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JACT Teachers’ Notes
AH 1.1 Athenian Democracy in the Fifth Century BC
1.1 Books and Resources
Useful books: relevant and stimulating material is found in the books listed in the
Specification, and we particularly urge looking at R.K. Sinclair's Democracy and
Participation at Athens, Josiah Ober's Mass and Elite in Classical Athens, and Cynthia
Farrar's The Origins of Democratic Thinking. There have also been a number of
helpful articles in Omnibus, particularly issues 14, 15, 17, 19, 23, 26, 28, 33, 35, 49, 51,
53, 55. Teachers will find Christopher Carey's Democracy in Classical Athens (BCP)
extremely helpful. Highly useful and concise is John Thorley’s Athenian Democracy
(in the Routledge Lancaster Pamphlet series). Eric Robinson’s Athenian Democracy: A
Reader is a very useful collection of ancient sources and modern essays on aspects of
the subject, but the key sourcebook is Roberts’ Athenian Radical Democracy LACTOR
(hereafter ARD). Rhodes’ Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh University Press) contains
useful articles on a number of aspects of the subject. Much of the modern scholarship
on ancient Athenian democracy is concentrated on its workings in the fourth century
BC: this is a reflection of the fact that a very considerable amount of epigraphical and
oratorical evidence survives from that era. It is possible that many fourth-century
practices were common to the fifth century, though there are important differences
between fifth- and fourth-century democracy.
The web:
http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/home is a hugely useful resource for studying
Athenian democracy, with essays, glossaries by top scholars
Athenian agora website (excellent for the material discoveries pertaining to Athenian
democracy from the Athenian agora): http://www.agathe.gr/
1.2 Sources
In contrast to the modern world, which has produced a huge and varied corpus of
democratic theory, no ancient Greek political thinker composed a fully-articulated
statement or justification of democratic values. It may be the case that, in Athens, the
everyday reality of such a system, combined with the prevailing orality of democratic
practice, would have made the prospect of such a treatise appear mundane or selfdefeating. But ancient Greek literature contains many passing references to debates
about democracy and democratic values, indicating that there was indeed discussion
and contention about the ideals, merits and problems of democracy in fifth-century
Greece. Discussions include an extraordinary section of Herodotus’ Histories (Hdt.
3.80-83), Pericles’ funeral speech for the war-dead at the end of the first year of the
Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 2.36-46), and Euripides’ Suppliant Women (esp. 404-41).
The Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides (in the fifth century) and Xenophon
(in the fourth century) therefore give us occasional insights into the workings and
ideologies of democracy. Note in particular Hdt. 3.80-3 (the probably fictional
constitutional debate), 5.66-9 (the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes); Thuc. 2.35-46
(the funeral speech of Pericles—a eulogy of the democratic system), 2.65 (the
‘obituary’ of Pericles), 4.26-30 (Cleon’s style of leadership; other important passages
on democratic leadership include 3.36-50 (the Mytilene debate) and 6.8-32 (the debate
about the expedition to Syracuse)). Xenophon gives us an exciting account of the
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debate about how to punish the generals after the battle of Arginusai (History of Greece,
1.7).
We are heavily reliant on fourth-century sources for understandings of the working of
Athenian democracy: the corpus of Attic oratory and the second half of [Aristotle]’s
Athenaion Politeia (the Constitution of the Athenians) (translated by P. Rhodes in a
Penguin edition and also by J. Moore in Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and
Oligarchy) of the 320s BC are sources which allow a detailed reconstruction of fourthcentury practices. Another text also entitled Athenaion Politeia (the Athenian
Constitution) is the one attributed to Xenophon in antiquity, but which today, generally
thought not to be the work of that author, is given the title The Old Oligarch (in the
notes referred to as OO). This work sets itself out as the work of an author dissatisfied
with the position of the wealthy elite in the Athenian democracy, but at the same time
suggests that there is a connection between democracy and Athens’ sea-based empire.
This pamphlet is generally thought to have been written in the late fifth century, though
Hornblower (in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, third edition) suggests that it may be
the work of a fourth-century writer. This text is translated by J. Moore in Aristotle and
Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy and now in a LACTOR by Robin Osborne.
Another contemporary source is Plato’s account of the trial of Socrates, the Apology:
this gives us at least Plato’s view of the opposition that an oddball like Socrates might
have faced in Athenian democratic society.
Aristophanes’ comedies of the late fifth and early fourth century BC are also very
useful to anyone who wants to see how democratic politics was represented through a
comic lens. His comedies were performed in front of audiences of Athenian citizens as
part the festivities of festivals such as the Lenaia or Dionysia. The fact that they were
entered into a competition meant that they are often designed to appeal to popular
views (though sometimes the playwright may have challenged the views of the
audience). A valuable book, C. Pelling’s Literary Texts and the Greek Historian
investigates the ways in which ancient texts manipulate history in order to suit their
own purposes and suggests that ancient texts tell us vital things about the way in which
the Athenians constructed their own state but also offer insight into both the author’s
and the ancient audience’s assumptions. J. Roberts, Athenian Radical Democracy 461404 BC LACTOR 5 is an excellent collection of the sources.
Finally, a source of the late first/early second century AD deserves mention. Plutarch’s
biographies of Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades and other Athenians are also useful for the
history of institutions and the narrative of the history of democracy, but Pericles has a
tendency to make Athenian politics resemble Roman politics particularly in terms of
political groupings (as Sara Forsdyke has argued on Plutarch Nicias 11: see her Exile,
Ostracism and Democracy, pp. 170-4). The most detailed ancient account of the
development of Athenian democracy is to be found in [Aristotle]’s Athenaion Politeia
(the Constitution of the Athenians).
1.3 Background information
In order to set the scene, it may be useful to provide a background chronology of the
history of the Athenian democracy
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Before the Fifth century
The traditional account of the history of Athenian democracy is the one told by
[Aristotle]’s Constitution of the Athenians. It has a tendency to emphasise the role of
individuals in the development of political institutions, and no modern history has been
able to change this emphasis. At least three big names from earlier in the sixth century
are associated with the emergence of Athenian democracy: Solon the law-giver,
Pisistratus the ‘tyrant’ and his son and successor, Hippias. In 594, when Athens was in
political turmoil, Solon was appointed chief magistrate or Archon and, exceptionally,
mediator. Despite the survival of some of his autobiographical poetry, it is hard to be
sure just what socio-political problems he was called upon to solve, but something is
known of his solutions (ARD 44 and 203).
Solon ended the enslavement of Athenian peasants for debt, and in so doing he
contributed towards an idea of humanity which divides the world between free men (in
the Athenian context, citizens) and slaves. He moved Athens from aristocracy, under
which the highest public offices were reserved for the sons of the ‘best’ families, to
timocracy, under which the criterion of eligibility for a given office was a man’s
agricultural production (grain, olive oil, wine). On that basis he defined four orders:
Pentakosiomedimnoi, Hippeis, Zeugitai, Thetes. The chief officials were drawn from
the top two orders; Zeugitai could hold minor offices; Thetes, who owned little or no
land, could hold no office but, very significantly, could attend the Assembly (ekklesia).
The set of laws which Draco had laid down in the late seventh century was
revised and extended by Solon. He introduced public lawsuits (graphai), whereby any
citizen, and not just a victim, could prosecute. Finally, he allowed appeals from the
verdicts of magistrates to the (H)eliaea, which may have been the Assembly meeting in
a judicial capacity. Both these last two measures had far-reaching consequences for
democracy.
In the event Solon failed to save constitutional government, and in the middle of
the sixth century Pisistratus, after a period of competition for political power between
factions based on family and locality, managed to secure his position as
unconstitutional monarch or ‘tyrant’. After a successful reign of nearly 20 years, he
died in 527. His elder son Hippias ruled in the style of his father until 514 when his
brother, Hipparchus, was assassinated. Thereafter his rule became harsher. In 510 he
was driven out of Athens by the intervention of the Spartan king, Cleomenes.
What followed was two years of aristocratic feuding between Cleisthenes of the
Alcmeonid family, who had been Archon in 525/4, and Isagoras. (Aristocracy had
worked smoothly when the heads of the great houses were able to agree on who should
hold the major offices.) Because Cleisthenes was getting the worst of it and Isagoras
had been elected Archon for 508/7, he ‘took the people into his following’. (For the key
passages in Herodotus see ARD 23ff.). There is considerable debate about the nature of
these events. The American scholar Josiah Ober has suggested that mass action by the
Athenian populace was essential in enabling Cleisthenes to herald the beginning of a
democratic order; another American with a very different perspective, L. J. Samons,
has argued that Cleisthenes’ reforms were self-interested: see chapter 2 of E. Robinson
(ed.), Ancient Greek Democracy. Herodotus’ analysis of Cleisthenes’ motives is
interesting (even if H’s analysis of democratic motives is not him at his best) and worth
comparing with that of the Constitution of the Athenians: see Hdt. 5.66-9 with
[Aristotle]’s Constitution of the Athenians 20-21.
But whatever the motives, there was significant change. Under aristocracy the
role of the Assembly had been to approve proposals, including proposals concerning
the election of candidates for office, made by the heads of the great houses. The chief
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officials were the Archon, who presided over the Assembly, the Polemarch or
commander-in-chief, the Archon Basileus and the six Thesmothetai (the whole group
was known as ‘the nine archons’) and the treasurers of Athena, patron goddess of
Athens. Ex-archons became members of the Council of the Areopagus.
Cleisthenes enlarged the role of the Assembly, most members of which were
farmer-soldiers. The military strength of Athens consisted of her heavy infantry or
hoplites. Cleisthenes managed to induce Isagoras to put to the vote measures designed
to please the Zeugitai, who were the poorest Athenians able to afford the six pieces of
hoplite armour.
The institution of ostracism (ARD 31, 32), whereby a man might be voted into
ten years of exile, is attributed to Cleisthenes by the Constitution of the Athenians. The
difficulty is that the first ostracism did not take place until 487. The purpose of
ostracism seems to have been to break political deadlocks such as had arisen between
Cleisthenes and Isagoras, but it was first used against suspected friends of the tyrants
(for more on ostracism, see section 4.5 below).
Cleisthenes’ legislation formed a complex whole, which would have taken some
years to work out and put into effect, even if there had been no further Spartan
intervention, and we cannot be sure of the full sequence of events. One of his purposes
may gave been to fragment large local loyalties, like Pisistratus’ hill faction, in the
interests of political and military unity. His building block was the ‘deme’—a village or
country town or urban ward (for more on demes, see below, section 4.6). Cleisthenes
introduced a Council of 500, fifty men from each new tribe. For more on tribes, see
below section 4.6; for more on the council, see below section 4.2). The Council is quite
separate from the Council of the Areopagus.
Fifth-century developments
There is little purely constitutional change to report from the first 35 years of the fifth
century. In addition to the possible invention of ostracism and the Statute of Limitations
on the Council (see below, section 4.2), the only major constitutional change was the
decision in 487/6 that archons should be chosen by lot rather than directly elected. This
immediately made the archonship much less prestigious (although it was still a source
of pride to be eponymous archon and have the year named after you). It also eliminated
the main occasion during the year when electoral competition might bring political
debates to a head: from 486 onwards the only major direct elections were those for the
generalship (curiously, we never hear of hustings for those or political tensions
surrounding them, though the relative infrequency of re-election to the generalship does
imply that the competition for the post was keen).
In 462 there was a political revolution, but one about which we know little.
Ephialtes apparently took advantage of the absence of his aristocratic political rival
Cimon and moved decisively against the Areopagus. The account in the Constitution of
the Athenians (ARD 45) is favourable to Ephialtes. ‘As the masses increased, Ephialtes
son of Sophonides became the champion of the people. He appeared to be both
uncorrupt and loyal to the constitution. He attacked the council of the Areopagus. First
of all, he removed many of its members, prosecuting them for their conduct in office.
Then in the archonship of Conon [462/1] he took away all the accretions which had
made possible their guardianship of the constitution, giving some to the Council of 500
and some to the people and jury courts.’
This all too concise account of momentous changes leading to ‘radical’
democracy does not mention Pericles, then aged a little over 30, but Aristotle couples
him with Ephialtes in his Politics (ARD 44). Apparently, Ephialtes had begun by
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prosecuting outgoing archons on charges arising at the examination (euthynai) that all
officials had to undergo at the end of their year of office—the context in which Pericles
had unsuccessfully prosecuted Cimon.
A body composed of ex-archons must have been weakened by the introduction,
twenty-five years earlier, of the lot into the procedure for appointing archons, and any
‘guardianship of the constitution’ vested in it will have looked increasingly anomalous.
The best modern guess is that the 'guardianship of the constitution' removed by
Ephialtes was the power to scrutinise would-be magistrates (dokimasia) and examine
outgoing magistrates or check on magistrates during their year of office.
It was thanks to Ephialtes that the Council of 500 now became increasingly
important both judicially and administratively (on the Council, see below, section 4).
The judicial importance of magistrates was in decline since the time of Solon.
As the amount of business for popular juries increased, the problem of ensuring enough
jurors must have arisen. It is uncertain just how and how much Pericles had helped
Ephialtes with his assault on the Areopagus, but at some point after the assassination of
Ephialtes (ARD 46, 47) Pericles solved the problem of juror supply. Jurors were
henceforth to be paid a modest sum (probably 2 obols initially, ARD 213) for each
day’s work, and the lot would be used to reduce the number who volunteered each year
to 6,000 – a kind of quorum, as for ostracism, and now perhaps one-seventh of the
citizen body. If the panel of 6,000 could represent the people, so, conveniently, could
each of its subdivisions. Each new panel of jurors swore the Heliastic Oath, promising
to vote according to the laws and to be fair.
The Constitution of the Athenians (ARD 52) tells the story of the introduction of
pay for jurors in the context of rivalry between Pericles and Cimon: it says that Pericles
introduced pay as a bid for popular favour against the influence of Cimon’s wealth, but
Cimon had been ostracised in 461. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Pericles needed the
prompting of his music teacher (actually Damon of the deme Oa). But there is a serious
point here: the radically democratic state was capable of patronage on a scale that
neither Cimon nor Hipponicus, the richest man in Greece, could match.
The huge political importance of what Solon had begun and Ephialtes and
Pericles had completed must have been evident to almost all (ARD 203). It is also
worth mentioning Pericles’ citizenship law of 451: he is connected with a law confining
citizenship to those whose parents were Athenian. Perhaps this should be connected
with the decision to give pay for jury service: maybe the Athenians wanted to limit the
group of people to whom this was extended. But, in the words of the Danish historian
Mogens Hansen, ‘by Pericles’ reforms the gulf that separated citizens from non-citizens
was made deeper’ (The Athenian Democracy, 1999, 38). Democratic government may
have developed but there was no idea of human equality. For more on citizenship, see
below section 3.
There were some important developments in the last years of the fifth century
after the death of Pericles. Cleon raised the pay for jury service from two to three obols.
The exact date of the introduction of payment for those attending the assembly is not
known: it happened at some time before 393 but probably not before the restoration of
democracy in 403 BC. In 410 and again in 404, Athenian democracy was overthrown,
and Athens was ruled by non-democratic regimes. When democracy was restored in
late 403, it was in a different, less radical, form which lacked the institution of
ostracism, and the power of law-making (but not decision-making) was transferred to
the nomothetai, a panel of citizens drawn from the board of 6000 jurors. Some
historians have characterised the transformation of democracy as a shift from the rule of
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the people to the rule of law (though this underestimates the continue centrality of the
people to fourth-century democracy).
Fourth-century democracy
NOTE: What follows on the fourth century is something that teachers should know in
order to complete the picture, but is not examinable.
We first hear of nomothetai at the time of the intermediate régime between the fall of
the Four Hundred and the restoration of democracy in 410 (Th. 8.97.2), when they must
have lapsed. In 403 after the second restoration of democracy, a smaller group of
nomothetai was appointed by the Council to collect and display the laws to be
considered, and another body of 500 nomothetai was elected by the demes to vet each
law in conjunction with the Council (Andoc. 1.84). Thus the demes were represented
twice over.
In 410, after the first restoration of democracy, the Assembly had appointed
codifiers (anagrapheis) of the laws, some of which went back to Draco and Solon. The
leader of the codifiers was Nicomachus. The work of collection and publication went
on from 410 to 404. The Thirty rejected this codification, but Nicomachus, assisted by
Teisamenus, was put back on the job in 403, and the work was finally completed in 399.
According to Andocides (1.81f.), an interim government of twenty was elected
after the overthrow of the Spartan-backed Thirty Tyrants in 403 BC. A Council was
chosen by lot, and law-givers (nomothetai) were elected. (The lot-selected Council
suggests that reversion to democracy was already agreed.) It remained for the twenty to
arrange for the appointment of officials and the revival of the jury courts and for the
swearing of oaths of loyalty to the amnesty—by all Athenians, all Councillors and all
jurors (Andoc. 1.90f.).
The Assembly’s intentions in 403 are revealed in a decree moved by
Teisamenus (Andoc. 1.83f.). It mentions the two boards of nomothetai. The smaller
board is hard to distinguish from Nicomachus and his fellow codifiers. Ratification
rested with the second board and not with the Assembly. When the work was finally
completed, it covered all branches of the law, including constitutional law and a huge
calendar of public sacrifices. Although constant reference was made in speeches to the
laws of Draco and Solon, much additional legislation had been passed under the
democracy from the time of Cleisthenes onwards.
It was from this point that general laws (nomoi) were distinguished from
particular decrees (psephismata). Thenceforth nomothetai, drawn by lot from the
annual panel of 6,000 jurors, took the final decision on proposed changes to the laws.
Though they were ordinary citizens, they could consider such proposals more carefully
than could the Assembly. It was thus much harder for inconsistencies in the code to
escape notice. The Assembly continued to pass numerous particular decrees, including
decrees appointing nomothetai, but no decree could trump a law.
Under radical democracy, the people, in the shape of a few thousand Athenians
assembled on Pnyx, were virtually sovereign. The constraints on their decision-making
were few and slight. Under the Athenian version of bicameralism, the lesser chamber
(the Council of 500) might hope to shape the course of an Assembly debate, but if their
probouleuma made a recommendation, the Assembly could reject or amend it, and it
could demand that a new probouleuma be drafted on specified lines for debate on a
later occasion. Only very rarely (Th. 3.36.5) would the presiding sub-committee
(Prytaneis) reopen a question on which the Assembly had already voted. In the interests
of national security, the generals could apparently prevent the Assembly from meeting
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(Th. 2.22.1). Any decree might be appealed against by a graphe paranomon and
referred to a jury court, and it was just possible for an official elected by the Assembly
to fail his vetting; but the jurors – aged at least 30, bound by their oath, and voting
secretly – were not a rival power: they were another manifestation of the same popular
power.
Radical democracy came to an end with the defeat of 404. Thoughtful
Athenians, reflecting on that shattering reverse, must have asked themselves ‘Why did
we lose?’ They may well have come to think that they had been misled into defeat by
bad leaders nurtured by a less than perfect constitution. (We cannot know this: we can
only make inferences from known changes to the constitution.) Out of defeat (in 413
and 404) had come oligarchic reaction (the Four Hundred and the Thirty). The régime
of the Thirty had completely discredited oligarchy. When Phormisius, an associate of
Theramenes, proposed the restriction of citizenship to those who owned land, he was
defeated. The constitution of the future would remain democratic, but with differences.
Those differences seem to be designed rather to prevent ill-considered constitutional
changes than military mistakes. Foreign policy, like the election of generals, remained
in the hands of the Assembly.
NOTES ON INDIVIDUAL BULLET POINTS FROM THE SPECIFICATION
2 Nature and Distinctiveness of Athenian Democracy
2.1 Nature
Democracy literally means ‘people power’. But ‘people power’ worked in a very
different way in the ancient Greek world from the way in which it works in the
modern West. The fundamental sense in which ancient Greek government was
democratic was the centrality of adult male citizens, regardless of their economic
status, in individual and collective capacities, to the judicial, executive and legislative
workings of government. The extent to which the institutions of Athenian democracy
set in place absolutely equal privileges of participation for all citizens is unclear.
Among the reforms connected with Solon was the division of the citizen-body on the
basis of agricultural productivity into four socio-economic classes ([Aristotle],
Constitution of the Athenians 7). At the time of Solon, the lowest class, known as the
thetes, were deemed ineligible for magistracies, and this restriction was probably
never repealed, though, in all likelihood, it was ignored by the second half of the
fourth century. Thetes however appear to have possessed the right to attend, vote,
speak and propose legislation at the ekklesia (assembly) and to initiate prosecutions at
the law courts. Democracy was ‘people power’ in the sense that all citizens, including
the poor, had equal political power by law. Citizens attended the assembly, where
they made speeches, debated on matters of political importance, and made decrees
(and, in the fifth century, laws) which directed the domestic and inter-state policies of
the state. Citizens also participated directly in the judicial process, with juries (which
acted as judges) being drawn from a board of 6,000 citizens selected at the start of the
political year. Most magistrates were selected by lot and held their office for one year.
There were no established political parties, and the profile and status of politicians or
politically active citizens was no more secure than their last speech. In contrast to
ancient democracy, modern democracy is representative, with elected representatives
(to whom, effectively, power is delegated) making decisions on the basis of a
democratic mandate. Other key differences between ancient and modern concepts of
democracy include the absence of a democratic ‘Constitution’ in ancient Athens (not
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that different from the UK, but perhaps very different from the US), and the lack of a
principle of Separation of judicial, executive and legislative powers.
What about the potential overlap of ancient and modern democratic values?
Democratic slogans like equality, liberty and the rule of law suggest that there is
considerable overlap between ancient and modern democratic value. In Athens there
is particularly strong evidence for a notion of equality of political privileges among
citizens. In addition to the idea of isonomia (equality before the law), important to the
Athenians were ideas of isegoria (‘equal rights of speech’), and isogonia (equality of
birth). One Athenian orator of the fourth century BC claimed that law and equality
were bases of Athenian democracy that made it distinct from oligarchy (Aeschines
1.5). However, important strands of modern liberal democratic ideas are absent from
Athenian thinking: these include the concern for minimising the effects of socioeconomic inequality, and the question of how best to address inequalites emerging
from gendered and ethnic difference. Whereas ancient Athenian democracy was a
slave-holding society which gave equal political privileges only to Athenian citizens,
modern interpretations of equality tend to emphasise human equality. Marxist
critiques of liberal democracy suggest that its notion of political equality is
undermined by the social and economic inequalities that emerge in a capitalist classbased economy; the Athenians, on the other hand, did not think that economic
redistribution was a prerequisite for political equality (or, for that matter, liberty).
Pericles, for instance, insisted that equality of political privileges was unimpeded by
poverty (2.37.1). It is clear, therefore, that ancient democratic thought was concerned
with political equality but not socio-economic equality. Liberal historians of Greece
(George Grote in the nineteenth century and Josiah Ober in the twentieth) have gone
further, suggesting, quite plausibly, that the Athenians, by empowering the masses,
instead sought political solutions to socioeconomic tensions.
An excellent study of the relations between ancient and modern democracy is
P. Rhodes’ Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology. There is a very accessible
discussion of the correspondences and disparities between ancient Athenian and,
modern British democracy by Leo Davidson in Omnibus 55, emphasising the notion
of freedom of speech.
2.2 Distinctiveness
One measure of the distinctiveness of Athenian democracy is to think how far
Athenian democracy was a one-off institution in the history of the Greek world. The
sources for ancient Greek history allow us to reconstruct the institutions and practices
of democracy in Athens to a scale of unprecedented detail; they also give us a clearer
idea of how exactly democracy developed in Athens. However, democratic
government did exist in the ancient Greek world outside Athens. There are
communities in which democratic institutions existed before the reforms of
Cleisthenes, and where they evolved independent of Athenian influence. In what may
be the earliest surviving Greek law on stone (dating from the seventh century BC,
from the Cretan city of Dreros), a set of regulations forbid the repeated tenure of the
office of kosmos (in all likely the chief magistracy of the city) within a period of ten
years. Another inscribed law, of the sixth century BC, discovered on the island of
Chios (but which may derive from the mainland city of Erythrai) demands that
officials should observe the decrees (rhetras) of the people when dealing with sacred
property. Both documents attest to the existence of institutions designed to restrict the
powers of high-profile individuals, while the Chios document lends authority to
statutes introduced by the people.
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In the fifth century BC, the Athenians appear to have encouraged the
development of democratic institutions in states which were members of the Delian
Confederacy. A now-lost inscription from Athens, dating to 453/2 BC, recorded by an
eighteenth-century traveller, established arrangements for a council of 120 men
selected by lot to be imposed on the city of Erythrai (LACTOR 1 216a). An
inscription from Athens dating probably to either 446/5 or 424/3 BC imposes
regulations on the Athenians (LACTOR 1 78 = ML 52) introduces an oath for the
Chalcidians and imposes judicial arrangements on them: in matters concerning exile,
execution or loss of civic rights, Chalcidians are to be tried at Athens in the court of
the thesmothetai. The Athenians, therefore were not the only fifth-century Athenian
community to have a democratic constitution, and it appears to be the case that they
encouraged the establishment of democratic institutions outside Athens. The
Athenians liked to think of themselves as unique or at least as an example to others.
Pericles, in the eulogy of Athenian democracy that was the funeral speech at the end
of the first year of the Peloponnesian war, declared that ‘Our constitution is not
modelled on the laws of our neighbours; rather, we are an example to others ’ and that
Athens was ‘an example to Greece’(Th.2.37.1; 2.41.1; see Liz Potter’s article ‘”The
education of Greece”: reading Pericles’ funeral speech’ in Omnibus 49). Pericles’
words evoke a time when the Athenians may have been able to impose democracy
even on stubborn communities. The Old Oligarch gives us a clue as to why the
Athenians may have done this: he claimed that the Athenians supported the ‘lowest
element’ in each city as it was well-disposed to them. He suggested that when they
tried to support the aristocrats in Boeotia and Miletus, those factions soon revolted
from them and massacred the common people (Old Oligarch 3.10-11). It may well
have been the case that the demos in some states would have preferred democracy
backed by the Athenians to oligarchy in an autonomous state (this is Moses Finley’s
view; but cf. Thuc. 8.48).
The Athenian-sponsored imposition of democratic regimes across Greece
raises the question of the relationship between Athenian democracy and the Athenian
empire. The Old Oligarch made a firm case for connecting democracy with
imperialism: at 1.2 he linked democracy with the rule of the sea: the masses row and
by virtue of this they were entitled to insist on political power (1.2). In Aristophanes’
Wasps, performed in 422 BC at the Lenaia, Philocleon claimed that imperial income
allowed the jurors to be paid for their service (605-6; cf. 655ff). The historian Moses
Finley, in an essay entitled ‘The Fifth-Century Athenian Empire: A Balance Sheet’
also suggested that the material benefit of the Athenian empire helped the Athenians
maintained their democratic system. But the existence of democracy in the fourth
century suggests the fallacy of this argument; as Lisa Kallet-Marx suggested, the
connection between imperial revenue and democracy was a rhetorical theme rather
than a historical reality (the essays cited here are collected in P. Low (ed.),
The Athenian Empire).
But it is worth remembering that the city of Sparta, so often held up as the
antithetical character to Athenian democratic openness, also possessed democratic
institutions: most significantly a popular assembly which met at regular intervals
(Plutarch, Lycurgus ch 6). The idea of citizen equality is attested in classical Sparta,
where citizens were called homoioi (‘equals’), but it is hard to find evidence for the
practice of political egalitarianism in that city.
When we think beyond Greece, the Athenian experiment in direct democracy
is by no means unique. While the predominant form of democracy in the modern
world is representative, theoretical and practical experiments with direct forms of
10
democracy have, however, been undertaken in the modern world. Some of these make
room for popular initiative: the practice of offering citizens the right to place issues to
the vote has been tried in the US state of California; a nearly-extinct form of direct
democracy which has endured in a few rural cantons of Switzerland since the 13th
century is that of annual popular assemblies (Landesgemeinde) which offer every
citizen the right to speak and vote (see Mogens Hansen’s fascinating article in
Omnibus 53, comparing the counting of votes in Athens and the Swiss democracies).
3.1 Participation
The most famous statement of the valuation of male citizen participation is that which
Pericles proposes in the first half of his funeral speech: ‘we alone believe the man
who does not participate not as a man who minds his own business (apragmon), but
we believe he is useless (achreios)’ (Thuc. 2.40.2). The clauses which follow these
words, in which the speaker insists upon the complementarity of action and
deliberation, evoke the idea that the Athenians alone are able to perform bravely in
battle because they have collectively pooled their ideas in order to calculate the best
possible action. However, given the fact that the presentation of political activity as a
virtuous contribution is a theme that emerges in other evidence for the discourse of
Athenian politics, it is likely that Thucydides’ words reflect a contemporary
discussion about the value and necessity of popular participation.
The potential contribution of the people to the political process was given
philosophical and allegorical elaboration in Plato’s Protagoras. In that dialogue, Plato
put a so-called Great Speech into the mouth of Protagoras, a fifth-century philosopher
and itinerant teacher of rhetoric (a sophist). Protagoras claimed that Zeus, when he
realised that man was without adequate means to protect himself from wild animals,
sent Hermes to bestow upon all men the arts of respect for others and justice, so that
there would be order in their communities. Political virtue arises from these qualities:
this is the reason, says Protagoras, that the Athenians allow their citizens to deliberate
about questions concerning political excellence (Plato, Protagoras 322d-323c). This
allegory may be read as a justification of mass participation in political deliberation
and the idea that all citizens might use their own initiative to contribute to the
workings of a community: it may be an expression of Protagoras’ own views.
Protagoras, however, does not rule out the possibility that some men have more
aptitude for politics than others; indeed, in the lines that follow this passage, he
suggests that a teacher can help to improve a student’s level of political virtue (323c324d).
The value of popular participation and its relation to leadership appears to
have been fiercely contended in popular arenas, and at points it appears that there was
an on-going debate about the question of how central good leadership was to effective
decision-making. Athenagoras was reported by Thucydides to have claimed, at a
meeting of the Syracusan assembly, that the masses were the best at listening to
different arguments and judging between them (Thuc. 6.39.1). Cleon, an Athenian
said by Thucydides to have been ‘most persuasive’ (Thuc. 3.36.6) among the people
in the 420s BC, in an assembly debate over the treatment of rebellious allies of Athens,
felt the need to challenge the elitist argument that learned and wise men were better at
the administration of the city (3.37.3-4). The other side of the argument was expressed
by Demosthenes, who, in his defence speech On the Crown, stressed the centrality of
his own contribution to the survival of the Athenian polis at a time of crisis (Dem
18.173). For this fourth-century statesman, the value of open political participation
was that it allowed political experts to offer advice, make speeches, and enact laws
11
and decrees (Dem. 18.320-2). Another Athenian, the fourth-century exile Xenophon,
envisaged a central political role for a prostates tes poleos (protector of the city) in the
improvement of his state’s finances (Xen. Recollections 3.6). Indeed, when we look at
the evidence for the institutions and the actual workings of the Athenian polis, these
parallel discourses about the desirability of broad participation are reproduced in the
existence of an inclusive, egalitarian framework which made room for people power
alongside a political elite. Greek democracy had the capacity to foster the emergence
of a bipolar system of values; but also, in terms of institutions and practices.
Some modern scholarly research has emphasised the significance of
individuals or ruling elites in Athenian politics. While selection by lot of officials
appears to have encouraged participation from a wider section of society, those
registered as citizens of city-demes were disproportionately well-represented in
elected magistracies such as the generalship. (On demes and tribes, see below, section
4.6). In the judicial sphere, it is clear also that wealth was a very useful tool in
political self-promotion. Wealthy citizens would boast of their contributions to public
levies in their speeches; they would have been less deterred by the threat of fines
imposed on those who brought unsuccessful public prosecutions, and for this reason
they would have been able to take advantage of the procedural flexibility of the
Athenian legal system. The wealthy would have been able to make effective use of
bribery to buy off would-be prosecutors. Despite the ideology of political equality
enunciated in Athenian public discourse, it is widely recognised that in Athens there
was no institutional attempt to eradicate inequality of opportunity, social status or
education. Although jury and assembly pay may have been enough for citizens to
support themselves and dependants, and allowed Athenian citizens the leisure to
participate, it is likely that seasonal demand for agricultural labour may have
determined the makeup of such meetings.
While Athenian democracy enabled the existence of ‘people power’, socioeconomic inequalities meant that the rich and the well-born always had a significant
presence in Athenian politics. The skill of rhetoric was undoubtedly a significant
factor in pursuing a political career (it was a skill which sophists, in exchange for a
fee, may have been able to cultivate), and expenditure remained an important factor in
raising one’s profile. Furthermore, prosopographical studies suggest that some sort of
elite (consisting either of the wealthy or those citizens whose family origins lay in the
city centre) played a large part in decree-making and elected office holding. A
disproportionately large number of proposers of decrees came from the wealthiest 4%
of the population. Despite the fact that there is epigraphical evidence to suggest that
the dominance of the wealthy in elected offices was less extreme in the fourth century
than it was in the fifth, it was still the case that the wealthy played a
disproportionately large role in city politics. On the other hand, the picture of politics
on a local scale, in the demes, is more egalitarian: Osborne’s survey of the holders of
the locally-powerful office of demarch suggests that for the most part, the holders of
that office were not men of high socio-economic status (Osborne, Demos: The
Discovery of Classical Attika 85).
While the wealthy and privileged dominated the foremost political roles, there
were opportunities for the masses to participate in less prominent roles. Ober has
suggested that the effect of popular participation in the fourth century BC was to
make the de facto political leadership adapt an agenda which was amenable to the
interests of the poor (Ober, Mass and Elite). The frustrations of anti-democratic
authors like the Old Oligarch (see above) appear to reflect this priority of popular
interests. While it is impossible to be certain about the proportion of citizens attending
12
the assembly, it is likely that in the classical period, fewer than 25% of male citizens
eligible (those over the age of 30) would have served in the boule in any ten-year
period (Sinclair Democracy and Participation 196). This means that a significant
proportion of those with political privileges would have dealt closely with the
financial, military and political administration of the city and would have been
involved in debate and decision-making on behalf of their city. This may well have
given rise to a very high level of political and bureaucratic awareness; participation in
political activity in the demes would have raised political education to a higher degree.
But the Athenian ideal of participation extended far beyond the limits of
political deliberation and decision-making. Athenian citizens were highly involved in
public activities that did not pertain to the political administration of their city. In
many senses, participation was expressed as a way of life as much as it was a political
system. The Athenians encouraged their wealthy citizens, by a range of institutional
and social pressures, to contribute to a range of financial levies perceived by the
citizens to be in the public interest. Activities such as participation in festivals, public
dining, attending the theatre (which activity the Athenians may well have subsidised
in the fourth century), and religious activity (such as participation in shared sacrifices),
was a central part of citizenship Contributing to the wellbeing of the city in a range of
ways was all highly valued, and the predominant discourse of Athenian inscriptions,
the lawcourts and the assembly constructed a theoretical compatibility between civic
activity and the notion of free citizenship. To identify participation as the
phenomenon at the heart of Athenian democracy is to suggest that that democratic
‘politics’ is a broader concept than one might initially think. See R. Brock ‘How to be
a citizen in Ancient Greece’, in The Journal of Classics Teaching 8 (2006).
Metics and Slaves
The exclusion of non-citizens (metics, foreigners and slaves) from the workings of
democracy was a product of the polis-centredness of its organisation. Participation, of
course, was envisaged by the Athenians not as a human right but as a privilege of
male citizens of the Athenian polis, who, from 451 BC, were legally defined as those
who were born of a citizen father and mother ([Aristotle]’s Constitution of the
Athenians). Slaves were entitled no political or legal rights; they were commodities
which were bought and sold and they were entitled to legal protection only inasmuch
as they were the property of citizens. Metics had obligations to he city: they were
required to pay the metoikion (a metic tax) and they were required to nominate a
citizen as a protector. They were also expected to undertake military service, though
not in the privileged position of the cavalryman. Metics had some legal rights: they
appear to have been able to sue and be sued in private procedures; but it is less clear
as to whether they were able to launch public prosecutions. For more on the legal
position of slaves and metics, see S. Todd, The Shape of Athenian Law (Oxford, 1993),
182-200
But it is clear that despite their exclusion from political life in the strictest sense of the
term, slaves and metics would have played a vital role in society. For one thing, male
citizens with political rights were outnumbered: there seem to have been 50-60,000
adult male Athenian citizens in 432; numbers of adult female Athenians will have
been very similar; numbers of children in pre-industrial societies more or less match
numbers of adults, so 50-60,000 boys and 50-60,000 girls; numbers of metics will
have fluctuated, but most scholars guess at around 20,000; numbers of slaves are
much harder to guess: Thucydides thought 'more than two myriads' a reasonable guess
13
for the numbers who ran away during the occupation of Decelea, and his phraseology
suggests that he thought of these as not domestic slaves; allowing for non-domestic
slaves in the city (as opposed to the mines) and for a domestic slave per household
(not evenly distributed) it is hard to imagine the total slave population to have been
much less than around 100,000.
Economically speaking, metics were vital: there was a tendency for a high proportion
of craft and trade activity to be in the hands of metics (and their slaves): compare the
arms factory owned by the family of the metic Lysias (see Lysias 12.19) with its 120
slaves, and note that metics and slaves worked alongside citizens on the building of
the Erechtheum.
Women
Women too were excluded from all political privileges. Pericles in the funeral speech
say that ‘the greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about by men’ (Thuc.
2.46). Women would have been in the audience, as they had an important role as
mourners. They were not permitted to represent even their own cases in the courts
(see R. Just Women in Athenian Law and Life 26-39), though they could embark on
arbitration themselves. Aspasia, Pericles’ mistress, is accredited by Plutarch (Life of
Pericles 24-5; a theme which also emerges in Aristophanes’ Acharnians) with
influence over his policy, but she is the exception not the rule. In what sense can we
see women as participants in Athenian democracy? Women played an important role
in religion, in particular as priestesses. Many priestesshoods were dominated by
particular families, but by the last quarter of the fifth century, the Athenians had a cult
of Athena Nike (Victory) which selected a priestess by lot from all of the people: a
clear sign of democratic institutions overlapping with religious ones. Women made
sacrifices and dedications to the gods, and these often indicate an ostentatious
fulfilment of duties of piety which suggest an attempt at raising the social status of
oneself or one’s family. Litigants in fourth-century oratory would sometimes boast of
their family’s involvement in the Thesmophoria, a festival restricted probably to
married citizen women, in order to prove that they were well-born or properly married.
In the fifth century, one woman left a mark on Athens: Myrrhine, the first priestess of
Athena Nike, who was commemorated with two grave markers in Athens and one in
her home village in Attica. One of her grave markers reads: ‘This famous grave is for
the daughter of Kallimachos, who first oversaw Nike’s shrine. Her name was
associated with god-fame; she was named Myrrhine by the fortune of the gods. She
was the first to tend the temple of Athena Nike. Lucky Myrrhine, selected by lot from
everyone.’ The mention of her father suggests that not only the priestess herself but
also her family was stressing its piety.
The other sense in which women played a part in Athenian democracy was in the
social labour of the procreation of children. Athenian citizenship demanded that
individuals possess both a citizen mother and father. This is brought out in comedy:
the leader of the chorus in Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata suggests that she partakes in
the common affairs of the city by contributing men to it (648-47): the verb that she
uses for ‘contribute’ (‘eispherein’) is a cognate of the term ‘eisphora’, the financial
contribution that rich citizen men were expected to out forward in times of military
emergency.
14
A good starting point for thinking about the exclusion of women, metics and slaves is
ch 6 of E. Robinson (ed.), Athenian Democracy: Readings and Sources (Blackwells
2004).
3.2 Critics
When we look at the discussion of democratic values in Herodotus’ constitutional
debate (3.80-3) or Euripides’ Suppliant Women, it becomes clear that justifications of
democratic practice often emerge during the course of polemical encounters with
opponents of democracy. This leads to a broader point, that Greeks often came up
with their best theories through discussion and debate (Socratic dialogues, for instance,
are set out as conversations).
Critics of democracy are analysed by J. Ober in Political Dissent in
Democratic Athens: the first two chapters deal closely with Thucydides and the Old
Oligarch. The pamphlet of the Old Oligarch sets itself out by saying that 1.1-2 ‘My
opinion about the Athenian politeia is this: I object (ouk epaino) to their choice of this
form of constitution, because this first choice entails a second – to prefer the interests
of the mob (poneroi) to those of the respectable people (chrestoi); this is why I object
to it. But since this is their decision, I shall prove that, even when the other Greeks
think they are going about it the wrong way, they are in fact employing the best
means of preserving their politeia.’ He writes as a disaffected member of the wealthy
classes. The following passages constitute variations on his criticism of democracy:
1.5: ‘Throughout the world the aristocracy are opposed to democracy, for they are
naturally least liable to loss of self-control and injustice and most meticulous in their
regard for what is respectable, whereas the masses display extreme ignorance,
indiscipline and wickedness for poverty gives them a tendency towards the ignoble,
and in some cases lack of money leads to their being uneducated and ignorant.’
1.6-7: ‘Now one might say that the right thing would be that they did not allow all to
speak on an equal footing, nor to have a seat in the council, but only the cleverest and
the best. But on this point, too, they are acting in their own interests by also allowing
the vulgar people to speak. For if … the aristocracy (chrestoi) were allowed to speak
and took part in the debate, it would be good for them and their peers, but not to the
mob. But now that any vulgar person (poneros) who wants to may step forward and
speak, he will just express that which is good to him and his equals.’
2.17: ‘It is essential for oligarchic cities to observe treaties and oaths; if they do not
abide by agreements, or if injustice is committed, the names of those responsible are
available in a small body. But when the whole people makes an agreement, it is
possible for them to lay the blame on the man who spoke and the man who put it to
the vote, and for the others to deny that they were present or approved of an
agreement which they discover was made by the whole citizen body; if it seems
inadvisable for a decision to be followed, there are a thousand excuses available for
not doing what they do not want to do. If a decision of the people turns out badly, they
blame a few men acting against their interests, but if things go well, they take the
credit for themselves.’
2.19-20: ‘I do not blame the common people for their democracy, for anyone is to be
pardoned for looking after his own interests, but a man who is not of the common
people and chooses to live in a city that is ruled by a democracy rather than one with
15
an oligarchy is preparing to do wrong, and realizes that it is easier to get away with
being wicked under a democracy than under an oligarchy.’
Thucydides’ work also contains passages which criticise democracy: his obituary for
Pericles (2.65) is a passage which blames the people and democratic leaders for the
failure of Athens in the Peloponnesian war; 4.26-30 (especially 4.28: ‘the Athenians
behaved in the way that crowds usually do’) may also be read as a criticism of the
kinds of policy that Athenian democracy in the fifth century devised for itself.
Criticism of the influence of speeches on Athenian decisions: see ARD 285-6.
Note additionally:
Gorgias on rhetoric: Encomium of Helen (DK B11).12: Argument which
persuaded the soul also compelled it to obey what was said and to approve of what was
being done. The one who persuaded does wrong as one who used compulsion, but the
one who was persuaded is criticised in vain as one who was compelled. This view
depends Gorgias’ views about knowledge: Encomium of Helen (DK B11) 11: Most
people equip themselves with opinion (doxa) as their adviser. But opinion is slippery and
insecure and throws those who use it into tricky and insecure fortunes.
(compare Socrates at Plato Menexenos235a-c on the effect of hearing a Funeral
Oration: I imagine myself to have become all of a sudden taller and nobler and more
beautiful… This majestic feeling remains with me for over three days, so persistently
does the speech and voice of the speaker ring in my ears that it is scarcely on the fourth or
fifth day that I recover myself and remember that I am really here on earth, whereas till
then I almost imagined myself to be living on the Islands of the Blessed, so skilled are our
rhetores.)
Euripides has the Herald in Suppliant Women 411-422 express the advantages
of one-man rule over democracy by voicing what must have been standard criticisms
(ARD 12)
Plato Republic 492b-d on attending the Assembly as a bad education: when
many gathered together sit down in assemblies, courts, theatres, army camps or any
other common meeting of the multitude, and, with a great deal of uproar, excessively
blame some of the things said or done and just as excessively praise others, shouting
and clapping; and, besides, the rocks and the very place that surrounds them echo and
redouble the uproar of blame and praise. Now in such circumstances, as the saying
goes, what do you suppose is the state of the young man’s heart? Or what kind of
private education will hold out for him and will not be swept away by such blame and
praise and go, borne by the flood, wherever it is headed so that he will say the same
things are noble and shameful as they do, practise what they practise, and be such as
they are?’
On Plato’s opposition to democracy, Catherine Osborne ‘A dangerous
opponent of Democracy? : Plato's views in the Republic’ Omnibus 26
Comedy is also an important source for anti-democratic prejudices. Athenian
drama, both tragedy and comedy, was mostly performed in the theatre of Dionysus in
Athens, as part of two major festivals, the Lenaea and City Dionysia. Both tragedies
and comedies were performed as entries in a competition, and it is safe to say that the
primary concern of comic poets like Aristophanes was to win the competition. But not
the sole concern. Aristophanes' plays reveal that lively rivalry between comic poets
was as much about poetry as about winning the competition, and comic poets readily,
if not completely seriously, espouse the role of poet as teacher (see esp. both the
overall plot of Frogs and note the chorus at 686-7).
16
One striking feature of Old Comedy is its topicality, and that topicality
involves living Athenians, who may appear on stage as characters in the piece, either
under their own name or thinly disguised, or who may be referred to by characters or
by the chorus. Since the poet wins the prize by making his audience laugh, we should
not be surprised if prominent living people are mocked or abused. (Not even the gods
escape this treatment.) The law of defamation did not apply to the theatre, or it was
understood that juries would not convict comic poets accused of defamation in the
theatre. Successful poets were highly esteemed.
It is likely that some of a comic poet’s own views will become apparent if
enough of his work survives. Eleven plays of Aristophanes survive, about a quarter of
his output, and it is hard to believe that he privately thought that the Peloponnesian
War should be prolonged or that it was a good thing for bright young sykophants to
prosecute venerable members of the upper class before juries composed of their social
inferiors, who were drawing pay for their work. (It does not follow that he had a better
judicial system to propose.)
Comedy mocks the existing order; so criticism of the powers that be should
not surprise. The government of Athens was essentially the Assembly, and it was
permissible to mock particular decisions of the Assembly, like the election of
Lamachus or Cleon as general, but it would have been unwise to attack the very idea
of a crowd of 6,000 coming to a sensible decision about anything.
The speakers and generals who advised the people could expect abuse as well
as ridicule. Pericles had died in 429, and Aristophanes’ first play was produced in 427,
and his first extant play (Acharnians) in 425. To judge from Acharnians and Peace
(421), which contain rival accounts of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431,
he would have felt quite free to abuse both Pericles and Aspasia.
Aristophanes' presentation of democratic politics in Knights: What are we to
make of the character of Demos in Knights? He is the epitome of regular Assemblyattenders, the embodiment of the assembled people. One of his slaves, general
Demosthenes in fact, describes him as ‘country-tempered, bean-chewing, irascible
Demos of Pnyx [not a real urban deme – just the place where the Assembly usually
met], an old crosspatch, hard of hearing’. It can hardly be true that under normal
circumstances (the Spartan invasions had stopped in 425) most of those attending
were elderly farmers. The point seems to be that addressing the Assembly was a
hazardous business. Speeches needed to be loud, clear and, unless you were Cleon,
emollient.
It is difficult to believe that OO had seen Knights when he wrote (2.18):
‘They [the Athenians] do not tolerate comic ridicule and abuse of the common
people’, but though Demos is subjected to ridicule, he is spared abuse, and towards
the end (1121-30) he assures the Knights that he has his wits about him.
More damaging to the image of democracy is perhaps the Sausage-seller’s
account of his contest with the Paphlagonian slave [Cleon] in the Council-house (62582). The Councillors are presented as gullible and greedy. If it were true that the
Councillors of Athens had difficulty in focusing on public policy, that would
strengthen the case for oligarchy. (more on Cleon in the Knights: see below section 6).
4. Workings
4.1 The Assembly
The Athenian assembly (ekklesia) was the assembly of adult male citizens; it was the
ultimate decision-making body of the Athenian polis. It is unlikely that even the
poorest citizens were ever excluded from the meetings. It probably reached a zenith of
17
its powers in the period between Ephialtes’ reforms and the Spartan destruction of
democracy in 404 BC. It was the essence of democracy: the word demos was often
used to describe the assembly. Xenophon (Recollections 3.7.6 =ARD 128) says that
‘fullers, cobblers, carpenters, smiths, farmers etc. made up the audience of the
assembly’. Combined with the lawcourts, it was what made Athens a democracy. The
Constitution of the Athenians of [Aristotle], 41, says: ‘the democracy controls public
life in every sphere by means of its votes in the assembly, as well as by its hold on the
courts’. The assembly was at the heart of direct democracy inasmuch as it offered
opportunities for the male citizen to get involved in the decisions made on behalf of
his city. This was the body which made decrees (psephismata), though these usually
followed the general guidance or the specific recommendation of the boule (Sinclair
1988: 88-101). The workings of the assembly were reliant on both individual
initiative and participation: some decisions required ratification by a quorum of 6,000.
But at the same time it is quite unlikely that the Pnyx, the auditorium at which the
assembly usually met, could ever have accommodated even the fourth-century
Athenian male citizen population of 30,000. In the fourth century, the statute-making
mechanisms of the Athenian state were divided between a number of institutions also
reliant on volunteerism: laws (nomoi) proposed by Athenian citizens were passed to
the nomothetai, a board which was drawn from the pool of 6,000 volunteer jurors,
who decided whether the law was to be enacted or not.
The assembly met, in the fourth century BC, 40 times per year, and
presumably extra meetings could be held when needed. It met usually at an
auditorium on the Pnyx Hill, though the meeting after the festival of Dionysus was
held at the Theatre of Dionysus. Chapter 43 of [Aristotle]’s Constitution of the
Athenians describes a meeting of the assembly: “The prytaneis of the council also put
up written notice of the meetings of the Assembly: one sovereign meeting, at which
the business is to vote the confirmation of the magistrates in office if they are thought
to govern well, and to deal with matters of food supply and the defence of the country;
and on this day informations have to be laid by those who wish, and the inventories of
estates being confiscated read, and the lists of suits about inheritance and heiresses, so
that all may have cognizance of any vacancy in an estate that occurs. In the sixth
presidency in addition to the business specified they take a vote on the desirability of
holding an ostracism, and on preliminary informations against persons charged as
malicious informers, citizens and resident aliens, up to the number of not more than
three cases of either class, and charges of failure to perform a service promised to the
People. Another meeting is given to petitions, at which anyone who wishes, after
placing a suppliant-branch, may speak to the People about any matter he may wish
whether public or private. The two other meetings deal with all other business, at
which the laws enact that three cases of sacred matters are to be dealt with, three
audiences for heralds and embassies, and three cases of secular matters. And
sometimes they do business without a preliminary vote being taken. Also the
Presidents give a first audience to heralds and to ambassadors, and to the Presidents
dispatches are delivered by their bearers.” Aristophanes’ Acharnians 1-203 gives a
comic turn on the procedures, mentioning the ‘vermilioned rope’ used to herd people
towards (or away from meetings). The speaker claims that he has come ‘prepared to
shout, interrupt and abuse the speakers’. Xenophon, A History of Greece 1.7 is also an
interesting insight into the ways in which the Athenian assembly worked after the
battle of Arginusai (see below on generals, section 4.4).
Christopher Blackwell’s overview of the assembly is an excellent resource:
see http://www.agathe.gr/
18
4.2 The Council
If the Assembly was to be sovereign, it had to have a smaller body to prepare its agenda.
Thousands of men cannot draw up an agenda on the spot. It is therefore reasonable to
believe our only, admittedly late, witness, the Constitution of the Athenians (ARD 31),
and accept that Cleisthenes introduced a Council of 500, fifty men from each new tribe.
For their accommodation a square Council-house was built on the west side of the Agora
or central square. The council (boule) was the other important organ of popular
government: it prepared the agenda of the assembly and took responsibility for the
everyday affairs of the polis. Citizens, selected probably by lot, sat on the council for a
year at a time and were forbidden from holding a seat either for more than one year
consecutively or more than twice in a lifetime (Rhodes 1972). The fact that councillors
were drawn from the whole territory of Attica and from the across the board of socioeconomic classes meant that its consistency and interests, in all likelihood, would have
replicated that of the whole community of citizens. Councillors would have represented
the interests of their fellow demesmen (Osborne 1985a: 92); in this sense the council
acted as a representative force in Athenian democracy.
The Council routinely scrutinised its successors before they took office, and also
the nine archons (ARD 172). A citizen wanting to denounce a major offence against the
city—committed by a general, for example—would do so to the Council, or directly to
the Assembly, and no longer to the Areopagus. As boards of magistrates multiplied, it
fell to the Council to co-ordinate and indeed supervise their activities.
It is not possible to chart accurately the development of the Council’s procedures
and duties (for which see ARD 150-185) from 508/7 to 462/1. It seems likely that from
the start the Council’s discussion of a matter resulted in a prior determination
(probouleuma) which either made a recommendation, proposed by a member of the
Council, or simply put the matter on the agenda with no recommendation. In the former
case the Assembly could accept, reject or amend the proposal. It could also require the
Council to put a matter that came up in the course of debate on the agenda for a later
meeting.
Though it is not attested in our sources, it may be that it was at the time of the
Ephialtic reforms that a step was taken to increase the Council’s capacity to handle its
growing volume of business by constituting the 50 representatives of each tribe as the
presiding sub-committee of the Council, the Prytaneis, serving, in an order determined
by lot, for a tenth of the lunar year—a prytany of 35 or more days (ARD 173). Just south
of the Council-house, a Round-house or Tholos was built to accommodate them. There
the Prytaneis dined at public expense. It was to the Tholos that messengers and
ambassadors reported.
One of the Prytaneis was picked by lot to be Chairman from one dusk to the next.
He spent the night in the Tholos with a third of the Prytaneis, and he took the chair at any
meeting of Council or Assembly held on his day. It was the Prytaneis who convened
those meetings. No one could serve as Chairman more than once; so a high proportion of
Athenians became head of state for a day. The Council met every day except for major
festival days and days of ill omen; so conscientious Councillors learnt a great deal about
the affairs of the city. We first hear of pay for attendance in 411 and do not know when it
was introduced; in the fourth century Councillors seem mostly to have been persons of
some standing, and the same is likely to have been true in the fifth. It is probable that at
least by the 450s the lot was being used to pick Councillors from those who volunteered
to represent each deme.
19
Despite some late references to the existence of jury courts before the reforms of
Ephialtes (ARD 44, 203), it is more likely that the need to subdivide the (H)eliaea into
jury courts was precipitated by the removal from the Areopagus of its politically
significant judicial functions.
The Constitution of the Athenians (ARD 45 above) rightly separates the Council
from the [assembled] people and the courts. For all its constitutional importance, the
Council could not speak for the people, and its prior determinations were eminently
revisable, unlike the findings of the jury courts. As just mentioned, the Assembly could
now hear denunciations of major offences against the state. The Athenians saw no need
to separate the judicial arm of government from the legislative or executive.
In the interests of national unity, the Council had to be geographically
representative; so each of the demes had at least one representative on the Council and as
many more as its size justified. In the interests of good government, there had to be a rule
that nothing could be discussed in the Assembly which had not first been discussed in the
Council. Since the Council’s business was not to control the Assembly but to enable it to
function, it could not be allowed to acquire a mind of its own; so from the first there
must have been severe restrictions on serving on the Council more than once. It was to
be a deliberative body; so there was a minimum age of 30. 500 is a sizeable number for a
deliberative body, and only the confident would care to address such an audience, but it
is not known how the 500 were originally appointed. Under the Athenian form of
bicameralism, the lesser body made its contribution before the greater one made its
contribution.
Operating this complex system was an education in democracy. For whatever reason,
Cleisthenes was a decimal thinker: 10, 50, 500 (contrast the duodecimal 12 Olympian
deities, etc.). Crucial to the way in which the new constitution worked was the
relationship between the Assembly and the individuals and groups that advised it. In
501/0 an oath was introduced which the Council had to swear. We do not have a full
text of the oath, but it is known to have included the following clauses:
I will serve as a bouleutes in accordance with the laws.
I will give the best counsel I can to the Athenian people
I will not imprison any Athenian who puts forward three sureties from
his own census class, except when someone is caught conspiring to betray the city or
end democracy, or who has bought a tax or gone surety or made a contribution, and
not paid.
I will not exile or imprison or execute anyone without trial
I will declare it if I know that any of those selected by lot is unsuitable
to be a Councillor.
added in 420s: If anyone strikes a silver coin in the cities [of the
empire] and does not use the coins of the Athenians or their weights or their measures
but uses foreign coins and weights and measures, I will punish and penalise him
according to the former decree which Klearkhos proposed.
added in 410/9: I will sit in the seat allotted to me.
added in 403/2: I will not hear any prosecution or action upon summary
arrest arising from events preceding the archonship of Eucleides, except in the case of
those in exile.
A law republished at the end of the fifth century, which constitutes a 'Statute of
Limitations' on the power of the Council, survives in part on stone. This statute, which,
for example, prohibits the Council from condemning a man to death without a full vote
of the people, is commonly thought to have been first moved in the early fifth century,
20
precisely to regulate the relations between the new Assembly and the Council. Relations
between Assembly and individuals were regulated by ostracism.
4.3 The magistrates
The public offices of Athens were divided between the minor (civilian) offices,
including the prestigious archonship, which were filled annually by lot and which no
one might hold more than once (rotation) and the major (military) offices, which were
filled annually by election by the Assembly and to which a man might be re-elected
year after year. (It is doubtful whether Solonian property qualifications—excluding,
for example, Thetes from office—still counted for much.) The Assembly could not be
expected to choose between all the obscure candidates wanting to hold some minor
civilian office (the Platonic Socrates, unlike his Xenophontic counterpart, does not
criticise the use of the lot), but, in an age of almost continuous warfare, national
security depended on the competence of the generals, and no one would be elected
general who had not already distinguished himself in some way. In Th. 2.37.1,
Pericles is talking about men such as himself who counted generals among their
forebears.
‘As for poverty, if anyone can do the city some good, he is not debarred by his
humble standing’ (Th. 2.37.1). Pericles is here talking about minor public offices.
Including jurors and Councillors? Two things that distinguished jurors from most
officials were their exemption from examination (euthynai) after a year of service and
their being able to serve year after year. One thing that distinguished Councillors was
the fact that the Council was a component of the state, as shown by the opening words
of most decrees: Resolved by the Council and People.
Ignoring Councillors and, for the moment, jurors, we can say that the detailed
administration of public affairs, financial and otherwise, was largely in the hands of
annual boards of ten. (The archons with their different duties did not function as such
a board.) Everything was done to prevent corruption and minimise the effects of
individual incompetence. The application of the lot to the list of those volunteering to
serve, subsequent vetting (dokimasia) of those picked to weed out the unsuitable, the
narrow remit, the fact that each member of the board would be watching the other
members, examination (euthynai), financial and general, of conduct during the year of
office – all this combined to ensure that most holders of minor office did a decent job.
According to Old Oligarch (3.4,2) one reason for the arrears of public business
in Athens was the need to vet would-be officials and to examine outgoing officials.
The work of the many different boards was co-ordinated by the Council, and
some of it had to be done in the presence of the Council. See [Aristotle]’s Constitution
of the Athenians 47.1 (ARD 201), for example.
Under democracy the main duties of the nine archons were religious and also
legal. The Archon, the Polemarch, the Basileus and the six Thesmothetai presided
over legal cases concerning respectively: citizen families, metic (licensed immigrant)
families, religion, and serious offences against the state. Except in cases of homicide
and some other quasi-religious offences, decisions about guilt or innocence were
taken by juries composed of hundreds of ordinary citizens, who were paid a modest
sum (3 obols by 425) for each day’s work, and had to be aged 30.
[Aristotle]’s Constitution of the Athenians gives us insight into the number of
personnel required in the democratic administration of Athens:
[24.1] After this, now that the city was confident and a large amount of money had
been collected, Aristeides advised the Athenians to assert their leadership, and to
21
leave the fields and live in the city: there would be maintenance for all, some on
campaign, some on guard duty, others attending to public affairs; and by living in this
way they would secure their leadership. [24.2] The Athenians were persuaded. They
took control of the empire, and became more domineering in their treatment of the
allies, apart from Chios, Lesbos and Samos: these they kept as guardians of the
empire, accepting their existing constitutions and allowing them to retain the subjects
over whom they ruled. [24.3] In accordance with Aristeides' proposal, they provided
ample maintenance for the common people, so that more than twenty thousand men
were supported from the tribute, the taxes and the allies. There were 6,000 jurors;
1,600 archers, and also 1,200 cavalry; the Council of Five Hundred; 500 guards of the
dockyards, and also 50 guards on the Acropolis; about 700 internal officials and about
700 overseas. In addition to these, when the Athenians subsequently organized their
military affairs, they had 2,500 hoplites; 20 guard ships; other ships sent out for the
tribute, carrying 2,000 men appointed by lot; also the town hall; orphans; and
guardians of prisoners. All these were financed from public funds.
4.4 The generals
4.4.1 Generals and Politics: introduction
Together with the leading speakers, among whom they were often numbered, the ten
generals were the most important men in Athens. In theory, all ten were on a level,
but those who were regularly re-elected, like Cimon, Pericles and Nicias, carried more
weight. The Assembly decided which generals should command each expedition. If
the glory to be won was great, the hazards were not negligible: the possibility of being
killed in action and of being prosecuted for failure (see Th. 4.65.3). The Athenians
expected their generals to succeed and not ‘give up’. It was their business to advise
the Assembly on the soundness or otherwise of projected expeditions. Mostly we hear
nothing about this advice, but Thucydides' accounts of the discussions over Pylos and
Sicily show that major debates could result if different generals gave different advice
(the veteran Nicias advising one thing and the gifted young aristocrat Alcibiades
advising another, in the case of Sicily) or if an influential politician disputed the
advice of a general (Cleon disputing with Nicias over Pylos). Once an expedition had
been decided on and generals chosen by the Assembly to command it, those generals
were expected to succeed. Provided that they did succeed, questions would probably
not be asked about incidental advantages accruing to them, but if they failed, they
could expect to be prosecuted for taking bribes or ‘giving up’ (prodosia) or on some
other charge and to suffer the fate of Miltiades, Thucydides and very many others.
4.4.2 Generals and Politics: the case of Arginusai
(What follows paraphrases Xenophon History of Greece 1.6.26–7.35: Xenophon's
account is likely to be biased—to an unknown extent). In 406 eight generals in
command of 150 Athenian ships had succeeded brilliantly in defeating 120
Peloponnesian ships in a huge battle fought off the Arginusai Islands, but a storm
prevented two experienced trierarchs, Theramenes and Thrasybulus, from carrying
out their orders to pick up shipwrecked survivors and corpses. The generals sent a
dispatch to the Council and Assembly explaining that a storm had prevented the
picking up of survivors and corpses. The eight generals were deposed and recalled
and required to undergo examination. Two of the eight escaped. The rest sent a
second dispatch, addressed to the people, naming Theramenes and Thrasybulus as
responsible.
22
On their return the six generals reported to the Council on the battle and the
storm. A Councillor called Timocrates moved that the generals be arrested and
‘handed over to’, or brought before, the people. At a subsequent meeting of the
Assembly, Theramenes defended himself and Thrasybulus, and he called for the
examination of the generals. The generals then spoke briefly in turn and presented
witnesses. Whatever the precise agenda of the meeting may have been, there was not
time to complete it before dark. So it was decided to adjourn the meeting, and the
Council was instructed to prepare a probouleuma on how the men should be tried
(before the Assembly or before a jury court).
At the next meeting of the Assembly, Callixenus moved a probouleuma which
assumed that the previous meeting of the Assembly had constituted a trial and invited
those present to vote by tribes on the collective guilt or innocence of the generals, the
penalty proposed being death and confiscation of property. Euryptolemus and some
others responded, it seems, by initiating a graphe paranomon against Callixenus, on
the grounds that nothing like a proper trial had taken place. Uproar ensued. Most of
those present shouted that it would be a terrible thing if the people were prevented
from doing whatever they wanted—an extreme expression of the claims of popular
sovereignty. They wanted to vote on the Council’s resolution. The presiding subcommittee, apart from Socrates, was prepared to put the question to the vote.
Euryptolemus had been forced to withdraw his summons, but he now spoke in favour
of trying the men individually, according to one of two legal procedures—before the
Assembly, in accordance with the decree of Cannonus, which carried the same
penalty as Callixenus had proposed, or before a jury court. Euryptolemus’ final
proposal was that the men should be tried in accordance with the decree of Cannonus,
but individually; the Council’s proposal was to judge them all with a single vote.
Initially, the Assembly voted for Euryptolemus and against the Council, but
one Menecles somehow secured a recount, and the decision was reversed. All eight
generals were condemned, and the six in Athens were executed, including Pericles’
only surviving son.
It was not long before the tide of feeling turned. The Athenians ‘voted that
complaints should be lodged against those who had deceived the people, including
Callixenus, and that they should provide sureties until they could be tried’ (Xen.
History of Greece 1.7.35). Theramenes was elected general for 405/4 and then
disqualified at his dokimasia for being ill-disposed to the people (Lysias 13.10). This
is the only known case of an elected general failing his dokimasia.
4.5 Ostracism
The institution of ostracism (ARD 31, 32), whereby a man might be voted into ten years
of exile, is attributed to Cleisthenes by the Constitution of the Athenians. The difficulty is
that the first ostracism did not take place until 487. The purpose of ostracism seems to
have been to break political deadlocks such as had arisen between Cleisthenes and
Isagoras, but it was first used against suspected friends of the tyrants.
Once a year the Assembly was asked if it wished to hold an ostracism. If it voted to do so,
the ostracism was held in the Agora some two months later. Each man who wished to
participate scratched a name on a potsherd or ostrakon. (More than 10,000 such ostraka
have now been found.) He cast his ostrakon under tribal arrangements to prevent plural
voting. If the total number of ostraka cast reached 6,000 (perhaps a fifth of the citizen
body), the man whose name occurred most frequently was sent into exile for ten years.
His property was not confiscated, and after ten years he could return without dishonour
and with his civic rights intact.
23
It might seem unjust that a man convicted of no crime should be sent into exile
for ten years, but the preservation of civic harmony was deemed paramount. The
method chosen suggests that by the time of the introduction of ostracism most citizens
could write, or at least read, simple legends, and it may provide the earliest instance of
the secret ballot.
For an example of ostracism, see Plutarch Nicias 11. Forsdyke Exile,
Ostracism and Democracy, pp. 170-4 suggests that Plutarch’s view that this ostracism
was a misuse of the institution is misguided. Thucydides 8.73 suggests however that
there was something unusual about his ostracism but says nothing about the alleged
manipulation of the vote.
4.5 Lawcourts and democracy
The lawcourts themselves were important institutions for the functioning of Athenian
politics: in the fourth century Athenian citizens were able, by the process known as
graphe paranomon, to prosecute a proposer of a law or decree for making an illegal
proposal. If the prosecution was successful, the proposal was annulled. Accordingly,
both in the lawcourts and in the assembly there was room for an individual citizen to
make a political impact.
Most Athenian lawsuits were heard in popular jury courts (major exception,
homicide and some other religious offences heard by Areopagus). The popular jury
court was an institution that became central in Athens after the Ephialtic reforms of
462/1. A board of 6,000 'ordinary' citizens was chosen annually by lot and sworn in;
on any particular day some or all of the 6,000 were assigned by lot to particular cases.
Cases were always heard by large numbers of dikastai, regularly 201, 501, and
sometimes 1,001 or even, it is claimed, all 6,000 together. Each case was under the
presidency of a relevant magistrate—in the case of Socrates the Basileus, an annual
magistrate chosen by lot, who had particular religious responsibilties, subject always
to the will of the Assembled People.
Cases were heard in the popular courts in the form 'Mr. A versus Mr. B',
where both A and B were private citizens (public prosecutors were appointed only in
very exceptional circumstances, and neither prosecutor nor defendant could be
represented by anyone else; there were no barristers at Athens). Some charges could
be brought only by the injured party, others could be brought by a third party. Cases
brought by a third party were known as graphai, and generally involved
circumstances which themselves prevented the injured party prosecuting. Impiety
was a third-party prosecution because the gods could not themselves bring
prosecutions. Any citizen in good standing could initiate a graphe, but he faced a
substantial fine (1,000 dr.) if he failed to secure one-fifth of the jurors' votes.
There was a preliminary hearing (anakrisis), at which the magistrate satisfied
himself that there was a case to answer within his jurisdiction, and the parties swore
conflicting oaths (antomosiai). When the case came to court, the prosecutor spoke
first, having the law or laws relevant to his case read out in the course of his speech,
and bringing witnesses to give testimony as appropriate. The defendant then spoke in
reply, and could also have laws read out and witnesses testify. Both prosecutor and
defendant might enlist the support of supplementary speakers (synegoroi). The
amount of time available to prosecution and defence was limited by the water-clock,
and depended on the seriousness of the charge, but all cases were heard within a
single day. The jurors might give noisy expression to their displeasure at things they
heard. The presiding magistrate offered no summing up and gave the dikastai no
guidance on the law; the dikastai decided on guilt or innocence by majority vote in a
24
secret ballot, which was taken without any formal conferring between them. In some
cases there was a stated penalty, but in cases of impiety there was no fixed penalty, if
the defendant was found guilty. Prosecutor and defendant made further speeches
proposing alternative penalties for the jurors to choose between, and the jurors then
voted again.
Magistrates were powerful within their own limited sphere, but their powers
were limited by litigation in Athens. ‘In public life, fear makes us utterly law-abiding:
we obey those currently in office…’(Th. 2.37.3). All the same, in his own court the
magistrate did not instruct the mass jury in the law, nor did he sum up. The jury voted
as soon as the case for the defence was completed. A majority vote convicted or
acquitted; a tie acquitted. Most Athenian court cases could be described as ‘Mr. A v.
Mr. B’. (There were no barristers, but there were professional speech-writers.) A
significant distinction existed between those cases known as dikai and those known as
graphai. In dikai, A was the aggrieved party or, as in a murder case, a kinsman of the
victim; in graphai, any male citizen could initiate proceedings on behalf of a victim,
when the nature of the crime more or less precluded the victim from prosecuting. The
introduction of graphai made possible the emergence of the sykophant, the illmotivated prosecutor.
Athenian litigation was sometimes connected with democratic values. In the
funeral speech, Pericles said ‘The law secures equality for all in their private disputes’
(Th. 2.37.1). ‘…and we obey the laws, especially those ordained for the protection of
victims’ (Th. 2.37.3). Understandably, Pericles does not address the important, but by
us unanswerable, question whether the mass jury of ordinary citizens, who had sworn
to uphold the law, did on the whole do so. Moreover, in saying such things, Pericles
concedes that Athens was not quite a crime-free and tort-free zone. Not necessarily to
its discredit, Athens was recognised as the city of litigation. The OO reflected on the
litigiousness of the Athenians: ‘They [the Athenians] have to decide more private
cases (dikai) and public cases (graphai) and examinations (euthynai)[of officials],
than the rest of humanity’ (OO 3.2).'…some will say that they [the Athenians] should
judge cases, but that fewer men should do the judging. Unless they have only a few
jury courts [as now], there will necessarily be only a few jurors in each court, so that
it will be easier to adapt oneself to a few jurors and to bribe them and easier to judge
much less fairly’ (OO 3.7).
Trials were trials of credibility: one party with his witnesses, and often
supplementary speakers, versus another. The strategy of the defendant was commonly
twofold: to suggest that his record proved him to be a friend of the people and ruled
out the possibility of his having committed such an offence and, in any case, the
prosecutor had no creditable motive or convincing evidence. The record most likely to
suggest a friend of the people would be one combining military, political and financial
contributions to the strength of the city. Standards of relevance would strike modern
judges as low.
Jurors:
Every year, the lot was used to pick a panel of 6,000 jurors aged at least 30
from those who volunteered. What kind of men volunteered? There is reason to
believe that many, but not all, of them were old and poor. See Ar. Wasps.
Juries 200-strong or 500-strong were standard, Hundreds of jurors were
assigned to, say, the Archon’s court for a year. No court met for more than 250 days
in a year; most, probably, for fewer than 200.
Popular juries resembled meetings of the Assembly in being deemed large
enough to represent the whole people. There could therefore be no appeal, under
25
radical democracy, against the findings of a jury court, although, if the verdict went
against one, it was possible to pursue one’s grievance in other ways, as by suing one’s
opponent’s witness for perjury. Nor, as we have seen, were jurors subject to
examination at the end of their year. It was an essential feature of the system that at
the end of their year magistrates, great and small, might find themselves prosecuted
for abuse of office before a jury of hundreds of ordinary fellow citizens. Many of
those jurors, having served in previous years, would be alert for any dust that might
be thrown in their eyes.
Large courts of even modestly paid jurors were expensive (4,000 jurors for
200 days would cost 66 2/3 talents), and no case, not even a capital case, lasted more
than a day. Some time before the trial, the parties had to attend a preliminary hearing
(anakrisis) before the relevant magistrate. If he was satisfied that there was a case to
answer within his jurisdiction, he took conflicting sworn statements (antomosiai)
from the parties, which helped to justify a short trial.
In what we should call criminal cases, much the commonest penalty was a fine;
more severe penalties were removal of some or all civic rights and death (to which
permanently fleeing the country was frequently a permitted alternative).
Much older than the popular jury courts was the court of the Areopagus,
composed of ex-archons, who served for life. Presided over by the Basileus, it heard
cases of murder and other quasi-religious offences. A higher standard of relevance
was said to prevail.
Aristophanes’ Wasps gives a comic turn on the lawcourt processes (the
proposal of penalties, the intervention of the juries, the calling of witnesses, pleas for
mercy). Plato's Apology (=speech in own defence) is Plato’s version of what Socrates
said in court when he was prosecuted in 399 for impiety.
4.6 Athenian political culture outside the Assembly, Council and Law-courts
NOTE: the information that follows here about demes and tribes is background, but
understanding of them is useful for understanding the nature of, and participation in,
Athenian democracy.
The tribes and demes were important in their role of selecting a cross-section of
Athenian men to serve on the Council. But both tribes and demes had a life of their
own, as well as being instruments of central government. What follows highlights
those aspects of that life about which we know most, and gives the evidence from
which we derive our knowledge.
4.6.1 Tribes
The ten Athenian tribes were named: Erechtheis, Aigeis, Pandionis, Leontis,
Akamantis, Oineis, Kekropis, Hippothontis, Aiantis, Antiochis
Political role: 50 members of each tribe formed the Council, and each tribal
contingent acted as the Council's 'Executive Committee' (Prytany) for a tenth of the
year.
Military role: army was organised in tribal groups, and war casualties were
listed by tribe. The ten generals were most commonly one from each tribe, although
method of election did allow two men to be chosen from one tribe and none from
another in a particular year. Other military officials also normally one per tribe.
Festival role: tribes were the basis of festal competitions as we see in the
following inscription:
26
IG ii21138 (shortly after 403/2):
Gods. Resolved by the Pandionid tribe on the proposal of Kallikrates: to
praise Nikias son of Epigenes of Kydathenaion for his manly goodness
towards the tribe, in that he was a good and keen [dithyrambic] choregos
for the boys and was victorious at the Dionysia, and at the Thargelia for
the men, and to crown him. Inscribe this decree on a stone stele in the
sanctuary of Pandion, epimeletai. And inscribe also anyone else who is
victorious after the archonship of Eukleides with the boys or the men at
the Dionysia, Thargelia, Promethia or Hephaistia. And the epimeletai
inscribe in the future anyone who is victorious in any of these and the
context in which he is victorious on this same stele.
Dionysia
Thargelia
Men
Boys
Men
Boys
Nikias
son
of Nikias
son
of Apemon son
Epigenes
of Epigenes
of Pheidippos
Kydathenaion
Kydathenaion
Myrrhinous
Andokides son of
Demon son of Xenopeithes son
Leiogoros
of
Demoteles
of Nausimakhos
Kydathenaion
Paiania
Paiania
Euripides son of Kharmantides son Antisthenes son
Adeimantos
of of Khairestratos of Antiphatos
Myrrhinous
Kytherros
Paiania
Philomelos son of
Philippides
of
Paiania
Tribes were also social groups, with property of their own to look after:
Athenian Agora Vol.19. P26 498-528 (relating to the 340s):
Timarchos of Aphidna, Amphikles and Ersikles of Aphidna registered for
confiscation the property of Nikodemos son of Aristomenes of Oinoe…
because Nikodemos owes 1000 dr. to the public treasury and has been
registered on the Akropolis as also owing a fine because after he became
epimelete of the Aiantid tribe and collected sacred silver of the tribe he
did not hand it over and was recorded on the Akropolis as also owing 666
dr. 4 obols… Special claim: the epimeletai of the Aiantid tribe, Dion son
of Momenios of Phaleron and Timokrates of Aphidna and Polyphilos son
of Polymedos of Oinoe made a special plea on behalf of the Aiantid tribe
relating to the land of Nikodemos son of Aristomenes of Oinoe… that he
owes the Aiantid tribe 666 dr. 4 obols because he did not hand over this
money to the Aiantid tribe when he was epimelete and collected the
sacred money of Aias and has owed it and is liable to lose all his property
if he does not hand over the money according to the laws of the Aiantid
tribe…
They had a concern for the well-being of members’ families. So (from c.300)
IG ii21165.17ff. (Honorific decree):
And he moved a decree in order that the Erekhtheids might all know their
own property and the epimeletai customarily established each year
walking over the property twice during the year might consider whether
the lands were being farmed according to the agreements and if the
boundaries were established in the same places, and he did this neither
of
of
of
of
of
of
27
putting obligations even to a single person above the interests of the tribe
nor as a result of bribery, even by a single person, but always speaking
and doing continuously what was best for the tribe, he was never
complained about by any of his fellow tribesmen. So with good fortune
the Erekhtheid tribe has decided to praise Antisthenes son of Nikander of
Lamptrai and crown him with a gold crown according to the law because
of his virtue and justice which he continually showed to the Erekhtheid
tribe. And since it happens that the daughter of Antisthenes has become
an heiress according to the laws, the epimeletai who are customarily
appointed each year are to look after Aristomakhe the daughter of
Antisthenes and if she needs anything to mention it to the tribe when it
holds its agora in order that she be not wronged even by a single
individual.
Goodwill belongs to the daughter of Antisthenes,
Aristomakhe, from each of the tribesmen both individually and as a body
because of the good qualities which her father continuously showed
towards the Erechtheid tribe.
4.6.2 Demes
Every Athenian man registered with his local deme, and he and his male descendants
became members of that deme for ever, regardless of subsequent changes of address.
Each deme appointed an annual chief official or ‘demarch’. In the fourth century there
are known to have been 139 demes of varying sizes.
The whole territory of Athens was split into three regions—urban (Athens,
Piraeus and environs), coastal and inland. Each of those regions was split into ten groups
of demes. Then, by taking one group of demes from each of the three regions,
Cleisthenes formed ten new phylai, commonly translated ‘tribes’, but they were not
kinship groups—just tenths of the citizen body. (There was an older kinship structure of
clans or gene, brotherhoods or phratries and four Ionian tribes, which Cleisthenes
bypassed but did not abolish.) Because each of the ten new tribes was composed of
groups of demes taken from each of the three regions, those thirty groups were known as
trittyes or thirds. Whether Cleisthenes’ arrangement of demes, trittyes and tribes
favoured the Alcmeonid family is disputed. Nine of the ten tribes were named after an
Attic hero (in the Greek sense), and the tenth was named after Ajax of Salamis, an
offshore island under Athenian control.
Cleisthenes’ tribal structure provided a new basis for the Athenian army, which
was not a standing army: there was no such thing as a military career, and hoplites were
called up as required. The new army was to fight in tribal regiments, commanded, from
501, by generals elected from each tribe. For the time being, the Polemarch remained
commander-in-chief.
Unlike tribes, which had a largely virtual existence, most demes were closeknit communities, villages whose inhabitants largely drew their living from farming
the lands around the village.
Each deme chose by lot a ‘demarch’ annually (except that the demarch of
Peiraieus was elected by the whole Athenian people). Something of the duties of the
demarch come out from the following honorific inscription from the deme of Eleusis:
IG ii21194, 1274 and additions:
Theoboulos son of Theobooulos proposed: with good fortune, since
Euthydemos continues to be well-intentioned to the demos of Eleusis and
of the Athenians, privately and publicly, and has been a good and upright
demarch after he received the office by lot, and has sacrificed to Dionysos
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on behalf of the health and safety of the demesmen, spending his own
money on the demesmen, and has shown a love of honour and increased
the income and handled the other business of the demesmen according tot
he laws throughout the year, Euthydemos should be given the honour also
bestowed on his ancestors of the right to front seats at festivals for himself
and for his descendants, and let the demarch then in office summon him to
take his front seat or else owe a fine of 100 drachmas sacred to Dionysos.
Praise Euthydemos for his virtue and goodwill towards the deme of the
Eleusinians and crown him with a crown of olive…
Some demes, at least, had theatres of their own and held the dramatic festival
of the rural Dionysia, at which rich local men were obliged to put on plays. Compare
the following inscription from the deme of Aixone dating from 313/2:
Athenische Mitteilungen 66 (1941) 218-9:
Gods. Glaukides son of Sosippos proposed: since the choregoi Auteas son
of Autokles and Philoxenides son of Philippos performed the choregia
well and showed love of honour, the demesmen resolved to crown each of
them with a golden crown worth one hundred drachmas in the theatre at
the time of the comedies in the year after Theophrastos’ archonship, in
order that other choregoi in future might also show such love of honour.
It was further resolved that the demarch Hegesileos and the treasurers
(tamiai) should give them 10 drachmas for a sacrifice, and that the
treasurers should have this decree inscribed on a stone stele and set up in
the theatre in order that the people of Aixone may always make their
Dionysia as fine as possible.
Religious activity was a very important part of the life of every deme and demes
published their own calendars of religious activities. Sacrifices and other religious
activities were expensive, but lands given to the gods generated what could
sometimes be very large sums in rent, and that money could be lent at interest to
generate yet more income. As a result even quite small villages might have very large
sums of money at their disposal for religious purposes. One example is the deme of
Plotheia, on the north side of Pentelikon, about which the following inscription gives
us some information:
IG i3258 (of c.420B.C.):
Capital funds: to the demarch, 1,000; to the two treasurers for sacred rites
throughout the year, 5,000; for the Herakleion 7,000; for the Aphrodisia
1,200; for the Anakia 1,200; for the Immunity 5,000; for the Apollonia
1,100; for the Pandia 600; of leases 134dr. 2 1/2 obols. The Plotheians
decided on the proposal of Aristotimos to allot magistrates suitable for the
money that each magistracy controls, and these magistrates are to keep the
money secure for the Plotheians. In the case of loans governed by
existing decrees or where interest is fixed, they shall loan the money and
exact the interest in accordance with the decree; all money that is loaned
afresh annually they shall loan to whoever gives the most interest and
persuades the magistrates loaning the money by security or a guarantor.
From the interest and from the rents, in cases where capital has been
converted to rent by purchases, they are to sacrifice the sacrifices common
to Plotheians and those of the Athenians on behalf of the community of
the Plotheians and those at the quadrennial festivals. For the other
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sacrifices for which it is necessary that all Plotheians contribute money for
sacrifices, those for the Plotheians or for the Epakreans or for the
Athenians, the magistrates who look after the money for the immunity are
to pay from the common fund on behalf of the demesmen. And for the
common sacrifices at which the Plotheians are feasted to provide good
wine at public expense, for other sacrifices up to half a chous to each of
the Plotheians who are present.
Demesmen necessarily belonged to the same tribe, and seem regularly to have
fought side by side, and richer members of a deme seem on occasion to have paid for
military equipment for fellow-demesmen who would not otherwise have been able to
fight as hoplites.
5. Prominent Individuals
There was a constant tension between the egalitarian political ethos of the Athenian
democracy. While there would have been expectation that prominent politicians
would make a contribution to a debate, the fact that the debate of the first item on
every assembly’s agenda was introduced with the question ‘Who wishes to speak?’
suggests that contribution to political activity was construed as an opportunity or a
privilege for every Athenian citizen. The openness of the democratic system enabled
certain citizens to win ascendancy and influence over their fellow citizens so that they
became politicians or leaders in a modern sense. Although constitutional authority of
all magistracies was in theory limited, power was accrued by persuasion: expert
knowledge, charisma and skill were all important qualities. In the fifth century, the
most prominent and influential politicians were, for the most part, the generals who
were elected to their office (to which they could be re-elected without restriction):
Pericles, who was elected general continuously for 15 years from 443 BC, is the
prime example (Plutarch Pericles 16.3; Thuc. 2.65.10); in the fourth century,
politicians rose to positions of prominence through oratorical power in the lawcourts
and assembly. Often it was the case that these politicians deployed democratic
institutions to serve their own interests. The graphe paranomon, for instance, was
used by politicians who wanted to build their reputation or to challenge another’s
ascendancy. Aeschines’ prosecution of Ctesiphon in 330, for proposing an
unconstitutional and undeserved crowning of Demosthenes, led to a showdown
between the prosecutor and Demosthenes: the verdict of the jury drew his political
career to a close (Aeschines 3 Against Ctesiphon). There were no fixed party
groupings in ancient Greece, and individuals were free to appeal to as broad a
spectrum as possible; however, it is highly likely that individual politicians were able
to rally family members, friends and those with shared interests in coalitions known
as hetaireiai. The most important article on Athenian politicians is probably that of
Moses Finley, ‘The Athenian Demagogues’ (reprinted in P. Rhodes (ed.) Athenian
Democracy), which stressed the structural role of Athenian politicians, rescuing them
from the dismissive interpretations of Thucydides, Aristophanes and [Aristotle] as
self-seeking opportunists. But he also demonstrated the fluidity of their power: an
Athenian politician’s standing was only as secure as his most recent performance in
the assembly or courts.
The conventional account of the institutional development of Athenian
democracy connects reforms with particular individuals (predominantly the one that
comes across in the Constitution of the Athenians of [Aristotle]: see above section 1).
This may be a reasonable interpretation, but to a large degree it also reflects the
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tendency of ancient Greek writers to connect the development of political institutions
with prominent individuals.
What follows are some suggestions about ways of thinking about the role of a
few individuals:
Cleisthenes: note his aristocratic background (he was a member of the Alcmaeonid
clan. It is interesting to follow the debate between Ober and Samons (see above
section 1.3) on his motives and the question of the extent to which he was making use
of an already-existing popular desire for wider participation. For more on Cleisthenes,
see above, section 1.3.
Ephialtes; virtually nothing is known about him or his background other than that he
championed interests of the people and reformed the powers of the Areopagus. He
was assassinated by the unknown Aristodikos of Tanagra ([Aristotle] Constitution of
the Athenians 25). For more on Ephialtes, see above section 1.3.
Pericles was the most important politician of the fifth century. He was born in c. 495,
the son of a distinguished general, Xanthippus and the Alcmaionid Agariste. In 472
he was choregos for Aeschylus’ Persians. In 463/2 he was one of those elected to
prosecute Cimon for taking bribes. In 462/1 he joined Ephialtes in his attack on the
Areopagus.
He had by now become prominent in Athenian politics, but he cannot be
assumed to have supported every subsequent shift in Athenian foreign or domestic
policy. He was certainly responsible for two major domestic reforms. The first was
the introduction of pay for civilian service. The second reform was his introduction of
a rule restricting citizenship to the sons of two Athenian citizens, a polites and a
politis – a rule that he cannot have foreseen that he would one day want broken on his
own behalf. The immediate object was no doubt to sharpen a demarcation that was
becoming blurred as more and more foreigners resided in Athens-cum-Piraeus and
more and more Athenian troops and civilians were stationed or resided abroad. In the
long term it must have raised the status of citizen women.
Pericles was deeply involved in the Athenian building or rebuilding
programme, which included the Parthenon (ARD 53-59). Work on the Parthenon
began in 447, and some four years later strife between Pericles, leader of the many,
and Thucydides son of Melesias, leader of the few, was resolved by the ostracism of
the latter. It is impossible to be sure what was at issue between them. Directly or
indirectly the subject allies paid for the Parthenon, and Thucydides had friends among
the allies, but it must have been obvious from the start that the Parthenon was to be no
ordinary temple. In virtue of the gold and ivory cult image, not to mention the
quantity and quality of the external sculpture and the ‘refinements’, it was bound to be
uniquely expensive.
After the ostracism, it is safe to say that Pericles was dominant in Athenian
politics and that until 430 few major decisions were taken against his will.
Pericles was very probably elected general for at least the years: 465/4,
455/4,448/7-445/4, 443/2-430/29,429/8. The Assembly could pay a citizen no higher
compliment than to go on electing him general, and he must have acquired
overwhelming prestige among his fellow generals.
He was the supreme orator of his day, and though he wisely restricted the
number of speeches that he made in the Assembly, he was perhaps the first full-time
politician, devoting much of his time to the complexities of both domestic and
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imperial business (ARD 161, though the anecdotal evidence (Plutarch Pericles 7.7)
suggests that he made a point of not speaking on every issue).
Since Th. is the foundation of our knowledge of Pericles, we should consider
his viewpoint. He was a kinsman of Cimon, but if, as seems likely, he was born in the
early 450’s, say 458, he will never have known a time when Pericles, who had
prosecuted Cimon, was not prominent in Athenian politics, and by the time that he
was eligible to attend the Assembly, Pericles was dominant. What more natural than
that he should suppose that the way things were from 443 to 430 was the way they
should have stayed and that what came after was much worse? Thucydides was
elected general in 424, not necessarily for the first time, and he will certainly have
held lesser commands before. He should have understood Pericles’ strategy.
The next paragraph is a précis of Th. 2.59 and the start of 2.65.
After two Spartan invasions and an outbreak of plague, the Athenians lost
their nerve and sued for peace, unsuccessfully. While he was still general [for 430/29],
Pericles called a meeting of the Assembly. [More precisely, he told the Prytaneis to do
so.] This gave him the opportunity to deliver a morale-raising speech. It achieved its
purpose, and as a community the Athenians recovered their fighting spirit; but as
individuals, both rich and poor had suffered from the invasions. Pericles was fined.
[He had been prosecuted on an unknown charge and convicted. He may have been
removed from office until he could pay the fine, or he may have been deposed.]
‘But soon after, as is the way of the mob [Th. is no admirer of the common
man when part of a crowd, but that does not make him an oligarch], they elected him
general again [probably for 429/8] and entrusted all their affairs to him…They
recognised that for the needs of the city as a whole there was none to match him.
While he led the city during the peace, he pursued a prudent policy and kept it safe,
and under him it was at its greatest. When the war broke out, then too his foresight
was apparent in his estimate of Athenian power. He outlived the start of the war by
two years and six months [Th. has nothing to say about Pericles between his reelection and his death, nor does he explain his death], and his foresight about the war
became still more apparent after his death. Pericles told them that if they stayed calm
[in the face of invasion], and looked after their fleet, and did not try to enlarge their
empire while the war lasted, and did not put the city at risk, they would win
through…He owed his influence to his prestige and his ability and his manifest
integrity. He controlled the masses as a free man should. He led them rather than
followed them. Because he did not seek influence by improper means, he would not
speak to gratify them; on the contrary, because he possessed influence thanks to his
prestige, he would gainsay them quite angrily. When he saw that they were
unreasonably confident and arrogant, his words would strike fear into them, and when
he saw that they were irrationally afraid, he would restore them once more to
confidence. The result was democracy in theory, but in fact rule by the leading
citizen.’
Earlier (2.13.2) Th. makes Pericles ascribe success in war to ‘sound strategy
and financial reserves’. Some have suggested that Th. exaggerates Pericles’ financial
acumen, since he failed to foresee the cost of naval warfare (sailors’ wages and
maintaining and replacing warships), but the inscriptional record is not full enough to
prove the charge, and the only military operation during the war for which we know
the total cost is the siege of Potidaea (Th. 2.70.2). Plato (Gorgias 517bc) suggests that
Themistocles and Pericles were followers rather than leaders. It is indeed hard to see
how a democratic politician could be more concerned with the moral improvement of
the citizens than with their long-term satisfaction.
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Th.’s last sentence is deservedly famous but not really true. If it seems true,
that is partly because Th. declines to specify what opposition Pericles faced in the
run-up to the war, but he does allow (1.139.4) that there was opposition to his
uncompromising stand against Sparta. (Was Cleon silent or ineffectual in the debate?)
This leading citizen was no monarch.
Th., as we have seen, was no lover of the common man en masse. He makes
Pericles speak up less enthusiastically than he might for the political system that he
had helped to create. He does answer two regular oligarchic charges against
democracy. The able few have scope; the poor many have adequate political
understanding. He nowhere says that participating in democracy is good for you.
Wisely, perhaps, he does not explore the relationship of democracy and living as you
please to imperialism with its endless casualties.
Th. neither affirms nor denies that radical democracy is a bad system that can
work, and in particular sustain a long war, only if by great good fortune a man as
gifted as its joint inventor is at the controls – courtesy of the poor many.
Plato does not share Th.’s favourable view of Pericles. In Gorgias (515e), for
example, he allows Socrates to report the view that Pericles corrupted the Athenians
by introducing pay for public service, thereby making them ‘lazy, cowardly, talkative
and money-loving’.
The thinking of OO deserves some attention. For him it is axiomatic, indeed
embedded in his terminology, that the rich few are morally better and abler than the
poor many and not simply richer. It is also axiomatic for him that everyone should
pursue his own best interests. (The poor many cannot be blamed for operating the
radical democratic system in their own best interests.) So one might expect that the
rich few, subjected to redistributive taxation by the poor many, would struggle to
replace radical democracy by oligarchy, but not enough of the rich few have been
(unjustly?) disfranchised by the poor many for failure in office to constitute a viable
faction (3.13f.). True enough, but there is more that OO could have said.
Individual citizens of Athens are like shareholders in a public corporation: so
long as they get more out than they put in, they are content. Until the Sicilian disaster
of 413, ambitious upper-class citizens got more out than they put in. (The Spartan
invasions of 431-425 did not do lasting damage.) They were willing to collaborate
with the poor many, and they had their reward – as generals-cum-admirals, trierarchs
or ambassadors (OO 1.18), as choregoi, and speakers. The city could do things – build
opulent temples, finance lavish sacrifices and festivals, maintain a large fleet – that no
private person could do. OO was wrong to suggest that the poor were the sole
beneficiaries. The system would remain stable until serious military reverses were
suffered.
What does OO make of upper-class traitors like Cleisthenes and his greatnephew Pericles? ‘Anyone who is not a man of the people and would rather live [and
participate?] in a democratic city than in an oligarchic one has got ready to do wrong
and has realised that it is easier for a bad man to escape notice in a democratic city
than in an oligarchic one’ (OO 2.20). A very partial view.
Pericles’ greatest moment was perhaps the Funeral Speech, put in his mouth
by Thucydides. What follows is a précis with a little commentary in square brackets.
The autonomy of the city is reflected in the liberality of its public and private
life. An Athenian is not resentful if his neighbour does what he likes. [A slogan of
radical democracy was ‘Live as you please’.] An Athenian obeys the unwritten rules
of morality. [Pericles believes that Greeks are better than barbarians and that
Athenians are better than other Greeks. Even that stern moralist, the Platonic Socrates,
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recognised that Athenian blood was thicker than water (Apol. 30a). Whether in fact
there was more fraternity in Athens than in other cities was never an answerable
question; there was certainly much sharp competition and envy. Athens was no doubt
the most tolerant city.]
If Athens is a city of toil, the calendar of festivals provides respite. The
produce of the world flows into Piraeus.
Athens neither has nor needs military training to match that of Sparta. [All the
same, something happened to get ‘the youngest’, the 18- and 19-year-olds, ready for
hoplite warfare.] Athens would be stronger on land were it not for her naval
supremacy. Athenian courage is spontaneous.
The life of service to the city is the best, but other lifestyles have their merits.
The philosophic life, cultivating the noble, entails neither extravagance nor softness
[witness Socrates]. The money-making life offers an opportunity for constructive
expenditure [on liturgies, for example, including the choregia, financing a dramatic or
dithyrambic chorus, and the trierarchy, commanding and maintaining a warship for a
year.] The only thing that is shameful about poverty [not destitution] is not trying to
escape it. [Most Athenians did what their fathers had done. The chances of working
men ‘bettering themselves’ were slight.]
Athenians are both daring and reflective. They make friends by conferring
favours, regardless of consequences. [Is Pericles talking about individual Athenians
and their neighbours or about the city and its non-tribute-paying allies?]
Athens is thus an example to the rest of Greece [as in 2.37.1] and her citizens
display an enviable versatility. Athenian power is the proof. The [tribute-paying]
subject allies cannot complain that the Athenians are unworthy masters. [William
Morris would not have agreed.] Later generations will admire Athens for her exploits
on land and sea. To preserve their city these men were ready to die, and those who
survive them should be no less ready. What makes the city is heroism like theirs.
What matters is how a man finishes. [Close to the Christian gospel.] These men
trusted in themselves. [Far from the Christian gospel.] Through gazing on her power,
an Athenian becomes the city’s lover. These men gave the city all they had, and their
names will live. Happiness depends on freedom, and freedom depends on bravery; so
Athenians should be brave.
Though these men died an enviably glorious death, that is hard for the
bereaved to accept. Those [few] fathers who can still beget sons should hope to do so:
only fathers can be expected to give the city sound advice. Other fathers should
remember that honour, not gain, sustains old age. Sons and brothers must learn to live
in the shadow of the glorious dead. All Pericles asks from widows is unobtrusive
fortitude. [Were the words of 2.45.2 close to the actual words or sentiments of the
man who lived with Aspasia?]
The city will bring up the children [sons?] of the dead. Cities that best reward
virtue enjoy the best citizens.
Pericles avoids the problems of empire. What else does he not touch on? He
says nothing about the new buildings on the Acropolis and nothing about man’s
dependence on divine favour.
We shall understand Athens well enough when we can see the social reality
behind Pericles’ rose-tinted words.
It is an interesting exercise to compare and contrast the Thucydidean portrayal
of Pericles (in the three speeches attributed to him at 1.139-45, 2.34-46, 2.56-65) with
that of Plutarch’s Life of Pericles. Whereas Thucydides’ Pericles is a mature and
34
intelligent statesman, Plutarch’s Pericles undergoes a transformation halfway through
his political career. Looking at Plutarch’s account makes Pericles seem more like one
of the successors who Thucydides is so keen to distance himself from. Thucydides’
account, which focuses on the latter period of Pericles’ career, portrays him as
without political rivals in Athens; Plutarch’s portrayal gives us clues about the early
opposition to Pericles early on in his career. Not everything that Plutarch reports
about Pericles is certainly true: his relations with Aspasia were among the slanders
brought against him (Pericles 37.5).
Pericles is directly connected with the law which limited citizen rights to those
with two Athenian citizens (Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 26.4). His
democratic reforms (principally the introduction of state pay) are said by the same
source to have been advised by Damon of Oa to introduce democratic measures as a
way of challenging the aristocratic patronage of Cimon (27.3-4). A scholiast on the
text of the fourth-century orator Aeschines (on 3.24) claims that he was first to
propose the distribution of theoric monies, perhaps to subsidise attendance at the
theatre.
There is some epigraphical evidence that mentions Pericles: a fragmentary
decree (SEG, X.47, trans. Crawford & Whitehead, Archaic and Classical Greece,
no.152) reads as follows, suggesting that perhaps Pericles did indeed use his wealth
for political leverage (even if his gift of money was turned down for the people, he
still received thanks for offering a gift): [. . . Nikomakhos proposed]: that everything
else should be as [the boule proposed; and that attention should be paid to the
fountains in the town] so that they may flow [ . . . and so that the works may be
completed] as cheaply as possible [the prytaneis who] draw the first lot to serve [are
to introduce the architect in the first] of the kyriai ekklesiai immediately [after the
sacrifices, doing what seems] good to the demos of the Athenians; … [. . .] proposed:
that everything else should be as Nikomakhos proposed; [and that thanks should be
offered to Perikles and] Paralos and Xanthippos and their sons; [but that expenditure
should be made from the money] which belongs to the tribute (phoros) of the
Athenians [after the goddess (Athena)] has received the customary portion [thereof].
The difference between Pericles and his predecessors is probably overstated by the
ancient sources. [Aristotle] on the successors of Perikles (Constitution of the
Athenians 28.3): After Perikles' death the distinguished were championed by Nikias,
who died in Sicily, and the people by Kleon son of Kleainetos: Kleon, it seems, more
than anyone else corrupted the people by his wild impulses, and was the first man
who, when on the platform, shouted, uttered abuse and made speeches with his
clothes hitched up, while everyone else spoke in an orderly manner. Next, after them,
Theramenes son of Hagnon was champion of the others and Kleophon the lyre-maker
champion of the people.... [28.4] Since Kleophon there has been an unending
succession of popular leaders whose chief desire has been to be outrageous and to
gratify the masses, looking only to considerations of the moment.
Thucydides on Athenian politics after Pericles:
Thucydides 2.65.7: They [the successors—and their followers] did the complete
opposite [of what Pericles had advised], and they made other moves, apparently
irrelevant to the war, for the sake of personal ambition and personal gain, with ill
consequences for themselves and their allies. If the moves succeeded, they brought
honour and gain to individuals rather [than the city], and if they failed, they weakened
the city’s capacity to fight the war.
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Thucydides 2.65.11-12: As a result [of the failure of leadership], as was natural in a
large and imperial city, many mistakes were made, the greatest being the Sicilian
expedition, which involved not so much a mistaken assessment of the enemy they
were attacking as a failure on the part of those who had sent it out to take the best
additional measures to support the expeditionary force. Instead, by pursuing charges
against individuals in their struggle for the leadership of the people, they hampered
the force in the field, and for the first time threw political life at home into turmoil.
Nevertheless, despite having met disaster in Sicily with their army and most of their
fleet [summer 413] and so succumbing to revolution at home [411–10], for three years
[412–10] they withstood their original enemies, the Sicilians who joined them
[summer 412], and most of their allies, who had revolted [412–11]. Later [407] they
also withstood the [Persian] King’s son, Cyrus, who was funding the Peloponnesian
fleet...
Cleon: Cleon was perhaps different owing to his background: he came from not a
leading Athenian family, but was associated with the making and selling of leather.
But even if he lacked an aristocratic background, he does appear to have been wealthy.
His father was a man called Cleainetos of the deme Kydathenaion, and he may be
identified as choregos for the victorious dithyrambic chorus of men from the
Pandionis tribe of 459: performance of the choregia was a clear sign of wealth. W.
Connor, The New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens, 1971 suggests that Cleon was
the first of the ‘New Politicians’ who rejected bonds of friendship as their means to
success, citing Plutarch, Moralia 806f., on Cleon’s repudiation of his friends – philoi:
But contrast Plutarch’s account of Pericles doing the same: Plutarch, Pericles 7:
‘Pericles decided to attach himself to the people’s party and to take up the cause of the
poor and the many instead that of the rich and the few, in spite of the fact that this was
quite contrary to his own temperament, which was thoroughly aristocratic. He was
afraid, apparently, of being suspected of aiming at dictatorship; so when he saw that
Cimon’s sympathies were strongly with the nobles and that he was the idol of the
aristocratic party, he began to ingratiate himself with the people, partly for selfpreservation and partly by way of securing power against his rival.
He now entered upon a new mode of life. He was never to be seen walking in
any street except the one which led to the market-place and the Council-chamber. He
refused not only invitations to dinner but every kind of friendly or familiar intercourse,
so that through all the years of his political career, he never visited one of his friends
to dine.’
One (relative) certainty is that Cleon is immediately distinguished from
Pericles by the much more aggressive pursuit of the war against Sparta. His
arguments in favour of reinforcing an expedition to Pylos (Thuc 4.28) might be
contrasted with Pericles’ policy of allowing the Peloponnesians to ravage Attica.
Thucydides mentions him also as an advocate of harsh punishment for the
Mytileneans in 427 (in which passage he says that his manner of addressing of the
assembly was violent: 3.36.6; cf. [Aristotle]’s Constitution of the Athenians 28.3; cf.
Plutarch Nicias 8.6): whereas earlier orators may have kept their hands inside their
cloaks, Cleon slipped his cloak off his shoulders and gesticulated wildly. He
supported the execution of the Scionians in 423. Cleon is connected with the raising
of jury pay from 2 to 3 obols in the 420s. Cleon is also a favourite butt of
Aristophanes’ jokes. He was attacked, being parodied as a Paphlagonian Slave, in
Aristophanes’ Knights (performed at the Lenaia of 424 BC) he is represented as a
politician serving the Athenian demos, and he gains the credit of the assembly and by
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proposing benefits for the people. A scholiast (translated by Fornara, From Archaic
Times… 131) asserts the idea that the theme of the play (the antagonism between
Cleon and the Hippeis) had a serious political dimension, with Cleon charging them
with desertion.
Knights is undeniably a savage attack on Cleon, and part of the attack fastens
on his making and selling leather. (Later champions of the people were Hyperbolus,
branded as one who sold lamps, and Cleophon, branded as one who sold lyres (though
his father is known to have been general). We should think of Cleon as having
inherited a small factory operated by slaves. He will not have had much time to
supervise production himself. What was thought wrong with being a tradesman? The
ideal was to be a free and self-sufficient citizen of an autonomous city. Selfsufficiency was an unattainable ideal, but the more of your needs that you could meet
from your own land, the better. If you made something to sell – shoes, say, out of
leather or sausages out of intestines – you were obviously dependent on your clientele,
and you might be tempted to cheat them. To make enough to live on, father and son
would have to work long hours, with little leisure for education or culture or the
acquisition of elegant manners.
The origin of Aristophanes’ feud with Cleon is explained in Acharnians. The
year before, 426, the young poet’s second play, Babylonians, had been directed for
him by Callistratus at the later of the two dramatic festivals, the City Dionysia, which
was attended by delegations from Athens’ subject allies bringing their tribute. In some
way Aristophanes had presented the city and its officials and Cleon himself in an
unfavourable light. The result, it seems, was that Cleon denounced Callistratus to the
Council, but the Council apparently took no action. If this is right, we have a quite
sufficient origin for the feud, although given that they were both members of the same
deme (Kydathenaion, an urban deme), the ultimate origin may go back further.
Thucydides' presentation of Cleon compared with that of Aristophanes:
We are fortunate in being able to compare the hostility of Aristophanes towards Cleon
with that of Th., who recounts Cleon’s actions in just four contexts: the two Assembly
debates on what to do about the subdued rebel Mytileneans in 427; the victorious
Pylos campaign in 425; the debate on what to do about the rebel Scionaeans in 423;
the expedition which he led to Amphipolis, where he was killed in 422. One thing that
he does not mention is that in 424 when he himself was on the board of generals,
along with Demosthenes, Lamachus and Nicias, so also was Cleon (Ar., Clouds
582ff.). If only minutes of one of their meetings in the Strategeion had survived! Even
his admirers must recognise Th.’s bias against Cleon, when they reflect on the
occasions on which he mentions him, they way in which he mentions him, and the
achievements he fails to mention (including considerable military success in 422); the
origin of the bias is unknown (we do not know who prosecuted Thucydides for his
failure to reach Amphipolis in time).
Both Aristophanes and Thucydides recognised Cleon’s rhetorical power, and
they actually use the same word ‘most persuasive’ (Knights 629, Th. 3.36.6, 4.21.3;
compare Thucydides' Syracusan equivalent, Athenagoras, at 6.35.2). With one ‘most
persuasive’ Th. couples ‘most forceful’ or ‘most violent’. The Constitution of the
Athenians (28.3) goes further, claiming that he was ‘the first man to shout and utter
abuse on the platform, and he made speeches wearing a belt, whereas everyone else
spoke in a decorous fashion’. We may doubt that Cleon was the first speaker to raise
his voice, but the belt would give him greater freedom to gesticulate, and it is very
37
possible that the practice of ad hominem abuse, in Assembly and court, did begin with
Cleon.
When introducing Cleon for the second time, in connection with Pylos, Th.
(4.21.3) describes him as ‘a popular leader of the time and most influential with the
masses’. The Greek word translated by ‘popular leader’ is demagogos, here used
neutrally by Th. The English derivative ‘demagogue’ is highly pejorative, meaning
roughly ‘misleader of the people’, and it should be used of Cleon, Hyperbolus,
Cleophon and the like only by those who are satisfied that when Th. (2.65.7), in his
‘obituary’ of Pericles, charges his successors with neglecting the city’s interests ‘for
the sake of personal ambition and personal gain’, he is being fair. Is it true that
Pericles was incorruptible and that all he wanted was what was best for Athens and
that his successors distinguished their own interests from those of the city and
sometimes or often preferred the former? Th. writes in general terms. Aristophanes
repeatedly alleges that Cleon embezzled public funds and took bribes from allied
cities, but if the allegations are true, how did he escape prosecution?
Later in his obituary of Pericles (2.65.10), Th. says of the successors:
Because they were more on a level with one another and because they were each
striving for the leadership, they were ready to surrender even policy-making to the
whims of the people.
Th. here expresses hostility to the idea of government by the people. There is a
curious fact about the speech he gives Cleon in the second Mytilenean debate:
whatever criticisms may be made of it, it does not pander to the whims of the people.
Those who disbelieve in Pericles’ financial acumen are inclined to believe in
the financial acumen of Cleon. The Paphlagonian boasts to Demos (Knights 774-6):
When I served as a Councillor, I raised enormous sums for the treasury on your behalf:
some men I racked, some I throttled and from some I demanded a percentage.
This may refer to Cleon’s pressure for the imposition of a war levy or eisphora – a
form of taxation much hated by the rich. He was vigilant over the collection of the
tribute (Knights 312). Pericles would have favoured firm treatment of Mytilene (Th.
2.13.2) but hardly cutting the throats of all the men of Mytilene.
On the expenditure side, Cleon was responsible for raising the jurors’ pay
from 2 obols to 3. A tight bond between Cleon the prosecutor and grateful jurors is
plausibly suggested by Knights 255 ff.
The Assembly took oracles seriously, but whether Cleon in fact exploited
oracles must remain uncertain.
Cleon’s prominence rested primarily on the prowess he displayed on Pnyx and
in court. He had no military background. The victory at Pylos was very fortunate for
him. He was rewarded with free dinners at the Prytaneion or City Hall and with a
front seat in the theatre. Aristophanes suggests that the rewards should have gone to
Demosthenes, and Th. (4.32) would surely have agreed. Had Cleon had more military
experience, he might have done better at Amphipolis. Unlike Pericles and Alcibiades,
he did not successfully combine the roles of speaker and general.
Knights won the prize at the Lenaea, and not much later Cleon, together with
Th., was elected general for 424/3. After comedy’s most savage attack came the city’s
highest compliment. This does not show that comedy was of no political importance.
Rather, it shows that the best available man for the job may have failings that it is fun
for even his supporters to see magnified on certain occasions.
Alcibiades
38
NOTE: there will not be a question which relates specifically to Alcibiades, not will
candidates be expected to mention him. But his career deserves mention, as it is
important for understanding the workings of the assembly, rhetoric and public
speaking (see below section 6).
Alcibiades’ early career
Alcibiades’ father Cleinias was killed at the battle of Coronea in 447, when
Alcibiades was only a few years old. To have been brought up in the household of
Pericles would have opened his eyes to political considerations unusually early, even
if Pericles did not give political dinner parties. In addition to an ordinary upper-class
education, in ‘music’ (poetry, dancing and the lyre) and athletics, he became a
companion of Socrates, which should have opened his eyes to other considerations.
He was exceptionally good looking, but that is unlikely to have deflected Socrates
from his moral preoccupations.
Xenophon (Recollections 1.2.40ff.) relates an anecdote about the teenage
Alcibiades extracting from Pericles a definition of laws as ‘all the declarations of
what is, and what is not, to be done that the assembled people have approved and
enacted’ and going on to ask why the coercion of the rich few by the poor many is
preferable to the coercion of the poor many by oligarchs or a tyrant.
Alcibiades fought as a hoplite at Potidaea, probably in 432, and at Delium in
424. It is not certain that there was an age qualification of 30 for election as general. It
might have been thought unwise for the city to deny itself the services of a military
prodigy. Anyhow, Alcibiades’ first attested year of generalship was 420/19, and he
went on being elected for every year till 415/4. After the conclusion of the Peace of
Nicias, which brought the Archidamian War of 431–21 to an end, he embarked with
Argos on anti-Spartan intrigues in Peloponnese, but his efforts were negated by a big
Spartan victory at Mantinea in 418. Did Th. regard these intrigues as ‘irrelevant’?
The rivals for political leadership at home that Alcibiades faced were his
social inferiors—two men who were both on the same social level as Cleon, though
their lifestyles were very different: Nicias, the affluent owner of a thousand mining
slaves, elected general for at least the years 427/6–420/19 and for 418/7–413/2, and
Hyperbolus, the lamp-maker, Cleon’s successor in the Assembly, who may have been
elected general for 425/4 (Knights 1313). Hyperbolus gets an even worse press from
Aristophanes and Th. than does Cleon.
In 417 Nicias had spent lavishly as leader of the Athenian delegation to the
festival of Apollo on the island of Delos. In 416 Alcibiades had entered no fewer than
seven teams in the prestigious chariot race at Olympia and come first and second.
Alcibiades and the Sicilian expedition
Nicias and Alcibiades had been political opponents before Athens decided on the
Sicilian expedition (Th. 6.15.2). Probably in 415, Hyperbolus proposed that an
ostracism be held, because he believed it would remove either Nicias or Alcibiades. In
the event the old opponents combined their followings, which did not amount to
modern parties, and it was Hyperbolus who went into exile. As far as we know, this
was the first ostracism to be held since 443. As it happened, it was also the last to be
held, but the possibility of another ostracism may have remained alive for some time.
Athens had shown a marked interest in Sicily during the Archidamian War:
she had had a sizeable force there in 427–4. In the winter of 416/5 an opportunity
arose for a return visit, aimed at conquering the island. According to Th. (6.1) most
Athenians were ignorant of the island’s size and population. Since geography was not
39
a school subject, that was no doubt so, but thousands of, admittedly ill educated,
Athenians had been there in 427–4, and it was the business of the generals to tell the
Assembly what it needed to know about the strength of prospective enemies. In
2.65.11 above, the trouble with the Sicilian expedition is not so much miscalculation
of the strength of the enemy, though that had many aspects, including the strength of
their cavalry and their distance from Piraeus, as disunity at home. By the ‘failure to
take…the best additional measures to support the expeditionary force’ Th. must mean
recalling Alcibiades and, probably, not recalling Nicias, who was sick and wanted to
be recalled. Questionable too was the wisdom of selecting Nicias as one of the
generals in command, since he was all along opposed to the expedition and did not
want to be sent.
If the Sicilian expedition was a major mistake, how did it happen? There was
wishful thinking about the financial resources of Segesta, one of the Sicilian cities that
had asked Athens for help. A bigger factor is described by Th. (6.15.2f.) at some
length. The expedition’s chief proponent was the charismatic Alcibiades. Negatively,
he wanted to oppose his old enemy Nicias; positively, he very much wanted to be in
command of the expedition, because he hoped to reduce Sicily and Carthage
[compare Ar. Knights 1303], gaining in personal wealth and reputation through his
success. Why did he want more money? Because his high standing among the citizens
led him to indulge his desires beyond what his actual resources would sustain. He was
spending too much on the uniquely costly business of breeding horses and on other
things too. [His disorderly private life was no doubt known about, but it did not at this
stage stop him being elected general.]
Alcibiades spoke powerfully, though not entirely honestly, in an Assembly
debate on supplies for the expedition. Nicias, seeing which way the wind was blowing,
tried to deflect it by magnifying the requirements for success, but his speech achieved
the opposite of what he had intended. Everyone became passionately keen on the
expedition. (Not literally everyone, but group pressure deterred the sceptical from
voting against it.) No one foresaw disaster. The common people, including those who
were to serve on the expedition as sailors or soldiers, hoped to draw pay in the short
term and by acquiring Sicily to ensure an endless source of pay [for holding Sicily
down?].
Some time before the expedition was due to sail, two outrages came to light:
first the mutilation of the herms, and then the profanation of the Mysteries. Herms
were ithyphallic statues of Hermes, god of travellers, to be found outside many houses
and temples in Athens. The Eleusinian Mysteries, honouring Demeter, goddess of
corn, and her daughter, into which many, if not most, Athenians were initiated, gave
the city its special access to the divine, and for initiates to reveal the Mysteries to the
uninitiated was a heinous offence. Offences against the religion of the city were
hardly distinguishable from political offences. It is unlikely that Alcibiades was
involved in the mutilation, but he was very likely involved in the profanation. His
rivals for the leadership of the people [led by Androcles, Th. 8.65.2] chose to see both
offences as part of an anti-democratic conspiracy and declared that none of it would
have happened but for Alcibiades and his disorderly behaviour. Alcibiades did not
want to sail with the prospect of a prosecution for impiety hanging over him, but the
Assembly decided otherwise.
Soon after the Athenian fleet had reached Sicily, Alcibiades was recalled to
stand trial, but he deserted and made his way to Sparta. There, according to Th., he
addressed the Spartan assembly. In the course of his speech, he gave the Spartans the
40
best military advice he could, part of which helped to destroy the Sicilian expedition.
He also explained his relationship with the Athenian people:
Th.6.89.3ff. ‘…I rather inclined towards the side of the people…We [the ancestors of
Alcibiades, including the Alcmeonids] have always been opposed to tyrants, and all
who oppose arbitrary power are called the people, and so the leadership of the people
stayed with us. Since the city was a democracy, it was necessary to go with the flow
most of the time. We tried to be more moderate in politics than the prevailing
indiscipline. There were others, in the past as in the present, who tried to lead the mob
astray (they banished me); but we led the whole people, thinking it right to help
preserve the form of government under which the city became the most powerful and
the most free [from foreign interference], and which we inherited, although those of
us with any sense knew democracy for what it was, and I myself could abuse it as
much as anyone, seeing that I have been wronged by it most of all. But of
acknowledged folly there is nothing new to say.’
Alcibiades is quicker to detect the indiscipline [or self-assertion] of the poor
many than the indiscipline of his own life. The ‘folly’ of radical democracy amounts
to this: the big decisions are taken by the poor and ignorant many, led or misled by a
few men who are rich and ignorant. Alcibiades does not see that ‘rich and ignorant’
covers not only Cleon, Hyperbolus, Androcles and the like but also himself. Unlike
them, he knows about poetry, music and art, but he does not know something more
relevant: the aims of democratic leaders and their followers need to coincide. He was
the chief promoter of the hazardous Sicilian expedition, which, not unexpectedly,
failed and in failing did Athens enormous harm.
Th. was not a religious man. He says that Alcibiades’ rivals magnified the
matter of the profanation, but he does not say what he thinks should have been done
about it. He must be right in thinking that, in the circumstances, recalling Alcibiades
was a grave mistake. It greatly contributed to the Sicilian disaster in 413, and that led
to the oligarchic coup of the Four Hundred in 411 (‘…and so succumbing to
revolution at home’). Th. does not fully explore the psychological connection between
military disaster abroad and revolution at home, but he gives hints.
6. Rhetoric and Public Speaking
The ancient sources give a very clear indication of the centrality of rhetoric and public
speaking to the Athenian democracy. They were at the centre of all public decisionmaking: the passing of decrees at the assembly, making a case in the lawcourts were
significant contexts in which public rhetoric was important. The high importance of
rhetoric is one reason that the sophists (itinerant teachers of rhetoric) were so
prominent in fifth-century Athens. ARD 276-96 contains a wide range of sources
which suggest that the sophists’ courses may well have been highly valued as a form
of training for Athenian democracy.
Was speaking to the Council or to a law-court different from addressing the
Assembly? In both cases the audience would be smaller, and in both cases the social
composition would be somewhat different. There is some slight evidence that it was
the wealthier who more often volunteered for service in the Council, and since men
could not serve until they were 30 the average age may have been higher than in the
Assembly (Socrates was 63 when he served on the Council in 406/5); Aristophanes
Wasps treats dikasts as old men, and they may have been of lower social status than
Councillors: compare Lysias 27.1 (of c.390 BC): ‘You must bear in mind that you
have often heard these men saying, when they want unjustly to have someone
condemned, that unless you condemn those whom they order you to, your pay will
41
give out’. But Demosthenes could expect to get away with saying the following to a
court: Demosthenes 19.237: ‘We, let me tell you Aphobetos and you Philokhares,
have considered you worthy, you who paint alabaster boxes and drums, and these
brothers who are scribes and common or garden men, (that is no evil, but it doesn't
deserve the generalship) of embassies, and military commands and the greatest
honours.’
Speakers to the Council sometimes encourage it to think about the views of the people
at large: so Lysias 26.12-14 (of 382 BC): ‘What do you think will be the attitude of
the mass of citizens if you acquit this oligarch? Remember, you, members of the
Council, are on trial before the whole polis here.’
Criticism of the influence of speeches on Athenian decisions: see ARD 285-6.
Note additionally:
Gorgias on rhetoric: Encomium of Helen (DK B11).12: Argument which
persuaded the soul also compelled it to obey what was said and to approve of what was
being done. The one who persuaded does wrong as one who used compulsion, but the
one who was persuaded is criticised in vain as one who was compelled. This view
depends Gorgias’ views about knowledge: Encomium of Helen (DK B11) 11: Most
people equip themselves with opinion (doxa) as their adviser. But opinion is slippery and
insecure and throws those who use it into tricky and insecure fortunes.
(compare Socrates at Plato Menexenos 235a-c on the effect of hearing a Funeral
Oration: ‘I imagine myself to have become all of a sudden taller and nobler and more
beautiful… This majestic feeling remains with me for over three days, so persistently
does the speech and voice of the speaker ring in my ears that it is scarcely on the fourth or
fifth day that I recover myself and remember that I am really here on earth, whereas till
then I almost imagined myself to be living on the Islands of the Blessed, so skilled are our
rhetores.’)
Euripides has the Herald in Suppliant Women 411-422 express the advantages
of one-man rule over democracy by voicing what must have been standard criticisms
(ARD 12).
Plato Republic 492b-d on attending the Assembly as a bad education: ‘when
many gathered together sit down in assemblies, courts, theatres, army camps or any
other common meeting of the multitude, and, with a great deal of uproar, excessively
blame some of the things said or done and just as excessively praise others, shouting
and clapping; and, besides, the rocks and the very place that surrounds them echo and
redouble the uproar of blame and praise. Now in such circumstances, as the saying
goes, what do you suppose is the state of the young man’s heart? Or what kind of
private education will hold out for him and will not be swept away by such blame and
praise and go, borne by the flood, wherever it is headed so that he will say the same
things are noble and shameful as they do, practise what they practise, and be such as
they are?’
For the degree to which the rhetorical model pervaded Athenian life compare
Xenophon Oikonomikos 11.22-5: Socrates: ‘I was about to ask you, Ischomachos,
whether you are concerned about the ability to defend yourself in court and to
prosecute a man, if necessary.’ Ischomachos: ‘Don’t you realise, Socrates, that I am
constantly practising precisely that: defending myself by proving that I do no wrong
to anyone and that I confer benefits on many people to the best of my ability? And
don’t you realize that I practise making accusations when I observe people wronging
the city as well as many private citizens, and doing no good to anyone?’ Socrates:
‘Please explain to me, Ischomachos,’ I said, ‘whether you actually practise delivering
such speeches.’ Ischomachos: ‘I never cease to practise public speaking, Sokrates.
42
For when I hear one of our slaves making an accusation or defending himself, I try to
conduct a cross-examination; or else I either criticize or praise someone before my
friends; or else I reconcile some of my acquaintances, trying to explain that it is more
profitable for them to be friends than enemies. Or else some of us get together and
censure a general, or we defend someone who has been unjustly accused, or we take
turns with each other making accusations when someone who doesn’t deserve it has
been honoured. Often in deliberating we praise those things that we desire to do and
blame those things that we do not desire to do.’ He added, ‘Often before now,
Socrates, I’ve been condemned to suffer punishment or pay a fine.’ Socrates: ‘By
whom, Ischomachos?’ I asked, for I was completely in the dark. Ischomachos: ‘By
my wife’, he said. Socrates: ‘And how was the contest?’ I asked. Ischomachos:
‘Pretty fine when speaking the truth was appropriate, but whenever it was a matter of
lying, I could not make the lesser argument stronger, Socrates.
There was also plenty of scepticism about the role of oratory. Cleon famously
mocked the Athenian assembly in the Mytilenian debate: (Th. 3.37): blaming the
Athenian demos for its indecisiveness: ‘the blame is yours, for stupidly instituting
these competitive displays. You have become regular speech-goers, and as for action,
you merely listed to accounts of it; if something is to be done in the future you
estimate the possibilities by hearing a good speech on the subject, and as for the past
you rely not so much on the facts which you have seen with your own eyes as on what
you have heard about them in some clever piece of verbal criticism…’. In the
lawcourts, too, there were similar sentiments: Socrates, in Plato’s Apology (34 b-c)
stated that he would award pleas from pity in his defence. Earlier on in the speech he
boasted that he was a plain and inexperienced speaker (17c-d).
Note also that the involvement of Alcibiades (see above, section 5) in the debate
about Sicily is highly relevant to the question of the workings of the assembly,
rhetoric and public speaking.
Peter Liddel, building upon material from previous notes by Robin Osborne and
John Roberts.