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Dr. Frances Pownall, Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta
Tuesday, October 2nd from 2:30-4:00 pm

Pulp Fiction?
Folly and Violence in Hellenistic Athens
I examine the folly and violence which occurs in the portrayals by the Greek historians of the various Successors to Alexander the Great who controlled Athens in the ­­early years of the Hellenistic Period. As I shall argue, the Greek sources deliberately misrepresent the Successors’ attempts to be viewed as legitimate rulers with divine authority, transforming their conspicuous displays of wealth and power into the stereotypes generally applied to tyrannical rulers. Although this historiographical process occurred throughout the Successor kingdoms, it is especially interesting to examine it in the case of Athens, the birthplace of democracy, where the struggle for political independence underlay relations with the Successors in the early Hellenistic Period.

https://www.ualberta.ca/arts/about/people-collection/frances-pownall