Kostas Vlassopoulos

Autore di Politics: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Ancients and Moderns)

7+ opere 48 membri 1 recensione

Sull'Autore

Kostas Vlassopoulos is Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History Beyond Eurocentrism (2007) and of several articles on politics and society, in the world of classical antiquity.

Opere di Kostas Vlassopoulos

Popolari Recenti

Politics: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Ancients and Moderns) (2009) 17 copie

Greeks and Barbarians (2013) 14 copie

Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (2007) 8 copie

Historicising Ancient Slavery (Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Slavery) (2021) 3 copie

Communities and networks in the ancient Greek world (2015) — A cura di — 3 copie

Greek and Roman Slaveries (Blackwell Sourcebooks in Ancient History) (2022) 2 copie

Violence and community : law, space and identity in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean world (2017) — A cura di — 1 copia

Esplora le opere

Opere correlate

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion (Oxford Handbooks in Classics and Ancient History) (2015) — Collaboratore — 32 copie

The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon (Cambridge Companions to Literature) (2016) — Collaboratore — 17 copie

Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Classical Presences) (2010) — Collaboratore — 9 copie

The Western Time of Ancient History: Historiographical Encounters with the Greek and Roman Pasts (2011) — Collaboratore — 6 copie

Ancient ethnography : new approaches (2013) — Collaboratore — 3 copie

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) (2021) — Collaboratore — 3 copie

How to Do Things with History: New Approaches to Ancient Greece (2018) — Collaboratore — 2 copie

Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece (2010) — Collaboratore — 1 copia

Ancient Greek Literature and the Foreign: Athenian Dialogues II (Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes, 130) — Collaboratore — 1 copia

Etichette

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Informazioni generali

Sesso: male
Nazionalità: Greece

Utenti

Recensioni

Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History… di Kostas Vlassopoulos

Kostas Vlassopoulos has written a provocative and polemical work of comparative history and historiography. He rejects the truism that the History of Ancient Greece is the antecedent to Modern European History and denies the validity of the traditional periodization of Greek history. Vlassopoulos argues for a new interpretation, away from a focus on the rise and fall of supposedly autonomous Greek poleis and toward an insertion of Greek history into the history of the wider Mediterranean and Near East.

Vlassopoulos’ historiographical review is fascinating, tracing the shifting perceptions and interpretations of Greek history from the ancient Greeks themselves to the formation of a late-20th century orthodoxy that posits the classical Greek polis as a community of citizens, in contrast to the Oriental despotisms of the East. Vlassopoulos claims to be working in the (M.I.) Finleyan tradition of questioning presumptions and rethinking methods, then directs some of his sharpest critiques at Finley himself for insisting that, before the Greeks, peoples of the Near East had no experience with politics. On the contrary, writes Vlassopoulos, evidence for self-government among non-Greeks—political deliberation and the administration of city life, the settlement of disputes and the representation of the community to higher authorities—is abundant and persuasive. Likewise, Finley’s reduction of all ancient Greek cities into isolated, ideal economic types (‘the consumer city’) ignores the whole complex of relations, processes, and functions within which ancient cities were situated.

This is a scholarly work, with copious references and notes, but the arguments and evidence are clearly laid out. Vlassopoulos calls for a rewriting of Greek history from a different perspective, but he does not write it himself. What he does do is reveal the historiographical problems inherent in teleological Occidentalism and the ‘traditional’ narrative of ancient Greek history. Anyone interested in ancient history will find this a stimulating, thought-provoking book.… (altro)