Status Updates From Democracy and Classical Greece

blowing past demosthenes and syracusa to say CORN! athens joined the coalition because of the corn routes!

“It poses the problem whether the creation of the coalition against [Phillip] was due to the oratory of Demosthenes and his colleagues, and to a response to their appeals to a sense of justice and resistance to aggression in interstate relations, or whether it was due to a shift in perceived interests.”

there were corn-wardens!? also i would also like to be known as an introducer (of lawsuits). idk mr davies i was highly entertained by your list of 91 positions in athenian government

“The object of the system was no so much efficient government as to pare back to an irreducible minimum the power of the individual magistrate — a power which was seen as essentially oligarchic.”

mr davies says city-states SUCK

“North and west of Mt Cithaeron the pattern ceased to hold. Moreover, if one approaches this cultural divide from the north rather than from the south, it is the city-state which is the anomaly. The cantonal, tribal, or monarchic areas to the north are far more typical of the dry farming areas of Europe and Asia Minor in the Iron Age.”

you’re telling me… 4th century politics get MORE incoherent…?

“From now on, as the values of autonomy and participation came to be held as or aspired to ever more strongly, the formulas for interstate cohesion, or for concentration of resources, employed by Athens or Sparta simply ceased to be viable.”

i loooove how in this history fish are barely mentioned and it all comes down to corn. i wanna stick davies, cartledge, and davidson in a room and see who emerges victorious. so we DO believe in a leisure class? so we DO believe those slave census numbers? <- psychological warfare

“…the historical value of the lists [Akropolis stelai] lies in absences (indicating revolt or enemy occupation)…”

mr davies i’ve read the “custom is king” story three times this month. can we PLEASE go back to what you said about agroforestry

“First, dry farming was universal, with a heavy concentration on corn staples (barley or wheat according to the soil)... Thirdly, the interculture of crops with olive trees may have been as common as it is today in the same areas.”