This chapter describes the rapid spread of democracy in the later fifth and earlier fourth centuries BCE. The reader imagines the life cycle of a democratic citizen in Classical Athens, from birth in the deme to political participation in mid-life to arbitration work in old age, with detours into the court system, festivals, the Athenian Funeral Oration, and ostracism. Comparative evidence is introduced from fourth-century BCE Argos. The Athenian monumental building projects of the period of the high empire (Parthenon, Propylaea, Erectheion, etc.) receive their own subsection, with a focus on democratic art. The reader is introduced properly to oligarchic institutions and ideology, which almost managed to reverse democratic gains for good in this period. The chapter ends with a discussion of the stasis or civil strife that broke out between democrats and oligarchs in so many Greek poleis.

This chapter explores the often-overlooked role of women in stasis and civil war, focusing on Fulvia’s involvement in the Perusine War and the funeral of Publius Clodius. Fulvia’s actions, particularly her display of Clodius’ unwashed wounds, set a precedent for Antonius’ later display of Caesar’s body, highlighting the antebellum politics and rhetoric of civil war. The chapter argues that Fulvia’s political role, enhanced during times of stasis and civil war, was crucial in inciting civil strife. Evidence from both sides of the civil war suggests that Fulvia’s actions were politically motivated rather than mere expressions of grief. By reappraising Fulvia’s role, this study aims to better understand Rome’s systemic breakdown before the civil war and the impact of her actions on the political landscape. The chapter concludes that Fulvia’s incitement to stasis was a significant factor in the unfolding of civil war dynamics.

This chapter confronts the primary obstacle to determining the frequency of stasis: the silence of our sources concerning the occurrence of stasis in almost all the roughly 200,000 polis-years that constitute Greek history 500–301. First, it uses the proxies for prominence introduced in Chapter 4, together with the results obtained in Chapter 5 and a set of case studies, to show that our sources rarely provide any positive evidence for stability (i.e., the absence of stasis); and that their silence is, consequently, our only source of evidence for stability in most polis-years. Second, it shows that, contrary to prevailing assumptions in existing scholarship, silence has no explanatory value vis-à-vis stability in most polis-years. In other words, the fact that no extant source indicates the occurrence of stasis in a given polis-year very rarely militates against the possibility that stas(e)is occurred. Finally, it concludes that the extant sources provide us with evidence for stability in only a few, exceptional cases. Consequently, we have to recognize that unattested staseis could potentially have occurred in almost any of the 200,000 polis-years under consideration.

This chapter uses qualitative analysis to elucidate the quantitative results obtained in Chapter 10. First, it explains why most staseis began with relatively minor forms of violence, such as shows of force, assassinations, and expulsions. Next, it addresses the follow-on question of why so many staseis ended before escalating to involve more intense forms of violence, such as battles and mass executions. Finally, it discusses the implications of the results obtained in Chapter 10 from a qualitative perspective.

Ancient historians often rely on arguments from silence but rarely discuss how or when such arguments can be responsibly employed. This chapter addresses this methodological shortcoming by examining the circumstances and ways in which Thucydides engages with staseis. It argues that Thucydides’ silence concerning the occurrence of stasis has far less value than is commonly assumed and develops a method to calculate the explanatory value of any narrative historical source’s silence concerning the occurrence of phenomena like stasis. It also shows that reading Thucydides with particular attention to stasis yields important insights into his narrative and historical methodologies, as well as his account of the Sicilian Expedition.

This chapter uses the results and understanding obtained in Chapters 9–11, together with a set of informed conjectures regarding the number of fatalities produced by staseis involving different types of violence, to reconstruct the broad outlines of the probability distribution function for stasis-induced fatalities. It then refines these preliminary results through statistical modeling. Broadly speaking, it argues that most staseis produced fewer than a dozen fatalities, while many produced no fatalities at all.

This chapter introduces the Greek concept of stasis, which is the term archaic and classical authors most frequently apply to episodes of regime-threatening political violence. It also reviews existing scholarship on the nature of stasis; describes the elements and dynamics that are typical of stasis; defines this commonly misunderstood term; and introduces a set of criteria designed to enable accurate diagnosis of as many staseis as possible, allow for consistent implementation in a broad range of historical and evidentiary contexts, map onto fifth- and fourth-century understandings of stasis as closely as possible, and ensure that, when departures from that emic understanding are necessary, they are implemented in a way that strengthens the validity of the results obtained in Chapters 2–12.

This chapter estimates the distribution of cases among the categories of stasis established in Chapter 9, as well as two additional subcategories, using a blend of qualitative and (especially) quantitative analysis. Broadly speaking, it shows that only a miniscule minority of staseis involved the most extreme type of violence (internal war); that a larger minority involved less-extreme-but-still-bloody forms of violence, such as mass executions and battles; and that a majority relied exclusively on types of violence that limited the number of fatalities, such as assassinations, betrayals, and expulsions.

This chapter compares stasis to the modern conceptual category with which it is most commonly associated: bellum civile, or civil war. It focuses primarily on the “original” civil wars of the first century BCE but also considers subsequent cases that are similar in scale, duration, and the types of violence involved. Against existing scholarship, which tends to conflate stasis with modern conceptual categories, including but not limited to civil war, it argues that stasis was a historically distinctive phenomenon that differs fundamentally from its analogues in both ancient and modern societies.

This chapter presents a set of stasis-narratives that flesh out the abstract discussion provided in Chapter 1. The narratives focus on the poleis of Plataia, Elis, Rhodos, Thebes, Tegea, Argos, and Telos, and are based primarily on the following sources: Thucydides (Plataia), the Oxyrhynchus Historian (Rhodos), Xenophon (Elis, Thebes, and Tegea), Aineias the Tactician (Argos), and IG XII.4.132 (Telos).

This chapter uses the results obtained in Chapter 7 to develop a hypothesis regarding the frequency of staseis in poleis other than Thebes: namely, that most poleis experienced stasis at a similar rate of once every 6–12 years. It then subjects this hypothesis to a series of tests using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis at both the macro and the micro level. It shows that the working hypothesis does not hold for Athens, Sparta, or Syracuse, all of which are genuine outliers with respect to stasis; that it almost certainly holds for a small subset of prominent poleis, such as Argos and Miletos, whose political histories can be studied in detail; that it very likely holds for a larger set of 50 prominent poleis, such as Herakleia Pontike and Mytilene, whose political histories are relatively well documented; and that it probably holds for most of the other thousand or so poleis under consideration.

This chapter surveys existing scholarship on the violence of stasis and outlines my approach to examining the types and (especially) the amounts of violence that stasis typically involved. Next, it introduces 14 types of violence that are characteristic of stasis: for example, surprise attacks, betrayals (prodosiai), and mass executions. Finally, it divides staseis into three broad categories vis-à-vis the types of violence they involved, elucidates these categories, and discusses their relation to each other.

This chapter discusses the frequency of stasis at Thebes. In contrast to existing scholarship, which focuses exclusively on cases that can be diagnosed with (near) certainty, it estimates the total number of staseis that occurred. This approach frees me to think probabilistically and thus factor into my analysis events that probably involved stasis, contextual factors that increased the likelihood of stasis, and – most significantly – the knowledge, acquired in Chapters 5 and 6, that the absence of evidence for stasis cannot be interpreted as evidence of absence except in a tiny minority of the polis-years under consideration. Through comprehensive analysis of the relevant evidence, it argues that Thebes experienced between 17 and 23 staseis during the fifth and fourth centuries; and thus that the Thebans experienced stasis at an average rate of between once every 8 and once every 11 years.

This chapter explores Or. 24, an emergency intervention concerning Rhodes. Internal strife had recently broken out in the community, which could prompt Roman rulers to deprive Rhodes of its status as civitas libera. To facilitate the end of stasis, Aristides mobilises the full spectrum of political lyric: canonical poets are recalled alongside mythical singers, while monodic and choral performances are brought into play to exalt harmonia over stasis. Through this discursive re-enactment of lyric, Aristides transfers to his prose appeal the political effectiveness of lyric poetry and music. This intermedial strategy culminates in the evocation of Alcaeus’ poetry on stasis. Together with stasis-plagued Lesbos, Alcaeus embodies the spectre of civic discord which an orderly Dorian community like Rhodes must reject at all costs. Lyric reception thus brings into focus Aristides’ approach to contemporary politics, especially his awareness of what it meant for a Greek community to live under the scrutiny of Roman rulers.

The Introduction summarizes the book’s thesis and offers a survey of current critical thinking on Henry James and travel. Demonstrating how studies of the author’s oft-cited ‘international theme’ have tended to approach his treatment of journeying either in abstractly cultural ways or in terms of place or destination, it argues for the need to consider the process of travel in more detail and in its own right. The first half of the Introduction outlines the crucial role of transport throughout James’s life and career and his interest in the epistemological and relational value of both small-scale (urban) and transatlantic ‘comings and goings’. The second half of the Introduction considers James’s association with what I call an aesthetics of stasis, whereby certain pictorial or architectural conceits from his Prefaces, notably the house of fiction, have become dominant models in Jamesian criticism. As I argue, much of James’s style and aesthetic logic, including his complex use of metaphor, borrows rather from the idea of conveyance. In support of its claims, the Introduction provides short readings and exempla from a number of James’s fictions, including The Sense of the Past, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl.

The Athenian experience may help us to sharpen several decisive questions of our time: In what form do the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that run through a group build a true society that is more than the sum of its disparate networks? Conversely, by what processes does a society come to tear itself apart, or even disintegrate? How do heterogeneous social arenas and temporalities coexist within it? Under what conditions should the fervor of exceptional situations be maintained without sinking into totalitarian unity? All these questions unfold with clarity in one quite singular moment of the history of Athens: the civil war of 404/3 BC.

The sources mention many Athenians who settled abroad during the troubles to quietly go about their business, or remained in the city, secluded in their oikos, without joining either camp. To take an interest in these ‘nonaligned’ individuals is to give their place in history back to the many protagonists who resisted the all-encompassing logic of the stasis and the contradictory injunctions that it gave rise to: Choose your side, comrade! But not everything is political in the same way and with the same intensity, either today or in the past: Even in the midst of turmoil, politics does not invest all spheres of existence and all the different layers of society in equal measure. Indeed, orators readily stigmatized the Athenians expelled by the Thirty who, instead of rallying to the democrats in Piraeus, had preferred the comfort of exile; symmetrically, many Athenians who remained in the city tried to demonstrate that they had not participated in any way in the exactions of the oligarchy. Socrates represents in this respect a case that is both common and exceptional: common, in that he was far from being the only one not to take sides during the civil war; exceptional, in that he declared this neutrality loud and clear, even if it meant arousing suspicion on both sides. A final question remains: Did all these ‘neutral individuals’ form a chorus in their own right? What links can be established between people who have remained outside the field of political confrontation – strangers to the ‘bond of division,’ to paraphrase Nicole Loraux? To put it another way: Is it possible to ‘make community’ out of abstention, even if it is an active choice?

Throughout this book, we have suggested that the notion of choruses offers a metaphor through which these diverse collectives can be understood. Granted, this metaphor is not a typical concept that historians ordinarily use to describe community life, such as the association or the network, which seem at first sight to offer a more stable descriptive framework. We nevertheless argue that the choral reference makes it possible to obtain fine-grained knowledge of the modulations of the Athenian city in 404/3, since it is anchored in Greek thought and social practices. Indeed, viewed through the lens of chorality, the Athenian community landscape appears in a new light, defined by plurality and contingency. Legal status is no longer a fixed barrier assigning place to individuals once and for all: Divergent temporalities constantly overlap and weave together the polyrhythmic fabric of the city. The question that guides the whole of our investigation is ultimately about the choral essence of the city. Is it possible to see the Athenian polis, and all the groups of which it is composed, as a choral song? Illustrating the scope of the Athenian social space does not consist only in describing its polyphony, but also in listening to the harmonics, be they consonant or dissonant, which cut across it.

‘Critias was indeed the most rapacious, the most violent and the most murderous of all those who were part of the oligarchy.’ In the ancient tradition, Critias is a man systematically described in superlatives. The ancient sources readily depict him as an extremist oligarch, a misguided disciple of Socrates, oblivious to the lessons of his former master. Incomparable Critias? This superlative representation deserves to be deconstructed. Not in order to rehabilitate his tarnished memory but because the man is a convenient bogeyman who acts as the singular representative of what was in reality a collective adventure. Not only does his role as leader of the Thirty remain to be proven, but this exclusive focus also tends to obscure the vast chorus that surrounded him: Far from being a lone wolf, Critias was the spokesman or, rather, the coryphaeus of Athenian oligarchs united by common habits and experiences. A poet and a virtuoso musician, Critias even promoted a true choral policy, striving to convince all the Athenians remaining in the city to align to his radical positions. Breaking with the democratic experiment and its multiple and competing choruses, the oligarch sought to create a single, distinctive and hermetic chorus, of which all the members had to dance in unison and where the slightest deviation was mercilessly punished. Better still, in the tumult of the civil war, Critias had a dream: to establish a permanent state of exception in order to forge a new brand of men entirely devoted to the cause of the oligarchy.