Erskine, Andrew, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones & Shane Wallace (eds.). 2017. The Hellenistic court: Monarchic power and elite society from Alexander to Cleopatra. Classical Press of Wales.
Hellenistic courts were centres of monarchic power, social prestige and high culture in the kingdoms that emerged after the death of Alexander. They were places of refinement, learning and luxury, and also of corruption, rivalry and murder. Surrounded by courtiers of varying loyalty, Hellenistic royal families played roles in a theatre of spectacle and ceremony. Architecture, art, ritual and scholarship were deployed to defend the existence of their dynasties. The present volume, from a team of international experts, examines royal methods and ideologies. It treats the courts of the Ptolemies, Seleucids, Attalids, Antigonids and of lesser dynasties. It also explores the influence, on Greek-speaking courts, of non- Greek culture, of Achaemenid and other Near Eastern royal institutions. It studies the careers of courtesans, concubines and ‘friends’ of royalty, and the intellectual, ceremonial, and artistic world of the Greek monarchies. The work demonstrates the complexity and motivations of Hellenistic royal civilisation, of courts which governed the transmission of Greek culture to the wider Mediterranean world – and to later ages.
CONTENTS
- List of Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
Andrew Erskine, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Shane Wallace - PART I: DEVELOPMENT
- Court, Kingship, and Royal Style in the Early Hellenistic Period Shane Wallace
- At Home with Royalty: Re-viewing the Hellenistic Palace
Janett Morgan - The Seleucid and Achaemenid Court: Continuity or Change?David Engels
- PART II: LIFE AT COURT
- Βίος αὐλικός: The Multiple Ways of Life of Courtiers in the Hellenistic Age
Ivana Savalli-Lestrade - Eunuchs, Renegades and Concubines: The ‘Paradox of Power’ and the Promotion of Favourites in the Hellenistic Empires
Rolf Strootman - Callimachus, Theocritus and Ptolemaic Court Etiquette
Ivana Petrovic - PART III: MARRIAGE
- Symbol and Ceremony: Royal Weddings in the Hellenistic Age Sheila L. Ager
- Once a Seleucid, Always a Seleucid: Seleucid Princesses and their Nuptial Courts
Alex McAuley - PART IV: BEYOND THE PALACE
- In the Mirror of Hetairai. Tracing Aspects of the Interaction Between Polis Life and Court Life in the Early Hellenistic Age Kostas Buraselis
- Image and Communication in the Seleucid Kingdom: the King, the Court and the Cities
Paola Ceccarelli - Outside the Capital: the Ptolemaic Court and its Courtiers Dorothy J. Thompson
- ‘Court-ing the Public’: the Attalid Court and Domestic Display Craig Hardiman
- PART V: CROSSING CULTURES
- Hellenistic Court Patronage and the non-Greek World
Erich Gruen - Bithynia and Cappadocia: Royal Courts and Ruling Society in the Minor Hellenistic Monarchies
Oleg Gabelko - Deserving the Court’s Trust: Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt
Livia Capponi - PART VI: DISLOYALTY AND DEATH
Misconduct and Disloyalty in the Seleucid Court
Peter Franz Mittag - The Hands of Gods? Poison in the Hellenistic Court
Stephanie Winder - The Royal Court in Ancient Macedonia: the Evidence for Royal Tombs
Olga Palagia