Description
Leaders abounded in the ancient world, from kings, pharaohs, emperors, tyrants, politicians, and orators to generals, minor officials and intellectuals. This book opens fresh perspectives on leadership by examining under-explored topics, posing new questions and revisiting old concepts. In particular, it seeks to shift attention from constitutional issues stricto sensu (such as kingship, monarchy, tyranny, etc.) or, more productively, to prompt a re-examination of these issues through the lens of leadership. The volume includes chapters on a range of cultures from across the ancient world in order to promote comparative reflection. Key questions include whether some models of good and bad leadership were universal among ancient cultures or exhibited differences? Why did a certain culture emphasise one leadership quality while another insisted on another? Why did only some cultures develop a theoretical discourse on leadership? How did each culture appropriate, define, redefine (or react) to existing concepts of leadership?
Table of Contents
1. Leadership in third-millennium Mesopotamia Sebastian Fink; 2. Leadership in rural Pharaonic Egypt: Village chiefs, small potentates and informal networks of power in the provincial world Juan Carlos Moreno García; 3. The importance of religion in Achaemenid leadership Reza Shaghaghi Zarghamee; 4. Leadership in ancient China Yuri Pines; 5. Public generosity and models of leadership in classical Athens: the case of Demosthenes Marc Domingo Gygax; 6. Divine kingship as reflected in Deuterocanonical literature: a challenge for Jewish thought in the Hellenistic period Beate Ego; 7. Cicero, Octavian and the failure of Republican leadership Jonathan Zarecki; 8. Ciceronian aspects of leadership in Livy's Ab Vrbe Condita Georgios Vassiliades; 9. Imperial and episcopal leadership Networks in the later Roman empire Bronwen Neil; 10. Concluding remarks Norman Sandridge.
