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But first they were conquered by Macedonia -- was Greek in many ways, but it did not have the political culture that Ober says distinguished the Poleis.
by adrianratnapala 10y ago
But first they were conquered by Macedonia -- was Greek in many ways, but it did not have the political culture that Ober says distinguished the Poleis.
- abecedarius 10y agoI'm including the Hellenistic era. It continued to grow economically at well above normal preindustrial rates (according to Ober), if not quite as high as in the classical period. Technological progress might've been even faster then -- it was the time of Archimedes and the Antikythera device, and much else. (Russo, The Forgotten Revolution.) Ober concluded with a post-Alexander chapter: the Hellenistic cities were not completely at the mercy of empire-building despots because a walled city at the time was very hard to conquer (instead of starving out) leaving a Nash equilibrium where cities paid substantial taxes but weren't messed with too much in their internal politics, so that much of that culture survived for quite some time. (From my memory of a book I read a year ago.) I'd guess that even without Rome, military technology & organization would've made cities increasingly vulnerable, and it'd have been a race between increasing despotism from such developments and the fact that freer more dynamic societies also have a kind of military advantage (see Archimedes again at Syracuse). But of course I'm indulging in total speculation.