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Known from ancient authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato, and more than 2,500 inscriptions, proxeny (a form of public guest-friendship) is the best attested interstate institution of the ancient world. This book offers a comprehensive re-examination of our evidence for this important Greek institution and uses it to examine the structure and dynamics of the interstate system of the Greek world, and the way in which these were transformed under the Roman Empire. Based on a detailed analysis of the function of the formulaic language of honorific decrees, this volume presents a new reconstruction of proxeny, and explores the way in which interstate institutions shaped the behaviour of individuals and communities in the ancient world. It draws on other material which has not been systematically exploited to reconstruct the proxeny networks of Greek city-states. This material reveals the extraordinary density of formal interconnections which characterized the ancient Greek world before the age of Augustus and reflected both trade and political contacts of different kinds. 0It also traces the disappearance of both proxeny and the broader institutional system of which it was part. Drawing on nuanced analysis of quantitative trends in the epigraphic record, it argues that the Greek world underwent a profound reorientation by the time of the Roman Principate, which fundamentally altered how Greek cities viewed relations with each other. Readership: For scholars and students interested in the history of ancient Greek institutions, epigraphy, ancient international relations, ancient Greek political structure, and the world of ancient Greece more generally

The database Cretan Institutional Inscriptions was created as part of the PhD research project in Ancient Heritage Studies Kretikai Politeiai: Cretan Institutions from VII to I century BC, carried out at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari by Irene Vagionakis from 2016 to 2019, under the supervision of Claudia Antonetti and Gabriel Bodard. The research project aimed at collecting the epigraphic sources related to the institutional elements of the many political entities of Crete, with a view to highlighting the specificity of each context in the period between the rise of the poleis and the Roman conquest of the island. The main component of the database consists of the epigraphic collection of the 600 inscriptions constituting the core of the documentary base of the study, for each of which an XML edition compliant with the TEI EpiDoc international standard was created. Each EpiDoc edition includes a descriptive and a bibliographic lemma, the text of the inscription, a selective apparatus criticus and a commentary focused on the institutional data offered by the document. In addition to the epigraphic collection, the database includes a collection of the main related literary sources, a catalogue of the attested Cretan institutions (assemblies, boards, officials, associations, civic subdivisions, social statuses, age classes, months, festivities and other celebrations, institutional practices, institutional instruments, public spaces) and a catalogue of the political entities of Crete (poleis, koina, dependent communities, extra-urban sanctuaries, hegemonic alliances). Data and SW available at https://github.com/IreneVagionakis/CretanInscriptions