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Politics in the Ancient World

出版	Cambridge University Press, 1983-07-07
主題	History / Ancient / GeneralHistory / WorldPolitical Science / History & TheoryPolitical Science / Political Process / General
ISBN	05212757099780521275705
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=hoAYu1WxtrQC&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBook	SAMPLE

註釋"Few topics in history have been studied more frequently and systematically than the governments in the Greek and Roman worlds and their domestic and foreign policies. But of the ways in which government was actually conducted and governmental decisions were arrived at--politics in one of its most vital senses--there seems to be no full account. Sir Moses Finley is austere in defining his subject. He argues that politics come into play only in societies in which binding public decisions are made by discussion followed by a vote. The participants and the voters need not be the whole adult (or male) population but they must extend well beyond the small circle of a ruler (or junta), his family and his intimates. These qualifications narrow the practitioners of politics in the ancient world to the city-states of Greece and to Republican Rome. Greece and Rome had different institutions and a different history. Nevertheless, Finley shows that a comparative analysis helps the historian to understand both societies more fully than separate accounts could achieve. Both had in common an agrarian base with a stratified and hierarchical social system, and both took the hitherto unprecedented and fateful step of incorporating the free lower classes--peasants, craftsmen and shopkeepers--into the political community. The latter naturally sought to maximize their political role. How far they succeeded or were checked, what the main issues were with which they were concerned, how war and conquest often fostered political stability, what ideological pressures directed the internal conflicts--these are the main themes of this study. First delivered as the Wiles Lectures for 1980 at the Queen's University, Belfast, this work has been revised, and annotated and considerably enlarged for publication. Little knowledge of the ancient world is assumed on the part of the reader and the book should interest students of politics as much as classicists and ancient historians"--Page 2 of cover