The concept of citizenship (politeia) is one of the notions underlying political institutions and society in the Greek world which, also owing to the stimuli of contemporary reality, has attracted sustained scholarly interest in recent years. Is citizenship defined in purely legalistic terms as the enjoyment of political rights, as Aristotle argued in Politics, book 3? Or does it entail the sharing of a system of values that is more complex and effectively reduces, if not minimizes, the importance of merely legal barriers?
While the institutional and sociological perspectives have hitherto been seen as irreconcilable and antithetical, the project aims to bring these approaches into dialogue through an integrated use of literary and epigraphic sources, in order to shed light on the origins and evolution, continuities and discontinuities of politeia in a holistic approach. We still lack, indeed, a systematic study of citizenship in the Greek world in a longue duree perspective, despite the presence of a vast bibliography on this subject. Based on the assumption that citizenship is a dynamic process, the research group proposes to carry out a comprehensive historical study of the nature and meaning of politeia in political thought and in the practice of community life. The investigation will be conducted both in a «vertical» perspective with reference to the diachronic development of the concept over the centuries between the archaic period and the second century BC and in a «horizontal» perspective through a comparative investigation of its morphology and dynamics in the parallel realities of poleis and federal states (ethne).
The research project stems from a convergence of interests and competences common to the five units. The following publications are envisaged: 1) a monograph on the principle of political representation in the Greek world; 2) a critical edition, translation and historical commentary on Demosthenes’ speech Against Euboulides; 3) a monograph on land redistributions in the ancient Greek world; 4) a monograph on citizenship and land ownership in Greek history; 5) a comprehensive collection of Greek inscriptions concerning «politographies» in the Hellenistic period; 6) a volume offering an account of the overall outcomes of the project and of the methodological experience resulting from the collaboration of the five research units. Two workshops and a concluding conference are envisaged.
The project includes the construction of an open-access website, named “Politeia”, which will make digital tools freely available to the scholarly community to ensure the dissemination of the in-progress results. In order to enhance outreach, members of the research teams will promote the fact that the project has a societal impact beyond its more targeted academic audience. The development of teaching materials for secondary schools as well as initiatives addressed to a broader public are an integral part of the group objectives.