Ideological Fictions and Collective Identities
From the Modern Nation to Classical Athens
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/1983-3636.2025.57711Keywords:
acropolis, Aeschines, Attic orators, classical Athens, funeral oration, Lysias, modern nation, Western civilisationAbstract
Taking as a point of departure recent discussions on the mobilisation of classical Greece for the construction of the concepts of Western civilisation and of modern Greek national identity, this study turns to the public discourses of fourth century BCE Athens and examines the role of specific ideological constructs in identity formation processes of the time, showing that there seems to be a significant convergence in the way the past, and indeed the classical past, is employed both in modern and premodern (particularly, classical in the chronological sense of the term) processes of collective identity formation.References
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