Athens and Attica

7ο Διαπανεπιστημιακό Σεμινάριο Βιώσιμης Ανάπτυξης, Πολιτισμού και Παράδοσης, με θέμα : “Χαρτογράφηση Τοπίου. Φυσικές και πολιτισμικές ποιότητες : Από τη χαρτογράφηση στον σχεδιασμό / From Mapping to Design”, εκδόσεις SYROS INSTITUTE, σελ. 186-201. [ISBN 978-618-81312-3-1] _ Προσκεκλημένη Εισηγήτρια

Σε μια περίοδο κρίσης και κριτικής θεσμών και πολιτικών, στο πλαίσιο του επιχειρούμενου “εκσυγχρονισμού” στην Ελλάδα η διάσταση του “χώρου” στη διαδικασία της “ανάπτυξης” υπονομεύεται. Γνωστικά πεδία, έτσι, του “χωρικού σχεδιασμού” απειλούνται, ενώ τα υψηλά ποσοστά ανεργίας επιστημόνων σε σχετικές κατευθύνσεις και η εντεινόμενη τάση φυγής στο εξωτερικό εισάγουν νέα ζητήματα σε συζητήσεις που ανοίγουν ξανά με αντικείμενο την παιδεία, τον χάρτη της τριτοβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης, τα επαγγελματικά δικαιώματα και τις εργασιακές σχέσεις. Σ’ αυτές τις συνθήκες, οι σχολές σχεδιασμού των πανεπιστημίων καλούνται να τα υπερασπιστούν και να κατοχυρώσουν τα επαγγελματικά δικαιώματα των αποφοίτων τους, διεκδικώντας ταυτόχρονα την συμμετοχή τους στη διαδικασία “χωρικής ανάπτυξης”. Το ερώτημα είναι : τι και πώς διδάσκουμε. Τίθεται έτσι θέμα μεθοδολογίας έρευνας και σχεδιασμού. Με εισροή τις σπουδαστικές συμβολές και την συμμετοχή σε Ομάδες Εργασίας και Επιτροπές με αντικείμενο το εκπαιδευτικό, ερευνητικό και το κοινωνικό έργο της Σχολή Αρχιτεκτόνων του Ε.Μ.Π., επιδιώκεται συμβολή στον διάλογο για τη διδακτική του “χωρικού σχεδιασμού” θέτοντας ως ερώτημα : αν η χαρτογράφηση μπορεί, και υπό ποιες προϋποθέσεις, να λειτουργήσει ως μέσο μελέτης, κατανόησης, σχεδιασμού του χώρου. Πιλοτικά επιλέγεται το “αττικό τοπίο”, εστιάζοντας σε τρεις ειδικές κατηγορίες χώρου _ το ιστορικό κέντρο της Αθήνας, το αστικό παράκτιο μέτωπο του Σαρωνικού και την πεδιάδα των Μεσογείων. Ιδιαίτεροι τόποι οι οποίοι αξιοποιούνται ως εργαστήρια μάθησης, κατανόησης, πειραματισμού σε θέματα “αστικού τοπίου”, αφού τα εγχειρήματα (ανα)σχεδιασμού ή μη σχεδιασμού τους έχουν μετασχηματίσει, εξαφανίσει, ή δημιουργήσει νέες “εικόνες” στο εσωτερικό τους, επηρεάζοντας και τις μεταξύ τους σχέσεις.

Λέξεις κλειδιά : διδακτική χωρικού σχεδιασμού, πολεοδομία - χωροταξία, χαρτογράφηση, αρχιτεκτονική παιδεία, χωρική ανάπτυξη, αττικό τοπίο, ιστορικό κέντρο Αθήνας, παράκτιο μέτωπο Σαρωνικού, Μεσόγεια

The project was devised as part of the European Union's Culture 2000 program, A.R.V.H.A. (Association for Research on the City and Habitat), the project's French co-ordinator, in collaboration with British architects and academics from A.T.A.P. (Anne Thorne Partnership Architects) and Greek architects from OMADA 80 architects and planners consultants, Sotiris Papadopoulos, Architect.
Each of the three organizations associated with the project has chosen an appropriate presentation for their city. Thus, the Greeks decided to present architectural evolution in Athens through a variety of projects (public buildings, residential buildings, public facilities, public housing with high environmental quality) covering the entire period concerned; the British team has proposed 7 walks along the Thames covering the most notable of the new buildings and districts built within the last 10 years and demonstrating the river's influence on urban planning in London. Finally, the French contribution puts the accent on projects conducted within the last ten years that were selected in collaboration with the major Parisian project clients, on the basis of their architectural and urban qualities. The ultimate aim of this project is to make these European cities accessible in order to enrich our knowledge of European architectural heritage.

The article presents the fragment of a new 'family grave stele' in the Athenian Kerameikos. It was found in 2014 during excavations in the Sacred Street, re-used as the cover of an ancient water channel that runs along the southwestern side of the street. The long history of this channel is briefly summarized, then the stele is discussed. It belongs to a relatively small group with many figures grouped around the seated  deceased woman and a mourning young girl.

This paper accompanies the publication on AIO of the inscriptions of the Marathonian Tetrapolis and is designed primarily to clarify the texts on which the translations are based. It reviews scholarship on the Tetrapolis’ sacrificial calendar (iv BC), published since my new edition, ZPE 130 (2000), 43-70, and makes some fresh observations. It also reviews the other inscriptions attributable to the Tetrapolis, IG I3 255, IG II2 2933, IG II2 1243, and an unpublished inscription.

Im Peloponnesischen Krieg (431 bis 404 v. Chr.) standen sich die Machtblöcke des Ersten Attischen Seebundes unter Führung Athens und des Peloponnesischen Bundes unter seinem Hegemon Sparta gegenüber. Dank Thukydides sind wir über den Verlauf dieses antiken Weltkriegs wie über kaum ein zweites Ereignis des Altertums informiert. Bruno Bleckmann erläutert die Kriegsgründe, die verschiedenen Etappen der Auseinandersetzung, den Ausgang sowie die historische Bedeutung dieses Konflikts.

""En Filipo II y el Arte de la Guerra tendremos la oportunidad de conocer en profundidad a uno de los más grandes reyes de la antigua Macedonia. Gracias a su habilidad como estratega, diplomático, político y soldado, heredó un reino pobre, débil y acosado por innumerables enemigos y lo transformó en el más poderoso de toda Grecia.

A lo largo de sus páginas podremos conocer la historia del reino Macedonio, desde sus orígenes míticos hasta la formación de un imperio, de la mano del que, a la postre, se convertiría en el padre del mítico Alejandro Magno y en el forjador de un nuevo ejército que cambiaria el devenir de la guerra en la Antigüedad. Filipo II fue el creador de la falange macedonia, formación que se demostraría como inigualable en el campo de batalla y que reportaría incontables victorias sobre poderosos enemigos, como los ilirios, los tesalios, los tracios, los beocios o los atenienses. Pero no sólo eso, logró integrar en el campo de batalla a la infantería y a la caballería para emplearlos en nuevas formaciones tácticas: armó a sus soldados con las míticas sarissas y apreció como pocos las posibilidades militares que la maquinaria de guerra podía proporcionarle, siendo el mecenas de numerosos avances en este campo. Soñó con conquistar el Imperio persa, cuando ya había logrado lo que nadie antes fue capaz: el control de Grecia.

Sólo la muerte le arrebató esa hazaña, pero sentó las bases de lo que más tarde conseguiría su propio hijo. Su figura levantó tanto odios como pasiones; se le conocía como mujeriego y bebedor, pero también por su habilidad para la oratoria, por sus astucia, determinación y valor. Siempre luchó en primera línea junto a sus soldados y nunca permitió que éstos le llamaran rey, sino solo "General".

La desigual distribución de la riqueza bajo las condiciones actuales del capitalismo es, como bien se sabe, el eje sobre el que Piketty ha centrado su atención; asimismo, forma parte de sus reflexiones el posible rol del estado, a través de los sistemas de tributación, como modo de in-tervenir en la distribución y atenuar el impacto de la desigualdad, incluso de propender a cierta igualación. No son sus respuestas concretas sino los interrogantes y los aspectos conceptuales a veces subyacentes en las respuestas mismas, los que aquí abordamos, en la medida en que nos convocan a reflexionar sobre la especificidad de la Atenas del siglo IV a.C. a partir de cuestiones que no dejan de remitir a la situación presente. Como en muchos otros aspectos de la Grecia antigua, las estimaciones acerca de cuán igualitarias o desiguales fueron las póleis según la distribución de la riqueza han conducido a que, sobre la misma base documental, unos las hayan considerado sociedades relativamente igualitarias, mientras que otros las han percibido como sociedades desiguales. En este contexto, la distribución de la riqueza y la eva-luación del grado de igualdad o desigualdad en la Atenas del siglo IV han encontrado un lugar privilegiado entre los intereses de los especialistas, debido a la conjunción de los datos disponibles sobre población y riqueza y a cierto nivel de consenso dentro de la comunidad académica en cuanto a la posibilidad de usar estos números, más de allá de discusiones sobre la interpretación de ciertos datos. Mi objetivo, tras revisar los datos e interpretaciones plan-teadas, es tratar de ensamblar este conjunto para producir un modelo de distribución de la riqueza entre diferentes sectores de la comunidad de ciudadanos atenienses. A partir de esto, se extrae el coeficiente de Gini con la idea de ponderar, dentro de lo que cabe, el grado de desigualdad que implica determinada disposición de los datos, cuando se asumen ciertos puntos de partida. Mi propia percepción a partir de los diferentes argumentos esgrimidos, conforme a los datos ensamblados, me llevará a proponer un modelo de distribución de la riqueza, con el cual voy a configurar un posible cuadro de distribución de la tierra, el elemento más significativo de la riqueza. Finalmente, planteo diversas cuestiones abiertas al debate conforme a los ejes de este evento. Mi perspectiva es que, a pesar de las importantes disparidades, en términos relativos y comparativos no en términos absolutos, claro está, la sociedad ateniense fue relativamente igualitaria.

This course presents a broad survey of historical forces at work over the past 6,000 years, examining the manners in which human societies have organized themselves along categories of race, ethnicity, class, and gender to meet the challenges of the increasing human population and its demands on natural resources: thus, it examines continuity and change in societies over time, in different places, and among various peoples.

The contribution of slaves to the Athenian state is a debate linked closely with the evidence of slaves for Greece as a whole.  This is because Athens, which included urban areas as well as villages within the territory of Attica, is one of the best documented sites for gathering evidence of the role of slaves in Classical Greek society.  However, although the question of slaves’ contribution to the Athenian state may provide a possible model for what occurred in other Greek cities, some historians advise caution on this matter.  For instance, Perikles’ ‘Funeral Oration’ praises the values of the Athenian life as unique and in contrast to the Spartan system.

This article calculates the public spending of classical Athens. The major public activities of this ancient democracy were festivals, politics and wars. There is hot debate about what was spent on these three activities. Ancient historians cannot agree whether the Athenian dēmos (‘people’) spent more on festivals or wars. This debate goes back to the first book on Athenian public finance. In 1817 August Böckh famously criticised the Athenians for wasting money on their festivals instead of building up their armed forces. Calculating their public spending would settle this debate. Böckh lacked the evidence to do such. Two centuries after him this is no longer the case. But this articles calculations do more than settle a longstanding debate. In classical Athens the dēmos had full control over public spending. In the assembly they authorised all the public activities of their state. Assemblygoers understood the financial consequences of their decisions. They knew how much a proposal that was put before them would cost. They had a good general knowledge of what the state spent on its major activities. Consequently they could judge whether a proposal cost the same as what was normally spent on such things. This made it possible for the Athenians to change their pattern of spending and so what they spent on one class of activities relative to other classes. Such votes allowed the dēmos to spend more on what they saw as a priority. Over time the sums that they spent on different public activities reflected the order of the priorities that they had set for their state. By calculating these sums this article demonstrates that it was not religion or politics but war that was the overriding priority of the Athenian people.

Our conference is conducting an interdisciplinary investigation of the symbiotic relationship between war, culture and democracy in ancient Athens. It examines the contribution of political practices, popular culture and military infrastructure to Athens' unprecedented bellicosity and military innovativeness and reassesses the impact of changes in military practice and personnel on the emergence and development of what was arguably the world's first democracy. Also considered are the organization and public standing of different wings of the Athenian armed forces. In addition it explores the changing depictions of soldiers, imperialism and enemy combatants in Athenian popular literature, public art and civic ceremony and the impact of these representations on contemporary mortuary sculpture and finely-painted pottery. At a time when contemporary democracies are making profound and controversial changes to the waging of war, this conference is a useful stimulus for debate today, helping to answer important questions, such as whether military bellicosity is an essential feature of democracy and the flipside of its cultural dynamism, whether democratic practices facilitate or impede military efficiency, and whether democracies are habitual breakers of the conventions of war.

The paper (accessible here: http://hdl.handle.net/10889/14833) offers an interpretation of Solon's citizenship law (Plu. Sol. 24.4), focusing on its importance (the first of its kind) and its (occasionally misunderstood) meaning. Solon's law restricted the bestowal of Athenian citizenship rights only to the perpetual exiles and those who came to Athens with their entire family to practise a trade. Thereby Solon wished to limit transient settlement and labour in Attica in the early sixth century BC, thus providing for political and economic stability. The clarification of both the law's meaning and Solon's intentions is necessary, given the past and recent problematic readings of Plutarch's text.

The Study area is located in Southeastern coastal Attica, extending along the coast, from the Southeast end of the Metropolitan area of Athens, to the southeastern edge of the Attican peninsula in the historical cape Sounion. The major environmental problems in the area emerge from the uncontrolled continuous construction of residences along the coastline, combined with the insufficiency of the sewer, water supply and waste management networks. The area is ruled by the major physical plan of the whole Attican prefecture. The Greek physical planning legislation places its development axes towards urban adaptation to climate change. This fact, along with the significance of the existence of a sandy coastline, next to the metropolitan area of a Mediterranean Capital, provides an opportunity to redefine  elements of the structure of a modern metropolis. This study aims to designate the indispensable projects and infrastructure assessing their impact to the environment implementing ICTs, and to develop a sustainable coastal tourism model. The qualitative homogeneity of the area’s physical and anthropogenic environment constitutes a crucial factor, for the accessibility with the Great Temple of Poseidon in Sounion, in order to express continuity of the Greek history through time. A GIS environment finally is developed, containing all the appropriate digital layers for the above assessment.

The book tells the story of the Athenian elite between 600 and 400 BCE on the basis of the imagery on the luxury pottery from which the wealthy drank at their banquets. The statistical evaluation of more than 6,000 representations lend insight into the lives of the elite as horse owners, athletes, and revellers. The image analysis is prefaced by a cultural historical section that describes the history and socio-economics of the elite.

Das Buch erzählt die Geschichte der Elite Athens zwischen 600 und 400 v. Chr. anhand der Bilder auf der Luxuskeramik, aus der die Reichen bei ihren Festen tranken. Über 6000 ausgewertete Darstellungen liefern Erkenntnisse über das Leben der Elite als Pferdehalter, Athleten und Bankettgesellschaft. Der Bildanalyse ist ein kulturgeschichtlicher Teil vorangestellt ist, der die Elite über die Historie und sozioökonomische Aspekte definiert.

The most famous myth about divine conflict for a city is doubtless the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the patronage of Athens. The first evidence of this contest is according to Herodotus, and the first representation is the impressive Parthenon west pediment, now almost lost. We know the Athena and Poseidon poses with the help of a modern french drawing and of two attic vases. The vases painters repeat the position of the central opponents but in new compositions, the first at the end of the fifth century and the second fifty years later. We don’t try to restitute the pediment and don’t suppose the ancient existence of a lost picture to explain the difference between the two vases and the sculptures, but propose to look at the vases again to understand how and why the craftsmen chose the Parthenon pose and in the same time propose a new image of this conflict.

In ancient Athens, the Panathenaia was the most important festival and it was celebrated in honour of Athena from the middle of the sixth century BC until the end of the fourth century AD. This in-depth study examines how this all-Athenian celebration was an occasion for constructing identities and how it affected those identities. Since not everyone took part in the same way, this differential participation articulated individuals' relationships both to the goddess and to the city so that the festival played an important role in negotiating what it meant to be Athenian (and non-Athenian). I apply theories of identity formation which were developed in the social sciences to the ancient Greek material and I bring together historical, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence to provide a better understanding both of this important occasion and of Athenian identities over the festival's long history.

Note that this book is now available in paper.

"Εργαστήριο Αρχαιολόγιας Ι. Το Ηρώδειο Συγκρότημα του Ιερού των Αιγυπτίων Θεών (2ος αι. μ.Χ.) στο Μικρό Έλος του Μαραθώνα: Ένας επισκέψιμος αρχαιολογικός χώρος υπό έρευνα και ανάδειξη. Ομιλία προβολής στο πλαίσιο κοινωνικής συνεργασίας και δράση προσφοράς στον αρχαιολογικό χώρο."

Στον δεύτερο τόμο της σειράς Αρχαιολογία εξετάζεται η Εύβοια και η Στερεά Ελλάδα, η ευρεία γεωγραφική ζώνη που εκτείνεται από τις δυτικές ακτές του Αιγαίου έως τα παράλια του Ιονίου Πελάγους. Στην ιστορική και αρχαιολογική αυτή περιήγηση η Εύβοια και ο νότιος ελλαδικός κορμός –Αττική, Βοιωτία, Φθιώτιδα, Ευρυτανία, Φωκίδα, Αιτωλία και Ακαρνανία– παρουσιάζονται από την προϊστορική περίοδο έως το τέλος του αρχαίου κόσμου. Τριάντα πέντε έλληνες και ξένοι αρχαιολόγοι αναλαμβάνουν το ταξίδι του αναγνώστη στην ιστορία και τα μνημεία, δίνοντας επιστημονική πληροφορία για κάθε περιοχή. Στο βιβλίο συνυπάρχουν σημεία αναφοράς του αρχαίου κόσμου με περιοχές και μνημεία που μόλις πρόσφατα άρχισαν να συγκεντρώνουν το αρχαιολογικό ενδιαφέρον. Πλούσια εικονογράφηση χώρων και ευρημάτων και εύχρηστοι χάρτες συμπληρώνουν την έκδοση.

The second volume in the Archaeology series examines Euboea and Central Greece, the wide geographical region spreading from the western shores of the Aegean to the coasts of the Ionian Sea. In this historical and archaeological journey, Euboea and the southern part of mainland Greece—Attica, Boeotia, Phthiotis, Eurytania, Phokis, Aetolia and Akarnania—are presented from the prehistoric era to the end of the ancient world. Thirty-five Greek and foreign archaeologists introduce the reader to the history and the monuments, with concise authoritative texts for each area.

The formation of Athens as a polis is a process that has its roots in the dark ages. In these pages, however, we have started from the origin of the so-called dark period in LH IIIC and the Submycenaean of Athens in order to try to trace, despite the deficiencies and gaps in the archaeological documentation and the lack of written documentation up to the 8th century, the social, economic, political and territorial processes that gave rise to the origin of the polis in this area, Attica. Athens is one of the poleis with the largest extension in historical times, unusually large, which can be understood precisely by the developments in this area during the dark ages and the peculiarities in its formation as a polis, which is framed, in any case, in general dynamics for the Greek world, with a period of crystallisation that is situated in the 8th century. Despite the large extension of territory governed with the formation of the polis from the asty from the mid-8th century and especially from the 7th century onwards, the particularities and apparent "recession" or lack of vitality of Athens in that century and in general during the archaic period can be explained by the peculiarities of the process of the formation of the polis, as well as by the strength and persistence of centrifugal forces, with strong territorial roots. This occurred in a context in which unity had been forged through coordination and consensus with Athens in the different territories and, in particular, through the actions of the elite that had become the ruling and governing class, within which the nobility/elite of the central part of the asty/Pedion had a specific weight.

In the 4th century BC, the first sanctuary for the goddess Isis was built in Athens by Egyptian immigrants. Cults for the Greco-Egyptian deities Isis, Sarapis, Harpocrates, and Anubis are attested in Athens and Attica until late antiquity and enjoyed great popularity among the Athenians. In previous research, these cults have mostly been studied in terms of their distribution and were more or less treated as "exotica". In my paper, however, I will show how the cults of the Greco-Egyptian gods were religiously appropriated and integrated into the local cultic landscape through the actions of individuals and groups. In doing so, I raise the question of the many possible meanings that the cults could have had in the local context of Athens at different times. As a new approach, I apply the theory of the Social Imaginary to describe how a ritual, a sanctuary, or an iconography of a god was imagined and shaped by the agency of individuals and groups. The seminar takes place Tuesday May 17, 2022, 17.00 (Athens time) with live presence at the Swedish Institute at Athens, Mitseon 9, or via Zoom link.

From Homer’s Iliad to the Athenian funeral oration and beyond the “‘beautiful death” was the name that the Greeks used to describe a combatant’s death. From the world of Achilles to democratic Athens, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the warrior’s death was a model that concentrated the representations and the values that served as [masculine] norms.  This should not be a surprise: the Iliad depicts a society at war and in the Achaean camp, at least, a society of men, without children and legitimate wives. Certainly the Athenian polis (“city-state”) reversed the traditional combatant–citizen relationship by claiming that one must be, first, a citizen before being a soldier.  Nevertheless this polis distinguished itself from others by the splendour that it gave the public funeral of its citizens that had died in war and especially by the repatriating of their mortal remains (Thuc. 2.34). In a society that believed in autochthony this repatriation was, undoubtedly, significant. Since the beautiful death crystallised the aretē (“courage”) of Achilles and Athenians alike, it was, from the outset, linked to speech. Indeed heroic death and the civic beautiful death were the subject-matter of elaborate speech. Such a celebratory discourse gave the warrior’s death an eternal existence in memory. This discourse gave his death its reality, but, conversely, also took for itself all that was valued in his accomplished exploit and claimed to be its truthful expression. In short the beautiful death was a paradigm.

Il lavoro intende inquadrare la tragedia frammentaria sofoclea "Creusa" all'interno del contesto mitologico e narrativo a noi non pervenuto, alla luce dell'analisi comparata con la superstite tragedia euripidea dello "Ione", ipotizzando una possibile trama e datazione.
La seconda parte del lavoro invece propone un'edizione critica riveduta dei frammenti giuntici, ipotizzando un contesto scenico all'interno del quale sarebbero stati pronunciati.