RICERCA ITALIANA     

The Third Greece and the West

Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II"

Abstract

This research proposes the study of the modalities with which the communities, of the “polis” type and of the “ethnos” and “koinon” types, were structured in Central Greece, an area which has been conventionally seen as a marginal part of Greece. The harsh judgement of Thucidides, who seemed to share a vision of these regions of Northwest Greece as backward, from the cultural and political point of view, has certainly slowed down research on these terrritories for a long time, even though in the past there were some relevant monographic works on the subject. The group proposes investigating the formation of the various identities, both at the level of the image of themselves they wanted to transmit (displayed in “narrations of myths”, genealogies, and also in coin symbols), and at the level of the institutional structures which they gave themselves (magistrates, assemblies, counsellors etvc.). Both these levels shall be considered as the outcome of the interrelations among the settlements in the various “zones” and of the relations of each of them with the Gulf of Corinth, a miniature Mediterranean within the Mediterranean, as well as of their interrelations with the colonial world, and in a vaster sense, with the Greekness of the West.
The basic working hypothesis is the conviction, largely advanced in recent studies (C.Morgan, Early Greek States Beyond the Polis, London 2003; but cfr. Già J.L.Amselle, Logiques Métisses, Paris 2002) that identities tend to modify >>>

Principal Investigator

Luisa Breglia Università degli Studi di NAPOLI "Federico II"

Research Objectives

The various groups participating in this research intend to study and deepen knowledge of the composite reality which has recently been given the designation of the Third Greece, using, as a point of reference, the Gulf of Corinth and the dynamics acting on it both from the coastal hinterland and from its opening to the West. In the last few decades the entire area, has, to varying degrees, been the subject of international research which has led to evaluating the history of the same by considering it in itself and not through the filter of a historiography of Ionic, Attic or Corinthian stamp, but, with evidence coming from necropolises, places of local and inter-ethnic cults, settlements and forms of utilization of the territory and epigraphs. Thus the idea of a Western koiné has taken shape, with its history independent of that of the East or the Aegean. Form has been given to the question of the interrelations between these two areas, as a question of when, why and how such relations grew. Problems connected to the links established within this area between its Western and Eastern sectors (Aetolia and Akarnania) have been reproposed; the projection towards Illyria, Epirus Corcyra and the Ionic islands, and the colonies in Italy and Sicily. But at the same time these studies have posed the question of the construction of a space reserved for politics within communites which present ethnic structures alongside those of citizenship, but which also suffer under the >>>

First Results

The Units associated with this research project act using presupposed common methodologies. They start from a common reflection on the theme of origins and identity and aim at verifying the possibilities and outcomes for such issues. They take into account the results of research in the field and the interpretations which have been proposed concerning the issues. Besides, in this context they see the necessity of reexamining the set of available documents, taking into account the fact that the reply to the question of identity cannot be found starting from a single sector of documents, but comes from the comparing them with the set of documentation belonging to politics, cults, artistic and artesan production, numismatics, and last but not least, the literary tradition, without which the interpretation of the material data risks becoming subjective and arbitrary. To come to the area under study, the so-called Third Greece, it seems obvious to all that for the ancient era the first level of attention is given to the traditions in myth. This area has been at the centre of the Homeric tradition and that of the nostoi (Odysseus, Diomedes, Ajax), but it has also been at the centre of scenes of myth connected to Oineus and Meleager, Tydeus, Alcmaion and his family. It has been the object of epic poems in the Aetolia and in general in the products of the Boeotian and Hesiodian schools. It has received Argonaut traditions and has been influenced by Corinthian traditions joining each >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The work of H.J.Gehrke, Jenseits von Athen und Sparta. Das dritte Griechenland und seine Staatenwelt, which appeard in 1986 costituted a novelty in the field of studies concerning regions and cities other than Athens and Sparta. As has been stated, unlike other studies (for example, M.Amit Great and Small Poleis, Bruxelles 1973), which dwelt on the problem of the relations between the “great powers” and the “small cities”, Gehrke treated the “Greek Third World”, organising it by taxonomies, essentially on an economic basis, thereby also providing researchers with a complete survey of the life of the “third” Greek poleis, which took into consideration not only their political history, but also data concerning economics, landscape and myth. Since then there has been a growing interest in these problems, and also in the problem of defining what a polis is exactly (already present in the studies of de Polignac in 1984, in the review of A. Snodgrass of the works of Van Effenterre and de Polignac himself; and above all thanks to the studies of the Copenhagen Polis Centre of M.H.Hansen). The problem of the possible definition of what a polis is was thus put alongside that of defining an ethnos and of following the role of the poleis from within that ethnos. Recently an important contribution to the definition of the ethne, but also to that of the “minor” poleis seemed to come from the anthropological point of view which invited the study of the phenomena of aggregation and of >>>