Download (c) Imprint Academic 2011 For personal use only -

PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS:
FRANK SPEECH, FLATTERY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
IN DEMOCRATIC ATHENS
Matthew Landauer1,2
Abstract: Parrhesia, or frank speech, is usually understood as a practice intimately
connected to Athenian democracy. This paper begins by analysing parrhesia in
non-democratic regimes. Building on that analysis, I suggest that most accounts of
parrhesia overlook the degree to which its practice at Athens implied a comparison of
the demos to an unaccountable ruler — a tyrant. As a practice, parrhesia was
paradigmatically undertaken by speakers addressing an audience with the power to
sanction them in the event that their advice proved uncongenial. As such it could be
useful in both democracies and autocracies, serving as a possible counterweight to
flattering rhetoric. But in both regime types it was in essence a remedial virtue, necessitated by a basic structural feature common to both autocratic and Athenian democratic decision procedures: at the centre of both was an unaccountable decision maker
able to hold its advisors to account.
Introduction
The Greek word parrhesia, literally meaning ‘saying everything’,3 was deployed
in fifth- and fourth-century Greek literature in two broad senses. On the one
hand, it could connote thoughtless, careless, impudent speech. Thus Isocrates
in the Aeropagiticus, in comparing the contemporary fourth-century democracy unfavourably with the regime founded by Solon and Cleisthenes, lists
parrhesia, along with license (akolasia), lawlessness (paranomia) and a general sense of entitlement among the citizens to do whatever they please
(exousian tou panta poiein) as lamentable features of contemporary Athenian
life.4 On the other hand, parrhesia could connote free speech, both as a privilege granted by a political regime and as the practice of frank speakers, even
(or especially) in the face of personal risk.
Parrhesia in these positive senses has recently been analysed within a
variety of fifth- and fourth-century Athenian contexts, and the literature
explores the many ways in which the practice was intimately connected to
1 Committee on Social Studies, Harvard University, Hilles Library, 59 Shepard St,
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Email: [email protected]
2 The author would like to thank Mary Dietz, Jennifer London, Harvey Mansfield,
Eric Nelson, Emma Saunders-Hastings, Joel Schlosser, Christina Tarnopolsky, Richard
Tuck, and audiences at the MPSA Annual Conference in 2009 and the Harvard Political
Theory Workshop for helpful comments on previous versions of this paper.
3 The Greek roots are ‘pan’ (all) and ‘rhesis’ or ‘rhema’ (speech).
4 Isocrates, Aeropagiticus, in the Loeb Isocrates, Vol. 2, trans. G. Norlin (Cambridge, MA, 1929), para. 20.7. Citations of Isocrates in this paper come from the
three-volume Loeb edition, with some translations modified.
HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXXIII. No. 2. Summer 2012
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
186
M. LANDAUER
Athenian democracy.5 Parrhesia is thought to have played an important role
in the Assembly, serving as a possible antidote to the dangers of expert and
potentially deceptive rhetoric and helping to secure the epistemic properties
crucial to a successful debate.6 More broadly, parrhesia is thought to have
resonated deeply with Athenian political culture. In the Republic, Socrates
describes the democratic city as ‘full of freedom and freedom of speech
[parrhesia]’, and modern scholars have followed suit in their descriptions of
democratic Athens.7 Arlene Saxonhouse, stressing parrhesia’s link with
shamelessness, sees it as fundamentally connected to democracy as the
regime that ‘breaks from the reverence for what has been and focuses rather
on the present and the future’.8 For her, parrhesia, ‘so central to democratic
Athens’ self-conception’, is fundamentally anti-hierarchical and egalitarian.9
Sara Monoson, emphasizing parrhesia’s democratic overtones, contrasts a
picture of a democratic city teeming with outspoken purveyors of sharp, critical, insight with an inverse image of the cowed subjects of a tyrant. Once
again, Plato’s Republic offers a window onto this view: in Socrates’ description of the tyrannical regime, one of the tyrant’s first acts is to dispose of his
former allies, on the grounds that they ‘speak freely [parrhesiazesthai] to
each other and to him, criticizing what’s happening’.10 The supposed absence
of parrhesia under tyranny and its flourishing in democracy can thus be
linked to the general anti-tyrannical ideology in fifth- and fourth-century Athens: ‘the practice of parrhesia in politics and personal life at Athens was
treated as a sign, indeed as proof, that the Athenians had defeated tyranny at
5 Scholarly work has linked parrhesia with various facets of democratic life. For
parrhesia’s relationship to comedy, see S. Halliwell, ‘Comic Satire and Freedom of
Speech in Classical Athens’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 111 (1991), pp. 48–70; and
J. Henderson, ‘Attic Old Comedy Frank Speech, and Democracy’, in Democracy,
Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens, ed. D. Boedeker and K.A. Raaflaub (Cambridge, MA, 1998), pp. 255–74. For parrhesia’s relationship to virtues such as courage
see S. Monoson, Plato’s Democratic Entanglements (Princeton, 2000), pp. 52–3; and
R. Balot, ‘Free Speech, Courage, and Democratic Deliberation’, in Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, ed. I. Sluiter and R.M. Rosen (Leiden, 2004), pp. 233–60. For its relationship to emotions such as shame see C. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants
(Princeton, 2010), ch. 3; and A. Saxonhouse, Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient
Athens (Cambridge, 2006), esp. ch. 2. For discussions of parrhesia’s place in democratic
ideology more broadly, see Monoson, Entanglements and Saxonhouse, Free Speech,
along with Elizabeth Markovits, The Politics of Sincerity (University Park, 2008).
6 Monoson, Entanglements, pp. 60–2; cf. Saxonhouse, Free Speech, pp. 92–3, on the
contrast between parrhesia and rhetoric.
7 Plato, Republic, in Complete Works, ed. J. Cooper (Indianapolis, 1997), 557b.
8 Saxonhouse, Free Speech, p. 209.
9 Ibid., p. 214.
10 Plato, Republic, 567c.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
187
home . . . and were now in fact living as free citizens’.11 By and large, the literature on parrhesia and democratic Athens offers an attractive picture of an
Athenian demos adhering to a popular ideology with a strong, participatory,
critical ethic of parrhesia at its core. Even scholars critical of some aspects of
this picture, or sceptical of how well parrhesia actually functioned, agree on
its important place in democratic ideology.12
The flourishing research on parrhesia’s relationship to democracy has not
been matched, however, with sustained consideration of its place in nondemocratic regimes.13 This is unfortunate for two reasons. First, our understanding of parrhesia is incomplete when we focus only on the democratic
context. But more importantly, a consideration of how parrhesia was thought
to function in autocracies can and should be the occasion to supplement and
clarify our understanding of how it functioned in Athenian democracy.
Parrhesia, I argue, was paradigmatically practised by speakers addressing an
audience with the power to reward or sanction them for their advice. Insofar
as this is true, parrhesia was not so much a norm for deliberation, understood
as co-equals jointly and freely deciding on a plan of action by discussing and
weighing the possible options, as it was a norm for counsel, understood as an
individual offering advice to a decision maker, individual or collective.14 As
such it could be practised, in both democracies and autocracies, as a remedial
virtue, necessitated by a structural feature common to both autocratic and
Athenian democratic decision procedures: at the centre of both was an unaccountable decision maker able to hold advisers to account. The remedial status of this form of parrhesia is underscored when we contrast it with another
11 Monoson, Entanglements, p. 55. For a discussion of the ‘Athenians’ official views
and self-representation’ as pertaining to tyranny, see also K.A. Raaflaub, ‘Stick and
Glue: the Function of Tyranny in Fifth-Century Athenian Democracy’, in Popular
Tyranny, ed. K. Morgan (Austin, 2003), pp. 59–94.
12 See, for example, Markovits, Politics of Sincerity, pp. 65–80. Markovits departs
from Monoson’s account of how Plato and Socrates approached the issues surrounding
parrhesia. She is also sceptical of the value of ‘straight talk’ for democracy generally,
arguing that parrhesia, at its worst, was merely another form of flattering rhetoric. Nonetheless, she largely accepts Monoson’s account of parrhesia’s place in Athenian
democratic ideology. See also Saxonhouse, Free Speech, which gives ample space to an
exploration of problems with the practice of parrhesia (see especially chapters five and
seven), without, however, denying its close association with democracy.
13 But see J. London, ‘How to do things with Fables: Ibn al-Muqaffa‘’s Frank Speech
in Stories from KalÌla Wa Dimna’, History of Political Thought, 29 (2)(2008), for a treatment of a kind of parrhesia in an autocratic (but non-Greek) context. D. Konstan also discusses parrhesia’s function in Hellenistic courts in his Friendship in the Classical World
(Cambridge, 1997). See below, n. 24, for more on Konstan’s understanding of parrhesia
in autocracies.
14 I am here drawing a distinction between ‘deliberation’ and ‘counsel’ even though
the Greeks may not have drawn such a sharp division between the two. Keeping the distinction in mind helps to clarify how parrhesia functioned in the Assembly.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
188
M. LANDAUER
usage of the term: parrhesia could also refer to a privilege of speaking frankly
with relative impunity — one that could be either granted or denied by rulers.15 Supporters of the Athenian regime consistently argued that it was in the
nature of democracies to grant this privilege to their citizens. But the fact that
Athenian democracy required its citizens to cultivate the virtue of risky
parrhesia strongly suggests that the privilege of speaking with impunity was
not consistently protected. If it was, why would political speech have been
risky in the first place? One might even say that speaking with parrhesia —
offering bold counsel in the face of significant personal risk — was a democratic virtue only insofar as the demos itself was structurally similar to a
tyrant.
The argument of the article proceeds as follows. In the first section, I
explore texts in which parrhesia is explicitly discussed in autocratic contexts.
Here I show that Athenians such as Isocrates thought that parrhesia was
important in autocratic as well as democratic settings: parrhesia could serve
as a possible counterweight to flattery, itself engendered by the autocrat’s
position as sole, unaccountable decision maker, with the power to reward and
punish his advisers. Having shown that the need for parrhesia in autocracies
arose from the power asymmetry between adviser and decision maker, I argue
in the following sections that a similar asymmetry of power obtained in democratic Athens. In Section II, I turn to an analysis of ancient explorations of
accountability and its absence in both tyrannies and democratic Athens, and
emphasize the structural basis for the rise of the image of the unaccountable
demos, analogized to the tyrant: Voters in the Assembly, and Jurors in the
popular courts, were thoroughly insulated from Athens’ otherwise extensive
network of accountability mechanisms, while simultaneously collectively
wielding the power to hold individual citizens accountable. The power asymmetries in the Assembly, I argue, thus parallelled those between the autocrat
and his advisers. This analogy provides the background for the argument of
15 Here I depart somewhat from D.M. Carter’s claim that parrhesia was merely an
‘attribute’, ‘something that the citizen of one city was more likely to display than that of
another’, and a characteristic that Athenians displayed merely as ‘a sort of side effect of
their political enfranchisement’. See D.M. Carter, ‘Citizen Attribute, Negative Right: A
Conceptual Difference Between Ancient and Modern Ideas of Freedom of Speech’, in
Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, ed. Sluiter and Rosen, pp. 198–9. I agree with Carter
that it would be wrong to conceive of parrhesia as a ‘right’, given that it was not absolutely protected by law. Yet parrhesia was also more than just a citizen attribute, since it
was conceived of not merely as a ‘side effect’ of political enfranchisement, but as something that could be granted and encouraged (or forbidden and discouraged) by the
regime. Moreover, as I explore below, many Athenians expected that granting and
encouraging parrhesia would have positive effects. As I argue throughout this article,
the word parrhesia could refer both to a privilege of free speech that could be promoted
or restricted by the regime, and also to a practice or attribute that could be exercised by
citizens, whether or not the privilege of parrhesia was well protected (although, to be
sure, where it was not well protected one might expect to find less of it).
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
189
Section III, where I argue that the discourse surrounding parrhesia and flattery in Athens was predicated on important similarities between the democratic Assembly and an autocrat. I conclude with the implications of this
analysis for how we should understand Athenian Assembly debate more
generally.
Parrhesia in Autocracies
In spite of parrhesia’s democratic pedigree and associations, there are a number of discussions in fourth-century Athenian literature of parrhesia in autocratic settings. Thus, for example, Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians
contains a single reference to parrhesia, which, strikingly, is divorced from
the democratic context. As Aristotle tells it, a farmer was busy working one
day on a plot of marginal land when the tyrant Peisistratus happened by:
Peisistratus saw someone working an area that was all stones, and, being
surprised, told his attendant to ask what the land produced. ‘Aches and
pains,’ the farmer replied; ‘Peisistratus ought to take his 10 per cent of the
aches and pains too.’ The man made the reply not knowing that he was
speaking to Peisistratus, while the latter was delighted at his frankness
[parrhesia] and industriousness, and exempted him from all taxation.16
Scholars who have commented on this passage tend to downplay its importance or quickly move to interpret it within the context of democratic Athens.
Sara Monoson sees it as playing on the incongruity of parrhesia being found
in a tyranny at all, while Arlene Saxonhouse believes it to reveal more about
the values of Aristotle’s fourth-century Athenian contemporaries than the
prevalence of ‘frank speaking’ under Peisistratus’ fifth-century tyranny.17 On
one level, Saxonhouse is surely right. If we take the story as a tale that
fourth-century Athenians told themselves, it says as much or more about their
own self-image as it does about how parrhesia might have functioned in tyrannies: the Athenians are proud of their reputation for boldness and frankness. We cannot extrapolate much from this anecdote. Aristotle presents the
story in the context of a discussion of the moderateness of Peisistratus’ tyranny; and given the farmer’s ignorance of his conversational partner’s real
identity, it is questionable whether the farmer’s quip should count as an example of parrhesia at all. Yet the story also opens the question of parrhesia’s
function in non-democratic regimes and of the attitudes of autocrats towards
its practice. The tyrant in Plato’s Republic thought parrhesia a danger to his
regime, a practice he could not tolerate. Why in contrast did Peisistratus find
the farmer’s frankness delightful?
16 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, in The Politics and the Constitution of Athens,
ed. S. Everson (Cambridge, 1996), 16.6.
17 Monoson, Entanglements, p. 55; Saxonhouse, Free Speech, p. 90.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
190
M. LANDAUER
Two letters, written by Isocrates to autocratic rulers, suggest that perhaps
Peisistratus had good reason to be delighted with frankness. In these letters,
one to Antipater, who served as Philip’s regent in Macedon, and the other to
Nicocles, a king on the island of Cyprus, parrhesia plays a prominent role.
The letter to Antipater contains this passage:
For it stands to reason that it is because of those who always and by choice
speak to please [tous aei pros hedonen legein proairoumenous] that not
only monarchies cannot endure — since monarchies are liable to numerous
inevitable dangers — but even constitutional governments [politeias] as
well, though they enjoy greater security: whereas it is owing to those who
speak with absolute frankness in favour of what is best [tous epi toi beltistoi
parresiazomenous] that many things are preserved even of those which
seem doomed to destruction.18
Those who are accustomed to thinking of parrhesia as a peculiarly democratic practice, should find Isocrates’ claim that parrhesia is a requirement for
both autocratic and democratic regimes surprising; indeed, Isocrates seems to
be claiming that it is even more important for the former. His argument relies
on the contrast between those who speak ‘to please’ and those who speak with
parrhesia in favour of what is best. The advice of the former leads to ‘dangers’, while the advice of the latter is salutary.
Yet on Isocrates’ account, while monarchs should listen to those frank
speakers, they are often seduced into giving ear to the flatterers. In the letter to
Antipater, Isocrates illustrates this tendency with an account of a former student, Diodotus, and his experience serving the ‘potentates of Asia’. Diodotus,
‘because of his frankness [dia to parresiazaesthai] in matters involving their
best interests’, was deprived of the honours he had expected for his faithful
service while ‘the flattery of men of no consequence had greater weight than
his own good services’.19 Similarly, Isocrates notes in the beginning of his letter to Nicocles that since most associates of a king ‘consort with them to gain
their favour [pros charin homilousin]’, kings are rarely exposed to the kinds
of parrhesia and criticism crucial to good education.20
Nicocles and Antipater should be particularly interested in advisers willing
to speak with parrhesia, then, primarily because the default tendency of most
advisers is to flatter the autocrat. This flattery is itself invited by the autocrat’s
position as sole unaccountable decision maker, with the power to reward and
punish his advisers. Given this position, those under his power are more likely
to tell him what they think he wants to hear, rather than run the risk of giving
him what they think is the best advice. Speaking to the autocrat is a risky
endeavour, and Diodotus’ experience with the Asian potentates highlights
that risk: one’s audience may not appreciate what one has to say. The power
18
19
20
Isocrates, To Antipater, Loeb, Vol. 3, trans. L. Van Hook, para. 6.
Ibid.
Isocrates, To Nicocles, Loeb, Vol. 1, trans. G. Norlin, paras. 3–4.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
191
asymmetry between speaker and audience gives rise to a particularly pernicious form of advice-giving — flattering speeches, aiming not at ‘the best’ but
‘to gratify’. This form of speech nullifies the immediate dangers to the
speaker, since the end result — if the speech is successful — is a gratified
audience. Nonetheless, it is ultimately, in Isocrates’ view, destructive for the
ruler: ‘monarchies cannot endure’ when advice aims at gratification and not
good policy. We can imagine that, at the limit, the flattery endemic to such
asymmetric power relations leads to a vicious circle: advisers, fearing for
their positions, tell the autocrat what he wants to hear; the autocrat rewards
those who gratify and flatter him, reinforcing the incentive to flatter. The process feeds on itself, with advice tending further and further away from good
policy, until the autocrat’s rule collapses.
Isocrates’ letters offer two potential ways out of the vicious circle. First, the
autocrat can try to mitigate the problem by creating a climate favourable to
parrhesia, i.e. by allowing and even encouraging his advisers to offer him
their best advice frankly rather than to flatter him. This is the main thrust of
Isocrates’ advice to Antipater and Nicocles. As Isocrates tells Antipater,
‘those who declare the truth should be esteemed more than those who, saying
everything in order to gratify, speak nothing worthy of gratitude’.21 Nicocles,
too, is advised to encourage frank speech. He is counselled to regard as trustworthy not those who praise everything he says and does, but those who point
out his mistakes. He should ‘grant parrhesia’ (didou parrhesian) to ‘those
with good judgment’ (tois eu phronousin) — that is, allow and encourage
those with good judgment to speak freely and frankly — and distinguish
between ‘artful flatterers’ (tous technei kolakeuontas) and those who ‘serve
him with goodwill’ (tous met’ eunoias therapeuontas).22 Isocrates thus counsels both Nicocles and Antipater to make frankness less risky by granting the
privilege of free speech (didonai parrhesian) to at least some advisers and
esteeming and rewarding those who speak frankly rather than those who
flatter.
Yet in recounting the story of Diodotus, who took it upon himself to practice parrhesia even in an inhospitable context, Isocrates offers another, distinct possibility: an adviser can speak up for the best even in situations where
21
Isocrates, To Antipater, para. 7.
Isocrates, To Nicocles, paras. 27–8. Cf. Carter, ‘Citizen Attribute, Negative
Right’, p. 211: ‘I am not aware of any accounts of historical tyrants restricting free
speech . . . a tyrant sees little need actively to discourage free speech when his very person
is discouraging enough . . . Because parrhesia is only an attribute, and not anyone’s right,
it is not so much something a tyrant actively restricts, as something his subjects are indisposed to exercise.’ That Isocrates attempts to get Nicocles and Antipater to ‘grant
parrhesia’ to their advisers suggests that even if we accept Carter’s distinction between a
tyrant’s ‘actively’ restricting free speech versus discouraging it (passively?) through his
‘very person’, parrhesia was still seen as something an autocrat or tyrant could promote,
e.g. by attempting to establish it as a privilege.
22
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
192
M. LANDAUER
it is likely that the autocrat does not want to hear it; and in such cases, the
adviser’s actions parallel the practice of parrhesia by orators in Athens. Consider, for example, Demosthenes’ presentation of his own parrhesia in the
First Philippic:
I have spoken my plain sentiments with parrhesia. Yet, certain as I am that
it is to your interest to receive the best advice, I could have wished that I
were equally certain that to offer such advice is also to the interest of the
speaker . . . But, as it is, in the uncertainty of what the result of my proposal
may be for myself, yet in the conviction that it will be to your interest to
adopt it, I have ventured to address you.23
In speaking up bravely in favour of ‘the best’ rather than speaking to ‘please’,
the autocrat’s adviser, like Demosthenes in Athens, engages in risky but salutary critique. Moreover, in both cases the parrhesiastes’ (frank speaker’s)
willingness to take on the risk of speaking frankly to the decision maker is
itself possible evidence of his trustworthiness, as Isocrates suggests to Nicocles,
and as Demosthenes suggests to his audience.
Yet the presence of risk in the autocrat–adviser relationship is ambiguous
in its effects. It is perhaps true that the speaker’s willingness to face the risks
inherent in speaking frankly to the autocrat is a sign of his trustworthiness.
This might suggest that the risks play an important role in ensuring that good
advice is given. On the other hand, the risks are also the cause of one of the
chief forms of pernicious advice giving: if reward and punishment were not
contingent on pleasing the autocrat, the motive to flatter would be absent.
Indeed, Isocrates’ advice to the autocrats to grant parrhesia to those who are
wise, and his attempts to get Antipater and Nicocles to look favourably on
frankness more generally, suggest that Isocrates is aware that the riskier frank
speech is, the less likely one is to get it. To put it differently, where the privilege of parrhesia is not granted from above, the virtue of parrhesia can still be
practised; but there is no guarantee that one’s advisers will willingly take on
the risk of speaking frankly.24
It is worth stressing that Isocrates is not, as some have argued, presenting
an idealized portrait of the relationship between autocrats and their advisers
23
Demosthenes 4.51, quoted in Monoson, Entanglements, 61.
Cf. D. Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge, 1997), p. 94. In an
analysis of Isocrates’ letter to Antipater, Konstan notes that ‘frankness is a virtue in a
counselor, who must risk the ire of princes foolish enough to be offended when contradicted, even if the advice is in their own interest’. Konstan understands the relationship
that obtains between frank speaker and prince to be a form of friendship: ‘To dare to
speak the truth in such a context represents the genuine fidelity of a friend and is to be
prized.’ Konstan’s focus on friendship leads him to de-emphasize the structural similarities between the practice of parrhesia in democracy (see, e.g., pp. 97 and 102), which I
make the focus of this article.
24
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
193
here.25 It is true that he is keen to portray his own relationship with Nicocles as
one marked by frankness, not flattery. This can be contrasted with Isocrates’
advice to his pupils, in the Antidosis and elsewhere, that it might sometimes be
necessary to ‘pay court’ to the demos at Athens, to practise therapeia, flattery.
Indeed, in the Antidosis, Isocrates notes that one of his pupils, the general
Timotheus, failed in his trial before the demos precisely because he refused
to flatter them.26 Yet it would be a mistake to take Timotheus’s relationship
to the demos as exemplary of the orator–demos relationship while taking
Isocrates’ description of his own relationship with Nicocles as exemplary of
the adviser–autocrat relationship more generally. This would be to overlook
the degree to which Isocrates, throughout his advice to Nicocles and Antipater,
remains aware that the problem of flattery is ever present in, and even built
into, the adviser–autocrat relationship. For every Timotheus, who ultimately
failed at democratic politics because of his refusal to pay court to the demos,
Isocrates offers a Diodotus, whose parrhesia and refusal to flatter autocrats
caused him equal amounts of trouble.
Isocrates has thus offered two possible solutions to the problem of flattery
in autocracies, engendered by the autocrat’s position as unaccountable decision maker. But it is not yet clear how this discussion of parrhesia in autocracies might bear on the democratic experience. After all, much seems to
differentiate the practice of parrhesia in democracies and autocracies. Not the
least important is the institutional context in which parrhesia is deployed: in a
democracy, the Assembly is the decision-making body, while in an autocracy,
a single man decides. There is also the question of who gets to speak with
parrhesia: it is likely that the circle of advisers to an autocrat would be smaller
than the set of possible advisers to a democratic Assembly, even accepting the
fact that the right to speak at the Assembly, while guaranteed to all citizens,
would have been exercised by relatively few. Moreover, Isocrates’ recommendation to Nicocles to grant parrhesia to those with good judgment, and
not to all his subjects, reinforces the idea that parrhesia in an autocracy may
well have been more limited in scope than in a democracy.27 Given these differences, it might be argued that Isocrates, in keeping with his constitutional
pluralism, was simply engaged in transferring some Athenian political knowhow to a foreign regime or two — if parrhesia had been so successful at
25
Cf. K. Morgan, ‘The Tyranny of the Audience in Plato and Isocrates’, in Popular
Tyranny, pp. 181–213. In her view, according to Isocrates, ‘the king–advisor relationship
is marked by freedom, whereas the orator–demos relationship is marked by flattery . . .’
(p. 186).
26 On Timotheus, see Isocrates, Antidosis, 130–3. See also Morgan, ‘Tyranny of the
Audience’, pp. 186–7. I accept Morgan’s claim that Isocrates tells his pupils to flatter the
demos, at least sometimes, but do not agree with her that he does not recognize the same
need in autocratic contexts.
27 Although, as I argue below, this is not a clear-cut issue — the Attic orators often
claim that they, and speakers like them, are not granted parrhesia either.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
194
M. LANDAUER
ensuring good decision making at Athens, then a form of it, suitably adapted
to the less egalitarian climate of an autocracy, could work just as well in such
regimes.28 If so, perhaps parrhesia in the autocratic setting tells us nothing
about its practice in a democracy. Yet I think this line of argument would too
quickly dismiss the significance of parrhesia as it was theorized in the autocratic case for understanding its place in Athens. To show why, I turn in the
next section to a broader analysis of the problem of accountability (and its
absence) in Greek discussions of both autocracies and democracies; this will
prepare the ground for a discussion of the discourse and practice of parrhesia
in Athens.
Accountability and its Absence
As we saw in the previous section, parrhesia in autocracies — whether
granted from above or offered from below — offered possible solutions to the
problem of flattery, a problem in no small part generated by the ruler’s institutional position and the power asymmetry between him and his advisers. In this
section, I explore the tropes in fifth- and fourth-century Greek literature
underpinning this description of the problem in autocracies, focusing on the
unaccountability of the autocrat, particularly the tyrant. I also show how, in
the wake of these images of the unaccountable tyrant, there arose similar
claims about the Athenian demos, emanating primarily from what Josiah Ober
has called the ‘critical community’.29 As numerous scholars have shown, the
analogy between demos and tyrannos was a central theme of fifth- and
fourth-century critiques of Athenian democracy.30 All of this is familiar
ground, and so here I emphasize only one aspect of the demos–tyrannos
analogy: the claim that the demos, like the tyrant, was unaccountable. I also
argue that this rhetorical move on the part of the democracy’s critics —
analogizing the unaccountability of the demos to that of the tyrant — highlighted a very real fact about the structure of Athenian institutions of accountability. While most forms of political participation in democratic Athens
28
On Isocratean constitutional pluralism, see Morgan, ‘Tyranny of the Audience’,
pp. 182, 188–91.
29 See J. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1998).
30 The literature on the tyrant–demos analogy is large. For an overview, see
S. Forsdyke, ‘The Uses and Abuses of Tyranny’, in A Companion to Greek and Roman
Political Thought, ed. R. Balot (Oxford, 2009), pp. 231–46, and the various contributors
to the Popular Tyranny volume. The tyrant–demos analogy took two main forms. First,
Athens was sometimes said to rule over her imperial allies in tyrannical fashion. In
Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, for example, Cleon admonishes the Athenians for forgetting ‘that your empire is a despotism [tyrannida] and your subjects disaffected conspirators’, in The Landmark Thucydides, ed. R. Strassler (New York, 1998), section 3.37.
The actions of the demos at home were also likened to a tyranny, particularly in their
dealings with elites. For examples and citations of relevant literature, see Forsdyke,
‘Uses and Abuses’, pp. 239–40.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
195
subjected citizens who took part to multiple accountability procedures, Jurors
and Assemblymen were privileged within this system, holding others to
account but accountable to no one.
The ‘constitutional debate’ in Herodotus’ Histories is an important early
source for the trope of autocratic unaccountability. Here, Otanes criticizes
monarchy as the form of government where ‘it is possible for the ruler to do
what he pleases without having to render an account [aneuthunoi]’.31 Such
freedom from restraints would render any man a bad ruler: ‘give this power to
the best man on earth, and it would stir him to unwonted thoughts’.32 On the
other hand, Otanes identifies the accountability of magistrates as one of the
three hallmarks of ‘rule by the majority’, along with selection of magistrates
by lot and the referral of all proposals to the public.33 The autocrat’s rule, at
least according to Otanes, is thus characterized by his ability to do whatever
he desires, with impunity, and without having to justify those actions.
The autocrat’s reputation for unaccountable rule in accordance with his
own desires would become a commonplace, and would crystallize around the
figure of a particular kind of autocrat — the tyrant. Plato’s depictions in the
Gorgias and Republic of the tyrant’s limitless desires and boundless transgressions of custom and law implicitly trade on the tyrant’s unaccountability.34 In
the Politics, Aristotle identifies tyranny in the ‘fullest degree’, ‘the counterpart of universal monarchy’, as the sort of tyranny that ‘exercises unaccountable [anupeuthunos] rule over subjects . . . with a view to its own private
interest and not in the interest of the persons ruled’.35 While both Plato and
Aristotle left some room for the possibility of a good single ruler, democratic
ideology tended to collapse the distinction between tyranny and monarchy.
Yet the critique of the tyrant as an irresponsible, unaccountable ruler represented a crucial point of agreement between the critics of the Athenian
democracy and exponents of its ideology.36 Thus Aeschines, in his speech
Against Ctesiphon, told the jurors, ‘There are, as you know, fellow-citizens,
three forms of government in the world tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.
Tyrannies and oligarchies are administered according to the tempers of their
lords, but democratic states according to their own established laws.’37 The
administration of Athens, in contrast with tyrannies, consisted in part in there
being ‘nothing in all the state that is exempt from audit [anupeuthunon],
31
Herodotus, Histories, Loeb, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA, 1950), 3.80.
Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Plato, Gorgias, trans. J.H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca, 1998), 466c–470a.
35 Aristotle, Politics, 1295a.
36 See J. Ober, ‘Tyrant Killing as Therapeutic Stasis: A Political Debate in Images
and Texts’, in Popular Tyranny, ed. Morgan, p. 215.
37 Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, para. 6.
32
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
196
M. LANDAUER
investigation, and examination’.38 For Aeschines, then, the unaccountable
tyrant stood as the antithesis of democratic Athens; whereas political actors at
Athens were held accountable, the tyrant was not.
Yet not all observers and participants in Athenian political life agreed with
Aeschines’ claim that nothing and no one in Athens was exempt from ‘audit,
investigation, and examination’. At least by the late fifth century, we find critics of the democracy pointing to exceptions. For example, in Aristophanes’
Wasps, Philocleon glories in his and his fellow jurors’ unaccountability. After
gleefully recounting the benefits of jury service, Philocleon concludes: ‘And
for doing all this we can’t be called to account [anupeuthunoi], something no
other office holders can claim.’ Here Aristophanes, in highlighting the jurors’
unaccountability using the language one might expect to see in a denunciation
of tyrants, begins to blur the line between the two.39
Xenophon’s account of the illegal collective trial of six generals after the
battle of Arginusae (406 BC), for their failure to rescue Athenian sailors whose
triremes had been destroyed, also trades on the unaccountable demos–tyrant
analogy. In the aftermath of the battle, procedures to determine who was at
fault for the disaster began almost immediately, with demands in the Assembly that the generals be called to account and ‘furnish the reason why they did
not pick up the shipwrecked men’.40 At the climactic moment of the trial,
Xenophon contrasts the accountability of the generals with the demos’s own
status: when one Euryptolemus tries to indict Callixeinus, who proposed to
try the generals collectively, for having made an illegal proposal, Xenophon
writes that the majority of the Assembly responds sharply, crying out ‘that it
would be terrible if someone were to prevent the people from doing what it
wished’.41 As Sara Forsdyke has noted, Xenophon’s use of the phrase ‘what it
wished’ recalls ‘the traditional portrait of the tyrant who can do whatever he
wants without being held to account’ that can be traced back to Herodotus.42
The strangeness of the anecdote — did the ‘majority’ of those sitting in the
Assembly, some three-thousand individuals, really shout something out in
unison? — highlights the comparison Xenophon is seeking to make between
demos and tyrant. In Xenophon’s view, the aftermath of the trial underscores
the asymmetry of accountability at Athens. As he writes, ‘Not a long time
later, the Athenians repented [their earlier decision], and decreed that those
who had deceived the demos be prosecuted, and that securities be set down
38 Ibid., para. 22. Indeed, Aeschines takes this to be so constitutive of Athenian good
rule that he makes the claim twice; cf. 3.17: ‘In this city, so ancient and so great, no man is
free from the audit who has held any public trust.’
39 Aristophanes, Wasps, in the Loeb Aristophanes II, trans. Jeffrey Henderson (Cambridge, MA, 1998), lines 578–87.
40 Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.7.4.
41 Ibid., 1.7.12, translation mine.
42 Forsdyke, ‘Uses and Abuses’, p. 240.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
197
until they were tried; and among them was Callixeinus.’43 Callixeinus was
found guilty, and although he escaped before his trial during the tumultuous
period of oligarchic revolution, he is reputed to have starved to death upon
his return to Athens, apparently universally detested for the role he played in
the affair. It is uncontroversial that the demos was responsible for the decision
to try the generals collectively; indeed, the Assemblymen’s response to
Euryptolemus that they should not be prevented from doing what they wished
suggests that the members of the Assembly viewed themselves as the responsible agents, at least at this point in time. Nonetheless, when the decision to try
the generals collectively comes to be recognized as a poor one, the demos is
not held accountable. Rather, the demos holds others to account: accountability is borne solely by the proposers of the decree, who are charged with
deceiving the people.44
Aeschines’ claims for the comprehensiveness of Athenian institutions of
accountability notwithstanding, the analogy to tyranny — at least with respect
to this issue — was not inapt. The crucial point was not whether accountability
was central to Athenian democratic theory and practice (it was), but the
answer to the following question: who at Athens was accountable to whom?
In both the fifth- and fourth-century Athenian democracy, institutions existed
to hold citizens participating in politics accountable to the polis; and from the
mid-fifth century on, accountability to the polis increasingly meant accountability to the people, in the Assembly and in the Courts, even while citizens
participating in these forums were themselves unaccountable.45
In keeping with Otanes’ description of ‘rule by the majority’, magistrates
were subject to a number of procedures before, after, and, in exceptional
cases, during, their term of office. At the dokimasia ton archon, a potential
magistrate selected by election or sortition could subsequently be rejected for
not meeting citizenship or age requirements, or if he had been found guilty of
a crime punishable with atimia (loss of citizenship rights). Held before a popular jury, the dokimasia procedure also allowed any citizen to come forward
and require the prospective magistrate to explain and defend his past actions
43
Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.7.35, translation mine.
See also my discussion of Diodotus’ speech in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War,
below, fn. 72, and of Aristotle’s account of final democracy and its relation to law,
below, p. 206.
45 The rise of popular institutions of accountability was an important aspect of the
development of popular sovereignty at Athens throughout the fifth century. Many of the
accountability institutions discussed in this paragraph had pre-democratic, non-popular
precursors. For example, it is likely that archons originally faced their dokimasia before
the Aereopagus, rather than popular courts. For an attempt at reconstructing the historical development of the institutions of accountability in the fifth century, see M. Ostwald,
From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 40–77.
44
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
198
M. LANDAUER
and way of life.46 Upon completion of their duties, magistrates were audited
through the euthunai. At the euthunai, magistrates had to give an account of
all public funds used and disbursed by them while in office, as well as of their
actions more generally. Both citizens and metics could present written accusations against an outgoing magistrate, charging him either with neglect or
positive malfeasance, and charges could result in trials before popular juries.
Finally, during their tenure magistrates could be removed through impeachment procedures such as the eisangelia. Used primarily for serious breaches
of public trust, such as treason, sedition and corruption, an eisangelia could
result in a trial before the Assembly or a popular jury; the usual penalty in a
successful eisangelia trial was death.47
Orators in the Assembly, holding no magistracy, were not subject either to
the dokimasia ton archon or euthunai. Nonetheless, a number of institutions
served to hold them accountable as well. Informally, orators had to worry
about immediate audience response in the form of the thorubos, the clamorous response of the demos which could drive a speaker from the rostrum. Formally, orators were potentially subject to eisangelia and, probably from the
mid-fifth century on, were also liable to the graphe paranomon.48 While the
name of the latter charge suggests it was used against speakers initiating
unlawful or unconstitutional proposals, its use extended to cases where the
proposal had been found to be unwise, harmful, or even merely undesirable.
Tried before a popular court, a successful graphe paranomon resulted both in
the annulment of the decree and a fine for its proposer, which could range
from the merely nominal to the crushingly heavy.49 Thus orators were potentially accountable for the advice they gave: they could be called on to defend
their actions and could be punished if they were unable to do so to the satisfaction of a popular jury.
Individual Athenians actively participating in politics could thus find themselves called upon to give an account of their actions, and could be penalized
by their fellow citizens should their account be deemed unsatisfactory.50
Nonetheless, there were two important modes of participation that stood outside — or better yet, above — this dense network of accountability institutions. As Philocleon boasted, and Xenophon perhaps bemoaned, the demos
46
In the wake of the oligarchic revolutions of 404/3, some citizens were rejected at
their later dokimasia for harbouring oligarchic sympathies. See Hansen, Athenian
Democracy, pp. 218–20.
47 Hansen, Athenian Democracy, p. 215.
48 The rise of the graphe paranomon at some point in the fifth century has been linked
by some scholars to the decline of ostracism, which could likewise be used to hold
non-magistrates accountable. See J. Tolbert Roberts, Accountability in Athenian Government (Madison, 1982), pp. 153–8.
49 On the graphe paranomon, see Hansen, Athenian Democracy, pp. 205–12.
50 Cf. Peter Euben’s analysis of the Greek notion of accountability in Corrupting
Youth (Princeton, 1997), n.21, p. 97.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
199
voting in the ekklesia and the large panels of citizen Jurors were unaccountable, both individually and collectively. Citizens could not be called on to
explain their votes in either forum, nor could they be held responsible for how
they voted. While decisions of the Assembly could be overturned, the procedure for doing so (as with the graphe paranomon) assigned responsibility for
the poor decision to the orator who made the proposal, not the demos (or part
of the demos) that voted for it (as we saw in Xenophon’s account of the aftermath of Arginusae). Thus, at least on the level of formal institutions, two
prominent political actors — the Assemblyman and the Juror — were able to
hold political actors to account without themselves being made accountable.
Why this should have been so is an interesting question with multiple possible explanations. Hansen and others have sought to explain it by invoking an
epistemic assumption central to democratic ideology about the superiority of
the judging demos: the demos is never blamed, individually or collectively,
because it is very unlikely — or impossible — that it is truly at fault in any
given case of bad decision-making.51 Yet quite apart from any epistemic justification of the practice, blaming the demos or juries for poor decisions may
well have been considered incompatible with the Athenian understanding of
democracy as a system that empowered the people. On this view, the privileged position of the judging demos within the institutions of accountability at
Athens was consonant with — perhaps required by — the basic tenets of
democracy. It is also possible that the Athenians did not believe that any individual’s voting behaviour could be so egregious as to rise to the level of a punishable offence.52 And if it would not have made sense to hold any individual
accountable for his vote, neither would it have been particularly feasible to
hold the demos or a jury collectively responsible. First, most, if not all, mechanisms of accountability at Athens were directed at holding individuals,
rather than corporate bodies, accountable; this principle was what made the
collective trial of the generals after Arginusae so shocking and so uncharacteristic.53 Nor is it clear how one could effectively hold the Assembly or Jury
collectively accountable; to punish thousands of citizens for how they voted
51
Hansen, Athenian Democracy, p. 207.
The status of Jurors and Assemblymen as idiotai (‘private citizens’), as opposed to
politeuomenoi or archontes (citizens taking very active roles in politics and magistrates),
is crucial, in my view, to understanding how and why Athenians thought it legitimate to
leave them unaccountable. Judicial rhetoric abounds with references to an individual’s
status as an idiotes as a reason to treat him leniently or not to prosecute him (e.g.
Demosthenes 19.182, 24.66; Aeschines 1.195). To the degree that Jurors and Assemblymen were seen as idiotai, then, they were not taken to be fit objects of Athens’ formidable
machinery of accountability.
53 See Hansen, Athenian Democracy, p. 221, for one possible exception to this
rule — magistrates sitting on boards could be collectively suspended from office following a vote of the Assembly until a Court could convene to consider any charges against
them (apocheirotonia).
52
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
200
M. LANDAUER
in making a poor decision would have been prima facie impractical, not to say
absurd. Thus, while there may have been sound reasons to leave ordinary
Jurors and Assemblymen, individually and collectively, outside the formal
system of accountability, their special status was an obvious exception to the
general rule.
Some scholars might argue that the contrast between an unaccountable
demos and a host of other accountable political actors is overdrawn. Elizabeth
Markovits, for example, claims that Athenian democracy was characterized
by a spirit of mutual accountability, whereby all citizens felt accountable to one
another. She adduces as evidence for her claim the ‘spirit of civic-mindedness’
among Athenian citizens; the dokimasia that all citizens underwent when
enrolling in their demes at age eighteen; ostracism, which could be used
against any citizen whatsoever; the requirement of Jurors to give oaths; and
the informal power of gossip, with potential social sanctions for those who
might act poorly in the Assembly or the Law Courts.54 Peter Euben has likewise argued that Athens possessed a ‘generalized culture of accountability’,
pointing to the dokimasia and the euthunai as its main institutional embodiments.55 While all of these factors may have shaped citizen behaviour, it is
clear that Jurors and Assemblymen faced a very different sort of scrutiny than
the one faced by other citizens active in politics.56 This asymmetry in the
accountability relationship had real political effects, in particular when mass
groups of unaccountable citizens had the power to hold others accountable. It
is against the backdrop of the Athenian demos’s privileged position within the
system of accountability — the fact that they were themselves unaccountable
while able to hold others to account — that the practice of parrhesia at Athens, and the discourse surrounding it, must be understood.
Flattery and Parrhesia at Athens
Recall that there were two ways in which parrhesia could feature in the
autocrat–adviser relationship, given the power asymmetry between the two.
Parrhesia could be granted from above, as when Isocrates urges Nicocles to
54 Markovits, Politics of Sincerity, pp. 54–5, 60–1. Markovits also draws on an argument by Adrianne Lanni, who shows that the corona of spectators surrounding each jury
trial had an effect on the behaviour of both litigators and jurors, and served the function of
holding the jurors at least informally accountable. See A. Lanni, ‘Spectator Sport or Serious Politics? Hoi periestekotes and the Athenian lawcourts’, Journal of Hellenic Studies,
117 (1997). Yet the informal corona stands in marked contrast to the formal mechanisms
that served to scrutinize and hold accountable most other actors in Athenian political life.
55 Euben, Corrupting Youth, p. 97.
56 Indeed, even those arguing for generalized accountability at Athens acknowledge
this. In spite of Euben’s claim that, at Athens, ‘people were scrutinized and held accountable anytime they proposed or opposed an action or decision’, he also admits that ‘for
better or worse, members of the juries and nonspeakers in the Athenian Assembly [i.e.
voters] . . . were not subject to the same intense scrutiny’ (ibid., pp. 97–8).
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
201
‘grant parrhesia’ to his trusted advisers. Parrhesia could also be practised
independently of such a privilege, as when Diodotus spoke frankly to the
‘Asian potentates’ he advised, even though to do so carried the risk that he
would be ignored, unrewarded for his efforts or, worse, punished for his frankness. Given the parallels between unaccountable demos and unaccountable
autocrat established in the previous section, we can now see that parrhesia at
Athens could feature in the orator–demos relationship in the same two ways.
In his display speech On the Peace, Isocrates imagines critically rebuking
his fellow citizens:
I know that it is hazardous to oppose your views and that, although this
is a free government [demokratia], there exists no ‘freedom of speech’
[parrhesia] except that which is enjoyed in this Assembly by the most
senseless orators, who care nothing for you [tois aphronestatois kai meden
humon phrontizousin], and in the theater by the comic poets.57
Isocrates identifies the cause of this state of affairs in the preceding passages
of the speech, echoing the language of his warnings to Nicocles and Antipater.
The Athenians have refused to hear speeches from anyone except those ‘who
accede in what [they] desire’.58 They recognize the dangers ‘flatterers [ton
kolakeuonton]’ pose in their personal lives but place ‘greater confidence in
them [mallon toutois pisteuontes]’ than in their franker fellow citizens ‘when
it comes to public matters’.59 As Isocrates argues:
You have made the orators care for and investigate, not what will be advantageous for the city, but how they can speak to win your favor. And the
majority of them are now inclined to speak in that way. For it is clear to all
that you will take pleasure in those calling you to war rather than in those
counseling peace.60
Thus, just as in autocratic regimes, a vicious circle arises, with political advisers telling the demos what they think it wants to hear, and the demos reinforcing this habit by only listening to those speakers. Isocrates had advised
Nicocles to ‘grant parrhesia’ to trusted advisers; in noting that ‘there exists no
parrhesia’ in Athens, he stresses that the demos has failed to do so. The consequences for the democracy are potentially grave: in the case Isocrates has in
mind, the Athenians refuse to listen to those speakers advocating peace with
their enemies, and instead are persuaded to carry on a costly war. The institutional context is also worth stressing: Isocrates claims that parrhesia does not
exist because the demos — freed like the autocrat from the burdens of being
held accountable, and able to punish and reward its advisers at will — has
57
58
59
60
Isocrates, On the Peace, Loeb, Vol. 2, para. 14.
Ibid., para. 3.
Ibid., para. 4.
Ibid., para. 5.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
202
M. LANDAUER
begun to fall prey to the kind of rhetoric such insulation from accountability
breeds.
In his lectures on parrhesia, Foucault interprets Isocrates’ speech as a sign
of a ‘crisis of democratic institutions’. In his view, by Isocrates’ time,
parrhesia had ceased to function properly. Flattering orators, telling audiences only what they wanted to hear, left no space for the ‘honest orator’ who
‘has the ability, and is courageous enough, to oppose the demos’. There is a
fundamental opposition between the will of the demos and the best interests of
the city; because of this, ‘real parrhesia, parrhesia in its positive, critical
sense, does not exist where democracy exists’.61 Foucault’s interpretation correctly identifies many of the key features of Isocrates’ argument — the problem of flattery and the tension between the will of the people and what
Isocrates takes to be the best interests of the city — but his conclusion strikes
me as misguided. Isocrates’ speech, I think, is better read not as evidence for
the decline of parrhesia in the fourth century but as highlighting an important
way in which parrhesia operated: parrhesia, understood as the virtue of bold,
risky speech, was necessary precisely because the unaccountable demos was
unwilling — or unable — to grant orators parrhesia, i.e. to guarantee them the
privilege of speaking frankly. Our understanding of parrhesia as a cornerstone of democratic ideology has to be supplemented by emphasizing that, at
least in the Assembly, it was often a kind of remedial practice necessitated by
the institutional power of the demos.
This view also underscores the need for a reappraisal of the role of risk in
the practice of parrhesia in Athens. The dangers of speaking in the Assembly
are often portrayed in contemporary scholarship as a means of making orators
accountable to the demos for the advice that they gave.62 Monoson, Markovits
and others have argued that parrhesia played an important vetting role in this
system of accountability: an orator speaking with parrhesia willingly shouldered the burden of that risk in the best interests of the city, and his willingness to do so counted as evidence for his public-spiritedness. The conclusion
drawn, then, is that ‘[t]he risks [the orators faced] were not thought by the
Athenians to undermine or even conflict with the practice of frank speech.
Rather, the risks affirmed that the speaker could be held accountable for the
advice ventured.’63 But as Isocrates’ analysis suggests, the riskiness of speaking to the demos, which was the consequence of the power asymmetry
between the demos and its advisers, could just as easily lead to flattery as it
could to parrhesia. Monoson recognizes this problem in the autocratic case:
61
M. Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los Angeles, 2001), pp. 82–3.
See Monoson, Entanglements, p. 55; Markovits, Politics of Sincerity, ch. 2.
63 Monoson, Entanglements, p. 55. Cf. Balot, ‘Free Speech’, pp. 244–6, who argues
that the thorubos, viewed positively by a number of scholars, could have detrimental
effects on democratic debate for reasons similar to those I discuss here in reference to the
asymmetrical accountability relationship between the orators and the demos.
62
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
203
‘a tyrant’s arbitrary, unaccountable, and absolute power virtually precluded
that individuals would risk saying anything other than what the tyrant wished
to hear’.64 Yet she does not recognize the parallels between the tyrant’s situation and the situation of the demos, and thereby does not grasp the complexity
of the relationship between parrhesia and Athenian democracy.
One might argue that Isocrates’ presentation of the parallel dynamics of
parrhesia in autocracies and Athens comprises a warped, ‘Isocratean’ view of
the democracy that Athenian democrats themselves would not have accepted.
Yet the analysis of these parallels was not limited to critics of the democracy.
In many respects, Demosthenes’ analysis of parrhesia’s presence (and absence)
in the Athenian Assembly shares much with the Isocratean view. In the Third
Philippic, Demosthenes complains — speaking with parrhesia — that Athens, famous for allowing a measure of parrhesia even to slaves and foreigners, nonetheless has banished it from Assembly debate. Rather than listening
to good advice, the demos is flattered by pleasant speeches, with the result
that the city runs great risks:
I think, men of Athens, that if I speak something of the truth frankly [meta
parrhesia], none of you will on that account become angry with me. For
look at it this way. In other matters you think it is so necessary for there to be
general freedom of speech [parrhesian . . . koinen] for everyone in the city
that you even allow aliens and slaves to share in it . . . but from your deliberations you have banished it altogether. Hence the result is that in the
Assembly your self-complacency is flattered by hearing none but pleasant
speeches, but your policy and your practice are already involving you in the
gravest peril.65
In this passage, Demosthenes invokes both of the senses of parrhesia that we
have explored throughout this article. On the one hand, Demosthenes claims
that granting the privilege of parrhesia is a practice the Athenians pride themselves on, to the extent that perhaps even foreigners and slaves share in it.66
Demosthenes also points out that this privilege is not properly secured in the
Assembly — indeed, it is ‘banished altogether’. Yet this does not mean that
Demosthenes cannot speak frankly (after all, he is doing so, or claims to be
doing so, in this very speech). But it does mean that he has to practise the virtue of parrhesia from below, in the face of potential censure, and must take on
the risk that entails. And it is far from clear that Demosthenes thinks that risk
64
Monoson, Entanglements, p. 55.
Demosthenes, Loeb, Vol. 1, Orations, trans. J.H. Vince (Cambridge, MA, 1930),
9.3–9.4. Cf. Carter’s discussion of this passage in ‘Citizen Attribute, Negative Right’,
pp. 208–9.
66 Cf. Demosthenes, Orations, 15.1: ‘I think it necessary, men of Athens, when
deciding about such great matters, to grant parrhesia (didonai parrhesian) to each of
your advisers.’ In this passage, too, Demosthenes takes parrhesia to be a privilege that
can be granted, using the same language (didonai parrhesian) as Isocrates offers to
Nicocles (see note 22, above).
65
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
204
M. LANDAUER
helps to ensure good debate; rather, at least in this instance, it seems to have
encouraged flattery, at least on the part of the other orators.67
Despite these similarities, Demosthenes must be distinguished from Isocrates
in two respects. First, unlike Isocrates, who never spoke in the Assembly,
Demosthenes directly challenges the demos — he willingly speaks with
parrhesia in the Assembly even under circumstances where such frank
speech is not encouraged and may not be rewarded. In both the Third Philippic and On the Chersonese, Demosthenes contrasts his own parrhesia with
the flattery of his fellow orators, thereby practising the virtue of parrhesia
that Isocrates merely preached. Second, Demosthenes also offers a divergent
analysis of what he takes to be the cause of the pathologies of Assembly
debate: the corruption of the demos by the orators. When Demosthenes
repeats his critique of Assembly debate from the Third Philippic almost verbatim in On the Chersonese, he blames his fellow orators for the deficiencies
of Assembly debate: ‘by persuasive arts and caresses they have brought you
to such a frame of mind that in your assemblies you are elated by their flattery
and have no ear but for compliments, while in your policy and your practice
you are at this moment running the gravest risks’.68 Whereas Isocrates seems
to hold the demos primarily responsible for the rise of flattery — in his mind,
the demos has all but forced the orators to flatter — Demosthenes asserts that
the orators are to blame.
Demosthenes further explores the dynamics of oratorical corruption of the
demos in the Third Olynthiac. The problems the Athenians face can be traced
back to the ‘popularity hunting [pros charin demegorein]’ of some of the orators.69 Rather than proposing good public policy, the orators ply the demos
with questions such as ‘what would you like? What shall I propose? How can
I oblige you?’.70 One might be tempted to take such an assertion as support for
an Isocratean analysis of the power asymmetry between demos or autocrat
and advisers. The obsequious questions the orators ask could be seen as the
natural response to their inferior position — they can profit only by offering
67 The claim that the demos will only listen to flatterers finds perhaps its most famous
exposition in Plato’s Gorgias, where Socrates identifies rhetoric as a ‘part of flattery’ and
argues that this kind of persuasive speech finds its natural home in the presence of large,
uninformed audiences (Plato’s characterization of the dikasteria and ekklesia); see
Gorgias, 459a–466a. I am not merely arguing that the flattery of the orators has to be
understood within the context of the asymmetric accountability relationship between
demos and orator; I am also arguing that parrhesia, at least in its manifestation as risky
speech, has to be understood as arising from this same context. The risky practice of
parrhesia is an alternative to flattery, and a potential remedy to it, but its very riskiness
underlines the fact that it is a product of the institutional circumstances that too often produce flattery, not frank speech.
68 Demosthenes, Orations, 8.34.
69 Ibid., 3.3.
70 Ibid., 3.22.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
205
the demos exactly what it wants. Strikingly, however, Demosthenes seems to
draw the opposite conclusion. Contrasting Assembly debate before the process
of corruption began and its current state, Demosthenes says the following:
What is the cause of all this, and why, pray, did everything go well then that
now goes amiss? Because then the people, having the courage to act and to
fight, were the master [despotes] of the politicians and were themselves the
dispensers of all favours [kurios autos hapanton ton agathon]; the rest were
well content to accept at the people’s hand honour and authority and
reward. Now, on the contrary, the politicians hold the purse-strings and
manage everything, while you, the people, robbed of nerve and sinew,
stripped of wealth and of allies, have sunk to the level of lackeys and hangerson [en huperetou kai prosthekes merei gegenesthe] . . . 71
The flattery and obsequiousness of the orators, Demosthenes claims, is not a
sign of the demos’s power but rather of that power’s usurpation by a few. To
some extent, Demosthenes is exaggerating the powerlessness of the demos
here for rhetorical effect: using the image of a debased and weakened demos,
Demosthenes hopes to shame the Assembly into adopting his activist and
energetic policies against the Macedonians. His argument is still ultimately
premised on the demos being the chief decision maker: the obsequious questions of the orators only make sense given this premise, as does the very occasion for Demosthenes to give the speech. If the demos could not change its
policies as it saw fit, there would be no point in Demosthenes attempting to
persuade it. Yet by highlighting the orators’ role in starting up the vicious circle of flattery, Demosthenes both minimizes the responsibility the demos
bears in the situation and points to a way forward: if the orators were not out to
corrupt, and the demos were more jealous of its own sovereignty and mindful
of its own good, the vicious circle could be avoided.72 Demosthenes is also
making an important observation here about the power dynamics between a
71
Ibid., 3.30–31.
It is worth contrasting Demosthenes’ and Isocrates’ responses to the pathologies of
Assembly debate with Diodotus’ in Thucydides’ account of the Mytilenean debate. As
Mary Dietz has noted, Diodotus is speaking within ‘an already corrupted situation’ in
which his desire not to be punished by the demos and his agonal struggle with Cleon
supervene on his attempt to persuade the Athenians of what he takes to be the best course
of action. See M. Dietz, Turning Operations (New York, 2002), p. 157. Diodotus’ discussion of accountability in diagnosing the ‘corrupted’ state of Assembly debate is particularly salient. As he tells the demos: ‘we, your advisers, are responsible, while you,
our audience are not so. For if those of you who gave the advice, and those who took it,
suffered equally, you would judge more calmly; as it is, you visit the disasters into which
the whim of the moment may have led you, upon the single person of your adviser, not
upon yourselves, his numerous companions in error.’ (Thucydides, 3.43.5). Strikingly,
Diodotus, while recognizing the asymmetry of accountability between demos and orator, seems to call less for relaxing the potential sanctions on orators (although cf. 3.42.5)
than for extending such sanctions to the demos. Diodotus’ solution, then, might be for the
burdens of accountability to be shared more equally, rather than to be sloughed off
72
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
206
M. LANDAUER
flattering adviser and a decision maker: at the limit, flattery undermines the
ruler’s own power. This happens not only because bad advice leads to bad
policies, but also because once the vicious circle of flattery and its rewards
starts up, it becomes difficult to say who is really controlling whom. Is the
demos using the orators or is it being used?
The ambiguity of the power relationship analysed in the Third Olynthiac is
reminiscent of Aristotle’s analysis, in Book IV of the Politics, of the relationship between the demos and demagogues in the final form of democracy. Yet
Aristotle’s account, while confirming aspects of Demosthenes’ analysis, also
points to its limits. In the final form of democracy — of which Aristotle would
consider Athens an example — Aristotle writes, ‘not the law, but the multitude [to plethos], have the supreme power [kurion einai], and supersede the
law by their decrees’.73 In Aristotle’s view, it is the absence of the rule of law
that leads to demagoguery and flattery: ‘where the laws are not sovereign,
then demagogues arise’. Aristotle goes on to argue that under these conditions
the power of the demos closely resembles the power of a tyrant, and in both
regimes, flatterers are honoured.74 With the demagogue playing the flatterer
to the tyrannical demos, the analysis of which party is truly in charge becomes
blurred: ‘For it happens that they [the demagogues] become great because the
demos has the supreme power over all things, while they have the supreme
power over the opinion of the people; for the multitude is persuaded by
them.’75 In such regimes, Aristotle suggests, the demos is paradoxically both
tyrant and tool of the orators.
Both Aristotle and Demosthenes, then, have focused on the problematic
ambiguities of the orator–demos relationship. Yet Aristotle’s explicit focus
on the institutional basis for that relationship seems to preclude Demosthenes’
voluntarist solution to the problem. The issue is not that orators must be
reined in by the demos; rather, Aristotle claims that any democracy in which
such a relationship between demos and orators is even possible is structurally
flawed. Where the demos has unlimited, unaccountable power to judge matters, Aristotle claims, flattery is the expected result. Aristotle does not explicitly deny that, even under such circumstances, good orators might be able to
challenge the demos and speak with parrhesia, but nor does he suggest that
this would be a likely outcome.
Of course, if Aristotle’s solution to the problem of flattery is a ‘moderate’
democracy, subordinate to the law, in which the people do not judge all
entirely. Unfortunately, I do not have the space to argue for this view more fully here, nor
to discuss its implications. See also Saxonhouse, Free Speech, pp. 153–63, for a discussion of Diodotus’ and Cleon’s speeches as they relate to parrhesia; and J. Zumbrunnen,
Silence and Democracy (University Park, 2008), pp. 112–13, 119, for a discussion of
Diodotus’ speech and the question of collective responsibility at Athens.
73 Aristotle, Politics, 1292a5–8.
74 Ibid., 1292a18–20.
75 Ibid., 1292a26–28.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
PARRHESIA AND THE DEMOS TYRANNOS
207
matters, then his solution is not one an Athenian democrat could accept.
Indeed, a good democrat would reject Aristotle’s framing of the problem, and
counter that the people, judging matters in the courts and the Assembly, are
actually the best guardians of the rule of law, not its underminers. Recall
Aeschines’ argument from his Against Ctesiphon, where the demos’s powers
to judge matters and hold elites accountable are held up as great bulwarks
defending the rule of law:
Tyrannies and oligarchies are administered according to the tempers of
their lords, but democratic states according to their own established laws.
Let no man among you forget this, but let each bear distinctly in mind that
when he enters a court-room to sit as juror in a suit against an illegal motion
[graphe paranomon], on that day he is to cast his vote for or against his own
freedom of speech [parrhesia].76
Aeschines, in calling on the Athenians here to defend the rule of law by continuing to hold elites accountable, may have been correct that the parrhesia of
ordinary citizens — understood as the privilege of speaking freely and
frankly, and which Athens prided itself on promoting — depended on the
robust popular control of elites, who might otherwise attempt to subvert democratic norms and institutions. But in defending the graphe paranomon, he was
also calling for the preservation of an institution that made the practice of
frank speech in the Assembly rarer, riskier and more difficult.
Conclusion
The contrast between flattery and parrhesia, and the parallels between the
institutional positions of the tyrant and the demos, complicate our understanding of the conceptualization and practice of parrhesia in Athens. Far from
marking off a clear boundary between tyrannical and democratic regimes, the
discourse surrounding parrhesia in Athens often highlighted the similarities
between the demos and the autocrat. While both the autocrat and the demos
could ‘grant parrhesia’ to their advisers, such freedom was not a foregone
conclusion. Absent this privilege, advisers could still practise the virtue of
risky parrhesia in addressing their audiences, but parrhesia in this sense is
therefore a remedial mode of advising unaccountable decision makers who
have the power to hold their advisers to account. The above analysis thus
emphasizes the ways in which the practice of parrhesia in many contexts was
predicated on inequalities and asymmetries of power. Our understanding of
parrhesia’s egalitarian, democratic overtones should be accordingly modified.
Placing that power asymmetry at the centre of the analysis of parrhesia
suggests a distinction important for our understanding Athenian Assembly
debate more generally. Parrhesia is less a norm for deliberation than it is a
norm for counsel. Athens was not a deliberative democracy but a democracy
76
Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, para. 6.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
208
M. LANDAUER
with a sovereign demos and a host of advisers. An analysis of the parallels
between autocratic and democratic decision making, and the kinds of flattering advice they both invite, suggests that the democratic ideals of sound political discussion and strong popular control did not necessarily go hand in hand.
Quite to the contrary, there was a potential trade-off between popular control
of elites, as institutionalized in the methods for holding orators accountable,
and high quality political debate, if the latter is thought to require a minimum
of flattery. It is true that even when the privilege of speaking freely was not
granted, parrhesia was still a practice that could help to minimize the problem
of flattery — but this required an orator to take real risks, and insofar as a supply of orators willing to take those risks could not be guaranteed, flattery was
a problem endemic to the Assembly. That the Athenians were committed both
to popular control of elites and to decision making informed by sound counsel
does not mean that these commitments always fit naturally together.77
Matthew Landauer
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
77 What I have been calling flattery in this article also shares a number of features
with what Simone Chambers has recently called ‘plebiscitary rhetoric’. See S. Chambers, ‘Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass
Democracy?’, Political Theory, 37 (2009), pp. 323–51. Chambers views the Greek
understanding of plebiscitary rhetoric, exemplified in the Gorgias, as arising owing to
the lack of ‘dialogic accountability’ between orator and demos. Yet the absence of
dialogic accountability does not mean that the relationship was characterized by a total
lack of accountability; instead, the accountability relationship ran only one way, with the
assembled citizens able to hold the orators accountable but not vice-versa. While this
may have precluded the citizens from enjoying the epistemic benefits of deliberation (as
opposed to rhetoric-infused counsel), it did allow them a measure of control over political elites. Thus one way of understanding my analysis of parrhesia and flattery in Athens
is as an attempt to explore the relationship between institutions of accountability and the
thriving practice of plebiscitary rhetoric in the Athenian Assembly. From this vantage
point, the relevance of the Athenian case to contemporary democracies becomes clear,
for we too have institutions of accountability that may be implicated in the flourishing of
plebiscitary rhetoric — elections and campaigns come to mind as central examples. We
should be mindful of the potential tradeoff between holding political elites accountable
and encouraging sound political discussion, particularly in an era in which both accountability and high-quality debate sometimes seem to be in short supply.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction