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Using all available evidence - literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and archaeological - this study offers a new analysis of the early Hellenistic Peloponnese. The conventional picture of the Macedonian kings as oppressors, and of the Peloponnese as ruined by warfare and tyranny, must be revised. The kings did not suppress freedom or exploit the peninsula economically, but generally presented themselves as patrons of Greek identity. Most of the regimes characterised as 'tyrannies' were probably, in reality, civic governorships, and the Macedonians did not seek to overturn tradition or build a new imperial order. Contrary to previous analyses, the evidence of field survey and architectural remains points to an active, even thriving civic culture and a healthy trading economy under elite patronage. Despite the rise of federalism, particularly in the form of the Achaean league, regional identity was never as strong as loyalty to one's city-state (polis).

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9781108702423

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D. Graham J. Shipley is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Leicester and a leading Greek historian who has published extensively on Classical and Hellenistic Greece. His publications include A History of Samos (1987), major contributions to the British School at Athens Laconia Survey volumes (1996–2002), and the lead editorship of the Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization (Cambridge, 2006). His Pseudo-Skylax's Periplous (2011) offered the first fully revised text since the nineteenth century of an important work of Greek geography, and the first commentary and translation in English. He is best known, however, for his monograph The Greek World after Alexander (2000), which has become the standard one-volume survey of the Hellenistic period in English and was short listed for the Runciman Prize, the Anglo-Hellenic League. He is a Fellow of a number of learned societies, including the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, as well as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

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