Contenu du sommaire : Politique en Grèce ancienne

The So-Called Solonian Property Classes: On Citizenship in Archaic Athens It is commonly accepted that the definition of four property classes by Solon in early sixth-century BCE Athens marked a major step in the political construction of the Athenian state. However, as Claude Mossé argued 35 years ago, this reconstruction is mainly the result of a fourth-century BCE historiography that installed Solon as the founding father of Athenian democracy—casting doubt on the early existence of the so-called Solonian system. Although such an approach has often been considered as “post-modern” or “pessimistic,” I propose to follow Mossé's path by considering the Solonian telè as occupational groups involved, among many others, in the construction of the Athenian polis. This analysis results in the definition of an explicitly archaic citizenship conceived as a performance linked to specific behaviors and lifestyles.

Two Types of Common Property in Ancient Greece This paper argues that there were two fundamental conceptions of common property in archaic Greece. This distinction is worth teasing from contemporary practices of distribution, such as the division of bounty between warriors after a military expedition. Within this context we can observe a difference between common property which is not distributed—the part that a community sets aside before portioning out individual shares—and a more abstract “common good” that results from the way in which the remainder is parceled out: for instance a division according to equal measures gives individuals the sense of belonging to a sharing community. Identifying these two forms as “exclusive commons” and “inclusive commons,” this article provides an analysis of their properties. It also outlines the consequences of the fact that ancient Greeks came to apply this distributive schema to the polis itself and to conceive its political structure as the result of a global distribution of goods and prerogatives. The duality outlined here should thus be understood as one of the core structuring principles of ancient Greek political practice and thought.

Repoliticizing the City, Thirty Years Later Thirty years after Nicole Loraux published her 1986 article in L'Homme, this study revisits the question of political experience in the Ancient Greek world. Its aim is to demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between the two definitions of the term “politics” as conceived by the Ancient Greeks. On the one hand, the political (le politique) was conceived as an ensemble of activities with no specific institutional substance or form, a sphere of action which has no direct equivalent in the modern state, but rather relates to very varied experiences and practices undertaken in the context of conflict. On the other hand, politics (la politique) was understood not only as organized access to different institutions, but also as the way in which a community structured and defined itself. Taking the Athenian crisis of 404 BCE as a case study, and, in particular, the speech of Cleocritus preserved in Xenophon's Hellenica, this paper proposes a new way of thinking about this dual expression of collective life. Far from the reconciliatory reading of Cleocritus' speech proposed by Loraux, his appeal for harmony bears witness, in the turmoil and tension of events, to the way that politics (in the institutional sense) was sidelined—to the exclusive benefit of the political and the collective practices associated with it. In conclusion, this case study opens up a more general consideration of the meaning of the “event” and its epistemological significance. By considering the crisis of 404 BCE at the heart of the “regimes of historicity” which characterized the history of Athens between the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, this article aims to provide a clearer articulation of the foundational moments and established functioning of Greek democracy.

The Single Body of the Polis: Public Slaves in Greek Cities Public slavery was an institution common to most Greek cities during the classical and Hellenistic periods. Whether they worked on the city's major construction sites, performed minor duties in its civic administration or filled the ranks of its police force (the famous Scythian archers of classical Athens), public slaves may be said to have constituted the first public servants known to Greek cities. Studying them from this perspective can shed new light on the long-running but still lively debate about the degree to which the polis functioned as a state. Direct democracy, in the classical Athenian sense, implied that all political prerogatives be held by the citizens themselves, and not by any kind of state apparatus. The decision to delegate administrative tasks to slaves can thus be understood as a “resistance” (as defined by the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres) on the part of the civic society to the development of a such a state apparatus.

(De)constructing politeia: Reflections on Citizenship and the Bestowal of Privileges upon Foreigners in Hellenistic Democracies. This article revisits the notion of citizenship (politeia) in the Greek world, challenging the traditional concept, based principally on the works of Aristotle, which defines citizenship in terms of political participation. It considers the numerous decrees issued during the Hellenistic period bestowing legal privileges upon foreign benefactors (such as the right to own property, to trade, to enter into a legal marriage, to be exempted from certain taxes...). If the classical tripartite division of status (citizens, resident aliens and slaves) remained valid during the Hellenistic period and provided the “infrastructure” of civic societies, the system of privileges established by cities to honor deserving foreigners created a “concatenation of different positions,” which, without calling into question the hierarchy of legal statuses, introduced social fluidity into an interconnected world, far removed from the Platonic and Aristotelian ideals of the autarchic city.