Intended as an introduction to the definition of oligarchy, this concise study guides the reader through the ideologies of Plato and Aristotle and compares theoretical oligarchy with its practice. Ostwald also examines the benefits and disadvantages of oligarchical citizenship.

This is the first ever documented study of the 1,035 identifiable Greek city states (poleis) of the Archaic and Classical periods (c.650-325 BC). Previous studies of the Greek polis have focused on Athens and Sparta, and the result has been a view of Greek society dominated by Sophokles', Plato's, and Demosthenes' view of what the polis was. This study includes descriptions of Athens and Sparta, but its main purpose is to explore the history and organization of the thousand other city states. The main part of the book is a regionally organized inventory of all identifiable poleis covering the Greek world from Spain to the Caucasus and from the Crimea to Libya. This inventory is the work of 47 specialists, and is divided into 46 chapters, each covering a region. Each chapter contains an account of the region, a list of second-order settlements, and an alphabetically ordered description of the poleis. This description covers such topics as polis status, territory, settlement pattern, urban centre, city walls and monumental architecture, population, military strength, constitution, alliance membership, colonization, coinage, and Panhellenic victors. The first part of the book is a description of the method and principles applied in the construction of the inventory and an analysis of some of the results to be obtained by a comparative study of the 1,035 poleis included in it. The ancient Greek concept of polis is distinguished from the modern term `city state', which historians use to cover many other historic civilizations, from ancient Sumeria to the West African cultures absorbed by the nineteenth-century colonializing powers. The focus of this project is what the Greeks themselves considered a polis to be.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

This book traces continuity in the development of the Athenian constitution, whereas previous studies have usually looked for catastrophic changes. Sealey selects three features of Athenian law which are important for the structure of society and the location of authority: (1) the legal status, and to a lesser extent the socioeconomic condition, of the different kinds of inhabitants of Attica; (2) the distinction, recognized in the fourth century, between "laws" and "decrees," analyzing what the Athians understood by "law"; and (3) the development of the Athenian courts. At an early stage the Athenians conceived the ideal of the rule of law and adhered to it continuously. They did so by means of a static concept of law and maintenance of an independent judiciary. The book is designed to be of importance not only for specialists in classical studies but for general historians, political scientists, and those concerned with the history of law. The book is within the reach of an advanced undergraduate and graduate audience.

What did democracy mean before liberalism? What are the consequences for our lives today? These questions are examined by this book.

This special issue of ZooKeys is the second in a planned series of volumes on the systematics of New World macro-moths. The 15 included papers describe three new genera, 23 new species, and four new subspecies, as well as proposing 64 new or revised synonymies, 13 new or revised statuses, and 125 new or revised generic combinations.