Athenian Proxenies of the Fifth Century B.C.

by: Walbank, M.B.

Price: 84,00 EURO

1 copy in stock

INTRODUCTION -- The subject of this study is the series of decrees that was issued at Athens in honour of foreigners who served the city's commercial and political interests, as well as those of individual Athenian citizens, during the fifth century B.C., the period when Athens, having formed the Confederacy of Delos among the Greek states as a means of attacking the Persian Empire, herself became an imperial power and reduced her Confederate allies to the status of dependent states. -- One of the tools by which this change was effected was the office of the proxenia. We possess today fragments of some sixty-eight inscriptions that record grants of proxeny or the award of further privileges to existing proxenoi; literary sources add a further nine proxenies; while documents of the fifth and fourth centuries that refer to proxenies held by the progonoi of contemporary proxenoi, or involve the revival of proxenies held by fathers or grandfathers that had lapsed or had been abrogated by the Thirty Tyrants in 404 B.C., indicate the existence of a further seventeen: in sum, ninety-four proxenies are known or can be inferred for the fifth century, only a small fraction, I believe, of the total number of proxenies maintained by Athens during this period, since it is my view that Athens maintained a proxenos in each of the states that constituted her Empire (an Empire that may have included at its height almost three hundred and fifty members), and also in many of those other states, both Greek and non-Greek, with whom she had dealings, whether diplomatic or commercial.

Athenian Proxenies of the Fifth Century B.C.

by: Walbank, M.B.

• ISBN-13: 9780888665980 / 978-0-88866-598-0
• ISBN-03: 0888665989 / 0-88866-598-9
• Samuel Stevens, Toronto, 1978

Price: 84,00 EURO

1 copy in stock