ABSTRACT
In the first section, The Greek Majority, contributors explore the lives of, and ancient opinions concerning, non-aristocrats. Only in recent years has it been accepted generally that Greeks outside the ruling circles are worthy of sustained scholarly attention. Yet even the most studied of classical literary texts, with their focus on leaders in politics and the arts, contain frequent references to the citizen poor, to women, slaves and helots. It might have been predicted, therefore, that the substantial volume of work on non-aristocrats which has now begun to appear would not only illuminate the lives of the ruled but would also inform the study of their rulers. It is a principle behind the composition of the present volume that rulers and ruled, high culture and the humdrum, cannot properly be studied in isolation from each other. Hooker examines the social organization which underlay the spectacular aristocratic manifestations of Mycenaean culture. Osborne considers the role of slavery in supporting and shaping the demokratia of Athenian citizens. Fisher investigates why the Athenians extended to slaves some protection against what was seen as the subversive vice of the rich, hybris. Griffiths studies non-aristocratic characters and attitudes in archaic poetry; Thomas examines the role of poetry in ruling circles of archaic Greece and the poet’s degree of freedom from the demands of a popular
audience. Morgan analyses the Greek novel to identify the social position and aspirations of its readership. Van Wees reassesses the differing military contributions made by distinct social groups, and asks whether Greek representations of war have been affected by sectional interests within societies. De Souza studies those seafarers whose very name, ‘pirates’, suggests their exclusion from the main institutions of power. King assesses claims made about the nature of women by Greek male medical writers from the fifth century to Roman times. Ogden considers how the differing treatment of illegitimate offspring in Greek communities reflected the differing statuses of women. Powell explores images of women in daily life and in mythology to reconstruct fifth-century controversy on the building of the Parthenon.
