Suchergebnisse

"This book offers the first comprehensive study of drawing lots as a central institution of ancient Greek society. It reveals how an egalitarian mindset guided selection, procedure, and distribution by lot and how drawing lots was introduced for polis governance, a Greek innovation that may be relevant today. The first two parts (Irad Malkin) explore the egalitarian mindset geared towards horizontal relationships, expressed in drawing lots instead of a top-down vision of authority and sovereignty. Drawing lots presupposes 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. It was a self-evident method broadly applied. Drawing lots crystallized community boundaries and emphasized its sovereignty. The guiding values were equality and fairness. The gods were the guardians of the just procedure of drawing lots, but they did not predetermine the outcome. The third part (Josine Blok) investigates the transposition of the drawing of lots to the governance of the polis. The implied egalitarianism was often in conflict with a top-down perception 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 use in the democracy of classical Athens was an exceptional case, eye-catching both in antiquity and today. Conclusions about the meaning of the Greek examples for drawing lots today and an appendix (Elena Iaffe) surveying the Greek vocabulary of drawing lots close the book"--

This book offers the first comprehensive study of drawing lots as a central, ubiquitous institution of ancient Greek society. Led by an egalitarian mindset, Greeks drew lots as a matter of course to distribute inheritance, booty, sacrificial meat, and lands, to mix groups, select individuals, and set turns. Lot-oracles were used for divination; otherwise, the gods guarded the justice of the procedure but rarely determined the outcome. When drawing lots was gradually applied to polis governance, classical Athens made sortition the basis of the first democracy in human history. A Greek innovation, drawing lots for governance inspires new democratic politics today.

This volume discusses the multidimensional aspects of the unique, and so far unprecedented for Macedonia, 191 sherds from Methone in Pieria, dated to ca 700 BCE, which bear inscriptions, graffiti, and (trade)marks inscribed, incised, scratched and rarely painted. The 191 vessels were unearthed during excavations in ancient Methone in Pieria, the oldest colony of Greeks from Eretria in the north according to tradition. The Methone find is unique for two reasons. First, most of the pottery dates between 730 and 700 BCE, a period from which very few examples of Greek writing survives. And second, inscribed ceramics, scratched or painted, are extremely rare in Macedonia. This new evidence of inscribed pottery from Methone is invaluable for classical studies, and the papers of this volume contribute notably to current discussions about: the Greeks and the Greek language in Macedonia; the Greek colonization; the pottery trade and the early Greek transport amphoras; trade, the symposium, and other contexts for the development of writing; the 'alphabets' of Methone and the introduction of the alphabet in Greece; the dialect(s) of Methone in relation to the Greek dialects; early Greek writing, literacy, and literary beginnings.