Ancient tyranny / edited by Sian Lewis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lewis, Sian, Author.

Contributor:

Lewis, Sian.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dictators--Greece--History--Congresses.

Dictators.

Dictators--Rome--History--Congresses.

Greece--Politics and government--To 146 B.C--Congresses.

Greece.

Rome--Politics and government--510-30 B.C--Congresses.

Rome.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 282 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Tyrants and tyranny are more than the antithesis of democracy and the mark of political failure: they are a dynamic response to social and political pressures. This book examines the autocratic rulers and dynasties of classical Greece and Rome and the changing concepts of tyranny in political thought and culture. It brings together historians, political theorists and philosophers, all offering new perspectives on the autocratic governments of the ancient world. The volume is divided into four parts. Part I looks at the ways in which the term 'tyranny' was used and understood, and the kinds of individual who were called tyrants. Part II focuses on the genesis of tyranny and the social and political circumstances in which tyrants arose. The chapters in Part III examine the presentation of tyrants by themselves and in literature and history. Part IV discusses the achievements of episodic tyranny within the non-autocratic regimes of Sparta and Rome and of autocratic regimes in Persia and the western Mediterranean world. Written by a wide range of leading experts in their field, Ancient Tyranny offers a new and comparative study of tyranny within Greek, Roman and Persian society.

Contents:

pt. 1. The making of tyranny

Kingship and tyranny in archaic Rome / Fay Glinister

Ducetius and fifth-century Sicilian tyranny / Trinity Jackman

Adfectatio regni in the Roman Republic / Christopher Smith

Money and the great man in the fourth century BC : military power, aristocratic connections and mercenary service / Matthew Trundle

From Agathocles to Hieron II : the birth and development of basileia in Hellenistic Sicily / Efrem Zambon

pt. 2. Tyranny and politics

Tyrants and the pols : migration, identity, and urban development in Sicily / Kathryn Lomas

Synchronicity : the local and the panhellenic within Sicilian tyranny / Sarah E. Harrell

Alexander of Pherae : infelix tyrant / Sawomir Sprawski

pt. 3. The ideology of tyranny

Pindar and kingship theory / Simon Hornblower

The comic Pericles / James McGlew

Tyrannical oligarches at Athens / Lynette Mitchell

Plutarch and the Sicilian tyrants / Claude Mosse (translated by Robin Machkenzie)

Reckoning with tyranny : Greek thoughts on Caesar in Cicero's Letters to Atticus in early 49 / Ingo Gildenhard

pt. 4. The limits of tyranny

The violence of the Thirty Tyrants / Andrew Wolpert

The politics of Persian autocracy, 424-334 BC / Stephen Ruzicka

Sulla the weak tyrant / Alexander Thein.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-7486-5104-7

1-280-76237-3

9786610762378

0-7486-2643-3

OCLC:

476039520