Eric W. Robinson is an American historian of ancient Greece, specializing in early democracy. He is currently a professor at Indiana University. In 1986, he graduated with a BA from Yale University. [1] After studying under noted historian Donald Kagan as an undergraduate, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. [2] [1] From 1999 to 2006, Robinson was an associate professor at Harvard University, where he won the Roslyn Abramson Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching. [3]
Robinson has written and edited several works, including The First Democracies: Early Popular Government Outside Athens, Oikistes: Studies in Constitutions, Colonies, and Military Power in the Ancient World Offered in Honor of A. J. Graham, Ancient Greek Democracy: Readings and Sources, and Democracy Beyond Athens: Popular Government in the Greek Classical Age. [1]
Megara is a historic town and a municipality in West Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Megara was one of the four districts of Attica, embodied in the four mythic sons of King Pandion II, of whom Nisos was the ruler of Megara. Megara was also a trade port, its people using their ships and wealth as a way to gain leverage on armies of neighboring poleis. Megara specialized in the exportation of wool and other animal products including livestock such as horses. It possessed two harbors, Pagae to the west on the Corinthian Gulf, and Nisaea to the east on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea.
Elis or Eleia is an ancient district in Greece that corresponds to the modern regional unit of Elis.
Cleisthenes, or Clisthenes, was an ancient Athenian lawgiver credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508 BC. For these accomplishments, historians refer to him as "the father of Athenian democracy". He was a member of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid clan. He was the younger son of Megacles and Agariste making him the maternal grandson of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon. He was also credited with increasing the power of the Athenian citizens' assembly and for reducing the power of the nobility over Athenian politics.
Gregory Nagy is an American professor of Classics at Harvard University, specializing in Homer and archaic Greek poetry. Nagy is known for extending Milman Parry and Albert Lord's theories about the oral composition-in-performance of the Iliad and Odyssey.
Literae humaniores, nicknamed Greats, is an undergraduate course focused on classics at the University of Oxford and some other universities. The Latin name means literally "more human literature" and was in contrast to the other main field of study when the university began, i.e. res divinae, also known as theology. Lit. hum., is concerned with human learning, and lit. div. with learning treating of God. In its early days, it encompassed mathematics and natural sciences as well. It is an archetypal humanities course.
A democracy is a political system, or a system of decision-making within an institution, organization, or state, in which members have a share of power. Modern democracies are characterized by two capabilities of their citizens that differentiate them fundamentally from earlier forms of government: to intervene in society and have their sovereign held accountable to the international laws of other governments of their kind. Democratic government is commonly juxtaposed with oligarchic and monarchic systems, which are ruled by a minority and a sole monarch respectively.
Paul Finkelman is an American legal historian. He is the author or editor of more than 50 books on American legal and constitutional history, slavery, general American history and baseball. In addition, he has authored more than 200 scholarly articles on these and many other subjects. From 2017 - 2022, Finkelman served as the President and Chancellor of Gratz College, Melrose Park, Pennsylvania.
Eric H. Cline is an American author, historian, archaeologist, and professor of ancient history and archaeology at The George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, D.C., where he is Professor of Classics and Anthropology and the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, as well as Director of the GWU Capitol Archaeological Institute. He is also the advisor for the undergraduate archaeology majors, for which he was awarded the GWU Award for "Excellence in Undergraduate Departmental Advising" (2006). Cline served as co-editor of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research along with Christopher Rollston from 2014–2020.
During the Classical era and Hellenistic era of Classical Antiquity, many Hellenic city-states had adopted democratic forms of government, in which free (non-slave), native (non-foreigner) adult male citizens of the city took a major and direct part in the management of the affairs of state, such as declaring war, voting supplies, dispatching diplomatic missions and ratifying treaties. These activities were often handled by a form of direct democracy, based on a popular assembly. Others, of judicial and official nature, were often handled by large juries, drawn from the citizen body in a process known as sortition.
Josiah Ober is an American historian of ancient Greece and classical political theorist. He is Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor in honor of Constantine Mitsotakis, and professor of classics and political science, at Stanford University. His teaching and research links ancient Greek history and philosophy with modern political theory and practice.
Hellenic studies is an interdisciplinary scholarly field that focuses on the language, literature, history and politics of post-classical Greece. In university, a wide range of courses expose students to viewpoints that help them understand the historical and political experiences of Byzantine, Ottoman and modern Greece; the ways in which Greece has borne its several pasts and translated them into the modern era; and the era's distinguished literary and artistic traditions.
Eric Matthew Nelson is an American historian and Professor of Government at Harvard University.
Jonathan Mark Hall is professor of Greek history at the University of Chicago. He earned a BA from the University of Oxford in 1988 and a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1993 and he is the author of many books, including Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture, A History of the Archaic Greek World, ca. 1200–479 BCE, Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian, and Reclaiming the Past: Argos and its Archaeological Heritage in the Modern Era, as well as various articles and reviews on Archaic and Classical Greece. His focus of research is on Greek history, historiography, and archaeology. He received the Quantrell Teaching Award in 2009.
Richard Charles Murray Janko is an Anglo-American classical scholar and the Gerald F. Else Distinguished University Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan.
John-Paul Himka is an American-Canadian historian and retired professor of history of the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Himka received his BA in Byzantine-Slavonic Studies and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan in 1971 and 1977 respectively. The title of his Ph.D. dissertation was Polish and Ukrainian Socialism: Austria, 1867–1890. As a historian Himka was a Marxist in the 1970s–80s, but became influenced by postmodernism in the 1990s. In 2012 he defined his methodology in history as "eclectic".
David Stone Potter is the Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Professor of Greek and Latin in Ancient History at The University of Michigan. Potter is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford universities and specializes in Greek and Roman Asia Minor, Greek, and Latin historiography and epigraphy, Roman public entertainment, and the study of ancient warfare.
Diana Buitron-Oliver was an American classical archaeologist and curator, specializing in Greek vase painting.
Athenian democracy developed around the 6th century BC in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica. Although Athens is the most famous ancient Greek democratic city-state, it was not the only one, nor was it the first; multiple other city-states adopted similar democratic constitutions before Athens. By the late 4th century BC, as many as half of the over one thousand existing Greek cities might have been democracies. Athens practiced a political system of legislation and executive bills. Participation was open to adult, free male citizens Adult male citizens probably constituted no more than 30 percent of the total adult population.
John R. Hale is an American archaeologist and historian. He was a highly regarded professor and field archeologist, and was Director of the Liberal Studies Program at the University of Louisville. He lectures widely for the public on topics in classicism, ancient history, and archeology and his archeological fieldwork has been featured in a number of documentary films for the Discovery Channel and the History channel.
Sterling Dow was an American classical archaeologist, epigrapher, and professor of archaeology at Harvard University.