Affective Relations and Personal Bonds in Hellenistic Antiquity

"The intense bonds among the king and his family, friends, lovers, and entourage are the most enticing and intriguing aspects of Alexander the Great's life. The affective ties of the protagonists of Alexander's Empire nurtured the interest of the ancient authors, as well as the audience, in the personal life of the most famous men and women of the time. These relations echoed through time in art and literature, to become paradigm of positive or negative, human behavior. By rejecting the perception of the Macedonian monarchy as a positivist king-army based system, and by looking for other political and social structures Elizabeth Carney has played a crucial role in prompting the current re-appraisal of the Macedonian monarchy. Her volumes on Women and Monarchy in Ancient Macedonia (University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), Olympias: Mother of Alexander the Great (Routledge, 2006), Arsino of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life (Oxford University Press, 2013) have been game-changers in the field and has offered the academic world a completely new perspective on the network of relationships surrounding the exercise of power. By examining Macedonian and Hellenistic dynastic behavior and relations, she has shown the political yet tragic, heroic thus human side, thus connecting Hellenistic political and social history. Building on the methodological approach and theoretical framework engendered by Elizabeth Carney's research, this book explores the complex web of personal relations, inside and outside the oikos (family), governing Alexander's world, which sits at the core of the inquiry into the human side of the events shedding light light on the personal dimension of history. Inspired by Carney's seminal work on Ancient Macedonia, the volume moves beyond the traditionally rationalist and positivist approaches towards Hellenistic antiquity, into a new area of humanistic scholarship, by considering the dynastic bloodlines as well as the affective relations. The volume offers a discussion of the intra and extra familial network ruling the Mediterranean world at the time of Philip and Alexander. Building on present scholarship on relations and values in Hellenistic Monarchies, the book contributes to a deeper historical understanding of the mutual dialogue between the socio-cultural and political approaches to Hellenistic history."
About the Author: Monica D’Agostini (2018 PhD Università Cattolica di Milano, 2013 PhD Università di Bologna) is the author of a number of learned contributions on political and military authority in Macedonia and Hellenistic Antiquity with forays into the history of modern political thought and its relation to the Classical heritage. Her publications include her recent volume The Rise of Philip V. Kingship and rule in the Hellenistic World, Alessandria (2019) and her book Gaetano Filangieri and Benjamin Franklin: between the Italian enlightenment and the US constitution, Ambasciata d'Italia a Washington DC (2011). She is currently affiliated with the department of Archaeology, Ancient History and History of Art at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan.
About the Author: Frances Pownall is Professor of Classics at the University of Alberta. She has published widely on Greek historiography (particularly the fourth century and the Hellenistic period), the source tradition on Macedonia and the Successors, and the historiographical tradition of Sicily and the Greek West. She is the author of Lessons From the Past: The Moral Use of History in Fourth-Century Prose (Michigan 2004) and a number of historical commentaries in Brill’s New Jacoby, as well as co-editor (with T. Howe) of Ancient Macedonians in the Greek and Roman Sources (Swansea 2018), and co-editor (with W. Heckel, J. Heinrichs, and S. Müller) of Lexicon of Argead Macedonia (forthcoming 2020).