Maria do Céu Fialho

Carmen Soares

Thomas Figueira

O livro Polis/Cosmópolis publica os resultados da investigação, feita a partir de perspectivas diversas, do modo como coexistiam, em tensão ou harmonia, no Mundo Greco-romano, na Idade Média e no Renascimento, identidades regionais e globais, minorias e maiorias, como se formaram e transformaram, desde o sistema da pólis, do fenómeno da colonização, das ligas hegemónicas, da imagiologia de uma Atenas ideal à de uma Atenas instável e de valores perdidos, retratada através das suas figuras públicas, do olhar sobre o Outro e sobre a variedade de regimes políticos do Outro, aos Reinos Helenísticos, enfatizando Alexandria. Segue-se o percurso que leva de Roma a uma Romanitas linguística e da Europa ao Novo Mundo. Mantiveram-se, no entanto, coexistentes, por muito tempo, as línguas locais e a língua do Império, como afirmação de identidade regional e de pertença global. Foi o caso dos Reinos Alexandrinos, mas também, como se verá, o caso da Hispânia. Este percurso leva a que se atente ao modo como padrões estéticos evoluíram, de uma sociedade oral para uma sociedade do livro e da leitura, tendo como suporte o mito, na sua inesgotável variedade, que vai da Índia Antiga e do seu interagir com o universo greco-romano ao Mundo Novo, através da recepção dos Clássicos, estudada e exemplificada no contexto da Lusofonia, através de uma reflexão, feita a partir desse Novo Mundo, sobre o papel dos Clássicos na educação em espaços diversos. Polis/Cosmopolis publishes the results of research, arising from diverse perspectives, into the coexistence, in tension or in harmony, of regional and global identities, minorities, and majorities in the Graeco-Roman world, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance. This work will explore the ways in which these cultural modalities were shaped, and transformed themselves, involving the polis system, the phenomenon of colonization, the hegemonic leagues, and Athens, both ideally imagined and historically beset with instability and lost values (as attested by its leading men). Our investigations also envision the Other, and consider the variety of political dispensations for the Other down to the Hellenistic kingdoms with, naturally, Alexandria first and foremost. There then follows the evolution that leads from Rome to a linguistic Romanitas and from Europe to the New World. Indeed, for a long time, local languages and the language of imperium coexisted as affirmations of regional identity and global integration, as was the case in the Hellenistic East as well as, in fact, in Hispania.

Identidades globais & locais

Pólis/Cosmópolis

Was Athens an imperialistic state, deserving all the reputation for exploitation that adjective can imply, or was the Athenian alliance, even at its most unequal, still characterized by a convergence of interests? The Power of Money explores monetary and metrological policy at Athens as a way of discerning the character of Athenian hegemony in midfifth-century Greece. It begins with the Athenian Coinage Decree, which, after decades of scholarly attention, still presents unresolved questions for Greek historians about content, intent, date, and effect. Was the Decree an act of commercial imperialism or simply the codification of what was already current practice? Figueira interprets the Decree as one in a series concerned with financial matters affecting the Athenian city-state and emerging from the way the collection of tribute functioned in the alliance that we call the Athenian empire. He contends that the Decree served primarily to legislate the status quo ante.

Coinage and Politics in the Athenian Empire

The Power of Money

Herodotus is the epochal authority who inaugurated the European and Western consciousness of collective identity, whether in an awareness of other societies and of the nature of cultural variation itself or in the fashioning of Greek self-awareness – and necessarily that of later civilizations influenced by the ancient Greeks – which was perpetually in dialogue and tension with other ways of living in groups. In this book, 14 contributors explore ethnicity – the very self-understanding of belonging to a separate body of human beings – and how it evolves and consolidates (or ethnogenesis). This inquiry is focussed through the lens of Herodotus as our earliest master of ethnography, in this instance not only as the stylized portrayal of other societies, but also as an exegesis on how ethnocultural differentiation may affect the lives, and even the very existence, of one’s own people. Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus is one facet of a project that intends to bring Portuguese and English-speaking scholars of antiquity into closer cooperation. It has united a cross-section of North American classicists with a distinguished cohort of Portuguese and Brazilian experts on Greek literature and history writing in English.

Thomas Figueira

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