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Chapter 2 – Section 1
Ancient Greece
Narrator: No it’s not a scene from a Hollywood epic. This is the Thames at Putney,
London this morning, when a replica of a Greek trieres is showing off its paces. Its
170 rowers can thrust it forward at up to 10 miles an hour, a compelling reminder of
how Athenian naval power ruled the civilized world. This warship symbolizes the
freedom Greece secured for itself by routing the Persians, but it was also the
instrument that made Athens rich by extracting tribute from its empire. So just how
starry eyed should we be about the city that gave us the Acropolis, Socrates and
Plato. If we are to believe the man who presided over the golden age of Athens,
Pericles, then the place and the way it was governed should be an example to us
all.
Male Speaker: Our constitution is called a democracy because the power is in the
hands not of a minority, but the whole people. When it is a question of settling
private disputes everyone is equal before the law. When it is a question of putting
one person before another, in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not
membership of a particular class, but the actual ability a man possesses.
Narrator: But as this inscription in the British Museum demonstrates Athenian
freedom was built partly on the oppression of others. Here the Athenians are
imposing their democratic system on the people of Erythre. Most of the Aegean
was forced by Athens’ navy to cough up money and ruthlessly suppressed if it
refused. At home slaves and women had no vote, which prompted the comic play
writer Aristophanes to allow his women to express their exasperation with the
system, but if you were an Athenian citizen you took part in a direct democracy.
The world has not seen the like of it since. Everyone could turn out at the debates,
everyone could speak, everyone could vote on every issue. The people, the demos
was truly sovereign. And it is occasionally looked like rule by the mob. We must
remember that when Athens sent her trieres and foot soldiers into the
Peloponnesian war at the end of the fifth century, her first priority was hardly the
lofty ideal of extending democracy. It was essentially a naked struggle for power
with Sparta, which Athens lost.
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