If the following essays do indeed point toward a new subfield, then they begin to accomplish this goal by uncovering the distinctiveness of ancient Greek and Roman political thought. The Greeks and Romans already stood out within the ancient Mediterranean world, because, unlike their Mediterranean neighbors, they gave a specifically political interpretation to ideals such as freedom and ‘‘law and order’’ (Raaflaub, chapter 3). What is important, however, is not any triumphal claim that the Greeks originated the political, but rather the exploration of why communal political activity became special or even primary for Greeks and Romans. By contrast with other ancient Mediterranean peoples, as Raaflaub shows, the Greeks and Romans erected their conception of the political on the basis of egalitarian practices of political power (to be sure: among the citizenry, not universally) and a concern with collective aims such as justice, well-being, law and order, freedom, and equality. Their political practices came to light as the most useful responses to the Greek experience of life in small-scale, independent, nonhierarchical, and materially and militarily struggling Mediterranean communities.
Even if the Greeks and Romans created newly political ideals, they never settled on immutable and determinate understandings of what politics was for, or what constituted its central activities. Dean Hammer’s essay (chapter 2) is an exemplary exploration of these points. Through examining the most important modern treatments of ancient politics, Hammer illustrates that ancient Greco-Roman politics should not be reduced to institutional functioning or any Weberian ‘‘monopoly of legitimate force’’ (cf. Herman 2006). (This is one area where the anachronistic importation of modern terminology or concepts can be particularly misleading.) Instead, as Hammer shows, the Greeks and Romans recognized coercive state authority while also understanding individual citizens, including their bodies, as penetrated by the multifarious workings of power. Hammer’s clear-minded interpretation of the ancient political experience through the lens of postmodern social theory pays particular dividends for students of politics as they struggle with the inevitably fuzzy dimensions and chaotic landscapes of political life. At all events, Hammer demonstrates more clearly than ever before that the political must be understood contextually, as a feature of the particular times and places in which politics was recognized and practiced. Yet in doing so Hammer also shows that his emphasis on historical particularity can make certain unfamiliar, and perhaps disquieting, political ideas available for our consideration and use.
World History
