What are we to do with Argos? The city has long been an important source of detail for debates in epichoric history – from the semi-legendary king Pheidon, to the battle of Sepia and Sparta’s relationships with its neighbors, to the dramatic expansions of the Achaean League. Argos has also starred as an alternative to Athens, another robust mainland democracy with enough documentation to further our understanding of democratic institutions and practices. These approaches, while important, do not place Argos in the center of wider interpretive trends in ancient history and archaeology: the former approaches fail to capture a wider audience, while the latter risk not devoting enough attention to the complexities posed by Argos itself.
Argos is overdue for a contemporary reexamination of its place in Greek history. A number of important conference publications have offered new insight since the turn of the century, but as our understanding of the city’s historical periods develops – in no small part thanks to the important fourth-century archive under study by Charalampos Kritzas – a synthetic reevaluation of Argos’ place in history is all the more important.
The goal of this symposium is to provide a platform for synthetic conversations by bringing together specialists from across sub-fields of Argive history and archaeology, centered around the focal question: how should new advances in these sub-fields change our overarching narratives of Argos’ past?