Reconciliation in later Classical and post-Classical Greek cities: a question of peace and peacefulness?

This chapter focuses on the wide range of approaches adopted by Greek cities, from end of Peloponnesian War to the early Roman Empire, to the problem of resolving and overcoming stasis. It concentrates on Greek ideas concerning reconciliation, including the ways in which they were embedded in institutions and practices. The institutional, legal and ideological aspects of civic reconciliation in Greek poleis have been intensively studied by modern scholars. The chapter seeks to bring a dimension to these debates, by approaching ancient Greek reconciliation through the questions raised above. The post-Classical rapprochement between homonoia and eirene in some contexts can itself be seen as yielding an attractive middle way: a peaceable, gentle type of homonoia, and a more political, idealistic type of eirene. Moreover, the broader post-Classical Greek wider vision of civic unity as something gentle and peaceful chimes with wider modern liberal interest in adapting traditional notions of citizenship and solidarity in a peaceful, cultural, cosmopolitan and pluralist direction