An early medieval Middle Persian Zoroastrian source known as The Provincial Capitals of Ērānšahr describes the provinces and major cities of the Sasanian Empire and supplies several of them with short foundation myths. In describing the establishment of the cities of Susa and Šuštar in Khuzistan, The Provincial Capitals reports that they “were built by Šīšīnduxt, the wife of Yazdgird, the son of Šābuhr, since she was the daughter of the Exilarch (rēš-galūdag), the king of the Jews (jahūdagān šāh), and was also the mother of Wahrām Gōr.”

Chapter 3 analyzes freedom as doing “whatever one wishes” in fourth-century oratory. As several scholars have noted, doing “whatever one wishes” appears ambivalent in forensic speeches. They argue that, since Athens was not an anarchic state, extreme freedom could be glossed as a threat to sociopolitical stability. In contrast to prevailing scholarship, however, I argue that the most dominant principle, even in these texts, is the preservation of positive freedom as justification for the litigant’s position. While acting “however one wishes” may be presented as objectionable, the rhetoric of that assessment emphasizes who is doing “whatever they wish” and whom they affect by doing so. Bad characters, whether a criminals, oligarchs, or metics, can be rebuked as undeserving of positive freedom and abusing the power that attends it. The limitation of another citizen’s ability to do what he wishes can also condemn the action. Doing “what one wishes” is not a byword for antidemocratic action, but can have such a connotation because of the particular actors or victims of the actions. It is the misuse of the natural qualities of a citizen that leads to censure.

In the concluding Chapter 6, I suggest other inquiries unfold when we take seriously the notion of the citizen as free and empowered. The approach to freedom and power developed throughout these chapters provides another way to interpret and understand Athenian political thought from the ground up. Recognizing democratic freedom as autonomy calls for a reassessment of ancient critiques of that freedom, such as Plato’s criticisms in the Republic. Likewise, expanding our view of power beyond power over others in order to allow multiple, simultaneous agents with the power to act uncovers often overlooked individuals with power, such as women and metics. In terms of modernity, democratic freedom offers a form of liberty before liberalism separate from republican or neo-Roman conceptions that is still able to protect a multiplicity of individual values.

In Chapter 4, I offer a new theory of citizen power. Every adult male citizen would have been free, but this also made him kurios, or empowered, as opposed to ceding his power to a slave master. When substantivized, kurios indicated a male citizen’s institutionalized role as the head of a household. The lens of the household kurios generates an understanding of citizen power that encompasses both private and public domains. Not simply power as domination, kurios also indicated a shared power to act. As a conceptual metaphor, kurios was applied to the political sphere and structured thought across these different domains. Thus, qualities of the term kurios in its original domain, the household, corresponded systemically in the applied domain, the city. The laws and the corporate citizen body, too, were understood as kurioi. While there may be competing claims to power, the identification of the citizen as sharing in power with and through the laws and the dēmos is distinct from the modern conception of the individual versus the state. The negotiation of power in this way has repercussions for debates regarding sovereignty and the rule of law.

Following attacks by Syriac Orthodox Christians around 792, a group of Maronite monks in northern Syria appealed to Timothy I, the Catholicos of the Church of the East, to intervene on their behalf with the Caliph, with whom the Catholicos was believed to have a close relationship. In his response, Timothy encouraged the Maronites to join his own church, noting that its many martyrs established its theological purity:

While presiding over a legal dispute, Rav Naḥman’s student persistently pestered him with questions. Exasperated, Rav Naḥman reprimanded the student: