Money Matters

This paper questions whether Athens’ defeat by its former allies in 355 B.C.E. was the watershed moment it is generally regarded to be – one that caused a sudden and significant change in the city’s financial and foreign policies. I present alternative interpretations of the evidence in order to recast our understanding of mid-fourth century Athenian political discourse.

Did the massive inequalities in wealth and political capital lead to a system of patronage in classical Athens? This question has vexed scholars for many years. Although there seems to be general agreement on the definition of patronage proposed by Saller and tweaked by Millett, Millett’s argument for the “avoidance” of patronage has been hotly debated (Arnaoutoglou; Finley 1983*; Gallant; Jones; Mossé; Zelnick-Abramovitz).

Kapêloi and Economic Rationality in Fourth-Century BCE Athens

This paper argues for a systemic and comparative approach to Syracusan imperialism in Sicily during the first generation of the Second Greco-Punic War, c. 410-380 BC. Like fifth-century Athens and Rome in the mid-Republic, the Syracusans were fairly unique in the pre-modern world in how they sought to balance the internal division of benefits with external predation.