Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece, Rome, and China

Hans Beck is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Münster and Adjunct Professor at McGill University, Montréal. He has published widely in the field of ancient Mediterranean history, including Consuls and Res Publica (edited with Antonio Duplá, Martin Jehne and Francisco Pina Polo, Cambridge, 2011) and Federalism in Greek Antiquity (edited with Peter Funke, Cambridge, 2015). His recent work on localism in the pre-modern world, including Localism and the Ancient Greek City-State (2020), has garnered significant global attention. He has won the Anneliese Maier Award of the German Humboldt Foundation and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a Co-Director, with Griet Vankeerberghen, of Global Antiquities, a research network dedicated to the study of ancient Greece, Rome, and China. Griet Vankeerberghen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies of McGill University, Montréal. She has published on several Western Han texts and their social, political and material contexts, including the Huainanzi, Shiji, and the Four Lost Classics. She co-edited Chang'an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China with Michael Nylan (2015). She is currently engaged in a research project on the nobles of Western Han, sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is a Co-Director, with Hans Beck, of Global Antiquities, a research network dedicated to the study of ancient Greece, Rome, and China.

'The essays … highlight similarities between the manifestations of these topics and adduce specific circumstances that may explain the differences. Recommended.' S. M. Burstein, Choice Magazines

• Editors' preface: Introduction. The many faces of 'the people' in the ancient world: δήμος – populus – 民 min Hans Beck and Griet Vankeerberghen; Part I. Authority and Lifestyles of Distinction: 1. Of gold and purple: nobles in western Han China and republican Rome Griet Vankeerberghen; 2. A tale of two stones: social memory in Roman Greece and Han China Miranda Brown with Zhang Zhongwei; 3. Private associations and urban experience in the Han and Roman Empires Carlos Noreña; Part II. The People as Agents and Addressees: 4. Rhetoric, oratory and people in ancient Rome and early China Francisco Pina Polo; 5. Female commoners and the law in early imperial China: evidence from recently recovered documents with some comparisons with classical Rome Robin Yates; 6. Registers of 'the people' in Greece, Rome, and China Hans Beck; 7. Food distribution for the People: welfare, food, and feasts in Rome and in Qin/Han China Moonsil Lee Kim; Part III. Inversions of the People: Emperors and Tyrants: 8. Augustus, the Roman plebs and the dictatorship: 22 BCE and beyond Alexander Yakobson; 9. Liberation as burlesque: the death of the tyrant Garret Pagenstecher Olberding; 10. Historical necessity or biographical singularity? Some aspects in the biographies of C. Iulius Caesar and Qin Shi Huangdi David Engels; 11. Employing knowledge: a case study in calendar reforms in the early Han and Roman Empires Rebecca Robinson; Part IV. Identities and 'Others': 12. The invention of the 'barbarian' and ethnic identity in early Greece and China Yang Huang; 13. Ethnic identity and the 'barbarian' in classical Greece and early China: its origins and distinctive features Hyun Jin Kim; Glossary.