Prof Polly Low (Durham) will give the Autumn Lecture in Classics, part of the ICS/National Hellenic Research Foundation/British School at Athens Lectures in Classics series
Towards a New History of Ancient Greek Empire(s)
Monday 3 November, 6pm EET 5pm GMT
British School at Athens and online
Full details and link to register here.
Can we talk of ’empire’ when studying the behaviour of Greek states in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE? Does using this terminology clarify or obscure our understanding of how states and individuals behaved, and how they understood their behaviour? These questions are not new, but they are made newly important by recent developments (in and beyond Greek history) in thinking about empires and imperialism, and particularly by current emphases on the diversity and flexibility of imperial practices, and of subject experience(s) of imperial power. This lecture will use a selection of case studies to explore the problem of identifying and analysing ’empire’ and ‘imperialism’ in Classical Greece; a particular aim of the lecture is to show how far the practices and ideologies of the fifth-century ‘Athenian Empire’ dominate not only modern but also ancient models of coercive interstate power.