Anarchia

In a tirade by Creon in Sophocles' Antigone, anarchia is defined as the worst of evils. Literary and philosophical ancient Greek sources express indeed a strong condemnation of anarchia, power vacuum, whether it occurs within a family, an army or a city. In a context of political crisis (stasis), the term anarchia, used in an institutional sense, refers to the vacancy of political office, and in particular that of the eponymous archon, in Athens and Thasos. Other terms, such as atagia and acosmia, also seem to have been coined by the Greeks to designate the vacancy of specific offices, that of tagoi in Thessaly and cosmoi in Crete. This book explores and examines the historical manifestations of power vacuum in Greek cities from the Archaic period to the end of the Hellenistic era. It takes two forms: vacancy of political office on the one hand, and political void on the other. Thus, the author identifies and analyses the literary, epigraphic and numismatic sources that give evidence for institutional vacancies, whether they occurred in the normal course of institutional functioning or as a result of an upheaval in the political order. It examines the causes, forms and perceptions of such vacancies, their impact on the continuity of power, and the palliatives implemented to remedy the situation. It takes into account political offices in all their diversity, at both civic and federal levels, in democratic and oligarchic political systems of the ancient Greek world. By shedding new light on this little-studied aspect of the exercise of power, this book makes an important contribution to the political and institutional history of ancient worlds.