Beck Hans, Funke Peter (Eds.). Federalism in Greek Antiquity

Cambridge University Press, 2015. — 634 p.The world of ancient Greece witnessed some of the most sophisticated and varied experiments with federalism in the pre-modern era. In the volatile interstate environment of Greece, federalism was a creative response to the challenge of establishing regional unity, while at the same time preserving a degree of local autonomy. To reconcile the forces of integration and independence, Greek federal states introduced, for example, the notion of proportional representation, the stratification of legal practice, and a federal grammar of festivals and cults. Federalism in Greek Antiquity provides the first comprehensive reassessment of the topic. It comprises detailed contributions on all federal states in Aegean Greece and its periphery. With every chapter written by a leading expert in the field, the book also incorporates thematic sections that place the topic in a broader historical and social-scientific context.Hans Beck is Professor of Ancient History, John McNaughton Chair of Classics, and Director of Classical Studies in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University, Montréal. He is co-author, with John Buckler, of Central Greece and the Politics of Power in the Fourth Century BC (2008), editor of A Companion to Ancient Greek Government (2013) and, co-editor with Antonio Duplá, Martin Jehne and Francisco Pina Polo, of Consuls and Res Publica: Holding High Office in the Roman Republic (2011). In 2015 he won the Anneliese Maier Research Award for his contribution to the internationalisation of the humanities and social sciences in Germany.
Peter Funke is Professor of Ancient History at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.