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2,500 Years and More: The Impact
The timing of the exhibitions on democracy and the anniversary of the Kleisthenes
democratic reforms in 508/7 BCE was internationally significant, coming as they did
after the end of the Cold War and at a time when Eastern European countries were
embracing democratic (and free market capitalist) reforms. The Greek Miracle and The
Birth of Democracy also happened at key moment for domestic politics in the United
States since 1992 was election year. January 1993 saw the inauguration of a new
Democrat President Bill Clinton after three terms of Republican Presidents (Ronald
Reagan and George Bush Snr). In his first inaugural address on 21 January 1993 Clinton
promised ‘American renewal’ that would be ‘born in the world’s oldest democracy, that
brings forth the vision and courage to reinvent America’. Clinton’s rhetoric presents
America as the oldest continuous democracy capable of reinvention and change as well
as leading the world ‘we did so much to make’.1
It is unlikely that Clinton was unaware of the ‘anniversary’ of ancient Greek democracy,
its celebration in America or the connections made between American and Athenian
democracy (both positive and negative). The election and inauguration taking place at the
same time as the anniversary of Kleisthenes’ reforms seemed to make it particularly apt
that America led the world in democratic celebration. Clearly this did not lead to
Athenian democratic reforms leading to a participatory democracy being embraced in
America or elsewhere. Arguably the main impact of The Greek Miracle exhibition, and to
a lesser extent The Birth of Democracy exhibition, was in Greece itself through its
continued arguments for the restitution of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British
Museum, the hosting of the Olympic Games in 2004 and the overhaul of two of its main
museums. Interestingly, one of the host institutions for The Greek Miracle, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, had also began a huge refurbishment of its
Greek and Roman Art galleries shortly before it hosted the exhibition. This section on the
impact of the commemoration of the reforms of Kleisthenes in 1992 to 1994 briefly
draws attention to four main areas: the refurbishment of museum institutions, the
restitution debate around the Parthenon sculptures, the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004
and recent readings of Athenian democracy in America.
Museum Institutions and Refurbishment
Carlos A Picón, the chief curator of the Greek and Roman Art Department at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, gives a brief history of his department in a new book to
commemorate to the full re-opening of the Greek and Roman Galleries in 2007. Picón
lists the major exhibitions which the department had hosted in the last two to three
decades. Exhibitions at the Metropolitan included Greek Art of the Aegean Islands
(November 1979 – February 1980); The Search for Alexander (October 1982 – January
1983) and The Amasis Painter and His World (September to October 1985). Loan
exhibitions with museums included The Greek Miracle (March to May 1993), which
‘presented a wealth of sculpture, coming for the most part from institutions in Greece’;
1
William Jefferson Clinton, 'First Inaugural Address' , 21 January 1993, website:
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres64.html [accessed 17/07/2008].
1
Greek Gold: Jewellery of the Classical World (December 1994 to March 1995) and
Pergamon: the Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar (January to April 1996).2 A further
investigation of these exhibitions and the reception of the classical world would be
useful. It would also be interesting to ascertain whether the exhibitions had any impact on
the redevelopment of the Greek and Roman Art galleries at the Met. The presentation of
sculptures in The Greek Miracle was widely admired, even by those who disliked the
exhibition in every other way. This was particularly true of reviews of the exhibition at
the Met, where the use of natural light was commended and the re-installation of Greek
and Roman Art there has been similarly admired.
The re-installation of Greek and Roman Art at the Met took place in four phases. First the
Robert and Reneé Belfer Court for Prehistoric and Early Greek Art opened in May 1996,
then seven Archaic and Classical (Greek art) Rooms opened in April 1999 and four
Cypriot Galleries opened in April 2000. Next the Roman and Hellenistic Galleries were
constructed and the Onassis Library for Hellenic and Roman Art was opened in 2007.
Key to all these reopening was the provision of education resources, such as teachers’
resources and an audio guide.3 The opening of the Greek Galleries in 1999, and the
Roman galleries more recently, was met with rapturous praise. In an article headed
‘Glory Comes Home to the Classics’ for The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman
admired the visual reinstallation of the sculptures in newly decorated galleries and their
arrangement by theme, style and chronology.4 Karen Manchester congratulates the staff
of the Met for a ‘truly sublime installation’ in her review for Apollo magazine and draws
attention to the presentation of Greek art ‘to an audience which may or may not be
especially well informed about Greek art’ through labels, panels, an audio guide and
regular gallery talks.5 Most recently, Gary Wills entitled his glowing review of the newly
opened Roman galleries and the accompanying catalogue with an article entitled ‘We are
All Romans Now’. This title and his last lines refers back to Shelley and, perhaps
inadvertently, to the advert placed in The Washington Post for The Greek Miracle ‘We
are All Greeks Now’:
The legacy of Greece is everywhere, not just in Athens and Rome. That point is
made clear in the sun-washed galleries of the Met, and in the splendid new
catalogue of these rooms. We are all Greeks. We are all Romans. 6
Wills’ comments on the legacy of the classical world being beyond Greece and Italy
connect to recent debates and controversies about the acquisition (and repatriation) of
2
Carlos A Picón, ‘A History of the Department of Greek and Roman Art’, Carlos A Picón, Joan R.
Mertens, Elizabeth J. Milleker, Christopher S. Lightfoot and Sean Hemingway, Art of the Classical World
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (London: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 3-23, p. 20.
3
Carlos A. Picón, ‘Acknowledgements’, Art of the Classical World (2007), p. 2.
4
Michael Kimmelman, ‘Glory Comes Home to the Classics’, The New York Times, April 20 1999, website:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E6D91F3BF933A15757C0A96F958260&sec=&spon
=&pagewanted=print [accessed 14/07/2008].
5
Karen Manchester, ‘The New Greek Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’, Apollo (July 1999), 312.
6
Gary Wills, ‘We Are All Romans Now’, The New York Review of Books (Volume 54, No. 9), May 31
2007, website: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20213 [accessed 17/07/2008].
2
antiquities to those countries. Whether conscious connections between the display (and
criticism) of The Greek Miracle and the re-installation of the Greek and Roman Art in its
galleries were made, the Metropolitan Museum’s major exhibition programme would
continually reinvigorate the interpretation of objects from the classical world and their
display.
Two of the museums in Greece, from which many of the objects were loaned to The
Greek Miracle, have had major renovations since the exhibition. The National
Archaeological Museum in Athens had a major overhaul and redisplay after the 1999
earthquake in Athens and a revolutionary new Acropolis Museum in Athens is due to
open in autumn this year (2008). It would be useful to investigate whether any
connections were made between loan exhibitions and the refurbishment of the museums
in Athens. The Acropolis Museum will display sculptures that had been on display in its
old site on the Acropolis as well as sculptures from the Parthenon held in the present
museum and the Centre for Acropolis Studies. The museum incorporates a Byzantine
archaeological site, which was found under the museum site, and displays Greek art
chronologically. It has been used as a weapon through which to call for the restitution of
the Parthenon Sculptures from Britain and elsewhere. The Greek Government and British
Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Sculptures have argued that all the
Parthenon sculptures should be displayed together in one place, namely the new
Acropolis Museum being built in Athens. The Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures
illustrates how the sculptures are currently broken up with, for example, heads of slabs of
the Parthenon frieze in Athens and the main body of the frieze in London.7 At a large
meeting that presented plans for the new Acropolis Museum in London in 2002, the then
Greek Minister of Culture, Professor Evangelos Venizelos, the architect of the New
Acropolis Museum Bernard Tschumi and the Director of the New Acropolis Museum
Project, Professor Dimitris Pandermalis put their case. Pandermalis described the display
of the Parthenon sculptures in the new museum:
The climax of the museum’s exhibition program is the classical collection of
the Parthenon architectural sculptures [. . .] On the north side, visitors will be
able to stand before the Acropolis in the new museum and simultaneously look
at the building from which the frieze originally came. The subtle and detailed
differences in the surfaces will be visible as a result of the natural light and the
visitor will have a clear view – and a clear sense of the unity of the exhibits
and the building from whence they came.8
The new Acropolis Museum in Athens is an interesting and, if it works, revolutionary
archaeological museum. However, political and archaeological squabbling meant that this
museum did not open in time for the Olympic Games and this damaged the restitution
cause. Work only resumed on the site in April 2004 after a court ruling that allowed the
7
Elena Korka, Rosa Tsakona, and Alkistis Choremi, The Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures
(Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, 2002).
8
Dimitrios Pandermalis, ‘The New Acropolis Museum’, in a pack issued by the Committee for the
Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, (Athens: Ministry of Hellenic Culture, October 2002)
3
building to be completed, following concerns about archaeological remains in the site.
Recurrent delays have meant that it is not scheduled to open until Autumn 2008.
Restitution and Retention Debate
Gary Wills began his review of the newly refurbished Greek and Roman Art galleries at
the Metropolitan by reflecting on the recent repatriation of material from the department
to Italy and Turkey, due to accusations of looting and the purchase of unprovenanced
material. Wills finishes his article with a defence of the retention of objects from classical
antiquity in museums outside Greece, Italy and Turkey:
In the famous case of the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, are todays’
Greeks actually the descendants of ancient Athenians? For that matter, the
Athenians themselves believed that the proper owner of works on the Parthenon
was Athena – and she has been missing in action for some time now. As far as she
is still alive, she is in the brains of all the people who read and love Homer and
related works that deal with her – and there are far more of those outside of
Greece than inside it.9
The ownership and repatriation of objects is an increasing concern for museums and
communities globally. Greece is not the only country requesting the return of cultural
objects from a museum in the western hemisphere. The Elgin Marbles debate over
retention and restitution is only one of many cases relating to ownership of cultural
property and museum practice in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The
issues bound up in the restitution and retention of the ‘Elgin Marbles’ are related to the
creation of the Acropolis as a national icon for the newly independent Hellenic State in
the 1830s. Artemis Leontis argues that Hellas (which she takes to mean both a
geographical and a psychological space known as Greece or Hellas) is a heterotopia. That
is a space set apart in western cultural imagination placed between fantasy and reality,
because it has classical ruins that are emblems of a romanticised and fetishised past.10
The position of the Elgin Collection in the British Museum incites ‘nationalist
powerpolitics’ for both the restitutionists seeking to return the Elgin Collection to Greece
and for the retentionists who insist the best place for the collection is in the British
Museum.
The importance of the classical past in the construction of modern Greek national
identity, in part to locate themselves both as heirs and ancestors to European civilisation,
cannot be underplayed. Yet this construction also causes problems. On the one hand, it
can lead to reaction against this classical past in favour of modernisation within Greece
and on the other hand, it can lead to the modern Greeks being dismissed as fervent
nationalists. Sofia Voutsaki debates the ambiguity of archaeology and the modern Greek
relationship with the classical past, finding that:
9
Gary Wills, ‘We Are All Romans Now’, The New York Review of Books (Volume 54, No. 9), May 31
2007, website: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20213 [accessed 17/07/2008].
10
Artemis Leontis, Topographies of Hellenism. Mapping the Homeland (Cornell: Cornell University Press,
1995), p. 7.
4
Archaeology therefore contributed directly to centralization in Athens and to the
contraction of the Hellenistic Nation into the Helladic State. Archaeology’s task
was to impart material reality to the archaistic ideology by imprinting the classical
past on the Greek social imagination. It is perhaps ironic that the setting of the
past on a pedestal created an unbridgeable gap between past and present, the
effects of which are still with us today.11
One of the effects of this relationship with the past is the restitution demand by modern
Greek governments since the 1980s. Arguably this demand had a new emphasis and
authority after The Greek Miracle exhibition in the USA. The Greek government could
point out that it loaned its antiquities, including objects from the Acropolis and
Parthenon, to an international exhibition safely, thus contributing to international cooperation and scholarship in the arts. The loan also gave international attention to Greek
antiquity and objects. After 1994, restitution leaflets (in Greek and English) were handed
out to tourists visiting the Acropolis. Bill Clinton even became involved in the restitution
argument while President.12 The Observer reported that Clinton made sympathetic
comments about the restitution of the Elgin Marbles to Greece on a flying visit to Athens
in 1999. This could of course be linked to his unpopularity in Greece due to the US
bombing of Kosovo earlier in 1999 – the bombing caused protest riots in Athens during
April 1999.
Traditionally the British Museum made a standard statement in response, commenting on
the place of the sculptures in a museum visited by over five million people per year and
that the decision would be determined by an Act of Parliament, not by the Museum. The
report Stealing History. The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material published by the Museums
Association and ICOM UK in 2000 and a parliamentary select committee, aimed at the
trade in illegal antiquities taking place now, put pressure on the British Museum’s case
for retention.13 However, since the appointment of Neil MacGregor as Director in 2002,
the British Museum has become more proactive at setting forth its case. Neil MacGregor
met the Greek Minister for Culture, Evangelos Venizelos, in 2003 to discuss the
restitution of the Parthenon sculptures. MacGregor’s answer was a firm ‘no’, but this was
still the first time representatives of these institutions have formally spoken together
about the issue. In October 2003 MacGregor signed a statement supporting the idea of the
universal museum. The statement was also signed by directors of the Art Institute of
Chicago, Berlin State Museums, the Louvre Museum Paris, the Metropolitan Museum
New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Prado Museum Madrid, among
others. This international uniting of museums and museum directors has given a new
strength of resolve to the British Museum’s aims for universality. This occurs at a time
when identity politics is being promoted and used to reclaim cultural identity within
11
Sofia Voutsaki, ‘Archaeology and the Construction of the Past in Nineteenth-century Greece’,
Hokwerda, Hero (ed.), Constructions of Greek Past. Identity and Historical Consciousness from Antiquity
to the Present (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2002), pp. 231-5, p. 250.
12
‘Return Elgin Marbles, says Clinton’, The Observer, 21 November 1999.
13
Neil Brodie, Jenny Doole and Peter Watson, Stealing History. The Illicit Trade in Cultural Material
(Cambridge: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000).
5
communities and nations, particularly those colonised by European empires until the midtwentieth century. The statement explicitly clarifies its stance on the retention of cultural
objects, and specifically the Parthenon sculptures, without actually mentioning them by
name:
Indeed, the sculpture of ancient Greece, to take but one example, is an excellent
illustration of this point and of the importance of public collecting. The centurieslong history of appreciation of Greek art began in antiquity, was renewed in
Renaissance Italy, and subsequently spread through the rest of Europe and to the
Americas. Its accession into the collections of public museums throughout the
world marked the significance of Greek sculpture for mankind as a whole and its
enduring value for the contemporary world. Moreover, the distinctly Greek
aesthetic of these works appears all the more strongly as the result of their being
seen and studied in direct proximity to products of other cultures.14
The statement emphasises that every single object displayed in a museum contributes to
the overall development of culture. James Cuno, one of the museum directors who signed
the statement (from the Art Institute of Chicago), published a book in 2008 that raises the
difficulties around the purchase by museums of unprovenanced archaeological artefacts
and the problematic claims made about cultural property by modern nation states. Cuno’s
polemic Who Owns Antiquity? is essentially an argument for the encyclopaedic museum
to display objects from a multitude of different cultures in a way untainted by nationalist
politics or ideology.15 Cuno takes Wills’ argument and applies it to ancient civilizations
across the globe. Of course, it could be argued that encyclopaedic ‘universal museums’
have their own nationalist and cultural agenda.16
The statement issued in 2003 on the ‘universal museum’ and the British Museum’s
involvement has been attacked for reconstructing the paternal ideal of the museum as a
source of knowledge for its visitors, without recourse to historical narratives of
ownership, colonialism and national identity. Far from dissociating himself from this
patrician image of the museum Neil MacGregor has countered Greek moves towards
restitution with articles in the press.17 A statement on the ‘Parthenon sculptures’ appears
on the British Museum website and leaflets presenting the British Museum’s point of
view, are now placed in an eye catching place at the centre of the Duveen Gallery where
the Parthenon sculptures are exhibited. The patrician image of the museum is clearly
invoked in the title of MacGregor’s article in The Guardian, ‘The whole world in our
hands’ as the title sets omniscient and god-like overtones. Arguing that the restitution
debate is not about ownership, but displaying ‘everyone’s culture’ in one place for
14
British Museum, ‘Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums’,
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/newsroom/current2003/universalmuseums.html, 09/01/2004 (access
date).
15
James Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2008).
16
Debbie Challis, ‘The Parthenon Sculptures. Emblems of British National Identity’, British Art Journal
(Volume VII, No. 1), Spring / Summer 2006, 33-39.
17
Neil MacGregor, ‘The Whole World in our Hands’, Review, The Guardian, 24 July 2004, 4-6 and Jane
Morris (interview with Neil MacGregor), ‘In with the new’, Museums Journal, June 2003, 21-5.
6
‘maximum public benefit’, MacGregor contrasts this stance to the Greek use of the
Parthenon sculptures as ‘an instrument of nationalist politics’.18 MacGregor is aware of
the complexities of modern Greek history and considers that the restitution issue became
important after the fall of the Colonels in 1974 due to enhanced nationalism. There were
debates about restitution before 1974, though MacGregor is right to cite the fall of the
Colonels’ despotic regime as an important trigger in the present debate, and nationalism
forms an important part of the move towards restitution. However, arguably, after the fall
of this dictatorship, Greek politicians needed to prove their democratic credentials, both
domestically and on the world stage. The dominance of democratic ideology, though not
necessarily practice, in international politics has also served to embed the iconography of
the Parthenon sculptures as emblems of ancient democracy. The celebrations of the birth
of democracy in 1992 to 1994, with two exhibitions at the centre of these celebratory
events, only served to further strengthen this ideological iconography.
Olympics in Athens, 2004
On September 5 1997 the International Olympic Committee announced that Athens
would hold the Olympic Games in 2004. Athens had previously bid to hold the 1996
Games, but this was surprisingly awarded to Atlanta in 1990. Whether The Greek
Miracle exhibition and the celebrations around Athenian democracy had any impact on
the decision making process is difficult and probably impossible to assess. Arguably,
though, given the decision to hold the games in Athens was based on the Olympic
heritage of Greece, modern as well as ancient, such a major international loan and
exhibition is likely to have had some bearing on increasing the status of Greece and
enhancing its reputation for international cooperation.19 The Olympic Games is the
largest and, perhaps, most popular reception of the classical past in the modern period,
holding as it does global significance and appeal. Nowhere has the elision of ancient and
modern Greece been more apparent and more spectacular than in the opening ceremony
of the Olympic Games in Athens on August 13 2004.
After a dramatic countdown, a huge screen in the main stadium of Athens linked the
Games to the site of the Olympic sanctuary in the Peloponnese and a fire bolt from Zeus,
the god of the Olympian valley, lit the five rings of the modern Olympics. This dramatic
opening, performed amidst the paying of Greek bouzoύki music, was soon followed by
the raising of the Greek flag, at which point the huge screen displayed the flag flying over
the Acropolis. The procession of the athletes was preceded by a theatrical representation
of 3,000 years of Greek history. This procession concentrated on the material remains of
the Greek past: frescoes from Knossos and Mycenae are brought to life, the gods on the
Parthenon frieze reappear to robe and disrobe, the pose of the discus thrower is taken up
by over a dozen actors, Byzantine icons are re-enacted and modern folk art represented.
Perhaps the most important spectacle of the ceremony was the huge Cycladic head from
2,700 BCE that splits into an archaic kouros and splits again into a classical sculpture.
The fragments from this huge sculpture underpin the narrative of the ceremony and acts
18
MacGregor, ‘The Whole World’ (2004), 6.
Michael Llewellyn Smith, Olympics in Athens. 1896. The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games,
(London: Profile Books Ltd, 2004).
19
7
as the most recognisable image of modern Greece. Sculpture and the visual arts of Greece
are, again, at the centre of a popular interpretation of ancient Greece. Interestingly,
Yannis Hamilakis has recently drawn attention to the debates around the consumption of
classical antiquity that took place in Greece around the staging of the Olympic Games.
Hamilakis points out how classical Greece became a selling point for corporate
sponsorship of the Games in 2004 amidst the general climate of national euphoria. The
earlier Coca-Cola advert from 1992 that Hamilakis cited (with Coca-Cola bottle shaped
columns on the Parthenon) has parallels, both aesthetically and in terms of its corporate
message, with the advert for The Greek Miracle exhibition published by Philip Morris Inc
in The Washington Post.20 Parallels between corporate sponsorship and the consumption
of classical heritage for a major blockbuster and for the Olympics could be further
explored.
Democracy Debated (Again)
There has been continuing academic and public debate about Athenian democracy since
the anniversary of the birth of democracy in Athens during the early 1990s. The debates
around freedom and democratic rights in the modern world have become even more
complex. More recently there has been a concentration on the Peloponnesian War in
America with books written by ancient historians Victor Hanson and Donald Kagan
aimed at a more popular audience. Victor Hanson is an academic at Stanford University
and has written on Greek agrarian and military history as well as contemporary foreign
and domestic affairs in the US. His latest book, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians
and Spartans fought the Peloponnesian War was published by Random House in 2005,
and was named one of The New York Times’ 100 notable books of 2006. Hanson used his
account of the Peloponnesian War to support ‘neoconservative political doctrine’ and the
foreign policies of the Bush presidency.21 Similarly so did Donald Kagan, professor at
Yale University, in his The Peloponnesian War (2003) and On the Origins of War and
the Preservation of Peace (1995). In fact Kagan went further and co-wrote with one of
his sons, Frederick, a professor of history at West Point, While America Sleeps: SelfDelusion, Military Weakness and the Threat to Peace Today in 2000. His other son
Robert Kagan is a foreign policy adviser to John McCain and has recently written The
Return of History and the End of Dreams, a survey of the last decade of international
politics. While America Sleeps drew on Winston Churchill’s While England Slept and
John F. Kennedy’s Why England Slept, both about England’s political position in the
1930s, to argue that ‘America is in danger’ and its national security was threatened by
foreign powers and America needs to be a global policeman to combat this. Kagan’s
comments that his study of Greece has taught him that war is the default mode of the
human species.22 Arguably, the origins of these American centric readings of the ancient
world can be seen in some of the celebratory rhetoric around The Greek Miracle. If
20
Yannis Hamilakis, The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in
Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1-8.
21
Tom Palaima, ‘First Democracy’, History Today, July 2005 (volume 55, Issue 7), 62-63, 62.
22
Bruce Felman, ‘Lion in Winter’, Yale Alumni Magazine, April 2002, website:
http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/02_04/kagan.html [accessed 29/04/2008].
8
American is equated with democratic Athens, then lessons need to be learnt from the
Peloponnesian War to protect American democracy and interests.
Two books on Athenian democracy published recently also by American academics but
aimed at a general public audience are useful to consider since they give very different
accounts of Athenian democracy and its reception. Loren J. Samons’ What’s Wrong with
Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship (2004) is a conservative
reading of Athenian democracy that considers the dangers of worshiping Athenian
democracy and the misunderstanding amongst the general population about the function
of a representative democracy. The point of the book, argues Samons, is to foster
criticism about modern concepts of democracy and to make clear why America is a
representative democracy as the founding fathers of America considered Athens unstable
and elected leaders could be shielded from the sometimes ‘volatile popular will.’23
Samons builds on M. I. Finley’s point that the fact that the western world now believes
that democracy is the only legitimate form of government is an odd phenomenon.
Samons is critical of historians such as Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick, the academics
behind the Democracy 2,500 project, ‘who offer Athenian democracy as a laboratory or
model for modern democratic practice’ as American democratic practice is different to
Athenian practice for good reasons. He further criticises Ober for being a ‘postmodern
historical theoretician’ who has disrupted traditional narrative history.24 There is clearly
more to Samons’ argument that his disgruntlement with the discursive nature of the
Democracy 2,500 project and debate around Athenian democracy, and it would appear to
have its roots in the Culture Wars around critical theory and identity politics taking place
on and off campuses in America. In essence, Samons argues that shared values around
religion, family and morality are lost in the crusade for democracy, choice and individual
freedoms. This is a very conservative reading of both American and Athenian democracy.
A year later Paul Woodruff gave a very different response to Athenian democracy and
American concepts of freedom in First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea.
Paul Woodruff considers democracy to be a ‘beautiful idea’ and considers democracy a
safeguard against one person or group having power that leads ‘to arrogance and
abuse’.25 Woodruff outlines the tools of first democracy to be the legal system, the
governing body, checks on majority rule, lottery, elections and accountability and
examines the Athenian practice of these tools. He finishes by considering how American
practice measures up against the ideal of democracy in the modern world and concludes
that since World War Two America has fallen behind these ideals and needs structural
changes. Woodruff examines the growth of influence in dogmatic groups and, like Robert
Hughes in his review of The Greek Miracle, quotes Louis MacNeice’s poem Autumn
Journal on the dangers of inequalities in Greek democracy and by extension the modern
world. Woodruff’s book, like Hanson, Kagan and Samons, is clearly influenced by the
23
Loren J. Samons, What’s Wrong with Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship
(London: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 1-2.
24
Samons (2004), p. 122.
25
Paul Woodruff, First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), p. 3.
9
‘War on Terror’ rhetoric around freedom and America’s foreign policy, albeit from a
very different political position:
As I write this book, the United States seems to be edging further away from the
essential principles of democracy. The growing political power of wealth
undermines equality, the retention of prisoners on Cuba threatens the rule of law,
and the rising number of electoral districts that are safely in the hands of political
parties undermines the value of peoples’ votes.26
These two recent books illustrate the importance of contemporary events and partisan
politics on the reception of ancient democracy. The debate has continued since 2005. In a
recent paper at the Classical Empires in Contemporary Culture conference at University
College London on 23 May 2008, Adam Goldwyn considered the different ways Athens
and its empire had been used by different columnists in The New York Times to reflect on
America and its foreign policy since 2001. Goldwyn found that Athens and Greek history
was used extensively by columnists of differing political persuasions as a barometer for
reading America and this was mainly due to the feeling of a shared democratic heritage.27
Debate around Athenian democracy has clearly continued since the celebrations and
exhibitions around the anniversary of Kleisthenes reforms in the early 1990s. How much
the two exhibitions considered here had an impact on or informed these later debates is
difficult to gauge, but if nothing else they cemented the idea that there is a reflective and
practical relationship between ancient Athenian democracy and modern America
democracy.
Bibliography
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British Art Journal (Volume VII, No. 1), Spring / Summer 2006, 33-39.
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26
Woodruff (2005), p. 18.
Adam Goldwyn, ‘Athens and America: Comparing Empires on The New York Times’ Editorial and Oped Pages’, unpublished paper at Classical Empires in Contemporary Culture, 23 May 2008, University
College London.
27
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