On the Structure of Greek Tribal Society An Essay

Abstract

IN this scholarly and modest essay, the author has collected some of the evidence relating to a certain stage in the development of Greek society, the existence of which runs some danger of being insufficiently recognised by students of ancient history. “Greek” society to most people means, in the first place, the society described in the Homeric poems; in the second, Athenian society from the fifth century downwards. These limitations of the field are the natural outcome of the paramount importance of Homeric and Athenian literature; information as to the structure of society in other parts of Greece and at other periods of Greek history can, with a few exceptions, only be gleaned from incidental references in Homer and the Attic writers, and from the data afforded by comparative anthropology. To a certain extent Mr. Seebohm's field of observation may still seem to be somewhat confined, and his work would have been more valuable had the few facts known of the life of the less civilised parts of ancient Greece been more extensively utilised. To this end we could, perhaps, have spared some of the detailed discussion of the better-known survivals of tribal institutions in Athenian society of the fourth century.

On the Structure of Greek Tribal Society. An Essay.

By H. E. Seebohm. (London: Macmillan and Go., 1895.)