RATIONES RERUM 20: Articolo Manuela Mari

Descrizione

Rationes Rerum 20

MANUELA MARI
Città greche di età ellenistica. Un modello unico?

The scholarship of the last decades has often highlighted the great vitality of Greek civic institutions in the Hellenistic period and the ability of the poleis to adapt to a totally changed political landscape. Some more recent studies, in particular, have insisted on the idea that the Hellenistic period saw the emergence of a widely shared type of polis, characterized by democratic institutions and an ideolog y ultimately derived from the classical Athenian model. This interpretation certainly has many merits, but it risks oversimplif ying both the institutional landscape of the Hellenistic world (in which many local variations sur vived) and the history of ancient Greek democracy as a whole. This article draws attention to some problematic issues raised by the idea of a “great convergence” of the Greek poleis toward a common form and to questions that have yet to be fully explored.