendix surveys the Greek vocabulary of lottery practices.

Greek attitudes to settlement and territory were often articulated through myths and cults. This book emphasizes less the poetic, timeless qualities of the myths than their historical function in the archaic and Classical periods, covering the spectrum from explicit charter myths legitimating conquest, displacement, and settlement to the 'precedent-setting' and even aetiological myths, rendering new landscapes 'Greek'. This spectrum is broadest in the world of Spartan colonization – the Spartan Mediterranean – where the greater challenges to territorial possession and Sparta's acute self-awareness of its relative national youthfulness elicited explicit responses in the form of charter myths. The concept of a Spartan Mediterranean, in contrast to the image of a land-locked Sparta, is a major contribution of this book. This revised edition contains a substantial new Introduction which engages with critical and scholarly developments on Sparta since the original publication.

Greek attitudes to settlement and territory were often articulated through myths and cults. This book emphasizes less the poetic, timeless qualities of the myths than their historical function in the archaic and Classical periods, covering the spectrum from explicit charter myths legitimating conquest, displacement, and settlement to the 'precedent-setting' and even aetiological myths, rendering new landscapes 'Greek'. This spectrum is broadest in the world of Spartan colonization – the Spartan Mediterranean – where the greater challenges to territorial possession and Sparta's acute self-awareness of its relative national youthfulness elicited explicit responses in the form of charter myths. The concept of a Spartan Mediterranean, in contrast to the image of a land-locked Sparta, is a major contribution of this book. This revised edition contains a substantial new Introduction which engages with critical and scholarly developments on Sparta since the original publication.

La civilisation grecque a emerge a partir du moment ou les Grecs se separaient les uns des autres et s'installaient loin de la Grece continentale, jusque sur les rivages de la mer Noire et de la peninsule Iberique. C'etait la une diaspora sans foyer d'origine, puisqu'il n'y avait pas d'empire grec ou de centre grec etabli qui aurait dirige la creation de ces centaines de communautes. Une fois disperses, au lieu de s'assimiler et de s'orienter vers leurs nouveaux environnements, ces Grecs continuerent a se referer les uns aux autres a travers la Mediterranee et la mer Noire tout en cristallisant par la meme leurs points communs et leur identite collective. A terme, les communautes grecques finirent par se ressembler entre elles bien plus qu'a aucun de leurs voisins etrusques, scythes ou libyens. Dans ce nouvel ouvrage, Irad Malkin emploie les concepts de la theorie des reseaux pour rendre compte de maniere originale de l'essor de la civilisation grecque au cours de la periode archaique. Les dynamiques de connectivite des reseaux actuels tels que l'Internet, qui tient tres peu compte des delimitations traditionnelles, sont remarquablement similaires aux reseaux de colonisation, de commerce, d'art et de cultes religieux de la Mediterranee archaique. Ces liens, a la fois penses et fortuits, reduisirent rapidement la distance qui separait les noeuds du reseau grec, faisant de la vaste Mediterranee et de la mer Noire un petit monde . Offrant une contribution majeure a un courant en plein essor de la recherche en Histoire, Un tout petit monde permet de depasser le traditionnel modele centre-peripherie de l'expansion grecque.

First published in 1988. This is a collection of works where the Mediterranean provides the context for all the cities which appear in this volume: all are (or have been) port cities, and as such their harbours played a significant role in shaping their histories. In essence, the question of ‘interaction between man and sea’ is one of the influence of the maritime position on the human communities constituting the ‘Mediterranean cities’: the connections between them, and the link of each city with its hinterland, as well as the influence of its position on the city’s internal development and character.

Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period when Greeks founded coastal city states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusion: mother cities were numerous and the new settlements ("colonies") would often engender more settlements. The "Greek center" was at sea; it was formed through back-ripple effects of cultural convergence, following the physical divergence of independent settlements. "The shores of Greece are like hems stitched onto the lands of Barbarian peoples" (Cicero). Overall, and regardless of distance, settlement practices became Greek in the making and Greek communities far more resembled each other than any of their particular neighbors like the Etruscans, Iberians, Scythians, or Libyans. The contrast between "center and periphery" hardly mattered (all was peri-, "around"), nor was a bi-polar contrast with Barbarians of much significance. Should we admire the Greeks for having created their civilization in spite of the enormous distances and discontinuous territories separating their independent communities? Or did the salient aspects of their civilization form and crystallize because of its architecture as a de-centralized network? This book claims that the answer lies in network attributes shaping a "Small Greek World," where separation is measured by degrees of contact rather than by physical dimensions.

Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period when Greeks founded coastal city states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusion: mother cities were numerous and the new settlements ("colonies") would often engender more settlements. The "Greek center" was at sea; it was formed through back-ripple effects of cultural convergence, following the physical divergence of independent settlements. "The shores of Greece are like hems stitched onto the lands of Barbarian peoples" (Cicero). Overall, and regardless of distance, settlement practices became Greek in the making and Greek communities far more resembled each other than any of their particular neighbors like the Etruscans, Iberians, Scythians, or Libyans. The contrast between "center and periphery" hardly mattered (all was peri-, "around"), nor was a bi-polar contrast with Barbarians of much significance. Should we admire the Greeks for having created their civilization in spite of the enormous distances and discontinuous territories separating their independent communities? Or did the salient aspects of their civilization form and crystallize because of its architecture as a de-centralized network? This book claims that the answer lies in network attributes shaping a "Small Greek World," where separation is measured by degrees of contact rather than by physical dimensions.

In this book, prominent historians apply Mediterranean paradigms to Classical Mediterranean Antiquty (Greece and Rome), allowing for a new approach to the ancient world and enhancing antiquity's relevance to the understanding of other historical periods as well as our contemporary world.This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Mediterranean Historical Review.

In this book, prominent historians apply Mediterranean paradigms to Classical Mediterranean Antiquty (Greece and Rome), allowing for a new approach to the ancient world and enhancing antiquity's relevance to the understanding of other historical periods as well as our contemporary world.This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Mediterranean Historical Review.

This book discusses Greek attitudes to settlement and territory as articulated through myths and cults. The emphasis is less on the poetic, timeless qualities of the myths, than on their historical function in the archaic and Classical periods, covering the spectrum from explicit charter myths legitimating conquest, displacement and settlement, to the ‘precedent-setting’ and even aetiological myths, rendering new landscapes ‘Greek’. This spectrum is broadest in the world of Spartan colonisation - the Spartan Mediterranean - where the greater challenges to territorial possession and Sparta’s acute self-awareness of her relative national youthfulness elicited explicit responses in the form of charter myths. The concept of a Spartan Mediterranean, in contrast to the image of a land-locked Sparta, is a major contribution of this book.

Ce livre traite de l'attitude des Grecs envers les notions d'implantation et de territoire telles qu'on les trouve exprimees dans les mythes et les cultes. Il y est question moins de la valeur poetique et intemporelle des mythes que de leur fonction historique aux epoques archaique et classique, qu'il s'agisse de mythes constitutifs legitimant la conquete, le deplacement et l'implantation ou de mythes etiologiques, tous redessinent a la grecque les nouvelles terres conquises. L'eventail des mythes est particulierement large dans le monde de la colonisation spartiate - la Mediterranee spartiate - ou le desir de conquete et la jeunesse de la nation spartiate susciterent force mythes fondateurs. Sparte elle-meme etait percue comme une jeune colonie dorienne, dotee de son propre mythe. Ses caracteristiques propres (constitution, cultes, heros, attitude envers les peuples sujets) passerent parfois a ses colonies, alors que dans des cites comme Tarente et Cyrene continuite et independance entretenaient une relation conflictuelle. L'idee d'une Mediterranee spartiate contrastant avec l'image d'une Sparte fermee sur elle-meme et la part prise par les mythes et les cultes dans la construction de cette identite sont les principales conclusions de cette etude. Antiquisants, historiens, anthropologues et historiens des religions et des mythes y trouveront de quoi nourrir leur reflexion. Irad Malkin est professeur d'Histoire de la Grece ancienne et directeur du Centre des Etudes mediterraneennes a l'Universite de Tel Aviv. Il a publie Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (1987) et The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (1998).

This remarkably rich and multifaceted study of early Greek exploration makes an original contribution to current discussions of the encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks. Focusing in particular on myths about Odysseus and other heroes who visited foreign lands on their mythical voyages homeward after the Trojan War, Irad Malkin shows how these stories functioned to mediate encounters and conceptualize ethnicity and identity during the Archaic and Classical periods. Synthesizing a wide range of archaeological, mythological, and literary sources, this exceptionally learned book strengthens our understanding of early Greek exploration and city-founding along the coasts of the Western Mediterranean, reconceptualizes the role of myth in ancient societies, and revitalizes our understanding of ethnicity in antiquity. Malkin shows how the figure of Odysseus became a proto-colonial hero whose influence transcended the Greek-speaking world. The return-myths constituted a generative mythology, giving rise to oral poems, stories, iconographic imagery, rituals, historiographical interpretation, and the articulation of ethnic identities. Reassessing the role of Homer and alternative return-myths, the book argues for the active historical function of myth and collective representations and traces their changing roles through a spectrum of colonial perceptions--from the proto-colonial, through justifications of expansion and annexation, and up to decolonization.

First published in 1988. This is a collection of works where the Mediterranean provides the context for all the cities which appear in this volume: all are (or have been) port cities, and as such their harbours played a significant role in shaping their histories. In essence, the question of ‘interaction between man and sea’ is one of the influence of the maritime position on the human communities constituting the ‘Mediterranean cities’: the connections between them, and the link of each city with its hinterland, as well as the influence of its position on the city’s internal development and character.