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Aristide "The Just." The art and manner of creating a hero in the democratic city.
BROWN Patrice.

Aristide "The Just." The art and manner of creating a hero in the democratic city.

€25,00 €0,00
N° d'inventaire 30267
Format 17 X 23.8
Détails 255 p.,
Publication Bordeaux, 2023
Etat Nine
ISBN 9782356135902
The Athenian Aristides, son of Lysimachus (circa 530 – circa 467 BC) was distinguished by Plutarch, at the beginning of the second century AD, as one of the great figures of the Greek past as it was imagined under the High Empire. He shares with Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, Alcibiades and Nicias the honor of a biography for the fifth century Athenian period alone. Increasingly admired by the Athenian manuscript tradition of the classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods for his immense moral qualities more than for his feats of arms or his political actions, in view of a whole literary record more than favorable, he nevertheless remains a little-known figure of whom no copy of statue has been found, is never mentioned by ancient authors, no inscription mentioning him has survived unlike his contemporary Themistocles. Although he came from a wealthy, if not aristocratic, background, he is said to have lived in the greatest poverty and removed from all material considerations according to a philosophical model which has its origins in the life of Socrates, thereby dragging all his descendants into poverty.

All these contradictions make it difficult to measure the real political impact of Aristides on the dramatic events (the Persian Wars) that Athens experienced, and we always oscillate between the idea of a major politician in the history of Athens and Greece at the beginning of the 5th century and that of a personality fabricated from scratch by a collective Athenian memory and especially by a flowering of late texts attached to idealizing an indisputable moral figure. It is all these contradictions that this book seeks to explain.
The Athenian Aristides, son of Lysimachus (circa 530 – circa 467 BC) was distinguished by Plutarch, at the beginning of the second century AD, as one of the great figures of the Greek past as it was imagined under the High Empire. He shares with Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, Alcibiades and Nicias the honor of a biography for the fifth century Athenian period alone. Increasingly admired by the Athenian manuscript tradition of the classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods for his immense moral qualities more than for his feats of arms or his political actions, in view of a whole literary record more than favorable, he nevertheless remains a little-known figure of whom no copy of statue has been found, is never mentioned by ancient authors, no inscription mentioning him has survived unlike his contemporary Themistocles. Although he came from a wealthy, if not aristocratic, background, he is said to have lived in the greatest poverty and removed from all material considerations according to a philosophical model which has its origins in the life of Socrates, thereby dragging all his descendants into poverty.

All these contradictions make it difficult to measure the real political impact of Aristides on the dramatic events (the Persian Wars) that Athens experienced, and we always oscillate between the idea of a major politician in the history of Athens and Greece at the beginning of the 5th century and that of a personality fabricated from scratch by a collective Athenian memory and especially by a flowering of late texts attached to idealizing an indisputable moral figure. It is all these contradictions that this book seeks to explain.