Stephen Todd – författare

The relationship between law, politics and society in democratic Athens is a central but neglected aspect of ancient Greek history that is beginning to attract increasing interest. Nomos brings together ten essays by a group of British and American scholars who aim to explore ways in which Athenian legal texts can be read in their social and cultural context. The focus is on classical Athens, since that is where the evidence is fullest, but the range of sources examined is broad, including the whole spectrum of literary and epigraphical texts, with special reference to the corpus of Athenian forensic oratory. All passages from Greek are translated; technical and legal terms, modern as well as ancient, are explained in a comprehensive glossary. These essays are designed to be accessible to those interested in social history and legal anthropology, as well as to historians of the ancient world.

Athens and Sparta were the two leading powers in the Classical Greek world. They represented entirely different systems of social organization: oligarchic conservatism at Sparta versus radical democracy at Athens. There was continuing ideological rivalry, culminating in the Peloponnesian War, a central event in Greek history. This text focuses on the image of rival societies, as Athens and Sparta have been perceived, by contemporaries, by later Greeks, during the Roman period and beyond. The topics covered include education, land-holding, the division of the sexes, the buildings of Athens, the development of Spartan traditional customs to meet the demands of the Roman tourist trade, and the relationship between imperialism and democracy, in antiquity and today. There is also an examination of the way in which the Peloponnesian War was constructed, if not invented, by its historian, Thucydides. The book is part of the "Classical World" series, which explores the culture and achievement of the civilizations of Rome. It is designed for students and teachers of Classical Civilization.