Re-shaping and Re-founding Citizen Bodies: The Case of Athens, Cyrene and Camarina
By Lucia Cecchet
Abstract: While the origins of civic subdivisions are generally obscure, much effort has been put into understanding their nature and function in the organisation of the public and private life of the polis in reference to political, military and religious functions. As well as evidence for the existence of such subdivisions,sources bear witness also to reforms and changes in their structure in the late archaic and early classical periods. Some of these cases of reforms are recorded by sources in relation to moments of crisis and change in the polis. In this paper, I will offer an overview of three reforms of the civic sub units in Athens, Cyrene and Camarina during the archaic and early classical periods. In these three cases, the re-founding of civic units seems to have happened in relation to tensions and conflicts internal to the citizen body. The aim of this paper is that of understanding the reasons and the mode in which the citizen-body was re-organised and how there-organisation could serve as a tool to solve internal conflicts.
Chapter in Citizens in the Graeco-Roman World, eds. Lucia Cecchet and Anna Busetto pp.50–77, Brill, 2017.