Kinship myths of ancient Greece and International Relations

“International relations (IR) as a field of study deals with decisions that are made within a country that have implications for relationships outside the borders of that country.” (Kaufman, J. (2013) Introduction to International Relations: Theory and Practice). The field of IR was established in the aftermath of the First World War, placing particular attention on war and peace at international level. While IR as a discipline is relatively recent in the history of political science, its concerns have occupied all societies since antiquity. In this talk I will use the modern tool of IR theory, in order to approach the particularities of ancient Greek society, and more specifically myth’s central role in Greek “international” politics, concentrating on myths of kinship between cities and ethnic sub-groups among the Greeks. Kinship myths were associated with gods and heroes as common ancestors of whole communities and the foundation of new settlements abroad, being rooted in a very distant past. At the same time they had a very practical application in the sphere of politics and interstate relations. They were used (often by being adapted according to the needs of the moment) by leaders and communities as powerful arguments of diplomacy and decision-making in times of war and peace, and were constitutive of a community’s ethnic identity.