About

Marc Domingo Gygax is the Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and a Professor of Classics at Princeton University. His principal interests include Hellenistic History, the history of classical Athens and archaic Greece, Greek Epigraphy, ancient and modern Philosophy of History, and Historical Anthropology. Before joining Princeton in 2002, he taught at the University of Tübingen from 1997 to 2002 and held a Fulbright post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley from 1994 to 1995. He studied Ancient History, Archaeology, and Prehistory at the University of Barcelona, earning a Licentiate in 1988 and a PhD in 1993, and also studied Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Tübingen, where he obtained an M.A. in 1990. His research explores the origins of city-states in Lycia, the phenomenon of Greek euergetism, and the long-term regularities and structures behind human deeds in history. Gygax has published extensively on topics such as Greek gift-exchange, reciprocity, inscriptions from Asia Minor, papyri, classical Athens, and classical reception. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Generalitat of Catalonia. He teaches undergraduate courses on Hellenistic History, Greek democracy, Greek and Roman Historiography, and Greek Epigraphy, as well as graduate seminars, including those in the Princeton-Oxford Exchange Program. He is affiliated with the Program in Hellenic Studies and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Sociology
• Visual arts
• Aesthetics
• History
• Art
• Epistemology
• Political economy
• Philosophy
• Classics
• Geography
• Ancient history

Selected publications

• Introduction

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-01-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Introduction outlines the main themes, issues and structure of the volume; provides a historiography of the debate on public giving and euergetism; and discusses recent theories.

  PublisherDOI

• Classical Athens and the Invention of Civic Euergetism

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 18 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Athens represents a special case in the history of Greek public benefactions. It is probably the polis that most resisted the emergence of civic euergetism, that is, the establishment of an organized exchange of benefactions for honors between polis and citizens. At the same time, no other classical polis contributed so much to the development of the practice and to its transformation into a defining institution of the Hellenistic age. This chapter examines these two sides of the history of Athenian euergetism in order to explain the widespread integration of citizens into an institution born before the classical period to regulate the relationship between poleis and foreigners. It deals with the reasons for the opposition to donations and honors for citizens, the factors that contributed to overcoming resistance to euergetism, and the elitist content of classical civic euergetism. Finally, it discusses some developments that counterbalanced this elitist component: the 'democratization' of euergetism through grants of honors to non-wealthy citizens, the organization of epidoseis, and other measures that served to prevent the rise of a class of great financial benefactors, along with the relaxation of this policy in the time of Lycurgus.

  PublisherDOI

• Benefactors and the Polis

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Classics

  Historians generally study elite public gift-giving in ancient Greek cities as a phenomenon that gained prominence only in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods. The contributors to this volume challenge this perspective by offering analyses of various manifestations of elite public giving in the Greek cities from Homeric times until Late Antiquity, highlighting this as a structural feature of polis society from its origins in the early Archaic age to the world of the Christian Greek city in the early Byzantine period. They discuss existing interpretations, offer novel ideas and arguments, and stress continuities and changes over time. Bracketed by a substantial Introduction and Conclusion, the volume is accessible both to ancient historians and to scholars studying gift-giving in other times and places.

  PublisherDOI

• Conclusion

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-01-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter presents concluding thoughts by the editors, identifying some of the main themes that have emerged from the chapters, and outlining some areas for further study.

  PublisherDOI

• Defining Boundaries in the Treaty of Apamea. A Note on a New Edition of Livy’s Fourth Decade

  Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte Romanistische Abteilung · 2020-07-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This contribution deals with Livy’s account of the peace treaty of Apamea between Rome and Antiochus III (189/188 BC), and in particular with Liv. 37,56,1–6, which treats the division of the Seleucid dominions in Asia Minor between Eumenes II and the Rhodians. With attention to Yardley’s new Loeb edition and translation of Livy’s fourth decade, it discusses grammatical problems and questions of textual transmission, translation, and historical and geographical interpretation.

  PublisherDOI

• Irreligiosity in Thucydides

  Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2020-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Euergetism and the embedded economy of the Greek polis

  2019-04-16 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter explores the economic impact of euergetism on the Greek polis by paying attention not only to the phenomenon of donations to the community by wealthy individuals, but also to public rewards for benefactions generally. Although the latter practice involved noneconomic benefactions, consideration of it allows for a better understanding of how donations arose. The main theories regarding euergetism and their evolution in recent decades as a result of changes in scholarly paradigms are discussed. This survey is followed by an analysis of euergetism in classical Athens that allows for new conclusions about the economic role of the phenomenon over time, as well as about the political, social, and economic evolution in the polis in the classical and Hellenistic periods.

  PublisherDOI

• Tucídides y el giro lingüístico en la historiografía contemporánea

  Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Redistribution and its Limits: Responding to Financial Challenges in Fourth-Century Athens

  Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2018-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Prologue: irreligiosity in fifth-century Athens

  Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra eBooks · 2018-06-29

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Arjan Zuiderhoek

  Ghent University

  7 shared

• John P. Tully

  5 shared

• Robin Osborne

  5 shared

• Hans van Wees

  5 shared

• Carlos F. Noreña

  5 shared

• Rolf Strootman

  5 shared

• Beate Wagner‐Hasel

  Leibniz University Hannover

  5 shared

• Onno M. van Nijf

  University of Groningen

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation
• Fellowship from the Fulbright Commission
• Fellowship from the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washingto…
• Fellowship from the Generalitat of Catalonia