Suchergebnisse

Historians generally study elite public gift-giving in ancient Greek cities as a phenomenon that gained prominence only in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods. The contributors to this volume challenge this perspective by offering analyses of various manifestations of elite public giving in the Greek cities from Homeric times until Late Antiquity, highlighting this as a structural feature of polis society from its origins in the early Archaic age to the world of the Christian Greek city in the early Byzantine period. They discuss existing interpretations, offer novel ideas and arguments, and stress continuities and changes over time. Bracketed by a substantial Introduction and Conclusion, the volume is accessible both to ancient historians and to scholars studying gift-giving in other times and places.

In the Hellenistic period, cities were the cornerstones of imperial rule. Cities were the loci for the acquisition of capital and manpower, and imperial agents (philoi) were recruited for a large part among Greek civic elites. This chapter departs from the dual premise that premodern empires are negotiated enterprises and that they are often networks of interaction rather than territorial states. The relentless competition between three rival superpowers in the Hellenistic Aegean – the Seleukid, Ptolemaic and Antigonid Empires – gave cities a good bargaining position vis-à-vis these empires. The fact that the imperial courts were dominated by philoi from the Aegean poleis moreover meant that these cities held a central and privileged place in Hellenistic imperialism, and benefited greatly from it. Royal benefactions structured imperial-local interactions. They were instrumental in a complex of reciprocal gift-exchange between empires and cities. Empires most of all needed capital, loyalty and military support. As kings were usually short of funds, the gifts by which they hoped to win the support of cities against their rivals often came in the form of immaterial benefactions like the granting of privileges and the protection of civic autonomy.