Narrative in Hellenistic civic decisions: persuasion, legitimacy and ‘cultural democracy’

This contribution explores the narrative dimensions of the public decisions (‘decrees’) and laws of ancient Greek city-states. Its focus is on the Hellenistic period (c. 323–31 BC), after the death of Alexander the Great, when Greek-speaking city-states across the eastern Mediterranean had to manoeuvre to preserve autonomy within, and in the gaps between, the large empires governed by Alexander’s successors and, eventually, the Romans. Greek city-states had evolved complex, institutionalised procedures for making public decisions. By the Hellenistic period, the most common issuing body was a democratic assembly open to all male citizens, which debated proposals (often originating from a smaller and sometimes more selective council) and then made a formal decision. The resulting decision was often inscribed on stone, to publicise and reinforce it. These civic decisions have traditionally been studied as legal and political documents: a source for studying institutions and procedures and reconstructing a political and diplomatic narrative. In recent years, however, scholars have been paying increasing attention to these documents’ ideological and rhetorical qualities: reading them as complex texts, products of public oratory and negotiation, addressed to a wide contemporary and later audience. As I explore in this chapter, the civic decisions of the Hellenistic period are particularly fruitful for this approach, with their often complex, sometimes flamboyant style in language and argument. These decrees included careful reflections about the ethics and politics of individual and collective life in a polis in constant negotiation with larger powers, especially monarchies.