Download Critics and Critiques of Athenian Democracy

Spotlight: Analyzing Athenian Democracy
Among the enduring contributions of the Greek empire to Western society is the
foundation of democratic society. But what did the development of Athenian
democracy actually involve?
Task
1. Form groups of two.
2. One partner will read article one, other partner will read article two.
3. Answer the following questions together based on the articles. Please note that some of the questions are addressed in
both articles, while some questions are only addressed in one of the articles.
4. Individually, student will complete the Critical Reflection.
Article
1
2
Title
Critics and Critiques of
Athenian Democracy
The Democratic
Experiment
Article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekcritics_01.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekdemocracy_01.shtml
Questions (Pairs)
1. Describe at least 5 major characteristics of Athenian democracy. (5 marks)
2. What are the major criticisms of Athenian democracy? (5 marks)
3. What was ‘tyranny’? Was Athenian democracy effective in eliminating tyranny in ancient Greece? Explain. (5
marks)
4. What was the policy of ostracism? Was this effective? Why or why not? (5 marks)
5. How did Greek philosophers view democracy? Explain. (5 marks)
6. What are the major similarities between Athenian democracy and modern democracy? (5 marks)
Critical Reflection (Individually)
Based on the two articles and discussion with your partner, what is your assessment of the effectiveness and validity of
democracy in Athens? The critical reflection must be completed individually and should be approximately 1 page (doublespaced in length). Refer to the rubric below in order to achieve full value for the reflection portion of this assignment. (20
marks)
Level Four (80–100%)
The paragraph uses critical
thinking skills with a high
degree of effectiveness by:
- including a topic sentence
that clearly establishes a
point of view
- supporting arguments with
sound historical evidence
- ensuring that each
reference to the
government systems clearly
and effectively supports the
point of view set out in the
topic sentence
Level Three (70–79%)
The paragraph uses critical
thinking skills with
considerable effectiveness
by:
- including a topic sentence
that attempts to establish a
point of view
- supporting arguments with
historical evidence
- ensuring that each
reference to government
systems makes a
connection to the point of
view set
out in the topic sentence
Level Two (60–69%)
The paragraph uses critical
thinking skills with some
degree of effectiveness by:
- including a topic sentence,
but point
of view is not clear
- supporting arguments with
some historical evidence
- ensuring that some
connection is made
Level One (50–59%)
The paragraph uses critical
thinking skills with a
limited degree of
effectiveness by:
- not including a topic
sentence
- supporting arguments
with limited historical
evidence
- making limited
connection
Critics and Critiques of Athenian Democracy
By Professor Paul Cartledge
Last updated 2009-11-05
Among the enduring contributions of the Greek empire to Western society is the foundation of democratic society. But
what did the development of Athenian democracy actually involve?
Invention of political theory
One of the indispensable words we owe ultimately to the Greeks is criticism (derived from the Greek for judging, as in a
court case or at a theatrical performance). Another is theory (from the Greek word meaning contemplation, itself based on
the root for seeing). An early example of the Greek genius for applied critical theory was their invention of political theory,
probably sometime during the first half of the fifth century BC.
The first concrete evidence for this crucial invention comes in the Histories of Herodotus, a brilliant work composed over
several years, delivered orally to a variety of audiences all round the enormously extended Greek world, and published in
some sense as a whole perhaps in the 420s BC. The evidence comes in the form of what is known as the Persian Debate in
Book 3.
According to the writer's dramatic scenario, we are in what we would now call the year 522 BC. The mighty Persian Empire
(founded in Asia a generation earlier by Cyrus the Great and expanded by his son Cambyses to take in Egypt) is in crisis,
since a usurper has occupied the throne. Seven noble Persians conspire to overthrow the usurper and restore legitimate
government. But what form of government, what constitution, should the restored Persian Empire enjoy for the future? That
at any rate is the assumed situation. In hard practical fact there was no alternative, and no alternative to hereditary autocracy,
the system laid down by Cyrus, could seriously have been contemplated. So what we have in Herodotus is a Greek debate in
Persian dress.
An early example of the Greek genius for applied critical theory was their invention of political theory...
Three of the seven noble conspirators are given set speeches to deliver, the first in favour of democracy (though he does not
actually call it that), the second in favour of aristocracy (a nice form of oligarchy), the third - delivered by Darius, who in
historical fact will succeed to the throne - in favour, naturally, of constitutional monarchy, which in practice meant autocracy.
The main interest for us centres on the arguments of the first speaker, in favour of what he calls isonomy, or equality under
the laws.
Views of the masses
Why, to start with, does he not use the word democracy, when democracy of an Athenian radical kind is
clearly what he's advocating? Chiefly because of a fatal ambiguity: to its opponents democracy was no more, and no better,
than mob-rule, since for them it meant the political power of the masses exercised over and at the expense of the elite. That
was one, class-based sort of objection to Greek-style direct democracy. Others were rather more subtly expressed.
Intellectual anti-democrats such as Socrates and Plato, for instance, argued that the majority of the people, because they were
by and large ignorant and unskilled, would always get it wrong. In these intellectuals' view, government was an art, craft or
skill, and should be entrusted only to the skilled and intelligent, who were by definition a minority. They denied specifically
that the sort of knowledge available to and used by ordinary people, popular knowledge if you like, was really knowledge at
all. At best it was mere opinion, and almost always it was ill-informed and wrong opinion.
A further variant on this view was that the masses or the mob, being ignorant and stupid for the most part, were easily
swayed by specious rhetoric - so easily swayed that they were incapable of taking longer views or of sticking resolutely to one,
good view once that had been adopted. The masses were, in brief, short-sighted, selfish and fickle, an easy prey to
unscrupulous orators who came to be known as demagogues. Demagogue meant literally 'leader of the demos' ('demos'
means people); but democracy's critics took it to mean mis-leaders of the people, mere rabble-rousers.
Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, was nothing but a collective tyrant.
Then there was the view that the mob, the poor majority, was nothing but a collective tyrant. A very clever example of this
line of oligarchic attack is contained in a fictitious dialogue included by Xenophon - a former pupil of Socrates, and, like
Plato, an anti-democrat - in his work entitled 'Memoirs of Socrates'.
'What', asks the teenage Alcibiades pseudo-innocently, is 'law'? 'Why', answers his guardian Pericles, who was then at the
height of his influence, 'it is whatever the people decides and decrees'. 'What?', replies Alcibiades; 'even when it decrees by
fiat, acting like a tyrant and riding roughshod over the views of the minority - is that still "law"?' 'Certainly', says Pericles. 'So',
persists Alcibiades, 'democracy is really just another form of tyranny?' 'Oh, run away and play', rejoins Pericles, irritated; 'I
was good at those sorts of debating tricks when I was your age.'
Background of Athens
Not all anti-democrats, however, saw only democracy's weaknesses and were entirely blind to
democracy's strengths. One unusual critic is an Athenian writer whom we know familiarly as the 'Old Oligarch'. Certainly, he
was an oligarch, but whether he was old or not, we can't say. His short and vehement pamphlet was produced probably in
the 420s, during the first decade of the Peloponnesian War, and makes the following case: democracy is appalling, since it
represents the rule of the poor, ignorant, fickle and stupid majority over the socially and intellectually superior minority, the
world turned upside down.
But - a big 'but' - it works: that is, it delivers the goods - for the masses. After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest
single power in the entire Greek world, and that fact could not be totally unconnected with the fact that Athens was a
democracy. The specific connection made by the anonymous writer is that the ultimate source of Athens' power was its navy,
and that navy was powered essentially (though not exclusively) by the strong arms of the thetes, that is to say, the poorest
section of the Athenian citizen population. They therefore in a sense deserved the political pay-off of mass-biased
democracy as a reward for their crucial naval role.
After all, at the time of writing, Athens was the greatest single power in the entire Greek world...
By 413, however, the argument from success in favour of radical democracy was beginning to collapse, as Athens' fortunes in
the Peloponnesian War against Sparta began seriously to decline. In 411 and again in 404 Athens experienced two, equally
radical counter-coups and the establishment of narrow oligarchic regimes, first of the 400 led by the formidable intellectual
Antiphon, and then of the 30, led by Plato's relative Critias. Antiphon's regime lasted only a few months, and after a brief
experiment with a more moderate form of oligarchy the Athenians restored the old democratic institutions pretty much as
they had been.
It was this revived democracy that in 406 committed what its critics both ancient and modern consider to have been the
biggest single practical blunder in the democracy's history: the trial and condemnation to death of all eight generals involved
in the pyrrhic naval victory at Arginusae.
The generals' collective crime, so it was alleged by Theramenes (formerly one of the 400) and others with suspiciously un- or
anti-democratic credentials, was to have failed to rescue several thousands of Athenian citizen survivors. Passions ran high
and at one point during a crucial Assembly meeting, over which Socrates may have presided, the cry went up that it would be
monstrous if the people were prevented from doing its will, even at the expense of strict legality. The resulting decision to try
and condemn to death the eight generals collectively was in fact the height, or depth, of illegality. It only hastened Athens'
eventual defeat in the war, which was followed by the installation at Sparta's behest of an even narrower oligarchy than that of
the 400 - that of the 30.
Restoration of democracy
This, fortunately, did not last long; even Sparta felt unable to prop up such a hugely unpopular regime, nicknamed the '30
Tyrants', and the restoration of democracy was surprisingly speedy and smooth - on the whole. Inevitably, there was some
fallout, and one of the victims of the simmering personal and ideological tensions was Socrates. In 399 he was charged with
impiety (through not duly recognising the gods the city recognised, and introducing new, unrecognised divinities) and, a
separate alleged offence, corrupting the young.
To some extent Socrates was being used as a scapegoat, an expiatory sacrifice to appease the gods who must have been
implacably angry with the Athenians to inflict on them such horrors as plague and famine as well as military defeat and civil
war. Yet the religious views of Socrates were deeply unorthodox, his political sympathies were far from radically democratic,
and he had been the teacher of at least two notorious traitors, Alcibiades and Critias. Nor did he do anything to help defend
his own cause, so that more of the 501 jurors voted for the death penalty than had voted him guilty as charged in the first
place. By Athenian democratic standards of justice, which are not ours, the guilt of Socrates was sufficiently proven.
...in one sense the condemnation of Socrates was disastrous for the reputation of the Athenian democracy...
Nevertheless, in one sense the condemnation of Socrates was disastrous for the reputation of the Athenian democracy,
because it helped decisively to form one of democracy's - all democracy's, not just the Athenian democracy's - most
formidable critics: Plato. His influence and that of his best pupil Aristotle were such that it was not until the 18th century that
democracy's fortunes began seriously to revive, and the form of democracy that was then implemented tentatively in the
United States and, briefly, France was far from its original Athenian model. If we are all democrats today, we are not - and it
is importantly because we are not - Athenian-style democrats. Yet, with the advent of new technology, it would actually be
possible to reinvent today a form of indirect but participatory tele-democracy. The real question now is not can we, but
should we... go back to the Greeks?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekcritics_01.shtml
The Democratic Experiment
By Professor Paul Cartledge
Last updated 2009-11-05
The ancient Greeks famously invented democracy. But what was Greek democracy actually like - and how was it different
from the 21st-century kind?
What's in a word?
What's in a word? We may live in a very different and much more complex world, but without the ancient Greeks we
wouldn't even have the words to talk about many of the things we care most about. Take politics for example: apart from the
word itself (from polis, meaning city-state or community) many of the other basic political terms in our everyday vocabulary
are borrowed from the ancient Greeks: monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy and - of course - democracy.
Greece was a collection of some 1500 separate communities scattered round the Mediterranean and Black Sea shores "like
frogs around a pond".
The ancient Greek word demokratia was ambiguous. It meant literally 'people-power'. But who were the people to whom
the power belonged? Was it all the people - the 'masses'? Or only some of the people - the duly qualified citizens? The
Greek word demos could mean either. There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies,
members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic
inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally have meant something like 'mob rule' or 'dictatorship of the
proletariat'.
Greek political systems
By the time of Aristotle (fourth century BC) there were hundreds of Greek democracies. Greece in those times was not a
single political entity but rather a collection of some 1,500 separate poleis or 'cities' scattered round the Mediterranean and
Black Sea shores 'like frogs around a pond', as Plato once charmingly put it. Those cities that were not democracies were
either oligarchies - where power was in the hands of the few richest citizens - or monarchies, called 'tyrannies' in cases where
the sole ruler had usurped power by force rather than inheritance. Of the democracies, the oldest, the most stable, the most
long-lived, but also the most radical, was Athens.
Solon and Cleisthenes
The origin of the Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries can be traced back
to Solon, who flourished in the years around 600 BC. Solon was a poet and a wise statesman but not - contrary to later myth
- a democrat. He did not believe in people-power as such. But it was Solon's constitutional reform package that laid the basis
on which democracy could be pioneered almost 100 years later by a progressive aristocrat called Cleisthenes.
Ephialtes and Pericles presided over a radicalisation of power that shifted the balance decisively to the poorest sections of
society.
Cleisthenes was the son of an Athenian, but the grandson and namesake of a foreign Greek tyrant, the ruler of Sicyon in the
Peloponnese. For a time he was also the brother-in-law of the Athenian tyrant, Peisistratus, who seized power three times
before finally establishing a stable and apparently benevolent dictatorship. It was against the increasingly harsh rule of
Peisistratus's eldest son that Cleisthenes championed a radical political reform movement which in 508/7 ushered in the
Athenian democratic constitution.
Ephialtes and Pericles
It was under this political system that Athens successfully resisted the Persian onslaughts of 490 and 480/79, most
conspicuously at the battles of Marathon and Salamis. That victory in turn encouraged the poorest Athenians to demand a
greater say in the running of their city, and in the late 460s Ephialtes and Pericles presided over a radicalisation of power that
shifted the balance decisively to the poorest sections of society. This was the democratic Athens that won and lost an empire,
that built the Parthenon, that gave a stage to Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, and that laid the
foundations of western rational and critical thought.
The democratic system was not, of course, without internal critics, and when Athens had been weakened by the catastrophic
Peloponnesian War (431-404) these critics got their chance to translate word into deed. In 411 and again in 404 Athenian
oligarchs led counter-revolutions that replaced democracy with extreme oligarchy. In 404 the oligarchs were supported by
Athens's old enemy, Sparta - but even so the Athenian oligarchs found it impossible to maintain themselves in power, and
after just a year democracy was restored. A general amnesty was declared (the first in recorded history) and - with some
notorious 'blips' such as the trial of Socrates - the restored Athenian democracy flourished stably and effectively for another
80 years. Finally, in 322, the kingdom of Macedon which had risen under Philip and his son Alexander the Great to become
the suzerain of all Aegean Greece terminated one of the most successful experiments ever in citizen self-government.
Democracy continued elsewhere in the Greek world to a limited extent - until the Romans extinguished it for good.
Greek democracy and modern democracy
The architects of the first democracies of the modern era, post-revolutionary France and the United States, claimed a line of
descent from classical Greek demokratia - 'government of the people by the people for the people', as Abraham Lincoln put
it. But at this point it is crucial that we keep in mind the differences between our and the Greeks' systems of democracy three key differences in particular: of scale, of participation and of eligibility.
Athenian democracy was direct and in-your-face... most officials and all jurymen were selected by lot.
First, scale. There were no proper population censuses in ancient Athens, but the most educated modern guess puts the
total population of fifth-century Athens, including its home territory of Attica, at around 250,000 - men, women and
children, free and unfree, enfranchised and disenfranchised. Of those 250,000 some 30,000 on average were fully paid-up
citizens - the adult males of Athenian birth and full status. Of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might regularly attend one or
more meetings of the popular Assembly, of which there were at least 40 a year in Aristotle's day. 6,000 citizens were selected
to fill the annual panel of potential jurymen who would staff the popular jury courts (a typical size of jury was 501), as for the
trial of Socrates.
An Athenian men's club
The second key difference is the level of participation. Our democracy is representative - we choose politicians to rule for
us. Athenian democracy was direct and in-your-face. To make it as participatory as possible, most officials and all jurymen
were selected by lot. This was thought to be the democratic way, since election favoured the rich, famous and powerful over
the ordinary citizen. From the mid fifth century, office holders, jurymen, members of the city's main administrative Council
of 500, and even Assembly attenders were paid a small sum from public funds to compensate them for time spent on
political service away from field or workshop.
The third key difference is eligibility. Only adult male citizens need apply for the privileges and duties of democratic
government, and a birth criterion of double descent - from an Athenian mother as well as father - was strictly insisted upon.
Women, even Athenian women, were totally excluded - this was a men's club. Foreigners, especially unfree slave foreigners,
were excluded formally and rigorously. The citizen body was a closed political elite.
A political space
There are some other important differences too. Athenian democracy did not happen
only in the Assembly and Council. The courts were also essentially political spaces, located symbolically right at the centre of
the city. Aristotle in his Politics defined the democratic citizen as the man 'who has a share in (legal) judgment and office'.
Also in the shadow of the Acropolis lay the theatre of Dionysus. Athenian drama, both tragic and comic, was a
fundamentally political activity as well, involving the city and the citizen-body directly or indirectly in the staged dramatic
action.
Power to the people
One distinctively Athenian democratic practice that aroused the special ire of the system's critics was the practice of
ostracism - from the Greek word for potsherd. In this reverse election to decide which leading politician should be exiled for
ten years, voters scratched or painted the name of their preferred candidate on a piece of broken pottery. At least 6,000
citizens had to 'vote' for an ostracism to be valid, and all the biggest political fish risked being fried in this ceremonious way.
For almost 100 years ostracism fulfilled its function of aborting serious civil unrest or even civil war. At the end of the fifth
century it was replaced by a legal procedure administered by the jurors of the people's courts. Power to the people, all the
people, especially the poor majority, remained the guiding principle of Athenian democracy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekdemocracy_01.shtml