Lene Rubinstein is Professor of Ancient History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research centres on Greek history, especially Ancient Greek law and Greek inscriptions, as well as the Attic orators and oratory generally. [1]
She is a co-founder and a director of the Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric at the Department of Classics. She has publications on Athenian law and oratory and wrote a book "Litigation and Cooperation: Supporting Speakers in the Courts of Classical Athens" in 2000 on advocacy in the Athenian courts. [2]
Demosthenes was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by studying the speeches of previous great orators. He delivered his first judicial speeches at the age of 20, in which he successfully argued that he should gain from his guardians what was left of his inheritance. For a time, Demosthenes made his living as a professional speechwriter (logographer) and a lawyer, writing speeches for use in private legal suits.
Elis or Eleia is an ancient district in Greece that corresponds to the modern regional unit of Elis.
Attic Greek is the Greek dialect of the ancient region of Attica, including the polis of Athens. Often called classical Greek, it was the prestige dialect of the Greek world for centuries and remains the standard form of the language that is taught to students of ancient Greek. As the basis of the Hellenistic Koine, it is the most similar of the ancient dialects to later Greek. Attic is traditionally classified as a member or sister dialect of the Ionic branch.
Priene was an ancient Greek city of Ionia located at the base of an escarpment of Mycale, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) north of what was then the course of the Maeander River. It was 67 kilometres (42 mi) from ancient Anthea, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from ancient Aneon and 25 kilometres (16 mi) from ancient Miletus. The city was built on the sea coast, overlooking the former Latmian Gulf of the Aegean. It was developed on steep slopes and terraces extending from sea level to a height of 380 metres (1,250 ft) above sea level at the top of the escarpment. Because of siltation from the river filling the bay over several centuries, the city is now an inland site. It is located at a short distance west of the modern village Güllübahçe Turun in the Söke district of Aydın Province, Turkey.
Polis, plural poleis, means ‘city’ in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center as distinct from the rest of the city. Later it also came to mean the body of citizens under a city's jurisdiction. In modern historiography the term is normally used to refer to the ancient Greek city-states, such as Classical Athens and its contemporaries, and thus is often translated as ‘city-state’. The poleis were not like other primordial ancient city-states such as Tyre or Sidon, which were ruled by a king or a small oligarchy; rather, they were political entities ruled by their bodies of citizens.
In ancient Greece, a metic was a foreign resident of Athens, one who did not have citizen rights in their Greek city-state (polis) of residence.
Lysias was a logographer in Ancient Greece. He was one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace in the third century BC.
The ecclesia or ekklesia was the assembly of the citizens in city-states of ancient Greece.
Synoecism or synecism, also spelled synoikism, was originally the amalgamation of villages in Ancient Greece into poleis, or city-states. Etymologically the word means "dwelling together (syn) in the same house (oikos)." Subsequently, any act of civic union between polities of any size was described by the word synoikismos. The closest analogy today is the incorporation of a city; in fact, "incorporation" is often used to translate synoikismos, in addition to the Latinized synoecism. Synoecism is opposed to Greek dioecism, the creation of independent communities within the territory of a polis.
The ancient Greek word oikos refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family's property, and the house. Its meaning shifts even within texts.
Ancient Greek laws consists of the laws and legal institutions of ancient Greece.
Lycurgus was a statesman and logographer in Ancient Greece. In the aftermath of the Athenian defeat at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, he became the leading figure in Athenian politics, taking control of Athenian finances and pushing through a range of measures which drastically increased Athens' revenues. This money was used to expand the navy, improve the city's fortifications, develop the temples and religious ceremonies, and to build up a hefty reserve. He also encouraged the restoration of traditional values and prosecuted those who fell short of his expectations of civic behaviour. Because of his leading role, the period from 338 to 324 BC is often known in modern scholarship as the "Age of Lycurgus."
Neo-Attic or Atticizing is a sculptural style, beginning in Hellenistic sculpture and vase-painting of the 2nd century BC and climaxing in Roman art of the 2nd century AD, copying, adapting or closely following the style shown in reliefs and statues of the Classical and Archaic periods. It was first produced by a number of Neo-Attic workshops at Athens, which began to specialize in it, producing works for purchase by Roman connoisseurs, and was taken up in Rome, probably by Greek artisans.
A funeral oration or epitaphios logos is a formal speech delivered on the ceremonial occasion of a funeral. Funerary customs comprise the practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from the funeral itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. In ancient Greece and, in particular, in ancient Athens, the funeral oration was deemed an indispensable component of the funeral ritual.
In political history, stasis refers to an episode of civil war within an ancient Greek city-state or polis. It was the result of opposition between groups of citizens, fighting over the constitution of the city or social and economic problems. Staseis were endemic throughout the Greek world, in mainland Greece as well as the colonies of Magna Graecia. With 19 episodes of civil strife between 650 and 214 BC, Syracuse, in Sicily, was the city with the most recorded staseis.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ancient Greece:
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 has received the Quantrell Teaching Award in 2009.
Gabriel Herman holds the Professorship in Ancient History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He specialises in ancient Greek social history, focusing on issues such as social structure, interpersonal relationships, moral norms, rituals, conflict resolution and decision making.
Jonathan Powell is Emeritus Professor of Latin at Royal Holloway, University of London.
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 city-states might have been democracies.