Ancient World Seminar: Will Mack (Birmingham), "Honour among citizens. Greek citizenship and the language of time"

The language of honour was frequently central to the way in which aspects of Greek citizenship were conceived: at different poleis citizens were punished with ‘dishonour’ (atimia) for certain offences or declared atimoi (while citizens with no such disqualification could be referred to as epitimoi); political participation often relied on a property-based assessment (timēma) of the citizen; offices could be conceived of as honours held by magistrates (timouchoi); and citizens were praised for their love of honour (philotimia).

Recent research, conducted especially by Josine Blok and under the auspices of her citizenship project, has done a great deal to illuminate the way in which these uses of concepts of citizenship related to each other at Classical Athens. This paper will try build on this and lay the groundwork for an historical account of the use of time and its cognates in relation to Greek citizenship more broadly, based on an examination of the way in which concepts of honour were institutionalised and contested at particular moments to define a citizen body or challenge such definitions.

William Mack spent ten years at Oxford University, completing his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Corpus Christi College and a year as a Fellow by Special Election at Wadham before joining the department of Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology at the University of Birmingham in 2014 where he is now Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek History and Culture. His first monograph, Proxeny and Polis: Institutional Networks in the Ancient Greek World, was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press and his active research interests include Greek citizenship, interstate relations, and epigraphic culture.