The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens

Athens, 403 BCE. The end of the bloody oligarchic dictatorship of the Thirty. The democrats return to the city victorious. Renouncing vengeance, in an act of amnesia, citizens call for — if not invent — amnesty. They agree to forget the unforgettable, the “past misfortunes” of civil strife, stasis. More precisely, what must be denied is that stasis — simultaneously partisanship, faction, and sedition — is at the heart of Greek politics.

This crucial moment of Athenian political history, Nico...