Polis Histories, Collective Memories and the Greek World

Re-assesses the phenomenon of Greek 'local history-writing' and its role in creating political and cultural identity in a changing world.

Rosalind Thomas (Author)

9781316644737, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 June 2022

502 pages
22.8 x 15 x 2.7 cm, 0.72 kg

'An important read for those studying Classical Antiquity, this may also be of interest to those interested in military history, for the insights it gives into how usually suspect works such as local histories can be used with profit.' Albert Nofi, The NYMAS Review

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).

1. What are polis histories? What are local histories? Popular history and its audiences
2. Tales for the telling: '?? ???????'
3. Ethnography for the Greeks? The polis as a new subject for historiography
4. Fostering the community: accumulative historiography
5. Origins, foundations and ethnicity: Greeks and non-Greeks
6. Saving the city: political history or paradoxa? Miletus and Lesbos
7. Polis in flux: dislocation and disenfranchisement in Samos
8. Athenian polis histories
9. The Aristotelian politeiai and local histories
10. Polis and island histories and the late Classical and Hellenistic world: a new Hellenism?

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Historiography [HBAH], History [HB]