Atene dopo la morte di Pericle nella riflessione di Karl Julius Beloch

Karl Julius Beloch was deeply interested in fifth century Athenian history and, although he later dismissed the importance of studying this period, his first work on mainland Greek history was devoted to the history of Athens from Pericles’ death to the defeat at Cheroneia. In the Attische Politik seit Perikles he focused his attention not just on party politics, which is perhaps the weakest side of his research, but also on the economic and demographic development of the polis at its acme. The materialistic and modernist view of economic growth in Classical age leads to the shaping of an idea of ancient history, where the individualities of the leading figures play no role, or, at least, not a fundamental one, as is demonstrated in the introduction of the second edition of his seminal Griechische Geschichte. The interest in the relationship between individual and society is therefore Beloch’s most important methodological contribution for the study of Classical age.