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THEOPHRASTUS’ ‘OLIGARCH’ AND THE POLITICAL INTENTION OF THE CHARACTERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2023

Katie Ebner-Landy  and
René de Nicolay
Katie Ebner-Landy*
Affiliation:
Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
René de Nicolay*
Affiliation:
History Seminar, University of Zürich, Zürich, CH
*
*Corresponding authors. Emails: [email protected] and [email protected]
*Corresponding authors. Emails: [email protected] and [email protected]
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Abstract

The intention of Theophrastus’ Characters still escapes us. This paper offers a new answer to that centuries-old question by looking closely at the one political sketch of the collection: ‘The Oligarch’ (C.26). We argue that C.26 reveals a political intention in the Characters, presenting oligarchy as the inherently flawed projection of a character trait onto political events. Read in this way, C.26 appears as a medium through which Theophrastus can take a definite but careful stance in contemporary Athenian politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 69 , December 2023 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Philological Society

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