Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political

by Quay Books

ISBN: 9780691192154

Published: 2023-06-20

"In this book, Melissa Lane argues that the concept of political office should be central to our understanding of Greek politics and political theory. Yet discussions of the Greeks tend to focus on courts and assemblies, or at most, on lottery as a means of selecting officeholders - without thinking about their powers of command or about how they were held accountable. Meanwhile, discussions of Plato's Republic and Statesman tend to ignore the profound extent to which his understanding of politics was articulated in terms of the vocabulary and practice of officeholding, on the one hand, and an interrogation of whether these were adequate to a full understanding of ruling, on the other. In The Origins of Political Office: Ancient Greek Ideas of Ruling and Being Ruled, based on the 2018 Carlyle Lectures at the University of Oxford, Melissa Lane explores public office as a principal building block of Greek political ideas that lies at the intersection of command and accountability. In...