Greeks Bearing Gifts: The Public Use of Private Relationships in the Greek World, 435-323 BC.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Slight abrasion on the dustcover. Otherwise very good and clean. Leichter Abrieb am Schutzumschlag. Sonst sehr gut und sauber. - Using models from social anthropology as its basis, Greeks bearing gifts takes a new look at the role of personal relationships in classical Greece and their bearing on interstate politics. It begins with a discussion of what friendship meant in the Greek world of the classical period, and then shows how the models for friendship in the private sphere were mirrored in the public sphere at both domestic and interstate levels. As well as relations between Greeks (in particular those with Athens and Sparta), Dr Mitchell looks at Greek relations with those on the margins of the Greek world, particularly the state of Macedon, and with neighbouring non-Greeks such as the Thracians and the Persians. She finds that these other cultures did not always have the same understanding of what friendship was, or practise the same kinds of exchange, and that this led to misunderstandings and difficulties in the relations between non-Greeks and Greeks. This book revises the current orthodoxy that personal friendships worked against the interests of the polis, and instead sees such relationships as playing an important part in political activity. In discussing how these trends differed in Athens and Sparta, it argues that personal �aristocratic-style� friendships were integral to polis ideology. ISBN 9780521554350