Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold

The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece
Erscheinungsjahr 1999
ISBN: 978-0-691-00736-6
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 660 g

The invention of coinage in ancient Greece provided an arena in which rival political groups struggled to imprint their views on the world. Here Leslie Kurke analyzes the ideological functions of Greek coinage as one of a number of symbolic practices that arise for the first time in the archaic period. By linking the imagery of metals and coinage to stories about oracles, prostitutes, Eastern tyrants, counterfeiting, retail trade, and games, she traces the rising egalitarian ideology of the polis, as well as the ongoing resistance of an elitist tradition to that development. The argument thus aims to contribute to a Greek "history of ideologies," to chart the ways ideological contestation works through concrete discourses and practices long before the emergence of explicit political theory.To an elitist sensibility, the use of almost pure silver stamped with the state's emblem was a suspicious alternative to the para-political order of gift exchange. It ultimately represented the undesirable encroachment of the public sphere of the egalitarian polis. Kurke re-creates a "language of metals" by analyzing the stories and practices associated with coinage in texts ranging from Herodotus and archaic poetry to Aristotle and Attic inscriptions. She shows that a wide variety of imagery and terms fall into two opposing symbolic domains: the city, representing egalitarian order, and the elite symposium, a kind of anti-city. Exploring the tensions between these domains, Kurke excavates a neglected portion of the Greek cultural "imaginary" in all its specificity and strangeness.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kurke, Leslie

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: Klassisch (Griechisch & Römisch)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Abbreviations xvii

Introduction Toward an Imaginary History of Coinage 3

I. What Is Coinage for? Numismatic and Historical Debates 6

II. Literary Methodology 23

III. The Structure of the Argument 32

PART ONE: DISCOURSES

Chapter One The Language of Metals 41

I. Forging the Language of Metals 45

II. Metals and Others in Herodotus 60

Chapter Two Tyrants and Transgression: Darius and Amasis 65

I. Darius and the Daric 68

II. Darius Kapelos 80

III. Amasis the Vulgar Tyrant 89

Chapter Three Counterfeiting and Gift Exchange: The Fate of Polykrates 101

I. Counterfeiting and Violated Exchange 101

II. Cosmic Reciprocity ill

III. Gift Exchange as Civic Violence 121

Chapter Four Kroisos and the Oracular Economy 130

I. Kroisos in Epinikion 131

II. Gift Exchange, the Grotesque Body, and the Civic Norm 142

III. Competing Economies, Competing Epiphanies 152

IV. Lydians and Ludopatheis: The Gap between History and Ethnography 165

PART TWO: PRACTICES

Chapter Five The Hetaira and the Porne 175

I. Inventing the Hetaira 178

II. The Porne and the Public Sphere 187

III. Ideological Faultlines 199

Chapter Six Herodotus's Traffic in Women 220

I. Herodotean Pressure: Destabilizing the Terms 220

II. Herodotean Alternatives: Reimagining the Public Sphere 227

Chapter Seven Games People Play 247

I. Games and Other Symbolic Systems 248

II. Pessoi: The Mediation of the Game Board 254

III. Aristocratic Games: Embodiment, Chance, and Ordeal 275

IV. Herodotean Games 295

Chapter Eight Minting Citizens 299

I. The Two Sides of the Coin: Materiality as Ideology 301

II. Coins Are Good to Think with 316

III. Changing the Currency 328

Conclusion Ideology, Objects, and Subjects 332

Bibliography 337

Index Locorum 365

General Index 373