Morderstwo polityczne u progu okresu hellenistycznego. Mechanizm działania w świetle uwarunkowań historycznych
Political Murder at the Threshold of the Hellenistic Period. The Mechanism of Action in the Light of Historical Condition

Summary/Abstract: This article analyses the phenomenon of the prevalence of political murders and their nature, based on the example of their occurrence in selected city-states, or lands of the Greek world such as Athens, Thebes, Sparta and Macedonia, playing a leading role in politics at the time. For this purpose, selected exemplifications from the turn of the Classical and Hellenistic periods were used. The juxtaposition of the two periods was intended to see differences and analogies and the impact of the sudden death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC on the course of events at the time. Attention has been given to the variety and cruelty of the punishments used and the motives used to justify the political murders committed. In addition to this, attention was paid to the social aspect, the perception and reactions of the individual to the murder issues and their view of the guilt of the perpetrators. The work undertaken was inspired by the fact of the apparent incongruity between the selected cases. The implication of the source analysis and the literature on the subject is to present common features classifying them as a political murder. Despite the available sources and literature on the subject, in many respects, the issue of political murder remains unexplored. The examples included in this article represent a fraction of those preserved in the source accounts.

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