Thalassokratia: un concetto, molti nomi

Abstract

The concept of thalassocracy, although problematic and difficult to define, is commonly used by modern authors, but if we examine ancient sources, we note both an extraordinary shortage of occurrences of this word and a considerable gap between the idea of thalassokratia that appears in the authors of the classical era, which often seems to correspond to a power of the sea in more or less local area, and a broader concept that emerges later, as a political category considered in its development.

Through an analysis of occurrences, in this essay we try to oppose the communis opinio that both the term and the concept must trace back to the Ionian area, emphasizing instead that this category may have better been developed in Attica during the Athenian Empire, when reflections about the hegemonic phenomenon and its antecedents could make sense and take hold.

Herodotus, Pseudo-Xenophon and Thucydides could all bear witness to the existence of a highly developed debate in the early years of the Peloponnesian War, using the word thalassokratia with double sigma, perhaps because it was perceived as archaic or refined, rather than as typically Ionic. Whatever the origin of the word may be, however, it is not thoroughly used by the authors of classical prose, who preferred other options for the definition of this fundamental concept.