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The thesis is concerned with the official documents (laws and decrees) preserved in the public speeches of the Demosthenic corpus (18, 21, 23, 24, 59). These documents purport to be Athenian statutes and, if authentic, would provide invaluable information about fourth-century Athenian history and institutions. The introduction gives an account of the presence of the documents in the corpora of the orators and in the manuscript tradition, summarizes previous scholarship and delineates a new methodology for analyzing the documents. A specific section within the introduction analyzes the stichometric marks found in the medieval manuscripts of the Demosthenic corpus. Through those marks we can calculate whether a section of text was or was not present in the Urexemplar of the corpus: the documents in Dem. 23 and some of those in Dem. 24 were, but the others have been inserted later. The following 4 chapters analyze in detail the documents found in Dem. 18, 19, 23, 24 and 59, also providing the text of each document as it appears in the paradosis, with an apparatus criticus. This survey reveals that those documents that were part of the stichometric edition are in general more reliable than those inserted later. By contrast, many features of these last documents, such as anachronistic expressions, formulas never attested in Attic inscriptions, inconsistencies between the documents and the orator's summaries, betray forgery. The conclusion argues that the stichometric documents have been inserted in the speeches in an Athenian environment at the beginning of the 3rd century BCE, presumably by Demochares of Leuconoe, the nephew of Demosthenes and an active politician himself. The non-stichometric documents are instead a very early product of the tradition of historical declamations and progymnasmata, witnesses of the development, side-by-side, of rhetorical education and antiquarianism.

This thesis investigates honour and recognition dynamics in fourth-century Athenian oikoi, looking in particular at the subordinate members of the family. Through a balanced combination of textual analysis and multi-disciplinary approaches, this thesis reassesses the experiences of children, women, and slaves, while contributing to a reassessment of timē more generally along the lines of modern theories of recognition. The aim is to show that timē is a bidirectional mechanism that pervades all sorts of interactions, allowing for complex interpersonal dynamics even in starkly asymmetrical relationships. The first chapter briefly sketches the various expressions of timē in the interpersonal sphere, while the second chapter looks more specifically at the possibility of recognition dynamics involving infants. In this chapter, much attention is devoted to ancient and modern accounts of infants' psychology: as I argue, some ancient sources agree with modern accounts of infants' psychology as essentially intersubjective. Intersubjectivity is the conceptual basis for the understanding of honour put forth in this thesis: the various case studies examined throughout the thesis demonstrate the fundamental awareness of the inextricable links between one's own timē and the timē of others. Chapters three, four, and five investigate the honour of children, women, and slaves respectively. Particular attention is given to the recognition they could obtain and expect in their relationships with other members of the oikos. Despite their subordinate status vis-à-vis their parents, husbands, and masters respectively, these categories were able to leverage the reciprocity inherent in relationships of all sorts, putting forth claims to recognition and respect. In addition to this, other paths were available to accrue honour and recognition, both in and out of the oikos, thanks for instance to athletic achievements, religious associations, or professional expertise. This thesis therefore contributes to a reassessment of timē as a fundamentally cooperative mechanism based on bidirectionality, while also shedding light on the experiences of the subordinate members of the family in fourth-century Athens from an innovative perspective. As this thesis shows, timē dynamics enabled children, women, and slaves to negotiate their claims to respect and defend their right to recognition.

This thesis centres around the legal penalty of atimia ('dishonour' or 'disrespect') in the archaic and classical periods of Greek history, analysed against the wider backdrop of the role of timē ('honour'/'worth' or 'respect'), of which a-timia is the exact antonym. The main contention of this thesis is that, contrary to the communis opinio, the legal penalty of atimia was not an exclusive concern of male citizens - in fact, its scope was much wider, and the legal remedy was available, for example, also against citizen women, and (male and female) resident aliens and foreigners. My thesis argues, therefore, that this flexibility of the penalty of 'dishonour' and the rationale behind its use in policing anti-social behaviour are better understood through the lens of 'honour'. This, contrary to current (and mistaken) understandings of the concept, is not a limited non-material commodity, pursued mostly by males in often violent forms of 'zero-sum' competition, and a disruptive value typical of Mediterranean societies, but rather a pluralist and bidirectional notion that has to do with the interplay of deference (i.e. both one's respect for others' claims and others' respect for one's own) and demeanour (i.e. the respectable conduct, self-presentation, and self-respect that safeguard one's own claims to deference) - an interplay which the Greeks understood and construed intuitively through the conceptual structure of their language. Thus, timē is not simply one value among many, but a measure of the value of any quality or set of qualities, and a motivational mechanism that accommodates both competitive and cooperative behaviour. After an Introduction that summarises the status quaestionis and lays out the methodology of the thesis, informed by sociological approaches and behavioural science, Chapter 1 explores the notion of timē in the legal sphere and argues that the ancient Greek notion of 'honour' was used to define both the (legal) status (timē as a mass noun) of an individual and the rights and privileges (timē in the singular, timai in the plural) attached to that status. By approaching timē from the standpoint of atimia, then, and by examining what it is that atimia deprives one of, it is possible to understand, e contrario, what timē really is. Chapter 2 examines the notion of atimia through its historical development, starting from archaic literature and arriving to legal (both literary and epigraphic) texts of the classical period. In Chapter 3, the legal penalty of atimia, the relevant procedures through which it was enforced, and the types of crime for which it was meted out in the classical period are investigated in full. Through a close reading of the relevant statutes as they are presented in the ancient sources and the analysis of the social dynamics that underpinned these laws, it is possible to see how the threat of 'dishonour' was used to promote cooperative behaviour by communally censoring 'dishonourable' (i.e. anti-social) conduct through the (political and social) exclusion of the offender. This discussion is complemented by Chapter 4, which deals with the consequences of legal dishonour for those more marginalised groups - citizen women and (male and female) free non-citizens - who nevertheless enjoyed a legally recognised status (and legally recognised rights) within the polis, and is followed by a Conclusion that sums up the main findings of the thesis.

This thesis investigates the transmission and political reception of fourth-century Athenian political oratory in early Hellenistic Athens (henceforth EHA) - viz. the period spanning from the Lamian War (322 BCE) to the end of the Chremonidean War (261 BCE). The thesis traces the earliest phases of the transmission of the Attic Orators' speeches (most notably Demosthenes') and their reception in the political landscape of that period. It argues for the importance of text-dissemination for a more rounded understanding of EHA: the speeches of the Attic Orators held a critical role in the political debates of that period, and often served as actual political weapons to assert and re-define Athenian identity and democracy in an anti-Macedonian perspective. The thesis holds that EHA's documentary evidence (especially honorific decrees) is crucial for a more rounded understanding of how the corpora of the Attic Orators were interpreted - as well as appropriated - by EHA politics. This investigation pioneers the integration of cultural history into the study of EHA, tackling textual dissemination as a fundamental aspect of cultural and political history. The Introduction sets out the methodological perspectives of the research: it discusses the exploitation of the Attic Orators' corpora as memory carriers in the dense and discrete cultural framework of EHA. Chapter 1 examines the idiosyncrasies of EHA's democratic discourse. The study of the contemporary language and the decision-making processes shows that the Athenian democratic framework of EHA should be assessed in close continuity with its late Classical predecessor. The chapter also discusses (and rules out) the opportunity of using the category of 'factions' in the political and cultural arena of the period. Chapter 2 delves into the early Hellenistic origin of the Demosthenic corpus. It argues that the earliest (posthumous) collection of Demosthenes' speeches was arranged not in Ptolemaic Alexandria but in early Hellenistic Athens: specifically, in the period between Demosthenes' death (322 BCE) and Callimachus' Pinakes. This chapter examines the relevant evidence for Demosthenes personally publishing his speeches during his lifetime; manuscript tradition and stichometry; and the presence of spuria (particularly [Dem.] 17). It contends that Demosthenes' Athenian Urexemplar was collected by a close associate of the orator, most likely Demochares of Leuconoe; and that the edition had a crystal-clear political significance, insomuch as it embodied the anti-Macedonian sentiment in a period marked by multiple phases of Macedonian domination. Chapter 3 provides a broad re-assessment of the political and intellectual activity of Demochares of Leuconoe, nephew of Demosthenes and major protagonist on the political scene of EHA. It shows how he consistently pursued policies re-enacting a Demosthenic persona: the anti-Macedonian paradigm of his uncle provided him with a model he looked at for his political and cultural activity. The chapter goes through Demochares' biography and positions in his Histories. It examines in detail the text of the request (aitēsis) for the highest honours which Demochares submitted for Demosthenes in 281/80 (XOr. 850f - 851c). It uncovers the complex memorial strategies with which the text engages and argues that the document's motivation clause reflects and echoes the arguments that Demosthenes employed in his speeches - most notably his self-defence speech On the Crown. Chapter 4 investigates Peripatetic criticism of Demosthenes in the age after Aristotle. It illustrates how Peripatetic rhetorical criticism of Demosthenes and other Attic Orators was imbued with an underlying political judgment in the context of the clashes between opposing views on the politics of memory pervading the cultural arena of EHA. Chapter 5 explores the early Hellenistic reception of Lycurgus of Boutade and his corpus of speeches - focusing on the posthumous honours proposed for him by Stratocles of Diomea (IG II² 457 + 3207 ≈ XOr. 852). The honours for Lycurgus dwell on two dimensions of the orator's activity: financial administration and religious oversight. I illustrate how these two spheres can be profitably read in the extant fragments of Lycurgus. The chapter also inspects Lycurgus' legacy within the genos of the Eteoboutadai; and how politicians like Stratocles and Lycurgus' son Habron sought to foster the coexistence of the patriotic memory of the orator with the new Athenian political landscape after 307. The Conclusion argues for the central role of early Hellenistic debates in the Nachleben of Attic oratory in the centuries to come.

This thesis seeks to conceptualise the literary universe in ancient Greek literature as a 'cosmic society' and thereby to examine the defining features of gods and humans and how excellent human individuals might achieve divine or godlike status. Traditionally, scholarship has distinguished humans from gods solely by the strict antithesis between immortality and mortality. I believe that this dominant view can be challenged, or at least modified, by further reflection on a set of notions and categories that separate and correlate gods and humans. The thesis aims to apply several social concepts such as honour, status, and community to analyse scenarios and occasions in which extraordinary humans succeed in becoming, or are approximated to, a deity. The thesis is divided into two parts and consists of six chapters. Part I provides a general conceptual framework, which is then applied to the three case studies of extraordinary figures in the works of Homer, Pindar, and Sophocles that constitute Part II. The Introduction reviews the mainstream scholarship relating to the Greek gods and their relationship with mankind and proposes the idea of a cosmic society. Chapter 1 examines some key texts on the distribution of honour among gods and humans and provides an interpretation of it as a coherent nexus of ideas and themes about the supreme rule of Zeus, the establishment and maintenance of the cosmic society, divine-human separation, the relationship between gods and humans, and divine-human interactions. Chapter 2 formulates the principal argument of the thesis: divinity, either of a god or a divinised human, is above all defined by a special honour that is ordained or distributed as a portion by the divine community under the rule of Zeus. I examine the ways in which a new deity is initiated into the divine community and compare them with several cases of apotheosis. The textual investigations lead to the main subject of the thesis, i.e. approximate and transgressive forms of divinisation. Building on the findings in Part I, the case studies of Part II explore how the extraordinary statuses of Iliadic warriors, Pindaric laudandi, and Sophoclean protagonists are defined in relation to their human fellows and especially to the gods in the cosmic society. These texts are chosen to reflect the diversity of contexts and genres in which extraordinary persons reach the limit of humanity and become approximate to gods. Chapter 3 focuses on the aristeia of three distinct Homeric warriors, all of whom are temporarily elevated to divine status in ways that have different thematic significance. Chapter 4 discusses Pindar's Olympian 1-3, composed for two Sicilian tyrants whose extraordinary statuses are defined in comparison to those of the figures of the central mythic narrative and who enjoy temporary bliss with eschatological prospects for post-mortem elevation to a divine realm, prospects that fundamentally depend on the laudandus' relationship with divine powers. Chapter 5 offers a detailed reading of the Ajax of Sophocles, in which the eponymous protagonist questions the traditional values relating to honour and the divine-human relationship in the cosmic society by rejecting the kind of honour based on his relationships with others and by attempting to confer on himself a special kind of honour that is independent of external recognition and divine distribution. These case studies will not only support the main argument of the thesis but also contribute to an understanding of the ethical and theological content of the poetic works, as well as their literary fabric.

This thesis constitutes a systematic analysis of emotion's role in Iliadic politics. I hereby argue that emotions, which the evidence of Homer's Iliad reveals as shaping and shaped by communal norms, are constitutive of Iliadic politics both normatively and anti-normatively. This means that the way in which leaders experience emotions, enact communal rules, and manage honour dynamics, especially within a deliberative context, is intimately bound up with the wellbeing of the community. Ch. 2 concerns political debate and variants of leadership emerging from the Achaeans' community. I show that a worsening of conflict is linked to individuals' focus on their own emotions and priorities, thereby failing to consider the emotions and rights of others. To this end, intersubjective thinking and feeling are of central importance vis-à-vis Iliadic honour dynamics and interpersonal relationships. Ch. 3 discusses decision-making processes in the Trojan community, showing that leaders must not only be able to follow procedural rules but propose constitutively rational plans of action. This involves the sound evaluation of one's emotions while giving due consideration to the advice of one's counsellors. Ch. 4 demonstrates that, unlike the Achaeans' and the Trojans', the Olympian assemblies unexceptionally engender effective decision-making. This is because Olympian actors do not push their claims to honour too far. Rather they display behaviour in accordance with communal norms and μοῖρα (fate). Following this, Ch. 4 shows that when leaders succeed in correctly deploying political mechanisms, the negotiation of communal norms and management of honour dynamics are able to accommodate dissent and emotional tension. Thereafter, Ch. 5 explains that effective negotiations are not restricted to members belonging to the same community but extend to those of warring communities, namely, the Achaeans and the Trojans. In these contexts, such negotiations are grounded in ethical values and shared religious beliefs, which transcend individual communities. However, because shared moral values are typically enacted on an interpersonal level only (and rarely on an intercommunal level), the instantiation of a superordinate 'community of communities' is not ultimately realised to any great extent within the epos. Still the Iliad gifts to readers such an aspiration.

My thesis investigates the discourse of sole rule in the Greek polis from the Archaic Period to the Early Hellenistic Period. In particular, the thesis analyses how sole rulers were able to legitimise their position throughout a long temporal span during which attitudes towards sole rule were constantly changing. Traditionally, scholarship has compartmentalised sole rule in the Greek World into separate categories: Homeric basileia, Archaic tyrannoi, Hellenistic kingship. I argue that these categories should be challenged, and my thesis aims to demonstrate both chronological continuity and geographic spread in the methods of legitimisation used by sole rulers from as early as the Homeric period right down to the death of Hiero II in 215 BC, the date at which this thesis ends. I identify two major stumbling­blocks to sole ruler legitimacy that monocrats had to overcome to stay in power. The first of these was the rise of an ideology of eunomia that centred on the rule of law in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. Sole rulers now had to frame their power within the confines of the law, and I adopt a New Institutionalist methodology to examine how sole rulers sought to institutionalise their power to counter accusations of lawlessness and illegitimacy. The second issue I discuss is the changing discourse surrounding sole rule from the seventh century onwards that led to increasingly negative stereotypes and conceptual metaphors that sole rulers had to contend with. The stereotypes largely portray the sole ruler as a sacrilegious, violent, lawless tyrant, an image the sole ruler had to negate to maintain his position. These stereotypes were further exacerbated in the fifth century following the Persian Wars when sole rule became increasingly perceived as a foreign trait, leading to the stereotype of the barbarian ruler. We can further trace changing attitudes towards sole rule in the underlying conceptual metaphors that existed in Greek society. Early conceptual metaphors focused on the sole ruler as protector of his people, such as a father, a shepherd, or a doctor. These were exploited negatively as sole rule became increasingly criticised, while the fifth century despotes conceptual metaphor depicted the sole ruler as a master of slavish subjects. From the fourth century philosophical works examined positive forms of monarchy, and the rise of Hellenistic kingship meant conceptualisations once again focused on positive aspects of sole rule, culminating in the extensive use of the euergetes conceptual metaphor. The changing conceptual metaphors are representative of changes in communal perception of sole rule and have important implications for our understanding of the discourse of sole rule and ancient Greek political thought. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part consists of three thematic chapters that focus on the wider picture of sole ruler discourse, while the second part features three case-studies demonstrating my conclusions in action. Chapter One introduces the methodological framework for the thesis and highlights the historiographical problems with many existing studies of sole rule. This methodological framework is provided by the New Institutionalist school of political analysis, while also introducing aspects of cognitive theory such as conceptual metaphors. These tools are used, throughout, in tandem with more traditional philological analysis of literary and epigraphic source material. Chapter Two examines ancient responses to sole rule and the development of the rule of law vs. rule of man ideology following the increasing importance of eunomia in the seventh and sixth century Greek polis. The chapter concludes by examining sole ruler responses to this new requirement for eunomia through the promotion of so­called 'lawful' sole rule. Chapter Three analyses three particular aspects of the discourse surrounding sole rule: stereotypes, conceptual metaphors, and nomenclature. The chapter looks at both positive and negative linguistic and conceptual representations of sole rule and to how these perceptions changed over time, before analysing how sole rulers attempted to combat these negative perceptions to maintain legitimacy. The remaining three chapters look at individual case­studies in order to contextualise and support the conclusions drawn from Part One. Chapter Four examines the Battiad dynasty of Cyrene of the seventh ­ fifth centuries BC, Chapter Five examines Classical Thessaly and the position of tagos, while Chapter Six examines the discourse of sole rule in Syracuse, beginning with Gelon I and concluding with the Early Hellenistic reigns of Agathocles and Hiero II. The detailed analysis carried out in this thesis provides a comprehensive study of the methods of legitimisation used by sole rulers from the Archaic Period to the Early Hellenistic Period, establishing threads of continuity across chronological and geographical boundaries.

This thesis examines the institutional design and the procedures regulating the decree-making in the poleis of the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The main contention of this thesis is that Greek decree-making is to be conceived as the result of a multi-layered system of interaction and delegation of deliberative authority among different institutions: councils, officials, assemblies and lawcourts. My thesis argues, therefore, that decree-making procedures were specifically designed to implement the concept of 'divided power', a value shared by both democracies and non-democratic regimes, and to shape the collective behaviour of the citizens when acting as decision-makers within the institutions. By adopting models from the political sciences, my thesis bridges the gap between institutional approaches to political decision-making and more recent approaches that have stressed the role of values and ideology as key factors to understand ancient Greek politics. Chapter 1 lays out the methodology of the thesis informed by the New Historical Institutionalism. Chapter 2 analyses the practice of delegation of power from the Athenian Assembly to the Athenian Council in order to enact additional measures. The careful study of the delegation-clauses sheds light on the administrative power of the Council by demonstrating that the Council played a proper policy-making role through the enactment of a decree, which was the product of Council's expertise in defined matters, such as religious affairs, foreign policy and the navy. Chapter 3 builds on the findings of the previous chapter, and shows the workings and development of delegation-clauses to the Council in two examples from outside Athens, Mytilene and Megalopolis over the longue durée. Chapter 4 deals with the deliberative procedures of Hellenistic Sparta. The Spartan 'divided power' envisaged that the Gerousia shared the probouleutic power with the ephors who could independently submit the bill to the Assembly. The Gerousia, however, held the power of nomophylakia and could veto the final decree. This chapter shows that divided power and the need of legal stability were addressed by Spartan institutions, but with different results because of the wider powers of officials in the decree-making. This chapter introduces the important issue of the balance between people's deliberation and stability of the legal order, which form an important focus of chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 discusses the role played by legal procedure of the adeia in fifth-century deliberative decision-making in the Assembly. This chapter provides a new comprehensive account of this legal institution. Adeia instituted a pre-nomothetic procedure, according to which the Assembly could change an entrenched piece of legislation or decree without clashing with the nomothetic ideology. Chapter 6 examines the relationship between deliberation and judicial review in the Greek poleis. The first section discusses the Athenian graphe paranomon, the public charge against an illegal decree. A thorough analysis of the legal procedure and of the institutional design shows that deliberative decisions were made within the framework of the rule of law and the graphe paranomon enforced this principle. This did not imply an institutional prominence of the lawcourts in the Athenian decision-making. The lawcourts performed an important role in the deliberative process through providing a safeguard of legal consistency by adding the legal expertise of the judges to the general rationale of the decree-making. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to the discussion of evidence of judicial review from outside Athens and the multifaceted role of the Hellenistic practice of appointing foreign judges in adjudicating public lawsuits, and especially in the judicial review of decrees.

The aim of the thesis is to study the pseudonymous letters of Aeschines, all of which purport to give an account of his sojourn in exile. There is a strong consensus among scholars that all the letters are forgeries, and their date of composition tends to be located in the first few centuries CE on linguistic grounds. Embracing a variety of literary forms, these letters were probably composed by multiple hands and may for convenience be divided into three categories: Letters 2, 3, 7, 11, 12 imitate the ‘Demosthenic’ letters in a manner similar to the Hellenistic (and beyond) historical declamations and progymnasmata; Letters 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 come to us with features reminiscent of what German scholars would call Briefromane, or ‘epistolary novels’, and are normally deemed typical of the so-called Second Sophistic; and Letter 4 is a showpiece assuming the form of a Pindaric exegesis. The thesis consists of two parts. The first gives an extensive account of the letters, including their background, history of scholarship, and basic features, to seek to present the ‘forger’ and the text in their proper historical and cultural contexts. The second part, which constitutes the basis for the reflections developed in the first, provides a detailed commentary in thematic sequence. It begins with the ‘Demosthenic’ counterparts (Epp. 2, 3, 7, 11, 12), and stylistic comparisons are made throughout. The analysis of the fictional letters (Epp. 1, 5, 6, 8, 9) pays particular attention to their consistency of narrative and engagement with other literary genres. The commentary on Letter 4 foregrounds the Pindaric elements and completes the thesis. Letter 10 is discussed at sporadic points: it is a later attachment to the corpus and the erotic content is inconsistent with the ‘original’ forgeries. The overall focus of the thesis is on two overlapping aspects of Aeschines’ early reception in antiquity – as ‘the other orator’ beside Demosthenes and as inspiration for later rhetorical education. Existing studies, however, are more concerned with textual criticism and linguistic analysis and have left the letters almost unproductive in these respects: so Drerup (1904), Schwegler (1914), and, most recently, García Ruiz and Hernández Muñoz (2012). In his classic work Goldstein (1968) took the parallel passages in the pseudonymous letters as evidence for authenticating Demosthenes’ letters, and scholars are now able to take advantage of a more reliable reference when studying Ps.-Aeschines. Holzberg (1994), on the other hand, established a set of generic criteria for the Briefromane and has substantially changed the way we read Ps.-Aeschines: it is now possible to appreciate the literary value of the letters without scrutinising their authenticity. Yet both these studies tell us only half the story: while Goldstein left more remarks on the imitative counterparts of Demosthenes’ letters, Holzberg focused on the way the letters reflect the epistolary narrative. Following Rohde (1876/1960), moreover, it seems common sense to characterise the pseudo-historical tale as seen through the letters as a product of the ‘Second Sophistic’, though discoveries of new papyri, e.g. the Ninus romance c. first century BCE, undermined this assumption. My study is built on these investigations in an attempt to form the most extended analysis. The study of the ‘Demosthenic’ counterparts will contribute to a better understanding of Ps.-Aeschines’ intertextual engagement with Demosthenes and his successors, e.g. Ps.-Leosthenes (FGrH 105 F 6 = MP3 2496). It shows that Ps.-Aeschines owes a great deal to the culture of rhetoric and highlights his significance in the Nachleben of Attic oratory. As for the other letters, this thesis argues that they deserve some space in our accounts of the history of exilic, periegetic, and epinician literatures for contextualising a wide range of preexisting literary forms such as the Homeric Odyssey (Ep. 1) and Pindar’s victory odes (Ep. 4). As contingent by-products of the ‘Demosthenic’ counterparts, however, they seem to allow no confident judgement about generic consciousness, esp. the very notion of ‘novel’, and need to be approached as antedating the Imperial exponents. Contrary to the communis opinio, therefore, I attempt to move the date of composition forward to the late Hellenistic period, in which there was already ample encouragement for a sophist, as well as for his students, to write pseudonymous letters. The ‘traitors’ blacklist’ (Ep. 12.8–9) and the term for the Rhodian family of Diagoreans (Ep. 4.4) entertain this possibility inasmuch as both show marked affinities with the Hellenistic sources. Last but not least, the two coexisting, radically opposed interpretations of one’s civic orientation in exile will help us tackle the stability and change in the political cultures of the post-Classical era. My conclusion is that these letters hold a unique position as very early – and very illuminating – examples of how different literary, political trends were interwoven to make, and to remould, a Classic. It is hoped that this study may have done something to reappraise Ps.-Aeschines, who is, in all likelihood, a pre-sophisticated forerunner at a crossroads in the history of Greek literature.

This work analyses the most important sources for manumission in Ancient Greece from a legal perspective, with the aim of unearthing the legal concepts and definitions that informed the liberation of slaves in the ancient documents. More specifically, this study will examine the legal nature of manumission in exchange for money while also analysing the legal condition of those ἀπελεύθεροι who, after their liberation, were required to perform παραμονή-services towards their former masters. This analysis will focus on the origins of manumission in Greece (which can be traced back to the Homeric poems), on the body of Hellenistic inscriptions from Delphi and Chaeronea, on some forensic speeches from Classical Athens and, finally, on the so-called ‘public manumissions’. All these sources are unequivocal in showing that, on the one hand, manumission in exchange for money had the nature of a bilateral legal transaction between the slaves’ masters and a third party, other than the slaves; and on the other hand, that the legal condition of manumitted slaves is always understood as one of freedom, independently of the possible imposition of post-manumission obligations upon them. This work ultimately shows not only that the Greeks’ conceptualisation of manumission relied on a solid understanding of key legal concepts such as slavery, freedom and ownership, but also that this institution was informed by common legal principles shared by different geographical and chronological contexts of the Greek world.

My thesis investigates the construction of democratic ideology in classical Athens. Ideology has often provided an alternative tool to formal institutions for the study of Athenian political life. An approach that reconciles institutions and ideology can provide us with a fuller understanding of Athenian democracy. Rather than as a fixed set of ideas, values and beliefs shared by the majority of the Athenians, I argue that Athenian democratic ideology should be seen as the product of a constant process of ideological practice which took place within and was influenced by the institutions of the democracy. My thesis focuses in particular on the construction of shared ideas and beliefs about Athens’ mythical past. Ch. 1 lays down the methodology of my work, which is inspired by the trend in the political sciences known as New Institutionalism. Ch. 2 explores the relationship between myth and Athenian democratic institutions. I show that the Athenians interacted with myth at all levels of their public and private lives, and were thus able to appreciate mythical variants and their potential ideological value. I also show that Athenian democratic institutions were characterised by specific discursive parameters which conditioned the behaviour of Athenian political actors. A comparison between mythical narratives produced for public and private contexts shows that the discursive parameters of Athenian democratic institutions influenced the construction of shared ideas about the mythical past in Athenian public discourse. As proven in Ch. 3-5, the Athenians emphasised different values and mythical variants depending on the institutional settings of the democracy. Ch. 3 analyses the influence of institutions on the values of charis and philanthrōpia in the myth of the Athenian war in defence of the Heraclidae. Ch. 4 explores the use or absence of hybris in accounts of the Attic Amazonomachy produced for public and private contexts. Ch. 5 explores how the myth of autochthony was conceptualised in terms of exclusiveness or collective eugeneia in different Athenian institutions. My research therefore provides a dynamic and multifaceted picture of Athenian democratic ideology, and shows that the Athenian democratic institutions enabled the Athenians to produce multiple and compatible ideas about their mythical past.