ABSTRACT
Classical Athens is practically tailor-made for a course concerned with social organization, the relationship between public and private realms of life, and the diverse, often conflicting, ideologies that control a complex society. The general development in Classical Athens, for example, from an early democracy controlled essentially by a tightly knit aristocratic elite to a system that attempted, at least, to be more inclusive of the larger citizen population, seems parallel to the shift in 20th-century. Philadelphia, class discussion touched on virtually every aspect of urban life, just as it did in the case of Classical Athens, and ancient texts provided an eye-opening set of parallels for the students to contemplate. The most fruitful avenue of comparison between Athenian and Philadelphian conceptions of “community” emerged from our examination of the elaborate fifth-century organization of the Athenian polis into demes and tribes.
