Stasis (polis)

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As Stásis ( ancient Greek στάσις stásis ; plural στάσεις stáseis ) the ancient scholarship describes civil wars and civil war-like conditions in ancient Greek city-states ( poleis ) . The modern usage of the word only partially coincides with that in the ancient sources.

Originally the word stásis meant "standstill, standpoint"; early on it was also used to denote those groups who shared a common point of view, and finally it was also used from the 6th century BC at the latest. BC ( Solon ), to name both the division of a polis into exactly two rival, hostile groups and violent clashes between them. All of these word meanings remained common in the centuries that followed.

Since the emergence of the polis in archaic times, references to divisions and rifts within the citizenship in numerous Greek cities have repeatedly been found in the sources. Since these were often long-term processes with hardened fronts, which sometimes shaped political life for generations, the term stasis came up. In the beginning, at least, rival aristocrats and their supporters often played an important role, and often these conflicts escalated and led to civil wars. Especially in the 6th century BC Some nobles succeeded in asserting themselves and establishing a tyranny ( e.g. Peisistratos in Athens ). Even after the end of archaic tyranny around 500 BC Chr. It came to stasis again and again; Now the conflicts between the groups (which, as already mentioned , were sometimes also called staseis ) were often intensified by social tensions. Ultimately it was mostly about rivalries and questions of power, but at the same time one often presented oneself as supporters of different forms of government. Often representatives of an oligarchy against the supporters of a democracy . The supporters of the defeated “party” had to go into exile, if they survived, which explains the large number of exiles in the Greek world.

During the Peloponnesian War , very bloody stasis occurred in several smaller poleis, which unfolded more or less in the slipstream of the larger conflict, as the civil war parties joined the different power blocs (in this case Sparta and Athens). In this case, Thucydides's account of the stasis on Korkyra is famous . Plato, and especially Aristotle, discussed the phenomenon in their philosophical writings. It is noticeable that the Greeks usually seem to have accepted submission to a foreign power quite willingly, provided that this renunciation of foreign policy freedom ( eleuthería ) was connected with the victory over the hostile party within their own community. This did not change with the establishment of Macedonian hegemony over Greece in the later 4th century: Stasis ice also occurred in many places under Hellenism . A far-reaching pacification of the Greek poleis succeeded only with the establishment of the principate and the enforcement of the Pax Augusta .

The causes of stasis were already controversial in ancient times. The sources often name conflicts between "poor" and "rich" or between "democrats" and "oligarchs" (see above) as the root, but while part of modern research follows this interpretation at its core and socio-economic problems as the main driving force behind Considered stasis, the proponents of the “elitist stasis theory” instead see escalating rivalries within the urban elites for status, honor and political power in the pole ice as the real cause. Foreign policy constellations could also contribute to the outbreak of stasis.

literature

  • Mark A. Barnard: Stasis in Thucydides. Narrative and analysis of factionalism in the polis. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor MI 1982 (Chapel Hill NC, Univ. Of North Carolina, Diss., 1980).
  • Cinzia Bearzot: Stasis e polemos nel 404. In: Marta Sordi (ed.): Il pensiero sulla guerra nel mondo antico. Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2001, ISBN 88-343-0689-9 , p. 19ff.
  • Moshe Berent: Stasis, or the Greek Invention of Politics . In: History of Political Thought 19, 1998, pp. 331ff.
  • Shlomo Berger: Revolution and Society in Greek Sicily and Southern Italy . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1992.
  • Henning Börm : Stasis in Post-Classical Greece. The Discourse of Civil Strife in the Hellenistic World . In: Henning Börm, Nino Luraghi (Ed.): The Polis in the Hellenistic World . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2018, pp. 53–83, online .
  • Henning Börm: Murderous fellow citizens. Stasis and Civil War in the Greek Poleis of Hellenism (= Historia-Einzelschriften . Volume 258). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-515-12311-2 .
  • Paula Botteri: Stasis: Le mot grec, la chose romaine. In: Metis 4, 1989, ISSN  1105-2201 , pp. 87ff., Online .
  • Iain Bruce: The Corcyraean Civil War of 427 BC In: Phoenix 25, 1971, ISSN  0031-8299 , p. 108ff.
  • Richard Buxton: A Model of Conflict: The Metonymic Function of stasis in Xenophon's "Hellenica" . Seattle, Univ. of Washington, Diss. 2011.
  • Hans-Joachim Gehrke : Stasis. Investigations into the internal wars in the Greek states of the 5th and 4th centuries BC Chr. (= Vestigia . Volume 35). CH Beck, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-406-08065-0 (The standard work on stasis in classical times; Gehrke, however, omits Athens, Sparta and the western Greeks. He sees conflicts within the elites as the actual engine of stasis ice.)
  • Benjamin Gray: Stasis and Stability . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015.
  • Mogens Herman Hansen : Stasis as an essential aspect of the polis. In: Mogens Herman Hansen, Thomas Heine Nielsen (Ed.): An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2004, ISBN 0-19-814099-1 , pp. 124-129 (brief but very informative introduction) .
  • Nick Fisher: Hybris, revenge and stasis in the Greek city-states. In: Hans van Wees (Ed.): War and Violence in Ancient Greece. Duckworth, London 2000, ISBN 0-7156-3046-6 , pp. 83ff. (Fisher emphasizes the importance of vengeance in escalating internal conflict.)
  • Peter Funke : Stasis and political upheaval in Rhodes at the beginning of the 4th century. v. Chr. In: Werner Eck et al. (Ed.): Studies on ancient social history. Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna 1980, p. 59ff.
  • Ulrich Gotter : Between Christianity and reasons of state. Roman Empire and Religious Violence . In: Johannes Hahn (Ed.): Late Antique State and Religious Conflict . De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2011, pp. 133ff.
  • Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp : Civil strife and political violence in the Greek poleis. In: Gymnasium . 96, 1989, pp. 149-152. (Detailed review of Gehrke 1985, with general considerations.)
  • Andrew Lintott : Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City 750-330 BC. Croom Helm, London et al. 1982, ISBN 0-7099-1605-1 .
  • Dirk Loenen: Stasis. Some aspects of the grippe partij- en klassen strijd in Oud-Greece . Amsterdam 1953.
  • Nicole Loraux: The Divided City. Zone Books, New York 2002.
  • Jonathan J. Price: Thucydides and internal war. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2001, ISBN 0-521-78018-7 .
  • Eberhard Ruschenbusch : Studies on the state and politics in Greece. From 7th to 4th century BC Chr. Bamberg 1978. (Ruschenbusch emphasizes the foreign policy component of internal conflicts.)
  • Geoffrey de Ste Croix : The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World . London 1981. (Influential, factual work that interprets the internal struggles in ancient Greece in the sense of Marxism as class struggle .)
  • Hans van Wees: "Stasis, Destroyer of Men": Mass, Elite, Political Violence and Security in Archaic Greece. In: C. Brélaz et al. (Ed.): Sécurité Collective et Ordre Public dans les Sociétés Anciennes . Fondation Hardt, Geneva 2008, pp. 1–39.
  • Ronald L. Weed: Aristotle on Stasis. A Moral Psychology of Political Conflict. Logos-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8325-1380-1 .
  • Aloys Winterling : Polis concept and stasis theory of Aeneas Tacticus . On the question of the limits of the Greek polis societies in the 4th century BC Chr. In: Historia 40, 1991, pp. 195ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Gemoll : Greek-German school and hand dictionary . G. Freytag Verlag / Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Munich / Vienna 1965.
  2. ^ Mogens Herman Hansen: Stasis as an essential aspect of the polis. In: Mogens Herman Hansen, Thomas Heine Nielsen (Ed.): An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2004, ISBN 0-19-814099-1 , pp. 124-129, especially p. 124.
  3. ^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 3.79–84.
  4. Henning Börm: Murderous fellow citizens. Stasis and civil war in the Greek poleis of Hellenism. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-515-12311-2 .
  5. Hans-Joachim Gehrke: Stasis. Investigations into the internal wars in the Greek states of the 5th and 4th centuries BC Chr. CH Beck, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-406-08065-0 .