Serena Barbuto
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Profile
Serena Barbuto is PhD candidate in Historical Studies at the University of Milan, where she graduated in Philology, Literature and History of Antiquity. Her research project addresses amnesty in the Classical and Hellenistic age. She is currently a visiting research student at the University of Edinburgh, School of History, Classics and Archaeology. Her research interests include the institutional and legal history of ancient Greece.
Abstract progetto di ricerca
Only in recent years the relevance of the speeches contained in Xenophon’s Hellenika have been emphasised. In particular, fertile ground for study is constituted by the second book, more specifically by the section on the tyranny of the Thirty and the restoration of democracy. In the delicate phase of transition from democracy to tyranny, Critias and Theramenes play a fundamental role: the growing opposition between them defines the establishment of an oligarchic regime through an effective work of persuasion – verbal and non-verbal – of the masses. Later, following the elimination of Theramenes, the polarity again invests Critias and Thrasibulus, the champion of radical democracy within the stasis of 404/3. It is also to Thrasibulus that we owe, to some extent, the antithesis – often only ideological or nominal – now between the men of Piraeus and the Thirty (Xen. Hell. II.4.13), now between the men of the city and the men of Piraeus (Xen. Hell. II.4.40-42). A noteworthy perspective is represented by the analysis of the rhetorical strategies deployed by the various orators and, ultimately, by Xenophon himself in relation to the pledge “not to hold a grudge” (μὴ μνησικακεῖν) for the events of the past: this is placed at the end of the second book as the completion of the events that occurred between 404 and 403. A further element of interest lies in the study of the same events and the role played by the characters listed above in Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia; in this regard, the last protagonist of the stasis of 404/3 to be counted is Archinus, to whom Thrasybulus passes the baton, more or less silently, as leader of the new moderate democratic faction.
