Decrees of Fourth-Century Athens (403/2-322/1 BC): Volume 1, The Literary Evidence

Description

Decree-making is a defining aspect of ancient Greek political activity: it was the means by which city-state communities went about deciding to get things done. This two-volume work provides a new view of the decree as an institution within the framework of fourth-century Athenian democratic political activity. Volume 1 consists of a comprehensive account of the literary evidence for decrees of the fourth-century Athenian assembly. Volume 2 analyses how decrees and decree-making, by offering both an authoritative source for the narrative of the history of the Athenian demos and a legitimate route for political self-promotion, came to play an important role in shaping Athenian democratic politics. Peter Liddel assesses ideas about, and the reality of, the dissemination of knowledge of decrees among both Athenians and non-Athenians and explains how they became significant to the wider image and legacy of the Athenians.

Peter Liddel is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Manchester. He has published extensively on Greek political history, notably Civic Obligation and Individual Liberty in Ancient Athens (2007), as well as on Greek history, historiography and epigraphy. He is co-editor of the Annual of the British School at Athens, and serves as co-editor of Brill's New Jacoby and as associate editor of Polis. He is a founding member of the Editorial Board of the Attic Inscriptions Online project and is also co-investigator in a project to digitally publish Attic inscriptions in UK collections (AIUK).