Christelle Fischer-Bovet (USC): A Reevaluation of the Revolts in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires. Balancing Ethnic and Socio-economic Solidarities

Date
Wed January 22nd 2014, 5:00pm
Event Sponsor
Stanford Department of Classics
Location
Building 110, Room 112
Christelle Fischer-Bovet (USC): A Reevaluation of the Revolts in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires. Balancing Ethnic and Socio-economic Solidarities

Join us at 5:00pm for light refreshments

Ethnic solidarity has been used to explain revolts in antiquity even though multi-ethnic states were rather successful at integrating socially diverse populations. The talk explores the nature of unrest in the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean and, drawing on recent research in the social sciences on inter-ethnic relationships, suggests that in practice socio-economic solidarities had more weight than ethnic ties, as can be seen from the incorporation of local elites within the new ruling elites in these two states.


Christelle Fischer-Bovet is an assistant professor of Classics at the University of Southern California who specializes in the social and cultural history of the Eastern Mediterranean from Alexander the Great to the Romans, with a special interest in Greco-Roman Egypt. Her book "Army and Society in Ptolemaic Egypt" (Cambridge University Press, March 2014) combines documentary evidence (papyri, inscriptions) with social theory to examine how the changing structures of the army led to the development of an ethnically more integrated society.