Demagogues, Power, and Friendship in Classical Athens

Leaders as Friends in Aristophanes, Euripides, and Xenophon

Professor Robert Holschuh Simmons (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

192 Seiten

2023
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-21448-4 (ISBN)

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What makes a demagogue? A much more friendly touch, or more importantly, a perception of a friendly touch, than has previously been explored. Demagogues, Power and Friendship in Classical Athens examines the ways in which a demagogic leadership style based on personal connection became ingrained in this period, drawing on close study of several genres of literature of the late 5th and early-to-mid 4th centuries BCE. Such connection was particularly effective with lower classes of Athenians, who had been accustomed to being excluded from politicians’ friendship-based approaches to coalition-building.

Comedies of Aristophanes (particularly Knights), tragedies of Euripides (particularly Iphigenia in Aulis), and historical biographies of Xenophon (particularly Anabasis and Cyropaedia) depict demagogues, or characters exhibiting demagogic characteristics, using a style of outreach to members of neglected classes that involved provoking feelings of friendship with individuals in these classes, whether the demagogues and individual supporters actually interacted closely or not. These leaders employed techniques, such as propinquity, homophily, and transitivity, that both contemporary sociologists (and, in some cases, Aristotle) recognize as effective for such purposes. Particular attention is paid to discrepancies in Aristophanes’ Knights between how the demagogue Cleon is hyperbolically portrayed (as a pederastic lover of the Athenian people) and how his language and actions make him out – as a friend of theirs, as he likely portrayed himself.

Robert Holschuh Simmons is Minnie Billings Capron Professor of Classical Languages at Monmouth College, USA.

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1: Friendship in Athenian Politics Prior to the Demagogues
Chapter 2: Cleon and the Rise of Friendship-Based Athenian Demagogy
Chapter 3: The Sociology of Making Individual Philoi among the Masses
Chapter 4: Distinguishing Desire from Friendship in Leadership Models in Aristophanes’ Knights
Chapter 5: Later Developments of The “Leader as Philos” Model

Conclusion: Cleon and The Legacy of Leadership by Friendship

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	27.01.2023
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
ISBN-10	1-350-21448-5 / 1350214485
ISBN-13	978-1-350-21448-4 / 9781350214484
Zustand	Neuware