2003 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Persuasion and Consensus in Ancient Greek Democracies
| Project/Area Number |
13610449
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
History of Europe and America
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| Research Institution | Osaka University of Foreign Studies |
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Principal Investigator |
SUZUKI Hirokazu Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Associate Professor, 外国語学部, 助教授 (80273738)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
HASHIBA Yuzuru Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Associate Professor, 外国語学部, 助教授 (10212135)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2001 – 2003
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| Keywords | Greece / democracy / Hungary / Balkan / Athens / persuasion / bribery / gift |
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| Research Abstract |
The head investigator Suzuki examines how political consensus was achieved in traditional Balkan societies, which had some cultural continuity from ancient Greece: his main focus is on medieval Hungary, where King Matthias Corvinus allegedly united his kingdom by remodeling it into a Renaissance state. He also brings to light the modern socio-psychological process by which the twentieth-century Hungarian communists employed the image of King Matthias as an absolute monarch who successfully controlled the powerful aristocrats.
The investigator Hashiba argues that there were at least two modes of persuading, with words and gifts, in classical Greece, and that neither mode was necessarily considered more improper than the other: monetary persuasion coexisted with verbal. Persuasion with gifts including bribes, mainly used in more or less private spheres, was firmly rooted in the traditional and aristocratic values, whereas persuasion with words, normally employed in public speeches before a large body of citizens such as assembly, council and popular courts, was underpinned by a new, democratic ideology. Persuading the people with gifts was crucially checked by Pericles, who was well conscious of the power of oratory and fully exploited it as a political weapon to persuade the people. The development of the Athenian democracy can be described as a process 'of conflict between the two opposing attitudes toward reciprocity, old and ne~ which eventually caused an inevitable change from persuasion with gift to that with words as a means of moving the people in the symbouleutic and jurisdictional bodies: persuasion by words and rhetoric, not by gift and wealth, was more suited to the democratic principle that all male citizens were equally allowed to participate in the government regardless of the amount of their property.
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Research Products
(10 results)
