Although far less familiar than democracy, oligarchic theories and practices persisted in the ancient Greek world from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period. This book uses four criteria to identify oligarchic regimes or situations: the number of participants, wealth, institutions and the use of violence. In addition, it is driven by a recurring question: how to consider together periods in which the vocabulary of oligarchia is attested (from the fifth to the third century BCE) and those in which it is not yet present (the Archaic period) or has (gradually) disappeared (the end of the Hellenistic period). The answers provided in this series of nineteen essays, which cover a wide geographical area beyond classical Athens and its oligarchic coups, reflect the vibrancy of current debates and aim to shed light on the contemporary resurgence of oligarchies.
