Rethinking Athenian Democracy reappraises the political structure of classical Athens from a viewpoint that does not presuppose a successful Periclean democracy, and contends that there are new reasons to doubt many of the claims for its excellence as a model of democratic politics. It advances an unorthodox reconstruction of Athenian political history which argues that Athenian government in the Periclean era was controlled by its council and not, as generally held, by regular assemblies of citizens. It contends that the orthodox view rests principally on the selectively wrongful use of fourth-century evidence.
The book argues that an unhistorical vindication of Athenian, and especially of Periclean, democracy was developed by English Radical and liberalist writers in and after the early nineteenth century. The rehabilitation of Athenian democracy was cemented by George Grote’s phenomenally influential mid-Victorian History of Greece. At the same time, reasonable scholarly argument against the Radical reconstruction of Athenian politics was discounted under the weight of a widespread sympathy with liberalist sentiments. Grote’s portrayal of Athens, it is contended, acted as a legitimising factor in the implementation of democratic political reform in Victorian England. And - despite the advances of classical scholarship - an erroneous view of Athens, rooted in a perspective originally articulated by Grote, continues to influence both the interpretation of antiquity and much contemporary discourse about the limits and possibilities of democratic politics.
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It is widely held that Periclean Athens operated as an efficient – and perhaps even emulable - direct democracy. This view has become entrenched despite the all but unanimous testimony of antiquity that Athenian dêmokratia was unstable, faction-ridden, corrupted and inegalitarian. This would not be so bad if it were legitimate to assail the ancient and modern critics of Athenian politics as anti-democratic elitists. Yet this endeavour is problematic when literary testimony of the failings of the classical dêmokratia is supported by non-narrative and non-literary evidence.
One is asked to believe that Athenian democracy functioned in certain ways for which there is no historical testimony, and to accept that favourable representations of its workings may be legitimately reconstructed from literary fragments and (more recently) lines from the texts of classical drama, to the disregard of copious ancient criticism. This book presents a new reconstruction of Athenian politics which seeks to demonstrate that its development can be sensibly understood along the lines presented in the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. In this account there was no 5th century Periclean mass direct democracy. That was a fourth century development and one which, as the ancients recorded, did not work particularly well.
Part I aims to demonstrate that the orthodox view of the evolution of Athenian democracy is skewed in certain vital respects. On this view Athens, perhaps in the time of Cleisthenes, probably after the Persian Wars, and certainly from the ‘reforms’ of Ephialtes to its surrender to Macedon in 322, functioned as a direct participatory democracy in which the political control and direction of the affairs of Attica was in the hands of male citizens over eighteen years of age, meeting in regular mass assembly under the guidance of the boulê.
In response to that view, I present a critique of both the history and the portrayal of classical Athens. I argue that much of the evidence advanced for ‘classical Greek democracy’ before 403 is fundamentally misleading. I argue that the shifting interpretations of Athens over the last two centuries have very much to do with the concerns of the day and very little to do with the objective presentation of historical evidence. The picture of ‘Athenian democracy’ reflected in for example the Cambridge Ancient History was largely formed in substance by the late nineteenth century, and certain crucial elements in its construction seem to have flourished due to ideological empathies, despite historical evidence which ought to have refuted much of the foundations on which the view rests.
The reconstruction of a non-democratic fifth-century dêmokratia presented in Part I leads directly to the problem addressed in Part II: how did the misrepresentation of the historical Athens arise? I suggest that it resulted from the entrenchment of an image of a ‘democratic’ Athens which was originally constructed in the 1820s. It was within an extant culture of Romantic Hellenism that the Radical historian George Grote successfully reversed the erstwhile negative status of Athenian democracy, which in turn – I contend - contributed substantially to the legitimization and acceptance of the democratic ideology underpinning the 1867 Second Reform Act in the eyes of the English upper and middle classes. The legacy of this ideology is subsequently traced through into much contemporary political theory.
The conclusion reviews the case that has been presented: that the Athenian dêmokratia was most fully developed in the fourth century, and that a broadly liberalist interpretation of Athenian politics has influenced, both for better and for worse, the shape of a significant part of contemporary Western democratic political discourse. There are significant (negative) implications for those who would argue that ancient practices can usefully inform contemporary democratic debate.
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The structure of the book in further detail:
Part I presents an unorthodox reconstruction of Athenian political history down into the C4th B.C.
Chapter 1 traces political structures to the time of Cleisthenes and contends that Attica was not unified before the end of the sixth century. It then reviews the evidence for the existence of archaic democratic sympathies with respect to the ‘reforms’ of Solon, and proposes a redefinition of some crucial elements of the political vocabulary of Ancient Greek.
Chapter 2 is concerned with the nature of the Cleisthenic state. It discusses the roles of Athens’ central political institutions between 508/7 and 462, and argues that it was the establishment of the Council of 500 which constituted the basis of what became known as dêmokratia; the much-vaunted ekklêsia made little regular appearance under the Cleisthenic state other than for the purpose of military mobilisation. It defends the testimony of A.P. to the effect that the Areopagus dominated the Athenian state from ca. 480 to 462, and discusses the impact of Ephialtes on Athenian politics in the years immediately after its curtailment.
Chapter 3 questions the orthodox reconstruction of the Athenian empire and argues, following the work of Harold Mattingly, that it developed much later than generally held. These chapters establish the historical background against which the political structures of the Periclean era must be understood.
Chapter 4 extends from the mid century down past the death of Pericles to the rule of the Thirty in 404/3. It argues that under Pericles there was no ‘direct democracy’ as conventionally understood. The ‘Athens’ that informed the successful democratization of Victorian England is contended to have been based on relatively infrequent assemblies whose purpose was primarily military. The arts and the building program were resounding showcases for Athenian glory but bore no intrinsic connection with a ‘democratic’ politics. A quest for wealth and status drew those whose names became famous to Athens, not the nature of its political regime.
Chapter 5 traces the institutional history of the reconstituted dêmokratia of 403, certain features of which have come to be cherished as laudable political achievements by scholars who have, it will be argued, anachronistically envisaged them as operative in the Periclean era. It lastly offers a critique of an influential body of recent work which contends that classical drama espouses or reflects egalitarian sentiments.
Part II turns to the interpretation of Athens.
Chapter 6 traces the evolution of the English reception of the Greeks from the early eighteenth century to the Victorian era, and delineates the extent of the cultural identification with Athens felt by the early Victorians. A detailed study of the periodical literature and emergent classical scholarship reveals how greatly classical studies was indebted to reformist political aspirations. The ideological bases of American and German classicism are also interrogated.
Chapter 7 aims to show that Grote’s History of Greece provided the intellectual capstone to unhistorical English reconstructions of Athenian democracy, and argues that the Victorian vision of Athens profoundly impacted on popular but also elite conceptions of the feasibility of democratic political reform.
Chapter 8 traces the legacy of Grote’s Athens which, although scholastically obsolete, remains ideologically enshrined as its dominant image in much contemporary democratic political theory.
The conclusion reviews the case that has been presented. There are significant implications for those who would argue that ancient practices can usefully inform contemporary democratic debate.
Whose Work Is Critically Appraised In This Book?
Prominent and influential scholars include A. Andrewes, G.W. Bowersock, G. Cawkwell, Mortimer Chambers, M.L. Clarke, W.R. Connor, Eric Csapo, J.K. Davies, J. Day, R.A. DeLaix, K.J. Dover, John Dunn, Victor Ehrenberg, J. Peter Euben, Cynthia Farrar, Moses Finley, Charles Fornara, W.G. Forrest, A. French, F.J. Frost, A. Fuks, A.W. Gomme, G.T. Griffith, Steven Halliwell, N.G.L. Hammond, Mogens Hansen, Victor Hanson, E.M. Harris, Charles Hedrick, David Held, Alan Henry, C. Hignett, Simon Hornblower, Richard Jenkyns, A.H.M. Jones, J.J. Keaney, G.B Kerferd, Konrad Kinzl, H.D.F. Kitto, J.H. Kroll, J.A.O. Larsen, D.M. Lewis, J.D. Lewis, R.J. L:ittman, H. Lloyd-Jones, Nicole Loreaux, P.B. Manville, H.B. Mattingly, I.F. Morris, Oswyn Murray, Y. Naketegawa, Josiah Ober, J.L. O'Neil, Robin Osbourne, Martin Ostwald, A.J. Podlecki, Kurt Raaflaub, P.J. Rhodes, Jennifer Roberts, W.G. Runciman, Robert Sallares, Arlene Saxonhouse, Raphael Sealey, H.A. Shapiro, R.K. Sinclair, Quentin Skinner, G.R. Stanton, Chester Starr, David Stockton, Barry Strauss, F.M. Turner, W.B. Tyrrell, J.-P. Vernant, Paul Veyne, Gregory Vlastos, R.W. Wallace, K.-W. Welwei, David Whitehead, Terry Wick, and many others.
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