Ritualised Friendship & The Greek City
by: Herman, Gabriel

Hardcover. Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, dust jacket with light fading to spine, 212 pages, b&w illustrations. In this book, Gabriel Herman offers a new interpretation of Greek xenia, a term traditionally rendered as 'guest-friendship'. Drawing on contemporary literary sources and inscriptions as well as anthropology, sociology, and comparative evidence from other times, he shows that xenia was a bond of fictitious kinship akin to godparenthood, rather than a tie of hospitality or ordinary 'friendship'. Starting off from this proposition, he develops a dynamic model of the formation of elite relationships and values. He explores the concepts of obligation and loyalty, gift and bribe, treason and patriotism, and places the Greek city within a new context of power relations. Clean copy.