Prodosia : la notion et l'acte de trahison dans l'Athènes du Ve siècle : recherche sur la construction de l'identité athénienne

This research aims at studying how treason – hostility from a close relation towards their community for an external enemy’s benefit – was perceived by the Athenian mentality of the 5th century. Even if there is no word or expression for the Athenians to gather every aspect of this behaviour, the word prodosia, by which they defined giving a close one up to the enemy (and which also implies the idea of abandonment in the face of danger) is the closest word to our “treason”.

The Athenians precisely defined the acts committed against the city in its relations to abroad by subjecting them to the special procedure of eisangelia: the characteristics of the agreement with the enemy to the detriment of the city make it possible to extend to several of them the qualification of prodosia, although the open violence against the fatherland, an act of adikia towards the community, regarded as a sacrilege in the common mentality, cannot be defined by this term. It appears that the moral conception of prodosia can overflow on the narrow legal definition of the term, of military and diplomatic order, which mainly indicates the handing-over to the enemy of an element of the city power. The study of this period, which goes from approximately 500 until the first years which follow the democratic restoration of 403 shows that the crises and highlights lived by Athens encouraged – linked to the history of other States, the great Persian Empire, but also similar communities like Sparta, Thebes, or the allied insular cities, and despite civil strife – the development of a feeling of belonging to the same community. It appears that at the end of the century, the Athenians are no longer in the situation to build a common identity, but rather to have to manage the identity which they forged, with the divergences which the appreciation of the past consequently entail when it is necessary to draw lessons from it for a new environment.