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Athens in the Periclean Age. Community value systems Kleos : “reputation” Timē : “honor” Aretē : “virtue, excellence” Andreia : “courage, manliness” Aidos : “shame” and “respect”. Athens in the Periclean Age. Class distinctions in the community Citizens Men Women Slaves
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Athens in the Periclean Age • Community value systems • Kleos: “reputation” • Timē: “honor” • Aretē: “virtue, excellence” • Andreia: “courage, manliness” • Aidos: “shame” and “respect”
Athens in the Periclean Age • Class distinctions in the community • Citizens • Men • Women • Slaves • Manumitted (freed) slaves • Metics (resident aliens) • Allies • Class distinctions outside the community • Barbaroi (xenoi)
Athens in the Periclean Age • Lives of men and women: shared experiences • Religious worship: public vs. private • Community festivals: two examples • an “all-Athenian” festival (Panathenaia) that proceeded from the Dipylon Gate to the Acropolis • dramatic festivals (Dionysia, Lenaia) at the Theater of Dionysus
Athens in the Periclean Age • Lives of citizen men: gendered experiences • Birth and the father’s acceptance of the son • Nomenclature: name, father’s name, deme (in Athens) • Pericles son of Xanthippos of the deme Cholargos • Pre-pubescence and education: training for oratory in the assembly (ekklesia) • Agora – the marketplace of goods and ideas • Political, religious, commercial, judicial and social buildings • Assumption of the mantle of citizenship by boys 18-20 years old – ephebes (epheboi)
Athens in the Periclean Age • Lives of citizen men: gendered experiences (continued) • Public experiences: service to the state – the polis • Army / navy (hoplites and hoplite warfare; triremes and rowers) • Magistracies • Priesthoods • Juries and the citizen-assembly (ekklesia) • Private experiences: symposium (symposion < sym + potios) • Dining and drinking • Intellectual milieu • Prostitutes and sexuality • Interpersonal experiences: patronage • Function: social mobility • Homosexuality: the erastēs and the eromenos
Athens in the Periclean Age • Lives of citizen women: gendered experiences • Household management (oikonomia ‘economics’) • Priestesshoods and prophetesses • Other women – the poor and resident foreigners • Merchants • Prostitutes / concubines (hetairai)
Tribute List ca. 450 BCE:– one example of the evidence for empire
Thucydides: Pericles’ policy • Then it is right and proper for you to support the imperial dignity of Athens. This is something in which you all take pride, and you cannot continue to enjoy the privileges unless you also shoulder the burdens of empire. • Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go. (2.63)
Thucydides: after Pericles • For Pericles had said that Athens would be victorious if she bided her time and took care of her navy, if she avoided trying to add to the empire during the course of the war, and if she did nothing to risk the safety of the city itself …. • But his successors … adopted methods of demagogy which resulted in their losing control over the actual conduct of affairs. Such a policy, in a great city with an empire to govern, naturally led to a number of mistakes, amongst which was the Sicilian expedition …. (2.65)