HIS 3. The Greek Polis: Beginning(s), End(s), Afterlife

Få overblik på:
- Historie, KA-2022, ét-faglig, lektionskatalog forår 2025
- Historie, KA-2022, to-faglig, lektionskatalog forår 2025
- Historie, KA-sidefag-2022, lektionskatalog forår 2025
- Historie, BA, lektionskatalog forår 2025

HIS 3. The Greek Polis: Beginning(s), End(s), Afterlife
This course aims to explore the development of the ancient polis (‘city-state’), from the earliest attestations through to the final stages of its history (and its afterlife). The Greek city-state, and especially the democratic polis of Athens, has historically held a special place in the collective consciousness of the western world, and of Europe in particular. In 2003, while preparing the draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, representatives of the EU Member States made a point of opening its preamble with the notion, put by the Athenian historian Thucydides in the mouth of the Athenian statesman Pericles, that “Our Constitution ... is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the greatest number” (Thuc. 2.37.1). As recently as 2021, on the 40^th anniversary of Greece’s accession to the EU, president of the European Council Charles Michel said in so many words that “Europe was born in Greece”, and then proceeded to cite an array of (almost) solely classical Athenian examples. But Greece was much more than Athens, and the concept of polis is much more multifaceted than what the Athenian example alone would suggest: different poleis throughout the Greek world had different political regimes, different civic cultures, different institutions, different modes of integration of the non-(male)-citizen population into their societies. By using John Ma’s recent comprehensive study on the Greek city-state (2024) as a blueprint, students in this course will engage with a variety of literary and epigraphic sources (in translation) to unravel the history of the polis from a pluralistic, non-Athenocentric perspective, and to explore the ways in which this kaleidoscopic history can help us make sense of our own relationship towards community, participation, autonomy, justice, power structures, and democracy in our modern societies.