During the early Hellenistic period (323–167 BC), the very small island of Delos rose to prominence as an independent polis and political center of the southern Aegean. Several hundred decrees on stone testify to Delos’ wealth, its connections with the wider world, and the presence of all the important actors of the period in Delian life. Yet, the decrees issued by the civic bodies of Delos during the period of independence consistently avoided the inclusion of dating formulae. This regular, extended and presumably deliberate practice is a feature of a scale found nowhere else in the Greek world. I wish to suggest that the absence of official temporal markers from Delian civic decrees responds to the Delian need of constructing their own political context in times when things changed constantly, rapidly and drastically. The Delians sought to cut ties from their Athenian past, protect their actions from the vicissitudes of time, and construct their own self-governing context in a world in which a historically significant, but freshly independent and conspicuously small polity had a fragile position in international affairs.
Speaker: Felipe Soza (Assistant professor of Classics at Williams College, Wiliamstown, MA)
Sponsors: RCCHU; Williams College; Harvard University; University of Seville
Organizer: Unai Iriarte Asarta (RCCHU Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University)
LOCATION:RCCHU Conference Room, 26 Trowbridge St. and over Zoom STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20231102T190000Z DTEND:20231102T200000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR