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[German version] (ἐκκλησιαστήριον; ekklēsiastḗrion). Meeting-place of a Greek public assembly. Among the cities where the word ekklesiasterion is used are Olbia (SIG3 218) and Delos during the period of the Athenian klerouchoi in the 2nd cent. BC (SIG3 662). In Athens, the regular meeting-place was the Pnyx in the south-west part of the city, where three different building stages from the 5th and the 4th cent. were identified. From the late 4th cent., the theatre of Dionysus came to be used more and more as a meeting place. As oppo…

(Κλεώνυμος; Kleṓnymos). [German version] [1] Athenian politician, put two important proposals forward in 426/5 BC Athenian politician; in the year 426/5 BC he put forward two important proposals: one concerned  Methone in Thrace, the other the collection of tributes from the  Delian League (IG I3 61,32-56; 68). C. was probably a member of the council in that year. In 415 he was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of an investigation into the religious scandals ( Herms, mutilation of the; And. 1.27). Aristophanes derided him as a glutt…

(νομογράφος/ nomográphos, ‘law-writer’) [German version] I. Greece In some Greek cities individual, specially qualified men were entrusted during the archaic period with the task of writing laws for the pólis. This could include writing down the existing legal practice as well as creating new laws. Known nomográphoi are, for example, Zaleucus in Locri Epizephyrii, Charondas in Catane, Draco [2] and later Solon in Athens. At times, but not always, this commission was associated with a regular office of state. Thus, Solon was at the same time an árchōn (Archontes [1]) in Athens but D…

[German version] (διαψηφισμός, διαψήφισις; diapsēphismós, diapsḗphisis). Literally, a ballot using pebbles to select alternatives. Both terms were occasionally used to designate votes in legal proceedtings (e.g. Xen. Hell. 1,7,14; cf. the verb diapsēphízesthai e.g. in Antiph. 5,8). In Athens, however, they refer specifically to ballots with the purpose of confirming or refuting the citizenship of people who at a certain time laid claim to that right. That happened in 510 BC, when the tyranny of the Peisistratids ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 13,5: diapsēphismós) was overthrown, agai…

[German version] The idea of Panhellenism is based on the tendency to place greater significance on the similarities that connect all Greeks as Greeks than on the perceptions of differences. 'Panhellenism' is not a term used in Antiquity, although in the Iliad (2, 530) and elsewhere in early Greek verse panhéllēnes is used to describe the Greeks (Hes. Op. 528; Archil. fr. 102 West). The Trojan War (see Troy) was presented as an untertaking in which the Greeks united in order to regain Helen [1] from the Trojans - although the latter are not described in Homer as being un-Greek. In the Archaic …

[German version] (καταχειροτονία; katacheirotonía) denotes the delivery of a verdict of guilty in a Greek court by means of raising the hand ( cheir). Sentencing by ballot ( psḗphos) is called katapsḗphisis. In Athens the word katacheirotonia was used for the people's verdict of guilty in cases of eisangelía (e.g. Lys. 29, 2; Dem. Or. 51,8), and also for negative votes of the public assembly after a probolḗ (complaint against a person; e.g. Dem. Or. 21,2), or after an apóphasis (recommendation) of the Areios pagos (e.g. Din. 2,20; it is probably referred to by [Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 59,2). Rho…

[German version] (Ὑπέρβολος; Hypérbolos). Athenian statesman (411 BC) from the deme Perithoedae. Contrary to the accusations levelled against him he was Athenian by birth. He seems to have acquired his wealth from the fabrication or sale of lamps (cf. Aristoph. Equ. 1315). Both Aristophanes (e.g. Equ. 1304) and Thucydides (8,73,3) describe him as ‘common’ ( mochthērós). As a  demagogue in the style of Cleon he strove for a leading position after Cleon's death in 422 BC and was a member of the council in 421/420 (Plato Comicus 166f. CAF = 182 PCG; cf. IG I3 82). According to Plutarch, in …

[German version] [1] Poet of epigrams of unknown dating Epigram poet of an unknown period (with a peculiar, otherwise undocumented name), author of an insignificant distich on Hesiod (Anth. Pal. 7,52). Degani, Enzo (Bologna) Bibliography FGE 38. [German version] [2] Union of craftsmen and officials Dēmiourgoí (δημιουργοί, ‘public workers’) were occupied with public matters at various levels, depending on time and place. 1. In the Linear B tablets from Pylos dḗmos is found but not demiourgoi; it has been suggested [2] but not universally accepted that in the Mycenaean world demiourgoi…

(κώμη; kṓmē, plural κῶμαι; kômai). [German version] A. Greece in the 5th and 4th cents. BC With the meaning ‘village’, kome signified in the Greek world a small community. Thucydides regarded life in scattered, unfortified kômai as the older and more primitive form of communal living in a political unit (Thuc. 1,5,1; on Sparta: 1,10,1; on the Aetolians: 3,94,4). Under the Aristotelian model of pólis formation, families first group together in a kṓmē, and then the kômai group together in a pólis (Aristot. Pol. 1,1252b 15-28; cf. 3,1280b 40-1281a 1). Scattered living in a kome is typical f…

[German version] (ἀρχαιρεσία; archairesía). Appointment of officials ( archai). In the Greek world an official was usually appointed for a year either by election ( hairesis in the proper meaning, but the term can be used for any method of appointing officials) or by casting lots ( klerosis). Many states annually convened for an electoral meeting in which honours were conferred and for which a particularly large attendance was desired (e.g. IPriene, 7). Rhodes, Peter J. (Durham) Bibliography Busolt/Swoboda.

[German version] (πολέμαρχος/ polémarchos, plural polémarchoi, 'leader in war') was the title of military officialsin various Greek states. In the stories of the rise of tyrants, Cypselus [2] in Corinth (Nicolaus of Damascus FGrH 90 F 57,5) and Orthagoras [1] in Sicyon (POxy. XI 1365 = FGrH 105 F 2) are said to have been polémarchoi. But it is unlikely that men outside the ruling aristocracy would be appointed to such an office or that the polémarchos of archaic Corinth would have civilian judicial duties like that of classical Athens. In the Spartan army of the fifth-f…

[German version] (ἀείσιτοι; aeísitoi). Aeisitoi are entitled, not just occasionally but regularly, to participate in the banquets prepared by the Greek states (cf. Poll. 9,40). In Athens one so honoured was accorded   sitesis in the  Prytaneion (e.g. IG II/III2 I 1,450b) [2; 3]; as aeisitoi were designated also the officials who were assigned to the council and who ate with the   prytaneis (e.g. Agora XV 86) [1]. Rhodes, Peter J. (Durham) Bibliography 1 Agora XV, 1974, 7-8 2 A. S. Henry, Honours and Privileges in Athenian Decrees, 1983, 275-78 archontes 3 M. J. Osborne, Entertainmen…

[German version] (οἱ δέκα; hoi déka) ‘the Ten’; a committee of ten men, elected after the overthrow of the Thirty in 403 BC to rule the oligarchy of Athens. According to Lysias (12,58) and some other sources, they were to work towards a peace settlement (accepted by [2]), but there is no hint of this in Xenophon (Hell. 2,4,23f.) and it is probably not so (cf. [1]), although the democrats around  Thrasybulus may have hoped that the change of regime in Athens would be followed by a change in direction.…

[German version] (ἐφόδιον; ephódion, ‘travel money’). In Greece, ephodion denotes the allowance for travel expenses paid to an ambassador (e.g. in Athens: Tod 129; cf. the parody in Aristoph. Ach. 65-67; in Chios: SIG3 402). In the Hellenistic and Roman periods a rich citizen could aid his city by declining such a payment due to him (e.g. IPriene 108). Rhodes, Peter J. (Durham)

[German version] (πεταλισμός; petalismós). Petalismos was the name for a ballot using the leaves (πέταλα/ pétala) of the olive tree. At Syracusae, the petalismos was the equivalent of the Athenian ostrakismós , i.e. a procedure for sentencing a leading individual to a period of banishment without finding him guilty of a misdemeanour. Diodorus Siculus (11,87) mentions the petalismos for the year 454/3 BC: it was introduced in the wake of a failed attempt to set up a tyrannis; its consequence was a five-year exile, but it was soon abolished again, as the fear of falling victim to the petalismo…

(στρατηγός/ stratēgós, 'army leader'; pl. strategoi). In many Greek states the formal title for a military commander. [German version] I. Classical Greece In Athens, strategoi are occasionally mentioned earlier (e.g. Peisistratus [4] as strategos; Hdt. 1,59,4; [Aristot.] Ath. pol. 17,2), but it was only after the tribal reorganization of Cleisthenes [2], probably first in 501/0 BC, that a regular board of strategoi was appointed: one from each of the 10 phylai, elected annually by the assembly (but candidates may have been pre-selected in the phylai, see [2]), and eligible for …

[German version] Modern term for the union of Greek states brought into being in 338/7 BC at an assembly in Corinth by  Philippus II of Macedonia after the battle of  Chaeronea (338 BC). The league evidently included all Greek states with the exception of Sparta, and was associated with a treaty establishing a ‘general peace’ (  koinḕ eirḗnē ). The members' oath and list of league members have survived in part in the form of an inscription (IG II2 236 = Tod 177; further information in Dem. Or. 17). The customary obligations of the treaty among its co-signatories also incl…

(Βουλή; Boulḗ) . [German version] A. General In Greek communities the boule was a council assembly, usually that responsible for current public duties, which also had to prepare the work of the public assembly (  ekklēsía ). Composition and responsibilities could change according to the respective form of constitution. In Homeric times the council consisted of nobles convened by the king as advisors; in oligarchically organized communities the boule could become a relatively powerful body, compared with a comparatively weak public assembly, by restricting eligi…

[German version] (συνοικισμός/ synoikismós, lit. 'living together'). In the Greek world, the combination of several smaller communities to form a single larger community. Sometimes the union was purely political and did not affect the pattern of settlement or the physical existence of the separate communities: this is what the Athenians supposed to have happened when they attributed the Attic synoikismos to Theseus, commemorated by a festival in classical times, the Synoikia (Thuc. 2,15) — whereas …

[German version] (ἀρχαί; archaí, ‘office holder’). In most Greek states the powers of hereditary kings were divided in the  Dark Ages and the archaic period and distributed among a series of officials ( archai or   archontes ), who were usually appointed for a year, often without the option of re-election. This process cannot be traced in detail because the sources tend toward a too schematic reconstruction. Apart from the offices that were responsible for the state as a whole, special offices were created on occ…