Articolo
Versione Digitale

La polykoiranía omerica e post-omerica : un indefinito potere dei molti tra lessico e teoria politica

2019 - Editoriale Scientifica

163-183 p.

  • Book II of the Iliad shows a significant moment of political crisis when Agamemnon loses the control over the Achaean army after his false announcement of the retreat from the besiege of Troy. Odysseus restores order and remembers the soldiers that the power of one man is better than the government of the many. He calls this situation polykoiranía, but he and the Homeric poems as a whole do not provide us with any further information concerning what this polykoiranía really is. Is it a form of government, a well identified political regime, or anything else?.
  • Through a lexical analysis focused on the occurrences of this word in the ancient Greek literature, the essay tries to answer these questions, with a view to outlining the most significant elements of a political idea which is usually relegated to the background or, worse, outside the debate concerning the forms of government, despite its first appearance in the Iliad, that is, in one of the most famous, influencing and quoted work in political literature, particularly in the ancient one. [Publisher's text].

Fa parte di

Storia e politica : rivista quadrimestrale : XI, 2, 2019