The term Politeia is first attested in Herodotus and is widely employed in the historical and political prose of the second half of the fifth century BCE .

Tra marginalità e integrazione. Aspetti dell'assistenza sociale nel mondo greco e romano-A cura di U. Roberto e P.

No abstract

Despite both the recent claim that the absence of an individual dimension of existence in the classical age hindered the development of "autobiography" in the Greek world, shaping, at best, an autobiographical dimension rather than an autobiographical genre, 1 and the daring conclusion that "the Greeks did not write autobiographies, " 2 autobiography has had in fact a long history in Greek historiography, as Vivienne Gray has highlighted in the previous chapter. As observed by G. Misch, 3 this literary genre lacks a specific form, and can present itself under the guise of letters, speeches, travel diaries, and memoirs, among others; thus, autobiographical traces must not be overlooked as has sometimes happened. 4 In effect, autobiographical stances have been recorded ever since Homer; 5 despite the fact that the Greek cultural milieu (and the Athenian in particular) does not itself seem to favor the emergence of a strongly autobiographical focus due to the prevalence of the public over the individual dimension, in Greek