War, Peace, and Alliance in Demosthenes' Athens

by Peter Hunt

Overview

Every Athenian alliance, every declaration of war, and every peace treaty was instituted by a decision of the assembly, where citizens voted after listening to speeches that presented varied and often opposing arguments about the best course of action. The fifteen preserved assembly speeches of the mid-fourth century BC thus provide an unparalleled body of evidence for the way that Athenians thought and felt about interstate relations: to understand this body of oratory is to understand how the Athenians of that period made decisions about war and peace. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of this subject. It deploys insights from a range of fields, from anthropology to international relations theory, in order not only to describe Athenian thinking, but also to explain it. Athenian thinking turns out to have been complex, sophisticated, and surprisingly familiar both in its virtues and its flaws.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521835510
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/28/2010
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Peter Hunt is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has taught at Vassar and Davidson Colleges, the University of Colorado, and Harvard University, and his publications include articles in top academic journals and edited collections. His first book was Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge, 1998).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations, translations, and inscriptions xi

1 Introduction 1

2 Economics 27

3 Militarism 51

4 The unequal treatment of states 72

5 Household metaphors 108

6 Defense and attack 134

7 Calculations of interest 154

8 Reciprocity 185

9 Legalism 215

10 Peace 237

11 Conclusion 265

Appendix 1 Speeches and texts 270

Appendix 2 Plato and Aristotle on the causes of war 276

Appendix 3 Claims of service 279

References 283

Index 309