Athenian Democratic Origins Paperback

G. E. M. de Ste Croix

In these interconnected essays the late Geoffrey de Ste. Croix defends the institutions of the Athenian democracy, showing that they were much more practical, rational, and impartial than has usually been acknowledged. A major essay provides a new view of Aristotle's use of sources in The Constitution of the Athenians, on which so much of our knowledge of Athenian constitutional history depends. Ste. Croix also argues that commercial factors had much less influence on Greek politics than modern scholars tend to assume, and that there was no such thing in any Greek state as a `commercial aristocracy'. As always, he works out these general positions with the utmost lucidity and pungency, and

0199285160

9780199285167

English

Oxford University Press, USA

25-Jan-12

472