Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- The Hellenistic Dynasties
- Series Editor's Preface
- Map
- Introduction: Court and Empire in the Hellenistic Near East
- PART I SETTING THE SCENE
- 1 The Court as an Instrument of Power
- 2 The Theatre of Royalty
- 3 The Royal Palace: A Stage for Royal Rituals
- PART II THE COURT AS A SOCIO-POLITICAL SYSTEM
- PART III CEREMONIAL AND RITUAL
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Court as an Instrument of Power
from PART I - SETTING THE SCENE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- The Hellenistic Dynasties
- Series Editor's Preface
- Map
- Introduction: Court and Empire in the Hellenistic Near East
- PART I SETTING THE SCENE
- 1 The Court as an Instrument of Power
- 2 The Theatre of Royalty
- 3 The Royal Palace: A Stage for Royal Rituals
- PART II THE COURT AS A SOCIO-POLITICAL SYSTEM
- PART III CEREMONIAL AND RITUAL
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is difficult to say what exactly a court is. One runs the risk of either excluding too many facets, or defining it too loosely. Most definitions consider the court to be a social space. Thus Elton wrote that ‘[t]he only definition of the court which makes sense … is that it comprised all those who at any given time were within “his grace's house”’. Starkey worked from an even narrower definition, excluding from the courtly milieu servants, guards, stablehands and other household personnel. However, such people could in practice be extremely influential since they, too, were part of the ‘inner court’ which surrounded the king on a regular basis, and thus relatively close to him. The problem, of course, is that in no two periods or states is a court similar. Medieval European courts were often peripatetic. Renaissance and Ancien Régime courts, on the other hand, could usually be localised in one or more fixed residences, and consequently modern definitions for this period more often include references to palaces. An interesting alternative definition is provided by Rodríquez-Salgado, who defines the court as the place where the ‘sovereign power’ of the monarchy resides; this leaves open the possibility that the monarch's ‘sovereign authority’ can be present even when the monarch himself is absent: ‘the monarch's residual authority, not his presence, was the prerequisite of a court’.
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- Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic EmpiresThe Near East After the Achaemenids, c. 330 to 30 BCE, pp. 31 - 41Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014