Kurt Raaflaub – författare

This volume is a unique, multi-authored social history of war from the third millennium B.C.E. to the tenth century C.E. in the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Europe (Egypt, Achaemenid Persia, Greece, the Hellenistic World, the Roman Republic and Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the early Islamic World, and early Medieval Europe), with parallel studies of Mesoamerica (the Maya and Aztecs) and East Asia (ancient China, medieval Japan). The product of a colloquium at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, this volume offers a broadly based, comparative examination of war and military organization in their complex interactions with social, economic, and political structures as well as cultural practices.

Throughout the twelve essays that appear in Ex Oriente Lex, Raymond Westbrook convincingly argues that the influence of Mesopotamian legal traditions and thought did not stop at the shores of the Mediterranean, but rather had a profound impact on the early laws and legal developments of Greece and Rome as well. He presents readers with tantalizing fragments of early Greek or archaic Roman law which, when placed in the context of the broader Near Eastern tradition, suddenly acquire unexpected new meanings. Before his untimely death in July 2009, Westbrook was regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on ancient legal history. Although his main field was ancient Near Eastern law, he also made important contributions to the study of early Greek and Roman law. In his examination of the relationship between ancient Near Eastern and pre-classical Greek and Roman law, Westbrook sought to demonstrate that the connection between the two legal spheres was not merely theoretical but also concrete. The Near Eastern legal heritage had practical consequences that help us understand puzzling individual cases in the Greek and Roman traditions.His essays provide rich material for further reflection and interdisciplinary discussion about compelling similarities between legal cultures and the continuity of legal traditions over several millennia. Aimed at classicists and ancient historians, as well as biblicists, Egyptologists, Assyriologists, and legal historians, this volume gathers many of Westbrook's most important essays on the legal aspects of Near Eastern cultural influences on the Greco-Roman world, including one new, never-before-published piece. A preface by editors Deborah Lyons and Kurt Raaflaub details the importance of Westbrook's work for the field of classics, while Sophie Demare-Lafont's incisive introduction places Westbrook's ideas within the wider context of ancient law.

Contents:F. de Polignac: Repenser la "e;cite"e;? Rituels et societe en Grece archaique M. H. Hansen: The "e;Autonomous City-State"e;. Ancient Fact or Modern Fiction? M. H. Hansen: Kome. A Study in How the Greeks Designated and Classified Settlements which were not Poleis T. H. Nielsen: Was Eutaia a Polis? A Note on Xenophon's Use of the Term Polis in the Hellenika P. Flensted-Jensen: The Bottiaians and their Poleis S. G. Miller: Old Metroon and Old Bouleuterion in the Classical Agora of Athens T. L. Shear, Jr.: Bouleuterion, Metroon and the Archives at Athens A. Avram: Poleis und Nicht-Poleis im Ersten und Zweiten Attischen Seebund W. Burkert: Greek Poleis and Civic Cults. Some Further Thoughts L. Rubinstein: Pausanias as a Source for the Classical Greek Polis