Indagare il lessico federale nella Grecia antica. La Confederazione beotica: un caso di studio

The paper aims to investigate the Greek federal lexicon, by considering the Boeotian confederacy as a case study. Starting from the assumption that the London papyrus’ discovery of the Oxyrhynchia Hellenika, which contains a long description of the Boeotian constitution, marks a pivotal moment for the history of Greek federalism, the analysis will extend to the impact that the federal lexicon used by the Oxyrinchus historian had on later authors. It will be shown that, before the testimony of the Oxyrhynchia Hellenika, the only way to refer to the Boeotian confederacy of the classic age was by using the ethnikon. The employment of the federal lexicon (e.g. koinon, sympoliteia, ethnos, synteleia) by 5th century BC authors whatsoever implies the presence of a federal state in Boeotia, as those same terms knew numerous other contexts in the Greek language. Thanks to the Anonymous these terms are also repurposed to refer to the Boeotian confederacy of the classical period and this tendency was shared by some later authors to also define the further stages of the koinon.