The Transformations of Archaic Greece and the Problem of Civilizational Choice <i>(Reflections on Albert A. Stepanian’s Monograph Ancient Greece: Research Sketches)</i>

<jats:p>This review essay examines the first volume of Albert A. Stepanian's monograph Ancient Greece: Research Esquisses, which reconceptualizes the transformations of post-Mycenaean and Archaic Greece through the analytical concept of the “transitive society.” The article situates Stepanian's argument within contemporary debates in Classical Studies and historical sociology, foregrounding his central thesis that, between the twelfth and eighth centuries BCE, the Greek polities faced not merely the task of recovery but a profound civilizational choice. It traces how this framework structures the monograph's two complementary parts – on the formation of the polis world and on the Spartan model – and assesses the author's treatment of technological change, the polis revolution, the agon, the Great Colonization, early tyranny, the Lycurgan Rhetra, and Plato's Republic. Particular attention is devoted to Stepanian's reinterpretation of Sparta not as an exception but as a distinct paradigm of Archaic social organization, a move that challenges the stereotype of Spartan exceptionalism prevalent in Anglo-American historiography. While affirming the methodological coherence and interdisciplinary scope of the work, the essay also identifies several issues that call for further clarification, most notably the relationship between historical agency and structural constraints and the operational content of the concept of oikoumene.</jats:p>