Towards a New History of Ancient Greek Empire(s)

Lecturer

Polly Low, Καθηγήτρια Αρχαίας Ιστορίας, Πανεπιστήμιο Durham

Abstract

Can we talk of ’empire’ when studying the behaviour of Greek states in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE? Does using this terminology clarify or obscure our understanding of how states and individuals behaved, and how they understood their behaviour?

These questions are not new, but they are made newly important by recent developments (in and beyond Greek history) in thinking about empires and imperialism, and particularly by current emphases on the diversity and flexibility of imperial practices, and of subject experience(s) of imperial power.

This lecture will use a selection of case studies to explore the problem of identifying and analysing ’empire’ and ‘imperialism’ in Classical Greece; a particular aim of the lecture is to show how far the practices and ideologies of the fifth-century ‘Athenian Empire’ dominate not only modern but also ancient models of coercive interstate power.

Bio

Polly Low is Professor in the Department of Classics & Ancient History at Durham University (UK).

Her research deals with the foreign relations of ancient Greek city states, particularly in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, historiography (especially Thucydides), and Greek epigraphy.

Her publications include Interstate Relations in Classical Greece (2007), The Athenian Empire (ed., 2007), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (ed., 2023), as well as several contributions to the series of studies Attic Inscriptions in the UK. Her current project is a history of imperialism in the Classical Greek world.