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Athenian democracy

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	Topics Athenian democracy Topic Home Athenian democracy developed in the GreekAncient Greece Ancient Greece is the period in Greek history which lasted for around one thousand years and ended with the rise of Christia... city-stateCity-state A city-state is a region controlled exclusively by a city, and usually having sovereignty.... of AthensFacts About Classical Athens The city of Athens during Classical Antiquity was a notable polis of Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Pelopo... , comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of AtticaAttica Attica is a periphery in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece.... , around 500 BC. Athens was one of the very first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, most but not all following an Athenian model, but none were as powerful or as stable (or as well-documented) as that of Athens. It remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracyDirect democracy Direct democracy, classically termed pure democracy, comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein sovereig... where the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right. Participation was by no means open to all inhabitants of Attica, but the in-group of participants was constituted with no reference to economic class and they participated on a scale that was truly phenomenal. The public opinionPublic opinion Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population.... of voters was remarkably influenced by the political satirePolitical satire Political satire is a subgenre of general satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics, politicians and pu... performed by the comic poets at the theaters. SolonSolon Solon was a famous Athenian lawmaker and Lyric poet. ... (594 BC), CleisthenesCleisthenes Cleisthenes was a noble Athenian of the accursed Alcmaeonid family.... (509 BC), and Ephialtes of AthensEphialtes of Athens Ephialtes was leader of the democratic movement and of the homonymous party in Athens.... (462 BC) all contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Historians differ on which of them was responsible for which institutions, and which of them most represented a truly democratic movement. It is most usual to date Athenian democracy from Cleisthenes, since Solon's constitution fell and was replaced by the tyranny of Peisistratus, whereas Ephialtes revised Cleisthenes' constitution relatively peacefully. HipparchusHipparchus (son of Pisistratus) Hipparchus was one of the sons of Pisistratus.... , the brother of the tyrant HippiasFacts About Hippias (son of Pisistratus) Hippias of Athens was one of the sons of Pisistratus, and was tyrant of Athens in the 6th century BC.... , was killed by Harmodius and AristogeitonHarmodius and Aristogeiton Harmodius and Aristogeiton, known as "the Liberators" and "the Tyrannicides", became heroes in Athens through their ro... , who were subsequently honored by the Athenians for their alleged restoration of Athenian freedom. The greatest and longest-lasting democratic leader was PericlesPericles Pericles or Perikles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator and general of Athens in the city's Golden Age... ; after his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by oligarchic revolution towards the end of the Peloponnesian WarPeloponnesian War The Peloponnesian War was an Ancient Greek military conflict fought by Athens and its empire and the Peloponnesian League, ... . It was modified somewhat after it was restored under EucleidesEucleides Eucleides was archon of Athens at the end of 5th century BC.... ; the most detailed accounts are of this fourth-century modification rather than the Periclean system. It was suppressed by the MacedonMacedon Summary Macedon or Macedonia was the name of an ancient kingdom in the northern-most part of ancient Greece, bordering the ki... ians in 322 BC. The Athenian institutions were later revived, but the extent to which they were a real democracy is debatable. Etymology The word "democracy" (Greek: d?µ???at?a) combines the elements demos (d?µ??, which means "people") and kratos (??at??, which means "force" or "power"). In the words "monarchy" and "oligarchy", the second element arche means rule, leading, or being first. It is possible that the term "democracy" was coined by its detractors who rejected the possibility of, so to speak, a valid "demarchy". Whatever its original tone, the term was adopted wholeheartedly by Athenian democrats. The word is attested in HerodotusHerodotus Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Dorian Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "father o... , who wrote some of the earliest Greek prose to survive, but even this may not have been before 440 or 430 BC. It is not at all certain that the word goes back to the beginning of the democracy, but from around 460 BC at any rate an individual is known whose parents had decided to name him 'Democrates', a name which may have been manufactured as a gesture of democratic loyalty; the name can also be found in AeolianAeolis Alternative meaning: the Aeolis region of Mars.... Temnus, not a particularly democratic state. Participation and exclusion Size and make-up of the Athenian population Estimates of the population of ancient Athens vary. During the 4th century BC, there may well have been some 250,000–300,000 people in Attica. Citizen families may have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 will have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. In the mid-5th century the number of adult male citizens was perhaps as high as 60,000, but this number fell precipitously during the Peloponnesian war. This slump was permanent due to the introduction of a stricter definition of citizen described below. From a modern perspective these figures seem pitifully small, but in the world of Greek city-states Athens was huge: most of the thousand or so Greek cities could only muster 1000–1500 adult male citizens and Corinth, a major power, had at most 15,000. The non-citizen component of the population was divided between metics and slaves, with the latter perhaps somewhat more numerous. Around 338 BC the orator Hyperides (fragment 13) claimed that there were 150,000 slaves in Attica, but this figure is probably not more than an impression: slaves outnumbered those of citizen stock but did not swamp them. Citizenship in Athens Only adult male Athenians citizens who had completed their military training as ephebeEphebos mainly depended, as the ), excluding some of them permanently and others temporarily (depending on the type). Furthermore, all citizens selected were reviewed before taking up office (dokimasia) at which they might be disqualified. Competence does not seem to have been the main issue, but rather, at least in the 4th century BC, whether they were loyal democrats or had oligarchic tendencies. After leaving office they were subject to a scrutiny (euthunai, literally 'straightenings') to review their performance. Both of these processes were in most cases brief and formulaic, but they opened up in the possibility, if some citizen wanted to take some matter up, of a contest before a jury court. In the case of a scrutiny going to trial, there was the risk for the former officeholder of suffering severe penalties. Finally, even during his period of office, any officeholder could be impeached and removed from office by the assembly. In each of the ten "main meetings" (kuriai ekklesiai) a year, the question was explicitly raised in the assembly agenda: were the office holders carrying out their duties correctly? No office appointed by lot could be held twice by the same individual. The only exception was the boule or council of 500. In this case, simply by demographic necessity, an individual could serve twice in a lifetime. This principle extended down to the secretaries and undersecretaries who served as assistants to magistrates such as the archons. To the Athenians it seems what had to be guarded against was not incompetence but any tendency to use office as a way of accumulating ongoing power. The powers of officials were precisely defined and their capacity for initiative limited. They administered rather than governed. When it came to penal sanctions, no officeholder could impose a fine over fifty drachmas. Anything higher had to go before a court. In Greece, rules were strict. Elected Approximately one hundred officials out of a thousand were elected rather than chosen by lot. There were two main categories in this group: those required to handle large sums of money, and the 10 generals, the strategoi. One reason that financial officials were elected was that any money embezzled could be recovered from their estates; election in general strongly favoured the rich, but in this case wealth was virtually a prerequisite. Generals were elected not only because their role required expert knowledge but also because they needed to be people with experience and contacts in the wider Greek world where wars were fought. In the 5th century BC, principally as seen through the figure of PericlesPericles Pericles or Perikles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator and general of Athens in the city's Golden Age... , the generals could be among the most powerful people in the polis. Yet in the case of Pericles, it is wrong to see his power as coming from his long series of annual generalships (each year along with nine others). His office holding was rather an expression and a result of the influence he wielded. That influence was based on his relation with the assembly, a relation that in the first instance lay simply in the right of any citizen to stand and speak before the people. Under the 4th century4th century Overview As a means of recording the passage of time, the 4th century was that century which lasted from 301 to 400.... version of democracy the roles of general and of key political speaker in the assembly tended to be filled by different persons. In part this was a consequence of the increasingly specialised forms of warfare practiced in the later period. Elected officials too were subject to review before holding office and scrutiny after office. And they too could be removed from office any time the assembly met. In one case from the 5th century BC the 10 treasurers of the Delian league (the HellenotamiaiHellenotamiai Hellenotamiai was an ancient Greek term indicating a group of public treasurers.... ) were accused at their scrutinies of misappropriation of funds. Put on trial, they were condemned and executed one by one until before the trial of the tenth and last an error of accounting was discovered, allowing him to go free.? Individualism in Athenian democracy Another interesting insight into Athenian democracy comes from the law that excluded from decisions of war those citizens who had property close to the city walls - on the basis that they had a personal interest in the outcome of such debates because the practice of an invading army was at the time to destroy the land outside the walls. A good example of the contempt the first democrats felt for those who did not participate in politics can be found in the modern word 'idiot', which finds its origins in the ancient Greek word (idiotes), meaning a private person, a person who is not actively interested in politics; such characters were talked about with contempt and the word eventually acquired its modern meaning. In his Funeral Oration, Pericles states: 'it is only we who regard the one not participating in these duties not as unambitious but as useless.' Criticism of the democracy Athenian democracy has had many critics, both ancient and modern. Modern critics are more likely to find fault with the narrow definition of the citizen body, but in the ancient world the complaint if anything went in the opposite direction. Ancient authors were almost invariably from an elite background for whom giving poor and uneducated people power over their betters seemed a reversal of the proper, rational order of society. For them the demos in democracy meant not the whole people, but the people as opposed to the elite. Instead of seeing it as a fair system under which 'everyone' has equal rights, they saw it as the numerically preponderant poor tyrannizing over the rich. They viewed society like a modern stock company: democracy is like a company where all shareholders have an equal say regardless of the scale of their holding; one share or ten thousand, it makes no difference. They regarded this as manifestly unjust. In Aristotle this is categorized as the difference between 'arithmetic' and 'geometric' (i.e. proportional) equality. Democracy was far from being the normal style of governance and the beliefs on which it was based were in effect a minority opinion. Those writing in later centuries generally had no direct experience of democracy themselves. To its ancient detractors the democracy was reckless and arbitrary. They had some signal instances to point to, especially from the long years of the Peloponnesian WarPeloponnesian War The Peloponnesian War was an Ancient Greek military conflict fought by Athens and its empire and the Peloponnesian League, ... . In 406 BC, after years of defeats in the wake of the annihilation of their vast invasion force in Sicily, the Athenians at last won a naval victory at ArginusaeBattle of Arginusae The naval Battle of Arginusae took place in 406 BC during the Peloponnesian War.... over the Spartans. After the battle a storm arose and the eight generalsStrategos The term strategos is used in Greek to mean "general".... in command failed to collect survivors: the Athenians sentenced all of them to death. Technically, it was illegal, as the generals were tried and sentenced together, rather than one by one as Athenian law required. SocratesSocrates Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy.... happened to be the citizen presiding over the assembly that day and refused to cooperate, though to little effect. Standing against the idea that it was outrageous for the people to be unable to do whatever they wanted. Later they repented the executions, but made up for it by executing those who had accused the generals before them. (A long account in XenophonXenophon Overview Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, was a soldier, mercenary and an admirer of Socrates and is known f... Hellenica 1.7.1–35) Years earlier, the ten treasurers of the Delian leagueDelian League The Delian League was an association of Greek city-states in the 5th century BC.... (Hellenotamiai) had been accused of embezzlement. They were tried and executed one after the other until, when only one was still alive, the accounting error was discovered and that last surviving treasurer was acquitted. This was perfectly legal in this case, but an example of the extreme severity with which the people could punish those who served them. In 399 BC SocratesSocrates Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy.... himself was put on trial and executed for 'corrupting the young and believing in strange gods'. His death gave Europe its first ever intellectual hero and martyr, but guaranteed the democracy an eternity of bad press at the hands of his disciple and enemy to democracy PlatoPlato Plato , whose real name is believed to have been Aristocles, was an immensely influential ancient Greek philosopher, ... . In the GorgiasGorgias (dialogue) *Gorgias* refers to the last dialogue that Plato wrote before leaving Athens.... written years later Plato has SocratesFacts About Socrates Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy.... contemplating the possibility of himself on trial before the Athenians: he says he would be like a doctor prosecuted by a pastry chef before a jury of children. Two coups briefly interrupted democratic rule during the Peloponnesian war, both named by the numbers in control: the Four HundredThe Four Hundred (oligarchy) The Four Hundred was a short-lived oligarchic body that held power in Athens during the Peloponnesian War from June to Septe... in 411 BC and the ThirtyThirty Tyrants The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in April 404 B... in 404 BC. The focus on number speaks to the drive behind each of them: to reduce the size of the electorate by linking the franchise with property qualifications. Though both ended up as rogue governments and did not follow through on their constitutional promises, they began as responses from the Athenian elite to what they saw as the inherent arbitrariness of government by the masses (Plato in the Seventh Epistle does remark that the Thirty made the preceding democratic regime look like a Golden Age). Whether the democratic failures should be seen as systematic, or as a product of the extreme conditions of the Peloponnesian war, there does seem to have been a move toward correction. A new version of democracy was established from 403 BC, but it can be linked with both earlier and subsequent reforms. For the first time a conceptual and procedural distinction was made between laws and decrees. Increasingly, responsibility was shifted from the assembly to the courts, with laws being made by jurors and all assembly decisions becoming reviewable by courts. That is to say, the mass meeting of all citizens lost some ground to smaller gatherings (of only a thousand or so!) which were under oath, free of men in their impetuous 20's and with more time to focus on just one matter (though never more than a day). One downside was that the new democracy was less capable of rapid response. Another tack of criticism is to notice the disquieting links between democracy and a number of less than appealing features of Athenian life. Although it predated it by over thirty years, democracy is strongly bound up with Athenian imperialism. For much of the 5th century at least democracy fed off an empire of subject states. ThucydidesThucydides (politician) Thucydides was a prominent politician of ancient Athens and the leader for a number of years of the powerful conservative fa... the son of Milesias (not the historian), an aristocrat, stood in opposition to these policies, for which he was ostracised in 443 BC. At times the imperialist democracy acted with extreme brutality, as in the decision to execute the entire male population of MelosMelos Melos can refer toMelos, the former name of the Greek island Milos... and sell off its woman and children simply for refusing to became subjects of Athens. The common people were numerically dominant in the navy, which they used to pursue their own interests in the form of work as rowers and in the hundreds of overseas administrative positions. Further they used the income from empire to fund payment for officeholding. This is the position set out by the anti-democratic pamphlet known whose anonymous author is often called the Old Oligarch. On the other hand the empire was, more or less, defunct in the 4th century BC so it cannot be said that it was democracy was not viable without it. Only then in fact was payment for assembly attendance, the central event of democracy (Similarly for the period before the Persian wars, but for the very early democracy the sources are very meagre and it can be thought of as being in an embryonic state). A case can be made that discriminatory lines came to be drawn more sharply under Athenian democracy than before or elsewhere, in particular in relation to woman and slaves, as well as in the line between citizens and non-citizens. By so strongly validating one role, that of the male citizen, it has been argued that democracy compromised the status of those who did not share it. Male citizenship had become a newly valuable, indeed profitable, possession, to be jealously guarded. Under PericlesPericles Pericles* or Perikles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator and general of Athens in the city's Golden Age... , in 450 BC, restrictions were tightened so that a citizen had to be born from citizen parentage on both sides. Metroxenoi, those with foreign mothers, were now to be excluded. Traditionally, for the poorer citizens, local marriage was the norm while the elite had been much more likely to marry abroad as a part of aristocratic alliance building. A habit of one group in society was thus codified as a law for the whole citizen body, which thus lost one axis of openness. Many Athenians prominent earlier in the century would have lost citizenship, had this law applied to them: CleisthenesCleisthenes Summary Cleisthenes was a noble Athenian of the accursed Alcmaeonid family.... , the founder of democracy, had a non-Athenian mother, and the mothers of Cimon and ThemistoclesThemistocles Themistocles was a leader in the Athenian democracy during the Persian Wars.... were not Greek at all, but ThracianThrace Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe.... . As Athens attracted an increasing number of resident aliens (meticMetic In ancient Greece, the term metic meant resident alien, a person who did not have citizen rights in their Greek city-state o... s), this shift in the definition of citizen worked to keep the immigrant population more sharply distinguished politically. Likewise the status of women seems lower in Athens than in many Greek cities. At Sparta women competed in public exercise — so in AristophanesAristophanes Summary Aristophanes was a Greek Old Comic dramatist.... ' Lysistrata the Athenian women admire the tanned, muscular bodies of their Spartan counterparts — and women could own property in their own right, as they could not at Athens. MisogynyFacts About Misogyny Misogyny is hatred or fear of, or strong prejudice against women.... was by no means an Athenian invention, but it has been claimed that in regard to gender democracy generalised a harsher set of values derived, again, from the common people. Democracy may well have been impossible without the contribution of women's labour (Hansen 1987: 318). SlaverySlavery in antiquity Slavery as an institution in Mediterranean cultures of the ancient world comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery ... was more widespread at Athens than in other Greek cities. Indeed the extensive use of imported non-Greeks ("barbarianBarbarian The word "barbarian" generally refers to an uncivilized, uncultured person, either in a general reference to a member of a n... s") as chattel slaves seems to have been an Athenian development. This triggers the parodoxical question: Was democracy "based on" slavery? It does seem clear that possession of slaves allowed even poorer Athenians — owning a few slaves was by no means equated with wealth — to devote more of their time to political life. But whether democracy depended on this extra time is impossible to say. The breadth of slave ownership also meant that the leisure of the rich (the small minority who were actually free of the need to work) rested less than it would have on the exploitation of their less well-off fellow citizens. Working for wages was clearly regarded as subjection to the will of another, but at least debt servitude had been abolished at Athens (under the reforms of Solon at the start of the 6th century BC). By allowing a new kind of equality among citizens this opened the way to democracy, which in turn called for a new means, chattel slavery, to at least partially equalise the availability of leisure between rich and poor. In the absence of reliable statistics all these connections remain speculative. However, as Cornelius CastoriadisCornelius Castoriadis Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek economist and philosopher.... pointed out, other societies also kept slaves but did not develop democracy. Even with respect to slavery the new citizen law of 450 BC may have had effect: it is speculated that originally Athenian fathers had been able to register for citizenship offspring had with slave women (Hansen 1987:53). This will have rested on an older, less categorical sense of what it meant to be a slave. Although metics had no direct political influence many were wealthy business owners who could, and sometimes did, influence policy by not allowing their citizen employees time off to attend the assembly, as well as having the simple expedient of wealth. Contemporary opponents of majoritarianismMajoritarianism Majoritarianism is a political philosophy or agenda which asserts that a majority of the population is entitled to a certain... (arguably the principle behind Athenian democracy) call it an illiberal regime (in contrast to liberal democracyLiberal democracy Liberal democracy is a form of government.... ) that allegedly leads to anomieAnomie Anomie, in contemporary English, means a condition or malaise in individuals, characterized by an absence or diminution of s... , balkanizationBalkanization Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region into s... , and xenophobiaXenophobia Xenophobia denotes a phobic attitude toward strangers or of the unknown.... . Proponents (especially of majoritarianism) deny these accusations, and argue that any faults in Athenian democracy were due to the fact that the franchise was quite limited (only male citizens could vote - women, slaves and non-citizens were excluded). Despite this limited franchise, Athenian democracy was certainly the first - and perhaps the best - example of a working direct democracyDirect democracy Direct democracy, classically termed pure democracy, comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein sovereig... . See also Harmodius and AristogeitonHarmodius and Aristogeiton Harmodius and Aristogeiton, known as "the Liberators" and "the Tyrannicides", became heroes in Athens through their ro... History of AthensHistory of Athens The history of Athens is the longest of any city in Europe: Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years.... History of democracyHistory of democracy The history of democracy traces back from its origins in prehistoric times to its re-emergence and rise from the 17th centur... External links , A digital encyclopedia: the history, institutions, and people of democratic Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, Christopher Blackwell, ed. by Takis FotopoulosTakis Fotopoulos Takis Fotopoulos is a Greek political philosopher and academic.... , Democracy&Nature, Vol.1, no.1