Resilience as a tool for interpreting the Hellenistic polis: beyond 'survival' and 'vitality'

Gray, Benjamin (2025) Resilience as a tool for interpreting the Hellenistic polis: beyond 'survival' and 'vitality'. In: Hartmann, A. and Rieger, A.-K. and Schliephake, C. (eds.) Ressourcen der Resilienz in der Antike. Materielle, performative und narrative Praktiken und Strategien. LEIZA Publications 6. Heidelberg, Germany: Propylaeum, pp. 131-149. ISBN 9783969294222.

Abstract

This paper evaluates ‘resilience’ as a tool for analysing the polis (city-state) in the Hellenistic period (c. 323–31 BC). Can ‘resilience’ capture, better than dominant paradigms of ‘survival’ or ‘vitality’, both existential threats to the Hellenistic poleis and their often successful surmounting of them? How can it help to analyse Hellenistic poleis’ complex combination of conservatism with change? The paper approaches these questions by analysing responses of individual Hellenistic poleis to varied crises: civil war and civic breakdown (Telos); great-power war, city destruction and displacement (Abdera); and intense demographic and ecological pressures (Abdera, Herakleia, Antiocheia-in-Persis). The paper analyses the public inscriptions in which these communities commemorated acute shocks, as evidence for resilience practices as well as ‘narratives of resilience’ in themselves. It then asks to what extent these inscriptions can be used to build a broader picture of a ‘resilient’ network of Hellenistic poleis, co-existing with Hellenistic monarchies and empires (including eventually the Roman Empire). Keywords: Hellenistic, polis, resilience, civil war, war, demography, environment, citizenship.

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