Table of Contents

1. What are polis histories? What are local histories? Popular history and its audiences; 2. Tales for the telling: 'τὸ μυθῶδες'; 3. Ethnography for the Greeks? The polis as a new subject for historiography; 4. Fostering the community: accumulative historiography; 5. Origins, foundations and ethnicity: Greeks and non-Greeks; 6. Saving the city: political history or paradoxa? Miletus and Lesbos; 7. Polis in flux: dislocation and disenfranchisement in Samos; 8. Athenian polis histories; 9. The Aristotelian politeiai and local histories; 10. Polis and island histories and the late Classical and Hellenistic world: a new Hellenism?

Promotional Information

Re-assesses the phenomenon of Greek 'local history-writing' and its role in creating political and cultural identity in a changing world.

About the Author

Rosalind Thomas is Professor of Greek History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Balliol College. Her publications include Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989), Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1992), and Herodotus in Context (Cambridge, 2000).

Reviews

'… a vital addition to the canon of ancient Greek historical prose and essential reading for all scholars.' J. Tucci, Choice

'An important read for those studying Classical Antiquity, this may also be of interest to those interested in military history, for the insights it gives into how usually suspect works such as local histories can be used with profit.' Albert Nofi, The NYMAS Review