84 pages
14,8 x 21,0, 2024

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.53179/9783868934786

The ancient state of the Lakedaimonians was composed of Spartiates – citizens of Sparta with full citizenship rights – and the so-called perioikoi (literally: ‘those who dwell around’), who lived in small, self-governing towns around Sparta. The perioikoi were personally free but lacked the ability to autonomously decide matters of foreign or military policy. Spartiates and (elite) perioikoi were fellow, if unequal, citizens: they fought side by side, worshipped the same gods and upheld the same conservative values. To the outside Greek world, all alike shared in the legendary military glory of Lakedaimon, but inside their home state, the perioikoi were second-class citizens. Even so, only very few perioikic poleis attempted to shake off Spartiate overlordship during their centuries of shared history. This essay seeks to determine the costs and the rewards of unfreedom, and to answer the question of why some poleis chose the risky course of revolt when so many did not.     

The Author

Imogen Herrad has lived in Berlin, London, Buenos Aires and Cardiff as a freelance broadcaster, writer and translator. Her programmes for German public radio include pieces about the Antichrist, medieval women writers, Zora Neale Hurston, and the cultural histories of sheep, dragons and the apple, respectively. Her short stories and articles have been published in magazines and anthologies in Wales, Canada and the US. She has published a collection of short stories, The Woman who loved an Octopus and other Saints’ Tales (Seren Books, 2007) and a travel narrative, Beyond the Pampas: In Search of Patagonia (Seren Books, 2012), and, together with Lennart Gilhaus, Michael Meurer and Anja Pfeiffer, co-edited the volume Transgression in der Antiken Welt (Springer, 2020). She currently works as translator and language editor at the BCDSS, and is writing a PhD thesis about disobedience in ancient Sparta.