Σεμινάριο ΚΕΕΛΓ: "Freedom and Slavery as Political Slogans", (Edward Harris, 7/4/2022)

Το Κέντρο Ερεύνης της Ελληνικής και Λατινικής Γραμματείας της Ακαδημίας Αθηνών, στο πλαίσιο του μηνιαίου σεμιναρίου του (Freedom & Unfreedom in the Ancient World), σας προσκαλεί στη διαδικτυακή διάλεξη:

Edward Harris (Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Durham University)

Freedom and Slavery as Political Slogans

Πέμπτη, 7 Απριλίου, 5-7μμ

Περίληψη

In 1985 K. Raaflaub published his Habilitationsschrift Die Entdeckung der Freiheit, which was later translated into English in 2004 as The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece. Raaflaub followed Finley in believing that slavery was not important in the society of the Homeric poems, was not an oppressive condition, and was only one status along a spectrum of different statuses. By the same token, freedom was not an important idea because the adjective eleutheros occurs only four times in the Iliad and Odyssey. According to Raaflaub, again following Finley, Solon only abolished debt-bondage for citizens and did not create political freedom because the people in Athens had little role in politics until the so-called reforms of Ephialtes. For Raaflaub the origin of political freedom comes during the Persian Wars when the Greeks fought against the Persian King, who was trying to enslave them. The liberty of the citizen developed only after the alleged reforms of Ephialtes when the Athenians believed that freedom was doing whatever one wanted unrestricted by limits.

Though differing on a few details, the book of Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture published in 1991 follows the main outlines of Raaflaub’s analysis but goes further in claiming that women in Greece were the first to express a desire for freedom. Several advances in our understanding of Greek History during the past twenty years make it necessary to take a new look at the origins of Greek views about political freedom. First, it has now been shown (Harris 2012; Lewis 2018) that slavery was much more extensive in the Homeric poems than Finley and Raaflaub believed and that the slaves of this period were the property of their owners in the same way as slaves in later periods. The talk will show that there is already a vast chasm between freedom and slavery in the Iliad and Odyssey. Free people in this period had a concept of subjective rights, which leaders were expected to respect and protect (Pelloso 2013). Second, it has now been shown that Solon did not abolish debt-bondage but slavery for debt and also that the lawgiver established the foundations of the rule of law, which he contrasted with the slavery of tyranny (Harris 2006: 3-28, 249-70). Third, Solon and other lawgivers in this period created statutes not only for the elite, but to protect the rights of all members of the community, who had a role in approving these rules (Harris and Lewis 2022). Fourth, the so-called reforms of Ephialtes have been shown to be a myth and that the people had the main power in Athenian politics long before 462 BCE (Harris 2019, Zaccarini 2018). Fifth, the Athenian view of freedom was not “doing what one wished” but was closely related to the rule of law (Filonik 2019). Freedom under the rule of law preceded the notion of freedom of the community from foreign control and aimed at the protection of the rights of individual citizens, not simply collective decision-making. This talk will adumbrate a new approach to the development of political freedom in Ancient Greece.

Bibliography 

Filonik, J. 2019. “‘Living as One Wishes in Athens: The (Anti-)Democratic Polemics,” Classical Philology 114: 1-24.  

Harris, E. M. 2006. Democracy and the Rule of Law in Classical Athens. Cambridge. 

Harris, E. M. 2012. “Homer, Hesiod and the ‘Origins’ of Greek Slavery,” REA 114: 345–366. 

Harris, E. M. 2019. ”Aeschylus’ Eumenides, The Role of the Areopagus and Political Discourse in Attic Tragedy”  in A. Markantonatos and E. Volonaki (eds.) Poet and Orator: A Symbiotic Relationship in Democratic Athens (Berlin and Boston): 389-419. 

Harris, E. M. and Lewis. D. M. 2022. “What are Early Greek Laws about? Substance and Procedure in Archaic Statutes, c. 650-450 B.C.” in J. Bernhardt and M. Canevaro  (eds.) From Homer to Solon. Leiden and Boston.  

Lewis, D. M. 2018. Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c. 800-146 B.C. Oxford.  

Pelloso, C. 2013. “The Myth of the Priority of Procedure over Substance in the Light of Early Greek epos,” RDE 3: 223-75.  

Raaflaub, K. 1985. Die Entdeckung der Freiheit: zur Historischen Semantik und Gesellchaftsgeschichte eines politischen Grundbegriffes der Griechen. Munich. 

Raaflaub, K. 2004. The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece. Chicago. 

Zaccarini, M. “The Fate of the Lawgiver: The Invention of the Reforms of Ephialtes and the Patrios Politeia,” Historiα  67: 495-512.  

Για να λάβετε τον σύνδεσμο συμμετοχής (Zoom) παρακαλώ συμπληρώστε τη φόρμα:

https://cutt.ly/oSgX8R3

ή επικοινωνήστε με τη διοργανώτρια Έφη Παπαδόδημα (epapadodima@academyofathens.gr)