Cults, Territory, And the Origins of the Greek City

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Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State Thomas Kelly Published online: 13 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Thomas Kelly (1996) Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State, History: Reviews of New Books, 24:4, 187-187, DOI: 10.1080/03612759.1996.9952543 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03612759.1996.9952543

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prove to be an excellent source for those wishing to research this period in Cambodian history. JEFFREY M. CHWIEROTH Virginia Tech

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de Polignac, Franqois Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-state Trans. Janet Lloyd Chicago: Chicago University Press 188 pp., $39.95 cloth $14.95 paper ISBN 0-226-67333-2 cloth ISBN 0-226-67334-0 paper Publication Date: August 1995

In an effort to explain the emergence of the Greek polis in his revised doctoral dissertation, La naissance de la cite‘ grecque (Paris, 1984), Franqois de Polignac, an associate at the Louis Gernet Center for Comparative Research on Ancient Societies in Paris, paid particular attention to Archaeological evidence. In this updated English translation of that work he takes into account archaeological material uncovered in the past decade. Religion, he argues, was at the very heart of the process that brought the Greek polis into being in the eighth and early decades of the seventh centuries B.C. This is reflected in the construction of the most famous sanctuaries in ancient Greece, the monumental extraurban sanctuary, and the emergence of hero cults. The site of the extraurban sanctuary was deliberately chosen to delimit territory. At the same time the sanctuary created a sacred or religious space and fostered communal solidarity. But the early polis was a political as well as a religious community; it was, in a word, bipolar. The extraurban sanctuary formed the socio-religious pole, while the inhabited urban space with its sanctuaries on the acropolis constituted the political pole. Only autochthonous Athens was exceptional, being monocentric rather than bipolar. In this examination of cult sites on the Greek mainland and the rituals associated with them, de Polignac’s debt to structuralist principles is unmistakable. He then moves on to an examination of cult sites in overseas colonies, particularly those in the western Mediterranean, where he detects a similar bipolarity. A final chapter is devoted to the diffusion of hero cults and their contribution to the political elaboration of the new palis. The bibliography of approximately ninety archaeological sites is full and up to date, but there are some glaring and troubling omissions from the general bibliography, and there is no index.

Summer 1996

Where checked against the original the translation is remarkably faithful, and it reads smoothly, but readers without some knowledge of early Greek history will not find it easy going. This is a stimulating, provocative, and highly original work on an important topic, but it produces an ambivalent reaction. De Polignac is surely correct in detecting significance in the very location of places of worship in the ancient Greek world, and there is much to be said for the prominent role here assigned to religion generally and to the construction of the monumental extraurban sanctuary in the formation of the Greek polis. But too many of his arguments rest on assumptions of questionable validity. THOMAS KELLY University of Minnesota

Osborne, Robin, and Simon Hornblower, eds. Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis New York: Oxford University Press 408 pages, $72.00, ISBN 0-19-814992-1 Publication date: February 1995

The essays in Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts, edited by Robin Osborne and Simon Hornblower, originate from an international conference held at Oxford in 1993 commemorating both the 2,500th anniversary of the Cleisthenic reforms and David Lewis’s 65th birthday. Lewis, who was a professor of ancient history at Oxford University, died in 1994, ending a brilliant and wide-ranging career in the study of antiquity. The work presents a very diverse selection of topics, which despite the inspired attempt of one of the editors to tie all twenty-two essays to the theme of the “ritualization of Athenian political, fiscal and religious life,” is in actuality united solely by the broad parameters of the general topic of “Athenian democracy.” Despite the diversity of material, this is a fine collection of studies by an impressive group of scholars. Indeed, the editor’s introduction, in which the argument for the common theme is put forward, is itself an interesting discussion of the role of ritual or procedure in the formulation of a people’s political ideology. Other essays range from questions regarding the level of violence in ancient Athens (Gabriel Herman, “How Violent was Athenian Society?”), historical analysis of the development of modern democratic practice and ideology (Eberhard Ruschenbusch, “Europe and Democracy”); from an analysis of the Athenian Dionysian festival as a “socio-political event” (Simon Goodhill, “Representing Democracy: Women at the Great Dionysia”), to the relation of comedy and democratic process (Christopher Carey, “Comic Ridicule and Democracy”).

Three of the essays-Charles W. Hedrick Jr., “Writing, Reading, and Democracy,” John Davies, “Accounts and Accountability: The Inventory Lists of the Parthenon,” and Diane Harris, “Freedom of Information and Accountability: The Inventory Lists of the Parthenon”4iscuss the role of inscriptional records of state activity in Athenian political life. In examining the issue from different perspectives, the essays draw the common conclusion that the primary purpose of inscriptional records was the affirmation of the principles of Athenian democratic administration. On the other hand, Rosalind Thomas’s “Law and the Lawgiver in Athenian Democracy” argues that “written law” represented a limit on the power of the people, the “demos.” While most of these essays will be understandable to the educated nonspecialist, some do assume a sophisticated knowledge of the vocabulary of Athenian democracy, and for this reason may be difficult for that audience to comprehend. Still the breadth and quality of these essays mean that this collection has something for everyone interested in the world’s first “democracy.” EDWARD ANSON University of Arkansas

Fernandez Castro, Maria Cruz Iberia in Prehistory Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell 419 pp.. $74.95, ISBN 0-631-16794-3 Publication Date: November 1995

The title of this useful volume is misleading: It does not cover the early prehistory of the Iberian peninsula, only the three millennia prior to the Roman invasion in the third century B.C. Maria Cruz Fernandez Castro, a lecturer in the department of archaeology at the University of Computense in Spain and a former visiting fellow at the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford, admits that the limited chronological scope is “unorthodox,” but justifies it on the grounds that a late starting point would “align the prehistoric content of this book with the fully historical character of the companion volumes in this series” (xi). Perhaps, but an accurate title (“Iberia in Later Prehistory,” for example) would still have been a better (and from the marketing standpoint a somewhat less deceptive) solution. The book is, nonetheless, a very good introduction to the archaeology and history of the protohistoric period in Iberia. It also fills a long-standing need for an accessible English language introduction to the subject for both scholars and students. The volume’s twenty chapters are subdivided into six thematic parts: The First Age of Metalworking, Bronze Metallurgists, Prehistoric Iberia at the Crossroads, Colonists and Natives in Ancient Iberia, Iberia before the Romans, and an epilogue. The footnotes in each chapter are full of up-to-date bibliogra187