Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece

Joseph M. Bryant is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada.

Acknowledgements
Preface: The Sociology of Knowledge and Historical Sociology


Introduction: The Polis and the "Spirit" of Hellenism


1. The End of the Bronze Age
2. Dark Age Greece


I. Social Structure: The Oikos and the Community


II. Norms and Values: The Ethos of the Warrior-Aristocracy


3. Archaic Greece


I. Social Structure: The Emergence of Polis Society


i. Social Change in the Early Archaic Age
ii. Hoplites and Tyrants in an Age of Transition
iii. Sparta's Perfection of the Warriors' Guild
iv. Toward Democracy in Athens


II. Norms and Values: The Articulation of the Polis-Citizen Bond


i. Aristocratic Supremacy in the Early Archaic Age: Hereditary Virtue and the Agonal Ideal
ii. The Dêmos in Dependency: Peasant Values and the Cry for Social Justice
iii. The Rise of Hoplite Heroes and Codification of the Polis Ideal
iv. Troubled Aristocrats, Confident Commoners, and the Contest for Status Honor and Self-Affirmation
v. From Myth to Science, and the Occult: The Quest for Knowledge and Salvation


4. Classical Greece


I. Slavery and the Material Foundations of Classical Civilization


II. The Persian Challenge: Military Triumph and Cultural Affirmation


III. The Classical Polis: Institutions and Normative Ideals


IV. The Sophists and Sokrates: Critical Rationalism and the Revaluation of Conventional Morality


V. Democratic Imperialism and the Expansion of Athenian Power


VI. The Peloponnesian War, Civic Factionalism, and the Rupturing of Polis Communalism


5. Fourth-Century Greece and the Decline of the Polis


I. Hegemonial Rivalries, Class Struggle, and the Deepening Crisis of Social Disorganization


II. Mercenaries, Military Monarchs, and the Erosion of Citizen Politics


III. Plato and the Dilemmas of Politics and Reason: The Polis as Philosophical Project


IV. The Minor Sokratics and the Onset of Normative Individualism


V. The Macedonian Conquest and the Suppression of Polis Autonomy


VI. Aristotle's Social Philosophy and the Sociology of Power


VII. Diogenes and Cynic Antinomianism


6. The Hellenistic Age


I. Alexander and the Graeco-Macedonian Conquest of the East


II. Wars of the Successors and the Consolidation of Imperial Patrimonialism


III. Ethics in a New Key: The Retreat from Polis-Citizen Ideals and the Interiorization of Moral Value


i. Epicureanism: Pleasure and Tranquillity in the Garden
ii. Stoicism: The Ethos of "Self-Hardening"
iii. Syncretism Triumphant: External Unfreedom and the Quest for Inner Plenitude and Immunity


Epilogue: On Reductionism, Relativism, and the Sociology of Morals and Philosophy


Glossary of Greek Terms


Notes


Selected Bibliography


Index