Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

The Folds of Parnassos: Land and Ethnicity in Ancient Phokis

Jeremy McInerney

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Independent city-states such as Athens have been viewed traditionally as the most advanced stage of state formation in ancient Greece. By contrast, this pioneering book argues that for some Greeks the ethnos, a regionally based ethnic group, and the koinon, or regional confederation, were equally valid units of social and political life and that these ethnic identities were astonishingly durable. Jeremy McInerney sets his study in Phokis, a region in central Greece dominated by Mount Parnassos that shared a border with the panhellenic sanctuary at Delphi. He explores how ecological conditions, land use, and external factors such as invasion contributed to the formation of a Phokian territory. Then, drawing on numerous interdisciplinary sources, he traces the history of the region from the Archaic age down to the Roman period. McInerney shows how shared myths, hero cults, and military alliances created an ethnic identity that held the region together over centuries, despite repeated invasions. He concludes that the Phokian koinon survived because it was founded ultimately on the tenacity of the smaller communities of Greece.

Language: English

Pages: 407

Format: Paperback

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Release: January 01, 2000

ISBN: 029275230X

ISBN 13: 9780292752306

The Folds of Parnassos: Land and Ethnicity in Ancient Phokis

Jeremy McInerney

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Independent city-states such as Athens have been viewed traditionally as the most advanced stage of state formation in ancient Greece. By contrast, this pioneering book argues that for some Greeks the ethnos, a regionally based ethnic group, and the koinon, or regional confederation, were equally valid units of social and political life and that these ethnic identities were astonishingly durable. Jeremy McInerney sets his study in Phokis, a region in central Greece dominated by Mount Parnassos that shared a border with the panhellenic sanctuary at Delphi. He explores how ecological conditions, land use, and external factors such as invasion contributed to the formation of a Phokian territory. Then, drawing on numerous interdisciplinary sources, he traces the history of the region from the Archaic age down to the Roman period. McInerney shows how shared myths, hero cults, and military alliances created an ethnic identity that held the region together over centuries, despite repeated invasions. He concludes that the Phokian koinon survived because it was founded ultimately on the tenacity of the smaller communities of Greece.

Language: English

Pages: 407

Format: Paperback

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Release: January 01, 2000

ISBN: 029275230X

ISBN 13: 9780292752306

More books from Jeremy McInerney

Ancient Greek Civilization

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age

3.9/5 ( ratings)

The Age of Pericles

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Ancient Greece: A New History

4.2/5 ( ratings)

The Age of Pericles (The Great Courses)

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Valuing Landscape in Classical Antiquity: Natural Environment and Cultural Imagination

A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean

The Cattle of the Sun: Cows and Culture in the World of the Ancient Greeks

Rate this book!

Write a review?