Athenian Imperialism

The empire that the Athenians established in the years after 478 BC was an entirely new phenomenon in the history of Greece, and the basis of much of the brilliant development of Athenian culture in the fifth century. Its growth and collapse was the key event in the history of the period, after the defeat of the Persian invasion. Yet this important historical phenomenon remains baffling to study. New developments in various fields have made urgent a revision of existing approaches, which largely originated in the first half of the last century. Advances in archaeology have hugely extended the possibilities of writing an archaeology of the empire. The accepted chronology of many key inscriptions has been powerfully challenged, so that new narrative reconstructions become possible. Relevant new documents in languages such as Lycian have become available. Understanding of the Persian empire which was the parallel, and in a sense the model, with which the Athenian empire interacted has been transformed in the last quarter century. Broader developments in historiography (microhistory; history from below; and, post-colonial theory) invite us to pose new questions.The aim of this collection is not to offer a final word on any of the problems, but to give a sense of the possibility of a new generation of studies of the empire.

No comedies are preserved from 413 or 412 BC. But we do have two — Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Thesmophoriazusae — that were performed in 411. The plot of Lysistrata is overtly political. Scholars have nonetheless found it difficult to detect specific traces within the play of the tumultuous events of 411, much less any concrete recommendations for how to deal with what everyone in the city must by then have realized was a terrible military and political situation. I argue that the play is best understood as evidence for the even more confused and ambiguous situation in mid-412 or so, and that the heroine's plans, procedures and complaints, and how the opposition to them is characterised, offer insight not so much into the ideology of the committed oligarchs who briefly seized power a year or so later, as into widely dispersed patterns of political and social thought that made that seizure possible.

This paper [in Dutch] questions whether it is justified to earmark classical Athens as "The Age of Pericles". It offers a short overview of what the sources have to offer on the life and deeds of the statesman and shows how the ancients may delude modern conceptions of his significance.

Pericles has had the rare distinction of giving his name to an entire period of history, embodying what has often been taken as the golden age of the ancient Greek world. “Periclean” Athens witnessed tumultuous political and military events, and achievements of the highest order in philosophy, drama, poetry, oratory, and architecture. Pericles of Athens is the first book in more than two decades to reassess the life and legacy of one of the greatest generals, orators, and statesmen of the classical world.

In this compelling critical biography, Vincent Azoulay provides an unforgettable portrait of Pericles and his turbulent era, shedding light on his powerful family, his patronage of the arts, and his unrivaled influence on Athenian politics and culture. He takes a fresh look at both the classical and modern reception of Pericles, recognizing his achievements as well as his failings while deftly avoiding the adulatory or hypercritical positions staked out by some scholars today. From Thucydides and Plutarch to Voltaire and Hegel, ancient and modern authors have questioned the great statesman’s relationship with democracy and Athenian society. Did Pericles hold supreme power over willing masses or was he just a gifted representative of popular aspirations? Was Periclean Athens a democracy in name only, as Thucydides suggests? This is the enigma that Azoulay investigates in this groundbreaking book.

Pericles of Athens offers a balanced look at the complex life and afterlife of the legendary “first citizen of Athens” who presided over the birth of democracy.

Scholars have disagreed about whether the Great Dionysia was celebrated in 404 bce, despite the grim circumstances in Athens on the eve of the city’s surrender to Sparta. This article reconsiders the problem and reviews the positive documentary evidence for the festival’s celebration. The
evidence indicates that the festival was indeed held, which speaks to the centrality of the Great Dionysia to Athenian civic life. The article then re-examines the conditions in Athens in the spring of 404, the practical consequences that these may have had for the festival, and the celebration of other festivals during times of war and crisis. Despite the evidence that the Great Dionysia was celebrated, the scale of its festivities must have been reduced. The first regular celebration after the war did not likely take place until 402/1, when the posthumous premiere of Sophocles’ Oidipous at Kolonos would have served partially as a symbolic proclamation that Athens’ great theatrical tradition would continue undiminished.

It is well known that some ancient Greek authors linked the development and persistence of democracy in a polis to her fleet.  Two factors for this connection are named by the sources: an internal one – the dependence of a maritime-oriented polis upon the poorest citizens serving as the rowers, archers or petty officers – and an external one, i.e. the role of the navy in preserving a democratic state’s independence against oligarchically minded neighbors.  This article examines the place of the two facets of democracy’s maritime entanglements in ancient Greek thought. I will maintain that when our sources speak of the seafaring aspects of democracy they mean one of these factors, not ‘Sea Rule’ as such. We shall see under which conditions each of these factors was thought to be valid. Finally, I will try to show how the role various authors attribute to the internal and external factors of the ‘sea-democracy’ connection corresponds to these authors’ general political outlooks.

This article aims to explain in a theoretical way, but with practical historical examples the complex notion of informal imperialism. First analyzing imperialism(s) and colonialism as a whole, it will then try to caracterize and categorize more specifically what is informal imperialism. Comparing imperialism with the our understanding of space, a grid of understanding is thus applied to imperialism as a whole, to then qualify and address the informality of the phenomenon, and give theoretical tools based on practical historical cases for the historian and the political scientist.

The purpose of my dissertation is to analyse the negative comments concerning Pericles; the 5th Century BCE Athenian statesman and general. This will involve an assessment of both ancient and modern writers. It will include an exploration of his early career as well as the decisions he made whilst in high office. His personal life will also be examined to clarify to what extent it affected his judgement in politics. Larger themes such as Athenian Imperialism and financial greed will also be taken into account to confirm if Pericles' actions were all just simply part of the current social-political landscape of the polis of Athens. The eventual aim of my dissertation is to evaluate these various assessments and judge if there is substantial weight to them.

Thirty years after Xerxes invaded Greece, the Achaemenid Persian Empire ended its long war with Athens. For the next four decades, the Persians tolerated Athenian control of their former tributaries, the Ionian Greek cities of western Anatolia. But during the Peloponnesian War, Persia reclaimed Ionia and funded a Spartan fleet to overthrow Athenian power. It took eight long years for Persia to triumph, and Sparta then turned on its benefactors, prompting Persia to transfer aid to Athens in the Corinthian War. The peace of 386 reiterated imperial control of Ionia and compelled both Sparta and Athens to endorse a Persian promise of autonomy for Greeks outside Asia.

In Persian Interventions, John O. Hyland challenges earlier studies that assume Persia played Athens against Sparta in a defensive balancing act. He argues instead for a new interpretation of Persian imperialism, one involving long-term efforts to extend diplomatic and economic patronage over Greek clients beyond the northwestern frontier. Achaemenid kings, he asserts, were less interested in Ionia for its own sake than in the accumulation of influence over Athens, Sparta, or both, which allowed them to advertise Persia’s claim to universal power while limiting the necessity of direct military commitment. The slow pace of intervention resulted from logistical constraints and occasional diplomatic blunders, rather than long-term plans to balance and undermine dangerous allies.

Persian Interventions examines this critical period in unprecedented depth, providing valuable new insights for the study of Achaemenid Persia and classical Greece. Its conclusions will interest not only specialists in both fields but also students of ancient and modern comparative historical imperialism.

This article provides an in-depth analysis of Gorgias's Funeral Oration. The chapter shows that Gorgias’s Epitaphios was most likely composed and disseminated at some point in the last quarter of the fifth century; that the text was intended to be received primarily by a literary audience (it was certainly not presented orally in the public funeral ceremony); and that Gorgias’s Epitaphios conveyed a tenor critical of the Athenian power politics in the later fifth century. Also, Gorgias’s Epitaphios seems to have played a role when Thucydides wrote the Periclean funeral oration in the Histories; and Isocrates in the Panegyricus took over the central message from Gorgias and developed it further.

Nessuno più di Aristotele ha studiato la democrazia ateniese. Di quella che è stata la forma storica più rilevante dell’idea democratica Aristotele ha voluto comprendere l’evoluzione, la storia: perciò ha pensato il confronto, in prospettiva diacronica, delle manifestazioni dell’idea democratica che giudicava le più significative e intellegibili della storia ateniese. A guidare la ricerca aristotelica sulla democrazia ateniese è un assunto rilevante del suo pensiero politico: ogni costituzione (politeia, nel suo linguaggio) è conoscibile attraverso la concezione che esprime riguardo a «ciò che è giusto». È l’idea (eidos) della giustizia, anzi della giustizia come uguaglianza, a definire il carattere di un regime politico. Aristotele ha cercato l’idea democratica prioritariamente nella forma di volta in volta assunta dal dispositivo della cittadinanza. Nel caso della democrazia ateniese, l’evoluzione viene seguita dalla fase dell’emergenza dell’idea di cittadinanza democratica, agli inizi del VI secolo, fino a quando le regole stabilite rispetto alla definizione del gruppo dei cittadini e delle loro spettanze hanno ricevuto una forma stabile. Un ciclo compiutosi nel corso del secolo e mezzo che separa i provvedimenti adottati in materia di cittadinanza da Solone e da Pericle.

This chapter sets Heraclitus and his work in the historical context of the Ionian  revolt (499 - 494 B.C.).The combined  external evidence and the ipsissima verba of Heraclitus lead to the conclusion that the book of Heraclitus was not only a philosophical treatise, but also a program of radical political and religious reforms whose aim was the creation of a federal state of Ionian Greeks (presumably with further expansion of it into a Panhellenic state) in order to match and to surpass the military might of the Persian empire.  In religious sphere the  Homeric anthropomorphic  polytheism had to be replaced by a monotheistic cult of Apollo the Sun (being a visible manifestation of his Father Zeus, the imperceptible «ever-living fire» imbued with mind, the creator of the Universe) who would unite the Greeks as a «common» (ξυνός) patron of the unified mega-polis. Heraclitus was an ideologue of the Ionian revolt and probably was connected with the «party of war» in Ephesus, hence his glorification of the fallen in battle who would be awarded with a «better portion» in afterlife and become commensals of gods in the Sun region, according to the neglected verbatim fragment in Zenobius Sophista (fr. 159A Lebedev). Heraclitus intentional «obscurity» and metaphorical language can be explained both as imitation of the oracular language of Apollo (whose prophet he claims to be by the prophetic formula “listening not to my logos…”) and as a conspiratorial protection against the spies of the Great king.  Heraclitus’ project probably failed because of the destruction of Miletus (494 B.C.), but his Panhellenic ideas may have influenced the founders of the Delian League who made the Delian Apollo the patron of the new confederation. And his dream was finally realised in full by Alexander the Great.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

Vincent Azoulay, Περικλής. Η Αθηναϊκή ∆ηµοκρατία υπό τη δοκιµασία του µεγάλου ανδρός (µετάφραση: ∆ηµήτρης ∆ηµακόπουλος), εκδ. Πόλις, Αθήνα 2015, σσ. 391. Η εικόνα του Περικλή, όπως είναι ευρύτερα γνωστή στη δηµόσια ιστορία, προβάλλεται από τον 19ο αιώνα και εξής στεφανωµένη µε την άλω της εξιδανίκευσης: δεινός ρήτορας, ικανός στρατηγός, εξέχων πολιτικός της αθηναϊκής δηµοκρατίας, οργανωτικός νους του µεγάλου οικοδοµικού προγράµµατος, κατ' εξοχήν εκφραστής της πολιτισµικής κορύφωσης της πόλης, εν ενί λόγω αρχιτέκτονας του «χρυσού αιώνα» της κλασικής Αθήνας. Ωστόσο, η µορφή του Περικλή ούτε στις φιλολογικές πηγές του αρχαίου κόσµου ούτε στην ιστοριογραφία των νεότερων χρόνων εµφανίζεται πάντοτε και µονοσήµαντα θετική. Το αντίθετο µάλιστα! Ενίοτε του προσάπτεται ατοµικισµός, αλαζονική και αυταρχική συµπεριφορά, φατριασµός ή άλλοτε στην ιδιωτική σφαίρα έκλυτος βίος, χαοτική ερωτική ζωή, ακόµη και ανάµιξη σε αιµοµικτικό σκάνδαλο. Η αντίφαση αυτή συµπλέκεται µε µία ακόµη, γενικότερη τούτη, η οποία όµως επηρεάζει καθοριστικά την αξιολόγηση της προσωπικότητας του Περικλή, ως ενσαρκωτή της αθηναϊκής δηµοκρατίας. Ενώ εδώ και δύο περίπου αιώνες το πολίτευµα της κλασικής Αθήνας θεωρείται ως η κορύφωση των επιτευγµάτων του αρχαίου ελληνικού πολιτισµού, κανένας έλληνας στοχαστής, φιλόσοφος ή δηµοσιολόγος του 5ου ή του 4ου αιώνα δεν εµφανίζεται ως θεωρητικός απολογητής της. 1 Απεναντίας το δηµοκρατικό πολίτευµα δέχεται επιθέσεις µε αποκορύφωµα τη δηλητηριωδώς εχθρική στάση του Πλάτωνα. Τη µοναδική ουσιαστικά εξαίρεση αποτελεί ο Επιτάφιος λόγος, τον οποίο ο Θουκυδίδης βάζει στο στόµα του Περικλή! Σηµειωτέον όµως κι εδώ ότι δεν πρόκειται για θεωρητικό κείµενο πολιτικού στοχασµού αλλά για ρητορικό λόγο µε συγκεκριµένη προθετικότητα. Ο καθηγητής αρχαίας ιστορίας στο Παρίσι Βενσάν Αζουλαί, ο οποίος έχει δηµοσιεύσει ήδη βιβλία για τον Ξενοφώντα και το Σύµπλεγµα των Τυραννοκτόνων, 2 επιχειρεί µε τη µονογραφία του αυτή να διασαφηνίσει το τοπίο και να εξετάσει τη θέση του αθηναίου πολιτικού τόσο στην εποχή του όσο και στη νεότερη ιστοριογραφία. Η σχετική βιβλιογραφία βέβαια µετρά ήδη αρκετές βιογραφίες του Περικλή. 3 Η αξία του παρόντος βιβλίου έγκειται κατά τη γνώµη µου στα εξής δύο σηµεία: Κατά πρώτον ο συγγραφέας επιχειρεί να κρατήσει µία κριτική µατιά, η οποία

Athens was a city of the written word. The public bodies of Athens and Attica and individual residents inscribed more words on stone than the citizens of any other Greek city. There are well over 20,000 Attic inscriptions on stone, and the production is continuous from the archaic period through to the end of antiquity. The sheer quantity of the material endows the epigraphical record with historical potential of a character distinctly different from any other Greek city. Together with the rich literary record — a disproportionate quantity of the literary evidence for ancient Greece, especially of the classical period, was produced by Athenians or Athenian residents — it enables the history of Athens to be written across a span of time and in a depth and detail that is unique in the Greek world and otherwise usually possible only for more modern polities. [A revised version of this chapter was posted on academia.edu on 25 Nov. 2019]

Marek Węcowski, “The growth of Athens”: Herodotus, Thucydides and an aspect of the Athenian ideology of the fifth century B.C.

The study begins with an analysis of the Socles episode (V 90-92), the most extensive of Herodotean speeches and the central scene of the Histories. One recognises here the existence of a forgotten slogan of the Athenian propaganda of the fifth century B.C.: “the growth (auxesis) of Athens”. The meaning of the episode is based on this very idea. The second part is a lexicographical study aiming at a sketch of the development of the images which are implied by the slogan under consideration, from Homer to the fifth century B.C. The next step is a historical study of the development of this aspect of Athenian ideology. The slogan originated (on the basis of some religious ideas of the archaic era) during the political struggles of the sixties to fourties of this century, and it was subsequently altered to suit the Periclean ideology of “the height (acme) of Athens”. At the same time, the slogan was used by some enemies of Athens and circulated in the Greek world by the time of the Peloponnesian War.

In the third part, the author shows that the formal structure of Herodotus’ Histories is partially based on the idea of the prodigious growth of Athens, a process which is parallel to the imperial expansion of the Persian kingdom. The fourth part examines the role played by the notion of “prodigious growth” in the historiographical program of the Histories. The conclusion is that Herodotus tries to introduce this idea into the concept of the “circle of human affairs”; he relies here on the association between this idea and an archaic image of the hybristic auxesis. The vision of the irresistible growth of the Athenians must have been particularily striking for the Greeks during the first part of the Peloponnesian War, when the work of Herodotus appeared.

The last chapter of the thesis is a study of an aspect of the historiographical program of Thucydides and of the structure of the first sections of his work. The author maintains that some curious features of Thucydides’ History are due to the fact that the historian has been profoundly influenced by Herodotus, most of all by his concept of the growth of Athens.

The choice made by Themistocles to meet Xerxes remains an enigma for most historians. Why did this brilliant strategist, who defeated the imperial armies of Xerxes at Salamis and was a fervent defender of a workers’ democracy rather than an owners’ democracy, go to Persia to make a pact with the enemy? Why did Artaxerxes I, when he arrived at the imperial court in 474 BCE, welcome him as a hero, appoint him governor of Magnesia and even give him the right to mint his own currency? Why did Themistocles (536-471) want to confer with Amestris, i.e. Queen Esther (510-426), mother of Artaxerxes I (Ne 2:6), and why did Socrates encourage his faithful follower, the strategist Alcibiades, before the Peloponnesian War began (in 431 BCE), to benefit from Amestris’ wisdom? An absolute chronology of this period gives the answer to all these puzzling questions: Zoroaster (614-536), whom Socrates considered the first magus, was the diviner whom Cyrus met after the fall of Babylon (Daniel). Impressed by this “magus” who had revealed to him that God himself had appointed him to rule the world (Is 44:24-45-4), his co-regent issued an imperial decree (Dn 6:24-28) stipulating that: “From now on, the Persians are to worship the Lord Wisdom (Ahura Mazda), the only god, creator of heaven and earth, creator of man's happiness”, which was the motto of all the Achaemenid kings. Themistocles, who had wanted to meet with Xerxes to secretly replace the Persian protectorate with a partnership, in order to avoid war with the imperialist Athenians, was convinced by Amestris’ much wiser secret plan of a non-interventionist policy.
https://www.lulu.com/fr/shop/gerard-gertoux/summit-meeting-between-queen-esther-and-general-themistocles-to-stop-athenian-imperialism/paperback/product-zzrqdq.html

As for the overall historicity of the book —despite widespread dismissal from skeptics— there is likewise a remarkable body of evidence for it, including the historical identity of Queen Esther herself. For more on this, read a thorough investigation by Gerard Gertoux (The Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology https://armstronginstitute.org/674).

Fourth-century Athenian orators of epitaphioi logoi and other Athenian panegyric attempt to portray fifth-century tragedy as fundamentally encomiastic of Athens. This is borne out by the rhetorical reception of two ‘epitaphioi mythoi’, i.e. myths handled by both tragedians and orators: Erechtheus’ repulsion of Eumolpus’ invasion of Athens and Theseus’ efforts to secure the burial of the ‘Seven against Thebes’. The orators’ ‘encomiastic’ view of tragedy marks a new departure in Athenian intellectual history and should be read against the background of other attempts to curate the city’s tragic heritage in the third quarter of the fourth century.

Aristophanic comedy combines the materials of popular fantasy with keen, well-targeted satire and criticism of the major political issues of the Athenian state. The Birds can be read as an open parable which illustrates caustically the imperialism of Athenian democracy. Nephelokokkygia, the fantastic city of the birds in mid-air, is in essence a projection of the radical and imperialistic Athens onto the heterotopia of the aerial realm. The comedy was performed while the Sicilian expedition was in full progress, and the Athenian dēmos expected to conquer the entire western Mediterranean. The phantasmagorical polis of the birds, which finally subdues the gods and the men and triumphantly dominates over the universe, looks like a magnificent and grotesque parody of the irrepressible ambitions of Athenian imperialism. As happens with all worthy works of fantastic literature (e.g. the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien), the mythopoeia of the literary creation is an autonomous construct of the imagination, a complete and self-existent secondary world, which does not need reference to external coordinates of meaning. However, behind this self-reliant fantastic creation, one may discern —if one wishes to, and on one’s own hermeneutical responsibility— a general connection with the historical circumstances of the author’s age and milieu.

In the Frogs, similarly, the Hades explored by Dionysus has many similarities with the city of Athens under the dire conditions at the end of the Peloponnesian War, shortly before the final defeat. The Frogs is the only known ancient comedy in which the action is mostly set in the realm of the underworld. The beleaguered Athens of 405/4 BCE, tantalized by the constant fear of defeat and destruction, had come to resemble a city of the dead; Hades seemed to have been transplanted in the agora and the streets of the city. With Aristophanes’ play, Hades also comes to occupy the orchestra of the theatre. Through this brilliant and bitter comedy, Aristophanes attempts to transmit a message of unity and patriotism to his audience: Athens, in order to survive, needs to find again the spirit of courage, self-sacrifice and concord that characterized the city at the time of the Persian Wars. Hence the choice of the warlike and patriotic Aeschylus over the subtle and intellectual Euripides: Dionysus may personally prefer the sophisticated drama of the latter, but has the duty to select a poet in accordance with the public needs and interests of the polis.

Aristophanes’ messages do not seem to have had much effect in practical terms. Athenian imperialism did not abate; the city was not saved. But his great works of dramatic art have lasted through time.

The Xanthos stele, a multilingual Lycian dynastic monument of the late 5th century BCE, testifies to the importance of diplomatic interaction between Xanthos’ rulers and Achaemenid Persian administrators in western Anatolia.  Yet the stele’s Persian references are unevenly and selectively distributed between its Lycian and Lycian B inscriptions, and entirely absent from its Greek epigram.  Amorges, a satrap’s son turned rebel, appears briefly in the Lycian and Lycian B texts, but scholars debate whether they present him as friend or foe of Xanthos; in contrast, the final section of the Lycian text celebrates the famous satrap Tissaphernes as an ally of Xanthos, but the Lycian B omits him entirely.  This paper analyzes the stele’s Persian content and proposes that its designers added the material on Tissaphernes in a late stage of composition, trying to exploit his patronage in the context of local dynastic politics.

The military strategy chosen by Pericles in 431 B.C. was also determined by the general principle of avoidance of unnecessary risks and casualties, even though this choice required spending more money, goods, and time (as Pericles says in Thuc. I 143, 5).  This principle, shown in several statements attributed to Pericles, is particularly evident during the siege of Samos (440-439 B.C.).  The analysis of Plut. Per. 27-28 reveals how the strategic behaviour of the Plutarchean Pericles at Samos (careful to limit casualties and waste of money and time in warfare) is consistent with the Thucydidean Pericles as well as with the democratic ideology of the time.  Furthermore, it makes it possible to retrace a strong public discussion about the Periclean strategic line (using contemporary sources like Ion of Chios) through the public declarations by Pericles and Cimon’s sister, Elpinice.

The present study examines section five of Poroi and Xenophon’s proposal to restore the reputation of Athens. After outlining his plan for ‘justly’ supplying the dēmos with sufficient sustenance in Poroi 1-4, section 5 addresses the desire to regain hegemony after Athens had lost the Social War. Xenophon does not adopt an anti-imperialist stance; instead he seeks to re-align imperial aspirations with Athenian ideals and earlier paradigms for securing hegemony. Xenophon’s ideas in Poroi are contextualized with consideration for his ‘Socratic’ distinction between tyranny and kingship, as well as his wider advice for ruling well. It is shown that his proposals for securing the consent of the allies reiterates ideas that Xenophon outlines across his corpus, especially Hiero and Cyropaedia. In Poroi Xenophon therefore applies his political thought in an attempt to re-direct Athenian ambitions away from policies that prompted charges of being a ‘tyrant polis’ and towards ‘legitimate rule’.

Keywords: Xenophon; Poroi; imperialism/hegemony; Social War

This paper discusses two important inscriptions for the history of the Athenian Empire, the Chalkis decree of 446/5 (or 424/3?) BC (IG I3 40) and the tribute reassessment decree (“Thoudippos’ decree”) of 425/4 BC (IG I3 71). Based on English translations of the most up-to-date and authoritative Greek texts, the paper sets out to explain the inscriptions in historical context, without assuming prior knowledge of ancient Greek or of the history of Athens and the Athenian Empire. To help the reader new to the study of Athenian inscriptions, the Paper includes an introduction to inscribed Athenian decrees of the fifth century BC. This paper will be useful for researchers, teachers and learners of Greek History at University level, but is also designed to help teachers and students in UK 6th forms studying Ancent History A-level (H407, LACTOR4 1.78 and 138).
Note: minor corrections were incorporated on 28 June 2017. Hard copies are available at:
http://www.andromedabooks.gr/product.asp?catid=38457.

Кузьмин Ю.Н., Макарова О.М. Алексей Егорович Паршиков (1940–1984): жизнь и смерть антиковеда в городе на Волге // Советский ландшафт древней ойкумены: отечественная наука о древнем Востоке и античности в 1920–1980-е гг. / Отв. ред. И.А. Ладынин. М.: Университет Д. Пожарского, 2016 (Вестник Университета Д. Пожарского. № 2[4]). С. 161–184; Паршиков А.Е. Афинские финансы в период Пелопоннесской войны // Там же. С. 281–319.

The article is devoted to the Russian historian of classical antiquity A. E. Parshikov (1940–1984). It presents his biography and his contribution to the study of the history and organization of the so-called Delian League, which he regarded as the successor of the anti-Persian Hellenic League of 481 B.C., in which the hegemony was passed from Sparta to Athens in 478/7 B.C. According to A. E. Parshikov, the transformation from the coalition of initially autonomous and equal allies under the leadership of Athens to the Athenian Empire (arche) was a long process the completion of which he asserted must be moved to a later date than is usually considered (i.e. around the middle of the fifth century B.C.), to the years of the Peloponnesian War. His views on the dates of some important inscriptions (e.g. the Coinage decree) in many points were similar to views of H. Mattingly.

In the work of A. E. Parshikov "The Athenian Finance in the Peloponnesian War" the author’s attention is mainly focused on the analysis of the most important epigraphic documents showing the condition of Athenian finances during the Peloponnesian War: the first decree of Thudippus, two Kallias’ decrees and also the Tribute Lists, which present the amount of phoros collected from the allies of Athens. After meticulous analysis, the author suggests that Kallias’ decrees should be dated to 422/1 BC. Other issues are addressed in this paper: causes and nature of changes in taxation of the Athenian allies in 425/4–410/9 BC; the correlation of authority and interaction of different structures in the financial administration of Athens and the Athenian Empire (Hellenotamiai, treasurers of Athena, the treasurers of the other gods, etc.); the possibility of involvement of a number of Pontic cities (Nymphaeum, Heraclea Pontica) in the Delian League. The transfer to bronze coinage due to the lack of precious metals in 406 BC marked the final of the financial crisis in Athens on the eve of the collapse of their empire.

The position of Damastion, a Greek colony founded by the fugitives from Aegina and Mende shortly after 420 BC somewhere in Illyria near the abundant silver mines (Strabo 7.7.8 and 8.6.16), has still not been established with certainty. An analysis of the pattern of findspots of coins of this town demonstrates a concentration in the area of the rich silver mines of southern Kosovo, indicating that Damastion should be sought somewhere in that region.

Nel mio elaborato ho voluto focalizzare l'attenzione sulla figura storica di Ducezio nei rapporti tra le popolazioni sicule e la città di Siracusa nel V secolo A.C.. A questo tipo di studio mi ha spinto la volontà di comprendere meglio l'atteggiamento che tennero i Siculi nei confronti di Atene durante la prima spedizione in Sicilia (427-424 a.C.).