Kinship in Thucydides: Intercommunal Ties and Historical Narrative ISBN: 9780191758386 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Classical Studies;
This volume explores the relationship between Thucydides and ancient Greek historiography, sociology, and culture. Presenting a new interpretation of the Peloponnesian War and its historian, it focuses on the role of emotions and ethics in the context of political history and ethnic conflicts. Drawing on modern anthropological inquiries on kinship and the sociology of ethnicity and emotions, and on scholarly work on kinship diplomacy and Greek ethnicity, it argues that inter-communal kinship has a far more pervasive importance in Thucydides than has so far been acknowledged.
Through close readings and contextualization of a variety of sources, Fragoulaki discusses the various ways in which ancient Greek communities could be related to each other (colonization, genealogies, belonging to the same ethnic group, socio-cultural symbols, political mechanisms, and institutions) and the largely cultural, emotional, and ethical expression of these ties. Through new readings of the History, such topics as Thucydides' narrative technique, his challenging silences, his interaction with other genres, and his intense engagement with Herodotus are dissected and discussed--offering a new appreciation of his unique contribution to historiography.
Maria Fragoulaki is an Honorary Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College, London.
