Herodotus' portraits of the four Persian kings in the Histories present the reader with four very distinct personalities. This offers an opportunity to compare them with each other as individuals, rather than as linked parts of an overall Herodotean pattern (such as the rise and fall of empires), and to use detailed differences between them at the micro-level as the basis for an analysis of each one's own unique style of leadership. My analysis takes as its starting point the classification of three of the kings allegedly made by the Persians themselves (see 3.89.3), focusing on all four kings' styles as presented within the contexts of Persian imperialism; advice and advisers; and three specific modes of behaviour (violence, uncertainty and fear). Each king is shown consistently to exhibit his own style of leadership - Cyrus as piealphaτήρ, Cambyses as deltaεsigmapieότης, Darius as kappaάpieηGammaος, and Xerxes as a consultative leader. My analysis uncovers Herodotus' awareness of many aspects of the problem of leadership in a monarchical system (such as the tension between offering sound advice and delivering mere flattery), as well as his non-judgmental approach to each individual king's style. I go on to deploy a number of modern leadership theories to assess the extent to which they can be fruitfully applied to the Persian kings' styles of leadership, concluding that the breadth of Herodotus' accounts of the leadership styles exhibited by the Persian kings draws attention to the shortcomings of such modern leadership theories in the inadequate assessment of the extent to which the majority of leaders perform, or fail to do so; and further that such modern leadership theories underline the exceptional quality of Cyrus' leadership and his uniqueness among the Persian kings, while at the same time suggesting the immense difficulty of sustaining a monarchical system in the absence of such quality leadership. Overall the analysis demonstrates how in the Histories Herodotus with subtlety and insight presents the reader, in a detailed and analytical way, with an engaged portrayal of ideas about leadership and its practice.

The long-standing relationship of archaeology with the art of its time is manifested variously throughout its history. In the last three decades this relationship has found a new expression with a handful of scholars making use of art-works and art-making as tools for research and public engagement. Their experiments have so far yielded a small yet substantial number of descriptive and (self-)reflective publications which have hitherto appeared scattered in the literature as unconnected one-off side-projects. However, their careful systematisation and historicisation suggests that they constitute an uncoordinated critique of the modernist legacy of contemporary archaeological practice, and articulate, albeit fragmentarily, a proposition for a new, counter-modern one. In the first part of my thesis I tease out and assemble the pieces of the abovementioned critique and proposition by examining the genealogies and incentives of each project described in the publications (both individually and comparatively). In the second and final part, I build on the lessons learnt from the assessment of these projects’ merits and shortcomings to explore the potential of a counter-modern, site-specific ethnographic art installation to counter and deconstruct hegemonic narratives concerning the material remains of the past, and to encourage people to establish more intimate connections with those, using as case-study the Acropolis of Athens in the years of the so-called ‘crisis’.

In the past, craft production in Classical and Hellenistic Greece has been studied mainly from a technological or social perspective. On the other hand, the study of ancient economies has largely neglected the role of craft production in favour of issues such as the nature of ancient economies, mechanisms for the exchange of goods, and the roles of agricultural production and slavery in economic activity. In this study I hope to redress this by looking at dyeing activity from an economic and social perspective. I have used a range of archaeological and historical evidence to build up a picture of the way dyeing (and by extension craft production) fitted into the subsistence strategies of the Classical and Hellenistic Greek household. The range of ingredients used, including dyes, fibres and chemical substances, and the nature of the processes carried out by ancient Greek dyers, are discussed. A methodology for the identification of dyeing activity in the archaeological record is proposed. Following a discussion of previous approaches to the study of ancient economic activity, a framework for the study of craft production in its economic and social context is also proposed. The evidence for dyeing activity in Classical and Hellenistic Greece is then analysed with reference to this framework, in order to assess the organisation and level of specialisation of dyeing and the way it fitted in with other subsistence activities on a seasonal basis.

This thesis presents the stratigraphic evidence for occupation from the later part of the Late Bronze Age (Late Helladic IIIC middle) to the beginning of the Early Iron Age (Sub-Mycenaean and Early Protogeometric period) at the archaeological site of Kynos, which is situated on the western shore of the North Euboean Gulf in mainland Greece. In particular, the architectural remains and their related pottery sequence, as well as the distribution of finds, are under discussion in order to understand the overall organisation of the site and the main activities of its inhabitants. A fresh examination compares the data to the latest material and archaeological evidence from other contemporary sites in the Greek region in an attempt to shed further light on the social structure at Kynos and to illustrate the distinctive characteristics of the periods under discussion.

The principle aim of this thesis is to develop a better understanding of social organisation in Greece after the collapse of the palace system c.1190 BCE. This is achieved through a multi-level analysis of burial practices, focussing specifically on the post-palatial cemetery at Perati, burial practices before and after the collapse in the Argolid, and the custom of burial with weapons, from the Shaft Grave period to the post-palatial period in Greece. The main theoretical basis for focussing on burial practices is the argument that social change is reflected and enacted in burial practices, so studying changes in burial practices (including the shift from chamber tombs to simple graves, the change from collective to single burials, the introduction of cremation, and the use of high status grave goods) has the potential to inform us about the nature of social change. This basic premise is challenged in the course of the thesis, when it is shown that burial practices in Attica changed before the collapse, whilst the custom of placing weapons in graves did not change when the palace system collapsed, and burial practices in the Argolid remained recognisably Mycenaean despite the destruction of the region’s two palaces. In explaining why burial practices did not change in response to the collapse of the palace system, the thesis develops a new theory. Burial practices do change, but this is in response to changes in kinship structures, rather than the nature of the state or the level of social complexity. Furthermore, this thesis argues that burials with weapons do not represent the burials or warriors or chiefs, but are used more broadly to reflect status achieved for a variety of reasons. These burials should not be regarded as “warrior graves”, since there was, in fact, no warrior class at any time in Bronze Age Greece. This study challenges a number of traditional interpretations of the post-palatial period in Greece. In particular, it is argued that this period should no longer be regarded as the start of the so-called Dark Age. The people who survived the destructions and went on to re-organise their lives during this troubled period should not be thought of as the victims of disaster, but active participants in the shaping of post-palatial Greece. They deserve to have their story told, and this thesis represents a chapter in that story.

This is the first examination of the significance of ancient Greek gardens. It analyses the use of the word κῆπος (kepos) using linguistic and contextual analysis, based on two databases of literary and epigraphic sources. It also uses iconographic, archaeological, ethnographical and palaeobotanical evidence to examine how Archaic and Classical gardens were perceived, the associations they invoked, and how ‘the garden’ functioned within the real Athenian landscape. Little is known about ancient Greek gardens, largely because the sources are so meagre, as is the research context. Consequently, inaccurate assumptions are made, based on Roman practice and influenced by contemporary perceptions. Understanding Greek garden practice is important because gardens are a vital part of a traditional society’s agrarian landscape. It is equally important to understand Greek perceptions of ‘the garden’, because they can illuminate societal attitudes towards both landscape and people: ‘the garden’ is easily co-opted as a symbol to express ideas about the surrounding culture and its beliefs. Therefore, the scanty sources that do exist relate more to ‘gardens of the mind’ than to real plots of land. Such gardens illuminate aspects of Greek perceptions, whilst their real counterparts play a vital role in negotiating overall city space. This study found that κῆπος was a shifting, elusive word and concept, having multiple uses and functioning in different ways, like the gardens themselves, which defy categorisation into discrete types. It is clear that conceptual and real garden spaces were constantly interacting and mutually reinforcing and that both the word and the real plots of land carried specific, long-enduring associations. The three essential ‘resonances’ were: of care for something highly valued; of luxury, privilege and eastern elements; and of the tempting yet risky presence of women. These, combined with the Greek landscape, made the garden an ambivalent, borderline space.

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This thesis is a reassessment of Xenophon’s strategies in the Poroi in the light of recent scholarly studies of the Athenian mining industry, trade, honours and the scholarly debate around the ancient capacity for economically rational decision-making. It argues that Xenophon wrote for a wider audience than the Athenian citizenry alone, and that an interpretation of the Poroi as proposing a beneficent regime in which slaves would live semi-autonomous lives cannot be sustained. Primarily it focuses on three specific strands. Using archaeological, epigraphic and literary evidence, it argues that judgements of Xenophon’s proposals as naïve underestimate the extent to which the heavy supply demands of the Laurion region reached into the lives of many Athenians from the elite to the artisan, and will have informed their reception of his plans with a financial literacy that obviated the need for detail. Using modern analyses of economic risk it explores the extent to which Xenophon acknowledged economic, physical and socially-constructed risks, demonstrating that despite their lack of detailed record-keeping, far from being unsophisticated in their judgement of the economic security of their commercial undertakings, Athenians had a developed recognition of risk and employed a variety of expedients to mitigate it. Finally, Xenophon’s proposals to use honours to encourage commercial activity are discussed in the light of scholarly judgements that such awards would be subversive, or reflected mid-century decline. A detailed analysis of honours offered both before and after Xenophon wrote shows that his proposals exploited a robust institution that had always adapted to reflect changing circumstances and that he set careful boundaries both to the number and the social background of potential recipients. In an early work of political economy which attempted to manipulate individual commercial activity in order to manage inter-state relationships, Xenophon’s ideas were innovative but sat within the Athenian democratic tradition.

It was once said that “if Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to endure forever?” (J. J. Rousseau, “Social Contract, Discourses”, B.III.ch. IX). The Peloponnesian and Macedonian wars have been scrutinized to the extent that the surviving sources may allow for it, but they have never been put under the magnifying glass in terms of International Relations’ schools of thought, namely “Realists”, “Rationalists” and “Revolutionists”, despite their striking similarities as to the prevention of competing state’s ascending power, as well as of their underlying dissimilarities regarding the respective exit strategies followed from the said preventive wars. This thesis brings together the principal episodes of these two war periods placing particular emphasis on notions of power, international anarchy, morality, security dilemma which all answer as to why the wars started, how they were fought and how they were ended. Furthermore, I extrapolate these deductions into the future in an attempt to forecast the main constants of great power behaviour in a similar situation of preventive wars. In this regard I demonstrate that “Realism” may provide the best toolkit not exclusively at the state (“forum externum”) level as the International Relations theory suggests, but also at the unit level (“forum internum”), which stands distinct from the holistic notion of domestic politics and falls within the contours of the decision making process. I attempt to bridge these two levels by injecting the notion of the “cosmo-icon”, which shall be assessed separately by the same aforementioned International Relations’ three schools of thought. Cosmo-icon is the inherent, unique, alphabet whereby the leader reads the book of international politics which is written by the states’ interaction. That alphabet is indispensable for “self-orientation” within the political system and emanates from fundamental decisions, based upon specific predefined approaches of the reality and not solely upon mere reactions to it (“perceptions”). Showing that the level of states and the unit level correspond in essence respectively to Thucydides’ famous reference to “uneven growth” and “fear” as causes of war and that the cosmo-icon is in fact identified within “predetermined” decisions, I stress that a successful exit strategy from a preventive war shall be the outgrowth of realism’s preponderance both at the state level of analysis as well as at the cosmo-icon’s one. Indeed, I prove that Rome succeeded when it cleaved to a “realistic” cosmo-icon, within a “realistic” states’ foreign policy, while Sparta failed because within a “realistic” states’ foreign policy she adopted a “rationalist” cosmo-icon. That said, it becomes evident from the two periods that for a great power a successful exit strategy from a preventive war is actually to stay within it, maintaining a “realistic” cosmo-icon towards a decisive battle and consequently establishing an authoritative relationship of a “mistress” but not of a “lover” with the subject states. That relationship will be based on the principle of proactively creating an interest rather than simply defending it, through a prudent, constant, political evaluation of alternative options by a small number, if not only one, person(s), through a web of ad hoc and restricted alliances, desisting from any territory-annexation, but also from ideological affiliations of any kind.

This thesis studies the wartime experience of the Empire's urban civilians in the six-century Persian wars. While many researchers have been conducted to examine Romano-Persian relations, civilians' fates in the armed conflicts between these great powers were greatly neglected. This dimension deserves more attention to shed new light on the relationship between Rome and Persia and the nature of warfare in classical antiquity. This thesis is divided into three parts. In chapter 1, both a sketch of major political and military events of the Roman Near East and a brief review of the late antique intellectual backgrounds are provided. Chapter 2 aims to investigate how late antique and medieval writers presented and described civilians' wartime experiences. The results show that they not only shared the same language stock with their predecessors, but also adopted certain allusions and motifs in their works. Roman civilians' fates are examined thematically from chapter 3 onwards. Whereas many of them were killed, the blockade of a city lead to famine and cannibalism. Meanwhile, cases of sexual violence were reported by authors from different literary milieux. Also, the inhabitants' possessions and building were either destroyed or removed. Different types of population movements in wartime are investigated in chapters 4 and 5. Some Romans took refuge outside their hometown or escaped to other places, while certain notables were detained as hostages. The victorious Persians captured many survivors and transported them to different places. In the end, chapter 6 includes both a synthesis of Roman civilians' wartime experiences and an explanation for these phenomena. Whereas many cities were either besieged or threatened, it is shown that the the Romans' fates in these conflicts were variable and affected by interaction of various factors such as the Sasanids' strategies and the responses of the Empire's authorities.