Gli antichi Greci e la guerra: libertà e/è partecipazione.

This essay explores the close connection between the concept of freedom and collective action during wartime in Classical Greece. It focuses particularly on Athens during the Pentecontaetia (479–431 BCE), a period marked by a widespread effort to commemorate the Persian Wars (492–479 BCE). Literary, epigraphic, and monumental sources consistently depict the conflict against Xerxes as a war ‘for the freedom of Greece,’ framing it within a historical perspective centered on a new awareness of the civic community's collective agency. Consequently, these sources highlight another facet of Athenian eleutheria, which—even from an internal political standpoint—appears intrinsically linked to the concept of active participation.