Bibliographic Essay

Werner Riess's Performing Interpersonal Violence: Court, Curse, and Comedy in Fourth Century BCE Athens (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012) is the most significant volume in recent years on the topic of Classical Greek violence.

On the terminology of violence see R. Beloch, s.v. ‘bia', in Der Neue Pauly, vol. ii (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler Verlag, 1997), col. áłá and Gregory Nagy, Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). Nagy's volume is a good introduction to concepts of violence in early Greek thought. On specific aspects of violence such as hubris, see D. A. MacDowell, ‘Hybris in Athens', Greece and Rome 23.1 (1976), 14-31; M. Gagarin, ‘The Athenian Law against Hybris', in Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979) pp. 229-36; and N.

On changing attitudes to war and optimistic views of a more civil Classical society in Athens than that previously, see Gabriel Herman, ‘How Violent was Athenian Society?', in Robin Osborne and Simon Hornblower (eds.), Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis: The History and Archaeology of Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 99-117. Edward Harris, ‘Feuding or the Rule of Law? The Nature of Litigation in Classical Athens. An Essay in Legal Sociology', in Robert Wallace and Michael Gagarin (eds.), Symposium 2001. Vortrage zue griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Wien: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), pp. 125-41, and Gabriel Herman, Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens: A Social History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) both champion Classical Athenian society as progressive and relatively peaceful. Connected to ideas concerning Athenian civil society are specific practices like bearing arms in Athens, on which see Hans van Wees, ‘Greeks Bearing Arms: State, the Leisure Class and the Display of Weapons in Ancient Greece', in Nicholas Fisher and Hans Van Wees (eds.), Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 333-78. For less optimistic views of Athenian civil society see Edward Cohen, Law, Violence and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Edward E. Cohen, ‘Theories of Punishment', in Michael Gagarin and David Cohen (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 170-90; Sally Humphreys, The Discourse of Law: Special Edition of History and Anthropology 1.2 (1985), 241-64; and N.

On the relationship between war and violence in Greece generally, Hans van Wees's Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London: Duckworth, 2004) provides an excellent introduction. On Athens specifically, see several chapters in David Pritchard (ed.), War, Culture and Democracy in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), including the useful introduction and John Keane's concluding chapter both addressing the important question regarding the violent nature of democracies. More recently, Jason Crowley, The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) explores the relationship between the Athenian citizen and military service. From an equally psychological perspective, Lawrence Tritle's From Melos to My Lai (London: Routledge, 2000) and Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995) and Odysseus in America (New York: Scribner, 2002) all discuss the connections between combat trauma and ancient warfare.

For good recent introductions and bibliography to violence on stage see William Allan, ‘The Ethics of Retaliatory Violence in Athenian Society', Mnemosyne 66.4/5 (2013), 593-615, and A. P. Burnett, Revenge in Attic and Later Greek Tragedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Similarly for comedy now see I. Ruffell, ‘Humiliation?: Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy', Helios 40.1-2 (2013), 247-77.

The role of the individual within the state legal system has been well discussed. Matthew R. Christ, ‘Legal Self-Help on Private Property in Classical Athens', American Journal of Philology 119 (1998), 521-45 unpicks many of the issues that vexed state, citizen and household in achievingjustice, often independently. The role of religion and justice is well discussed by Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Lastly, on the violence of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens see Andrew Wolpert, Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) and his briefer treatment, ‘The Violence of the Thirty Tyrants', in Sian Lewis (ed.), Ancient Tyranny (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2006) pp. 213-23. Finally, for the interplay between the law and the individual in Athens, Martin Ostwald's From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society and Politics in Fifth Century Athens (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) covers much ground.