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Lecture

Sophia Aneziri gives four lectures on the topic “For Eternity: the Foundations of Greek Antiquity between Individual and Collective History” at the Collège de France.

Foundations have been around for a long time. They are based on the donation-transfer of movable or immovable property and the use of this income to finance an objective defined by the donor. The protection of assets is an integral part of foundations. They must be left intact so that the objective can be pursued over time (ideally forever).

Internationally, the interest in the phenomenon of foundations over time is clear. In 2020, Borgolte published an 800-page book entitled ‘World History as a History of Foundations’, which examines religious foundations from Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt through the medieval West to the monasteries of India and China. The political context of foundations is highlighted in a collective work entitled ‘Stiftungen zwischen Politik und Wirtschaft. Geschichte und Gegenwart im Dialog’, published in 2015 and edited by S. von Reden. Here, the foundations of modern and contemporary times are also taken into account and a dialogue is established between past and present.

The foundations of Greek antiquity are the material on which this series of lectures will be based. Although they are a diachronic phenomenon, foundations can only be fully understood in the political, social, economic and cultural context of their time, and at the same time they help considerably to understand that context. They will be examined, where methodology permits, over the long term, i.e. from the earliest evidence of the fourth century BC to the Roman period, but with the emphasis on Hellenistic cases and their historical context.

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