How and why did political innovation come about and how were such innovations anchored (more or less) successfully?
During Greco-Roman antiquity, states diverged immensely in size, political structure, economic performance, and population density. Work Package 4 is a large Work Package with a substantial number of case-studies from different periods and on different key topics, selected for their potential to illustrate how and why political innovation came about and in particular how such innovations were anchored (more or less) successfully. They deal with the anchoring of coined money and of the allocation of political office by the use of the lot (allotment) in Athens; anchoring military innovation in the Hellenistic period and republican Rome; the anchoring use of traditional honorific discourse in the new context of the Imperial Greek city; anchoring political culture in Roman Athens; anchoring the position of the Emperor in Rome; and anchoring the position of women under the Roman empire.
