Rediscovering Greek Institutions

Matteo Barbato is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Greek History at the University of Milan. He is the author of The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past (EUP, 2020). His research focuses on the cultural, political and institutional history of Athenian democracy and on post-classical Greek historiography. Mirko Canevaro is Professor of Greek History at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively on the history of the Greek polis, particularly on Demosthenes and Athens (2013, 2016) and Aristotle's Politics (2014, 2022), on dynamics of honour and recognition, and on class struggle in the Grek polis. Alberto Esu is Lecturer in Classical Greek History at the University of Manchester. He has published on ancient Greek law and institutions, political thought, and Athenian oratory. He is the author of Divided Power in Ancient Greece: Decision-Making and Institutions in the Classical and Hellenistic Polis (2024) and has co-edited (with E. M. Harris), Keeping to the Point in Athenian Forensic Oratory: Law, Character and Rhetoric (EUP, 2025).

• AcknowledgementsList of Tables and IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: New Institutionalism and Greek HistoryMatteo Barbato, Mirko Canevaro and Alberto EsuPART I: INSTITUTIONS, CONSTITUTIONS, JUSTICE, AND THE LAWS1. Nomothesia and Financial Administration: Institutional Development and ‘Constitutionalisation’ in Fourth-Century AthensMirko Canevaro2. Institutions and Legal Discourse in Classical and Hellenistic SpartaAlberto Esu3. The Discourse of the Ancestral Constitution in the Early Hellenistic PeriodLaura Loddo4. ‘Another’s Justice’: A New Institutionalist Approach to the Rise of Foreign Judges in the Hellenistic WorldMatt SimontonPART II: INSTITUTIONS AND CITIZENSHIP5. Citizenship in the Greek Polis: An Institutionalist ApproachMichele Faraguna6. Non-Citizens in Athenian AssociationsJames KiersteadPART III: INSTITUTIONS, DELIBERATION, AND LEADERSHIP7. Rules, Practices, Narratives: Managing Decrees in Classical AthensPeter Liddel 8. Deliberative Justice? Pursuing Self-Interest and Helping the Wronged in Athenian International RelationsMatteo Barbato9. Deliberative Institutions, Political Culture and Society from Classical to Hellenistic IasosRoberta Fabiani10. The Strategos in the Classical Period. Path Dependence, Decision-Making, and Military LeadershipMatteo ZaccariniPART IV: INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS BEYOND THE POLIS11. New Institutionalism and Federal Structures in Ancient Greece: The Case of the Boeotian Territorial NetworkChristel Müller12. Institutional Isomorphism, Hellenisation, and the Southern Illyrian Communities as a Case StudyChiara LasagniConclusions: Critical Overview and Future Research Directions in the Study of Ancient Greek InstitutionsAlain BressonBibliographyGeneral IndexIndex Locorum

A veritable toolbox of sophisticated, theoretically informed approaches to the study of formalized structures and relationships in the ancient Greek world. The chapters show how much we can still learn from looking again at the institutional features which loom so large in the surviving inscriptions and literary texts.