Mirko Canevaro

My early research, culminated in the publication of his first monograph (The Documents in the Attic Orators, OUP 2013), was on key documents about Athenian law and institutions. This work was the necessary underpinning for my wider work on Greek political, legal and economic institutions, particularly on the impact of political decision making and legislation on society more broadly. My extensive commentary of Demosthenes’ Against Leptines (De Gruyter 2016) sheds new light on Athenian politics, law and public economy. The study of the social and economic underpinnings of political institutions is also matched in my work by research into ancient philosophical reflections on these topics, culminated in co-authored commentaries of book IV and of books VII-VIII of Aristotle’s Politics. Further articles and edited volumes make contributions to the study of the legacy of Athenian thought, to intedisciplinary work in Greek history and the social sciences, and on a variety of topics from the status of slaves and freedmen in Athens all the way to the development of polis institutions in the Archaic period and of ideologies and practices of law-making vis-à-vis democratization. I have worked with Douglas Cairns on a major project about honour (and inequality) in ancient Greece, funded by a grant of the European Research Council (2018-2023). My interest in these topics stems from research on the Athenian honour system and public economy for my commentary on Demosthenes’ Against Leptines. We broke new ground in ancient Greek social, political, and intellectual history by bringing recent findings on the links between economic inequality and its psycho-social effects to bear on the society, culture, and economy of classical Greece. Our aim was understand how the Greeks poleis, Greek society, and Greek authors responded to inequalities of wealth and their corresponding inequalities of status in the way that they lived their lives, developed their political and cultural institutions, and thought about issues of justice, equality, and social cohesion. This project aimed to relate what can be gleaned about the economic realities of the classical polis to the exploration of the interpersonal, social, and political tensions that such inequality will have created, with particular reference to Greek conceptions of honour and their role in Greek law, life, politics, and thought. Outcomes of this project (forthcoming or at an advanced stage of preparation) are monographs on subjective rights in ancient Athens, on Ancient Greek honour (with D. Cairns), and edited volumes on approaches to the study of honour in ancient societies (with D. Cairns, K. Mantzouranis, and M. Zaccarini) and on honour and slavery in Ancient Greece (with D. Cairns and D. Lewis).

Canevaro, M. (2024) The many Athens-es of modernity: some remarks on a new volume on the reception of Athenian democracy, Incidenza dell’Antico, 22, pp. 109-118 Canevaro, M. (2024) L’hybris degli oppressi: onore e controllo sociale nel mondo greco (e nel nostro), Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica, 151(1), pp. 15-66 Canevaro, M. and Lewis, D. M. (2023) Between ‘The character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond): The Popularity of the Athenian Empire Revisited, Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 40(4), pp. 176-202 Canevaro, M. (2023) Una élite arcobaleno: se le politiche di inclusione dimenticano la classe. MicroMega, 6/2023, pp. 47-58 Canevaro, M. and Esu, A. (2023) Once again on Aristotle and the identity of t