Official Course Description
Not only since Christian Meier's "Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen" has the 5th century BC been regarded as a key period for the development of central political categories and as a catalyst for the emergence of social institutions that still seem so familiar to us today: Comedy and tragedy develop into tangible dramatic categories. The concept of democracy is documented for the first time during this period. At the same time, the specific Greek city-state, the pólis (Greek: [i]polis[/i]), developed into a universal political frame of reference within which discourses on political equality (Greek: [i]homónoia[/i]) and oppression (Greek: [i]despoteía[/i]) were conducted.
However, the terms we are familiar with are often not what we initially expect. The historical phenomena are related to our modern institutions and have developed from them. In their concrete form, however, they differ greatly from their modern relatives. The proseminar will take this fact as a starting point and examine the central social developments in Athens in the 5th century BC.
[u]Recommended literature:[/u]
Welwei, Karl-Wilhelm: Athen. Von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn des Hellenismus, Darmstadt 2011.
Sabben-Clare , J.P./ Warman, M.S. (Hg.): The culture of Athens, Cambridge, 2023.
[b]+++ Bitte beachten+++[/b] Der Arbeitsbereich Alte Geschichte bietet zugleich auch die Quellenübung: „Thukydides“ an. Ein Besuch beider Veranstaltungen ist nicht verpflichtend, kann aber sinnvoll sein, um die Seminarinhalte in den breiteten historischen Kontext des Peloponnesischen Krieges einzubetten.[u] +++ [/u]
- Lecturer: Jonas Langer