An interesting article over at @AncientWorldMag on the idea of 'states' in the ancient world: ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/state…

I think it both presents an interesting argument and a solid summation of scholarly perspectives on the question, but I don't quite buy the argument. 1/21
Hall's main point: that 'state'-ness is necessarily a fuzzy set is valid and well made. Was Rome a 'state' in 477 when the Fabii fell against Veii? Probably not.

The state is defined as an entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force... 2/21
...for the Fabii to fight this way suggests that the Roman Republic itself didn't yet have that monopoly.

And of course even in the modern period we have developed terms to express some of the fuzziness of the 'state' set. We thus talk about 'failed states' for... 3/21
...entities which had the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force but lost it.

And of course, even modern states don't truly have absolute such monopolies - just read about revenge killings among street gangs where the law fails (e.g. amazon.com/Ghettoside-Tru… ). 4/21
Moreover, we need to caveat that the ancients often don't speak in terms of states: not Athens, but the Athenians, no the Seleucid Empire, but Antiochus or Seleucus does things.

And Hall makes these arguments very well, and they are worth making. 5/21
But there are other points I don't fully follow.

First off, I think it's probably a bit overeager to talk about the 'dismissal' of the notion of a hoplite army in early Rome.

The irony here is that I am myself somewhat skeptical about an early hoplite Roman army... 6/21
...and I tend to avoid making any kind of pronouncements prior to Polybius kicking in because the evidence is really 🤷‍♂️

But early Italian hoplite-esque combat is still regularly asserted, e.g. @DrMichaelJTayl1 "Panoply and Identity During the Roman Republic" PBSR (2020). 7/21
I think it is a bit premature to call a position 'dismissed' which is still standard in narratives for the early republic and continues to appear in the scholarship of specialists in the field.

Maybe that's coming, but it doesn't seem to be here yet. 8/21
Second - I don't know if Hall would endorse M.H. Hansen's definition of a state needing to be "public power above both ruler and ruled" but I think that added rider isn't very helpful, as it moves to exclude states built around truly personal rulership. 8/21
But history is full of states which achieved a monopoly on the legitimate use of force while still being personal possessions of an individual or a family; we still have some of these (e.g. Saudi Arabia).

I don't think the state as an abstract beyond the ruler is necessary. 9/21
And I think an excessively narrow definition of the 'state,' when they emerge and are used, has an unfortunately tendency to 'define out' non-Western states where the definition is otherwise met. 10/21
More to the center of the argument, the proscription of abandoning 'state' for 'community' I think still airbrushes an important distinction for comparing and understanding different polities. 11/21
Working at the meeting point of the Middle Roman Republic - where the state/non-state/proto-state question-marks of the sixth and fifth century had long since resolved into a clear state (perched atop a tributary empire and so complex in form) and truly non-state peoples... 12/21
...like those of much of Gaul and Spain, the state/non-state typology still has tremendous value for understanding differences in the structures of these communities. 13/21
The idea of 'state formation' is also valuable in situating Iberian and Gallic communities on a continuum of social change w/ Rome, at different points, rather than treating as completely alien forms of social org. because in many ways they are more similar than different. 14/21
Moreover, abandoning the 'state' label completely makes the process of state formation - with its tendency to 'ripple' outward as non-state peoples form states to compete with neighboring states - harder for the student to discern. 15/21
Of course we should stress in our scholarship and to students that state-formation is not one way!

The Roman state forms, fails, reforms, fails *again*, reforms and then fragments leaving successor states and a large zone of non-state polities over western Europe. 16/21
And I certainly endorse the idea, advanced by Hall that we should think in terms of "a world of individuals making choices which impact their contemporary space of time."

Any serious discussion of states knows that they are not singular actors, but composite entities. 17/21
I think a focus on webs of power is important, but I'd leaven that with some Hannah Arendt: force and violence are not power (and so 'military power' as used here, is almost but not quite a contradiction in terms). 18/21
States use power to generate force, and can use force to generate power, but the are not the same; this is not a case of one kind of power being transmuted into another but of the interaction of two quite different things (see H. Arendt, "On Violence") 19/21
In the end, I think ditching the idea of states, even for the ancient world, obscures more than clarifies.

That said, think this article is a good place to start talking about states and the use of the label though - it makes some very good arguments - well worth a read.

end/21

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More from @BretDevereaux

21 Jan
I love the Aeginetan turtles! I always point these out whenever I am teaching Greek coinage.

So much better than owls.
For those playing along at home, because Greece in the Archaic and Classical period (when coinage was introduced to there from Anatolia) was split into a lot of little states, each state minted its own coins (on more-or-less similar weight standards) with their state emblem.
Athens had its owl (for Athena), Aegina a turtle, Thebes a Boeotian shield, Thera had dolphins. Little Silinus on Sicily had wheat (it was good farm country) and so on.
Read 7 tweets
20 Jan
Oh yeah, also shout out to Micah 4:4 getting into the inauguration, being quoted by Amanda Gorman (via George Washington (maybe also via the musical Hamilton, but it was famous before)) in her amazing poem (and what delivery!)
The full verse goes:
"Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken" (NIV)
In its context, the verse contemplates a future world at peace under God's rule.

But Washington, most famously in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, took the verse as an ideal for the American republic, where people of every stripe "shall sit...
Read 7 tweets
18 Jan
Just to give a sense of how lacking in rigor this thing is, I submitted an article for peer review of about 80% the length a bit back. Where this 'report' seeks to answer vast questions about American principles over 200+ years of history... 1/5
...my question was a little one - the date and impact of a single piece of Roman armor. Just one piece, over a limited time-span.

To do that, I cited a little more than 110 modern works (in 6 languages) and a dozen ancient authors in two ancient languages... 2/5
...in the course of just under 130 footnotes.

All to answer a simple question about a single piece of armor.

That is not me bragging about how great I am. That is merely how history is done, the level of rigor we expect in our discipline.

Every good historian does this. 3/5
Read 5 tweets
18 Jan
Looking over the so-called 1776 commission, the thing I find most disappointing are the missed opportunities created by just how clownishly incompetent a document this is, from stem to stern. whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…

1/6
History is about evidence (which makes one question why this document lacks a bibliography or notes), but it is also about selection & interpretation. Two historians, working in good faith, may look at the same body of evidence &, because they look from a different angle... 2/6
...or at a different part, come up with different, but equally valid conclusions.

Consequently, I think there is good and valuable history to be written by people whose views and values differ greatly from mine. I want to welcome those people into the discipline. 3/6
Read 6 tweets
18 Jan
Oh boy, we're doing Peter Turchin 'Cliodynamics' (which I almost typed 'Cliomancy' which seems about as accurate) discourse again.

So my views on the matter were expressed here, from the last time we did Cliodynamics-Discourse:
Do note that Turchin appears himself in that thread and somewhat moderates the 'tone' of how the press frequently presents him (but then one wonders why that tone appears unaltered in the recent Guardian story theguardian.com/us-news/2021/j…)
Also note Dr. Fafinski @Calthalas response to the current Turchin/Cliodynamics discourse here: (also a thread).
Read 11 tweets
17 Jan
This is a great question, so let's get into this in more detail!

The question here is is essentially, "what did Philip II (father of Alexander) do to the Spartans, and how do we know that?"

A thread! 1/25
First off, our sources for the life of Philip II are really poor. Unlike the multiple biographies we have of his son Alexander III ('the Great'), we have no sustained biography of Philip II. Consequently, we're left to piece together his reign from disparate sources. 2/25
There's a strong tradition that Philip II just left the Spartans alone. That tradition comes from Plutarch, who preserves that classic Laconic reply where Philip threatens that if he enters Spartan territory he would destroy them and they respond 'If' (Plut. De Garr. 17). 3/25
Read 26 tweets

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