The Rationes Centesimarum, inscribed accounts of a 1 percent tax paid on sales of land by Attic corporate groups (demes, phratries etc.) to individual Athenian citizens in the 4th century B.C., are an important source for the social and economic history o f classical Athens. Although some of the fragments have been known for over a century, this book is the first comprehensive edition. In addition to a new fragment, published here for the first time, it contains revised texts of the 15 fragments already k nown, based on a fresh autopsy of the stones. This has resulted in many new readings and a new arrangement of the fragments into stelai. A translation in tabular form is followed by a textual and epigraphical commentary and full notes on the 150+ indivi duals and the 60+ corporate groups mentioned in the records, a number of them identified for the first time. Prosopographical analysis enables likely dates for the sales to be established to within a few years. This forms the basis for a final discussion chapter, which identifies the inscriptions as records of a centrally organised land sale programme probably attributable to the leading Athenian financial administrator, Lykourgos.

This 1997 volume contains essays on Greek and oriental history by the distinguished ancient historian David M. Lewis.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (D. Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2004.

The Rationes Centesimarum, inscribed accounts of a 1 percent tax paid on sales of land by Attic corporate groups (demes, phratries etc.) to individual Athenian citizens in the 4th century B.C., are an important source for the social and economic history o f classical Athens. Although some of the fragments have been known for over a century, this book is the first comprehensive edition. In addition to a new fragment, published here for the first time, it contains revised texts of the 15 fragments already k nown, based on a fresh autopsy of the stones. This has resulted in many new readings and a new arrangement of the fragments into stelai. A translation in tabular form is followed by a textual and epigraphical commentary and full notes on the 150+ indivi duals and the 60+ corporate groups mentioned in the records, a number of them identified for the first time. Prosopographical analysis enables likely dates for the sales to be established to within a few years. This forms the basis for a final discussion chapter, which identifies the inscriptions as records of a centrally organised land sale programme probably attributable to the leading Athenian financial administrator, Lykourgos.

This volume examines the applicability of central place theory in contemporary archaeological practice and thought in light of ongoing developments in landscape archaeology, by bringing together ‘central places’ and ‘un-central landscapes’ and by grasping diachronically the complex relation between town and country, as shaped by political economies and the availability of natural resources. Moving away from model-bounded approaches, central place theory is used more flexibly to include all the places that may have functioned as loci of economic or ideological centrality (even in a local context) in the past. Fourteen chapters examine centrality and un-central landscapes from Prehistory to the late Middle Ages in different geographical contexts, from Cyprus and the Levant, through Greece and the Balkans to Italy, France, and Germany.

Age-old scholarly dogma holds that the death of serious theatre went hand-in-hand with the 'death' of the city-state and that the fourth century BC ushered in an era of theatrical mediocrity offering shallow entertainment to a depoliticised citizenry. The traditional view of fourth-century culture is encouraged and sustained by the absence of dramatic texts in anything more than fragments. Until recently, little attention was paid to an enormous array of non-literary evidence attesting, not only the sustained vibrancy of theatrical culture, but a huge expansion of theatre throughout (and even beyond) the Greek world. Epigraphic, historiographic, iconographic and archaeological evidence indicates that the fourth century BC was an age of exponential growth in theatre. It saw: the construction of permanent stone theatres across and beyond the Mediterranean world; the addition of theatrical events to existing festivals; the creation of entirely new contexts for drama; and vast investment, both public and private, in all areas of what was rapidly becoming a major 'industry'. This is the first book to explore all the evidence for fourth century ancient theatre: its architecture, drama, dissemination, staging, reception, politics, social impact, finance and memorialisation.

This is the first commentary in any language on Aeschines' Against Timarchos, the prosecution speech in the politically crucial trial of 346/5BC. The case in essence was that Timarchos was legally ineligible to engage in active politics because he had engaged in improper homosexual relationships in the past and had wasted his inheritance on debauchery. The speech is our most important source for Athenian legal sanctions and moral attitudes concerning same-sex relations, and has been the focus of intense recent debates on the nature of Greek sexualities and on the relationship between sex, politics, and cultural life. It illuminates Athenian politics at the time when Athens faced the challenge to her independence from Philip of Macedon. It is a rhetorical masterpiece of misrepresentation, which persuaded the jury to convict Timarchos despite the fact that Aeschines had virtually no evidence of his misdeeds. This book provides a new translation, a full introduction, and a commentary, all accessible to those without knowledge of Greek. The introduction explores the main issues of the case, including Aeschines' career, Athenian laws and attitudes relating to homosexual relations, and the reasons for Aeschines' success: it is suggested that the verdict reflects the same moral and cultural unease in Athens which was shortly to produce the attempts at political, social, and cultural renewal associated with the age of Lycurgus. The fully documented commentary pays attention to the rhetorical strategy of the speech, explores important aspects of the language used, especially in relation to the moral denunciation of Timarchos' sexual and other malpractices, and explains all references to historical events and people.