Cleisthenes the Athenian: From 1964 to 2024
Abstract
Sixty years after the publication of Clisthène l'Athénien, an essay published in 2024 (La Cité et le nombre, by Paulin Ismard and Arnaud Macé) challenges the foundations and conclusions of its predecessor, offering a novel perspective on the institutional reforms of Athens in 508/7 BCE. The authors discard the idea of the reformer as a "genius" and find the models applied to the new Athenian institutions in the simple forms of vernacular arithmetic used since Homer to manage military affairs. Furthermore, Athens is not an isolated case, as similar models can be found in other institutional reforms of the period. This approach allows for a broader, more straightforward, and more explanatory understanding of the underlying cognitive processes that shaped institutional and political action in archaic Greece. Furthermore, the historiographical implications of this proposition are contextualised within the framework of the "Paris School," emphasising its dual intellectual authorship by a historian and a philosopher.
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