Navigation auf uzh.ch
Navigation auf uzh.ch
My first research focused on Greek institutional and legal history with emphasis on Classical Athens and Sparta which have produced a series of articles on Spartan and Athenian constitutional law and politics. My first major research project investigated the concept of divided power in the decision-making procedures of the Greek poleis of the Classical and Hellenistic periods. This study resulted in my first monograph Divided Power in Ancient Greece: Decision-Making and Institutions in the Classical and Hellenistic Polis which will be published by OUP in March 2024. The book situates a systematic analysis of the institutions (e.g. delegation to councils, judicial reviews, veto powers), values, and discourse of decree-making in different Greek states within the debate about institutionalized sovereignty in the Greek city-states. The book makes the case for moving beyond the traditional notion of sovereignty and adopting the notion of divided power which underpinned a multi-layered decision-making process of delegation of authority and legal control over the people’s decisions.
Building on my institutional and legal interests, my current research project (A Cultural History of Greek Office-Holding in the Classical and Hellenistic Greek World) at the University of Zurich aims to advance our understanding of honours for public offices in the Greek City-states. It will argue that the institution of magistracies, understood as timai, and the relevant public honours for their performance in office were both manifestations of the emic Greek concept of timē (honour, dignity, esteem) and should be studied as a single phenomenon. Timē encompasses both the individual value and prerogatives and external markers through which the community acknowledges this value and shapes public behaviour. This project will argue that reciprocity of timē informed the way citizens as political actors related to power and law. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach based on current works of New Institutionalism, history of emotions, and anthropology. Through a careful analysis of honorary decrees on stone and literary sources, the project will offer a new study of the institution of civic magistrates and the way honour related with the laws and legal procedure, from the Classical to the late Hellenistic periods, and its impact in the nature of Greek political regimes.
Monograph
A. Esu, Divided Power in Ancient Greece: Decision-Making and Institutions in the Classical and Hellenistic Polis, OUP, Oxford (forthcoming 2024).
Edited Volumes
A. Esu and E.M. Harris (eds) Keeping to the Point: Law, Character and Rhetoric in Athenian Forensic Oratory, EUP, Edinburgh. (forthcoming)
M. Barbato, M. Canevaro and A. Esu (eds) Rediscovering Greek Institutions, EUP, Edinburgh. (forthcoming)
Peer-reviewed Articles
A. Esu (2017) ‘Divided Power and Eunomia: Deliberative Procedures in Ancient Sparta’, Classical Quarterly 67.2: 353-73.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838817000544
A. Esu (2021) ‘Adeia in fifth-century Athens’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 141: 1-26.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426921000100
E. M. Harris with A. Esu (2022) “Policing Major Crimes in Classical Athens: Eisangelia and Other Public Procedures”, Rivista di Diritto Ellenico (RDE) 21, 39-119.
M. Canevaro and A. Esu (2023) “Once Again on Aristotle and the Identity of the Athenian Nomothetai. A Response to Gertrud Dietze-Mager”, Erga Logoi 11.1, 7-28
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/erga-2023-001-caes
Peer-reviewed Contributions to Books
A. Esu (2021) ‘Hegemony, Coercion and Consensus: A Gramscian Approach to Greek Cultural and Political History’, in E. Zucchetti and A. Cimino (eds.) Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World, London, Routledge: 341-51.
DOI:https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429201684-after2/hegemony-coercion-consensus-alberto-esu?context=ubx&refId=da027e0d-0df6-4b09-b564-e4fb895a95f4
A. Esu (2020) ‘After the Empire: Judicial Review and Interstate Relations in Athens in the Age of Demosthenes, 354-22 BCE.’, in E. Cavanagh (ed.) Empire and Legal Thought: Ideas and Institutions from the Ancient World to the Modern World, Leiden (Brill): 69-104.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004431249_004
M. Canevaro and A. Esu (2018) ‘Extreme Democracy in Theory and in Practice: Nomophylakia and fourth-century Nomothesia in the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia’, in C. Bearzot, M. Canevaro, T. Gargiulo, E. Poddighe (eds.) Athenaion Politeiai tra storia, politica e sociologia: Aristotele e Ps-Senofonte, Milan: 105-45.
Open access link: https://www.ledonline.it/public/files/journals/2/852-6/athenaion-politeiai-06.pdf
Encyclopedia Entries
A. Esu and E. Poddighe (2020) ‘Adeia’, in A. Erskine, D. Hollander, A. Papakonstantinou (gen. eds.), Encyclopedia of Ancient History, London and New York.
A. Esu and E. Poddighe (2020) ‘Diagramma’, in A. Erskine, D. Hollander, A. Papakonstantinou (gen. eds.) Encyclopedia of Ancient History, London and New York.
A. Esu and E. Poddighe (2020) ‘Kalokagathia’, in A. Erskine, D. Hollander, A. Papakonstantinou (gen. eds.), Encyclopedia of Ancient History, London and New York.
Book Reviews
A. Esu (2021), ‘Review of E. Carawan, Control of the Laws in the Ancient Democracy at Athens, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore’, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2021.12.33
Open access link: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2021/2021.12.33/
A. Esu (2020), ‘Review of F. R. Foster (2018), Die Polis im Wandel. Ehrendekrete für eigene Bürger im Kontext der hellenistischen Polisgesellschaft (= Die hellenistische Polis als Lebensforme 9), Verlag Antike, Munich’, Klio. Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte, 329-335.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/klio-2020-0016
A. Esu, (2020), ‘Review of K. Kapparis (2018), Athenian Law and Society, Routledge, London’, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2020.01.18.
Open access link: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2020/2020.01.18/
A. Esu (2018), ‘Review of P. J. Rhodes (ed. trans.), Zambrini A., Gargiulo T. (trans.), Aristotele:Costituzione degli Ateniesi. Rome/Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 2016 and P. J. Rhodes (ed. trans.) The Athenian Constitution written in the School of Aristotle, Liverpool, 2017’, Classical Review 68.2: 366-69.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X18000410
A. Esu (2016) ‘Review of M. H. Hansen (2015), Political Obligation in Ancient Greece and in the Modern World, Copenhagen, (Scientia Danica. Series H, Humanistica, 8 vol. 10.) Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters’, Classical Review 66. 2: 478-80.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X16000937