Fortifications and democracy in the ancient Greek world By Josiah Ober

https://www.academia.edu/94059064/Fortifications_and_democracy_in_the_ancient_Greek_world?sm=b&rhid=37229243351 How much has democracy to do with the development of urban architecture in the ancient Greek world? In this chapter we tlook at a category of architecture that (so we will argue) helped sustain democracy (if not liberal democracy3) across the Greek world in the late- and postclassical periods, that is, the massive stone and brick fortifications that framed urban spaces. We will make what we suppose is a counterintuitive claim: in late-classical and Hellenistic Greek antiquity, big investments by city-states (Greek poleis) in military architecture (especially monumental city walls and outworks, but also fortified villages, garrison forts, watchtowers in the countryside) were closely related to the spread of democracy across the ecology of city-states and contributed materially to the stability of democracy within those states. ...