The ethnic turn has led to a paradigm shift in Classics and Ancient History. In Greek history
it toppled the traditional view that the various ethnos states of the Classical and Hellenistic
periods drew on a remote pedigree of tribal togetherness. Instead it appears that those
leagues were built on essentially changing flexible and relatively late constructions of
regional identities that took shape most often only in the Archaic period. The implications are
far-reaching. They impact the conception of an ethnos' political organization and they spill
over into the study of external relations. It has been posited that in their conduct of foreign
policy ethne often resorted to a federal program. Did ethne emulate each other and did they
inspire others to adopt a federal organization? More recently it was argued that their foreign
policy was charged with ethnicized attitudes. Did the idea of ethnic togetherness generally
influence foreign policy? And did everyone subscribe to the same blueprint of ethnicized
arguments? The contributions to this volume explore the lived and often contradictory
experience between tribal belonging and political integration.
