Brill's Companion to the Reception of Athenian Democracy. From the Late Middle Ages to the Contemporary Era 9789004443006, 2020035815, 2020035816, 9789004276512

Table of contents :
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
1 Some Reasons for a Companion
2 The Structure of the Volume
2.1 Part I: An Introduction to Athenian Democracy and Its Reception
2.2 Part II: the Reception of Athenian Democracy: Ages, Countries, Scholarship
2.3 Part III: Modern Philosophy in the Face of Athenian Democracy
2.4 Part IV: Athenian Democracy and Contemporary Political Science
Bibliography
Part 1 An Introduction to Athenian Democracy and Its Reception
Chapter 1 The Nature of Athenian Democracy
1 Democracy
2 Ideology
3 Institutions
4 History
5 The Character of the Fourth-Century Democracy
6 Tradition109
Bibliography
Part 2 The Reception of Athenian Democracy
Chapter 2 Athenian Democracy in the Late Middle Ages and Early Humanism
1 Aristotle’s Reappearance: a False Start
2 Francesco Petrarca: the Men, Not the Institutions
3 In Florence: the First Humanist Wave
3.1 Leonardo Bruni and the First Humanists Interested in Athens’ Institutions
3.2 Poggio Bracciolini
3.3 Leon Battista Alberti
Bibliography
Chapter 3 Athenian Democracy in the Italian Renaissance
1 Naples: the Second Humanist Wave
1.1 Giovanni Pontano
1.2 Francesco Patrizi of Siena
2 Niccolò Machiavelli: the Rise of the Mixed Constitution
3 Carlo Sigonio: the Time of the Antiquarians
Bibliography
Chapter 4 Hobbes, Thucydides and Athenian Democracy
1 By Way of Introduction
2 Hobbes’ Translation of Thucydides and His “Humanist” Period
3 Hobbes, Thucydides, and Athenian Democracy
4 Athenian Democracy and the Early Years of Charles i’s Reign
5 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 5 The Reception of Athenian Democracy in French Culture from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire
1 Prolegomena
2 Rollin and the Emergence of a Democratic Athens
3 The Democratic Athens from Montesquieu to Barthélemy (1748–1788)
4 Athenian Democracy in the Culture of the People of the Revolution
5 “The Imaginary Liberal” and the Development of a “Bourgeois Athens” by Pierre-Charles Lévesque to Benjamin Constant (between 1795 and 1819)
6 The Reception of the “Liberal” Athens in France, from George Grote to Victor Duruy
Bibliography
Chapter 6 Athens and the Founders of the American Republic
1 The Founders’ Classical Education
2 The Persian Wars and the Superiority of Republican Government
3 Athens and the Perils of Democracy
4 The Fall of Greece and the Need for a Strong Central Government
Bibliography
Chapter 7 The Character of Democracy: Grote’s Athens and Its Legacy
1 Grote’s Athens in Its Context
2 The Character of Democracy
3 A Revolutionary Athens
4 The Impact of Grote’s Athens
Bibliography
Chapter 8 German Evaluations of Athenian Democracy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
1 Repercussions of the French Revolution
2 Burckhardt, Weber and the Subordination of the Individual to the State
3 Topical Criticism of Athens by Nineteenth Century German Classicists
4 Positive Images of Athens
5 The “Rehabilitation” of Athenian Democracy
6 From the First World War to the Third Reich
7 No German Exceptionalism
Bibliography
Chapter 9 Liberty Ancient and Modern in Twentieth-Century Italy: Between Classical Scholarship and Political Theory
1 Moral Liberty versus Hedonistic Liberty: Croce on the Ancients and the Moderns
2 Greek Liberty and Universal History: Arnaldo Momigliano
3 Greece versus Rome: the Anti-liberal Point of View of Aldo Ferrabino
4 Demosthenes as the Hero of Liberty: Piero Treves
5 Greatness and Limits of Athens: Gaetano De Sanctis
6 Modern Democracy: Nothing to Do with Athens?
7 Modern Democracy: Something to Do with Athens?
Bibliography
Part 3 Modern Philosophy in the Face of Athenian Democracy
Chapter 10 What Has Marxism Got to Do with Ancient Athens?: Marx and Marxist Historiography on Ancient Democracy
1 Introduction1
2 The Polis According to Marx
3 A “Republican Yankee” in Russia
4 The Schoolmaster and the Erudite Philistine
5 The Ethnological Notebooks, a Contaminated Text
6 What is Left of Marxist Historiography?
Bibliography
Chapter 11 The Philosopher and the City: Leo Strauss’ Reading of Athenian Democracy
1 Leo Strauss and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns
2 A Tale of Two Cities
3 The Philosopher and the City
4 Jerusalem and Athens
5 Writing between the Lines
6 Beyond the Veil
Bibliography
Chapter 12 “The Political Sphere of Life, Where Speech Rules Supreme”: Hannah Arendt’s Imaginative Reception of Athenian Democracy
1 The Loss of Tradition
2 Democracy versus Isonomia
3 The Polis as Experience of Interdependence
4 A Difficult Recuperation?
5 The Re-emergence of Isonomy
Bibliography
Chapter 13 Philosophy as a Political Praxis: Foucault’s Use of the Classics
1 Foucault, the Classical Heritage, and the Enlightenment
2 The Care of the Self and the Political Domain
3 The Construction of Philosophical Ethos
4 Parrhesia as Resistance
5 Nussbaum’s Theory of Justice – or, What Foucault’s Philosophy Lacks
Bibliography
Part 4 Athenian Democracy and Contemporary Political Science
Chapter 14 Classical Athens as an Epistemic Democracy
1 Introduction: Theories of Epistemic Democracy1
2 A Successful Epistemic Democracy
3 Conditions for Knowledge Aggregation
4 Cleisthenes’ Reforms: Demes and Tribes as Social Networks
5 The Council of 500: Structural Holes and Bridging Ties
6 Organizational and Individual Learning
7 Conclusions
Bibliography
Chapter 15 Sortition and Politics: From Radical to Deliberative Democracy – and Back?
1 Introduction1
2 Athens: Sortition as a Tool for Radical Democracy
2.1 Sortition in the Athenian Polity
2.2 The Ideal of Radical Democracy
2.3 Divinatory Sortition and Distributive Sortition
3 Sortition and Democracy, Ancient and Modern
3.1 Randomly Selected Minipublics and Deliberative Democracy
3.2 Representative Sample and Descriptive Representation
3.3 Legitimacy and Challenges
3.4 Sortition and Politics: a Typology
4 Conclusion
Bibliography
General Index of Names and Subjects

Citation preview

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Athenian Democracy

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Brill’s Companions to Philosophy Ancient Philosophy Edited by Kyriakos N. Demetriou (Cyprus University)

volume 7

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​bcpa

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Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Athenian Democracy From the Late Middle Ages to the Contemporary Era Edited by

Dino Piovan and Giovanni Giorgini

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: Partenone, by Luciano De Nicolo, 2019. Image used with permission of the artist. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Piovan, Dino, editor. | Giorgini, Giovanni, editor. Title: Brill’s companion to the reception of Athenian democracy : from the late middle ages to the contemporary era / Edited by Dino Piovan and Giovanni Giorgini. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | Series: Brill companions to philosophy: ancient philosophy, 2588-7823 ; Volume 7 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035815 (print) | LCCN 2020035816 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004276512 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004443006 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Democracy–Greece–History. | Democracy–Greece–Athens– History. | Democracy–Philosophy–Greece. | Athens (Greece)–Politics and government. Classification: LCC JC75.D36 B73 2020 (print) | LCC JC75.D36 (ebook) | DDC 320.938/5–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035815 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035816

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 2588-​7 823 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​2 7651-​2 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​4 4300-​6 (e-​book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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Contents

Preface ix John Dunn Acknowledgments x List of Abbreviations xi List of Illustrations xiii Notes on Contributors xiv Introduction 1 Dino Piovan & Giovanni Giorgini

part 1 An Introduction to Athenian Democracy and Its Reception 1

The Nature of Athenian Democracy 27 Mogens Herman Hansen

part 2 The Reception of Athenian Democracy: Ages, Countries, Scholarship 2

Athenian Democracy in the Late Middle Ages and Early Humanism 57 Gabriele Pedullà

3

Athenian Democracy in the Italian Renaissance 105 Gabriele Pedullà

4

Hobbes, Thucydides and Athenian Democracy 153 Luca Iori

5

The Reception of Athenian Democracy in French Culture from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire 179 Pascal Payen

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vi Contents 6

Athens and the Founders of the American Republic 203 Carl J. Richard

7

The Character of Democracy  Grote’s Athens and Its Legacy 220 James Kierstead

8

German Evaluations of Athenian Democracy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 271 Wilfried Nippel

9

Liberty Ancient and Modern in Twentieth-​Century Italy  Between Classical Scholarship and Political Theory 298 Dino Piovan

part 3 Modern Philosophy in the Face of Athenian Democracy 10

What Has Marxism Got to Do with Ancient Athens? Marx and Marxist Historiography on Ancient Democracy 333 Carlo Marcaccini

11

The Philosopher and the City  Leo Strauss’ Reading of Athenian Democracy 368 Giovanni Giorgini

12

“The Political Sphere of Life, Where Speech Rules Supreme”  Hannah Arendt’s Imaginative Reception of Athenian Democracy 399 Olivia Guaraldo

13

Philosophy as a Political Praxis  Foucault’s Use of the Classics 421 Giovanni Leghissa

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vii

Contents

part 4 Athenian Democracy and Contemporary Political Science 14

Classical Athens as an Epistemic Democracy 453 Josh Ober

15

Sortition and Politics  From Radical to Deliberative Democracy? 490 Yves Sintomer



General Index of Names and Subjects 523

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Preface John Dunn “The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy”, Bernard Williams once observed, “is Western philosophy”. By contrast the legacy of Athenian democracy to modern politics, whether in the West or anywhere else, can scarcely be summarized with comparable confidence or concision. Modern politics is more a predicament than it is a cultural accomplishment or intellectual achievement. We have no reason to blame it on ancient Greece or to laud Athens for inflicting it on us. What Athenian democracy has handed on to us, however, is both more salutary and much harder to pin down. At its core lie a range of attitudes and a set of practices of interrogation which still provide us with our key resources for understanding the roles of coercive power, law making and interpretation, and competitive judgment in shaping the lives we struggle to live together. Both attitudes and practices assumed a recognizable form within the turbulent political life of Athens during the century and three quarters for which it became self-​consciously a democracy; but they did not pass to us directly, as those of Rome arguably did, as an assertion or vindication of the city’s own achievements or excellences. In Athens itself the dynamism of its culture and the urgency of its intellectual exploration were each reflections of the scope and intensity of its political life. It was the critical power which they carried between them which made it possible for them to outlive the historical setting from which they came. What Dino Piovan and Giovanni Giorgini’s masterly Companion shows, with impressive range and in fascinating detail, is just how lengthy and erratic a route they have had to follow to reach us in their present form. Their story begins with a superb synoptic account of the city’s political institutions in operation during its democratic epoch by their steadiest and most indefatigable living student and passes through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to its harsh appraisal at the hands of Thomas Hobbes. It covers their mixed reception in France and North America in the context of their two great Revolutions and the very different aftermaths of each. It traces the responses which the democracy of Athens elicited in Germany and Italy over the course of the last two centuries and the resonances which it evoked in the pages of Marx and Leo Strauss, as well as those of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. It ends with the efforts of today’s political scientists to draw lessons from it for contemporary application. Read as a whole, as it richly deserves to be, it gives any thoughtful and attentive reader an outstanding opportunity to take in and judge that legacy for themselves.

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Acknowledgements The Editors would like to thank all the contributors, without whose patience and cooperation there would be no volume. The contributions are all original except for two, Kierstead’s and Ober’s, which are revised/​updated versions of already published essays; we thank the original publishers for their permission to reprint them. We also wish to express our gratitude to Kyriakos Demetriou, the Series Editor, for his initial input, his constant encouragement and his valuable help. A special thank goes to Luca Iori, who prepared the general index with generous availability and timely collaboration. Last but not least, we are thankful to the anonymous reviewer for the prompt revision and the excellent suggestions. This book is dedicated to Paul Cartledge, for all he has done to revive the history and the ideals of democracy.

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Abbreviations Aesch. Supp. Aeschylus, Supplices Aeschin. Aeschines Andoc. Andocides Androt. Androtiones Anth. Pal. Anthologia Palatina Antiph. Antiphon Ar. Aristophanes Eccl. Ecclesiazusae Vesp. Vespae Arist. Aristotle Ath. Pol. Athenaion Politeia Eth. Nic. Eticha Nichomachea Pol. Politica [Rh. Al.] Rhetorica ad Alexandrum Dem. Demosthenes Pr. Prooemia Diod. Diodorus Siculus Din. Dinarchus Eur. Supp. Euripides, Supplices FGrH F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1923–​) Harp. Harpocration Hdt. Herodotus Hom. Homer Il. Iliad Od. Odyssey Hyp. Hyperides Ibid., ibid. Ibidem, in the same work ig Inscriptiones Graecae (1873-​) Isae. Isaeus Isoc. Isocrates Antid. Antidosis Lycurg. Lycurgus Lys. Lysias mecw Marx K., Engels, F.  Collected Works. 1–​50. London:  Lawrence and Wishart, 1975-2004. mega Marx K., Engels, F. Gesamtausgabe. i-​i v. Berlin: Dietz Verlag (1975–​ 1998); Akademie Verlag (from 1998).

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xii Abbreviations oed Oxford English Dictionary old Oxford Latin Dictionary Paus. Pausanias Philoch. Philochorus Pl. Plato Leg. Leges Pol. Politicus Prt. Protagoras Resp. Respublica Plut. Plutarch Mor. Moralia Arist. Aristides’ Life Cim. Cimon’s Life Phoc. Phocion’s Life Per. Pericles’ Life Sol. Solon’s Life Them. Themistocles’ Life Polyb. Polybius Ps.-​Xen. Ath. Pol. Pseudo-​Xenophon, Respublica Atheniensium sc. scilicet, of course seg Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (1923-​) Theophr. Char. Theophrastus, Characteres Thuc. Thucydides Vit. Thuc. Vitae Thucydidis Xen. Xenophon Hell. Hellenica Mem. Memorabilia

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Illustrations Figures 3.1 4.1

14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5

Types of Constitutions according to Machiavelli 130 Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre Written by Thucydides the sonne of Olorus, trans. Thomas Hobbes, London 1629. Frontispiece by Thomas Cecill. 161 Four levels of Athenian civic subdivisions: status groups, tribes, trittyes, demes 469 Tribe Pandionis’ delegation of Councilmen for one year (quotas by deme) 471 Pandionis’ tribal team as a social network: starting position 472 Pandionis tribal team network, stage 2 475 Pandionis tribal team network, stage 3 476

Tables Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Middle Ages 64 Humanism and the Rise of Valerius Maximus 68 Latin Translations of Major Greek Sources on Athenian Democracy (1402–1483) 79 3.1 Printed Editions of Major Greek Sources on Athenian Democracy (1460–1500) 106 3.2 Printed Editions of Major Latin Sources on Athenian Democracy (1460–1500) 107 3.3 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Renaissance i 120 3.4 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Renaissance ii 127 15.1 The uses of random selection 501 15.2 The political logic of sortition 515 2.1 2.2 2.3

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Notes on Contributors John Dunn is emeritus Professor of Political Theory at King’s College, Cambridge (UK). His research focuses on applying a historical perspective to modern political theory. Much of his work –​reflective essays, edited collections, and several books –​ has tackled substantive issues in political theory. Among many other books, he is the author of The Cunning of Unreason (2001) and Setting the People Free: the Story of Democracy (2005). Giovanni Giorgini is Professor of History of Political Thought at the University of Bologna and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. A  Life Member of Clare Hall College, Cambridge, he has been Fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University and Visiting Professor in many universities in the United States (Princeton, Chicago, Pittsburgh) and in Italy (Bol­ zano, imt-​Lucca). Giorgini is the author of La città e il tiranno (Giuffrè, 1993), Liberalismi eretici (Edizioni Goliardiche, 1999), I doni di Pandora (Bonomo, 2002) as well as of a translation with introduction of Plato’s Politicus (Rizzoli, 2005). With Elena Irrera, he has edited The Roots of Respect (De Gruyter, 2017), where he also contributed an essay on respect in ancient Greek poetry. He is the author of numerous essays on ancient political thought, Machiavelli and contemporary liberal theory as well as of translations and entries in encyclopaedias. Olivia Guaraldo is Associate professor in political philosophy at the University of Verona where she also directs the Hannah Arendt Center for Political Studies. Her field of research comprises modern and contemporary political thought. She has worked extensively on the thought of Hannah Arendt (two monographies in 2001 and 2014, an Italian edition of Arendt’s essay Lying in politics) and contemporary feminist political theory, investigating the theoretical and political relationships between Italian feminist philosophy and Angloamerican gender theory. Guaraldo has also edited and introduced the Italian translations of Judith Butler’s works, Precarious Life (Rome 2004, Milan 2013) and Undoing Gender (Rome 2006, Milan 2014). Among her most recent publications: ‘Public Happiness:  Revisiting an Arendtian Hypothesis’,  Philosophy Today, 62:2, pp. 395–​416, 2018.

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Mogens Herman Hansen is one of the leading scholars in Athenian democracy and the Polis. He retired in 2010 after 40 years at Copenhagen University (Denmark). He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, by Deutsche Archaeologisches Institute and the British Academy. From 1993 to 2005 he was the director of the Copenhagen Polis Centre. He has written many books about the Athenian democracy:  The Athenian Assembly (1987), The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (1991), A Comparative Study of 30 City-​State Cultures (2000), Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (2004), Polis: an introduction to the ancient Greek city-​state (Oxford University Press, 2006), and others. Luca Iori is Research Fellow in Ancient Greek History at the University of Parma. He is author of Thucydides Anglicus. Gli Eight Bookes di Thomas Hobbes e la rice­ zione inglese delle Storie di Tucidide (1450–​1642) (Rome, 2015) and he is currently co-​editor of T. Hobbes. Translations of Thucydides (‘Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes’, Oxford University Press). He has written extensively on the reception of Thucydides from the Renaissance to the contemporary age. James Kierstead is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Born in Canada, he studied Classics, Ancient History, and Political Science in Oxford, London, and Stanford, where he completed a doctoral dissertation on Athenian democracy under Prof. Josiah Ober. He has published a number of articles and reviews mostly linked in some way with ancient Greek democracy and its reception. His current book project, Democracy and Associations in Classical Athens, should see publication with Edinburgh University Press in 2021. Giovanni Leghissa (member of the board of the philosophical journal “aut aut”) is currently Research Professor of Epistemology of the Humanities at the Department of Philosophy, University of Torino (Italy). Previously, after completing his PhD study in Trieste (Italy), he taught in Italian, Austrian and German Universities. Among his publications: L’evidenza impossibile. Saggio sull’immaginazione in Husserl (1999), Il dio mortale. Ipotesi sulla religiosità moderna (2004), Il gioco dell’identità. Differenza, alterità, rappresentazione (2005), Incorporare l’antico. Filologia classica e invenzione della modernità (Milano, 2007), Neoliberalismo. Un’introduzione critica (Milano, 2012). He is the Italian editor of works of Husserl, Derrida, Blumenberg, Overbeck, Tempels, Hall, de Certeau.

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Carlo Marcaccini is an indipendent scholar of ancient Greek history. His main interests are ancient ethnography, archaic Greek civilization, politics of the Classic period. His main works include Atene sovietica. Democrazia antica e rivoluzione comuni­ sta (Pisa, 2012); Il conflitto delle élites. Atene 508–​403 a.C. (Milano, 2017). Wilfried Nippel has served as Professor of Ancient History at the Humboldt-​Universität zu Berlin (Germany) since 1992. He is a full member of the Berlin-​Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften since 1997. His research foci include historical anthropology, the history of ancient science and the classical reception. He is author of many books such as Mischverfassungstheorie und Verfassungsrealität in Antike und früher Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 1980), Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Antike oder moderne Freiheit? Die Begründung der Demokratie in Athen und in der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a. M., 2008); Karl Marx (München, 2018). Josiah Ober is Professor of Political Science and Classics and the Constantine Mitsotakis Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences at the Stanford University (USA). He specializes in the areas of ancient and modern political theory and historical institutionalism. His ongoing work focuses on the theory and practice of democracy and the politics of knowledge and innovation. Recent articles and working papers seek to explain economic growth in the ancient Greek world, the relationship between democracy and dignity, and the aggregation of expertise, and the development of ancient Greek theories of strategic rationality. He is author of about 90 articles and book-​chapters and several books, including Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989), Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (1998), Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens (2008), The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (2015), and Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism in Theory and Practice (2017). Pascal Payen is Professor of Greek History at the University of Toulouse –​Jean Jaurès. Previous publications include Les Îles nomades. Conquérir et résister dans l’Enquête d’Hérodote (1997); Plutarque, Grecs et Romains en parallèle (1999); Johann Gustav Droysen, Histoire de l’Hellénisme, with introduction (2005); with D. Foucault: Les Autorités. Dynamiques et mutations d’une figure de référence à l’Antiquité (2007); with V. Fromentin and S. Gotteland: Ombres de Thucydide. La réception de l’historien depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’au début du xxe siècle (2010);

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Les revers de la guerre en Grèce ancienne. Histoire et historiographie (2012); La guerre dans le monde grec; viii-​Ier siècles avant J.-​C. (2018). Gabriele Pedullà (1972) is professor of Italian Literature at the University of Rome 3 and was visiting professor at Stanford and ucla. Among his books: Machiavelli in tumulto (Rome: Bulzoni, 2011, translated for Cambridge UP), and a new edition and commentary to Machiavelli’s “Prince” (Rome:  Donzelli 2013, in course of translation in English, Spanish, and Portoguese). With Sergio Luzzatto, he also edited a three volume “Atlante della letteratura italiana” (Torino: Einaudi, 2010–​2012). Dino Piovan obtained the National Scientific Qualification as associate professor in Greek Language and Literature in 2013, after studying in Italy (Universities of Padua and Pisa, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici in Naples) and abroad (lmu of Munich in Bayern, ucl London). He is adjunct professor of Greek at the University of Verona. His publications include a commentary on Lysias’ speech 25: Defence Against a Charge of Subverting the Democracy (Padua-​Rome 2009) and two monographs: Memoria e oblio della guerra civile. Strategie giudiziarie e racconto del passato in Lisia (Pisa 2011); Tucidide in Europa. Storici e storiografia greca nell’età dello storicismo (Milan 2018). He is also co-​author of Con parole alate, a History of Ancient Greek Literature (with texts) in three volumes (Bologna 2020). Carl J. Richard (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, 1988) is Professor of History at the University of Louisiana (USA). Richard’s research and teaching focus on early national American history and U.S. intellectual history. His books include The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 1994), Twelve Greeks and Romans Who Changed the World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), The Battle for the American Mind: A Brief History of a Nation’s Thought (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired the Founding Fathers (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States (Harvard University Press, 2009), and Why We’re All Romans: The Roman Contribution to the Western World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). Yves Sintomer is professor of political science at the Paris viii University (France), researcher at the cresppa (cnrs) and Associate Member, Nuffield College, University

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of Oxford. His research focuses on participative democracy and deliberative democracy from ancient Greece to contemporary age. His writings have been published in 19 languages. His books include The Porto Alegre Experiment: Learning Lessons for a Better Democracy (New York: Zed Books, 2004); Participatory Budgeting in Europe: Democracy and Public Governance, together with C. Herzberg and A. Röcke (London: Routledge, 2016); Sortition and Democracy. Histories, Tools, Theories, edited together with L. Lopez-​Rabatel (Exeter:  Imprint Academic, 2019); Between Radical and Deliberative Democracy. Random Selection in Politics from Athens to Contemporary Experiments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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Introduction Dino Piovan and Giovanni Giorgini 1

Some Reasons for a Companion

The political arrangement that Cleisthenes and his supporters succeeded in creating in Athens in the year 508 bce was not only a revolutionary political regime in which the people, namely every (free male adult) Athenian citizen, took part in the most important decisions for the city, such as making alliances, waging war, imposing taxes; it had two additional features which were painstakingly examined and remained permanently in the imagination of subsequent politicians and authors. In the first place, it was founded on some, implicit or explicit, values: the equal value attributed to each citizen for his contribution to politics, belief in public discussion and the goodness of decisions made in common, the importance of free speech and of open debate, to name a few. The institutions of democratic Athens were a reflection of the democratic values of the citizens. Second, the evident success of this regime in the fifth century bce and its dramatic fall at the end of the century, spurred heated discussions about the strong and weak points of making all citizens responsible for the decision-​ making process. For better or for worse, Athenian democracy remained a paradigmatic regime for centuries, even millennia, after its downfall. This is why we believe that a Companion to the Reception of Athenian Democracy is an important tool for understanding this political regime. 2

The Structure of the Volume

2.1 Part i: An Introduction to Athenian Democracy and Its Reception However, attempting to provide a complete and comprehensive guide to the reception of Athenian democracy from antiquity to today would be an almost unmanageable endeavor, given the vastness of the field not only in sectors already explored in the previous studies devoted to this argument but also in many other subjects, rarely, or nearly ever, investigated before, such as contemporary philosophy and political science.1 Therefore 1 One of the best books on the reception of classic Athenian democracy is Roberts (1994), which starts from antiquity and arrives to the early 1990s. However wide its scope and rich its analyses are, it devotes a very limited place to modern and still less to contemporary

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_002

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this Companion aims to present to the reader a vast, albeit not unlimited survey, articulated in different sections, each one with its own particular rationale. The first essay serves as an introduction to the theme and offers a synthetic and accurate history of Athenian democracy, articulated in paragraphs which permit even to a non-​specialist, non-​classicist reader to get a clear view of what it was, what were its values, how it worked, when it was born and how it developed in the two centuries of its life; lastly, it aims at giving a quick glance even on its tradition in the subsequent two thousand years. His author is Mogens Herman Hansen, a world-​famous scholar who has tirelessly devoted all his life to explore Athenian institutions, procedures and functioning in a wide series of journal articles and books, which are essential for anyone who deals with these topics. Admittedly, there are a lot of controversial questions about ancient Athenian democracy, but they cannot be dealt with in a book focused on its reception. However, it is fair to say that one of Hansens’ most original and reiterated thesis has provoked an intense debate among specialists of ancient Athens, namely, the idea that there is a basic shift in its history at the end of fifth century, when democracy was restored after a violent stasis (‘civil war’) between oligarchs and democrats. For Hansen, fifth-​century Athenian democracy was a government by the people that would be substituted by the rule of law in the fourth century. While some scholars have accepted this view, others have rejected it.2 The ancient reception of Athenian democracy is not specifically addressed either in this chapter or in any other in this book because its focus is on the modern and contemporary reception.3 However, the ancient reception is very important to fully understand the modern as many references in the chapters in the second part will make it clear. In fact, the Renaissance writers as well as early-​modern and modern thinkers and historians of ancient Greece mostly based their own judgments on, or at least justified them with, the references to classical Greek historians and philosophers such as Thucydides, Xenophon, philosophy; besides, it has no proper space to contemporary political sciences. Other important books, published in the last decades, that deal at least partly with this theme are: Cambiano (2000); Hansen (2005); Urbinati (2006 [2002]); Nippel (2008); Hansen, Ducrey and Hernandez (eds) (2010); Cartledge (2018). 2 Hansen’s thesis is shared, e.g., by Ostwald (1986) and rejected, e.g., by Ober (1996), 107–​122; Millet (2000); Piovan (2017b); Cartledge (2018), 223. 3 On the ancient reception of Athenian democracy see Roberts (1994), 25–​118; Canevaro and Gray (eds) (2018) is now essential for the Hellenistic period. Here and in the following footnotes the bibliography is intentionally limited to few, primarily recent references from which one can easily obtain a much more extensive overview.

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Plato and Aristotle, who were mainly non-​democratic and even anti-​democratic and gave life to the so-​called “antidemocratic tradition in Western thought”.4 To be fair, there was also in the classical age a pro-​democratic tradition, represented by passages in some fifth-​century tragedies like Aeschylus’ Persians and Euripides’ Suppliant Women, by Otanes’ speech in Herodotus’ Histories (Hdt. 3.80), by Protagoras’ speech in the homonymous Platonic dialogue (Pl. Prt. 319b–​324c), and by many speeches of the orators, Demosthenes above all.5 But it is indisputable that it was the critical tradition that enjoyed the attention of modern readers much more than the democratic, at least until well into the nineteenth century; therefore some brief remarks about the ancient reception of Athenian democracy are here in place, just to provide a first orientation to the non-​specialist readers. The first pamphlet expressly dedicated to indict the Athenian government is the Pseudo-​Xenophon’s Athenaion Politeia (‘Constitution of the Athenians’). This anonymous writer, often referred to as the “Old Oligarch” in Anglophone classical studies,6 at an unspecified moment in the second half of the fifth century bce condemns democracy as a kind of tyranny of the ugly and bad people, i.e. the poor, over the beautiful and good ones, i.e. the rich, even if he concedes that the Athenian demos is not irrational in promoting its own interest.7 In spite of this negative representation, this ancient oligarch was not given serious attention before the nineteenth century. Much more influent than him was the historian Thucydides (ca 460–​400 bce), whose History did not have a public as large as other ancient writers, like Tacitus and Plutarch, since the rediscovery of the classics in the fifteenth century ce, but one that deeply meditated on his often challenging sentences and played sometimes a key role even beyond the boundaries of scholarship, as the case of Hobbes

4 “Antidemocratic tradition in Western thought” is the subtitle of Roberts (1994); Ober (1998) attempts to differently frame most of the quoted authors as internal critics of democracy. 5 On the ancient pro-​democratic ideology and tradition see Roberts (1994), 33–​47; Ober (1989); Cartledge (2011 [2009]), 79–​89, 95–​102. For a very synthetic presentation of some ancient anti-​democratic arguments and the corresponding democratic replies see Piovan (2008); for Otanes’ speech in Herodotus see Piovan (2019). 6 It was the famous Oxford classicist Gilbert Murray who apparently used this epithet for the author of the Constitution of the Athenians. We obviously do not know whether the author was old or young, but Murray inferred from the realistic and desolate tone of the pamphlet that the writer must have been old: the Aristotelian stereotype of the ‘old man’ played some part in this characterization. 7 For all the questions (authorship, dating, structure, themes and aims) about Pseudo-​ Xenophon’s Athenaion Politeia see Lenfant’s and Serra’s substantial introductions to their very recent critical editions: Lenfant (2017); Serra (2018).

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shows.8 Thucydides was often read as an outright critic of democracy but this is a simplistic interpretation that does not take into account his more nuanced evaluations. On the one hand, he depicts the Athenian demos as irrational, dominated by fickle passions, rescued from taking bad decision by the authority of Pericles, who is portrayed as an exceptional politician able to control the people more than being controlled by them as nobody after him would be (Thuc. 2.65); on the other hand, he has Pericles deliver the Funeral Oration, which is the most splendid praise of Athenian democracy ever written and the most elaborate elucidation of its ideal reasons that antiquity has bequeathed us (Thuc. 2.35–​46); its importance is unquestionable, leaving aside the double question whether Thucydides is reliable in reporting Pericles’ speech, and to what degree he agrees with Pericles’ words. Concerning Thucydides’ own political tendencies, he normally does not speak in the first person except once, when he commends the moderate government of the Five Thousand, which followed the oligarchy of the Four Hundred (411/​410 bce), as “a moderate blending between the few and the many” (Thuc. 8.97.2), i.e. between the rich and the poor. This is the first time in ancient Greece that a kind of mixed constitution was formulated and established, a political-​constitutional form of government that will be picked up and refined by Aristotle and later by Polybius, and will have a great fortune in eighteenth-​century political thought.9 The views of Xenophon (ca 430–​355 bce) on his native polis’ democratic regime are not entirely consistent and univocal; if it is generally supposed that he supported the oligarchy of the Thirty in 404/​403 bce and admired Sparta, nonetheless he undoubtedly praised the restoration of democracy and the moderation of the demos and its leaders in the Hellenica, his main historical work (Hell. 2.4.43), whereas in the Memorabilia, specifically devoted to report thoughts and sayings of his former teacher Socrates, he stages a dialogue between Alcibiades and Pericles in which law is unveiled as the enactment of the ruling power, hinting at the conclusion that there is no real difference between democracy and tyranny (Mem. 1.2.40–​46). Even if most scholars still deem him a strict anti-​democrat, it could be more fruitful to see him as a not necessarily hostile critic of democracy, at least for some part of his long life.10 Much less ambiguous is the position of Plato (427–​347 bce), who launched the most radical attack to democracy, arguing from a philosophic point of 8 9 10

For Thucydides’ reception see Fromentin, Gotteland and Payen (eds) (2010); Harloe and Morley (eds) (2012); Lee and Morley (2015); Piovan (2018). On Thucydides’ political views see Raaflaub (2006); Jaffe (2017). For Xenophon on the restoration of democracy see Piovan (2010); for Xenophon’s political views see Brown Ferrario (2017); Tuplin (2017).

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view. In the Gorgias, a dialogue written around 380 bce, he has Socrates condemn all past Athenian political leaders such as Themistocles and Pericles, accused of having flattered the demos and given up to its appetites without trying to improve it. In the Politeia or Republic, his major work, drafted after 380, he sketches his ideal city, the kallipolis (‘beautiful city’), conceived as a political arrangement in which the rulers are Platonic-​style philosophers (Resp. 473d); that is however, presented as just a model in the sky, suitable to orient those who want to reform their own poleis on earth. On the other hand, when Plato deals with the different forms of government, he places democracy almost at the bottom of a descending progression, barely a step above tyranny (Resp. 555b-​562a). One may notice that Plato conceived of democracy as the rule of one faction (the demos) in its own interest and to the detriment of the rest of the city: in such a regime there is no pursuit of the common good and an everlasting civil strife. Plato’s attack truly arrives at the heart of the matter, for he questions the very foundational values of democracy and therefore its political practices. Plato considers human beings as unequal by nature and therefore unequally suited to contribute to politics; he therefore objects to the political and legal equality granted by democracy to all citizens, “equal and unequal alike”. Plato, accordingly, does not believe that the best decisions come from the people’s participation to politics; on the contrary, he argues that only those who know what is good for their fellow-​citizens are entitled to rule the city. And the mass of the people will never reach philosophical knowledge. Quite controversial is the case of the Menexenus, a funeral oration which appears to most interpreters as a polished parody of the kind of speech devised to extol the merits of the democratic city. Finally, the Laws, Plato’s last work, aims to depict a less ideal state than the Republic, located in a precise site (Crete), provided with a very meticulous code of laws and considered by some scholars to be a theocracy; in any case, the best regime depicted there, a concession to political realism and therefore a ‘second-​best’ after the one where everything is in common for the ruling class, is extremely different from the contemporary democracy.11 Aristotle (384–​322), Plato’s greatest pupil, cannot be considered a straightforward democrat either, but it would be mistaken to define him a fierce anti-​ democrat just like his teacher. His Politics is a very useful source of information about the political institutions of the ancient Greek world and it is very 11

On Plato’s most important political dialogues see Schofield (2000) and Laks (2000), and in general Cambiano (2016); on Platonic political theory’s reception since antiquity until the twentieth century see Vegetti (2009).

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rich of theoretical discussions and analytic taxonomies about what a politeia (‘constitution’) is and what its different types are. Regarding democracy, Aristotle identifies four species of this regime, from the most radical to the most moderate, which is very close to the most moderate form of oligarchy (Pol. 1291b-​1292a). In addition, he identifies the fundamental distinction between oligarchy and democracy not in the number of their citizens and rulers, according to the traditional classification of constitutions (rule by one, rule by some or rule by the many),12 but in the rulers’ economic status: the discriminating factor is whether power is held by the rich or by the poor, i.e., by the people who do not have to work for a living or by those who have to (Pol. 1279b–​1280a). Aristotle considers the rule of the poor a bad regime since it acts in their own selfish interest, damaging the unity and harmony of the city and arousing a civil strife that can degenerate into the worst evil, stasis.13 However, Aristotle finds some redeeming qualities in the rule of the many: in Politics 3.11, 1281b he uses a very evocative metaphor and speaks of the people gathered together as “something in the nature of a single person, who –​as he has many feet, many hands and many senses –​may also have many qualities of character and intelligence”. What he advocates as the best form of government is a mixture of democracy and oligarchy, a regime governed by citizens in a social-​economic middle condition, able to hold the constitution on balance between the extremes (Pol. 1296a). While the influence of Aristotle’s Politics on European political thought was enormous, much different was the destiny of the Constitution of the Athenians, a work whose first part lays out a history of the Athenian constitution and in the second part describes its practical working. As valuable as it is for providing precious information and sometimes unique details, it was not preserved in Byzantine manuscripts and discovered only in 1879 in Egyptian sands and soon attributed to Aristotle or his school; it is anyway worth mentioning here because of its role in scholarly histories of Athens since then.14 In the post-​classical age, Polybius (200–​118 bce), the major exponent of what survives of all Hellenistic historiography, criticizes democratic 12 13

14

It was Herodotus (ca. 484–​425 bce) the first that clearly assigned all forms of government to one of these only three categories in the so-​called Persian Debate in book 3 of his Histories (Hdt. 3.80–​82); on it see Cartledge (2018), 93–​96. In stressing the dangers of the civil war (the word in ancient Greek is stasis) for Greek polis Aristotle had been preceded by Thucydides’ passionate analysis of the virulent crisis burst in Corcyra (Thuc. 3.82–​83), on which see Price (2001) and, more synthetically, Piovan (2017a). On Aristotle’s Politics see Bien (1985 [1973]); Rowe (2000); Cambiano (2016). On the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians see Rhodes (1993).

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Athens as a chaotic regime that is not worth examining, whereas he praises the Roman Republic as a paradigmatic mixed constitution in which the three traditional forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy) are all represented; this well-​balanced mixture would be, according to him, the key to explain the unrestrainable rise of Roman power in the Mediterranean world. Polybius’ book 6 will enjoy a significant fortune since Humanism and will be carefully meditated also by the American Founding Fathers.15 In republican Rome, Cicero (106–​43 bce) has an ambivalent attitude towards classical Athens: on the one side, he acknowledges its primacy in the field of culture; on the other side, he attacks its democracy as one dominated by an unruly mob, ungrateful towards its political leaders, and revives the theory of the mixed constitution, presented as the best form of government in his main political work De Republica.16 In Roman Imperial age, it was Plutarch (ca 46–​120 ce) that mostly influenced the modern view on Athenian politics, at least until the nineteenth century, when his value as an independent and reliable source began to be questioned. Like Cicero, he also makes a fundamental distinction: on the one hand, Plutarch wholeheartedly admires Athens’ cultural excellence and contributes to mold its lasting memory in the imaginary of posterity; on the other hand, he seems to prefer Sparta’s to Athens’ political constitution which he, as a follower of Plato living under a monarchic regime, probably does not fully understand; Plutarch also pinpoints the difficult relationship between leaders and mass, depicted as ungrateful and irrational in many of his Parallel Lives, like in the Life of Phocion which will be largely used before the nineteenth century as a source for describing Athenian democracy.17 The picture of Hellenistic and Imperial reception of Athenian democracy is, however, much richer than these few lines may make it look; as a very recent book has highlighted, “engagement with Classical Athens helped the successive generations of Hellenistic and early Imperial Greeks […] to investigate, from their different perspective, the central and enduring issue of the relationship between a city’s demos and its elites”.18

15 16 17 18

On Polybius’ constitutional theory see Hahm (2009); Thornton (2011); on Polybius’ stance on Athenian democracy Champion (2018). On Cicero’s political thought see Atkins (2000). On Plutarch’s political philosophy see Pelling (2014); on Plutarch’s stance on Classical Athenian democracy Erskine (2018); Dubreil (2018). Canevaro and Gray (2018), 13–​14.

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Part ii: the Reception of Athenian Democracy: Ages, Countries, Scholarship The second part of this Companion analyses the modern and contemporary reception of Athenian democracy since the late Middle Ages, at the dawn of Humanism, when ancient Greek texts were rediscovered in the West, until the late twentieth century. Not all the periods and countries where ancient Greek history sooner or later began to be studied are the object of direct investigation; the focus is on some crucial ages, moments and figures that have a pivotal value in the history of its reception. The investigation is mainly centered on those nations such as Italy, England, France, the United States of America and Germany, which one could call “classical countries” for the central role played by the classical education and the classical inspiration in their cultural life, at least in the ages under examination. It has to be specified, however, that “nation” is a concept that should not be interpreted in its strictest sense, as an equivalent to the modern national state; indeed, the nations examined here do not sometimes coincide with the exact borders of the states bearing the same name. In fact, ‘nation’ is still today a concept not identical to state (there are states with more national groups within them and nations subdivided into more states); this is true all the more for the past, before the rise of national movements and revolutions in the nineteenth century. Accordingly, it should not be surprising that the account of post-​revolutionary France includes Benjamin Constant, who was born into a family of French origin in the French part of Switzerland; the same applies to Jacob Burckhardt, a German-​Swiss intellectual, when dealing with nineteenth-​century Germany. Furthermore, it must be emphasized that these, albeit in a large sense, national traditions are not completely separated from each other, since they often influence one another, sometimes reciprocally; we will return to this point later. The first chapter of this section, by Gabriele Pedullà, investigates an area so far seldom explored: the reception of Athenian democracy in Italy from the late thirteenth century until the early fifteenth century. Its starting point is the reappearance of Aristotle’s Politics in Latin translation, which provided a series of useful analytic concepts and a great number of examples from Greek history; but these examples were then so new for the readers that they tended to de-​historicize Aristotle. It was only later that this situation began to change thanks to Francesco Petrarch (1304–​1374), the true forerunner of Humanism. A keen reader of the first-​century ce Roman historian Valerius Maximus, especially his De dictis factisque memorabilibus, a text focused on historical and biographic anecdotes of Greek and Roman eminent men, Petrarca’s interest was not in the political institutions but rather in the great men, for he considered them capable to transform the present through the imitation of their 2.2

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virtues. Accordingly, the democratic leaders of ancient Athens like Themistocles, Pericles and Alcibiades, returned in his pages, evoked, however, for their mores more than for their policies. One of the aspects more emphasized by Petrarch is the unjust condemnations suffered by these politicians, which proved the Athenian people’s ingratitude and confirmed his scepticism about self-​ governing communities of his own day. Privileging individuals over the forms of government opened the path to the Humanistic tendency to suggest ancient democrats as education models even to future kings and princes and was a distinctive element in early fourteenth-​century writers such as Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini and Leon Battista Alberti, the first Humanists that learnt to read Greek texts in the original. Amidst them, the most interested in Athenian politics was Bruni who, influenced by Aristotle, positively stressed the oligarchic elements in the Athenian constitution of Solon’s age (early sixth century bce) against that of Pericles, which he considered a degenerate version of the good government identified with the mixed constitution. This stance also contributed to shape the orientation towards democratic Athens for the future. The late fifteenth and sixteenth-​century reception is examined in the following chapter, also by Gabriele Pedullà. That age is characterized by important translations of the works of ancient Greek historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides and Plutarch, making information about Athens more and more accessible to all readers. Petrarca’s moral-​pedagogical approach to democratic leaders is still prevalent in the second half of the fifteenth century; this is evident in the works of one of the major political thinkers of that time, Giovanni Pontano, who held high offices in the kingdom of Naples, whereas Francesco Patrizi had a deeper interest in the actual functioning of Athenian institutions, which he analytically compared to Renaissance Italian republics: Patrizi appreciated the popular participation to government of the post-​Solonian age as opposed to the majority of Humanists. This more historical-​political perspective reached the pinnacle with Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy. The Florentine writer drew heavily not only on Polybius, as it is usually recognized, but also on another Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first century bce), both convinced supporters of the superiority of the mixed constitution. No surprise, then, that Machiavelli put the mixed constitution at the top of the forms of government and placed Athenian democracy amongst the inferior regimes, so that Athens is frequently invoked just as a counterexample to the Roman Republic. A third approach to Athenian democracy, different from Petrarca’s and Machiavelli’s, was developed by Carlo Sigonio. In his De republica Atheniensium he applied to Athens the same method developed by the so-​called antiquarians to ancient Rome, in order to offer the first systematic reconstruction of the Athenian classical constitution. One peculiar feature of Sigonio is that he

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highlights the system of checks and balances which made the Athenian system a regime far from a mob rule and concludes with a very positive judgement on Athenian history. The Humanists’ predominantly negative bias against Athenian democracy was common also in seventeenth-​century England, a period examined by Luca Iori. What is more, this prejudice was widespread even amongst intellectuals with completely opposite leanings such as the ultra-​royalist Robert Filmer and the republican James Harrington; they both tended to interpret it as a dangerous rule of only one class, where the poor’s government pursued its own interest at the expense of the commonweal. It was the ancient critics of Athenian democracy, such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle, that were then mostly read and commented upon. The core of this chapter is the analysis of Thomas Hobbes’ translation of Thucydides, published in 1628, which was much more than a simple English version: in fact, it was an investigation into the historical reality of fifth-​century Athens as well as a way to convey a precise political message, by presenting ancient democracy as the true reason of the city’s downfall in the Peloponnesian war. According to the author of Leviathan, ancient history should be taken as an important warning against unruly assemblies for citizens of 1620s England, torn by a strong conflict between Crown and Parliament. Not much different was the atmosphere in pre-​enlightenment France, as it is shown by Pascal Payen. It was only with Charles Rollin’s historical work that the interest in ancient Athenian politics began to rise alongside a new appreciation of Thucydides, until then overshadowed by Plutarch. Rollin’s Athens is a cultural city, open to the arts and literature, as well a political experiment, for it was democratic and at the same time royalist, due to the central role of such great leaders as Pericles. Rollin’s main credit is to introduce Athens in the critical-​political debate that will continue in France in the eighteenth century through Montesquieu, Rousseau, de Pauw, Barthélemy and many others, nicely divided between admirers of Sparta and proponents of Athens.19 This debate will continue up to the French Revolution,

19

The two antagonist cities that fought the Peloponnesian War continued their ideological war outside the battlefield up to the present age. The present Companion examines the reception of Athenian democracy in in the intellectual history of the West, but the Spartan political arrangement received a conspicuous attention too in different ages; a remarkable example is eighteenth-​century France, where Lycurgus’ constitutional arrangement became the paradigm of the reforms France needed. On the Spartan tradition in European intellectual history see Ollier (1933); Rawson (1969); Hodkinson and McGregor Morris (eds) (2012).

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after which we witness to the building of the so-​called “Bourgeois Athens”, which relegates the Spartan model on the side-​lines and leads to the liberal Athens portrayed in the second half of the nineteenth century by Victor Duruy, a fervent follower of the English historian and radical philosopher George Grote; this liberal picture was still inspiring for Gustave Glotz in the first half of the twentieth century. Echoes from the French debates on ancient constitutions are present in the controversies that developed on the other side of the Atlantic at the time of the foundation of the United States of America. As Carl Richard illustrates, statesmen such as Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and others had a classical education and classical Athenian history was studied with an eye to the present, in a perspective not different from Machiavelli’s. Thus, Herodotus taught that a big monarchical state could be defeated by small republics, an important lesson during the revolutionary confrontation with the British Empire; the ancient critics of democracy -​such as Thucydides, Plato and Plutarch-​taught that Athenian democracy was an unstable state, ruled by a violent mob that led the city to failure in the war against Sparta. Accordingly, it was the theory of the mixed constitution that inspired them when drafting the institutions of the new state. In addition, Demosthenes, Polybius, and Plutarch, prompted the American republicans to meditate on the victory of Macedonia, earlier, and Rome, later, over Athens and the entire Greece; hence the drive to consider a strong central government as a necessity. The anti-​democratic bias was still strong in late eighteenth-​and early nineteenth-​century England as witnessed by the work of Mitford, whose main credit is maybe to have stimulated the lively reaction of George Grote, who changed the paradigm of the reception of ancient Athens with his monumental Greek History. As James Kierstead maintains, Grote’s Athens is the opposite of the idle and oppressive government of the mob depicted over centuries by most writers and scholars: this new Athens could therefore displace Sparta as the model constitution. Even if Grote’s Athens was, and is sometimes still today, criticized as a disguised image of the London of his own day, Kierstead emphasizes the careful weighing of evidence on which Grote’s work is based and the innovative perspective in which it is scrutinized by the author, endowed with a personal experience in finance and politics very different from the ordinary academic historian. On the other hand, Kierstead does not deny the influence of the Victorian Zeitgeist in Grote’s work but traces its presence in the idea of character, used to connect constitution and individuals in order to stress the ideological and social dimensions of ancient democratic institutions more than the political aspects. The importance of Grote’s works goes

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well beyond academic studies,20 having an effect on the liberal democratic tradition represented by such authors as John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper. Grote’s influence can be detected in Mill’s emphasis on the importance of participation by the common people in politics as well as in Popper’s rehabilitation of the sophists as part of democratic Athenian life. At the same time, Kierstead does not minimize how different Mill’s and Popper’s positions are as compared to Grote’s more democratic leaning, with the result of re-​positioning the English historian at the center of the liberal tradition. It was German culture, however, which most identified with ancient Greece in the context of modern Europe, giving rise, in the late eighteenth century, to the Neo-​Humanism of Joachim Winckelmann, the Schlegel Brothers, Wilhelm von Humboldt and many other distinguished authors; in the same epoch, academic philologists founded a new science of antiquity that for over a century gave pre-​eminence to Germany in classical scholarship. German admiration for Greek culture went hand in hand with a distrust of Athenian democracy which was also influenced by the contemporary European context, as it is shown by Wilfried Nippel. It was the French political developments, first the Revolution with its Jacobin excesses, then the Thermidorian moment, that had an impact on the German reception; Constant’s insistence on the radical difference between ancient and modern liberty will be revived in the nineteenth century by Jacob Burkhardt and Max Weber. And a close connection between scholarly reception and political atmosphere can be tracked down also in the twentieth century, from World War i to the Weimar Republic, and until the Third Reich. A more positive image was also present in Germany, but it was only with the publication of Grote’s Greek History that it began to manifest itself. On the contrary, no specific German line of interpretation is present after World War ii, with the exception of Christian Meier’s work, influenced by the conceptual history approach and centered on the cultural factors giving life to ancient democracy. As in Germany, also in twentieth-​century Italy can we recognize a connection with contemporary politics in the debate about liberty ancient and modern, as it is reconstructed by Dino Piovan. The liveliest moment of this discussion was during the Fascist regime and was triggered by a non-​ classicist, the philosopher Benedetto Croce, who resumed the opposition between Ancients and Moderns drawn a century before by Constant. Some accomplished young classicists such as Gaetano De Sanctis, Aldo Ferrabino, 20

For the influence of Grote in France and in Germany see the chapters by, respectively, Payen and Nippel in this volume; for his presence in Italian classical studies around 1930 see Piovan’s chapter.

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Arnaldo Momigliano and Piero Treves contributed to this debate, and in their replies to Croce and to each other one can perceive a reaction to historicist philosophy as well as to the Fascist propaganda which aimed at extolling the merits of Rome to the detriment of ancient Greece. After World War ii most classical scholars prefer to avoid discussions with political implications but the debate on ancient and modern liberty still sees significant contributions by political theorists and political scientists such as Giovanni Sartori, who rejected ancient democracy, which he assimilated to the tyranny of the majority, and Guido Calogero and Norberto Bobbio, who were more positive in consideration of the participative factor. Some general remarks may at this point be made. First, the reception of classical Athenian democracy is not a very specific area as, for example, the reception of a literary genre like tragedy or comedy or so, but it necessarily includes a vast range of different phenomena: moral behaviour and political leadership; exemplar anecdotes and historical events; literary genres such as historiography, political and philosophical treatises and oratory; institutions such as assembly, council, law-​courts etc.; practices like lot; and so on. This large variety of themes can certainly be explained by the different interests and purposes which drove so many readers and writers in different countries and ages; in any case, we would like to specify at least one general reason that could explain it,: we observe that the reception of Athenian democracy is a phenomenon not limited to scholars of the ancient world but involves also non-​scholarly fields. Moreover, the distinction between scholarly and non-​scholarly spheres has a reduced relevance, if any, during Humanism looking at antiquity not just as an object of study but as an inspiring source for renewing human life and society. This was the situation until the end of the eighteenth century. It was only with the foundations of the modern science of antiquity at the end of that century that things began to change. This does not mean that ancient history became immediately and everywhere an exclusive interest of specialists because the ‘scientification’, that is the tendency to building its own discipline as a systematic and technical knowledge as well as science in the strict sense, is a German phenomenon that only gradually spreads to all Europe, and not without resistance. Moreover, scholarly debates are not always aseptic and distant from political shades; in fact, the ‘scientification’ is accompanied by politicization, as Karl Christ has explained.21

21

See Christ (1988), who pinpoints that two of the trends of classical scholarship in nineteenth-​century Germany are the ‘scientification’ and the politicization.

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Another general point we would like to make concerns the crucial role played by Italian Humanism. It is not only the first chronological stage in the history of this reception, but also the view that molded for centuries Western approaches to ancient Athenian politics. A first approach, developed by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and predominant for a long time not only in Italy, is focused on the political leaders of ancient Athens:  it emphasizes their virtues, sentences and deeds, at the expense of institutions, ideology and practices; its perspective is essentially moral. A second approach, which for convenience’s sake we could identify with Machiavelli, even if he is not the first to implement it, has a much more historical-​political perspective, for he is interested in drawing lessons for the present by comparing ancient and contemporary situations. A third approach, started by Sigonio, focuses on reconstructing institutions and practices by using a great variety of sources, not only literary, and by comparing each other so to outline a much more detailed picture of how ancient political arrangements actually worked; this is the so-​ called antiquarian perspective, which lay the foundations for the subsequent scientific scholarship. A final point is that, although this reception history is divided by nations, these different traditions are not impervious to each other. The French Revolution is an event that provokes reactions not only in France but also among English classicists, like Mitford (see Kierstead’s chapter), and German philologists (see Nippel’s chapter). Even the post-​revolutionary debate has important consequences, as it is shown by Constant’s conference on ancient and modern liberty; it remains an important reference-​point both for the German authors Burckhardt and Weber (see again Nippel) and for the Italian authors Croce, Momigliano, and others (see Piovan’s chapter). Another interesting case is represented by the English historian George Grote, whose work was broadly reviewed and so lively debated by French and German classicists to mark an important shift in this reception history; moreover, Grote’s influence was not limited to scholars but had a remarkable impact on J.S. Mill, one of the fathers of liberalism. The debate on Athenian Classical democracy is, therefore, much more than a specialistic issue, for it intertwines with the history of political thought, intellectual history and political theory, as the cases of Machiavelli, Montesquieu and others show. 2.3 Part iii: Modern Philosophy in the Face of Athenian Democracy In the second half of the twentieth century, the merits and demerits of Athenian democracy may perhaps not have been such a battlefield for the discussion of contemporary democracy as it was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but the ideological role of this political experience still

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played an important part, both intellectually and politically. In this respect, World War II represented a decisive watershed. For the first part of the century was characterized by totalitarian experiments in many important countries in Europe and elsewhere; after the war, many authors turned to Athenian democracy –​sometimes as an idealized model, sometimes as the object of careful historical reconstruction –​to draw inspiration to provide suggestions about how to mend, improve, revitalize their contemporary democracy –​and the activity is still continuing on. A very important event provided new blood to, and shaped the study of, Athenian democracy in the twentieth century –​the discovery of two leaves of papyrus containing the text of Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians in the sands of Egypt in 1879. This momentous discovery was followed by the publication of a first excellent edition of the text by Frederic G. Kenyon in 1891; it enormously improved our knowledge of the functioning of Athenian institutions and solved many questions whose solution even the greatest previous historians could only guess at. The better knowledge of the actual functioning of institutions and magistracies of ancient Athens translated into new, original lines of interpretation of its democratic regime. It was exactly in 1945 that Karl Popper published his famous book, destined to have a long-​lasting impact on political theory as well as on classical studies, The Open Society and Its Enemies.22 Popper’s attack on totalitarianism took the form of a sharp critique of the ‘intellectual fathers’ of the totalitarian State –​ Plato and Hegel –​and of a passionate defense of liberal democracy. He accused Plato of having idealized a “tribal or closed society”, in which human beings are subjected to magical forces; his perfect city is the dream of a static world, where social change is seen as corruption, decay and decline. To Plato’s “utopian social engineering” Popper opposed “piecemeal social engineering”, which works by trial-​and-​error in fighting against the most urgent evils in society. It is interesting, and telling, that Popper identified in Plato, the sharpest ancient critic of democracy, one of the masterminds of the totalitarian State while, at the same time, extoling the merits of Athenian democracy.23 In the post-​war years and in the 1950s it became almost a commonplace to identify in Plato’s ‘absolutist’ view of truth and perfection the root of totalitarianism, while seeing in ‘relativism’ and the Sophists the foundations of Athenian democracy: this is the opposition we find in the famous Austrian legal philosopher

22 23

On the reception of this work, and a fair evaluation of its merits and demerits, see Lane (1999). About Grote’s influence on Popper see Kierstead’s chapter.

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Hans Kelsen, for instance.24 An analogous contrast animates Eric Havelock’s rehabilitation of the Sophists in The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (1957); and underpins the contrast between ‘nomocracy’ and ‘teleocracy’ in Friedrich von Hayek’s writings and between universitas and societas, ‘politics of faith’ and ‘politics of scepticism’, in Michael Oakeshott.25 In a similar vein, Ernst Cassirer opposed the power of myth deployed by Plato and many other authors up to the Nazi regime to the logos, the power of reason.26 Plato vs Athenian democracy was the intellectual match for interpreters with liberal leanings for two decades after World War II.27 It is interesting to contrast this liberal interpretation with the Marxist streak in the reception of Athenian democracy, examined by Carlo Marcaccini in his rich essay, which takes its start from Marx’s own writings on the ancient world. Marcaccini attributes a great importance, in order to understand Marx’s interpretation of ancient history in general and Athenian democracy specifically, to the Ethnographical Notebooks which Marx put together in his last years. These contain annotations on the work of famous ethnographers such as Henry Sumner Maine and Lewis Henry Morgan; they point to a more complex and nuanced appreciation of Athenian democracy towards the end of Marx’s life. Morgan considered the historical process in cyclical terms; he thought that the revolution was nothing other than the reaffirmation, in new form, of an original communitarian spirit. Thus, Athenian democracy was not an absolute novelty but a “revival” of the equality which was in place in an earlier period. In addition, Marcaccini shows that in his last years Marx had close intellectual ties with Russian populists and, as a consequence, had revised some of his theoretical positions. To complete the picture, Marx used the views of the conservative classical scholar Schömann to counter Grote’s view on the importance of Cleisthenes for the establishment of democracy at Athens. Marcaccini notices the interesting combination of Schömann, the American ethnographers and the important influence of Russian populism to mold Marx’s view of Athenian democracy, which was aimed at totally refuting Grote’s liberal interpretation. For instance, Marx attributed to Isagoras the introduction of election by lot, thus emphasizing the image of Cleisthenes as a political realist, stripped of the idealist aura that Grote conferred on him. Marcaccini sums up the nineteenth-​century ideological battle about Athenian democracy arguing that it left us with two opposing views: a liberal, 24 25 26 27

See Kelsen (1955). See, for instance, Hayek (1973–​1979); Oakeshott (1975) and Oakeshott (1996). See Cassirer (1946). For a critical examination of this trend see Giorgini (2019).

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formal view of Athenian democracy conceived as the result of constitutional reforms, characterized by the rule of law and certain specific institutions; and a substantial view, which sees democracy in the citizens’ spirit of equality and ideology.28 Marcaccini then turns to examine post World War II Marxist historiography, which produced different ‘schools’ and many original and seminal works. In England, the Cambridge historian Moses Finley, in his Democracy Ancient and Modern (1973), argued that in contemporary democratic states power is in the hands of an elite, whereas in classical Athens leaders depended on the decisions of the assembly. Athens thus becomes a model for devising future forms of popular participation. Marcaccini then examines the debate on slavery and empire between Finley and de Saint-​Croix and the important contribution of the French Marxist school of Vernant and Vidal-​ Naquet. He sees in the works of Josiah Ober the end point of this Marxist interpretation: Ober holds the radical view that the instauration of democracy at Athens was a revolution led by the people, where Cleisthenes, instead of being seen as the reformer who enlightens the people, appears as drawing on ideas from the people of Athens. However, linking too tightly these scholars to Marxism is not at all uncontroversial; the young Finley had certainly an important relation with Marxist ideas (he was even persecuted by McCarthyism) but he came closer and closer to Max Weber;29 Ober’s work has a very rich cultural background which includes also the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and the French Marxist Louis Althusser but also other non-​Marxist as Michel Foucault, Christian Meier and Niklas Luhmann. The German American philosopher Leo Strauss has often been accused of reviving a sort of querelle des anciens et des modernes because of his passionate advocacy of a return to classical Greek philosophy and his concurrent stark attack on political modernity. In his essay, Giovanni Giorgini shows that Strauss’ reading of Western political thought is not a mere historical work but reveals a clear political agenda: Strauss reads in the beginning of political modernity with Machiavelli and Hobbes a dramatic decline in the conception of the State and its role. For these authors attributed to the State only the task of protecting the life of the subject whereas classical philosophers conceived of the polis as the only place where the human being can flourish; a decline which continued to the present era with the horrors of Nazism and Communism. It is very 28

29

According to Marcaccini’s view, Martin Ostwald, Mogens H. Hansen and Edward Harris are exponents of the formal, liberal interpretation of Athenian democracy while Moses I. Finley and Josiah Ober of the substantial view. About the latter ones and their relationship with Marxism see above. About Finley see Harris (2013).

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interesting that Strauss found in Plato, the sharpest ancient critic of democracy, the author who can act as a point of reference in the contemporary intellectual and political quagmire; this is because Strauss aimed at ‘ennobling’ his contemporary liberal democracy by educating a new intellectual ruling class. Giorgini does not eschew the intricacies of Strauss’ thought: he analyzes the importance of Strauss’ method for reading ancient and modern authors –​the “hermeneutics of reticence” –​and its foundation in the idea that the philosopher’s quest for truth inevitably conflicts with society’s opinions. In this picture, Athenian democracy has a twofold role: Athens emerges as the city where philosophy was born; at the same time, its democratic regime, which allowed free speech and thus fostered philosophical investigation, is sharply contrasted with Sparta’s demand to absolute dedication from its citizens. Finally, Giorgini examines the fundamental role that Athens has in Strauss’ ‘tale of two cities’, in his view of the origin of Western civilization in Biblical faith (Jerusalem) and Greek philosophy (Athens). Classical suggestions, especially from Aristotle, play a prominent role in Hannah Arendt’s philosophy and shape her vision of the place of man in the cosmos and of the role of politics for human happiness. But even more important is perhaps her imaginative reception of the entire world of the polis and of Athenian democracy specifically. Olivia Guaraldo emphasizes Arendt’s constructive and free interpretation of the practice of ancient politics and of the functioning of Athenian democracy. Similarly to Strauss, Arendt was drawn to ancient political practice by her desire to counter contemporary totalitarian regimes; her intent was to recover a lost and forgotten notion of practical life (inter homines esse) conceived as a sphere of liberty in which human beings can begin new enterprises by sharing words and deeds. Arendt found in Herodotus’ logos tripolitikos (Hdt. 3.80–​82), and notably in Otanes’ praise of isonomia, the quintessence of the Greek notions of freedom and equality: the desire “neither to rule nor to be ruled”. These concepts had a completely different meaning from their contemporary counterparts, which are included in universal declarations: they were implemented and embodied in practices of equal political participation. In this sense, isonomia as ‘no-​rule’ is also different from democracy, which Arendt conceives as rule of the majority. Exactly because she wants to emphasize this aspect of absence of domination among free and equal citizens inside the polis, Arendt never (or rarely) refers to democracy when speaking of the polis, but prefers to use the word isonomia. Politics also discloses an existential dimension: as it is described in Pericles’ funeral speech, politics is a space in which human deeds, because of their greatness, will be remembered. As Guaraldo notices, “it is in this space of public appearance that we can at once reveal our uniqueness

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(‘each human being is different from every other’) and our plurality (‘we are many’).” In this view, politics is conceived as a space devoid of violence, where “speech rules supreme”, and thus opposed to views which relegate it to a strategy of containment of domination drives or, worse, to totalitarian views of the State. Guaraldo concludes by remarking the originality of Arendt’s attempt to overthrow the interpretative tradition that sees politics as characterized by power, as domination of some over others, and to replace it with a vision of equality based on an idealized interpretation of Athenian democracy. Giovanni Leghissa examines Michel Foucault’s creative use of ancient philosophy and his interest, especially in the last phase of his intellectual career, in the experience of Athenian democracy. Leghissa shows that the study of ancient philosophy assumed a pivotal role precisely when Foucault tried to conceive new possible forms of resistance to power by looking at what Greek philosophers had written about the exercises one has to do on oneself in order to loosen the grip of power over oneself. It is difficult to reconstruct Foucault’s narrative of the emergence of modern subjectivity without taking into account the role played by his constant reference to classical models. Foucault emphasizes very much the relation between democracy and the proper use of parrhesia, the possibility to speak up one’s mind in public. As it is shown in Thucydides’ speeches, the mere presence of democracy as a set of formal rules of government is not enough; it is necessary that those who speak to the assembly tell the truth. The ‘parrhesiastic discourse’ must be true, it must be recognized as a form of truth-​telling. In addition, because of the rivalry and competition among the political actors involved in the democratic process of decision-making, those who want to deliver a discourse of truth must show courage. By analyzing the figure of Pericles as depicted by Thucydides, Foucault is able to reconstruct the complex and uneasy role that truth-​telling played within Athenian democracy. According to Thucydides Pericles could see the truth, was capable to tell it, and his decisions aimed at the public good. In addition, he proved to be morally irreprehensible and incorruptible. Only by having these qualities –​Foucault concludes –​was he able to exercise “the ascendancy necessary for a democratic city to be governed –​in spite of or through democracy”.30 The last part of Leghissa’s essay is devoted to Martha Nussbaum’s attempt at eliciting a concept of human nature from certain ‘capabilities’ common to all human beings and its political relevance. 30

Foucault (2010), 180.

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2.4 Part iv: Athenian Democracy and Contemporary Political Science What was so exceptional about Athenian democracy? In his celebrated Funeral Speech Thucydides’ Pericles praises the democratic institutions and mores which enable and foster a peculiar ‘Athenian way of life’, according to which private enrichment and flourishing go together with public commitment to create a unique combination which is the reason for Athens’ success. Pericles proudly remarks that the Athenian constitution is an example (paradeigma) for other cities and Athens is “the school of Greece” (Thuc. 2.41): a sort of Athenian ‘exceptionalism’. In the second part of the twentieth century, especially after 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet empire which brought to an end the Communist ideal, ancient historians and political theorists have looked at the experience of Athenian democracy to draw inspiration about ways of improving popular participation to the democratic decision-​making process. In the widespread climate of an almost inevitable liberal democratic future,31 many authors with different backgrounds have set to study the specificities of the Athenian system and to elicit insights for improving contemporary democracies. What characterizes these works is a remarkable combination of historical accuracy and theoretical innovativeness.32 One of the first and most original authors who has historically investigated the birth and subsequent accomplishments of Athenian democracy is the American classicist and political scientist Josiah Ober. In the essay reprinted here in an updated form, he provides the reader with a very unusual reading of the functioning of Athenian democracy, for he applies the tools of contemporary political theory, and most specifically the recent concept of ‘epistemic democracy’, to his investigation of ancient Athens. Supporters of this notion argue that there is a certain “wisdom in the multitude” which can be exploited in the deliberative process: in this perspective, a democracy may be said to be ‘epistemic’ if it employs collective wisdom to make sound policy. Ober accordingly examines the democratic regime at Athens comparing it with previous and subsequent regimes as well as with other cities of the same age endowed with different constitutions and other modern States to see how it fares in comparison. His conclusion is that the performance of classical democratic Athens was outstanding. By studying the institutional intricacies of the Athenian regime, as well as its democratic ideology, Ober argues that the democratic system spurred the circulation and exploitation of useful knowledge among the citizens, while democratic ideology put incentive, and social rewards, on 31 32

On this and for a cautionary note see Fukuyama (1992). See Cartledge (2018); Euben, Wallach and Ober (1994); Ober and Hedrick (eds) (1996); Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace (2007).

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citizen cooperation. Ober concludes that the experience of ancient Athenian democracy is not only interesting for theorists of democracy, but it also offers valuable insights to reform contemporary democratic States. In the final chapter Yves Sintomer examines the relation between sortition and democracy in an investigation spanning from ancient Athens to contemporary Canada. Sintomer starts with an examination of the experiments to apply this typically democratic method of selecting magistrates and representatives in the past thirty years, born under the sign of deliberative democracy; they imply a critique of all those visions that tend to reduce democracy to representative government. Sintomer reminds us that already Herodotus considered election by lot a tool of (radical) democracy (Hdt. 3.80) and notices that the use of random selection and public deliberation grew alongside democracy itself. He then turns to the contemporary literature in democratic theory to examine how the rise of the notion of ‘deliberative democracy’ with its tools such as deliberative polls, has revived the importance of sortition for implementing an effective democracy. In a continuous dialogue with the practices of Athenian democracy, Sintomer examines the different effects of group-​deliberation and mass-​deliberation as well as the results of sortition in different types of democracy. He concludes remarking the difficulty of applying sortition to create deliberative minipublics in contemporary democracies: while sortition, together with the frequent rotation of the offices, added elements of self-​government to Athenian democracy, it could have the negative and paradoxical effect of creating a minipublic which holds an ‘enlightened’ opinion contrary to the public opinion. The practice of sortition will not eliminate elections but will enrich the dynamics of democracy. The volume aims to offer a comprehensive overview of the reception of Athenian democracy. We are confident that the contributors have achieved that goal, even though we are aware that the volume has not exhausted the topic of the reception of Athenian democracy. We do not see this as a limitation. In our view, the value of any Companion, including this one, lies in its capacity not only to collect and synthetize existing scholarship but also to open new avenues of research and to show what remains to be done in a field of study. We have tried to do all these things to the best of our means.

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Piovan, D. (2010) L’antidemocrazia al potere. La tirannia dei Trenta in Senofonte. Milano: Signorelli 2010. Piovan, D. (2017a) “The unexpected consequences of war. Thucydides on the relationship between war, civil war and the degradation of language,” Araucaria. Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofia, Politica y Humanidades 19 (1): 181–​197. Piovan, D. (2017b) [published 2019] “Nomos Basileus o demos basileus? Sulla democrazia ateniese di V e IV secolo a.C.,” Rivista di diritto ellenico 7: 139–​152. Piovan, D. (2018) Tucidide in Europa. Storici e storiografia greca nell’età dello storicismo. Milan: Mimesis. Piovan, D. (2019) “Atene o l’utopia della democrazia,” in Camerotto, A. and Pontani, F.  (2019) Utopia (Europa), ovvero del diventare cittadini europei. Milano:  Mimesis, 87–​100. Price, J. (2001) Thucydides and Internal War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raaflaub, K. (2006) “Thucydides on Democracy and Oligarchy,” in Rengakos, A. and Tsakmakis, A. (eds) (2006) Brill’s Companion to Thucydides. Leiden: Brill, 189–​222. Raaflaub, K., Ober, J. and Wallace, R. (2007) Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Berkeley-​Los Angeles-​London: University of California Press. Rawson. E. (1969) The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Roberts, J.T. (1994) Athens on Trial. The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994. Rowe, C. (2000) “Aristotelian Constitutions,” in Rowe, C. and Schofield, M. (eds) (2000), 366–​389. Rowe, C.J. and Schofield, M. (eds) (2000) The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rhodes, P.J. (1993) A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. Rev. edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schofield, M. (2000) “Approaching the Republic,” in Rowe, C. and Schofield, M. (eds) (2000), 190–​232. Serra, G. (2018) “Introduzione,” in Pseudo-​Senofonte, Costituzione degli Ateniesi, ed. G. Serra. Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, xv-​x liv. Thornton, J. (2011) “La costituzione mista in Polibio,” in Felice, D. (ed.) (2011) Governo misto. Ricostruzione di un’idea. Napoli: Liguori, 67–​118. Tuplin, C. (2017) “Xenophon and Athens,” in Flower (ed.) (2017), 338–​359. Urbinati, N. (2006 [2002]) L’ethos della democrazia. Mill e la libertà degli antichi e dei moderni (= Mill on Democracy. From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government). Roma-​Bari: Laterza. Vegetti, M. (2009) “Un paradigma in cielo”. Platone politico da Aristotele al Novecento. Roma: Carocci.

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pa rt 1 An Introduction to Athenian Democracy and Its Reception

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­c hapter 1

The Nature of Athenian Democracy Mogens Herman Hansen When I was invited to contribute to this volume the brief I had from the editor was to submit an account of Athenian democracy from my point of view. Accordingly, this chapter is a synthesis of what I have published in Demography and Democracy (1985), The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes (1987), The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (1991/​1999), The Tradition of Ancient Greek Democracy and Its Importance for Modern Democracy (2005), and about three score of articles, most of them published in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 1976–​2014 and in Classica et Mediaevalia 1980–​90. Revised versions of articles about the assembly are collected in The Athenian Ecclesia i (1983) and ii (1989a). My chapter falls into six parts. (1) A short introduction on the concept of demokratia. (2) A section on the democratic ideology: freedom (eleutheria), equality (isonomia and other compounds with isos) and tolerance (praotes, philanthropia). (3) A section on the institutions focusing on the fourth century bce and in particular on the period 355–​322, the only period for which we have enough sources to reconstruct a reliable picture of how the democracy worked. (4) A section on the history of Athenian democracy in the period 507–​404. (5) A section on the character of the democracy after it was restored in 403. It was not a return to what it had been before the oligarchic revolutions of 411 and 404 but a modified constitution in which important legislative and judicial powers were transferred from the assembly (the demos) to legislative assemblies (nomothetai) and courts (dikasteria) manned with mature citizens over thirty who had taken the heliastic oath. (6) A section on the tradition of Athenian democracy, in particular in the period from ca. 1850 to the present day. 1

Democracy

Athenian democracy from 508/​7 to 322/​1 is the best known example in history of a “direct” democracy as opposed to a “representative” or “parliamentarian” form of democracy. Demokratia was what the word means: the rule (kratos) of the people (demos), and decisions of the people’s assembly were introduced with the formula “it was decided by the people” (edoxe to demo, ig ii2 28).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_003

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28 Hansen When an Athenian democrat said demos he meant the whole body of citizens (Aeschin. 3.224; Dem. 59.89) irrespective of the fact that only a minority turned up to the meetings of the assembly (Thuc. 8.72).1 Critics of democracy, on the other hand, and especially the philosophers, tended to regard the demos as a class, (i.e.), “the ordinary people” (Arist. Pol. 1291b17-​29; Ath. Pol. 41.2) or the “city poor” who by their majority could outvote the minority of countrymen and major property owners (Pl. Resp. 565a; Arist. Pol. 1310a.8–​12).2 2

Ideology

Today democracy is invariably a positive concept, almost a buzz-​word, whereas demokratia in ancient Greece was a hotly debated form of constitution, often criticised both by oligarchs (Hdt. 3.81; Ps.-​Xen. Ath. Pol.) and by philosophers (Pl. Resp. 555b-​62a; Arist. Pol 1317a40-​20b17). The Athenian democrats themselves, however, connected demokratia with the rule of law (Aeschin. 1.4–​5). Democracy was even deified. In the fifth century every meeting of the council was opened with offerings for the democracy (Antiph. 6.45), and in the fourth century offerings were made to the goddess Demokratia (ig ii2 1496.131-​41). Like modern democrats, the Athenians believed that democracy was inseparably bound up with the ideals of liberty, equality and tolerance, and each of these three values was subdivided into a public and a private sort (Thuc. 2.37).3 Liberty.4 The fundamental democratic ideal was liberty (eleutheria), which had two aspects: political liberty to participate in the democratic institutions, and private liberty to live as one pleased (zen hos bouletai tis, Arist. Pol. 1317a40-​ b17; Thuc. 2.37.2). An important aspect of liberty was freedom of speech which in the public sphere was every citizen’s right to address his fellow citizens in the political assemblies (isegoria, Hdt. 5.78) and in the private sphere was every person’s right to speak his mind. It was called parrhesia –​the right to say anything –​and it applied not only to citizens but also to foreigners and even to slaves (Dem. 9.3). The critics of democracy, especially the philosophers, took democratic liberty to be a mistaken ideal that led to pluralism (Pl. Resp. 557d) or worse to anarchy (Pl. Resp. 558e) and prevented people from understanding the true purpose of life which was to be a good citizen in a well ordered polis (Arist. Pol. 1310a25-​36). 1 2 3 4

Hansen (1999), 130; (2018), 101. Hansen (1999), 301, 303, 334 (nos. 58–​61); Ober (1998). Hansen (2008), 26. Raaflaub (2004); Liddel (2007); Hansen (2010b).

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Equality.5 The democrats’ concept of equality (isotes) was not based on the view that all are equal, although the philosophers wanted to impute this view to the democrats (Arist. Pol. 1301a28-​35). The equality advocated by the Athenian democrats was that all should have an equal opportunity to participate in politics (isonomia, Hdt. 3.80.6; Isoc. 7.20). The principles were “one man one vote” (isopsephos polis, Eur. Supp. 353)  and the equal right for all citizens to speak in the political assemblies (Eur. Supp. 407–​8, 438–​41). Furthermore, in relations with one another all must be equal before the law: pros ta idia diafora pasi to ison (Thuc. 2.37.2). The concept of equality, however, was principally political and in Athens it did not spread to the economic sphere of society. After Solon (594/​3) there were no major economic reforms. By contrast with some other democratic poleis (Thuc. 5.4.2) there was no re-​distribution of land (anadasmos ges), and every year the archon on entering office had to proclaim that he would uphold the existing distribution of property (Arist. Ath. Pol. 56.2). Tolerance.6 A third but less often mentioned democratic ideal was tolerance. It was called “mildness” (praotes, Dem. 22.51; Arist. Ath. Pol. 22.4) or “indulgence” (philanthropia, Hyp. 1.25; Dem. 25.87–​9). It consisted in allowing others to live as they pleased (Thuc. 2.37.2-​3). It was the counterpart of freedom in the private sphere, (i.e.), one’s own right to live as one pleased, and like this form of eleutheria it was restricted to the private sphere. The Athenians distinguished between two kinds of laws and two kinds of sanction for transgressing the laws. In a democracy the laws about the daily mutual relations between citizens were mild. Here tolerance prevailed. But the laws about public life and the political institutions were severe and here the sanctions could be ferocious (Dem. 24.192-​3).7 3

Institutions

Whereas our sources for the democratic ideology cover both the fifth and the fourth century bce a description of the political system must focus on the fourth century and especially on the age of Demosthenes (355–​322) where the sources are plentiful enough to allow a reconstruction of the democratic organs of government.8 5 6 7 8

Raaflaub (1996); Hansen (1999), 81–​5, 327 (no. 23). Hansen (1999), 204, 310, 327 (no. 21). Hansen (1999), 204. Hansen (1999), x, 322–​3 (nos. 1–​3). On the assumption that the democracy in the age of Demosthenes was essentially like the democracy in the age of Pericles both Sinclair (1988)

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30 Hansen Population. The population of Athens, like that of every city-​state, was divided into three clearly differentiated groups: citizens (politai), metics (metoikoi), (i.e.), foreigners who stayed in Attika for a period longer than (probably) one month (Aristophanes Byzantinus fr. 38), and slaves (douloi). The division shows that Athens was a society based on “orders” rather than “classes”, for the tripartition was by legal status, (i.e.), it was based on privileges protected by law.9 Membership of a group was inherited, and the groups were ordered hierarchically, in that a slave could become a metic by manumission (Harp. s.v. metoikion) or a metic a citizen by a citizenship decree (Dem. 59.89–​90), while, on the other hand, a citizen could be penalised with loss of honour (atimia) by which he forfeited all his rights and was virtually thrust out of the community (Dem. 21.182; Aeschin. 3.176), and a metic could, for certain offences, be punished by being sold as a slave (Suda s.v. poletai). The citizens were the privileged order, which by law had the monopoly of landed property (ig ii2 80.9-​ 11) and political power.10 The metics were the underprivileged order of free people mostly making a living by crafts, trade and services (Xen. Poroi 2.1–​5; Isoc. 8.21).11 The slaves were the unprivileged order, whose only right protected by law was that they could not be killed with impunity (Antiph. 5.48); and the purpose of that regulation was undoubtedly to protect the master’s property rather than the slave’s life.12 Citizen Rights. The Athenians had no concept of human rights but the citizens were protected by rights which today are conceived as being human rights: no citizen could be executed without due process of law (Lys. 22.2; Dem. 25.87). Another law forbade torture of Athenian citizens (Andoc. 1.43). Citizens were exempt from corporal (though not from capital) punishment (Dem. 22.55). A citizen’s home was protected against being searched by officials without due warrant (Dem. 18.132), and his property was protected by the archon’s proclamation that whatever a person possessed before he entered upon his archonship he will have and possess until the end of his term (Arist. Ath. Pol. 56.2). Finally, a citizen could not be sold into slavery, except if he had been ransomed as a prisoner of war and had not reimbursed his ransomer (Dem. 53.11). Political rights were restricted to adult male citizens. Women (Ar. Eccl. 210ff), foreigners and slaves were excluded (Dem. 9.3). Citizenship was confined to

9 10 11 12

and Bleicken (1994) give a synchronic account of the democratic institutions that covers the entire period from 462 to 322. Hansen (1999), 86–​8. Hansen (1999), 94–​116. Isager and Hansen (1975), 66–​74; Whitehead (1977). Garlan (1988).

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The Nature of Athenian Democracy

children born in wedlock between two Athenian citizens (Isae. 12.9; Arist. Ath. Pol. 26.4). An Athenian came of age at 18 (Arist. Ath. Pol. 42.1-​2) when he became a member of his father’s deme (demos “municipality”) and was enrolled in the deme’s roster (lexiarchikon grammateion, Aeschin. 1.103); but as epheboi –​young citizens between 18 and 20 –​most Athenians were liable for military service for two years (Arist. Ath. Pol. 42)13 before, at the age of 20, they could be enrolled in the roster of citizens who had access to the Assembly (the pinax ekklesiastikos, Dem. 44.35), and full political rights were only obtained at the age of 30 when a citizen was allowed to present himself as a candidate at the annual sortition of magistrates (Xen. Mem. 1.2.35) and of the panel of 6000 citizens (Arist. Ath. Pol. 24.3; Ar. Vesp. 662) who served as both legislators and jurors (Dem. 20.93).14 Citizen Numbers.15 In the age of Demosthenes the resident citizen population16 totalled some 30,000 adult males over 18, of whom some 20,000 were over 30 and thus in possession of full political rights.17 The population of Attica –​citizens, metics and slaves of both sexes and all ages –​amounted to between 200,000 and 250,000 persons.18 Institutions. Analysing the working of Athenian democracy in the classical period we notice a basic distinction between “politics” and “administration” which corresponds to a dichotomy between decision-​making and administrative institutions. The decision-​making institutions were the demos, the boule, the dikasteria and, in the fourth century, the nomothetai. The administrative were some seven hundred archai19 and the boule which was technically an arche viz. a magistracy with five hundred members.20 But the boule was also a decision-​making institution. A decree (psephisma) had to be debated in the boule before it was brought before the demos; and in about half of all cases the demos’ decision was a ratification of what the boule had decided.21 Also in some matters the boule could pass psephismata that did not have to be debated and voted on in the Assembly.22 So the dichotomy between politics and administration was not perfect and it was the boule that belonged in both categories. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Aeschines was born c. 397 and served as ephebos c. 379–​7 (Aeschin. 1.49, 2.167). Hansen (1999), 72, 97, 151, 167, 176; Kremmydas (2012), 350–​51. Hansen (1985), (1999), 327–​8 (nos. 24–​30), (2006a), 19–​60. I.e. excluding citizens settled in the clerouchies. Hansen (1999), 181; Akrigg (2019), 31. Hansen (2006a), 45 with notes 136–​7. Hansen (1980b). For the boule as an arche, see Hansen (1981), 347–​51. Rhodes (1972), 78–​82. Rhodes (1972), 82–​7.

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32 Hansen The People’s Assembly.23 Any citizen above 20 had the right to speak and vote in the people’s assembly. The assembly itself was called demos (Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.3) whereas ekklesia was the term used for a meeting of the assembly (ibid. 43.4) or the place where it met (Dem. Pr. 6.1).24 The Athenians held forty ekklesiai in a year, (i.e.), four in each of the ten prytanies (Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.3). The demos met mostly on the Pnyx (the hill west of the Areopagus) (Aeschin. 3.34). A meeting was normally attended by at least 6,000 citizens, the quorum required for (among other things) ratification of citizenship decrees (Dem. 59.89), and a session lasted a couple of hours only (Aeschin. 1.112). The demos was summoned by the 50 prytaneis and chaired by the nine proedroi (Arist. Ath. Pol. 44.2-​3). The debate consisted of a number of speeches made by the political leaders, and all votes were taken by a show of hands (cheirotonia), assessed by the proedroi without any exact count of hands (ibid. 44.3).25 The debate was in principle a one-​way communication from the speaker to the people (Aeschin. 3.2; Dem. Pr. 4), but in actual fact the Athenians may never have held one single ekklesia in which this pattern of debate was strictly respected. The demos took the liberty to interrupt the speakers by cheers (Dem. 19.14), cries of protest (Dem. Pr. 4) or by laughter (Aeschin. 1.80–​4) and sometimes the people shouted a speaker down (Dem. 19.113).26 Legislators.27 In the fourth century the Athenians distinguished between laws (general and permanent rules, called nomoi) and decrees (temporary and/​or individual rules, called psephismata) (Andoc. 1.89; Dem. 20.91–​2; Dem. 24.152). The assembly was not allowed to pass nomoi but did, by psephismata, make decisions on foreign policy and on major issues of domestic policy (Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.6). Furthermore the demos was empowered (a) to elect the military and financial magistrates (ibid. 43.1, 44.4); (b) to initiate legislation (nomothesia) by appointing a panel of legislators (nomothetai, Dem. 3.10–​13); and (c) to initiate a political trial (eisangelia eis ton demon) by appointing a panel of jurors (a dikasterion, Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.4). Citizens over 30 were eligible to participate in the annual sortition of a panel of 6,000 jurors (hoi omomokotes, Ar. Vesp. 662) who for one year served both as legislators (nomothetai, Dem. 20.93) and as jurors (dikastai, Dem. 24.148 and 151). When a nomos was to be enacted, the assembly decreed the appointment for one day only of a board of (e.g.) 1000 legislators selected by lot from the 23 24 25 26 27

Hansen (1987), (1999), 330–​3 (nos. 38–​57). Hansen (2010a), 507–​10. Hansen (1983), 103–​17. Bers (1985); Hansen (1987), 69–​72; Thomas (2016), 89–​107. Hansen (1999), 161–​77, 334–​6 (nos. 62–​71).

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6000 jurors (Dem. 24.21–​38; Aeschin 3.38–​40). Having listened to a debate the nomothetai decided by a show of hands all amendments to “Solon’s laws”, (i.e.), the Solonian law code of 594/​3 as revised and codified in the period 403–​399 (Andoc. 1.82–​5; Lys. 30). Boards of nomothetai were appointed only infrequently and to legislate once in a month was considered excessive (Dem. 24.142). Laws were higher norms than decrees and decrees passed by the demos must be in consonance with the laws (Dem. 24.30). If a decree was in conflict with the laws it should be quashed by a graphe paranomon (a public action for having proposed and carried an unconstitutional decree) brought against the proposer and heard by a dikasterion (Aeschin. 3. 5, 8,16).28 If a new law was in conflict with an old law the new law should be quashed by a graphe nomon me epitedeion theinai, a public action for having proposed and carried an unsuitable law (Dem. 24.33–​5, 138; Arist. Ath. Pol. 59.2). That was in opposition to the modern principle of lex posterior but in conformity with the Greeks’ respect for tradition and their praise of “the ancestral constitution” (patrios politeia: Thrasymachus fr. 1 Diels-​Kranz; Arist. Ath. Pol. 29.3). Athens is the oldest state known to have practised judicial review. Just as the Athenians passed many more decrees than laws, so the graphe paranomon was a much more common type of public action than the graphe nomon me epitedeion theinai (Aeschin. 3.194).29 Courts.30 Jurisdiction was in the hands of the courts. The plural form dikasteria (Aeschin. 1.91) is more common than the singular dikasterion (Dem. 24.148), but even when the plural is used it is clear that the Athenians saw their popular courts as a unity and as an organ of state on a par with the assembly and the council (Dem. 57.56). The popular courts (dikasteria) met on roughly 200 days in a year.31 On a court day members of the panel of 6000 jurors showed up in the morning in the Agora, and a number of jurors for the day (dikastai) were selected by sortition from among those who presented themselves. These courts consisted of 201 or 401 jurors each in private actions and 501 or more in public actions. Each court was presided over by a magistrate (arche), and in a session of some eight hours the jurors had to hear and decide either one public action or a number of private actions (Arist. Ath. Pol. 63–​9). However, many private legal quarrels were settled by arbitration and only came before the courts if a party appealed against the arbitrator’s award (ibid. 53.2). Homicide was usually handled by the Areopagus (ibid. 57.2-​4). In cases of burglary or robbery the 28 29 30 31

Hansen (1974); (1999), 205–​12. Hansen (1974); (1999), 212–​3. Todd (1993); Hansen (1999), 178–​224, 336–​8 (nos. 72–​81). Hansen (1999), 186.

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34 Hansen magistrates had the power to have the perpetrator executed without a trial if he was caught in the act (Aeschin. 1.91).32 On the other hand the courts had unlimited power to control the assembly, the council, the magistrates and the political leaders (Lys. 1.3633, Dem. 21.223, 24.118, 148, 57.56, 58.55; Din 1.106).34 The two most important types of political trial were (1) the public action against unconstitutional proposals (graphe paranomon),35 brought against proposers of decrees (Aeschin. 3.3–​8) and (2)  denunciation to the people in assembly (eisangelia eis ton demon), used most frequently against generals charged with treason and corruption (Dem. 13.5).36 Magistrates.37 In addition to the decision-​making organs of government (demos, nomothetai, dikasteria) Athens had about 1200 magistrates (archai) selected from among citizens above 3038 who presented themselves as candidates (Lys. 6.4). About 100 were elected by the demos, principally the military and some financial officers (Aeschin. 3.14; Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.1), whereas the other 1100 were chosen by lot (Dem. 39.10), viz. 500 councillors (bouleutai) (Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.2) and c. 600 other magistrates, often organised in boards of 10 with one representative from each tribe (ig II2 1388.1-​12).39 The period of office was restricted to one year and a magistrate selected by lot could only hold the same office once40 whereas elected magistrates could be re-​elected (Arist. Ath. Pol. 62.3). Before entering office magistrates had to undergo an examination (dokimasia) before a dikasterion (ibid. 55.2-​5) and, on the expiration of their term of office, to render accounts (euthynai) before another dikasterion (ibid. 54.2; 48.4-​5).41 Accountability was a crucial aspect of Athenian democracy and was enforced more rigidly than it is in most modern representative democracies. The magistrates’ principle tasks were: (a) to summon and preside over the decision-​making bodies and to see to the execution of the decisions they made (Arist. Pol. 1322b12-​17); (b) to administer cults and sanctuaries, survey public buildings, manage the state’s finances, etc. Apart from routine matters, the 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Hansen (1976), 36–​53. Probably referring to the dikastai, cf. Wallace (1989), 102–​5. Hansen (1999), 303. Hansen (1974). Hansen (1975); (1999), 212–​18, 339–​40 (nos. 90–​4). Develin (1989); Hansen (1999), 225–​45; 341–​2 (nos. 98–​106); Frölich (2004); Rhodes 2016. Hansen (1980b), 167–​9, pace Develin (1985). Rhodes (2016), 113. In the fourth century a citizen could serve twice in the boule (Arist. Ath. Pol. 62.3) but not in consecutive years, Rhodes (1981), 696. Hansen (1999), 218–​24, 340–​41 (nos. 95–​7); Frölich (2004) 331–​62.

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magistrates could not decide anything but only prepare the decisions (ibid. 1298a28-​32). But they had independent jurisdiction in all cases where the sum at issue did not exceed 10 drachmas (Arist. Ath. Pol. 53.2), and they could impose smaller fines on citizens who did not comply with the decisions or broke the law (Aeschin. 3.27). The Council of Five Hundred prepared business for the demos (Arist. Ath. Pol. 45.4) and the nomothetai (Dem. 24.48), the other magistrates for the dikasteria (Aeschin. 3.29). The Council of Five Hundred.42 By far the most important board of magistrates was the Council of Five Hundred (he boule hoi pentakosioi, Dem. 19.179).43 It was composed of 50 members from each of the ten tribes (phylai)44 who for a tenth of the year (a prytany of 36 or 35 days) served as prytaneis, (i.e.), as executive committee of the council, which again served as executive committee of the demos (Arist. Ath. Pol. 45.4). The council met every day except holidays (ibid. 43.3), (i.e.), some 275 days in a year of 354 days45 in the Town Hall (bouleuterion) on the Agora to run the financial administration of Athens and to consider in advance every matter to be put before the people (Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.2–​49.5). Furthermore, the council had daily responsibility for foreign affairs (Dem. 18.169; Aeschin. 2.58). Of the other boards of magistrates the most important were the ten generals (strategoi) who commanded the Athenian army and navy (Arist. Ath. Pol. 61.1–​2),46 the board for the Theoric Fund (hoi epi to theorikon) who in the 350s under Euboulus supervised the Athenian financial administration (Aeschin. 3.24–​5), and the nine archons (archontes), who in most public and private actions had to summon and preside over the popular courts and supervised the major religious festivals, (e.g.), the Dionysia (Arist. Ath. Pol. 56–​9). Each tribe’s contingent of 50 councillors had to serve as prytaneis, (i.e.), as the executive committee of the council for a tenth of the year (Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.2), and a third of them, (i.e.), the members from one of the tribe’s three ridings, had to be present continuously in the prytany house, the Tholos in the Agora (ibid. 44.1). The chairman of the prytaneis was called epistates ton prytaneon. He was picked by lot from the prytaneis and held office only for a night and a day. He held the seal of Athens and the keys of the treasuries, he presided over meetings of the demos and the boule, and it was he who counted as the head of the state of Athens. It was only possible to be epistates ton prytaneon once in a 42 43 44 45 46

Rhodes (1972); Hansen (1999), 246–​65, 342–​3 (nos. 107–​11). For the boule as an arche, see Hansen (1981), 347–​51. See 18 infra. Hansen (1999), 251. Hamel (1998).

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36 Hansen lifetime (ibid. 44.1-​3).47 As a result about every fourth adult male Athenian citizen could say, “I have been for twenty four hours President of Athens” –​but no Athenian could ever boast of having been so for more than twenty four hours. Amateurism.48 The Athenians’ attitude towards their magistrates (archai) illustrates a fundamental aspect of the democracy, viz. amateurism. Professionalism and democracy were regarded as, at bottom, contradictory. Most magistrates were picked by lot and could fill a magistracy for one year only. Most served in boards of ten, and it seems to have been normal for the magistrates at their euthynai to give lack of qualifications as the excuse for failings in office (Dem. 24.112). The same attitude dominated the administration of justice. Pay for advocates was forbidden (Dem. 46.26), but if the jurors permitted (Hyp. 2.20) the prosecutor or defendant could share his speaking time with a friend or relative, and professional speechwriters (logographoi) were allowed (Aeschin. 1.94; Theophr. Char. 17.8).49 Furthermore juries were composed of many hundred ordinary citizens. As a consequence the law of Athens never attained the professionalism of Roman law, and Athenian law has never had the influence that Roman law has had.50 The alternative would have been a professional class of magistrates who could have arrogated some of the powers reserved for the democratic assemblies of ordinary citizens. The Active Citizen. In most matters the initiative was left to the individual citizens, in this capacity called ton Athenaion ho boulomenos hois exestin (seg 26: 72.34; Aeschin. 1.32).51 At any time several hundred citizens must have been active occasionally as speakers and proposers of nomoi and psephismata or as prosecutors before the people’s court.52 But it was always a small group of a score or so of citizens who more or less professionally initiated Athenian policy. They were called “speakers” (rhetores, Hyp.  3.4, 8)  or “policy makers” (politeuomenoi) (Dem. 3.29–​31), whereas the ordinary politically active citizen is referred to as an idiotes, (i.e.), a “private person” (Hyp. 3.27; Dem. Pr. 13).53 Political Leaders.54 There were small groups of political leaders both in the assembly (Dem. 18.143) and in the council (Dem. 22.38) where they appeared as proposers and speakers, and in the courts where they acted as advocates

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Rhodes (1981), 531. Hansen (1999), 308–​9. Rubinstein (2000). Hansen (1999), 308. Hansen (1999), 266–​8, 343 (no. 150). Hansen (1999), 144, 271. Hansen (1999), 144, 308. Hansen (1999), 266–​87, 343–​7 (nos. 112–​30).

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(synegoroi) alongside the principal prosecutor (Hyp.  3.13) or the defendant (Aeschin. 2.184) in a political trial.55 But there were no organised groups of supporters among the ordinary citizens who listened and voted.56 Assembly democracy is inimical to the formation of political parties consisting of both leaders and followers. Parties are a child of modern indirect democracy, because they are bound up with elections to representative bodies. In Athens the political speaker had on every occasion actually to get a majority of those present for his view, and rhetoric, the art of persuasion, was the most important weapon in the competition between political leaders (Thuc. 2.40.2; Dem. 19.184).57 All Athenian statesmen in Demosthenes’ time were orators (rhetores, Hyp.  3.8). The Athenians’ ideal assembly speaker was the plain citizen who spoke his honest mind with modest infrequency and without circumlocution (Aeschin. 3.220), but the ideal is praised with a rhetorical dexterity that gives away the professional (Dem. 1.1). The ideal rhetor was the amateur, called idiotes, (i.e.), the private person (Hyp.  3.13; Dem. Pr. 13.1), as opposed to the professional rhetor who often made gain out of his political activity (Dem. 18.170; Din. 1.90; Hyp. 1.24–​5). Down to the mid-​fourth century the Athenian political leaders were either generals (strategoi) or speakers (rhetores) or both (Hyp. 3.27; Din.1.71). In the age of Demosthenes all were rhetores and none any longer strategos. The only exception was Phocion (Plut. Phoc. 7.5-​6, 8.2).58 It was a very small group of Athenians who were the almost professional political leaders, and they were recruited either from the well-​off or from ambitious citizens who became well-​off as a result of their political career.59 The role of the political leader in Athens was also essentially different from that in modern democracies, and to describe the Athenian rhetores as “the politicians of Athens” is misleading. A  politician, today, is a decision-​maker, elected by the people; he is paid for his activities; his accountability is often restricted by immunity from prosecution; he is almost always linked to some political party, and the word “politician” has a pejorative ring. The Athenian rhetores were not elected but self-​appointed; they never took decisions but made proposals; they risked being penalised if they made money out of their political activity; they were constantly brought to account before the people’s court, and there were no political parties for them to belong to.60 Also the term 55 56 57 58 59 60

Rubinstein (2000). Hansen (1999), 283–​7, 346 (no. 127); (2014a). Ober (1989), 43–​9, 123–​4; Yunis (1996). Hansen (1999), 268–​71, 345–​6 (nos. 120–​6). Davies (1971) and (1981). Hansen (1989a), 3–​4; (1999), 270–​71.

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38 Hansen rhetor was often used in a favourable sense, for example by Demosthenes who prides himself of having been rhetor and politeuomenos (Dem. 18.173, 212). Political Pay.61 The ordinary citizens were reimbursed for their political activity as ekklesiastai or nomothetai or dikastai or bouleutai (Arist. Ath. Pol. 62.2). Very few of the magistrates (archai) were paid on a regular basis (Arist. Ath. Pol. 62.2),62 but many obtained perquisites instead (Isoc. 7.24-​7).63 Speakers and proposers in the political assemblies were unpaid, and those who attempted to make a profit out of politics were regarded as sykophantai and liable to punishment (Dem. 58.12-​13; 59.43; Lys. 25.3). The Council of the Areopagus. The council of the Areopagus was a survival of the Archaic period. It got its name because it met on the Areios pagos (Dem. 23.65–​6), the Hill of Ares west of the Acropolis. It consisted of former archons who served on the council for the rest of their life (Lys. 26.11). It must have had about 150 members of whom about two fifths must have been over 60.64 So it was a council of elders, in fact the Athenian “senate”. In the period 461–​404 it was mainly a court for cases of homicide (Philoch. fr. 64 FGrH). However, the powers of the Areopagus were again progressively enlarged during the democracy from 403 to 322 in connection with attempts to revive the “ancestral” or “Solonian” democracy (Din. 1.62–​63; Lycurg. 1.52).65 4

History

Cleisthenes’ Reforms.66 In 510 the Peisistratid tyrants were expelled from Athens (Hdt. 5.62-​5; Arist. Ath. Pol. 19), but the revolution ended in a power struggle between the returning aristocrats led by Cleisthenes and those who had stayed behind led by Isagoras. With the help of the ordinary people (the demos) Cleisthenes successfully opposed Isagoras (Hdt. 5.66, Arist. Ath. Pol. 20.1) and in 508/​7, reforming the Solonian institutions of 594/​3, he introduced a new form of popular government which was in fact arising in several Greek poleis at the time.67 The term demokratia can be traced back to c.  470 (seg 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

Hansen (1999), 240–​2, 274–​6. Hansen (1979); (1999), 241; (2014b), supported by Lewis (1982), MacDowell (1983). Contra Gabrielsen (1981); Pritchard (2015), 66–​80; Rhodes (2016), 109–​10. Hansen (1980a); (2014b). At Isoc. 15.152 the reference is probably to the ekklesiastikon and dikastikon: Hansen (1980a), 109–​10; (2014b), 413. Hansen (1990). Wallace (1989); Hansen (1999), 288–​95, 347 (nos. 131–​3). Ober in Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace (2007), 83–​104; Hansen (1999) 34–​36. Robinson (1997).

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34: 199;68 Aesch. Supp. 604) and may go back to Cleisthenes’ reforms of 508/​7 as Herodotus suggests (Hdt. 6.131.1).69 Cleisthenes’ major reform was a new political organisation of Attika and the Athenians (Hdt. 5.69; Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.2–​6).70 Attika was divided into three regions, the city (asty), the inland region (mesogeios) and the coast (paralia). Each region was divided into ten ridings (trittyes); and each riding comprised a number of municipalities (demoi), in the fourth century from one to ten demes per riding (Arist. Ath. Pol. 22.4). Altogether there were 139 demes.71 Furthermore, Cleisthenes created ten new tribes (phylai, Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.2)72 each composed of three ridings, one from the city, one from the inland and one from the coast, and each comprising between 6 and 21 demes. However, Cleisthenes allowed the old organisation of the citizens into phratries (phratriai) to persist (a phratry was allegedly a kinship group united in the cult of Apollo Patröos and Zeus Herkaios, Arist. Ath. Pol. 55.3).73 So in future the condition for becoming a citizen was no longer membership of a phratry alone but registration in a deme as well. Thus, the Archaic kinship-​based organisation of the Athenians was largely replaced by one based on the deme in which a citizen lived and of which he was a member.74 In future every citizen had a triple name: his first name, his father’s name (patronymikon) and the name of the deme of which he was a member (demotikon), (e.g.), Sokrates Sophroniskou Alopekethen (Socrates son of Sophroniscos of the deme Alopece).75 Membership of a deme was hereditary and since many Athenians in the course of time moved from the countryside into Athens the close link between a citizen and his deme was gradually dissolved but not abandoned.76 Cleisthenes’ other major reform was the creation of the council of 500 (he boule oi pentakosioi, Dem. 19.179, seg 19:  133.2) with 50 representatives from each of the ten tribes (Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.3), and a fixed number of seats assigned to each of the demes.77 Finally, to avoid a repeat of the power struggle of 510–​ 07 Cleisthenes introduced ostracism (ostrakismos),78 a procedure by which 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

Hansen (1986). Hansen (1986). Traill (1986). Traill (1975), 73–​76. Hansen (1999), 103, 105–​6. Lambert (1993). Whitehead (1986). Hansen (1996). Damsgaard-​Madsen (1988); Hansen et al. (1990). Meritt and Traill (1974). Thomsen (1972); Brenne (2001); Siewert (2002); Forsdyke (2005).

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40 Hansen a political leader could be sent into banishment for ten years (Androt. fr. 6; Arist. Ath. Pol. 22; Philoch. fr. 30; Plut. Arist. 7.3–​8). Each year the demos voted in an ekklesia79 whether they wanted an ostracism. If the vote was yes, the ostracism took place some two months later in the Agora. Each citizen could cast a potsherd (ostrakon) on which was scratched the name of the political leader he wanted to see banished. If the total of potsherds cast was in excess of 6,000, the citizen whose name appeared most times had within ten days to leave Attika for ten years. Ostracism was used some fifteen times in the period from 487 to 415, mostly in the 480’s and 470’s. Altogether some 11,000 ostraka are preserved.80 The procedure was never abolished, but it was not used after 415. After that year the preferred procedure for getting rid of a political leader was the graphe paranomon, attested for the first time in one of the years 417–​15 (Andoc. 1.17, 22). Fifth-​Century Reforms.81 During the next century democracy was buttressed by other reforms: in 501 command of the army and navy was transferred from the polemarchos to a board of ten popularly elected generals (strategoi, Arist. Ath. Pol. 22.2). In 487/​6 the method of selection of the nine archons was changed from election to selection by lot from an elected short list (ibid. 22.5). By Ephialtes’ reform of 462/​1 the council of the Areopagus was deprived of its political powers which were divided between the assembly, the council of five hundred and the popular courts (ibid. 25.2).82 Shortly afterwards, on the initiative of Pericles, political pay was introduced for the popular courts (Arist. Pol. 1274a8-​9) and the council (ig i3 82.20), so that even poor citizens could exercise their political rights (Thuc. 2.37.1). Athenian citizenship became a much-​coveted privilege, and in 451 Pericles had a law passed confining citizenship to the legitimate sons of an Athenian mother as well as father (Arist. Ath. Pol. 26.4).83 The Oligarchic Revolutions of 411 and 404. The defeats in the Peloponnesian War resulted in a growing opposition to democracy and twice antidemocratic factions succeeded for some months in establishing an oligarchy, in 411 a regime led by a council of four hundred (Thuc. 8.63–​9, 97; Arist. Ath. Pol. 29–​ 33),84 and in 404/​3 a radical oligarchy under a junta which fully deserved the name “the Thirty Tyrants” (Xen. Hell. 2.2–​4; Arist. Ath. Pol. 35–​8).85

79 The ekklesia kyria of the sixth prytany (Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.5). 80 Rhodes (1981), 267–​71; Hansen (1999), 35, 280. 81 Hignett (1952). 82 Wallace (1989). 83 Patterson (1981). 84 Hornblower (2008), 938–​64; Rhodes (1981), 362–​411. 85 Rhodes (1981), 415–​62.

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5

The Character of the Fourth-​Century Democracy

The restored Democracy.86 In 403/​2 democracy was restored in a modified form.87 In c. 403 legislation (Dem. 24.42) and in c. 355 all jurisdiction in political trials88 was transferred from the demos to the panel of 6,000 jurors89 acting both as legislators (nomothetai) and jurors (dikastai).90 Whereas all citizens above 20 could attend the sessions of the demos (Dem. 44.35; Arist. Ath. Pol. 42.5), the nomothetai (Dem. 20.93) and the dikastai (Arist. Ath. Pol. 62.3) were mature citizens over 30, and by contrast with the demos in an ekklesia (Dem. 24.78) they had sworn the heliastic oath (Hyp. 3.40) which allegedly went back to Solon (Dem. 24.148). The Athenians’ reverence for an oath and respect for the wisdom of mature citizens (Dem. Pr. 45.2) bolstered the view that decisions made by the jurors in the dikasterion were superior to those made by the demos in the ekklesia (Dem. 24.78; 57.56) and that the dikastai in the court were kyrioi panton (Lys. 1.36; Dem. 21.223; 24.118, 148; 57.56; 58.55; Din. 1.106). In the age of Demosthenes only one source asserts that the demos in the ekklesia was kyriotatos (Dem. 59.88) and that view is immediately modified by the concession that the people’s decision can by overturned by a graphe paranomon (Dem. 59.90) heard by the dikasterion. The Areopagus.91 The council of the Areopagus regained some of its former political powers. In 403/​2, in connection with the revision of the corpus of laws, the demos decreed that the Areopagus was to supervise the administration of the laws by the magistrates (Andoc. 1.84). In the 340s a new criminal procedure was introduced, called apophasis. It was a variant of the eisangelia eis ton demon. The Areopagus was entrusted with the preliminary investigation and passed a provisional verdict of “guilty” or “not guilty”. If the verdict was guilty, had to be confirmed by the demos and referred to a dikasterion (Dem. 18.133-​4; Din. 1.1, 3–​4, 54–​60, 63, 112; Hyp. 1.38). After the defeat at Chaeronea in 338 the Areopagus is said to have played a decisive role in the period down to the peace with Philip (Lycurg. 1.52; Aeschin. 3.252). In the course of that critical period, on the motion of Demosthenes, the Athenians passed a decree that the council of the Areopagus, in accordance with

86 87 88 89

Hansen (1999), 42–​3, 89–​90, 182–​3, 351–​2 (no. 152). Hansen (1999), 300–​04; Rhodes (2016) 116. Hansen (1999), 159. Hansen (1999), 182. During the first decades of the fourth century several political trials were heard by the demos: Hansen (1975) nos. 73, 75–​6, 80–​1, 86. 90 Dem. 20.93. 91 Wallace (1989); Hansen (1999), 288–​95, 347 (no.133).

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42 Hansen the ancestral laws, was authorised to judge any citizen for any offence (Din. 1.6, 62, 83). In the 330s a kind of minister of finance was introduced (ho epi tei dioikesei, seg 19: 119). He was elected for a four-​year period and could be re-​elected, and for twelve consecutive years the administration of Athens was entrusted to Lycurgus (Hyp. fr. 139 Sauppe). These and other reforms were allegedly a return to the “ancestral” or “Solonian” democracy (Andoc. 1.83; Aeschin. 3.257).92 In important respects they changed the character of the Athenian democracy in the period 403–​322, but they did not impress Plato and Aristotle, who both regarded the contemporary Athenian constitution as an instance of a pure, radical democracy (Pl. Resp. 557a-​58c; Arist. Pol. 1274a1-​11). They found it odd to leave important political decisions to the demos at large (Pl. Prt. 319b3-​d8). The Athenian democrats, however, believed in the intelligence and sound judgement of the ordinary citizen (Dem. 3.15); but they also insisted that no citizen was required to engage in political activity at the top level (Dem. 10.70–​4; 18.308; 19.99). Active and Passive Participation.93 Political participation can be divided into passive participation, that is listening and voting, and active participation, which implies speaking to the assemblies and making proposals. What the Athenians expected of the ordinary citizen was the former, which demanded enough common sense to choose wisely between the proposals at offer (Dem. 18.308; Pr. 45.1-​2). Active participation was left to ho boulomenos (Dem. 18.173, 179, 193, 197).94 The functioning of the democracy depended upon the willingness of a large number of citizens to attend the assemblies and a small number to act as ho boulomenos by speaking, moving proposals, and bringing public actions on behalf of the polis. Ordinary citizens who took part in the decision-​making institutions were paid in good coin, whereas the active citizens who appeared as speakers, proposers and prosecutors were “political animals” who were stimulated by the hope of receiving honours: an honorary decree, a golden crown or a dinner in the Prytaneion (Dem. 20.107–​8; Arist. [Rh. Al.] 1424a24ff). The numerous honorary decrees passed by the Athenians were a vital hormone without which democracy would probably have languished. Competition for honours was a powerful motivation for all Greeks in all aspects of life from politics to sport (Dem. 20.108).95 On the other hand, citizens who tried to make 92 93 94 95

Hansen (1989b). Sinclair (1988), 191, 221; Hansen (1999), 296–​304, 306–​7, 344 (nos. 114–​8). For the fifth century, see Thuc. 6.39.1; Eur. Supp. 438–​41. Hansen (1999), 84.

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money from their political activity were treated as sykophantai and punished (Dem. 59.43; Isoc.15.313-​14; Arist. Ath. Pol. 43.5). Two-​Stage Procedures.96 Competition among political leaders could lead to their bidding against each other with promises to the people (Dem. 3.22). There was also a risk that the people, in wrath or panic, could be persuaded into hasty decisions (Ar. Eccl. 797–​8; Xen. Hell. 1.7.35). Several of the Athenian institutions were meant to counter such risks: Every decree passed by the people had been discussed in the council before it was put to the demos in the ekklesia (Arist. Ath. Pol. 45.4) and was subject to possible reversal by a graphe paranomon. Some decrees, such as treaties and conclusions of peace seem to have required a debate in two successive ekklesiai (Aeschin. 2.60–​61),97 others such as citizenship decrees had to be ratified in a subsequent meeting by a quorum of 6,000 (Dem. 59.89–​90); and it was always possible, through the procedure of anapsephisis, to reopen at a subsequent meeting a matter already decided (Thuc. 3.38.1; 49.1). New laws were debated both by the council and by the people before they were referred to a session of nomothetai (Dem. 24.48); and afterwards a new nomos could be quashed by a graphe nomon me epitedeion theinai heard by a session of the people’s court (Dem. 24.138).98 The elaborate system of two-​stage procedures sometimes led to the opposite result from that intended: instead of over-​hasty decisions the protracted decision-​making process could make it difficult to mount an effective foreign policy (Isoc. 8.52). Demosthenes sometimes makes precisely that point in a criticism still heard today: democracy is an ineffective form of government when confronted with a dictator who can come to lightening decisions and strike when and where he chooses (Dem. 18.235). Financing the Democracy.99 Pay for political participation made democracy the most expensive form of constitution (Dem. 24.97–​9). The assembly cost about 45 talents a year,100 the council probably about 15,101 and the courts somewhere between 22 and 37102 (Arist. Ath. Pol. 62.2). Expenses on magistrates were small (ibid.; Dem. 24.97–​9).103 Thus, in the age of Demosthenes the total annual costs of the democratic political institutions were close to 100

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

Hansen (1999), 307–​8, 351 (no. 150). For the fifth century, see Thuc. 1.44.1. Hansen (1999), 175. Hansen (1999), 315–​6, 348–​9 (nos. 138–​41). Hansen (1999), 150. Hansen (1999), 255. Hansen (1999), 188–​9. Hansen (1979); (2014b).

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44 Hansen talents. How big a part was that of the annual revenue of the Athenian state? In the Fourth Philippic, which Demosthenes delivered in 341, he tells the people that not long ago the annual income was 130 talents max, but that now it had risen to 400 talents (Dem. 10.37–​38). The reason for the nadir “not long ago” was probably the Athenian defeat in The Social War in 355 (Xen. Poroi 5.12). In the period of peace from 338 to 323, under the administration of Lycurgus, the annual income reached a maximum of 1200 talents (Plut. Mor. 852F; ig ii2 457), a sum that surpassed the annual income of 1000 talents in the age of Pericles before the Peloponnesian war.104 In times of stringency there was the risk that the poor might use their majority to soak the rich to keep up the payments –​in the assembly by imposing taxes, which only the rich had to pay, in particular the eisphora,105 and in the courts by condemning the rich and confiscating their property. That danger of “government by the people” was a theme beloved by its critics (Lys. 30.22). But one of the democratic leaders argued that the people resisted the temptation of condemning a number of rich mining-​concessionaires, although the prosecutors’ proposals for confiscation were very tempting (Hyp. 3.32–​8). Yet, the richest of all the mining-​concessionaires, Diphilos, was condemned to death and his fortune of 160 talents distributed among the citizens (Plut. Mor. 843D). It was not, however, expenses on the democratic institutions that threatened the Athenian economy, but the endless wars (Dem. 4.28–​9). And even in peacetime the military expenses were considerable. Fodder for the knights’ horses cost the state 40 talents per year (Xen. Hipparchicus 1.19). The cavalry was recruited from the upper class, the upholders of the aristocratic ideals. Yet it must have cost the Athenians about as much as did the assembly of the people. A further economic aspect of the democracy is how the citizens could afford to engage in politics to the extent that they did. For the great majority of the Athenians who just attended the assembly and the courts political activity only occupied a fraction of the time of the individual, so that the compensation paid out for participation may have sufficed. And although the great majority of the citizens had to work for a living, most of them had a wife and a slave,106 and it may have been the work of the women (Arist. Pol. 1323a5-​6, Dem. 57.30)107 even more than that of the slaves that provided the ordinary male citizen with his opportunity to participate in the political institutions. The rhetores (Dem. 1 04 105 106 107

Pritchard (2015), 92. Brun (1983); Hansen (1999), 112–​15. Garlan (1988), 55–​69. Hansen (1999), 318.

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24-​123-​4; Din. 1.98–​9) as well as the strategoi (Lys. 29.2) were mostly recruited from among the wealthy citizens –​or from citizens who became wealthy by their political activity –​in spite of all the procedures devised against making money on politics. To some extent the Athenians accepted gifts to political leaders although they were prohibited by law (Hyp. 1.24–​5).108 6 Tradition109 The gradual and moderate transformation of the democratic institutions came to an abrupt end in 322/​1 when the Macedonians after their victory in the Lamian War (323–​22) abolished the democracy and had it replaced by a “Solonian” oligarchy (Diod. 18.18.4-​5; Plut. Phoc. 27.5).110 During the Hellenistic age democracy in some form was restored several times viz. in 318–​17, 307–​298?, 287–​103, and 88–​85 bce.111 Two Millennia Without Democracy. After the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 bce democratic poleis including Athens were slowly changed into oligarchies, and in consequence of Sulla’s conquest of Athens in 86 bce the Athenian democracy was abolished once and for all.112 As a form of state democracy disappeared and did not come back until some 2,000 years later in the wake of the American and French revolutions in the late eighteenth century.113 In the meantime all large states were monarchies and almost all the small city-​states in Italy and elsewhere were oligarchies114 (Exceptional democracies are Firenze 1378–​82115 and some of the small Swiss cantons116). But due to the strong classical tradition ancient democracy carried on a shadowy existence in political thought. It is in fact discussed more frequently than one would expect, given that it did not exist any longer. The ancient Greek democracy mentioned by philosophers, however, was not the Athenian democracy, but the general type discussed in Plato’s Republic Book 8, in Aristotle’s Politics Books 3–​6 and in Polybius Book 6.117 Athenian democracy was almost forgotten, and, if mentioned, 1 08 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

Harvey (1985), 108–​13; Hansen (2014b), 406–​8. Hansen (2005). Hansen (1999), 300, 304. Habicht (1997). Geagan (1967). Hansen (2005), 7; (2010), xviii. Hansen (2006b), 144–​45. Hansen (2006b), 144. Hansen (1983), 208–​12. Hansen (2005), 11–​13.

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46 Hansen the focus was on the mythical “Solonian democracy” known from Plutarch’s Life of Solon and Aristotle’s Politics 1273b35-​74a21.118 The philosophers’ evaluation of democracy oscillated between utter rejection and cautious acceptance. As a pure form of constitution democracy was almost universally criticised, whereas it was accepted as an indispensable element of a mixed constitution alongside monarchy and aristocracy. And a mixed constitution was mostly preferred to any of the three pure types: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.119 The transition from direct to representative democracy was anticipated in political thought long before democracy came back as a political system. The popular assembly in the ancient Greek poleis was a democratic institution, but not a representative one. The medieval parliaments were representative institutions but not democratic ones. The link between democracy and representation was established in 1642 in King Charles’ response to the parliament’s complaints. He, or rather his advisers, argued that the constitution of England was a mixed constitution in which the King was the monarchical element, the House of Lords the aristocratic and the House of Commons the democratic.120 Representative democracy emerged as a political system in USA in the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.121 Revived Interest in Athenian Democracy. It was not until c. 1800, when history grew up as a scholarly discipline in its own right, that the Athenian democratic institutions were studied seriously and reconstructed, (e.g.), by August Böckh, from sources such as Thucydides, Demosthenes and inscriptions.122 And it was only from c. 1850 that the new understanding of Athenian democracy was connected, principally by George Grote,123 with a budding interest in democracy as a form of government, though now in the form of “representative” or “parliamentary” democracy and no longer as an “assembly” democracy in which power was exercised directly by the people. In fact, not one single Athenian institution seems to have left its mark on posterity neither in the Middle Ages, nor in the early modern period –​when democracy was still conceived as direct rule by the people  –​nor in the nineteenth century  –​when democracy was conceived as representative government based on elections.124 Popular

1 18 Hansen (1989b); (2005), 11–​14. 119 Cf. e.g. Cicero, De re publica 3.23 versus 1.34, 42–​5 and Thomas Aquinas, De regimine principum 1.1 versus Summa Theologiae questio 105. 120 The Online Library of Liberty and Charles I’s Answer, 12. Hansen (2013). 121 Wood (1992). 122 Hansen (1994), 31. 123 Grote (1907 [1846–​1856]), iv, 300–​49. 124 Hansen (2005), 20–​22.

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assemblies have been replaced by parliaments, sortition by election, boards of volunteering magistrates by professional civil servants, and annual rotation among all citizens by a closed hierarchical bureaucracy of administrators who serve for decades. As far as political institutions are concerned, Tocqueville was right: the only connection between ancient and modern democracy is the name democracy.125 During the last generation, however, Athenian democracy has been regarded by some not as a historic curiosity but as a source of inspiration for new forms of democracy.126 Representative democracy presents a major problem: the problem of participation. Especially since the 1950s a growing ignorance and apathy among the voters is felt. In this context it has become more common to look back to ancient Athens. The Athenian citizens’ massive participation in their political institutions is unparalleled in world history, and some politicians and students of political science suggest that what could be achieved in ancient Athens must be achieved again, either by reforming representative democracy or by re-​introducing some form of direct democracy.127 Some suggest frequent referenda implemented by electronic voting in which all citizens participate, and here a historic example is Athenian democracy in which major decisions were made directly by the people. Others prefer to leave political decisions, or political advice, to randomised panels of citizens selected by lot from all citizens. Advocates of this system, often called demarchy, usually acknowledge their debt to the Athenian use of rotation decided by sortition.128 It is the contemporary utopian ideas about a return to more direct democracy which has fostered a new interest in Athenian democracy as a political system. In ideology there is a much closer affinity between ancient and modern democracy.129 The modern triad of democracy, liberty and equality130 is matched by the Athenian triad of demokratia, eleutheria and isonomia. Again both ancient and modern liberty is subdivided into political liberty (the right to participate in politics) and individual liberty (the right to live as one pleases). Also Athenian democratic equality was not to hold that all are equal, but an equality of opportunity, and it applied in the political but not in the economic sphere of life (Thuc. 2.37). The close parallel between Athenian and modern democratic liberty was pointed out by Benjamin Constant131 and later by George Grote in 1 25 126 127 128 129 130 131

Tocqueville (1991–​1992 [1835–​40]), 2.3.25, p. 737. Hansen (2005), 22–​24, 45–​59. McLean (1989), 158. Fishkin (1997), 18–​26. Hansen (2005), 24–​27. Holden (1974), 28. Constant (1997 [1819]), 600–​1, 609, 836.

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48 Hansen his History of Greece,132 but his work was soon eclipsed by Fustel de Coulanges who in La cité antique (1864) successfully advocated the erroneous view133 than individual liberty was unknown in the ancient world.134 There can be no doubt that the Athenians cherished individual freedom as an ideal. Whether they lived up to their ideal is a different question which cannot be answered by referring to Euripides or Thucydides or Demosthenes. But here the philosophers are valuable sources. Both Plato and Aristotle give voice to the view that democratic freedom to live as one likes was not just an ideal but –​alas –​a reality, and that is one of their reasons to reject democracy as a debased form of constitution. Plato in particular but Aristotle too would not have focused on individual freedom as one of the most objectionable aspects of democracy if “to live as one likes” had been an empty rhetorical phrase and of no importance in real life. Thus Plato and Aristotle are the best sources we have to confirm what the Athenian democrats claimed: that individual freedom in the private sphere to live as one likes was an important ideal and to a large extent a reality too in classical Athens.135 It is commonly held that Athenian democracy was in fact an oligarchy because political rights were reserved for the full citizens who constituted a minority of the population. That is true; but we must not forget that the adult male citizens probably constituted more than 50% of the adult male population.136 The same proportion of adults with political rights was reached in Britain only after the electoral reform of 1884–​85.137 So, on this view, it would be anachronistic to speak of democracy in Europe before 1884. Universal voting rights for white males was achieved in USA during Andrew Jackson’s presidency 1829-​7.138 But when president Wilson on 12 April 1917 wanted “to make the world safe for democracy” it was a democracy in which women did not have voting rights except in New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Norway and Finland.

Bibliography

Akrigg, B. (2019) Population and Economy in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1 32 133 134 135 136 137 138

Grote (1907 [1846–​1856]). Hansen (2005), 27. Fustel de Coulanges (1963 [1864]), 3.17, p. 280–​6. Hansen (2010b), 338–​9. Hansen (2006a), 56 n. 137. Bryce (1921), i, 24–​6. Thernstrom (1984), i, 285–​8.

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Bers, V. (1985) “Dicastic Thorubos,” in Cartledge and Harvey (eds) (1985) 1–​15. Bleicken, J. (1994) Die Athenische Demokratie. 2nd edn. Paderborn: Schöningh. Brenne, S. (2001) Ostrakismos und Prominenz in Athen. Attische Bürger des 5. Jhs. v. Chr. Auf den Ostraka. Wien: Holzhausens Verlag. Bryce, J. (1921) Modern Democracies. 2 vols. New York: MacMillan. Brun, P. (1983) Eisphora, Syntaxis, Stratiotika:  Recherches sur les finances militaries d´Athènes au IVe siècle avant J.-​C. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Constant, B. (1997 [1819]) “De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes,” in Idem, Écrits politiques. Paris: Gallimard. Cartledge, P. and Harvey, A.D. (eds) (1985) Crux. Essays Presented to G.E.M de Ste. Croix on his 75th Birthday. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Damsgaard-​Madsen, A. (1988) “Attic Funeral Inscriptions. Their Use as Historical Sources and Some Preliminary Results,” in Studies in Ancient History and Numismatics Presented to Rudi Thomsen. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 55–​68. Davies, J.K. (1971) Athenian Propertied Families. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, J.K. (1981) Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens. New York: Arno. Develin, R. (1989) Athenian Officials 684–​321 B.C. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Fishkin, J. (1997) The Voice of the People. New Haven: Yale University Press. Forsdyke, S. (2005) Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy. The Policy of Expulsion in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Frölich, P. (2004) Les cités grecques et le contrôle des magistrats. Genève: Droz. Fustel de Coulanges, N.D. (1963 [1864]) La cité antique. Paris: Librairie Hachette. Gabrielsen, V. (1981) Remuneration of State Officials in Fourth-​Century B.C. Athens. Odense: Odense Universitets Forlag. Garlan, Y. (1988) Slavery in Ancient Greece. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Geagan, D.J. (1967) The Athenian Constitution After Sulla. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies. Grote, G. (1907 [1846–​1856]) History of Greece. 12 vols. Everyman’s Library edn. London: Dent. Habicht, C. (1997) Athens from Alexander to Antony. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Hamel, D. (1998) Athenian Generals. Military Authority in the Classical Period. Leiden: Brill. Hansen, M.H. (1974) The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C. and the Public Action against Unconstitutional Proposals. Odense: Odense University Press. Hansen, M.H. (1975) Eisangelia. The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C. and the Impeachment of Generals and Politicians. Odense: Odense University Press.

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50 Hansen Hansen, M.H. (1976) Apagoge, Endeixis and Ephegesis against Kakourgoi, Atimoi and Pheugontes. Odense: Odense University Press. Hansen, M.H. (1979) “Misthos for Magistrates in Classical Athens,” Symbolae Osloenses 54: 5–​22. Hansen, M.H. (1980a) “Perquisites for Magistrates in Fourth-​Century Athens,” Classica et Mediaevalia 32: 105–​25. Hansen, M.H. (1980b) “Seven Hundred Archai in classical Athens,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 21: 151–​73. Hansen, M.H. (1981) “Initiative and Decision:  The Separation of Powers in Fourth-​ Century Athens,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 22: 345–​70. Hansen, M.H. (1983) The Athenian Ecclesia. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Hansen, M.H. (1985) Demography and Democracy. Herning: Systime. Hansen, M.H. (1986) “The Origin of the Term Demokratia,” Liverpool Classical Monthly 11: 35–​6. Hansen, M.H. (1987) The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes. Oxford: Blackwell. Hansen, M.H. (1989a) The Athenian Ecclesia, 2. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Hansen, M.H. (1989b) “Solonian Democracy in Fourth-​Century Athens,” Classica et Mediaevalia 40: 71–​99. Hansen, M.H. (1990), “The Size of the Council of the Areopagos and its Social Composition in the Fourth Century B.C.,” Classica et Mediaevalia 41: 73–​7. Hansen M.H. (1994) “The 2500th Anniversary of Cleisthenes’ Reforms and the Tradition of Athenian Democracy,” in Osborne, R. & Hornblower, S. (eds) Ritual, Finance, Politics. Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to Davis Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 25–37. Hansen, M.H. (1996) “City-​ethnics as Evidence for Polis Identity,” in Hansen, M.H. and Raaflaub, K. (eds) More Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 169–​96. Hansen, M.H. (1999) The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. 2nd edn. London: Duckworth. Hansen, M.H. (2005) The Tradition of Ancient Greek Democracy and Its Importance for Modern Democracy. Copenhagen: The Royal Academy. Hansen, M.H. (2006a) Studies in the Population of Aigina, Athens and Eretria. Copenhagen: The Royal Academy. Hansen, M.H. (2006b) Polis. Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-​State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, M.H. (2008) “Thucydides’ Description of Democracy (2.37.1) and the EU-​ Convention of 2003,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 48: 15–​26. Hansen, M.H. (2010a) “The Concepts of Demos, Ekklesia and Dikasterion in Classical Athens,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 50: 499–​536.

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Hansen, M.H. (2010b) “Ancient Democratic Eleutheria and Modern Liberal Democrats’ Conception of Freedom,” in Hansen, M.H., Ducrey, P. and Hernandez, A-​C. (eds) Démocratie athenienne–​démocratie moderne: tradition et influences. Genève: Fondation Hardt, 307–​53. Hansen, M.H. (2013) “The Transition from Direct to Representative Democracy,” in Böss, M. et al. (eds) Developing Democracy. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 24–​36. Hansen, M.H. (2014a) “Political Parties in Democratic Athens?” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 54: 379–​403. Hansen, M.H. (2014b) “Misthos for Magistrates in Fourth-​Century Athens?” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 54: 404–​19. Hansen, M.H. (2018) Aspects of the Athenian Democracy in the Fourth Century B.C. Reflections on C. Tiersch (ed.) Die Athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert. Zwischen Modernisierung und Tradition (Stuttgart 2016). Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Harvey, F.D. (1985) “Dona Ferentes: Some Aspects of Bribery in Greek Politics,” in Cartledge and Harvey (eds) (1985) 76–​117. Hignett, C. (1952) A History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holden, B. (1974) The Nature of Democracy. London: Nelson. Hornblower, S. (2008) A Commentary on Thucydides, Volume III: Books 5.25–​8.109. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Isager, S. and Hansen, M.H. (1975) Aspects of Athenian Society in the Fourth Century B.C. Odense: Odense University Press. Jones, N.F. (1999) The Associations of Classical Athens. New York: Oxford University Press. Kremmydas, C. (2012) Commentary on Demosthenes Against Leptines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lambert, S.D. (1993) The Phratries of Attica. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Lewis, D.M. (1982) “Review of Gabrielsen, V. Remuneration of State Officials in Fourth-​ Century B.C. Athens (Odense 1981)”, in Journal of Hellenic Studies 102: 269. Liddel, P. (2007) Civic Obligation and Individual Liberty in Ancient Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lipsius, J-​H. (1905–​15) Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren. 3 vols. Leipzig: Reisland. MacDowell, D.M. (1983) “Review of Gabrielsen, V.  Remuneration of State Officials in Fourth-​Century B.C. Athens (Odense 1981)”, in Classical Review 33: 75–​76. McLean, I. (1989) Democracy and New Technology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Meritt, B.D. and Traill, J.S. (1974) The Athenian Agora, XV:  Inscriptions. The Athenian Councillors. Princeton: The American school of classical studies at Athens. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (1998) Political Dissent in Democratic Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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52 Hansen Ober, J. and Hedrick, C. (eds) (1996) Demokratia. A Conversation on Democracies Ancient and Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Patterson, C. (1981) Pericles’ Citizenship Law of 451–​50 B.C. New York: Arno Press. Pritchard, D.M. (2015) Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens. Austin: University of Texas Press. Raaflaub, K.A. (1996) “Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy,” in Ober and Hedrick (1996) 139–​74. Raaflaub, K.A. (2004) The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece. Chicago:  Chicago University Press. Raaflaub, K.A., Ober, J. and Wallace, R.W. (eds) (2007) Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rhodes, P.J. (1972) The Athenian Boule. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, P.J. (1981) A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, P.J. (2016) “Fourth–​century appointments in Athens”, in Tiersch, C. (ed.) Die Athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert. Zwischen Modernisierung und Tradition. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 109–​19. Roberts, J.T. (1999) Athens on Trial. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Robinson, E.W. (1997) The First Democracies. Early Popular Government Outside Athens. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Rubinstein, L. (2000) Litigation and Cooperation. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Siewert, P. (2002) Ostrakismos-​Testimonien, I. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Sinclair, R. K. (1988) Democracy and Participation in Athens. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Thernstrom. S. (1984) A History of the American People, I. New York: Harcourt Brace Iovanovich. Thomas, R. (2016) “Audience Participation and the Dynamics of Democracy”, in Tiersch, C. (ed.) Die Athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert. Zwischen Modernisierung und Tradition. Stuttgart: Franz SteinerVerlag, 89–​107. Thomsen, R. (1972) The Origin of Ostracism: a synthesis. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Tocqueville, A. de (1991–​1992 [1835–​40]) De la démocratie en Amérique, in Idem, Œvreues. 2 vols. Pléiade edn. T. ii. Paris: Gallimard. Todd, S.C. (1993) The Shape of Athenian Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Traill, J.S. (1975) The Political Organization of Attica. Princeton:  American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Traill, J.S. (1986) Demos and Trittys: Epigraphical and Topographical Studies in the Organization of Attica. Toronto: Athenians. Wallace, R.W. (1989) The Areopagos Council, to 307 B.C. Baltimore:  John Hopkins University Press.

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Whitehead, D. (1977). The Ideology of the Athenian Metic. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society. Whitehead, D. (1986). The Demes of Attica 508/​7  –​ca. 250 B.C. Princeton:  Princeton University Press. Wood, G.M. (1992) “Democracy and the American Revolution”, in Dunn, J. (ed.) Democracy. The Unfinished Journey 508 BC to AD 1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91–​106. Yunis, H. (1996) Taming Democracy. Models of Political Rhetoric in Classical Athens. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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pa rt 2 The Reception of Athenian Democracy Ages, Countries, Scholarship

∵

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­c hapter 2

Athenian Democracy in the Late Middle Ages and Early Humanism Gabriele Pedullà It has cost me a great deal of expense to search into Italian rubbish and ruins, but enough of pure gold and marble has been found to reward the pain. john adams to thomas jefferson, August 25, 1787.

∵ Not so differently from what had already happened many times in Italy and Europe during the Middle Ages, Italian Renaissance authors were happy to compare the flourishing of the arts south of the Alps to classical Athens’ cultural achievements.1 Between the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the writings of the humanists, this correlation was made with regard to many different cities, from Venice to Messina, but it was especially Florence which was called the “New Athens” and which maintained such a laudatory nickname in modern historiography.2 If one leaves aside the occasional polemics against any kind of republican rule (when Athens was a frequent target along with Rome and Sparta), 1 Even if this and the subsequent chapters were originally submitted to the editors of the present volume in 2014, the author would like to acknowledge that he had the opportunity to revise them and update the bibliography thanks to two fellowships: at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University (Spring 2018), and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (Spring 2019). The final results of my research were publicly presented twice:  at the Humanities Council, Princeton University, where I  was Belknap Visiting Fellow (April 2018); and at the ias (February 2019). I would like to thank all these institutions for their support and Brett Savage for revising my English with competence and generosity. Whenever possible, Ancient and Renaissance works are cited by book and chapter/​paragraph, according to the most common editions. This essay and the following one are dedicated to the memory of Nicole Loraux. 2 On how Athenian cultural myth was re-​deployed in early-​modern Europe, see Reszler (2004).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_004

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58 Pedullà the parallel between Attic democracy and the Italian city-​states’ popular governments came much later, mostly during the last two centuries, but eventually became a sort of cornerstone in every genealogy of modern liberalism. A bit like Voltaire, who sketched a history of classicism in four phases (Greece under Pericles and Alexander –​Rome under Caesar and Augustus –​ Italy under the Medici –​France under Louis xiv), today historians of political thought are often tempted to apply an analogous linear model and present classical Athens, republican Rome, and the Italian communes as the first three stages of a path that –​passing through the English, American, and French revolutions –​finally ended in the rise of modern representative democracies. For anyone who is wary of such an abstract approach to intellectual history, an inquiry into the actual relations between these different moments seems necessary.3 In this case, the most problematic link is the presence of the Athenian model in Renaissance political imagination. Seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​century republicans were well informed about Greek, Roman, and Italian history, just as the Romans knew a lot about Greek poleis, and the Italians of the Middle Ages and Renaissance humanists had a clear picture of Roman history after the kings’ eviction in 509 bce. However, even if the topic is potentially relevant also for classicists and political theorists, we still know very little about how Attic democracy was perceived in Italy from the end of the thirteenth century to the mid-​sixteenth century –​that is, when Italian political thought reached its peak of originality, in part also because of a constant dialogue with ancient authors.4 The fact that nobody has really worked on this period does not mean there are no bold statements in recent scholarship.5 In 2016 two books were published in English on the millenary history of Athenian democracy (the first one being the translation of a German work originally printed in 2008), and, even if the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance do not occupy more than a couple

3 An excellent model of comparison is provided by Mohlo, Raaflaub and Emlen (1991); Hansen (2000). Griffeth and Thomas (eds.) (1981) is scarcely useful. 4 The only analyses are: Roberts (1994), 119–​136; Ampolo (1997), 13–​19; Ampolo (1998); Cambiano (2000), 17–​132 (mostly on Bruni, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini); Viroli (2003); Hansen (2005a), 7–​10. On Sparta, see Rawson (1969), 130–​157; Rosse (2005) –​though, in this last case, limited to France; McGregor Morris (2012) –​even if limited to England; Vlassopulos (2012); Stenhouse (2018). 5 Too often, the historical narratives that open the political scientists’ monographs on democracy are, to say least, below scholarly standard. See for instance Dahl (1998), 15–​17; Tilly (2007), 27–​28.

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of pages in these volumes, Wilfried Nippel’s and Paul Cartledge’s narratives give an idea of the common view today.6 As a matter of fact, readers encounter two apparently contradictory (but often combined) stories. According to the first, Attic democracy reappeared in Italy for a sort of spontaneous affinity between the Greek poleis and the communes: simply put, late medieval and early-​modern city-​states effortlessly recognized themselves in Athens’ mirror. At the basis of this fraternization would supposedly lie some precise structural  analogies:  the unusual weight of their urbanization and commerce (in a world still largely agricultural and peasant);  the limited extension of their territorial domain;  the broad popular participation in the administration of public affairs; the recourse to lot to choose all (or most of) the magistrates; the frequent rotation of the offices; the implementation of special laws to keep the overly rich and powerful citizens’ tyrannical ambitions at bay. The blossoming of the Italian republics would then be the proof that in some small enclaves the ancient love of freedom had been kept alive (or precociously revived), until the torch of liberty had been passed into the hands of the men who –​first in America and then in France –​ would use it to set aflame the Ancient Regime’s hierarchical corporate society. In the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–​1822), who lived and wrote during the international rise of the historiographic myth of the free Medieval city-​ states, “From age to age, from man to man,/​ It lived; and lit from land to land/​ Florence, Albion, Switzerland” (Hellas, A Lyrical Drama). Still today, this is the preferred view of Renaissance scholars. But one encounters also another, partially opposite, claim –​especially among the classicists. According to this second reconstruction, nobody was really interested in Athenian democracy before the Enlightenment. As a reviewer has pointed out, referring to Nippel’s book, the history of Athenian political legacy would be therefore, for the most part, the history of a “non-​event” –​and that is also true for Cartledge.7 To quote the similar opinion of another specialist of Athens, Mogens Herman Hansen: Between antiquity and the Enlightenment  democracy  was a  Sleeping Beauty, with two major differences. She did not sleep for a hundred years only, but for almost two thousand, and she did not wake up by being kissed by a loving prince. When she was roused from sleep, she was feared 6 Cartledge (2016), 273–​280; Nippel (2016), 85–​88. See also Marchettoni (2018), 28–​30; Butti de Lima (2019),‬‬ 5–​45 (especially valuable for the evolution of the terminology, but mostly focused on the Scholastics, Bruni, and Machiavelli). 7 Osborne (2016), 531.

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60 Pedullà by princes, detested by philosophers and found impossible by statesmen. Democracy was seen as revolutionary mob rule always torn by factions, and this view was only confirmed when Robespierre described France as a democracy in a speech held in the Convention one year after the execution of King Louis xvi. In Europe it took about a century before the Goddess of Democracy became a respectable lady.8 Such a divergence depends probably on what Renaissance scholars and classicists consider democracy. If one uses the word to describe any form of popular self-​government, Italian republics undeniably shared some elements with Athens, whereas, if one opts for a more restricted definition, the connection becomes less certain. In this regard, Nippel’s and Cartledge’s syntheses are especially problematic also because they constantly shift from one paradigm to the other, as the two authors never decided if they wanted to write a general history of the idea of freedom in the West or, rather, a history of a particular form of government. The narrative presented in the following pages will be very different. 1

Aristotle’s Reappearance: a False Start

The re-​emergence of Attic democracy in the West can only be appreciated in comparison to Athenian political institutions’ utter oblivion during the Middle Ages.9 Still, historical sources were not completely absent. For instance, a synthetic, though not always linear, account of Athenian wars against the Persians and Sparta was provided by one of the most widely circulating ancient works (with over 250 manuscripts still extant), namely the Historiae adversus paganos.10 However, when Paulus Orosius retells fifth-​century bce history, he barely mentions Athenian institutions apart from a few quick references to the fact that the Romans imitated Solon’s laws (ii.13), to the transformation of the constitution into an oligarchy in 411 bce (ii.16) and to the violent rule of the Thirty Tyrants in 404 bce (ii.7). Even Solon is never mentioned apart from this single reference, not a single word is said about Peisistratus’ tyranny, and Pericles is presented only as a famous general (I.21).11 8 9 10 11

Hansen (2005b), 7. On ancient poleis in Byzantine political thought: Irmscher (1982); on democracy in Jewish political thought: Melamed (1993). All information about the diffusion of manuscripts comes from Guenée (1980). Even less information could be gleaned from Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae v.29.16-​23.

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A little more could be found in the Epitome that Marcus Junianius Justinus (Justin) had produced between the third and fourth centuries ce on the basis of the (now lost) Histories by Pompeus Trogus. Athenian history is told there very succinctly, but in this case the fundamental elements are present. From Justin a Medieval reader could learn that the Athenians were an autochthonous population from Attica (2.6); that at first there were a succession of monarchs, but that, after King Codrus’ death, the city was governed by magistrates on a yearly basis and that the city was eventually granted written laws thanks to the wise Solon, who succeeded in reaching an agreement between the richer citizens and the commoners (2.7). Sometime later, a victorious Athenian general, Peisistratus, managed to install himself as a tyrant for thirty-​three years with the support of the mass (2.8). After Peisistratus’s death, his sons were expelled and one of them persuaded the Persian king to wage war against his own city, but, despite being outnumbered, Athenians triumphed both over King Darius and his son Xerxes, thanks also to the help of Sparta (2.9–​14). Once their common enemy was defeated, Athenians and Spartans became rivals (2.15) to the extent that a dire war broke out (3. 6–​7; 4. 3–​5; 5.1–​7). In the course of this long conflict, a young Athenian general, Alcibiades, persuaded his compatriots to change their form of government into an aristocracy (5.3). The Athenians were defeated all the same, and the Spartans established a regime of thirty oligarchs which very soon became a tyranny (5.8). The Thirty Tyrants were rapidly chased out of the city and the liberator of Athens, Thrasybulus, put forward a motion of amnesty towards those who had supported the previous regime (5.9–​10). Consequently, democracy was brought back to Athens and it lasted until the conquest of the whole of Greece by Macedonia. Justin’s text is worthy of note because it challenges a scholarly commonplace: namely the idea that the resurgence of interest in classical Greece was the mechanic and inevitable result of the re-​appearance of manuscripts which had been buried in libraries, together with the circulation of new translations. Conversely, the Epitome offers proof that at least some basic information had always been in circulation and that it was rather Medieval readers who –​with a few exceptions, like John of Salisbury’s Polycraticus (1120–​1180) or Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Maius (1184/​94–​1264) –​had scarce interest in it. In short, what was lacking during the Middle Ages was primarily a practical incentive to deepen the already available knowledge.12

12

Testimonies on democracy from the Roman historians were important too –​an aspect completely overlooked by Hansen (2005b), who, alongside Plato, Aristotle and Polybius,

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62 Pedullà Take the case of the greatest thirteenth-​century Italian political treatise (but written in French): Li livre du tresor by the Florentine notary Brunetto Latini (ca. 1220/​30–​1294), also famous as Dante Alighieri’s teacher. In Latini’s encyclopedic account, Athens is, to say the least, a rather uncertain presence (starting with its being located in Macedonia: i.123). After readers are told that Solon set out Athenian laws, which were then also adopted by the Romans (i.17), the whole of Greek history is reduced to a succession of kings jumping from Agamemnon to Philip ii of Macedonia (i.28); the only characters belonging to Athens’ democratic season who are mentioned are two “princes”: “prince” Pericles, recalled for his sexual continence (ii.75) and “prince” Themistocles, mentioned for a famous remark about how, when it comes to choosing a son-​ in-​law, preference should be given to the man himself rather than to his patrimony (ii.95); an incomprehensible reference is made to the Athenians’ defeat by Sparta and to the Thirty Tyrants, who had been received, at first, with a broad consensus for condemning without trial all “disloyal citizens,” but very soon had begun to strike indifferently at the good and bad citizens. Hence the cautionary note: “To the Patres Conscriptes, beware of what you do, for often we do things with a good intention, which end up causing damage” (iii.35). Such confusion is not surprising if one considers that contemporary works such as Li faits de li Romains or, later, the Romuleo by Benvenuto of Imola (who died in 1387/​88) show that thirteenth-​and fourteenth-​century authors had analogous difficulties reconstructing a chronologically coherent account of Roman history as well. Thus, more than anything, the Tresor shows how little interest there was in Athens at the time. Mainly thanks to Cicero’s De officiis, some names and anecdotes were known, but the general context in which Athenian leaders had acted remained mysterious.13 As Quentin Skinner has rightly demonstrated, an ideology of self-​government (if not yet a republican ideology) emerged in Italian communes well before Greek political models were known in the West, and without their initial contribution.14 For Western elites to get interested in Attic democracy, it was therefore necessary that they first find a good reason to do so. The great occasion presented itself at the end of the thirteenth century with Aristotle’s reappearance in

13 14

adds only Plutarch as a source of relevant information before the nineteenth century (pp. 7–​9). Viroli (1992) 11 wrongly backdates this phenomenon: “It is only in the thirteenth century that the scattered ruins of the Athenian and Roman wisdom were elaborated to form a coherent and shared language of politics.” Skinner (1978). However, Skinner is wrong when he downplays the relevance of Aristotle for the humanists.

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Europe. For most of the Middle Ages Aristotle’s thought had been known in a very partial way, solely thanks to the translations of his writings on logic and on the theory of argumentation made by Boethius in the sixth century ce. But, apart from these exceptions, only in the second half of the twelfth century did his oeuvre begin to be systematically reintroduced in the West together with the precious Arab commentaries. As a result of the efforts of numerous scholars, within a hundred years the Aristotelian corpus was finally made available in its entirety, causing a true upheaval in all fields of knowledge –​from logic to metaphysics, from physics to biology, from theology to astronomy. Ethics and political theory were obviously no exception. The Nicomachean Ethics was translated around 1250 by the Bishop of Lincoln Robert Grosseteste (1175–​1253), whereas some ten to fifteen years later it was the Politics’ turn, rendered in Latin by the Archbishop of Corinth William of Moerbecke (1215–​1286). It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this event, and scholars have long spoken of a true “Aristotelian revolution.”15 Indeed, Aristotle taught scholastic philosophers to consider politics not as a necessary instrument to rule the men after Adam’s original sin (according to Augustine’s lesson), but the result of a natural push towards social life; he offered a new conception of vices (no longer as the absence of a given virtue, but as an imbalance due to excess or deficiency); and he replaced the traditional opposition between good princes and bad princes with a more articulated analysis of political systems, now classified according to the number of those who rule and their virtuous or corrupt goals (that is the common good or the private interest). Moreover, in Aristotle’s vision there was not a single best form of government, as the efficacy of a constitutions depended to a great extent on its suitability for a given kind of citizenry –​only certain populations, with particular characteristics, being appropriate for self-​rule. The assimilation of Aristotle also implied a great effort to offer an equivalent to Greek constitutional vocabulary from Nicomachean Ethics viii.10 and Politics.16 In this process Robert Grosseteste and William of Moerbecke came to similar conclusions, by opting for a full set of neologisms –​among which the word democratia for bad popular rule. While this six-​fold model rapidly became the standard way of classifying political forms, the words to refer to 15

16

Ullmann (1961), 231–​43. Recent attempts to downplay Aristotle’s role, like Nederman (1991), are not persuasive. In general, on the Politics’ Medieval reception: Fioravanti (1981), Dunbabin (1982); Füller (1992); Fioravanti (1997); Fioravanti (1999); Lambertini (1999); aavv (2002). On political Aristotelianism in Byzantium: Kaldellis (2010). Bereschi (2016). On democratia as bad popular rule in the Medieval Aristotelian tradition: Toste (2018). On imperfect governments in general: Nederman (2004).

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64 Pedullà them continued to shift for some time. For instance, whereas the majority of the Scholastic philosophers simply reused Robert Grosseteste’s and William of Moerbecke’s lexicon, Dante Alighieri (1265–​1321) opted for a slightly different terminology in De monarchia i.12.9, and so did the jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1314–​57) in his De regimine civitatis. table 2.1 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Middle Ages

Good constitutions

Monarchìa (One) Aristokratìa (Few)

Politìa (Many)

Robert Grosseteste William of Moerbecke Dante Alighieri

basileia regia potestas reges

aristocratia aristocratia aristocratici/​ optimates aristocratia/​regimen maiorentium

politia/​timocratia politia zelatores populi libertatis politia/​per populum/​ regimen ad populum

Bartolus of Sassoferrato regnum

Bad constitutions

Tyrannis (One)

Oligarchìa (Few)

Demokratìa (Many)

Robert Grosseteste William of Moerbecke Dante Alighieri Bartolus of Sassoferrato

tyrannia tyrannia tyramnides tyrannides

oligarchia oligarchia oligarchiae oligarchia

democratia democratia democratiae democratiae/​ populum perversum

Starting with the new morphology of constitutional forms, in his writings Aristotle provided a series of very malleable concepts, potentially useful for the analysis of contemporary politics too. However, it was not easy to interpret them because he built his arguments on a great number of examples from Greek history, with constant allusions to historical figures and events which no one had ever heard of for centuries. Even more importantly, the political institutions to which Aristotle referred were rather distant from medieval thinkers’ everyday experience, as scholastic philosophers were accustomed to a feudal world where –​under the two universal powers of the Pope and the Emperor –​ kingdoms and duchies prospered. The universe of the Politics was completely different, as most of the case-​studies came from small city-​states like Athens and Sparta, about whose institutions little was known. Nevertheless, Greek poleis were more or less reminiscent of the Italian communes, which had long been laying claim to de facto autonomy from the pope and the emperor. To get

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an idea of just how difficult it was for his first readers to orient themselves in Aristotle’s descriptions, suffice to consider the following: that in the De regimine principium –​which had been circulating under the presumed authorship of Thomas Aquinas (1225–​1274) but was actually written mostly by Ptolemy of Lucca (1236–​1326) –​reference to democratic Athens self-​governing and electing its own magistrates in all freedom appears no less than four times (ii.9; iv.1; iv.7; iv.16). Nothing could be taken for granted. Even if it was not easy to disentangle the dense forest of information (in the Politics no less than 270 historical examples and 60 different poleis are mentioned), Aristotle’s prestige made this exercise inevitable. Some of the greatest thinkers of the time, such as the German Albert the Great (1193–​1280), his disciple Thomas Aquinas, Peter of Auvergne (ca. 1240–​1304), and later Nicole Oresme (1323–​1382), invested therefore considerable energy in commenting on this difficult work. There were essentially two strategies for the interpretation of the Politics. The first one was analogy, and it consisted in trying to find in the contemporary world the greatest number of viable equivalents to explain Aristotle’s examples. In this respect, authors coming from central-​northern Italy and Germany had more familiarity with self-​rule than French and English ones, so they had a clear advantage over the latter. Albert the Great, for instance, elucidates the distinction into four classes of census set out in Solon’s constitution (Politics ii.12) through a comparison with communal Major and Minor Guilds (Politicorum libri, pp. 197–​98).17 And similarly, Ptolemy of Lucca writes that the regimen politicum which, in Greece, had been established in Athens, now “maxime in Italia viget,” is adopted especially in Italy (De regimine principum iv.1).18 There was however another solution. Historical sources could be checked against one other, so as to clarify the countless riddles of the Politics. That is what Ptolemy does the most, for instance when he brings in a passage by Roman military theorist  Vegetius  on the Athenians’ and Spartans’ decision to limit armies to a maximum quota of ten thousand infantry men and two thousand horsemen (iv.10); when he reports an anecdote about Demosthenes, according to which in the republics the Senate exercises the same function with the people as the guardian dogs with the flock (iv.11); and when he proposes (in the wake of Cicero) a comparison between Solon’s legendary wisdom 17

18

According to Nederman (2002), the Guilded culture of the communes was more open to the mechanical workers’ political participation than Aristotle, and this influenced the Politics’ interpretations. Against Aristotle, Albert the Great explicitly stated that democratia was even worse than tyrannis in his Super Ethica. Commentum et questiones viii.10. Cambiano (2000), 10–​11, 15–​16. The same connection is made by Albert the Great, Politicorum libri ii.9; iv.4; vi.4. On the Italian communes seen from Byzantium through Greek philosophical categories: Syros (2010).

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66 Pedullà as a legislator and Themistocles’ talent as a military leader (iv.12). However, scholastic philosophers knew very few texts that could help them in this work and were not therefore in the best position to carry out such an interpretative task, as can be seen from the many mistakes made by Thomas Aquinas, who, in one case, presents the most famous Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, as an Athenian (Sententiae in libros Politicorum ii.13). In the original works written by Aristotelian philosophers between the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, it seems that yet a third strategy prevailed. In fact, it was possible to circumvent the difficulties by simply cutting off the historical examples. For example, the De regimine principum by Giles of Rome (1234–​1316) preserves only three quick allusions to Sparta (i.1.10; i.2.26; ii.1.21) and one to Locri (iii.1.18), while Athens is represented only through Solon, who is remembered as a founding legislator along with Lycurgus (iii.2.33). And when it comes to the Defensor pacis by Marsilio of Padua (1275/​80–​1342/​43), not even those references surface: whenever Greece is mentioned, here and there, that means the Byzantine Empire, so that the only allusions to the world of the poleis are the use of the name “Alcibiades” to indicate “a certain” (i.16.17) together with a quick critique of Spartan women’s free mores (ii.17.12). All in all, the Aristotle of the Scholastics is a de-​historicized Aristotle, where there is little room for Athenian democracy. Although the meticulous accumulation of examples is clearly one of the Politics’ elements of strength, the first generation of commentators struggled to free Aristotelian concepts from the continuous references to historical facts which risked making the text incomprehensible. The price to pay in order to welcome Aristotle’s political theory in the West, was therefore to eliminate from the text all the elements which could seem too Greek –​even at the cost of rendering the argumentation extremely abstract. Thus, when a commentator felt the need to offer his readers some concrete references, he preferred to draw some akin anecdotes from Cicero, Sallust, or Valerius Maximus. This attitude lasted longer than one would think. Still in the mid-​fifteenth century, in a very different intellectual climate,  when Hellenic culture was at that point very present, there is evidence of the same belief that the Politics would only gain from a rewriting that would free it from the heaviness of too many references to Greek history. And this is precisely what Venetian humanist Lauro Quirini (1420–​1481) did around 1450, by adapting Aristotle’s treatise for the Doge Francesco Foscari: “It seemed to me that the work that he had composed on the State could easily tolerate a cut,” because, “when he discusses political issues, he brings almost innumerable examples totally unknown to men of our age” (De republica, p. 123).

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If still in 1450 Quirini was experiencing such difficulty, we can assume that reading the Politics more than a hundred and fifty years earlier must have been, more than a trial, a cultural shock, and that simply getting rid of Aristotle’s exemplification with a cut was by far the easiest way to approach his text. True enough, even if the Politics contributed to set in circulation a great deal of information about Athenian democracy (with no comparison with what had been known until then), the main concern of the first interpreters was to bring out only the general concepts, while the historical anecdotes were seen as an unsurmountable obstacle. Contrary to what has often been claimed as yet, even if the word democratia first entered into Latin with Robert Grosseteste’s and Willam of Moerbecke’s translations, it was thus not thanks to Aristotle that Athenian history and institutions could become an important reference for Italian reflection on associative life. 2

Francesco Petrarca: the Men, Not the Institutions

Justin’s Epitome is one of the ancient historical texts which survived in the greatest number of exemplars: over 200 medieval manuscripts, just after Valerius Maximus (over 420)  and the aforementioned Orosius. What is special about Justin, however, is that 80% of all these manuscripts were transcribed in Italy during the fifteenth century. Clearly, if a work which was little read for centuries suddenly becomes so sought-​after at a precise moment and in a precise geographical area, something must have happened to explain such an abrupt and widespread interest in Greek history. To put it briefly, this something can be indicated with a single word: humanism. For some time now, following Ronald G. Witt, scholars have been ever more inclined to consider Padua as the place, and the end of the thirteenth century as the time, for the emergence of a new attitude towards the classical world.19 Thanks to authors like Lovato Lovati (1240–​1281) and Albertino Mussato (1261–​ 1329), Paduan men of letters became more and more aware of how their own use of Latin was distant from that of the Ancients and started looking for ways to render their own prose and verses closer to those respected models. Over the long term, however, the consequences of this original approach would not be limited to a merely stylistic improvement but were to lead, amongst other things, to a renewed curiosity for pagan history –​including Greece. The

19

Witt (2001). On the complementary role of Veronese antiquarians: Weiss (1947); Rundle (2002).

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68 Pedullà re-​emergence of Attic democracy, which failed to happen thanks to Aristotle, was then to blossom thanks to Cicero. In the following decades, the classicist ideals spread to the rest of Italy and found their greatest promotor in Francesco Petrarca (= Petrarch, 1304–​1374). Not surprisingly, the author of the Canzoniere and the Triumphs is also a key figure when it comes to the reception of Athenian democracy. Before him, the attitude towards ancient Greece was, to say the least, schizophrenic. On the one hand, its cultural heritage was greatly revered not only with respect to authors already available in translation like Aristotle, but also to more mysterious figures like Homer and the tragedians (only known through the laudatory judgements of Latin writers). On the other hand, generally speaking there was no interest in Greek political history, with the only exception of Alexander the Great, whose achievements had never lost their popularity throughout the Middle Ages. Petrarch on the contrary, from the start of his career gambled on the relevance of Greek history, probably influenced by an ancient text which –​just like Justin –​was experiencing unprecedented success in the same first decades of the fourteenth century: the De dictis factisque memorabilibus by Valerius Maximus.20 This explosion is even more impressive if one compares its sudden spread to the diffusion of another ancient historical work widely transcribed during the Middle Ages, Paulus Orosius’ Historia adversus paganos. table 2.2 Humanism and the Rise of Valerius Maximus

AUTHOR Paulus Orosius Valerius Maximus

vi.

vii.

viii. ix.

x.

xi.

xii.

xiii. xiv.

xv.

1

2

9

18

13

26

47

28

28

64

0

0

0

2

0

1

6

14

113

283

In nine books, Valerius Maximus had gathered an impressive amount of historical anecdotes not neglecting any aspect of vita activa (anger, cruelty, bravery, fidelity, gratitude, friendship, parental love, etc.). More important for Petrarch’s interest in Greek history was the not secondary detail that each

20

On Valerius Maximus’ success, see Cherchi (2002); on fifteenth-​century commentaries see Crab (2015).

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thematic section was itself divided into two parts: the first collecting exempla from Roman history, and the second dealing with the deeds and the sayings of eminent men from other countries. Following this organization, Valerius Maximus’ work ends up offering a catalogue of virtuous and dissolute lives, caught in their most exemplary moments. And, as a result, the De dictis gives the readers a discontinuous history in two different meanings –​because both heroes and villains are isolated from their context and stand alone in their moral prominence or abjection, but also because their existences are always summarized in a couple of gestures or maxims, so that in the end they look like marble statues rather than historical characters.21 Like many of his contemporaries, Petrarch fell in love with Valerius Maximus, who –​in turn –​nourished his interest in Greek history. This is probably the single most difficult point for modern scholars to accept, as for them talking about Attic democracy means above all studying a particular form of government: its various magistracies (each one with its own competences and powers), its decision-​making practices, its election and sortation procedures, its age and census classes (also in relation to the city’s military organization), its territorial divisions, and so on. For Petrarch and his followers, on the contrary, democratic men came first. So that one can say that Athenian democracy’s reappearance in the Western political imagination passed through Valerius Maximus’s pantheon of viri illustres more than anything. The primacy of men over institutions did not happen by chance, given that humanists dreamed of transforming the present through a constant dialogue with the past and the imitation of Greek and Roman virtues. It is not surprising, then, that the most popular anecdote of Athenian history during the fifteenth century concerns young Themistocles’ moral conversion once he was caught by the desire to follow Miltiades’ glorious path.22 In retelling it, Petrarch (Familiares vi.4.10; xxi.12.15; xxi.12.33), Quirini (De republica, p. 159), Francesco Filelfo (Satyrae i.6), Bartolomeo Platina (De principe, p. 155), Francesco Patrizi of Siena (De institutione reipublicae iv.1), and Cristoforo Landino (Proemio alla Sforziada, p. 187) were presumably evoking the archetype of the very same process of replication of the great men’s deeds that they themselves wanted to inspire with their writings. In his early (and unfinished) Rerum memorandarum libri (1343–​45), Petrarch starts from there. If, already in the past, authors like John of Salisbury and Vincent of Beauvais had occasionally made use of Valerius Maximus for information about

21 22

On Valerius Maximus in figurative arts, see Guerrini (1985); Donato (1985). See Valerius Maximus, De dictis 8.14.ext.1 and Cicero, Tusculanae 4.19.

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70 Pedullà the Greek world, in this case the De dictis provides the structural model of the Rerum memorandarum as well. Indeed Petrarch does not merely pillage the catalogue of virtues and vices drawn out by the Roman historian, but plans to write an updated version in which the civic virtues of the pagans are (at least in part) re-​interpreted in light of the Christian doctrine and the bipartition “Romans”/​“Externals” is substituted by a tripartition “Romans”/​“Externals”/​“Moderns.” There are a number of causes for Petrarch’s interest in Athens, among which, at least, a clear fascination for the exotic and the novel, a certain degree of cultural exhibitionism, and, more than anything, the desire to re-​appropriate Latin antiquity completely should be mentioned. Recovering the Greek culture was for Petrarch ultimately an attempt to place himself, also from this perspective, at the level of his beloved Roman models. If Cicero and the other authors cherished by Petrarch had revered Greece as the cradle of culture, in his view anyone wishing to renew the bonds with the Romans had to show the same respect (De natura deorum 3.82; De legibus 2.36; Brutus 26, 39, 50, 332; De oratore 1.13). And, in the specific case of the Rerum memorandarum libri, this meant that the only way to follow Valerius Maximus’ model was to include the Athenian and Spartan figures as well. Petrarch was therefore interested precisely in that which, for the scholastics, had been the easiest to sacrifice from Aristotle’s Politics: the particular examples and the individual stories, the men and their customs, the mores rather than the leges. This was a decisive change. If, all in all, the viri illustres from Athens’ democratic age are not so numerous in Petrarch’s writings, almost all the main figures appear, giving the reader the sense of an unprecedented intimacy with that unfamiliar world. Hence, in his three most ambitious Latin works (Familiares, Seniles, and De remediis utriusque fortunae), Solon appears more than twenty times, Themistocles eighteen, Alcibiades, thirteen, both Miltiades and Pericles, six, Aristides and Theramenes, four, followed by a small cluster of minor characters. And this ranking will be confirmed by the frescoes and the paintings, where Solon is one of the few Athenians often portrayed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Given the length of the three works, these could seem small numbers, but there is no doubt that the full re-​emergence of the homo democraticus in the West and, more in general, the birth of the “multiplicity of the tradition” (as Karlheinz Stierle effectively called it) are tied to Petrarch more than anybody else, and had important effects on the iconographic tradition, too, through the many visual representation of his Triumphi.23 A comparison with Dante can be especially useful. At one end, we have the Commedia, where the Greek 23

Stierle (2003). Petrarch’s attitude to Greek history was left out of the most recent attempt to account for his relation to the Greek world: Mazzucchi and Fera (2002–​03).

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world is only present through its mythology and cultural tradition and Athens is evoked only once, along with Sparta, as an example of good rule, in a harsh attack against Florence (Purgatory vi.139–​44). Atene e Lacedemona, che fenno l’antiche leggi e furon sì civili, fecero al viver bene un picciol cenno verso di te, che fai tanto sottili provedimenti, ch’a mezzo novembre non giugne quel che tu d’ottobre fili. Compared to you, Athens and Lacedaemon, though civil cities, with their ancient laws, had merely sketched the life of righteousness; for you devise provisions so ingenious –​ whatever threads October sees you spin, when mid-​November comes, will be unspun. (translated by allen mandelbaum)

It is clear that, once he had established a parallel between Florence and the ancient poleis, Dante has no further interest in the details of Athenian history. And this is also the reason why the only Athenian democratic leader who gets a quick mention is Solon (Paradise viii.124), but, even then, significantly, more as one of the legendary Seven Sages than as a politician (following in Thomas Aquinas’ and Ptolemy of Lucca’s line).24 On the other end, a generation later, there are the Triumphs. Here, the atmosphere is completely different, for Petrarch fully relishes the opportunity to parade his unparalleled knowledge of Greek history.25 Thus, in the catalogue of the “egregious foreigners” (that is, in Valerius Maximus’ partition, the “Externals”), most of the second section of the Triumph of Fame (ii.25–​39) is devoted to the Athenians: 24

25

According to the commentators, the contrast between Solon and Xerxes would point at the different functions great men serve in a community: the military leader and the legislator. Still, given the Persian king’s bad reputation, one might wonder if Solon and Xerxes represent rather the wise man and the fool (an interpretation that could be supported by the fact that a few verses later Jacob and Esau appear, and Esau, who gave up his birth right for a plate of lentils, was a famous symbol of dullness). Still in the mid-​fifteenth century, the heavenly voyage narrated by Enea Silvio Piccolomini in his Dialogus de somnio quodam will not display a greater number of ancient Greek figures than Dante’s Commedia.

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72 Pedullà et Alcibiade, che sì spesso Atena come fu suo piacer volse e rivolse con dolce lingua e con fronte serena; Milziade che ’l gran gioco a Grecia tolse, e ’l buon figliuol che con pietà perfetta legò sé vivo e ’l padre morto sciolse; Teseo, Temistoclès con questa setta, Aristidès che fu un greco Fabrizio: a tutti fu crudelmente interdetta la patria sepoltura, e l’altrui vizio illustra lor, ché nulla meglio scopre contrari due com’ piccolo interstizio. Focïon va con questi tre di sopre, che di sua terra fu scacciato morto; molto diverso il guidardon da l’opre! And Alcibiades, who so many times Turned Athens back and forth, to suit his will, By his fair face and by his honeyed words; Miltiades, who took the yoke from Greece, With his good son, who, loving perfectly, Binding himself, set his dead father free; Themistocles and Theseus with this group, And Aristides –​like to our Fabricius –​ To whom Athenian burial was denied, Their excellence illumined by the vice Of others: nought so well contrasts two acts As brevity of intervening time; Phocion, banished even in his death, Was of the company of these three men –​ Far different from his deeds was his reward! (translated by peter sadlon)

Just few decades after Brunetto Latini and Dante, Petrarch offers a much richer picture. In no more than fifteen lines, the majority of Athenian history’s leading figures parade in front of the reader. Cleisthenes and Pericles are still missing, but their absence is not surprising, given Petrarch’s sources and, even more important, the fact that he is not trying to retrace the whole history of Greek democracy but just to offer some notable examples of fame. Indeed, the virtues of the great men portrayed in the Triumphs are completely disconnected

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from the political system in which they rose –​to the point that Petrarch has no problem including in his catalogue a mythological king (Theseus) and even an open enemy of popular rule (Phocion) with no contradiction. For Petrarch, in fact, political life is merely the stage where the great men’s qualities, which originate in individual morality alone, can publicly shine and obtain the recognition they deserve. Taken out of context (and especially out of the conflicts), virtuous politicians resemble philosophers a lot –​as is clear in the case of Solon, whom Petrarch introduces not amongst men of action but thinking men (Triumph of Fame iii.36–​38). Vidi Solon, di cui fu l’util pianta che, se mal colta è, mal frutto produce, cogli altri sei di che Grecia si vanta. Solon I saw, who nursed the useful plant That, if it be ill tended, bears but ill: And the six sages of whom Greece is proud. (translated by peter sadlon)

Insofar as Solon is one of the Seven Sages, it is not strange to find him in this context, although Petrarch underlines his role as a lawgiver much more than Dante does (l’util pianta, “the useful plant,” means “the laws”). Even in the Triumphs, however, Solon remains a de-​politicized legislator who, when giving Athens its institutions, did not choose amongst various possible options but merely applied a sort of timeless wisdom to the city’s needs. It is not by chance, thus, that nothing is said of the contents of this legislation (Rerum memorandarum i.36; Familiares viii.10.13; xvii.1.23; xviii.8.7; xx.4.8; xxiii.5.17; xxiv.12.9). In the end Petrarch contents himself with telling that Roman decemviri took Athens as their model for the twelve tables of the law –​a clear proof of their worth (Familiares xvii.1.23). As for the rest, Solon is praised by Petrarch for being filled with an irrepressible desire for knowledge (Seniles i.5.57) and for a certain attitude which is particularly praiseworthy in a man devoted to the good of the city, such as his indifference to private wealth (Familiares vi.3.42); sometimes, he is mentioned as a symbol of industrious old age (Familiares vi.3.14; xii.7.6; xvii.8.7; xxiii.5.17; Invectiva contra quendam magni status hominem 7). And that is all. The way Solon is treated is not exceptional and does not depend merely on his double status of sage and politician, but highlights Petrarch’s special attention to some virtues. Above all, in the wake of Cicero’s De oratore, Petrarch

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74 Pedullà admires the rare synthesis of military capacities and humanistic skills of democratic leaders –​a synthesis seen as the highest result of the pedagogical model he himself was promoting at the princely courts and amongst the communal elites of northern and central Italy. The legitimisation of a political primacy that until then had been based on the juridical titles granted by the universal powers of the church and the empire or on the simple exercise of force, could be replaced, or at least flanked, by the possession of an exclusive cultural patrimony as a guarantee of one’s ability to govern. And the great Athenians embodied such a perfect balance of diverse virtues as military talent and literary and philosophic culture even more than their Roman equivalents.26 Accordingly, the divide between men of letters and men of power, which medieval society had held strictly separate, with the clerici (those who pray) on the one hand and the bellatores (those who fight) on the other, necessarily lessened. Moreover, in addition to their literary skills, according to Petrarch, Athenian leaders possessed a further trait in common with sages and philosophers: their ability to bravely suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” As a result, Solon and the others had obviously carried out memorable actions, in wartime or in peacetime, but Petrarch praises them less for their deeds than for their endurance. This is already evident from the passage of the Triumphs quoted above. Though Miltiades appears as the general who defeated the Persians (‘l gran gioco a Grecia tolse, “who took the yoke from Greece”) and Alcibiades is remembered for his extraordinary capacity to manipulate the people at will, the other Athenians are presented at the lowest point of their political life, that is when they have to face failure. Theseus, Themistocles, Aristides and Cimon were all banished into exile; Cimon (’l gran figliuolo, “the great son”) ended up in prison as ransom for the release of the body of his father Miltiades (who himself had died in jail); Phocion was even denied burial in his motherland. This pessimistic view is not just peculiar to the Triumphs given that, to mention but a few examples, in Petrarch’s works Pericles is praised for his composed reaction to the news of his son’s death (Familiares ii.1.32), Themistocles for his dignified behaviour in exile (Familiares iii.10.13), Miltiades, Aristides, and Socrates for their readiness to submit to unjust verdicts and Solon for the good will displayed in accepting his expulsion from Athens (De remediis ii.67.4), Theramenes for his noble attitude in the face of banishment (Seniles 26

The domestication of the medieval knight and his transformation into a gentleman not (only) through good manners –​as in the well-​known reconstruction by Elias (1969 [1939])  –​but through a complete education in the humanities is the core of Amedeo Quondam’s reading of Renaissance Classicism. See Quondam (2010).

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xi.12.4), etc. From time to time, and especially in the second part of the De remediis, the defeat borne by these ancient champions of virtue offers Petrarch the opportunity to demystify once and for all the illusion that good fortune is here to stay (in fact, whereas the first book of De remediis teaches how not to be deceived by good fortune, the second book reads more like a consolation, by making use of ancient and contemporary examples to caution the reader, and equip him against the inevitable blows of misfortune). Generally, though, Petrarch does not put a particular emphasis on the woes of vita activa. At most, pagan heroes of endurance have in his eyes the merit of offering models of behaviour deemed worthy also from a Christian perspective. To counter the traditional suspicions towards classical culture, putting forward the capacity for forbearance was then for Petrarch also a means to pre-​empt potential criticism whilst consolidating his own project of integral recovery of the ancient world. Petrarch was maybe interested in emphasising the injustice of those condemnations for another reason  –​this time a more explicitly political one. Whether in times of war or peace, Theseus, Solon, Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, and Cimon all carried out great deeds, and yet, Athenian people rapidly forgot their merits and, at the first opportunity, showed its ingratitude (just as it happened in Rome with Coriolanus and Scipio). For this reason, Petrarch’s astonishment at this treatment often exceeds even his praise for the victims’ strength of character (for Themistocles see Familiares iv.2.7; xiii.4.18; De remediis i.23). Many of these stories had been collected by Valerius Maximus (De dictis 5.3) and Petrarch draws explicitly on him in the De remediis (i.94), where a whole chapter is devoted to the people’s ingratitude and its characteristic capriciousness (the same accusation will turn up also in De remediis ii.124). In these pages Petrarch’s scepticism about self-​governing communities emerges very clearly. Thus, as paradoxical as it may seem, in his writings Athenian democratic leaders are mostly evoked in order to put forward arguments against the rule of the people –​a very clear political stance, and all the more so in a period when the communes were everywhere under attack from ambitious and powerful citizens willing to become lords of their cities.27 Petrarch’s little sympathy for popular government clearly appears from his early Rerum memorandarum, where a democratic leader like Pericles is depicted in very dark tones. Valerius Maximus (De dictis 8.9 ext.2) had already approached his oratorical abilities to those of the Peisistratus, writing that

27

On Petrarch’s relationships with the Italian tyrants:  Manselli (1976); Ferraù (2006a); Varanini (2006); Fenzi (2006); Marcozzi (2011); Fenzi (2016a); Fenzi (2016b).

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76 Pedullà the latter “upheld his tyranny by the force of arms,” whereas Pericles did not need to, but Petrarch ends up describing Pericles even as “a second Peisistratus”  –​a dangerous manipulator who, if at all, proved to be more astute than the tyrant who had violently put his hand on freedom (Rerum memorandarum iv.13); to get the same results, all Pericles needed was in fact his oratorical art so that “whilst harming the people, he seemed to speak to them as a friend” (Rerum memorandarum ii.35; see also De vita solitaria ii.10.3). This last mention of Pericles harming the people with the people’s consent is not present in the ancient sources and is a very telling addition, as Petrarch knew Cicero’s De oratore (iii.34.138), where it was explicitly said that –​in the interest of the community –​Pericles was able to persuade his fellow-​citizens of doing even what they did not want to do. As a result of this malevolent interpretation, Pericles looks like the many illegitimate lords who in those very same years pretended to act in the interest of their cities but, actually, were imposing themselves throughout the peninsula with violence and deception. For Petrarch, in other words, whoever tries to please the commoners is necessarily a masked tyrant. A bit paradoxically, then, Athenian history emerged as a relevant topic in Western Europe thanks to a humanist very sceptical of, if not downright hostile to, any kind of popular rule. Nevertheless, given that Petrarch was first and foremost interested in individuals and only secondarily in forms of government, his coldness towards democratic institutions, along with his repeated condemnation of the ineptitude of the masses, did not affect his admiration for Athenian leaders (with the exception of Pericles). In Petrarch’s vision, sovereigns, dukes, and republican magistrates had much to learn from democratic figures like Themistocles or Cimon –​perhaps starting off with their admirable capacity to endure the ingratitude and self-​destructive impulses of the common people. In its very ambiguity, such an approach was to be decisive for the Athenian leaders’ recovery. Precisely because the imitation of the ancients deals with individual virtues, for Petrarch it can be sought for at every latitude and independently from the kind of government adopted in a given country  –​and fifteenth-​century humanists would not forget this lesson. Thus, just as a republican leader like Scipio the African would become the principal model for the heir to the throne of Naples in Giovanni Pontano’s De Principe, it won’t be strange to find Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles mentioned with praise in Francesco Patrizi’s De regno, nor that Cimon and Aristides will be evoked respectively as supreme examples of hospitality and justice in Filippo Beroaldo the Elder’s De optimo statu et de principe.

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With the notable exception of Paul Oskar Kristeller,28 in analysing early-​ modern political thought, most of twentieth-​century specialists insisted primarily on the contrast between antagonistic constitutional models, thereby projecting on the Renaissance an approach which would become common only much later, in the eighteenth century. In order to properly appreciate the European success of Athenian viri illustres, it is necessary conversely to acknowledge that –​with the exception of tyranny –​the humanists tended to blur the differences between the various forms of government and insisted instead on the importance of the education (institutio) of future leaders, as much in a princely as in a republican context. Given that in their opinion the success of a state depended first and foremost on the virtues of its ruling class (or, in the case of princely regimes and kingdoms, of the prince), it was to pedagogy which all efforts had to be directed. And that is precisely the task to which fifteenth-​century humanists set themselves. It is only from this perspective that authors like Patrizi, Platina, or Filippo Beroaldo the Elder could write treatises on republics and princely governments without contradicting themselves, i.e. without these oscillations implying in any way a rejection of their previous writings. Carried out mainly by means of ancient exempla, the contents of these institutiones did not change much when addressed to a young nobleman or to a future sovereign.29 But, for the sake of the present topic, this is also the reason why, in the wake of Petrarch, Athenian democratic leaders rapidly took up significant places in European political imagination –​even in monarchic and feudal countries. A famous classicist wrote, some thirty years ago: “The German polis can only be described in a handbook of constitutional law; the French polis is a form of Holy Communion; the English polis is a historical accident; while the American polis combines the practices of a Mafia with the principles of justice and individual freedom.”30 Oswyn Murray’s characterization of “national schools” has certainly more than one element of truth, but –​in light of what has been said until now –​it ought to be expanded. Before all this, indeed, there was the Athens of Italian humanists: that is, the Athens of famous men, which would retain considerable importance in the whole of Europe at least until the end of the eighteenth century. And Petrarch was at the very origins of this strong tradition. 28 29 30

Kristeller (1965). The opposite, more conventional view was held, among others, by scholars like Hans Baron, Nicolai Rubinstein, Felix Gilbert, Eugenio Garin, Cesare Vasoli, Manlio Pastore Stocchi, John G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner, Maurizio Viroli. Hankins (1995); Hankins (1996); Pedullà (2010b); Quondam (2010); Cappelli (2016); Pedullà (2020a), 83–​87. Murray (1987), 326.

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78 Pedullà 3

In Florence: the First Humanist Wave

Despite Petrarch’s efforts to bring Greek culture to Italy, he never learned the language of Homer. Greek had never quite disappeared from western Europe during the Middle Ages,31 but it was a rudimentary language which did not provide access to the classics. After a number of ill-​fated attempts in which both Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio were involved, the decisive spark was lit in Florence in February 1397, when Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (1350–​1415) was invited to teach it.32 One of Petrarch’s Florentine “disciples” had promoted the appointment –​ Coluccio Salutati (1331–​1406) who, from his influential position as chancellor of the republic, in those very same years had brought together a small circle of intellectuals who were to play major roles in the history of Humanism. Salutati was too old to learn Greek,33 but Chrysoloras was a great teacher and a charismatic presence. With the younger generation, he achieved extraordinary results both in Florence, where he stayed for three years, and in Milan and Pavia (for another three years). And his students Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Guarino Veronese, Ambrogio Traversari, Palla Strozzi, Pietro Paolo Vergerio, and Uberto Decembrio constituted the first nucleus of western humanists capable of reading Greek classics in the original.34 From the perspective of the rediscovery of Athenian democracy, Chrysoloras’ intellectual interests are very significant. While Petrarch and Boccaccio had been obsessed with the ghosts of Homer and Greek tragedians, the Byzantine scholar directed his disciples especially towards the historians, the philosophers, and the orators.35 Moreover, besides becoming themselves teachers of Greek, many of Chrysoloras’ students set themselves to the laborious task of translation, focusing on the authors who were dearest to their master. The humanists were dissatisfied with the medieval versions of Aristotle because of the many errors and the poor literary quality of the Latin prose. Thus, one of Bruni’s first undertakings as a translator, was a Latin rendering of Aristotle’s political and ethical writings –​the Nicomachean Ethics (1417), the 31 32 33

34 35

Berschin (1988). Coccia (2010). For a general overview, see Cortesi (1995). Athens and its democratic tradition never figure in Salutati’s writing, and this can be considered a confirmation of his conservative and “medievalising” culture (even compared to Petrarch), as is shown by Witt (1983). On the out-​datedness of Salutati’s works already for the generation immediately after him, see Dionisotti (1958), 262. On the return of Greek to the West, see Hankins (2001); Ciccolella and Speranzi (2010). On the way the first humanists promoted their classicizing movement see Revest (2013). In general, on Greek studies in fifteenth-​century Italy see Wilson (1992). Hankins (2002–​03). - 978-90-04-44300-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 01:34:07AM via University of Exeter

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Economics, which today is considered spurious (1421), and finally the Politics (1439) –​which would be more reliable and more elegant.36 At the same time, many important works were still awaiting a first translation. Ambrogio Traversari, then, put into circulation a Latin version of Diogenes Laertius’ Life of the Philosophers (1433), relevant here for the information about Solon’s political activity.37 The most difficult task was clearly the rendering of Plato: after a partial attempt by Chrysoloras’ Florentine pupils, the first five books of the Republic were translated by Uberto Decembrio, but the whole work was completed by Pier Candido Decembrio, Uberto’s son, only in 1439.38 And there were the historians –​Plutarch at the head of them. His Lives, crucial for the history of Athenian democracy, appeared in Latin over three successive waves of translation, by a number of different humanists: between 1412 and 1418 (Demosthenes, Phocion, Aristides, Cimon, and Themistocles between), between 1435 and 1437 (Solon, Theseus, and Pericles), and between 1455 and 1456 (Nicias and Alcibiades).39 Bruni also worked on Xenophon’s Hellenica, producing in 1439 a free adaption (abridged by about one third from the original) entitled Commentaria rerum Graecarum. table 2.3 Latin Translations of Major Greek Sources on Athenian Democracy (1402–1483)

GREEK TEXT

LATIN TRANSLATIONS

Plato, Republic

Manuel Chysoloras-​Uberto Florence 1484-​85 Decembrio 1402 (partial); P.C. Decembrio 1439, A. Cassarino 1440, M. Ficino 1463-83* Leonardo Bruni 1409*; Marsilio Bologna 1475 ca. Ficino 1463-​83

Plato, Gorgias

36 37

38 39

FIRST LATIN PRINTED EDITION

For a comparison of the different versions of the Politics:  Curnis (2010); Schütrumpf (2014). On Bruni’s theory of translation: Baldassarri (2003); Botley (2004). The first edition was printed in 1469. Gigante (1988); Dorandi (2009), 201–​228. It is thanks to Traversari that the Excellentium imperatorum vitae by Cornelius Nepos was rediscovered in 1434, which had been practically unknown till then. The book is relevant for Athenian democracy’s history because one finds there Miltiades’, Themistocles’, Aristides’, Cimon’s, Alcibiades’, Thrasybulus’, Conon’s, and Phocion’s biographies, and it shows a judgement of popular attitude in political life more positive than in the majority of ancient sources. The book was first printed in Venice in 1471, and enjoyed an extraordinary success during the Renaissance. Hankins (1990). Giustiniani (1961); Pade (2007); Volpe Cacciatore (2009). - 978-90-04-44300-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 01:34:07AM via University of Exeter

80 Pedullà table 2.3 Latin Translations of Major Greek Sources on Athenian Democracy (1402–1483) (cont.)

GREEK TEXT

LATIN TRANSLATIONS

FIRST LATIN PRINTED EDITION

Plutarch, Demosthenes Plutarch, Aristides Plutarch, Cimon Plutarch, Phocio

Leonardo Bruni 1412

Rome 1470

Francesco Barbaro 1416 Leonardo Giustinian 1416 Anon. 1416-​18; Leonardo Giustinian 1432* Guarino Guarini 1417; Lapo of Castiglionchio 1436* Ambrogio Traversari 1433

Rome 1470 Rome 1470 Rome 1470

Lapo of Castiglionchio 1435 Lapo of Castiglionchio 1436; A. Pacini 1437* Lapo of Castiglionchio 1437 Lorenzo Valla 1452

Rome 1470 Rome 1470

Plutarch, Themistocles Diogenes Laertius, Solon Plutarch, Solon Plutarch, Theseus

Rome 1470 Rome 1472

Plutarch, Pericles Thucydides, History of Peloponnesian War Diodorus, Histories Iacopo of Santo Cassiano 1453 xi-​x iii Herodotus, Histories Matteo Palmieri 14??; Lorenzo Valla 1455* Plato, Laws Georg of Trebizond 1455; Marsilio Ficino 1463-​83* Plutarch, Nicias Alamanno Rinuccini 1455

Rome 1470 Treviso 1483

Plutarch, Alcibiades

Rome 1470a

Antonio Beccaria pre-​1456; Donato Acciaiuoli 1459*

Venice 1474 Florence 1484-​85 Rome 1470

a  In case of multiple translations, the symbol * indicates which one has been chosen by Antonio Campano for the print edition. Starting with the 1487 print Pacini’s version of the Life of Theseus was substituted with Lapo da Castiglionchio’s. An early, but still unpublished, free translation of Herodotus by Matteo Palmieri survives in three manuscripts: see Pagliaroli (2006).

Thanks to Chrysoloras’ disciples, in about twenty years, there was a surprising outpouring of texts full of information about Athens, its history, and its institutions. In such conditions, one could expect a rapid insertion of Athenian

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democracy into humanist political theory. Looking at things closely, still, one realises that actually Athens (and generally speaking Greek poleis) seems even less present in Salutati’s circle than they were in Petrarch. For Chrysoloras’ students, knowledge of Greek was ultimately a means for improving their Latin,40 and something similar seems to have been the case for Greek history, which remained clearly peripheral compared to Rome. The stages of translation of Plutarch’s works are very significant in this respect, all the first biographies rendered into Latin being those of Roman great men. With the telling exception of Alexander the Great, before 1412, when Bruni turned his attention to Demosthenes’ biography, not a single Greek life was translated –​a clear sign of the young humanists’ priorities. Contrary to what is generally asserted, first-​hand research shows that the place of Athenian democracy and its “famous man” in early fifteenth-​century political and ethical writings is rather limited.41 This should not be a surprise, though. Throughout Italy, descending from the Romans was a particular point of pride, but in Florence this feeling was especially strong because of the legendary founding of the city by Sulla, or, according to other versions, by Cesar. Rome was considered the highest model of civic virtues and the embodiment of earthly success, and stressing the symbolic relations with such an ancestor had always played a precise function of ennoblement, so that for many humanists there was no particular reason to turn to the exotic (and less successful) Athens. But there was also another reason not to exaggerate with “external” examples (to use Valerius Maximus’ and Petrarch’s lexicon). If Athenian popular leaders incarnated the same virtues which could be learnt from their Roman counterparts, then, for highly pedagogical reasons, it would be preferable to insist on the more well-​known figures instead of confusing students and common readers by multiplying the models of prudence, liberality, or endurance without necessity.42 We are thus very far from the widespread idea that Florentines should have spontaneously recognised themselves in Attic democracy.43

40 41 42 43

Hankins (2002–​03). Out of Florence, though of little interest, one can mention the few references to Athens in Lorenzo Valla’s De vero falsoque bono. The reluctance to discuss Greek history is even stronger in the humanists who wrote in vernacular, addressing a wider and less-​cultured readership, such as Matteo Palmieri (Vita civile) and Giovanni Cavalcanti (Trattato politico-​morale). It is not possible to subscribe to Pocock (1975): “Salutati was following the Athenian tradition” (p. 65); “A city like Florence could learn much from Athenian history” (p. 75).

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82 Pedullà Leonardo Bruni and the First Humanists Interested in Athens’ Institutions Despite what has been said so far, in the first half of the fifteenth century all the most important figures involved in the reception of Athenian democracy –​the aforementioned Bruni (from Arezzo), Poggio Bracciolini (from Terranova), and Leon Battista Alberti (the son of a Florentine exile) –​were in any case from Tuscany and, in different ways, tied to Florence. Leonardo Bruni (1370–​1444) was probably the most renowned humanist of his age.44 He was universally admired for his Ciceronian prose,45 but he also played a crucial role in the history of Renaissance republicanism through both his political writings and his history of Florence composed in imitation of Livy.46 Given that his oeuvre is pervaded by the celebration of republican heroes like Brutus, Cato, and Scipio, one could legitimately expect to find an equivalent degree of interest for their Athenian democratic counterparts. As a matter of fact, such an idea has long inspired the research on Bruni and, more in general, on “civic humanism” since The Crisis of the Early-​Renaissance (1955), where Hans Baron much emphasised the importance of the Athens model within the context of the long ideological and military struggle fought by Florence against despotic Milan in the first half of fifteenth century (at that time under the rule of the Visconti).47 Later scholarship, however, showed that things are much more complex. Undoubtedly, at least on two occasions, Bruni structured a celebration of his own town and fellow citizens by imitating Greek texts about Athens. The first of them –​the Laudatio Florentinae Urbis (1404) –​is the work to which Bruni owes his early reputation, all the more so because a generation later his writing played a significant role in the diplomatic skirmishes against Milan. The Laudatio is an encomiastic description of Florence as there had been many in the Middle Ages, but –​in contrast with the many texts written up until then –​it is rigorously structured according to the classical models, in the wake of an ana­ logous speech in praise of Athens composed by Greek sophist Aelius Aristides (second century ce).48 The second work by contrast was much less widely circulated. It is a funerary speech in honour of Nanni Strozzi, a leading mercenary condottiero, who died whilst in the service of Ferrara against the Visconti 3.1

44 45 46 47 48

For a general profile: Ianziti (2012). Witt (2001) 421–​431. For Bruni’s exceptional republican standpoint also in the Florentine context, see Pedullà (2005) xxv-​x xvi. On the limits of Bruni’s republicanism, see Hankins (2000a). Baron (1966) 191–​211. Irace (2010).

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(1427). This text is especially interesting because Bruni constructs his eulogy following the example of the famous epitaph pronounced by Pericles for the fallen during the first year of the Peloponnese war, as it is reported by Thucydides (Histories 2.35–​46), and then transforms Strozzi, with some exaggeration, into a perfect example of a citizen-​soldier. Following Baron, these references have long been interpreted as a sign of Bruni’s desire to associate Florence with Athens, as if –​through Aelius Aristides and Thucydides  –​the humanist was trying to build a precise political genealogy in the name of the affinity of their republican institutions. Nevertheless, this line of argument seems no longer defensible today. In the absence of explicit references to Athens, Bruni could not be oblivious to the fact that in both cases practically none of his potential readers could establish that connection to Greek models which modern scholars perceive immediately. Neither Aelius Aristides nor Thucydides were yet translated and only a handful of humanists had the linguistic skills necessary to understand them (had they browsed one of the very few Greek manuscripts circulating in Italy at the time), while in both texts Bruni addresses a much broader audience: a learned audience who had all the means to appreciate his beautiful Ciceronian Latin (elocutio), the strength of his construction (dispositio), and the novelty of his republican arguments (inventio), even if –​in the absence of a common ground of readings –​it was not in the position to detect his sources. This means that, while Bruni was clearly eager to take as much as he could from Aelius Aristides and Thucydides in order to make his argumentation more effective, he could not think that following their literary lesson was a way of suggesting that Florence was in any form tied to Athenian democracy.49 The quick parallel (p. 640) between the exile suffered by the Guelphs in 1260 and the strategic retreat of the Athenians before the battle at Salamis during the second Persian War (480 bce) is then not enough to say the Bruni was presenting Florence as a new Athens (and even more, if one matches these sparse allusions to Athens with the dozens of comparison with Rome in the same Laudatio). Moreover, Bruni shows very little interest in Athenian democratic leaders, to the point that the same figures who had been so dear to Petrarch are practically non-​existent in his writings. In comparison with the countless references to Roman viri illustres, in Bruni only Themistocles, Solon, and Miltiades win brief mention: Themistocles gets some rather generic praise for his loyalty to his motherland (Oratio in funere Othonis, p. 404); Solon is appreciated for the law establishing that the children of citizens who died on the battlefield were 49

Griffiths (1988), 105; Cambiano (2000), 22–​41. Baron’s opinion is still oft repeated: Canfora (2001), 48; Azoulay (2014), 159; Ruggiero (2015), 241–​42.

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84 Pedullà to be raised at public expenses (Oratio in funere Nanni Strozae, pp.  708–​10); while Miltiades and Themistocles are rapidly mentioned in a long list of ancient generals (Orazione per Niccolò da Tolentino, p. 818). And that is all. Nonetheless, Bruni all the same played a major role in the rediscovery of Athenian institutions. As he wrote in a letter to his fellow humanist Flavio Biondo, the Politics’ abundance of information on Greek constitutions was one of the principal reasons behind his decision to devote so many years to its translation (Epistulae viii.1). It is not surprising, then, that Bruni was also the humanist of his time who reflected the most on Aristotle’s categories and that he inaugurated the two standard Renaissance attitudes towards democracy. First of all, for Bruni (as for most of the fifteenth-​century political thinkers), the elements that distinguished Athens from other ancient republics, such as Rome and Sparta, appeared less relevant than those that united them –​democracy was, in this perspective, only a minor variation within the greater family of self-​ruling political communities. The second point was in part related to the first: for Bruni, as for all the humanists who will distinguish Athens from Rome and the other Greek cities after him, Athens possessed clear oligarchic traits that openly diverge from the concept of democracy we are accustomed to –​beginning with our idea that in democratic society citizens must be granted equal access to political participation. On the basis of these positions one can surely recognize Aristotle’s influence. In his six-​fold constitutional scheme, as we have seen, demokratìa is the name of the degenerate version of the good government of the many, politìa (in Bruni’s translation they are respectively called respublica and popularis status). In book 4 of the Politics, however, Aristotle makes it clear that oligarchy and democracy are not completely bad, as they can reciprocally correct their flaws by avoiding the extremism of the government of the few and of the many. The closer they are, the better it is –​because in this happy case, their balanced mixture is anything other than the good politìa. To represent this idea Mogens Herman Hansen50 proposed a useful scheme: Best Forms: Worst Forms:

50

Oligarchy Democracy Oligarchy Democracy Oligarchy Democracy Oligarchy Democracy

Hansen (2013b).

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Aristotle’s analysis of the evolution of the Athenian government from Solon to Pericles is conducted in the light of this idea, and it results in a strong preference for the earlier phase, when the census-​class system excluded the poorest citizens from the offices: As for Solon, some think he was an excellent legislator because [in 594 bce]: he abolished an oligarchy which had become too unmixed; he put an end to the slavery of the common people; and he established the ancestral democracy, by mixing the constitution well. For they think the council of the Areopagus is oligarchic; the election of officials aristocratic; and the courts democratic. But it seems that the first two, the council and the election of officials, existed already, and Solon did not abolish them. On the other hand, by making law courts open to all, he did set up the democracy. That, indeed, is why some people criticize him. They say that when he gave law courts selected by lot authority over all legal cases, he destroyed the other things. For when this element became powerful, those who flattered the common people like a tyrant changed the constitution into the democracy we have now:  Ephialtes and Pericles curtailed the power of the Areopagus [in 462 bce], and Pericles introduced payment for jurors [around 440 bce]. In this way, each popular leader enhanced the power of the people and led them on to the present democracy. It seems that this did not come about through Solon’s deliberate choice, however, but rather more by accident. For the common people were the cause of Athens’s naval supremacy during the Persian wars. As a result, they became arrogant, and chose inferior people as their popular leaders when decent people opposed their policies. Solon, at any rate, seems to have given the people only the minimum power necessary, that of electing and inspecting officials (since if they did not even have authority in these the people would have been enslaved and hostile). But he drew all the officials from among the notable and rich: the pentakosiomedimnoi, the zeugitai, and the third class, the so-​called hippeis. But the fourth class, the thetes, did not participate in any office. (Arist. Pol. 2.12, 1273b-​1274a, trans. C.D.C. Reeve) For centuries, starting with Bruni, this page will affect any judgment of the Athenian constitution.  Contrary to the traditional view, according to which there would not be any supporters of Attic democracy before the Enlightenment and the French and American revolutions, from the fifteenth century onward there are no lack of admirers of Athenian institutions, but  –​in the footsteps of Aristotle  –​they side pretty consistently with Solon and against

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86 Pedullà Pericles, under the name of politia, respublica or even democratia appreciating a form of limited popular government that does not fit well with our modern notion of democratic rule. But this is not so surprising, given that such a position was perfectly in line with the humanist’s direct experience of the oligarchic system of Italian republics and that they were repeating Aristotle’s arguments. Hence, two  elements  characterize  the judgments of Bruni and, later on, of many fifteenth-​century humanists who will speak favorably about Athenian constitution (like Lauro Quirini, Cyriac of Ancona, and, later, Francesco Patrizi of Siena): 1) Praise for the control function of the aristocratic Areopagus  –​a council composed of former archons (for a long time the highest political office in the city) and having extensive powers of direction and supervision on the laws discussed in the popular assembly;51 and/​or 2) An appreciation for the census-​class division assigning the people only the right to elect the wealthiest citizens to various offices, without being allowed to be elected in turn.52 As Bruni never discussed Athenian constitution in a comprehensive manner, his position has to be reconstructed from a number of brief statements (one could even say that for him, as for the scholastics, single empirical forms of government were only interesting insofar as they could help explain the Politics’ concepts –​ without becoming a self-​sufficient subject of historical inquiry). In the Laudatio, for instance, the role of the Parte Guelfa in Florence is explained through a reference to the Roman censors, the Spartan ephors, and the Athenian Areopagus, who, according to Bruni, were all appointed to their office in order to protect the freedom of their city (p. 642). Even if he does not expand on this point, it is clear that Bruni is suggesting that, contrary to Athens, which degenerated from good respublica to bad popularis status, Florence, where the Parte Guelfa was still in power, was in very good hands. Another important passage can be found in Bruni’s treatise on the art of translation, the De interpretatione recta (around 1420), where examples taken from Aristotle’s Politics are especially numerous. In discussing the true meaning of the Greek word timema, Bruni claims in fact that it must not be translated by honorabilitas (according to the old version by William of Moerbecke), but as census, concluding from this that “all the Greek cities were administered on the basis of the census” (p. 186), even if Aristotle (as already seen) had presented the rise of the people, after Ephialtes and Pericles, in direct antithesis with Solon’s census-​class system. 51 52

The Areopagus had been also highly praised by Cicero, De officiis 1.22.75. On the inegalitarian nature of humanist republicanism see Pedullà (2020a), 76–​83.

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In both cases Bruni uses the history of Athenian democracy with clear political intentions: on one side to ennoble the Parte Guelfa (that is the magistracy that traditionally protected the interests of the most powerful families tied to the Arti maggiori) through the comparison with the Areopagus53, but also, on the other side, to warn his fellow citizens of the risks of a wider popular participation.54 Behind his concern, then, one can easily recognise the anxiety of the Florentine ruling class in the decades following the Ciompi tumult (1378), when for five years even the lowest artisan had gained access to public offices. The memory of the revolt was still vivid,55 but more recently the traditional aristocratic families had also been under attack from new ambitious clans (like the Medici), so that highlighting the salutary effects of a moderate respublica and the dangers of popularis status by reminding that even Athens never dared to give everybody full access to political participation was instrumental to the defence of the old regime. And Bruni’s cautious approach to popular government would not change after 1434, when Cosimo de Medici became the informal ruler of Florence and Bruni maintaned his position at the head of the Florentine chancellery.56 It is not strange that such an interpretation of Athenian democracy would be eventually very well received in Venice –​traditionally a close oligarchy. As already seen, around 1450 Lauro Quirini presented to the Doge a short treatise in two books inspired by Aristotle, the De republica.57 Although Quirini tried to keep the references to Greek history to a minimum, Athenian democracy plays an important role all the same. In his treatise both Athens and Rome are indeed presented as two positive (and very stable) models of popular government (respublica, not democratia): that is, one in which it is not the multitudo that governs but in which, in the name of libertas, the appointment of the members of the nobilitas to the offices is confirmed by all the citizens through free elections (p. 139). Behind such an idealised self-​representation of the relations between the ruling elite and the people, one can obviously recognise Venice. But Quirini, just like Bruni, does not miss the opportunity to explicitly connect this moderate form of government to the ancients by praising Athenian Areopagus 53 54 55 56

57

Brown (1980). Schadee (2018). Garin (1981); Najemy (2000), 83–​84; Najemy 2002; Kent (2002); Najemy (2006), 181, 303. The presentation of Florence as a politìa and not as a demokratìa will recur in Bruni’s description of his constitution written directly in Greek in 1438, when the city hosted the Council promoting an ephemeral reunification of the Orthodox and the Catholic churches and then was crowded with political and religious authorities from Byzantium. Cappelli (2010). In general, on fifteenth-​century Venetian humanism: King (1986).

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88 Pedullà and Roman censors as an essential tool for restraining the excesses of the people (p. 150). Exactly the same arguments one finds in the Laudatio. Behind Bruni’s and Quirini’s writing, lie a double target –​within and without the city. First and foremost, praising the respublica (polity) against the popularis status (democracy) was aimed at striking down any potential requests for participation arising from the lower strata of society or, more generally, any potential criticism of the current regime; however, exalting the Areopagus was also a way to counter the wide-​spread accusation (especially those from seigneurial states) that self-​ruling cities necessarily had to fall in prey to factions and of the irrational decisions of the mob.58 The risk existed, but, still –​Bruni and Quirini argued –​such a disastrous outcome was not foreordained. And, thanks to the benevolent rule of an enlightened aristocracy, both Florence and Venice were proving that republics too were able to steer clear from those internecine conflicts and self-​harming decisions which, to the contrary, are unavoidable when the people govern on its own.59 Besides Bruni and Quirini, a third figure must be mentioned:  Cyriac of Ancona (1391ca-​1451). Merchant, traveller, and antiquarian, Cyriac is mainly remembered for the great number of inscriptions he transcribed and collected from everywhere in the Adriatic Sea and in Greece, trying to preserve the memory of the antique sites (for this passion he was often singled out as “the father of archaeology”). However, Cyriac wrote also on other subjects and a short tract on constitutional forms survived in two manuscripts, the Sex modi administrandarum rerum publicarum (composed between 1440 and 1447). Even if it is not particularly original, such a brief text is noteworthy for one reason: there is clear proof that Cyriac, who tried to apply the ancient morphology to his own time, is not following Aristotle. As a matter of fact, while in the Politics politìa and demokratìa are the names of the good and the bad popular rule, here Cyriac opts for, respectively, democratia and ochlocratia –​ a clear sign that he is drawing his information from another Greek source, most likely Plutarch’s De tribus reipublicae generibus, where the same terminology is deployed. Cyriac, as righty noted by James Hankins, is then the first modern author to employ the word democratia for the good form –​in a certain way, “the first democrat.”60 58 59 60

Bueno De Mesquita (1965); Varanini (1994); Gamberini (2013). On the centrality of concord in humanist political thought: Pedullà (2018), 10–​26. According to Hankins (2016), Cyriac would rely instead on book vi of Polybius’ Histories, where the same couple demokratìa vs ochlokratìa is present. However, Plutarch’s influence seems more probable, given that all the other proofs of a reception of Polybius vi in Italy are much later in the century, and that Cyriac draws from Plutarch’s Moralia in other

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A mixed regime of the people and townsmen in a city, such as we learn the Athenian maintained, although very often they used to employ the excellent counsel of the Areopagites at suitable moments, just like an aristocratic regime. Today among the Italians, Florence and Tuscany, Ancona in Picenum and the colony of Recanati seem to maintain this type of regime. These indeed are protected and regulated beneath the fostering pontifical power of the vicar of God. (p. 297) For Cyriac, too, reflecting on ancient political forms was then above all a way to master contemporary realities and to shed light on them through the comparison with the past. 3.2 Poggio Bracciolini The second humanist from the Salutati circle who cannot be overlooked is Poggio Bracciolini (1380–​1459). Younger than Bruni (whom he would eventually succeed as the head of the Florentine Chancellery in 1453, after a career mostly spent in the service of the Church), Poggio too had studied Greek with Chrysolaras, but he never managed to completely master such a language. Moreover, compared to Bruni, Bracciolini was certainly less interested in institutional problems,61 so that it was not from that perspective that Athenian democracy could stimulate his curiosity. A close inspection of his works shows in any case that it is only in his dialogues from the 1440s –​the De nobilitate (1440), the De infelicitate principum (1440), both written when he was in Florence with the papal court, and the De miseria humanae conditionis (1448) –​that Athenian history is put forward to some extent. The first impression one gets is that, in these works, Bracciolini is following in the footsteps of Petrarch and particularly his interest in Athenian viri illustres. In addition, Bracciolini too pays special attention to Athenian exiles, adding the list of Greek democratic leaders to the already long list of Roman generals and politicians unjustly expulsed by their fellow citizens. In fourteenth-​and fifteenth-​century Italy, when political conflicts, especially in the communes, ended more often than not with the banishment of the defeated party, the topic maintained an obvious urgency.62 As we have seen, Petrarch was interested in exiles fundamentally for three reasons. First of all because they let

61 62

writings (the preference accorded to monarchy in De tribus reipublicae generibus could have already also inspired Cyriac’s Cesarea laus to Leonardo Bruni in 1436, for instance). Pedullà (2010a); Pedullà (2020b). On Renaissance exiles: Starn (1982); Heers (1997); Shaw (2000); Milani (2003). For a list of thirteenth-​to fourteenth-​century exiled men of letters: Carocci (2010).

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90 Pedullà him highlight the moral superiority of his favourite heroes, who accepted their own fall with great endurance giving an example of a Christianised fortitudo. Secondly, in a more political key, because the unjust punishments enabled him to articulate a clear-​cut judgement on the ingratitude of the people and the evils of self-​governing republic, which will be echoed far and wide also during the fifteenth century, from Alberti (Teogenio, p. 78) to Gian Mario Filelfo (Consolatoria, p. 96), and from Patrizi (De regno v.11) to Aurelio Lippo Brandolini (De comparatione reipublicae ac regni iii.66; iii.91), to mention only authors who make explicit reference to Athens. Third and lastly, because the incredible defeat of such virtuous people taught the lesson that man should not trust too much in the illusory triumphs of the vita activa. With regard to the last point, Petrarch had always been careful to avoid emphasising it too much (except maybe for De remediis i.108). Conversely, as can be easily inferred by some of the titles of his dialogues (De miseria humanae conditionis, De infelicitate principum, De varietate fortunae), for Bracciolini that was the most important aspect. Unjust accusations and banishments are for him the final evidence that any success in one’s earthly life has but little value (especially when compared to the permanent rewards which await the virtuous in the next life). The exiles of his viri illustres are then given special attention precisely because the expulsion coincided for them with the fall of the last illusions on politics 63. Athens acquires therefore a new strategic role in Bracciolini’s line of argument because, by confirming what Rome had already shown, it enables him to formulate a sort of universal law, valid under every sky and at every latitude –​a sort of constant which stands over and above history, and is inscribed in the very essence of the human condition. This is also why, perhaps, Bracciolini is, all in all, much more systematic and replaces Petrarch’s lists of individual examples with methodical analyses of the misfortunes of each nation. In the De miseria humanae conditionis, for instance, the fall of Constantinople (1453) offers the opportunity for a dialogue between the humanist Matteo Palmieri, Cosimo de Medici and the author himself, where (pp. 94–​97) Cosimo tries to demonstrate that men are not condemned to unhappiness on this earth, while Poggio replies to him with a long, detailed discussion of Spartan, Carthaginian, Roman, and Athenian history (the cases of Solon, Socrates, Aristides, Miltiades, Cimon, Phocion, Themistocles, and Alcibiades are evoked and predictably the text ends up in a diatribe against popular ingratitude and stupidity). And a similar list, though shorter, was already in the De infelicitate principium (94), where Alcibiades, Themistocles, Pericles, 63

Fubini (1982).

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and Aristides are cited as proof of how illusory happiness really is. Rather than a test of virtue, as in Petrarch, exiles and unjust condemnations represent then, for Bracciolini, the confirmation that no enduring satisfaction is to be expected in this life. The other topic for which Bracciolini has recourse to Athenian history, is the definition of nobility, which was another issue of extreme urgency in fifteenth-​ century Italy.64 In the dialogue devoted to this question, the De nobilitate, two contrasting claims are presented:  1) the position of Lorenzo di Giovanni de Medici, for whom (in the wake of Aristotle, Politics 4.8, 5.1) noble is he who descends from a rich and ancient family, whose members have served the state with honour and dignity, and 2) that of Niccolò Niccoli, who represents Seneca’s Stoic view (Epistulae xliv.2–​5) and identifies nobility with virtue even in the absence of external recognition. In the debate which follows, the death in poverty of Aristides plays a key role in Niccoli’s reply. Would Aristotle have dared claim that Aristides did not bequeath his own nobility to his sons just because he did not leave them any wealth? But Themistocles’ life too is relevant to Niccoli’s argument: for, according to the tradition, Themistocles in his youth was so full of vices that he was deprived of his inherited nobility, only the better to obtain the “true” one –​the one based on personal virtue rather than on family titles –​once he changed radically his way of life (50; 56). In the following pages especially interesting is the heated debate triggered by the interpretation of a famous passage from the De senectute (iii.8), where Cicero tells how Themistocles, having been accused by a man from the island of Seriphos of owing his fame only to his Athenian origins, had answered: “True, by Hercules, I would not have become famous had I been from Seriphos, nor would you have been, had you come from Athens.” The joke had been echoed already by Petrarch (De remediis i.15.16) and Vittorino of Feltre (De ingenuis moribus 1)  and would often be quoted in times to come;65 in the De nobilitate, however, the anecdote is recalled on uncommon polemical grounds by Lorenzo to prove that virtue alone is not enough to achieve glory (62), and provokes a harsh reaction from Niccoli, who now radicalises his own initial position and claims that even virtuous philosophers who lived in utter poverty like Cleanthes and Demetrius must be considered nobler than Pericles and Themistocles (75).

64

Donati (1988) devoted only few pages to the humanists, and should be read along with Castelnuovo (2009); Castelnuovo (2010); Finzi (2010). 65 Filelfo, Commentationes Florentinae de exilio ii.169; Ludovico Carbone, Oratio in funere Guarinis Veronensis; Patrizi, De institutione reipublicae vi.1.

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92 Pedullà The treatise, as often in Bracciolini’s dialogue, ends on a conciliatory note which may feel somewhat disappointing (“Each one of us is free to think what he believes”). However, it is worthwhile noting here the extraordinary potential of the dialogue form: capable of transforming even the most well-​rooted and traditional anecdotes into the starting points for a discussion with unpredictable outcomes. And Bracciolini (who is not by chance one of the humanists most responsible for the dialogue’s revival in the fifteenth century) is clearly well aware of this potential when he gives a different spin on the traditional and inoffensive story about the man from Seriphos.66 Just from these passages, it is easy to see how little Bruni’s and Bracciolini’s Athens have in common. As already seen, the difference between the two leading disciples of Salutati is especially clear with regard to their approaches to the institutions –​a topic extremely relevant for Bruni but not for Bracciolini. There is however one exception, though it is a late work and somewhat marginal in Bracciolini’s overall output: namely the Oratio in laudem reipublicae Venetorum, written when the former chancellor of the republic, after a sudden break with the Medici, was thinking about leaving Florence for good and relocating in Venice (1459). In this particular case, Bracciolini’s praise of the so-​called Serenissima is then part of a strategy to captivate the local senate, and must be read as a merely rhetorical work, not a treatise on political theory, as the very choice of the term oratio immediately reveals in the title. To commend Venice, Bracciolini swiftly goes through all the most well-​known constitutions of antiquity, in order to finally offer the prize to the republic of San Marco alone, by asserting that –​contrary to Athens, Sparta, Carthage, and Rome, which were all marked down by harmful internal conflicts and the ingratitude of the people –​Venice experiences (and has always experienced) an admirable concord. Bracciolini is especially bitter against Athens and explicitly connects the many exiles, death sentences, fines, and incarcerations suffered by its viri illustres to its democratic constitution, as well as the constitutional instability (from kings to tyrants, up to “the plebs’ rashness”) and the constant absence of peace both from within and without (p. 927). No humanist had ever expressed himself so harshly about Athens. At the same time, however, the openly encomiastic nature of this text (where even Sparta, famous for its social cohesion is described as “smashed to smithereens by discord,” “not tranquil but tumultuous,” and “devoted to personal hatreds”) makes it clear that Bracciolini is not articulating a real historiographic thesis, 66

Marsh (1980); Celenza and Pupillo (2010).

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but only showing off his rhetorical skills. For this reason, more than anything the Oratio in laudem reipublicae Venetorum sounds like a confirmation of his lack of interest for those kinds of questions. Just like Petrarch, Bracciolini is lured by the virtues of democratic men, not by the institutions of their city. 3.3 Leon Battista Alberti The third important author of this period is Leon Battista Alberti (1404–​1472). He was even less bound to Florence than Bracciolini, for though the Alberti were one of the most prominent Florentine families, his father was exiled and Leon Battista was educated in Venice and Bologna under a shroud of uncertainty, all the more exacerbated by his own illegitimate birth. The fundamental aspect of Alberti’s biography (just as that of his intellectual career) was therefore his mobility: from one city to another, as from one discipline to another –​ painting and law, mathematics and philosophy, architecture and poetry. His constant peregrinations through Italy did not stop Alberti from spending long periods of time in his city of origin, in particular between 1434 and 1436, and between 1439 and 1443, when Pope Eugenius iv also resided there. This last date especially marks a net divide between his ethical writings and a new phase, dominated by scientific and artistic interests.67 Indeed, somewhat expectedly, it is in the works composed during his “Florentine decade” (1434–​ 1443) –​ the Libri della famiglia, the Teogenio and the Profugiorum ab aerumna libri –​that Athens is more present. Generally, the Greece described by Alberti is not that of the poleis. In his works, what transpires most is his fascination for Greek philosophy, which he came to know of mostly thanks to Traversari’s translation of Diogenes Laertius. Though there are clear traces of “political pessimism”68 (not far from Bracciolini’s), what is at stake with Alberti is not a devaluation of earthly life compared with the civitas Dei that awaits Christians. Rather, Alberti’s disappointment lies with the awareness of the illusory nature of power, which is considered responsible for drawing people’s attention away from what should be their only objective: the search for truth. More than to Augustine, Alberti looks indeed to the Cynics or the Epicureans, in a mixture of suggestions from multiple sources. It is not from civic life and certainly not from public honours that people will reach happiness –​so says Alberti in many places. Yet, despite these doubts about vita activa, many of his works have a clear political meaning: from his mythological fictions and dialogues (such as the Momus and the Intercenales) 67 68

On the importance of the relation with Florence for Alberti: Boschetto (2000). For a general profile: Grafton (2002). Bacchelli and D’Ascia (2003), xxv.

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94 Pedullà to the later De iciarchia (1468), where Alberti endorses a form of oligarchic republican rule.69 Regardless of his dislike for democratic government (or perhaps, precisely because of it), in Alberti’s works the example of Athens recurs often. His Athenian viri illustres are mainly remembered for their moral and intellectual qualities,70 but when the discussion shifts to political institutions Alberti is particularly harsh against democracy. Even if, in the wake of Bruni and Quirini (and, above all, of Aristotle), Alberti shows clear admiration for the aristocratic Areopagus (Teogenio, p. 70), it does not seem sufficient to redeem Athenian institutions and to temper his general condemnation of any sort of popular government. Also in his case, the unjust exiles of the democratic leaders like Aristides, Socrates, and Alcibiades are mentioned as the best proof of the inconstancy and stupidity of the masses (Teogenio, p. 78). Democracy’s failings are often mentioned in the context of philosophical consolations (consolationes) as well, not so differently from what Petrarch had done in the second part of his De remediis. Both the Teogenio and the Profugiorum can be classified under this literary genre, which was very popular amongst the humanists.71 The violence of the masses is, for Alberti, simply one of the many evils people must learn to endure. This means however that, at least, the political arena offers something of a training ground where men can improve their character. Themistocles’ famous joke to Simonides on the uselessness of the art of memory when people would need rather an art of forgetting,72 summarises therefore perfectly Alberti’s disconsolate approach towards the vita activa (Profugiorum, p. 135). There is a third aspect however which allows us to place Alberti alongside Petrarch: their common fascination with Alcibiades.73 Socrates’ favourite disciple is one of the most present Athenian figures in Petrarch, who not only names him first, of all the Athenians, in his Triumphs, but who also seems utterly conquered by his multifaceted features: first of all, his peculiar mixture of vices and virtue (already widely discussed in the ancient sources); then, his career, seesawing from favour to disfavour in correspondence to the Athenians’ alternating 69 70

Boschetto (1991). Thus, Themistocles is quoted for his justice (Libri della famiglia, 289), Solon for his wisdom (Teogenio, 70), Pericles for his endurance (Teogenio, 83; Profugiorum, 112), etc. 71 The only monograph on humanistic consolationes neglects their political dimension: McClure (1991). Yet on this topic a parallel book could very well be imagined focusing on Petrarch, Filelfo, Alberti, Bracciolini and Pontano’s De fortitudine. 72 Cicero, De oratore ii.86.351 (quoted already by Petrarch, De remediis i.8.16). 73 They were not alone: Boccaccio devoted two whole chapters to Alcibiades in his De casibus virorum illustrium (iii.12–​13).

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feelings towards him; lastly, his privileged relationship with Socrates. For his moral ambivalence, Alcibiades appears in Petrarch, at times as a positive model (De vita solitaria ii.14.19; Familiares xi.8.22; xiv.3.5; Sine nomine 13; Seniles ii.1.63) and at others as a negative one (De remediis i.78; ii.26.8; Fam. xiv.5.19). The same attraction for Alcibiades –​“a man who, for the ancients and to this day, is the most famous and celebrated according to all the histories” (Libri della famiglia, p. 88) –​permeates Alberti’s writing to the point that, alone in the Libri della famiglia, he is mentioned no less than seven times. Still, in contrast to Petrarch (and to the ancient sources), here Alcibiades’ darker traits disappear completely. Alberti praises Alcibiades’ beauty (p. 291), his non-​conformism (p. 88), but above all his legendary capacity to adapt to places and situations –​ an attitude which Alberti must surely have recognised in himself (pp. 297, 335). Tellingly, the vir illustris who proved to be the most intolerant of the strict rules of the polis, is also the Athenian to which the author of Momus feels the closest. The fact that Alcibiades was in no small part responsible for the disasters his city suffered during the war against Sparta, was clearly not so troubling to Alberti: and his full endorsement is perhaps the best corroboration of Alberti’s deep mistrust towards any form of popular rule: whether in Athens or in Florence.

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102 Pedullà Pade, M. (2007) The Reception of Plutarch’s ‘Lives’ in Fifteenth-​Century Italy. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Padona, G. (ed.) (1976) Petrarca, Venezia e il Veneto. Firenze: Olschki. Pagliaroli, S. (2006) L’Erodoto del Valla. Messina: Centro Interdipartimentale di studi umanistici. Pedullà, G. (2005) “Introduzione,” in Witt (2005) ix-​x xix. Pedullà, G. (2010a) “Scipione e i tiranni,” in Luzzatto and Pedullà (eds) (2010) 348–​355. Pedullà, G. (2010b) “Francesco Patrizi e le molte vite dell’umanista,” in Luzzatto and Pedullà (eds) (2010) 457–​463. Pedullà, G. (2018) Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism (2011). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pedullà, G. (2020a) “Humanist Republicanism: Toward a New Paradigm,” History of Political Thought 41: 43–​95. Pedullà, G. (2020b) “Scipio vs Caesar: The Poggio-​Guarino Debate without Republicanism,” in Ricciardelli and Fantoni (eds) (2020) 275–​306. Platina, B. (1979) De principe, ed. G. Ferraù. Messina: Il Vespro. Platina, B. (1942) De optimo cive, ed. F. Battaglia. Bologna: Zanichelli. Pocock, J.G.A. (1975) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Poddighe, E (2014) Aristotele, Atene e le metamorfosi dell’idea democratica. Roma: Carocci. Quirini, L., De republica, eds. C. Seno and G. Ravegnani, in Krautter, Kristeller, Pertusi, Ravegnani and Seno (1977) (eds). Quondam, A. (2010) Forma del vivere. L’etica del gentiluomo e i moralisti italiani. Bologna: il Mulino. Rabb, T.K. and Suleiman, E.N. (eds) (2003) The Making and Unmaking of Democracy: Lessons from History and World Politics. Oxford: Routledge. Rawson, E. (1969) The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reszler, A. (2004) Les nouvelles Athénès. Histoire d’un mythe culturel européen. Gollio: Infolio. Revest, C. (2013) “La naissance de l’humanisme comme mouvement au tournant du XVe siècle,” Annales 68: 665–​696. Ricciardelli, F. and Fantoni, M. (eds) (2020) Republicanism: A Theoretical and Historical Perspective. Roma: Viella. Roberts, J.T. (1994) Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Rundle, D. (2002) “Review of In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni by Ronald G. Witt,” Renaissance Studies 16: 418–​421. Rosse, M. (2005) La renaissance des institutions de Sparte dans la pensée française: XVIème-​ XVIIIème siècle. Aix-​en-​Provence: Presses Universitaires d’Aix-​Marseille.

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Ruggiero, G. (2015) The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schadee, H. (2018) “A Tale of Two Languages:  Latin, the Vernacular, and Leonardo Bruni’s Civic Humanism,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 67: 11–​46. Schütrumpf, E. (2014) The Earliest Translations of Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ and the Creation of Political Terminology. Paderbon: Wilhelm Fink. Settis, S. (ed.) (1985) Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana. Torino: Einaudi. Shaw, C. (2000) The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (1978) The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Starn, R. (1982) Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Stenhouse, W. (2018) “Early Modern Greek Histories and Republican Political Thought,” in Velema and Weststeijn (eds) (2018) 86–​108. Stierle, K. (2003) Francesco Petrarca. Ein Intellektueller im Europa des 14. Jahrhunderts. München: Carl Hanser. Syros, V. (ed.) (2010a) Well Begun is only Half Done: Tracing Aristotle’s Political Ideas in Medieval Arabic, Syriac, Byzantine, and Jewish Sources. Tempe AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Syros, V. (2010b) “Between Chimera and Charybdis:  Byzantine and Post-​Byzantine Views on the Political Organization of the Italian City-​States,” Journal of Early Modern History 14: 451–​504. Thomas, C.G. (ed.) (1988) Paths from Ancient History. Leiden: Brill. Tilly, C. (2007) Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toste, M. (2018) ‘ “Tantum pauper quantum diues, tantum ydiota quantum studiosus’: How Medieval Authors Made Sense of Democracy,” in Carron, Lutz-​Bachmann, Spindler and Toste (eds) (2018) 281–​351. Ullmann, W. (1961) Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen. Varanini, G.M. (1994) “Propaganda dei regimi signorili: le esperienze venete del Trecento,” in Cammarosano (ed.) (1994) 311–​343. Varanini, G.M. (2006) “Francesco Petrarca e i da Carrara, signori di Padova,” in AAVV (2006) 81–​97. Velema, W. and Weststeijn, A. (eds) (2018) Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination. Leiden: Brill. Viroli, M. (1992) From Politics to Reason of State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Viroli, M. (2003) “Republic and Democracy: On Early Modern Origins of Democratic Theory,” in Rabb and Suleiman (eds) (2013) 23–​40.

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104 Pedullà Vlassopulos, K. (2012) “Sparta and Rome in Early Modern Thought: A Comparative Approach,” in Hodkinson and Macgregor Morris (eds) (2012) 43–​69. Volpe Cacciatore, P. (ed.) (2009) Plutarco nelle traduzioni latine di età umanistica. Napoli: D’Auria. Weiss, R. (1947) The Dawn of Humanism in Italy. London: Ardent Media. Wilson, N. (1992) From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Witt, R.G. (1983) Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Witt, R.G. (2001) ‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients:’ The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni. Leiden: Brill. Witt, R.G. (2005) Sulle tracce degli antichi: Padova, Firenze e le origini dell’umanesimo. Roma: Donzelli (Italian updated translation of Witt 2001). Zarka, Y.Ch. (ed.) (1999) Aspects de la pensée médiévale dans la philosophie politique modern. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Zorzi, A. (ed.) (2013) Tiranni e tirannide nel Trecento italiano. Roma: Viella.

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­c hapter 3

Athenian Democracy in the Italian Renaissance Gabriele Pedullà It is a long way from Greece to Latium

leonardo bruni to niccolò niccoli (1407)

∵ By the mid-​fifteenth century, some of the works most relevant to reconstruct the history of Athenian democracy were circulating in Greek, but many of them remained yet to be translated, most probably because of their imposing bulk. Luckily, an authoritative stimulus to sustain the intellectual and financial burden required for such a task arrived from above. In 1447, a true humanist, born Tommaso Parentucelli (1397–​1455), was elected pope with the name of Nicholas V. In addition to giving protection to his old friends, the new pontiff set up an ambitious systematic project, commissioning a great deal of new translations to the most important Hellenists of the day. As Arnaldo Momigliano eloquently wrote, “the whole series of translations was potentially the most revolutionary event in historiography since Fabius Pictor introduced Greek historiography into Rome at the end of iii century bc.”1 But Giovanni Pontano had already said something similar in book iv of his De obedientia, fifteen or so years after the pope’s death: “What his times owe to Nicholas V, everyone knows today and the future generations will understand it too.” Three of the commissions in particular would shed light on Athenian democracy: the historical writings of Herodotus and Thucydides (both translated by Lorenzo Valla) and books xi-​x iii of Diodorus Siculus’ universal history (which had been assigned to Iacopo of Santo Cassiano, a very gifted humanist who unfortunately died too young to leave a real mark in his field).2 More or less at the same time, though without the pontiff’s financial support, the first translation of Plato’s Laws appeared in 1455, produced by a Greek immigrant 1 Momigliano (1974), 131. For a general view: Fryde (1983a). 2 On Thucydides: Alberti (1957); Pade (2006); Pade (2010); Pade (2014). On Herodotus: Alberti (1959); Pagliaroli (2006); Foley (2016); Looney (2016).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_005

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106 Pedullà in Venice: Georges of Trebizond. This means that, at the very moment Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks (1453), the main Greek sources on Athenian democracy were coming into new light in Western Europe (for Plato, the standard version was to be established a few years later thanks to Marsilio Ficino, who after 1463 translated all his dialogues). Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of their publication, the works commissioned by Nicholas V do not seem to have left much of a trace in humanistic political theory.3 Rather, what seems to be truly distinctive of those years, is how a system of shared references from Greek history took place. This process was clearly accelerated by the new printing techniques, which initially developed in Germany between 1452 and 1455 and spread all over Europe after 1462. The first prints had an average circulation of 300–​500 copies per edition, with peaks of more than 2000 in the bigger cities and for titles easier to sell like the ancient classics (moreover, generally speaking, Italian typographers printed a larger number of volumes per edition).4 A simple list can give an idea of the impact of printing techniques on the diffusion of the information about Greek history during the fifteenth century:5 ­Table 3.1 Printed Editions of Major Greek Sources on Athenian Democracy (1460–1500)

Plutarch, Lives Diogenes Laertius, Lives Herodotus, Histories Plato, Gorgias Thucydides, History Plato, Works

First Edition

Italian Editions

European Editions

Total

1470 1472 1474 1475 1483 1484-​85

6+1 9+9 5 1 1 3

0+1 2+0 0 0 0 0

6+2 11 + 9 5 1 1 3

The numbers, however, are especially striking in the case of the two Latin text most strictly tied to the rediscovery of Greek history at the beginning of the humanistic movement, Justin and Valerius Maximus (followed by Paulus 3 Kempshall (2011), 532, 546. 4 For an up-​to-​date catalogue of the first editions of the ancient classics see De Blasi and Procaccioli (2010). For ancient philosophy see Hankins and Palmer (2008). 5 The first number indicates the editions in Latin, while the second one the translations in a modern language.

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Athenian Democracy in the Italian Renaissance

Orosius, another important source of information during the Middle Ages, but which became less popular in the fifteenth century).6 ­Table 3.2 Printed Editions of Major Latin Sources on Athenian Democracy (1460–1500)

Justin, Epitoma Valerius Maximus, De dictis Paulus Orosius, Historiae

First Edition

Italian Editions

European Total Editions

1470 1470 1471

10 + 1 21 + 9 5+0

0+0 5+4 1+1

10 + 1 26 + 13 6+1

Although it is not possible to quantify precisely the impact of these editions (a prudent estimate would count –​only for the Italian prints –​5,000 copies of Justin, 14,000 copies of Valerius Maximus, and less than 2,000 of Orosius), it is clear that the information about Athens (and Rome, of course) became increasingly accessible to all sort of readers. The major consequences of this spread of the information about the Hellenic world were a gradual “standardisation” and “specialisation” of the character traits of each Athenian vir illustris compared to the first half of the century, following the model that was already in place for Roman ones.7 The corpus of ancient works was large enough to guarantee a wide, though not infinite, array of choice, but inevitably in the hands of humanists the democratic leaders started being tied more and more to particular virtues or vices. One e­ xample –​Pericles –​will suffice to illustrate what I mean by “standardisation” and “specialisation.” Since the eighteenth century, Pericles represents the very symbol of fifth-​century bce democracy, to the point that in public discourses he even embodies on his own a whole period of Western civilisation.8 During the Renaissance, however, he was much less popular and sometimes he was not mentioned without criticism, but, more important, he was associated with four virtues, and only those. For fifteenth-​century humanists, Pericles: 1) embodies the type of the politician perfectly skilled in the humanae litterae (Petrarch, Familiares xix.18.32; Francesco Filelfo, Satyrae ii.6; Gian Mario Filelfo, Consolatoria, p. 88; Patrizi, De institutione reipublicae ix.3; Angelo Poliziano, Nutricia, v. 506; Marco Marullo, Institutionum principalium i.120–​121; etc.); 6 See chapter 2, pp. 67–69. 7 See chapter 2, pp. 69–70, 80–81. 8 On Pericles in Greek and Roman culture: Banfi (2003).

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108 Pedullà

2) offers a model of sexual restraint (Giovanni Cavalcanti, Trattato politico-​morale, p. 212; Filelfo, Consolatoria, p. 50; Platina, De principe, p. 148; De optimo cive, p. 234; etc.); 3) represents the virtue of fortitudo, that is to say the capacity to endure misfortune (Petrarch, Familiares ii.1.32; De remediis ii.48.4; Extravagantes 28; Alberti, Teogenius, p.  83; Giannozzo Manetti, Dialogus consolatorius ii.30; iii.55; etc.); 4) provides an example of magnificence –​though, as we shall see, this trait is not always without a dark side (Patrizi, De regno vii.11; Giuniano Maio, De maiestate 19; Pontano, De magnificentia 12; etc.). Given the abundance of classical testimonies, a great number of other interpretations were obviously still possible. However, from that moment on, Pericles would be enduringly tied to these four traits, as the outcome of a process of standardisation/​specialization that, for any ancient figure, was the inevitable price to pay in order to enter a canon of viri illustres now ever more as much Greek as Roman. Accordingly, all the other Athenian democratic leaders experienced a comparable evolution in the same years. 1

Naples: the Second Humanist Wave

The other main trend of the second half of the fifteenth century which needs to be taken into consideration is the reduced dynamism of Florentine political thought under the Medici informal regime (1434–​1494). True enough, some relevant works were still written in those years (such as Bartolomeo Scala’s De legibus or Alamanno Rinuccini’s Dialogus de libertate), but it is significant that they had little or no circulation at all. In any event, beyond individual texts and authors, it is the general intellectual climate which moved towards theoretical speculations, under the influence of Marsilio Ficino’s Neo-​Platonism.9 As a result, Athens was present in Florence in those years like never before, but almost exclusively as the cradle of the arts and philosophy. However, the viri illustres of the past (be they Roman, Spartan or Athenian) did not disappear. The Medici –​although being de facto rulers of the city –​never stopped speaking the language of Florentine republicanism, preferring to present themselves as the defenders of a freedom constantly under attack from inside and outside, and the comparison with the great models 9 Hankins (1990).

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of republican virtue of the past played an important role in their political self-​fashioning.10 During these same years the Kingdom of Naples gained increasing importance as a humanistic centre, including the political thought. This rapid blossoming was first of all due to the first Aragonese king, Alfonso (1396–​1458), who, since the long years of war for the possession of the Kingdom against the Angevin pretender to the throne (1435–​1442), gathered from everywhere in Italy a great number of preeminent men of letters at his court and, not by chance, was later celebrated as “The Magnanimous.”11 Among them, some major figures clearly stand out, even if they do not have a particular interest in political theory: the Roman Lorenzo Valla (who in 1440 launched from Naples his famous attack against the temporal power of popes, in his De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione), the Sicilian Antonio Beccadelli (also known as Panormita), the Ligurian Bartolomeo Facio, the Neapolitan Jacopo Sannazaro, and, at least in part, the Apulian Antonio de’ Ferrariis (known as Galateo). Nevertheless, at least two leading humanists based in the Kingdom of Naples were also important political thinkers: the Sienese Francesco Patrizi and the central figure of Aragonese culture, the Umbrian Giovanni Pontano, who later in his life became even chancellor of the Kingdom –​a sort of prime minister.12 1.1 Giovanni Pontano Patrizi and Pontano are by far the two leading Italian political thinkers of the second half of the fifteenth century, and, predictably, their works played a special role also in the rediscovery of Athenian democracy. Even if Pontano is younger, it is more appropriate to begin with him, because Patrizi’s writings had limited circulation during the author’s life and were printed only during the sixteenth century. Born in Umbria, but settled in Naples since 1448, Pontano (1429–​1503) had a remarkable career at the Neapolitan court, where a great number of humanists gathered around him in a renowned Academy.13 Apart from his De principe, dedicated in 1463 to the young duke of Calabria, Alfonso 10

11 12 13

On the Medici’s pillaging from the storehouse of republican imagery: Brown (1961); Brown (2000). The case of the De optimo cive is emblematic, because Bartolomeo Platina presented there Cosimo and Lorenzo as the defenders of Florentine freedom under threat from a new Peisistratus (p. 193). Delle Donne and Jaume Torró Torrent (eds) (2014); Delle Donne (2015). For a partial (but still impressive) list of works dedicated to Alfonso or commissioned by him:  De Rosa (2007), 43–​63. On fifteenth-​century Neapolitan culture:  Santoro (1974); Tateo (1976); Bentley (1987); Santoro (1988); Cappelli (2016). Furstenberg-​Levi (2016).

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110 Pedullà (whom he tutored) and his De obedientia (1470), which was intended to be a cautionary note for the riotous feudatory landowners of the Kingdom, most of his ethical and political works were composed in his later years, and especially after retiring from political service in 1495: the De fortitudine (printed in 1490), the De liberalitate, the De beneficentia, the De magnificentia, the De splendore, and the De conviventia (all printed in 1498). And other important treatises were published posthumously: namely the De magnanimitate, De fortuna, De immanitate, De sermone, and De prudentia (all in 1508).14 As far as what concerns Athens, there could not be a greater discrepancy between the first three treatises and the others. In the texts published before 1498, Pontano does not seem to have any direct knowledge of Greek history: his quotations are mostly from Latin poets (Virgil, Ovid, and Horace) and his Greece is still essentially the world of Homer and of the ancient myths. Thus, even when, quite exceptionally, Pontano mentions one of Athens’ most famous viri illustres (in the second book of his De fortitudine), he writes the Aristides was sentenced to death, while actually he was sent into exile –​a clear proof of Pontano’s scarce familiarity with Athenian history at this stage. On the contrary, the later works show a completely different picture, where Greek history is constantly appealed to. In these treatises, Pontano nurtures an ambitious project: that of codifying for the first time –​in minute detail and on a rigorously Aristotelian framework –​all the main virtues relevant to associative life (or, its vices, as in the case of immanitas, savagery).15 To carry out his task, Pontano needed a wealth of characters to illustrate the different nuances of behaviour to imitate or to avoid, teaching his reader, anecdote after anecdote, how to put in practice the principles of aurea mediocritas (golden mean), convenientia (adaptability to a variety of situations), and decorum (appropriateness of behaviour in a given context). In doing so, one of the main innovations of Pontano’s political treatises is that he is amongst the first humanists to give preference not to Cicero and Valerius Maximus, with their well-​ known traditional anecdotes, but rather to an author much less used for this purpose –​namely Plutarch, who was very well suited for this duty, given that his biographies were full of dramatic confrontations between virtue and vice.16

14 15 16

On Pontano’s early political works:  Cappelli (2003); Cappelli (2010); Cappelli (2012); Cappelli (2014). On Pontano’s late political works:  Quondam (2007) 35–​131; Quondam (2010) 384–​431. In general: Kidwell (1991); Roick (2018). This will to theoretically codify a virtue not yet taken into consideration reminds one of Seneca’s De clementia. On Plutarch’s visual strength and his success among Renaissance artists: Guerrini (1998); Guerrini (2002).

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By the end of his life, Pontano would perfectly master Athenian history, as proved for instance by his De prudentia, which, in its conclusion –​along with many Roman, Jewish, and modern ­figures –​presents the examples of Cimon, Pericles, and Phocion (always from Plutarch). At times, Pontano seems to turn to Plutarch with the enthusiasm of a neophyte, as in the De liberalitate, in which the abundance of anecdotes taken from Aristides’ and Cimon’s Lives (three and five, respectively) feels like the result of a very recent reading. Nobody had ever made recourse to Plutarch that much, before. Sometimes, however, the emphasis on the virtue Pontano intends to map out, leads him to trivialise his source somewhat. This seems especially true in the case of Cimon: for, whereas Plutarch does not hesitate to report the ancient criticism against him –​namely that his famous generosity was intended to ingratiate himself to the poorest citizens, like aspiring tyrants often do (Cimon 10)  –​, none of these suspicions are voiced in Pontano, who probably reinterpreted Cimon’s decision to remove the enclosures surrounding his own property (so that everyone could pick all the fruit they wanted) as the act of liberality of a feudal lord towards his subjects. In most cases, still, Pontano manipulates with great proficiency the examples from the Lives, using Aristotle’s philosophical concepts to lead a deep inquiry into the true meaning of each virtue. Occasionally, Pontano does not even shy away from correcting the exemplary images of the figures passed down through tradition, as in the case of Pericles. Thanks to De officiis 2.7.60, he had always been associated with “magnificence” –​and in a controversial way, because Cicero reported Demetrius of Phaleron’s accusation that Pericles had invested too much in his artistic and urbanistic projects and commented on the story by saying that, when it comes to spending public money, it is better to be more moderate. On the same topic, in the De magnificentia (12) Pontano mentions a similar anecdote from Plutarch, according to whom Pericles (who was very wealthy) would have replied to the accusation of wasting too much for the Propylaea: “The expense is not in your name, but in mine; I will inscribe my own name on the monuments” (Pericles 14). Such a provocative reply wounded the Athenians in their pride and induced the assembly to take on the burden of the expenses –​which is what Pericles had presumably planned all along. However, at least in this case Pontano refers to this anecdote not to show Pericles’ cunning but to establish an original parallel with another famous Athenian leader, Nicias (also mentioned by Plutarch for his extraordinary generosity: Nicias 3). This is a very original choice, because in his Parallel Lives Plutarch always matches a Roman with a Greek, while the De magnificentia offers an unprecedented comparatio of two Athenians and expresses a preference for Nicias (“It would seem that Nicias deserves the greatest praise”),

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112 Pedullà whilst upbraiding Pericles for his studium magnificientiae  –​that is to say, a disproportionate desire to prove his princely generosity. In Aristotelian terms, since virtue is always connected with the golden mean, Pericles has sinned by excess, because the generosity of individual citizens must remain within the limits of liberalitas, whereas only princes also can show magnificentia (upon which, in fact, depend all the great urban projects). And a private citizen who aspires to spend like a prince always runs the risk of having the worst presumed of him.17 It is significant, nevertheless, that the same anecdote will reappear in the De prudentia but in a very different light –​further proof of the malleability of Plutarch’s stories. Considering that prudence (understood as the capacity to find the right means to achieve a given goal) is the virtue par excellence of politicians, in this treatise Pontano does not pursue an abstract ideal of behaviour but offers some very realistic considerations about power that had him often indicated as the most convincing fifteenth-​century precursor to Machiavelli. And, not surprisingly, in the new context the same anecdote is told to show Pericles’ cunning and his ability to manipulate the assembly and not the ambiguous nature of his “magnificence.” Whoever reads Pontano against the backdrop of fifteenth-​century humanism, immediately realises his clear desire to distance himself from some common-​places of that time. In this context, the massive injection of Aristotelian concepts works then as an antidote against the shortcuts and it is used to distinguish clearly between deeds that are virtuous and deeds that merely look so (as, for example, Pericles’ magnificientia). For this reason, although overall the presence of Athenian viri illustres is maybe quantitatively smaller in Pontano compared to Petrarch, Bracciolini, and Alberti, Plutarch’s democratic leaders play a decisive role in Pontano’s effort to re-​examine some of the humanists’ most common beliefs –​a challenge to the tradition impossible to pose by merely repeating the old anecdotes of Cicero and Valerius Maximus, where the story came already embedded with its moral. One of the key points of this reappraisal of fifteenth-​century political thought is in the De prudentia, here too involving Pericles. As seen in the previous chapter, all the humanists put an enormous emphasis on the education of the ruling classes.18 Whomsoever was lacking good pedagogy had little hope of governing well, because, according to them, in the end virtue itself mostly 17 18

Plutarch also tells a similar anecdote about the accusation raised against Phidias for having portrayed himself and Pericles inside the shield of Athena (Pericles 31). Patrizi gives credence to this hostile story in De regno ii.10. See chapter 2, p. 77. See also Pedullà (2020) 83–​87.

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depended on the studia humanitatis, understood not so much (or not only) as a heritage of notions, but rather as a process of intimate self-​development through a constant dialogue with the great men of the past. The humanists were then tempted to attribute to the virtuous politician an ever-​increasing number of traits which are typical of the men of letters. Following this path, however, the risk was that the specula principum and the institutiones would transform princely or republican leaders (both called principes) into humanists –​with a substantial overlap of the two figures which, eventually, would constitute the object of Machiavelli’s attack.19 In his De prudentia, Pontano seems to be moved by similar preoccupations. It is for this reason, presumably, that he devotes a crucial chapter of his treatise to clearly distinguishing between prudentia and sapientia. Are those really the same thing? Or rather, have the humanists gone too far, and lost sight of the specific characteristics of politics? One should not be surprised to find these questions raised by someone like Pontano who was directly involved, at the highest levels, in the diplomatic battles of his time and hence more than anybody else capable of perceiving the difference between the purely abstract level of the principles and their application in practice. Thus, in order to give politics its own specificity back, Pontano invokes Themistocles and Pericles: the two Athenians who, in the humanists’ writings, had come closest to embodying the model of a political leader perfectly skilled both in the art of words and in the art of war. Pontano does not deny their rhetorical and oratorical talents, but he matches them to Thales and Anaxagoras to show how, although Themistocles’ and Pericles’ culture, only the two philosophers were able to reach a superior kind of knowledge (De prudentia, pp. 44v-​45r), and therefore how –​despite the pedagogical ideals of the day –​vita activa and vita contemplativa remain irreducibly distinct. The most cultivated and eloquent politician will never be a philosopher, and vice-​versa.20 19

20

Pedullà (2013a) xxviii-​x xxviii. See the ending of The Art of War: “Our Italian Princes, before they tasted the blows of the war in the North, believed it was enough for them to know what was written, think of a cautious reply, write a beautiful letter, show wit and promptness in their sayings and in words, know how to deceive, decorate themselves with gems and gold, sleep and eat with greater splendour than others, preserve a certain air of wantonness around them, behave avariciously and haughtily toward their subjects, become rotten with idleness, hand out military ranks at will, express contempt for anyone who may have shown them any praiseworthy behaviour, desire that their words be the responses of oracles; nor were these little men aware that they were preparing themselves to be the prey of anyone who assaulted them.” Girolamo Cardano will eventually take up these distinctions in his De sapientia.

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114 Pedullà 1.2 Francesco Patrizi of Siena As far as chronology is concerned, Patrizi (1413–​1494) precedes Pontano by a full generation. However, his political works had a limited circulation in his lifetime and received wide recognition only after being printed in Paris in 1519 and 1520. This reversal of fortune accords well with his adventurous life, which led him to become familiar with almost all the main forms of government in Italy: first as a citizen of the republic of Siena; then –​after being sent into exile –​as a bishop in Foligno with delicate political tasks (thanks to the support of his Sienese compatriot, Pope Pius ii); and finally in Gaeta, under the protection of the Aragonese dynasty, with whom he had knitted solid personal relationships since his youth. This eventful path is reflected also in his main works:  the De institutione reipublicae (1471), dedicated to Sienese ruling class and to Pope Sixtus iv, and the De regno et regis institutione (1483), dedicated to the same Alfonso to whom Pontano had previously offered his De principe. Both works have a clear encyclopaedic ambition, intending to summarise all the knowledge that a republican leader or a prince should possess in order to govern justly and competently. The many digressions from the main topic, including a detailed history of the arts and sciences must not therefore be considered as mere diversions (as has often been claimed), once they are understood as being part and parcel of a conscious political project, based on a careful education of the elites. No single word, then, summarises the overall sense of Patrizi’s work as well as the one the two treatises’ titles have in common: namely institutio (education, formation). It is this shared insistence on education which enables Patrizi to avoid the binary alternative of princedom and republic, which has puzzled scholars for many years.21 Indeed, whereas the De institutione reipublicae shows more sympathy towards republican self-​government and the De regno argues for the superiority of princely rule, both works share the same pedagogical approach and in many ways are complementary.22 For the most part, in fact, they overlap in light of a relativistic judgement on the different constitutions clearly derived from Aristotle. Also for Patrizi, in the end, there is no best regime in the absolute, but only regimes which are more or less suitable to different nations (for instance, the proem to book vi of the De institutione reipublicae states that the natural political form of government in Athens was the people’s regime and for that reason, despite the many upheavals, the city always returned ad

21 22

Typically, Viroli (1992) 215 speaks of “serious interpretive problems.” Pedullà (2010a).

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optimam democratiam, with a clear reference to the restoration brought about by Thrasybulus).23 Such an ecumenical approach also probably explains why Athens receives so much attention in both Patrizi’s works. Not too surprisingly, the heroes of Athenian democracy are first present as the incarnations of the various virtues, especially in the De regno, where the discussion revolves around the education of the future sovereign. One thus finds the handsome Alcibiades as an ambiguous example of most fine natural qualities, the best education, and a precocious corruption (De regno ii.8); the excessive ambition of Pericles (De regno ii.10); the dangers of animosity against fellow citizens, exemplified through the hatred between Aristides and Themistocles (De regno iv.11); once again Alcibiades for his amazing capability to adapt to the customs of different people (De regno v.20); Miltiades as a model of comitas and facilitas (De regno vii.9); the generosity of Cimon (De regno viii.18); Aristides (De regno ix.10) and Thrasybulus (De regno ix.20) as a model of princely frugality; etc. In the humanists’ writings, the choice of examples is never a secondary question. Writing in the 1460s, Patrizi was the first modern political theorist to take his information mostly straight from the Greek historians (Plutarch, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Herodotus whose discussion of the best form of government in his Histories 3.80–​82, is put to the fore in De institutione reipublicae i.4) rather than from Cicero, Valerius Maximus, or Justin. This impressive rise in the historical evidence alone suffices to make both the De institutione reipublicae and the De regno a real turning point in the early-​modern reception of Athenian democracy.24 Even more important, Patrizi’s world is by now completely Latin and Greek. A simple detail shows it: while previous humanists often organized their examples “spatially,” following Valerius Maximus’ model (shifting from the Romans to the Externi), in his writings Patrizi alternates between three different arrangements, depending on his topic. In books i and ii of the De institutione reipublicae, where Patrizi discusses the evolution of different arts and disciplines, the Greeks are discussed first, in accordance with chronology. To the contrary, in the chapters devoted to sketching the constitution of his ideal republic through a close comparison between the most celebrated historical examples (in book iii), the point of reference is Rome, which is used to provide the basic terminology for the institutions (as Patrizi makes clear in De institutione reipublicae iii.12); it is thus from here that the analysis 23 24

On Patrizi: Pedullà (2010a); De Capua (2014). It is not possible to subscribe to Roberts (1994): “Patrizi’s discourses were arranged topically for the easy reference of statesmen whose tastes did not run to particular demanding texts” (p. 121).

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116 Pedullà later on expands to include also the philosophers’ beliefs (Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Cicero) and, subsequently, the actual constitutions of the other cities, ancient and modern.25 In the rest of the De institutione reipublicae, finally, there is absolute freedom, weaving together examples taken from the most divers historical and geographical contexts depending on the different needs of Patrizi’s argumentation. Not only does Patrizi incorporate a lot of new Greek sources in his tracts, but he shows an unprecedented interest in the actual functioning of the Athenian institutions. One can already perceive a change from the way Solon is portrayed in the De institutione reipublicae. A few examples will suffice: thanks to Diogenes Laertius (who is used here for the first time as a source of information on Athenian democracy), Patrizi is aware of the difference between the harshness of Dracon’s laws and the milder legislation implemented by Solon (De institutione reipublicae i.5; i.8); he describes approvingly the law which forbade Athenian citizens to sell their land (De institutione reipublicae iv.1); he commends the proviso which imposed on the State the maintenance of the sons of citizens who had died at war (De regno v.4); and he reports even a decree which was liable to jeopardise the image of Solon as a pacifier, namely the law according to which whoever in time of civil war did not take part in the fight should be put to death (De regno vi.19).26 The ample room given to family law (De institutione reipublicae i.8; iv.6) and marital law (De institutione reipublicae iv.3) must be read too in the context of Patrizi’s exceptional sensibility to ancient institutions and jurisprudence. It is obvious that Patrizi does not intend to reconstruct systematically the Athenian constitution or its history, for the simple reason that the aim of his work is different –​a more theoretically driven one. And yet, in the 1460s and 1470s Patrizi was clearly much more informed about Athenian democracy than anyone before him in the preceding one thousand years. Thus, in the De institutione reipublicae he often makes use of this exceptional knowledge to support his own ideas through an analytical comparison between Athens and Renaissance Italian republics. A few examples can easily give an idea of his way of building his arguments on ancient history. 1) Referring explicitly to Athens, Patrizi sharply refutes the elitist arguments against the people’s participation in government: he argues for instance that it is unjust that only noblemen should rule because no city is constituted only 25 26

This choice does not legitimate the conclusion of Cambiano (2000): “from his work, it appears clearly that he did not have a precise picture of the Athenian institutions and that his preferred store of examples comes from the Roman institutions” (p. 46). On this law Loraux (2002) builds her own original interpretation of Greek politics.

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of noblemen and that the importance of the people’s contributions is clearly proven in war, when a large army in needed, as can be seen by the irreversible downfall of Sparta’s aristocracy after the defeat of Leuctra (De institutione reipublicae i.4, following Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquities 2.17). The ideal would then be a republic administered by men from the middle class because, as Aristotle repeatedly proved, the most stable constitutions are those relying on the mediocres and not on the mighty or the poorest citizens (De institutione reipublicae i.4; vi.1; vi.5), so that only when the rule of the middlers is impossible, aristocratic government should be preferred to plebeian one (De institutione reipublicae i.4; i.8). 2) Another major theme of the De institutione reipublicae is the necessity of having an army of citizens. Patrizi is by no means original in this: bringing back conscription is one of the constant leitmotivs of fifteenth-​century humanism. However, Patrizi introduces in his treatment of the topic a crucial reference to Greek history: that the Athenians had to yield to the power of the Spartans until they taught the younger generation once again to be more active at the gym than at the theatre (De institutione reipublicae ii.8).27 3) Amongst the humanists, a frequent debate is raised against the practice of reserving certain magistracies for foreign officials invited from outside (as in the case of judges and podestà), so as to avoid the competition between parties for these delicate positions. Patrizi as well argues against this practice (De institutione reipublicae iii.2) but he explicitly builds his argumentation on a reference to Athens and the other republics which never did such a thing (Rome, Venice, Carthage, and Sparta). 4) Persuaded of the middle class’ stabilizing role, Patrizi consistently insists on the threat posed to republican freedom by wealthy citizens. Some of the examples he uses to argue for his position come from Athenian history and in particular from Solon’s legislation, which was thought to avoid the formation of too vast properties (De institutione reipublicae iv.1). To this end Solon had stipulated that no citizen was allowed to dispossess himself from his own land (De institutione reipublicae vi.3), arguing that only an attentive prevention can avoid the formation of a class of affluent citizens, which would be incompatible with self-​government and freedom. And, as Patrizi thought that the agrarian laws were a remedy worse than the evil that they were meant to counter, similar precautions were necessary to prevent the degeneration from the beginning (De institutione reipublicae vi.5).

27

In Matteo Palmieri (Vita civile iv.174), for instance, one finds, at best, a generic appreciation of the armed citizens of Athens, Rome, and Carthage.

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118 Pedullà 5) Finally, Patrizi shows great appreciation for the amnesty practised in Athens after the Thirty Tyrants were expulsed. In this case as well, the theme was of prime interest in fifteenth -​century Italy, and especially in republics like Siena and Genoa which were famous for their self-​destructive internecine struggles, for it offered a potential model for coming out of a bloody conflict.28 Cicero, Valerius Maximus, and Cornelius Nepos had already given their very favourable judgement on Thrasybulus’ behaviour in that circumstance (in the Philippicae 1.1; De dictis 4.1.ext.4; De vitis 8.3, respectively). Nevertheless, amongst the humanists amnesty had not been given much attention previously:  Petrarch merely notes that Thrasybulus was already old when he liberated his country from the oppressor, as further proof that everyone can have an active old-​age (Familiares xx.3.4); Platina does not go much further than offering a generic commendation for his commitment to civic duty (De optima cive, p. 191); in Pontano, Thrasybulus only appears as the Athenian general who receives with joy the prophecy that he would meet his death in a winning battle (De magnanimitate i.48.74). In short, for all these authors, Thrasybulus was but an additional example, used to illustrate certain virtues, while Patrizi (who had experienced exile on his own) focuses rather on the importance of reconciling the community and weakening potential oppositions, by offering forgiveness to those adversaries who were readier to surrender (De institutione reipublicae vi.5).29 Just from these quick comparisons, it should appear clearly that Patrizi is making good use of his historical information. Before him, there had been only two ways of speaking about Athenian constitution, because humanists either generically described it as one of the many republics (without saying anything about its differences with respect to Sparta or Rome), or focused only on individual institutions and laws of particular interest (the Areopagus and Solon’s decree on the Athenians’ sons killed in war for instance). The De institutione reipublicae inaugurates, to all intents and purposes, a new perspective. Though the remarks on democracy are dispersed throughout such a lengthy work, Patrizi finally provides a coherent framework. Moreover, if at the core of this framework one can recognize Aristotle, Patrizi is also ready to detach himself from him, for instance when he gives a rather favourable opinion on Athens’ constitutional evolution after Solon: a republic governed by all of its people, in which citizens in arms defend their own city and were ready to check the excessive power of the rich with an appropriate legislation (something that must 28 Renaissance rituals of pacification have received increasing attention in recent years: Polecritti (2000); Bruni (2003); Petkov (2003); Dessì (2005); Niccoli (2007). 29 Canfora (1997a) mistakenly attributes the rediscovery of Thrasybulus’ amnesty to the religious wars in France.

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have recalled Patrizi’s readers of the anti-​magnate measures taken by many Italian communes).30 Generally speaking, it is not incorrect to say that the De institutione reipublicae is more focused on laws and the De regno on customs. Yet, at the same time, it would be an error to consider the two works as in opposition. For example, it is in the De regno (i.3) that readers find what is probably the first history of the Athenian constitution ever written by a modern author. In the wake of Aelius Aristides in his Panathenaicus (which was yet to be translated to Latin at the time), Patrizi argues that Athens offers a very interesting case study for, in its history, it experienced all sort of governments one after another, even if, in the end, democracy always prevailed (as the preface to De institutione reipublicae vi goes, Athenians “semper ad optimam democratiam redierunt,” always came back to the best form of popular government). Patrizi thus begins his narrative with Theseus and the first creation of city-​states, moving on to Cecrops (who chose the name of the city, in honour of Minerva) and to the equally mythical Codrus (who willingly sacrificed himself in battle in order to guarantee Athens’ victory and was the last Athenian king), before going on to the long domination of the descendants of Heracles over the whole of Attica. Only at the end of this long process does Solon’s respublica finally show up, immediately followed by Peisistratus’ people-​supported tyranny (Patrizi is also the first to make use here of their friendly correspondence reported by Diogenes Laertius, in which Solon states that, though tyranny is always an evil in itself, Peisistratus has proved to be the mildest of tyrants). According to the De regno, the expulsion of the sons of Peisistratus coincided with the return of democracy. In a first phase “the most famous men occupy positions of power”; then, in a second moment, stirred by “ambition and envy,” the people imposed itself through sedition, and putting all the most skilled military leaders on trial (an allusion to the punishment inflected on the Athenian strategoi for not having rescued the survivors from the Athenian ships sunk or disabled after the battle of Arginusae, in 406 bce) eventually led Athens to a tremendous defeat in the war against Sparta. But the oligarchic regime of the Thirty Tyrants imposed in the aftermath of the war did not last, and from then on Athens would not lose its freedom again until Macedonians enslaved the whole of Greece. Such a narrative deserves special attention. First, it is highly significant that Patrizi rejects the appellations of respublica and popularis status which a pro-​ oligarchic author like Bruni had chosen for good and bad popular government,

30

On the long-​term memory of the anti-​magnate laws in Florence: Najemy (1991); Najemy (2006).

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120 Pedullà to call the first and the second phase of Athenian democracy after Peisistratus respectively popularis status and plebeius dominatus.31 As a matter of fact, with this choice comes to the fore Patrizi’s greater appraisal of popular participation, since –​contrary to the majority of the humanists –​it is not the government of the people but only the rule of the plebs alone that is condemned in his narrative.32 In recent years James Hankins has rightly underscored the importance of fifteenth-​century efforts to find a common political lexicon for the six basic constitutions, and Patrizi clearly played an important role in this process.33 Hankins’ inquiry can be expanded to a larger number of texts and summarized in a simple scheme:34 table 3.3 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Renaissance i

Good constitutions

Monarchìa (One) Aristokratìa (Few) Politìa-​Demokratìa (Many)

Leonardo Bruni (i)

regnum

optimorum civium potestas

Leonardo Bruni (II) Cyriac of Ancona Lauro Quirini Lorenzo Valla

regia potestas/​ regnum regnum regnum monarchia/​ imperium unius viri  

optimatum gubernatio aristocratia aristocratia imperium virorum optimorum  

  31 32 33 34

censuaria potestas/​popularis potestas respublica democratia respublica aequabilitas iuris, quum dominatur multitudo  

See chapter 2, pp. 84, 86–87. Patrizi defends even the manual workers’ political participation against Aristotle and Cicero in De institutione reipublicae i.8. On the importance of this position see McClure (2004) 12–​14. Hankins (2010); Hankins (2014); Hankins (2016) for Bruni, Cyriac, Patrizi, and Brandolini. The examples are taken from Bruni’s translation of the Nicomachean Ethics (i) and Politics (ii), Cyriac’s Sex modi administrandarum rerum publicarum, Quirini’s De republica, Valla’s translation of Herodotus, Donato Acciaiuoli’s In Aristotelis libros octo Politicorum commentarii (composed in 1472, but printed only in 1566), Patrizi’s De institutione reipublicae and De regno, Brandolini’s De comparatione reipublicae and regni, Scala’s Apologia contra vituperatores civitatis Florentiae (1496), Beroaldo the Elder’s Oratio in tribunos plebis, Raffaele Maffei’s Commentarii Urbani (1506), and Longueil’s translation of De tribus reipublicae generibus by Plutarch (made before 1522, but only printed in 1544, posthumously).

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Athenian Democracy in the Italian Renaissance table 3.3 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Renaissance i (cont.)

Good constitutions

Monarchìa (One) Aristokratìa (Few) Politìa-​Demokratìa (Many)

Donato Acciaiuoli

regia potestas/​ optimatum regia gubernatio/​ gubernatio/​ regnum optimatum potestas Francesco Patrizi regnum/​ potestas monarchia optimorum civium Aurelio regnum/​unius Brandolini principatus Bartolomeo Scala regnum Filippo Beroaldo principatus regius/​ monarchia Raffaele Maffei regnum Christoph de regia vel unius Longeuil potestas

respublica

isonomiaa/​ popularis societas/​ popularis status/​ optima democratia politice/​respublica respublica/​ popularis civitas principatus ex aristocratia

optimatum gubernatio optimatium respublica/​ aristocratia principatus optimatum/​ aristocratia aristocratia paucorum vel optimatum potestas

democratiaque compositus politia popularis potestas

Bad constitutions Tyrannis (One)

Oligarchìa (Few)

Demokratìa-​ Ochlokratìa (Many)

Leonardo Bruni (i) Leonardo Bruni (II) Cyriac of Ancona Lauro Quirini Lorenzo Valla

paucorum potentia paucorum potentia oligarchia oligarchia imperium paucorum/​ status paucorum/​ oligarchia

multitudinis gubernatio popularis status

tyrannis tyrannis tyrannis tyrannia tyrannis

ochlocratia democratia status popularis

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122 Pedullà table 3.3 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Renaissance i (cont.)

Bad constitutions Tyrannis (One)

Oligarchìa (Few)

Demokratìa-​ Ochlokratìa (Many)

Donato Acciaiuoli

paucorum potentia/​ paucorum gubernatio oligarchia/​ paucorum potentia paucorum potestas

popularis status/​ popularis gubernatio

tyrannis

Francesco Patrizi tyrannis Aurelio Brandolini

tyrannis

Bartolomeo Scala tyrannis Filippo Beroaldo tyrannica administratio Raffaele Maffei

tyrannia

Christoph de Longueil

tyrannides

oligarchia/​ paucorum principatum principatus paucorum/​ oligarchia oligarchia/​ paucorum administratio/​ gubernatio paucorum dominationes

plebeius dominates/​plebeia gubernatio democratia/​ plebeius principatus plebis status popularis status/​ democratia democratia/​ popularis administratio/​ popularis gubernatio plebis violenti in agendo conatus

a  In Greek letters (probably inspired by Herodotus).

From this scheme it should be clear that on the first four forms there was a sort of general consent (the only real oscillation being between the Greek expressions aristocratia and oligarchia and their Latin equivalent), while the real problems started with the names to give to good and bad popular government, as popularis status and democratia could be assumed in both senses (and the same Bruni opted for different solutions in his translations of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics). Democratia indicated the good form for Cyriac of

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Ancona35 and the bad one for Lauro Quirini, Aurelio Lippo Brandolini, Filippo Beroaldo the Elder, and Raffaele Maffei, whereas popularis status /​popularis gubernatio /​popularis administratio /​popularis postestas /​popularis societas /​popularis civitas was the name chosen for Aristotelian polity by Leonardo Bruni (in his translation of the Ethics), Francesco Patrizi, Bartolomeo Scala, and Christoph de Longueil and the one Bruni in his other translation (that of the Politics), Lorenzo Valla, Donato Acciaiuoli, Filippo Beroaldo the Elder, and Raffaele Maffei picked for corrupted popular government. Not always does the choice hide a strong political judgment, but at least in Patrizi’s case it is clearly a precise will to distance himself from Bruni’s translation and to promote a more inclusive form of republican rule. Besides the translation choices, Patrizi’s narrative deserves at least two more considerations. Above all, he never deduces any anti-​democratic consideration from Athenian failures, even while underscoring the weak points of the system. That means that, although Patrizi acknowledges a crisis of democracy in the last part of the fifth century bce, his only comment is that all states are inevitably destined to fall. Moreover, he combines his classical sources in an original key. The De regno does not follow obsequiously Politics 2.12 (to the point that the Areopagus is never mentioned), nor Justin, but –​even if no politician between Solon and Thrasybulus is explicitly named and the institutional reforms which made the people’s hegemony possible are left unmentioned –​it offers an original version of Athenian history where the many political upheavals are clearly contextualised within the fight against Sparta, whenever necessary connecting internal with external politics.36 Though it is also worth noting that, compared to Aristotle, for Patrizi the crisis comes later: not as an immediate consequence of Ephialtes’ and Pericles’ reforms, but during the Peloponnesian War, when the assembly’s presumed irrational behavior is blamed for Athens’ defeat. Even if the Greek historian is not mentioned, it is therefore quite likely that, in such a narrative, Patrizi is rather putting to good use Thucydides’ analysis (another absolute novelty). All these elements are enough to make Patrizi by far the leading figure in the history of the reception of Attic democracy between Petrarch and Machiavelli, even if the De institutione reipublicae and the De regno had a minimal impact until they got printed in Paris and, a bit unexpectedly, became the most 35 36

For this reason Hankins (2016) aptly called Cyriac “the first democrat.” Patrizi overtly proves wrong some of the traits which Hansen (2005) considers as characteristic of any appreciation of Athenian democracy between 1250 and 1800:  namely 1) the absence of a “historical description,” 2) a “hostile” attitude, and 3) the centrality of Solon alone.

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124 Pedullà successful political treatises of the sixteenth century –​just after Aristotle’s and Machiavelli’s.37 2

Niccolò Machiavelli: the Rise of the Mixed Constitution

Pontano’s and Patrizi’s treatises easily give the impression that at the end of the fifteenth century, the history of Athenian democracy had finally assumed a central place in humanist political theory. At this point, a retrospective list of the works where Athens’ good popular rule (that is, an Aristotelian moderate polity according to the teachings of Solon) is praised would include, at least: Leonardo Bruni, Laudatio Florentinae Urbis (1404) Cyriac of Ancona, Sex modi administrandarum rerum publicarum (1440–​1447) Lauro Quirini, De republica (1450 ca.) Francesco Patrizi of Siena, De institutione reipublicae (1471) Francesco Patrizi of Siena, De regno (1484) Filippo Beroaldo the Elder, Oratio ad tribunos plebis (1491) Even the upheaval produced by Charles viii’s invasion of Italy in 1494 contributed to consolidate the potential curiosity for the ancient experiments in popular rule, when, as a consequence of the war, in 1494 the Medici were banished from Florence after 60 years of informal government and the restored republic assigned all the principal functions to a Consiglio Grande (Great Council) made up of over 3,000 members from an overall population of 50,000 (of whom around 10,000 male adults, that were at least 29-​years-​old).38 Nothing comparable had ever been seen in the Italian communes; in a certain way Athens had never been so close. Still, such impressive numbers (compared to early-​modern standards) did not mean an immediate increase in the interest for Athenian institutions, as it is clear from the transcripts of the informal meetings (pratiche) which, during the republican period (1494–​1512), were summoned in order to prepare the reunions of the Consiglio Grande with the help of all the highest magistrates and most eminent citizens. In thousands of pages, whereas Roman history is often 37 38

During the sixteenth century, Patrizi was translated (or heavily plagiarised) into Italian, French, English, and Spanish for a total of 48 prints and 19 epitomes; 40 manuscripts survive: Hankins (2010) 469. On Florence in those years: Gilbert (1965); Najemy (2006) 375–​413; Fournel (2010).

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invoked as a model, Athens is not mentioned a single time, proving that Greek history was known to so few of the Florentine elite that, were anyone to refer to such exotic events, he would have only confused matters instead of clarifying the options at stake.39 The persistent uneasiness with Athens helps to better explain the role which its history plays in Machiavelli’s writings, where ancient democracy receives much more attention than it has usually given by scholars.40 In his case, almost all references come from a single text:  the Discourses on Livy, which Machiavelli conceived of as an inquiry into Rome’s success aimed at drawing from ancient history a set of rules potentially valid also for the modern era. In Machiavelli’s other texts, references to Athens are quite exceptional: there is a furtive allusion to the defeat in the war against Sparta in The Prince (5); some war stratagems by Cimon, Phormio, Alcibiades, and Iphicrates are recalled in the Art of War (from Frontinus’ Stratagemmata); in the preface to the Florentine Histories the “division between the nobility and the plebs” which occurred in Rome as well as in Athens and “all other republics which flourished in those times” are rapidly mentioned. Unfortunately, he continues in this last case, Florence went well beyond these spontaneous and natural conflicts: first the nobility itself is divided, then comes the division between the nobility and the people, and finally between the people and the plebs; and often it happens that one of these parts which had prevailed, itself divides in two: from which divisions, there follow many deaths, many exiles, families destroyed, more than there ever was in any other city which anyone can still remember.41 39

Fachard (1988–​2002). See Gilbert (1957). References to Roman history had become common in the pratiche since the 1420s:  Brucker (1977) 290–​293. Years later, however, Francesco Guicciardini would explicitly interpret the pacification desired by the preacher Girolamo Savonarola after banishing the Medici as amnesty in an Athenian fashion (Storia d’Italia ii.2). In 1498–​99 the Roman jurist and humanist Mario Salamonio served as Captain of the People (that is, as a foreign judge) in Florence for six month and delivered some ceremonial speeches in the Palazzo Vecchio; in one of them he contended that it was Athens’ political system, not Rome’s, that was closest to Florence’s, and listed nine specific correspondences (see D’Addio 1955). Salamonio must then be added to the list of Renaissance admirers of Athenian democracy. 40 On Machiavelli in general: Vivanti (2013). In the last years, greater attention has been paid to the role Sparta (and especially Spartan social reformers Agis and Cleomenes) played in Machiavelli’s work: Cadoni (1985); Nelson (2004); McCormick (2009); Barthas (2011). Athens though has not received such attention. 41 In Florentine Histories v.1, Machiavelli tells of Cato the Censor’s hostile reaction to the Athenian embassy led by philosophers Diogenes and Carneades, but this anecdote falls out of the chronological context of Athenian democracy.

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126 Pedullà That is all. Conversely, Athens is frequently invoked in the Discourses. The first relevant novelty, compared with fifteenth-​century treatises, is the pre-​ eminence given to the constitution. Democratic institutions, as seen, had received some attention from Bruni and Quirini, but only in Patrizi did the interest become somehow more systematic. With Machiavelli, however, we are much beyond that. No one has said it more clearly than Arnaldo Momigliano: “Modern political thought was born when Machiavelli analysed Livy by the standards of Greek political thought” –​that is, focusing on the Roman constitution rather than on Roman mores.42 Momigliano goes right to the point and today his bold statement probably needs correcting only on one front, in the light of a recent discovery: book 6 of Polybius’ Histories was not the only, nor the most important Greek trigger to move Machiavelli, as Momigliano thought.43 Indeed, far greater seems to have been the influence of another Greek author who had just recently been rediscovered:  the rhetorician and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (ca. 60–​7 bce), who, in his Roman Antiquities, had applied some of Polybius’ intuitions to the archaic history of Rome (which is precisely the period discussed in the Discourses).44 Machiavelli clearly moves in the Roman Antiquities’ footsteps. Polybius’ and Dionysius’ principal idea was that none of the forms of government described by Aristotle were lasting  –​not even the three traditionally considered good (monarchy, aristocracy, and polity/​democracy). As a matter of fact, political stability could only be reached through a careful amalgamation of them such as only Sparta, Carthage, and Rome had succeeded in doing in antiquity –​not Athens. For this reason, in Machiavelli the theory of the so called “mixed constitution” has the effect of immediately placing Athenian democracy amongst the inferior forms of government, together with monarchy and aristocracy. On this point, following Dionysius (and not Polybius), the Discourses are even 42 43

44

Momigliano (1992a), 519. The first five books of Polybius’ Histories were translated by Niccolò Perotti under Nicholas v’s request, but not book vi, in which the theory of the mixed constitution and the comparative description of Roman, Spartan, and Carthaginian institutions are presented. For a long time, scholars wondered how, though not knowing Greek, Machiavelli could have read it, but, after discovering that already in the 1490s Bernardo Rucellai, Marco Antonio Sabellico, and Aurelio Lippo Brandolini were making references to it, it became clear that at that stage Polybius vi had already reached a broader public: see Dioniosotti (1980) and, for more examples, Pedullà (2018). On Machiavelli’s use of Lascaris’ translation see Hexter (1956) and Monfasani (2016). The first eleven books of Dionysius’s Roman Antiquities were translated at the request of Nicholas V by Lampugnino Birago, who completed his Latin version in January 1469 or 1470 (subsequently printed in 1480 in Treviso). On the importance of Dionysius in early modern and modern political theory: Pedullà (2010c), Pedullà (2018).

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more radical, going as far as considering monarchy, aristocracy, and polity/​democracy as not only short-​lived but simply “pestiferous” (Discourses i.2).45 Once more, it is worth taking note of the words chosen by Dionysius’ and Polybius’ translators (Lampugnino Birago and Janus Lascaris) and eventually by Machiavelli, Agostino Nifo, Gian Giorgio Trissino, and Baldassar Castiglione (in his Book of the Courtier iv.21, 1528) to render in Latin and Italian the six basic forms.46 Polybius was clearly at the origins of the new positive exploitation of the Latin word democratia to indicate the good form of popular rule, even if, before Lascaris’ translation, also Cyriac had done such a thing, following in the footsteps of Plutarch’s De tribus reipublicae generibus, and the same distinction between democratia and ochlocratia was also present in Hilarion Veronesis’ (1440–​1485) translation of Hermogenes’ Compendium Rhetorices.47 table 3.4 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Renaissance ii

Good constitutions

Monarchìa (One)

Aristokratìa (Few)

Demokratìa (Many)

Lampugnino Birago

principatus regius/​monarchia/​ monarchica potestas  

paucorum principatus/​ principatus optimatum  

populi principatus

 

45 46

47

 

Pedullà (2018) 188. In Nifo’s De regnandi peritia (1523) the reference to Polybius’ six forms is made explicit (i.1); conversely, in his De rege et tyranno (i.1) and De vera vivendi libertate (i.12), respectively published in 1526 and 1535, the same Nifo uses timocratia /​respublica /​isonomia for good popular rule and democratia /​popularis potential /​popularis potestas for the bad one. On Nifo and Machiavelli: Pedullà (2010b), Pedullà (2017a). It must be noted that the word ochlocratia was used also by Maximus of Tyrus in his sermon Vitam contemplativam meliorem esse activa (first published in a posthumous Latin translation by Cosimo de Pazzi in 1517); however, for Maximus there are only three, and not six, forms: monarchy (regia potentia /​gubernatio regia), aristocracy (aristocratia /​optimatum potestas), and democracy (dimocratia /​popularis potentia /​ochlocratia /​potentia plebis). I would like to thank John Monfasani for kindly providing me the information about Lascaris’ translation (1500 ca.) from Vat. Lat. 2968, ff. 1r-​v. The translation was first published in 1523 in a collection of ancient and modern rhetorical works. The Greek princeps dates 1508.

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128 Pedullà table 3.4 Translating the Six Basic Constitutions in the Renaissance ii (cont.)

Good constitutions

Monarchìa (One)

Aristokratìa (Few)

Demokratìa (Many)

Hilarion Veronensis Janus Lascaris

regnum

aristocratia

democratia

regnum

Niccolò Machiavelli Agostino Nifo

principato

aristocratia/​ democratia aristocratica respublica governo di ottimati stato popolare

Gian Giorgio Trissino Baldassar Castiglione

vasilia regno

governo dei boni/​ ottimati

amministrazione populare

Bad constitutions

Tyrannis (One)

Oligarchìa (Few)

Ochlokratìa (Many)

Lampugnino Birago Hilarion Veronensis Janus Lascaris

tyrannis/​tyrannica –​ monarchia tyrannis oligarchia

–​

monarchia/​ tyrannica politia tirannide

oghlocratia

Niccolò Machiavelli Agostino Nifo Gian Giorgio Trissino Baldassar Castiglione

48

basilia/​regnum

tyrannis/​ dominatio tirannide tirannide

aristocratia/​optimatum democratia principatum aristocratia dimocratia

ochlocratia

oligarchia/​oligarchica respublica governo di pochi/​ stato de’ pochi oligarchia/​paucorum potestas oligarchia

licenza demarchia ochlocratia48

governo di pochi non governo ad boni arbitrio della moltitudine

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The insistence on the superiority of mixed government, however, relegated this good democratia amongst second-​rate choices. Already in Polybius, Athens had been singled out, along with Thebes, in order to show how superior were mixed constitutions. For him, the brief hegemony of those two republics over Greece was just the result of the extraordinary virtue of its citizens, starting with Themistocles (Histories 6.44), while Sparta, Carthage, and Rome were able to consolidate their conquests thanks to the excellency of their institutions. Machiavelli clearly endorses such a judgment, so that Athens plays only a minor role in the Discourses’ “constitutional engineering,” and is mentioned just to highlight the inferiority of the unmixed forms of government in comparison to Sparta, Rome, and Venice (Discourses i.2).49 Obviously, Athenian history did not only offer a long string of defeats. Far from it. Machiavelli, too, is ready to recognize it –​for example in Discourses i.58 and Discourses ii.2, where he illustrates the general tendency of republics to expand at a very fast rhythm once they enjoy political freedom by describing a similar trend in Athens and in Rome after the fall of Peisistratus’ and Tarquin’s tyrannical rule. In the first case, however, these remarkable successes did not last long –​very likely because of the errors of the first lawgiver, Solon, who did not implement the mixed constitution.50 The Discourses represent one of the few real turning-​points in the reception of Athenian democracy. Fifteenth-​century humanists had assimilated Athens with other ancient republics: for better or worse. Amongst the negative aspects, the internal conflicts were usually evoked (Petrarch, Bracciolini, Palmieri, Quirini, Patrizi, Brandolini, Pontano in book iv of the De obedientia), as well as one of the main consequences of these, that is to say, unjust exiles (Petrarch, Bracciolini, Francesco and Mario Filelfo, Patrizi), while, as for the positive aspects, the citizen army system was often commended (Bruni, Palmieri, Patrizi), and so was the citizens’ notorious devotion to the commonwealth. In all these cases, anyway, Athens, Sparta, and Rome were associated with the same praises and criticisms, to the point that during the whole fifteenth-​century political thought it is easy to trace a clear anti-​republican tradition to the princely courts, but not a specifically anti-​democratic one, given that, as already seen, the republican authors who criticized democratia (like Quirini and Beroaldo) did it in the name of the Aristotelian good polity. 49 50

On the European spread of the so-​called “myth of Venice”: Gaeta (1961); Gilbert (1968); Gilmore (1973); Robery and Law (1975); Marx (1978); Muir (1981) 13–​63; Gaeta (1981); Fontana and Fournel (1997); Finley (1999). Only with Giambattista Vico’s New Science the existence of such an original lawgiver would be questioned: Pedullà (2010c) cxxx-​c xxxii.

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130 Pedullà

­f igure 3.1 Types of Constitutions according to Machiavelli. Gabriele Pedullà, Machiavelli in Tumult: The “Discourses on Livy” and the Origins of Political Conflictualism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

The first to neatly separate Athens from the other ancient republics was then Machiavelli. After him, Athens’, Sparta’s, and Rome’s paths will neatly diverge, and for a couple of centuries the simple form of popular government (even the moderate polity) will play only a minor role, while, with some exceptions, the last two –​being mixed constitutions –​will fight for primacy. As a result, in the great majority of cases, from this moment on Athens (along with Florence)51 will simply disappear from the discussion of the best constitution. In the immediate aftermath of the Discourses, thus, Athens would acquire the three characteristics which, from then on, would stick to it for centuries: a democratic constitution (clearly distinct from simply republican one); a relatively short-​lived freedom (because of the persistent political instability); and an exceptional cultural thriving. However, as a result of this same process of “speciation” inside the broader “genus” of ancient republics, Sparta too would come to acquire its own “specific” characteristics, mostly built in contrast to Athens: a mixed constitution tending towards aristocracy (or simply an aristocratic one); a lasting freedom (obtained thanks to its famous civic concord); a constant and exclusive devotion to military exercise. And in this comparison 51

According to Hulliung (1983), Machiavelli would have even considered Florence as “Athens’ reincarnation” (p. 48).

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between Greek poleis, Athens systematically would hold second place (at least from a political point of view) until at least the end of the eighteenth century, when, little by little, the myth of a “bourgeois Athens,” respectful of individual liberties (and then closer to the moderns), was destined to subvert the hierarchies once more.52 However, Dionysius and Polybius’ lessons were not only decisive with respect to mixed constitutions. As suggested by Momigliano, from them Machiavelli learnt how to consider the forms of government not just as the sum of individual laws but rather as a true organism, in which every single institution is strictly bound to the others. Therefore, in the Discourses the analysis of political systems reaches a degree of complexity simply unimaginable for fifteenth-​ century authors. Now, each constitution has its strengths and weaknesses: and since the causes of the former are often also the causes of the latter, the lawgiver can only choose from amongst models which are all partially faulty, after weighing out carefully the advantages and disadvantages of any option. In Machiavelli’s own words, there exist “necessary inconveniences” (Discourses i.6), which one should not hesitate to embrace for the sake of the advantages that come with them when these advantages are comparatively greater. However, too often deciding is not easy, especially because many aspects that, upon first consideration, one would tend to consider as separate, actually are interwoven. This is for instance the case of civic and military institutions, as the capacity to recruit an army large enough to protect the republic (and eventually to expand it), depends on its form of government and the extension of popular participation but has, in turn, heavy consequences (that is, social conflicts). The most relevant alternative is the one set out in Discourses i.6, where the Roman model (characterized by openness towards newcomers, wide popular participation, a powerful army, but also social conflicts) is opposed to Spartan and Venetian ones (characterized by closeness to newcomers, strong aristocratic leadership, admirable social concord but also military weakness). Not being a mixed constitution, Athens is excluded from such a comparison, but it is brought back into discussion later. As a general rule, one could even say that in many cases it is only thanks to the counter-​examples offered by Athenian history that Machiavelli frames Rome’s most original characteristics. Every time that happens, however, one must also acknowledge that the Discourses expand on ideas already present in Dionysius’ Antiquities. It is here, for instance, that Machiavelli read that the main reason for Sparta and Athens’ incapacity to build stable empires was their unwillingness to assimilate the defeated cities into their government (Antiquities 2.11; 3.17; 6.19). But the same 52

Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet (1995 [1979]).

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132 Pedullà can be said about Dionysius’ insistence on Rome’s extraordinary capacity to contain self-​destructive conflicts (at least until the Gracchi) in contrast with the Greek poleis’ bloody struggles (Antiquities 2.11; 7.18; 7.66). As a matter of fact, in both cases Machiavelli will reuse those same arguments in discussing the way Rome built its own empire (Discourses ii.3)53 and in asserting (counter-​intuitively) the positive effects of the (bloodless) conflicts between the patricians and the plebeians (Discourses i.4). In these examples, Athens is always at the negative end and Rome at the positive. In other words, Athens is always mentioned in order to make Rome shine in a more vivid light, except for Discourses i.1, where the Greek polis is classified amongst the cities born free and, for this reason, more likely to self-​rule effectively (like Rome, Sparta, and Venice, but unlike a Roman colony like Florence). Such a rejection of Athenian democracy has often bewildered scholars. The Discourses are famous for their full commitment to the people against the aristocrats –​from their appreciation of the tribunes of the plebs (Discourses i.3–​6) to their taste for popular processes as a tool for controlling elites (Discourses i.7–​8), and from their defense of the social reformers who resorted to violence to amend excessive disparities in wealth (Discourses i.10), to their now famous thesis that “the disunion between the plebs and the Roman senate made the republic free and powerful” (Discourses i.4). On these bases, one could then expect from Machiavelli a fuller appreciation of the government of the people and even of democratic rule, while, conversely, the Discourses opt for a constitutional system that incorporates monarchical and aristocratic elements. In short, why did not Machiavelli like democracy? Specialists are embarrassed by this question but at this point, after analyzing the humanists’ reflections on Athenian history, it is not difficult to answer it: Machiavelli endorses Roman mixed constitution against plain popular rule because everybody in his time identified good democracy (that is polity) with a very moderate form of republicanism. If Pericles’ Athens was just a disordered republic (according to the majority of ancient sources) and if the alternative was then between Solon’s Athens and Rome, the latter seemed better suited to implement the people’s participation and power thanks to such institutions as the tribunes, while correcting all the principal defects of the former (for instance, the excessive power of the assembly alone).54 53 54

Probably Machiavelli was also influenced by a passage from the Annales (11.24), where Tacitus explains the Roman success in comparison to Athens’s through an analysis of their different policies towards the defeated cities: Pedullà (2018) 151–​52. McCormick (2011) has rightly noted that in Machiavelli’s description (Discourses i.18) Roman assembly resembles Athenian one (pp. 97–​100).

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That in embracing Rome and not Athens Machiavelli was not contradicting his strong pro-​popular assumptions can be easily verified thanks to Discourses i.28, where the following question is posed: “What was the reason why the Romans were less ungrateful towards their own citizens than the Athenians?” This is a crucial passage, given that –​as already seen in the previous ­chapter –​the presumed ingratitude of the people against the ruling class had always been a favourite argument of humanists like Petrarch, Bracciolini, and Alberti against popular rule, whether they were sympathetic with princely or oligarchic government.55 In this particular case, while other republics just put on trial their leaders for what they had done, Athens had implemented a peculiar procedure—​ostracism –​in order to strike pre-​emptively the citizens who had pursued excessive power and who, by their mere presence, posed a threat to democracy. Aristotle had repeatedly condemned this law (Politics ii.13; v.3; v.8), and in the second half of the fifteenth century more and more humanists started paying attention to it, from Platina (De optimo cive, p. 193), to Rinuccini (Dialogus de libertate, p. 286) and Patrizi (De institutione reipublicae vi.5). At least the last two of them appreciated ostracism, which was seen as a fundamental instrument to preserve freedom. As Patrizi wrote, quoting from Aristotle, but with approval: “None of you excel –​said the inhabitants of Ephesus –​, and if one exceeds the others, that one should go into exile” (De institutione reipublicae vi.5). Such a favourable attitude is particularly evident in another humanist text very dear to Machiavelli,56 namely a long letter De nobilitate by Antonio Galateo (1448–​1517), where the whole traditional list of viri illustres sent into exile is presented, but immediately corrected by specifying that “the leading and powerful citizens were the cause of conflicts, discord, civil wars and all evils.” In this context too ostracism is commended. It seems to me that the Athenians behaved wisely since whichever citizen who earnt the favour and great honours amongst the people, even because of virtuous actions, had to go into exile for some time lest the favour and approval of the people should deflate, and so that he should not aim for reign because of the following he had thereby acquired. (p. 278). Believing that republics need exceptional instruments to prevent the “mighty” from imposing themselves over the city, Machiavelli clearly follows this line. 55 56

See Chapter 2, pp. 74–75, 89–90, 94. For instance, the oration of the anonymous plebeian in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories iii.13 echoes Galateo’s De nobilitate (Pedullà 2013b).

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134 Pedullà As a matter of fact, not only does he defend the people from the accusation of being ungrateful (the topic of Discourses i.28–​32), but –​after taking sides in favour of popular trials in Discourses i.8–​9 (once again in the wake of Dionysius’ Antiquities, and against the pro-​oligarchic Roman and humanist tradition) –​he expresses his appreciation for ostracism.57 In his view, the presumed ingratitude of the people, its envy, or –​even worse –​its madness have nothing to do with the implementation of such a harsh provision; the Athenians were implacable towards their political leaders simply because, in contrast to the Romans, “having had their freedom taken away by Peisistratus […], when they recuperated their freedom once more, they were the readiest of avengers not only of errors, but of shadows of errors of all their citizens, because of the outrages suffered in their past slavery.” Indeed, Machiavelli continues, “if Rome had been deprived of its freedom like Athens, it would not have been more indulgent with its citizens than Athens had” (Discourses i.28). In this comparison too, Rome comes out with the upper hand, but what really counts in this case is that Machiavelli shapes his argument to exonerate Athens from the traditional criticism. Rather than just repeating that, contrary to the Athenians, the Romans had known how to manage the potentially destructive elements of the social conflicts, Machiavelli is telling that had Rome, as well, in different circumstances, been harsher with its most ambitious citizens, it would not be culpable, for a certain dosage of “ingratitude” is necessary to protect republican liberty. Just as Roman tumults, within certain limits, “ingratitude” as well must be therefore considered nothing more than a “necessary inconvenience,” even if it implies that some men of outstanding qualities be sacrificed in the name of collective freedom. Great men –​Polybius claimed (Histories vi.44) –​have the ability to alter the course of history in their own cities for a certain period of time. However, their appearance in the public arena is exclusively a question of chance, to the point that one could even say –​in accordance with Renaissance Aristotelian epistemology –​that they belong to the sphere of unpredictable accidents, while institutions, thanks to the repetitiveness of their mechanisms, can be instead the subject of scientific knowledge. Given that whoever looks for universal rules must turn first and foremost to the forms of government, it is not 57

In his early Dell’ingratitudine (vv. 130–​144) Machiavelli had said that in Athens “Ingratitude makes its nest uglier than anywhere else,” quoting the examples of Miltiades, Aristides, Phocion, and Themistocles. However, as Bausi (1987) made clear, this particular text is “an exquisitely literary product,” less engaged with political theory and closer to the canons and topoi of that specific genre. On Machiavelli’s appreciation for popular trials: McCormick (2011) 114–​140; Pedullà (2018) 61–​64, 106–​10, 115–​116.

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so odd that there is little space for the viri illustres in the Discourses: for Machiavelli (Discourses i.4), at a careful analysis, even virtues prove to be the effect of laws –​which are themselves but the product of conflicts (thus “good examples derive from good education, good education from good laws, and good laws from those tumults that many people condemn thoughtlessly,” Discourses i.4). Sometimes Machiavelli turns to sources still rarely employed during his time, such as Thucydides.58 Nevertheless, also when he comments on the same episodes as previous humanists, it is significant that Machiavelli always focuses on new aspects of the same story, by expanding on a particular point or in any case by wringing out of the event questions which had not been asked before. Such a creative usage of the more traditionally known classical episodes presupposes a long familiarity with ancient writings that only a man with a solid education in the Greek and Latin authors could have.59 In a certain way, Machiavelli is then struggling with the humanists on their favourite field, but, to demystify their strongest beliefs, he does not even spare the most admired of the viri illustres. In Discourses i.59, for example, a famous episode is retold concerning Themistocles and Aristides (from Cicero’s De officiis 3.11.49; Valerius Maximus’ De dictis 6.5.7) which had been referred to often in humanist literature to summarise the contrast between the utile and the honestum (Platina, De principe, pp. 109, 113, De optimo cive, pp. 215, 217; even Morosini, De bene instituta republica, p. 215). Machiavelli presents it in the following way: Themistocles […] said that he had a plan that would be very useful (di grande utilità) to their country, but he could not reveal it because, once publicly revealed, he would not be able to realize it anymore. Therefore, the Athenians chose Aristides, to whom he (=Themistocles) could communicate his idea and, depending on what the latter (=Aristides) thought, they would deliberate about it. Themistocles then showed Aristides that the navy of the whole of Greece, though it was under Athens’ protection (sotto la fede loro), could be easily either captured or destroyed; this 58

59

In the Discourses Machiavelli makes ample use of Thucydides, for instance when retelling the Athenian expedition to Sicily (i.53; iii.16), when mentioning Athens’ “excessive growths” once freedom was restored (i.58; ii.2) and generally when discussing the Peloponnesian War (ii.2; ii.10; ii.12). The choice is even more significant given that Machiavelli knew how little read Thucydides was, so much so that he feels the need to present him as “the Greek historian” (iii.16). On Machiavelli and Thucydides:  Canfora (1997c). Surprisingly Pade (2006) 793 states that “the general consensus still seems to be that the Florentine political writer was never strongly influenced by him.” On Machiavelli’s humanistic education:  Guidi (2009); Black (2013)  –​both refuting Martelli (1998) and Bausi (2005).

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136 Pedullà would make the Athenians the masters of that region. Whereupon Aristides reported back to the people that Themistocles’ plan was very useful (utilissimo) but very dishonest (disonestissimo): for this reason, the people rejected it entirely. The humanists, like Cicero, are interested in the contrast between two heroic figures who occupy the whole stage with their diverging temperaments and ethics. In Machiavelli, on the contrary, the real protagonist of the episode is the people of Athens, who rejects without hesitation Themistocles’ plan, and, by doing so, thus proves that republican assemblies are more trustworthy than princes. An analogous approach recurs elsewhere. Following Valerius Maximus (De dictis 5.6 ext.3), the humanists had retold the suicide of Themistocles, who after ending up during his exile at the Persian king’s court, had preferred to commit suicide rather than lead the army of Artaxerxes against Greece, as he seemed at first disposed to do (Platina, De principe, p. 65; De optimo cive, p. 191). Machiavelli repeats the same story in Discourses ii.31 but in a much less favourable version found in Plutarch, according to which Themistocles committed suicide either not to compromise his glorious image, or because he considered the military campaign he had himself proposed to the sovereign actually hopeless (Plut. Them. 31). In the Discourses, Themistocles is then nothing more than a desperate exile: just as any man in his situation, he tries to persuade a powerful neighbour to move against his own country, and, in doing so, he is inevitably forced to lie to him by presenting the campaign as more straight-​ forward than it really is. Moreover, once again, at the centre of the story we do not find a solitary figure in all its greatness, but a human “type” –​the type of the “banished” –​observed in all its emotional fragility. Something similar happens also in the case of the conflict between Alcibiades and Nicias in relation to the Sicilian expedition which led to the rekindling of hostilities with Sparta (Discourses iii.16). In his Histories (6.9–​14; 6.16–​18), Thucydides had transcribed their long contrasting speeches to show the advantages and disadvantages of the available options but also, as always in classical and humanist historiography, to draw out the characters of the two men. Machiavelli, conversely, is only remotely interested in the two leaders. Rather he extracts from Nicias’ speech a general thought to support his own thesis that in a time of peace “it is not the virtuous men but those who are either richest or most powerful for their family ties” who get elected to high office. In Thucydides Nicias had indeed claimed that in taking position against the war he was going against his own interest: “because, when Athens was in peace, he knew that there were countless citizens who wanted to thwart him; while

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in waging a war, he knew that no citizen would be superior or equal to him.” Therefore, the wise Nicias is described as a great expert in mass psychology more than as a democratic hero of unblemished virtue; it is once again the reactions of the assembly which capture Machiavelli’s attention.60 In the end, it is as if, in the Discourses, examples from democratic Athenian history were appreciated as a way to verify and corroborate the hypotheses formulated about the Roman plebs. In the Discourses, not only are the leges analysed in a completely original way (as a part of an organism to compare with other organisms –​that is, with the other constitutions) but also the viri illustres, so dear to the humanists, are reduced to a background role. In such a context, the principal element of greatest continuity is probably the admiration for Solon. For Machiavelli, the Athenian legislator made a grave mistake in not choosing a mixed constitution for his city, but, apart from that, he embodies un unquestioned model. As readers are reminded at Discourses i.40, Roman laws were written in imitation of those codified by him. Moreover (Discourses i.11) Solon had proved to be no less astute than Lycurgus, Numa, and Savonarola in using religion in order to make the people accept his reforms (according to Plut. Sol. 14).61 Somewhat surprisingly, Machiavelli prefers the moderate Solon to the more radical Pericles in the only direct comparison he makes between them. As already seen, Aristotle matched Solon’s original constitution with the developments at the time of Pericles and took a position in favour of the more ancient legislation (Politics 2.12). Machiavelli as well, matches the two statesmen in the Discourses but on a completely different matter, when he refuses a common saying that “money is the nerve of war” to argue instead that nothing is indispensable to military operations apart from an efficient army (Discourses ii.10).62 On the one side there is Pericles, who, in one of the speeches that Thucydides put in his mouth, instigates his fellow citizens against Sparta with the argument that war is “done with the sword and with gold,” and, given Athens’ superior wealth, they can be confident in victory (Histories i.141). On the other side there is Solon, who was famous already among the ancients for his travels in the Near-​East and his legendary encounter with Croesus, when the

60 In Discourses i.53 the Athenian assembly’s decision to finance the campaign against Syracuse is once more referred to as proof of the people’s tendency to support hazardous projects. 61 Bartolomeo Scala (a close friend of Machiavelli’s father, and Niccolò’s predecessor at the head of the Florentine chancellery) had put these ancient legislators side-​by-​side on this matter (De legibus 49). 62 On Discourses ii.10 see Barthas (2011); Barthas (2015).

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138 Pedullà Athenian guest taught him not to rely too much on his proverbial wealth (a lesson Croesus came to appreciate only years later, after Cyrus defeated him in war). The humanists had been very much taken by the episode and had made it into a symbol of the instability of all earthly glory (Petrarch, Rerum memorandarum iii.62; Familiares viii.1.8; Pontano, preface to the De prudentia; Beroaldo, De optimo statu et principe). In repeating it, Machiavelli refers to a less well-​known source, Lucian of Samosata’s Charon, where Solon explicitly says “war was made with the sword and not with gold,” but above all draws a very different lesson from it: the ruinous defeat of the Croesus was not the result of the instability of the wheel of fortune but of his overconfidence in the power of money. Following this line, Machiavelli can thus implicitly link Croesus and Pericles (the two principes who trusted wealth too much), and casts a shadow, however indirectly, on Pericles’ excessive liberality too. Indeed, as the Art of War reads, “the unarmed rich man is the prize of the poor soldier.” 3

Carlo Sigonio: the Time of the Antiquarians

As is well known, the works of Machiavelli had an explosive effect on European political thought. In the wake of the Discourses, a new way of reading ancient historical writings was established, based on the comparative analy­ sis of the effects that either different decisions made in similar contexts, or similar actions produced in different contexts. Of course, the cult of the viri illustres, which had been so dear to the humanists, continued to inspire literary and figurative works. But from that moment, and until the eighteenth century, all political theorists who built their own hypotheses using ancient history as a repertory of examples, would do so in a close dialogue with Machiavelli. The signs of Machiavelli’s immense success do not reside so much in the great number of authors who repeated this or that claim from the Prince or the Discourses, but rather in subsequent thinkers’ inability to circumvent the binary alternatives he set out in those works (even when they would opt for the opposite solution). To mention but a few banal examples, it is what would happen with the comparisons between the Turk with the king of France (Prince 3) or that of Scipio with Hannibal (Prince 17), the opposition between the mixed constitutions modelled on Venice and Sparta, or those modelled on Rome (Discourses i.6), the conquests made by the sword or with money (Discourses ii.10), etc. In all these cases, Machiavelli’s followers, starting with Francesco Guicciardini (1478–​1540) and Donato Giannotti (1492–​1573) who knew him personally, would often take position against his advice but without

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contesting the Prince’s or the Discourses’ original categories.63 At most, some other thinkers, would order the empirical examples in a different fashion –​like the Venetian Paolo Paruta (1540–​1598) who, in Della perfezione della vita politica (1579), put Athens and Rome in a single constitutional family in order to better contrast their flaws with Spartan and Venetian aristocratic model. One of Machiavelli’s strengths, and one of the reasons for his success, resides precisely in the great flexibility of the categories he establishes in the Discourses. Due to limited space, it is impossible to pursue this Machiavellian tradition any further here. Suffice it to say that a systematic investigation into the works of Francesco Guicciardini, Donato Giannotti, Girolamo Cardano, Paolo Paruta, Giovanni Botero, Giovan Battista Guarini, Scipione Ammirato, Traiano Boccalini, Alessandro Tassoni, Paolo Sarpi, Ludovico Zuccolo, and Scipione Malvezzi would show the vitality of the questions raised by Machiavelli, including those about Athens, which endured well into the second half of the seventeenth century, and later still –​in Italy, but also abroad.64 Early modern Europe experienced truly a “Machiavellian moment.”65 However briefly, at least one other author must be mentioned, the great classicist from Modena, Carlo Sigonio (1522–​1584), for it is to him that we owe a third major model of reasoning about Athenian democracy, different both from Petrarch’s moral-​pedagogical approach and from Machiavelli’s historical-​political one:  the antiquarian paradigm. To help their contemporaries orient themselves in the Roman past, authors like Flavio Biondo, Pomponio Leto, and Bernardo Rucellai (the so-​called “antiquarians”) developed a method based on identification, comparison and discussion of all the surviving records. In broad terms, this involved explaining classical authors through other authors’ words, juxtaposing passages drawn from texts of any sort to trace unknown elements back to known ones –​similar to how mathematicians solve equations. Our knowledge of Rome is still very much indebted to them on a great number of subjects and occasionally their technique even provided highly sophisticated results, as when the antiquarians

63

64 65

On Guicciardini:  Cambiano (2000) 93–​116. In his Discorso di Logrogno (1512), written before reading Machiavelli, Guicciardini appreciates Athens for its popular militia and its Areopagus, but he criticizes it for the quantity of decisions still left in the hands of the people (who in his view should only elect the magistrates but not directly vote on relevant matters). In the subsequent years, in the footsteps of Machiavelli, Guicciardini too endorsed the mixed constitution (but with a pro-​oligarchic flavor). On the second half of the sixteenth century: Cambiano (2000) 117–​132. Pocock (1975). On the European influence of the Discourses’ methodology:  Zwierlein (2006); Pedullà (2018) 29–​34.

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140 Pedullà discussed general historical problems, such as the reasons for the rise and fall of the different States.66 Nevertheless, during the fifteenth century Greek history remained outside the antiquarians’ interest. Clearly, ever since the reappearance of Aristotle, Athens’ constitution had been somehow present to political thinkers, though no one had attempted to reconstruct its institutions in a systematic and coherent way like the fifteenth-​century humanists had done with Rome. Being mainly focused on Livy’s narrative, the Discourses too discussed only single, select aspects of Athens’ political organization, but –​in the wake of Polybius and Dionysius –​Machiavelli offered his contemporaries new reasons to study in depth the way Athenian democracy had worked. Constitutions, Machiavelli showed, could only be understood through careful comparison, and this also meant that the greater was the number of empirical forms of government studied, the better the comprehension of each of them. In this perspective Machiavelli’s contemporaries were especially well-​ informed about Rome after the great historian and antiquarian Flavio Biondo had published in 1459 a voluminous reference-​work on its institutions called Roma triumphans, but on Sparta too there was not lack of information thanks to the translation of Xenophon’s monograph by Filelfo, who provided the humanists precious materials for a comparative approach.67 Conversely, only in 1564 was a similar reconstruction attempted for Athens, when Sigonio, a major intellectual figure wrongly overlooked by historians of political thought today, published his De republica Atheniensium –​just a few years before Aquiles Estaço and Fulvio Orsini published their Illustrium virorum ut extant in Urbe expressi vultus (1569) and Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium et eruditorum ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatibus expressa (1570), where the physiognomy of the great Athenian writers and political leaders was carefully reconstructed through a painstaking study of the surviving statues and gems.68 66

67 68

For a general overview on Renaissance antiquarianism: Grafton (1996); Ampolo (1997); Miller (2012); Stenhouse (2013); Acciarino (2017). In 1541, Guillaume Postel had published a De republica seu magistratibus Atheniensium in which he described how the most important institutions worked, with the aim of providing the French king with useful historical information for shaping the state’s bureaucracy; his book was translated into Italian in 1543. On Postel: Secret (1977). On Filelfo’s Sparta see Hankins (2018). Sigonio’s monography on Athens has received very little attention, unlike his works on Rome and Israel, which were studied respectively by McCuaig (1989) and Bartolucci (2007). Unfortunately, Sigonio is “one of those important figures that drop out of the historiography because nobody wants to do the work necessary to understand them”: Hankins (1991) 517. Like Patrizi, Sigonio too refutes Hansen (2005) (see footnote 29).

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Divided into four books –​which are devoted to the constitution in general (“De forma reipublicae”), to the different assemblies (“De consiliis”), to the administration of justice (“De iudiciis”), and to the offices (“De magistratibus”) respectively –​Sigonio’s monumental survey relies on an impressive number of sources, the majority of which were never employed before to decipher Athens’ constitutional organization: Homer, the tragedians, Aristophanes, Lysias, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Aeschines, Libanius, Hyperides, Pausanias, Strabo, Aulus Gellius, Eusebius, etc. Though, notwithstanding his exceptional erudition, Sigonio’s tract stands as a major cornerstone in the history of the reception of Athenian democracy for many other reasons. The first striking aspect is undoubtedly Sigonio’s will to provide a whole constitution of Athens, by systematizing the scattered information into a coherent framework but above all by applying to the Greek city a method that Sigonio had previously refined when working on Rome and its jurisprudence. Already for the fifteenth-​century antiquarians, the Corpus Iuris Civilis had been much more than a generous source of information on the most diverse topics, offering a precise stimulus to investigate the way institutions worked in practice –​that is, to study them with a degree of attention to detail far greater than that of the “philosophical” analyses of the ancient constitutions (in Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Polybius, and even Dionysius). For instance, Sigonio describes in detail the characteristics and history of each magistracy (who can be elected, what was the procedure, where were the meetings held, who had the right to speak, and in which order, etc.); nor does he leave out the religious institutions. Biondo’s Roma triumphans offered an excellent example of this approach, and the De republica Atheniensium certainly walks this path. However, the antiquarians influenced Sigonio not only in his interests for the details. As Momigliano wrote in a rightly famous essay, the strength of the antiquarians was their ability to capture the invariant elements, the general framework of reference that remains unchanged under the surface, whereas, conversely, historians tend to have a special sensitivity to change. This means that Sigonio, as an antiquarian, always aims to highlight, first and foremost, the deep structures. In the case of Athens, this means that, at the same time he devotes considerable effort to showing the system of checks and balances on which the constitution was based, he never loses sight of the real cradle of the sovereign power: the popular assembly of citizens. As Sigonio writes, “from Solon, who supported the people, absolute power was given to the will of the assembly” –​ but he also recalls the oration Against Neera of the Demosthenic corpus: “the Athenian people are the masters of all decisions concerning the city” (ii.4). While clearly indicating that the assembly is the fulcrum of the whole system, in Sigonio’s view the Athenian political system is very far from the pure

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142 Pedullà and simple mob rule (according to an anti-​democratic commonplace). Far from that. The ekklesia has the last word but is not omnipotent, because Solon and the other Athenian prudent political leaders built around it a dense network of deliberative bodies and magistracies. Sigonio never speaks of a mixed constitution, but his Athens uses a system of counterweights no less complex than that described by Machiavelli for Rome, Sparta, and Venice in the wake of Polybius and Dionysius. In particular, the De republica Atheniensium insists on the large number of councils (ii.1). Alongside the ekklesia (called concio), Sigonio recalls the presence of two senates: not only the famous Areopagus (on which the humanists, who were committed to redeeming Athens from the accusation of being a democracy and to promoting instead its image as a moderate polity, had concentrated their attention), but also the Boulé (simply called Senatus). Here 500 citizens sat, allocated by lot and called to organize the work of the concio, since the ekklesia could only discuss legislative measures previously passed under the scrutiny of the Senatus (ii.3). Sigonio sincerely appreciates the participation of the whole people and praises Solon for not having deprived the assembly of any prerogative while prudently conferring greater powers to the councils. The metaphor he prefers to use to describe the Athenian constitution’s efficiency is therefore that of the anchor (probably suggested to him by the traditional image of the ship of the state at the mercy of storm, from Alcaeus forward),69 to the point that he writes that the two Senates were designed specifically “so that the floating assembly was held back by these anchors” (ii.3). Thanks to Solon’s wisdom, there is no danger of sinking or ending up on the rocks for Athens. As a matter of fact, according to Sigonio, another major element characterized its democratic constitution:  from the beginning the Athenians had distinguished between laws and decrees (i.5). While the former, corresponding to Solon’s original legislation, were publicly exposed and offered the general juridical framework, the assembly enjoyed the freedom to issue at will any particular bill that did not conflict with the fundamental laws of the state (and those who tried to do so could be tried for graphé paranomon). Such a division preserved the original constitution from abrupt changes and protected the republic’s freedom. If, as an antiquarian, Sigonio identifies the Athenian political system’s structural features with extraordinary perspicacity, he does not limit his investigation to them alone. First of all, alongside law (and closely interwoven with it), there is social history. According to the ancient sources (mainly Herodotus 69

Curtius (2013) 128–​130; Brock (2013) 53–​67.

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and Plutarch), after discussing tribes (phylai), the assemblies (curiae), and the demes (populi), Sigonio divides Athens’ population intro three groups on the basis of Attic geography (i.2) –​the citizens from the country (campestres), who generally opposed the democratic regime, and those from the mountain (montani), who generally supported it, and those from the coast (maritimi), generally in a middle position, and he eventually integrates such a first classification into another, depending on the citizens’ affluence: the wealthy (patrici), the farmers (rustici), and the working class (opifices). Moreover, the De republica Atheniensium greatly valorizes the relationship between geography, economics and politics, drawing from Thucydides some brilliant insights of the maritime origins of Athenian power –​an idea that some decades later would fuel the interest for Athens in Holland. Of the accomplished historians Sigonio, however, has above all a great sensitivity for the transformations that led him to retell in detail the evolution of the system during the two-​and-​a-​half centuries that separate Solon’s reforms from Philip ii’s conquest. Inevitably, even for him the starting point is Aristotle, but Politics 2.12 is integrated with the most diverse materials, so that he provides readers with the most complete and convincing account of Athenian constitutional history written up to then. For Sigonio, too, there was a “democratia prior” and a “democratia posterior,” chronologically separated by Peisistratus’ tyranny (i.5). The first democracy was already established by the legendary King Theseus (according to Plutarch’s testimony), and was eventually improved by Dracon and Solon, who gave the city the first written laws and its principal institutions. However, thanks to the census-​class system implemented by Solon (who was also responsible for the geographical division of the citizens), such a government was still ruled by the wealthiest families. The second democracy must be associated with Cleisthenes, Aristides and Pericles instead, and is distinguished from the first one by the rule of all the free citizens (i.5). Compared to Aristotle, who had opened the second phase with the pro-​popular reforms of Aristides, Ephialtes, and Pericles, for Sigonio the key figure, the single political leader who put the change in motion, is instead Cleisthenes, who strengthened popular government by giving citizenship to many slaves and foreigners (peregrini) and by establishing ostracism as a regular practice (of which Sigonio thinks favorably: ii.4). This is a very original choice which –​in the absence of a Plutarch’s biography of the great inspirer of the 509 bce reform70 –​would become common among scholars only much later, following the discovery in 1891 of the Constitution of the Athenians attributed to 70

However, Cleisthenes is quickly praised in Plutarch, Pericles 3 and Aristides 2.

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144 Pedullà Aristotle; the humanists, for example, were not at all interested in Cleisthenes (also because he is mentioned only very seldom by Latin authors).71 Sigonio came to formulate his highly original periodization of Athenian history by taking advantage of a series of sources that had not been sufficiently valued up to that time: Herodotus’ account, first of all (Histories 5.66; 5.69), but even more so two passages by Aristotle in which Cleisthenes is credited with a decisive role in reshaping the body politic by enrolling in the tribes many “foreigners and slaves” (Politics 3.2) in order to “strengthen the democracy” (Politics 6.4).72 Sigonio writes in fact: “Having driven out the tyrants, Cleisthenes, son of Alcmaeon, an exemplary man and citizen, not only restored the republic, as Herodotus said, but also empowered it, as Aristotle believed” (i.5). In the end such a special appreciation for Cleisthenes led Sigonio to formulate an unprecedented judgment about Athenian history. For Aristotle, “prior democratia” was simply better, because it was closer to righteous polity; for Sigonio (who, on this point, clearly follows Isocrates, Areopagiticus 20), Athens’ Golden Age is instead its central phase, just like living organisms:  “If someone asked what was the popular government (popularis respublica) in Athens, one could respond in a persuasive way: especially what is found in the laws of Solon, Cleisthenes, and Aristides, among which the former strengthen the rich and the latter the poor” (i.5). With a typically Aristotelian line of thought (even if in this case against Aristotle) Sigonio excludes therefore the two extremes (Theseus-​Dracon on one side and Pericles-​Ephialtes on the other) and valorizes the akmé, so that his narrative looks even more Aristotelian than Aristotle’s own. The last element that must be stressed is Sigonio’s enthusiasm for Athenian democracy. Already Patrizi (De regno i.3) had valued Aelius Aristides’ idea that the history of Athens owes its importance to the fact that the city experienced all the different political systems. Though Sigonio goes even further: “I believe that nothing is more splendid, more useful or more pleasant to know than its history” (i.5). Not even the difficulties of the popular government after Aristides reduced his appreciation for Attic democracy, nor, one might say, hurt it so much. For Sigonio, in fact, democracy survived any sort of attack: the brief oligarchic parenthesis orchestrated by Theramenes, the government of the Thirty Tyrants, and even the Macedonian occupation, because, after Alexander the Great’s death, the Athenians “recovered their ancient institutions and laws, and in those they remained for many centuries” (i.5). This is another

71 72

Among the humanists the partial exception is Marco Antonio Sabellico, Enneads ii.5. On the centrality of the citizenship policy in Aristotle’s thought see Poddighe (2014).

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very original judgment, which makes Sigonio the forerunner of a thesis that is much in vogue today about the longue durée of democracy in Greek history, but which in his case seems above all a reply to Machiavelli. It was not true, in fact, that Athenian freedom had lasted only “one hundred years,” as stated in Discourses i.2. And the unexpected resilience of Solon’s democratic institutions could be the best proof of the validity of the simple popular government against all its detractors –​starting with the many supporters of the mixed constitution. All these elements make the De republica Atheniensium a work without comparison within Renaissance scholarship and, one must say, a one much closer to modern approach than any other text on Attic democracy written since the reappearance of the Politics. It is no exaggeration to say that, in its main lines, an undergraduate student could still prepare a course on the constitution of Athens by using this 1564 treatise. To reverse the title of a famous essay by Nicole Loraux on Thucydides,73 in a certain way Sigonio is a colleague of today’s classicists: their first colleague (no surprise then that centuries later his books were still read by philosophers like Jean-​Jacques Rousseau and discussed by scholars such as Edward Gibbon and George Grote). Simply put, with the De republica Atheniensium a new history begins for the study of ancient democracy.74 For this reason too Sigonio’s masterwork offers a perfect conclusion for any inquiry about the reappearance of the Athenian political system in the West.

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­c hapter 4

Hobbes, Thucydides and Athenian Democracy Luca Iori I am glad to see you Sir, will you take a walk with me this morning, and tell me what good newes yee have heard, for I have not yet been in Westminster Hall, the place most infected with the Athenian disease

g. gillespie, A Late Dialogue Betwixt a Civilian, and a Divine [1644]

∵ 1

By Way of Introduction

In autumn 1647, England was experiencing an anxiety-​ridden moment of suspense: the first phase of the Civil War had just ended with the victory of Parliamentarian forces and Charles I  was confined as a prisoner at Hampton Court Palace. At the same time, the New Model Army, commanded by Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, had occupied the city of London and was developing a large-​scale programme of radical reform, which included the creation of a new republican order and a modified episcopal state church with toleration outside it.1 Within this framework, from 28 October to 11 November, the representatives of the Army assembled at Putney, on the right bank of the Thames, to shape England’s future and discuss a new constitutional settlement. On this occasion, two different republican models competed against each other: the first, supported by Cromwell, envisaged the creation of an “oligarchic republic” with a weak king, a strong council of state, a House of Lords, and a House of Commons elected by a basically unreformed freeholder franchise (i.e. landowners and traders). The most revolutionary wing of the Army advocated on the contrary a decentralized state, with a unicameral Parliament 1 For a deeper insight into the historical background, see Braddick (2009), 507ff.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_006

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154 Iori elected by a nearly universal male suffrage,2 according to which “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and […] every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government”.3 These latter “democratic” proposals were put forward in the Agreement of the People for a firme and present Peace at the meeting on 29 October. The document shocked the country and encountered wide opposition: Cromwell immediately pointed out that “the consequence of this rule must end in anarchy”;4 the House of Commons proclaimed the Agreement seditious on 9 November, and the king himself branded it with the ignominious epithet of “Leveller”. This title was promptly relaunched by the polemicist Marchmont Nedham, who described the label as “most apt for such a despicable and desperate Knot […], that indeavor to cast downe and level the Inclosures of Nobility, Gentry and Propriety, to make us all even”.5 Even more relevant, the same Nedham, a few years later, professed similar anti-​Leveller views by openly referring to ancient history. In The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated (1650), he identified Leveller principles with Athenian democracy, portraying the Leveller mob as the Attic populace electing monstrous tyrants and corrupted demagogues to positions of high office: I come to give you a more exact and lively Draught, of the manifold miserable Inconveniencies of that Government, (or rather, Confusion) so earnestly contended for by the Levelling Party. […] Such a Democratick, or Popular Forme, that puts the whole multitude into an equall exercise of the Supreme Authority, under pretence of maintaining Liberty, is […] the greatest enemy of Liberty. […] When affaires are in this condition, then (as Aristotle saith) Mera Δημοκρατία est extrema tyrannis. […] A lively sad example whereof we have in the popular State of Athens, where they chose such Persons to participate of the supreme Authority, as would countenance them, and share with them, in slaying or condemning the

2 Cf. Tuck (1993), 243–​248 and Glover (1999), 71ff. For a fully detailed account of the Putney debates, cf. Mendle (2001). 3 According to the Putney debates transcripts, these words were spoken by Colonel Thomas Rainborough during the meeting on 29 October; cf. Woodhouse (1992), 53. A recent reconsideration of the Putney debates on franchise is available in Baker (2013). 4 Woodhouse (1992), 59. 5 Nedham (1647), 70. For the “Leveller democracy”, cf. Wootton (1991). Foxley (2013) offers a general and up-​to-​date discussion of Leveller political theory.

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richer Sort, and then seizing upon their Possessions, plundring their Houses, and many more such fine effects of Levelling Liberty. Hence it is, they shift and change their Governers so often, rejecting, at every new Election, such as they have found averse to their licentious waies, as Enemies of Liberty, under pretence of putting Better in their places; that is, such indulge them in these and the like Courses.6 Nedham’s passage deserves close attention for at least two reasons: first, it shows the extent to which early modern English thinkers made use of Greek constitutional models as an effective leverage in contemporary politics.7 Secondly, and more importantly, Nedham summed up in a few lines all the principal vices that were commonly attributed to Athenian democracy by seventeenth-​ century authors: mob rule; volatile assemblies; power of demagogues; subjugation of public interest to the desires of the masses. Such defects, mentioned by Nedham to reproach the Leveller programme, were actually part of a broader and negative image of Athens, which was often evoked by English writers for different purposes.8 In Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings (ca. 1630s), for example, the ultra-​royalist Robert Filmer repeatedly refers to Athens to argue that monarchy was the best form of government and there was “no reason for good men to desire or choose” democracy; if we consider the “Athenian Common-​weal”, Filmer explained, we cannot help but notice that “the Wicked are always in greatest Credit, and Vertuous men kept under”: They expelled Aristides the Just; Themistocles died in Banishment, Meltiades in Prison; Phocion, the most virtuous and just man of his Age, though he had been chosen forty five times to be their General, yet he was put to Death with all his Friends, Kindred and Servants, by the Fury of the People, without Sentence, Accusation or any Cause at All.9

6 Nedham (1650), 79–​80, 82. 7 On this point, consider at least the influential studies of Fink (1945), Pocock (1975), 333ff. and Skinner (1998). 8 Cf. Roberts (1994), 143–​148, Cambiano (2000), 225ff., Zabel (2016), 65–​116. A similar image of democratic Athens did already occur in sixteenth-​century treatises:  e.g. T.  Elyot, Boke Named the Governour [1531], book i, chap. 2 [= Elyot (1531), 6–​7]; T. Smith, De Republica Anglo­ rum [1565], book i, chap. 3–​4 [= Smith (1583), 3–​4]; T. Floyd, The Picture of a Perfit Common Wealth [1600] [= Floyd (1600), 15, 19]); cf. Roberts (1994), 138–​142. For the Renaissance anti-​ democratic tradition outside England, see also the essays by Gabriele Pedullà in this volume. 9 Filmer (1680), 59–​60.

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156 Iori On the opposite field, one of the most influential seventeenth-​century republican thinkers, James Harrington, rehabilitated the idea of democracy by employing it as the term for good popular government, even though he did not hesitate to represent the Athenian experience as a perversion of this ideal. As stated in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), a good democracy should balance a genuinely aristocratic senate with an assembly that votes but assuredly does not debate, while Athens “consisted of the Senate of the Bean [sc. the boulé] proposing [and] of the Assembly of the people resolving and too often debating”. Moreover, “for as much as her Senate consisted not of the natural Aristocracy, […] it was cast headlong by the rashnesse of her Demagogs into ruin” and “the people […] were called unto the Pulpits, where some vomited, and others drunk poison”.10 Just these few examples make it clear that seventeenth-​century England shared a widespread bias against Athenian democracy, which tended to be interpreted as a dangerous class rule, where the poorest and politically untutored citizens participate in state affairs, pursuing their own interests at the expense of the commonweal. This representation was certainly influenced by some famous modern political thinkers, such as Jean Bodin,11 but it was also largely based on an attentive reading of ancient authors who had direct knowledge of late fifth-​and fourth-​century bce Athens: above all, Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, and Thucydides. Especially the latter had been playing a crucial role since 1628/​9, when Thomas Hobbes published his successful translation of Thucydides’ History, entitled Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre.12 The Eight Bookes, indeed, did not simply provide English readers with a vernacular and most accurate version of the Greek work, but also conveyed a precise political agenda by 10

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Harrington (1656), 18, 150. Harrington’s opinions on Athenian democracy are thoroughly illustrated by Cambiano (2000), 239–​253; for Harrington’s views on Sparta, see Strumia (1991). Most English republicans deeply disliked any form of mass politics and promoted the hegemony of an oligarchic or aristocratic council (Tuck (1993), 221–​253). No surprise that these authors often praised Athens when it was governed by such organs: e.g. the Areopagus in Solonian and post-​Solonian Athens (Nedham (1656), 8; Sidney (1698), 130–​ 133), the Assembly of Five Thousand in 411 bce (Harrington (1656), 175; Harrington (1659a), 13). For the reception of Athens in seventeenth-​century English republican thought, see Cambiano (2000), 225–​259, Roberts (1994), 144–​148; Nelson (2004), 87ff.; Zabel (2016), 97ff.; Zabel (2017), 133–​137. E.g. Six Livres de la République, book iv, chap. 7 and book vi, chap. 4 [= Bodin (1606), 531–​ 532, 544, 702ff.]; see Roberts (1994), 139–​142. A general bibliography on Hobbes’ Eight Bookes is provided in Iori (2012), 149–​154 and Iori (2015), 279–​297 passim. More recent and relevant studies on the subject include Warren (2015), 127–​159 and Hoekstra (2016).

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presenting the failing trajectory of democratic Athens as an important warning to 1620s England. For this reason, Hobbes’ translation appears to us both as a sophisticated attempt to scrutinize the historical reality of fifth-​century Athens and as one of the main channels through which seventeenth-​century English prejudice against Athenian democracy established itself. The present chapter aims at clarifying precisely this dual role played by the Eight Bookes: first, we will examine how Hobbes concretely shaped and conveyed to his readers a tragic image of Attic democracy via Thucydides; then, we will figure out why, in Hobbes’ opinion, the history of fifth-​century Athens was so relevant to the contemporary political scene. In this way, we will try to make it clearer why the Eight Bookes actually deserves to be considered as an essential staging-​post in the English reception of Athenian democracy. However, before going into any specific detail on that subject, we need to briefly contextualize the translation in relation to Hobbes’ early biography, hearing the purposes of his version directly from the philosopher’s voice. 2

Hobbes’ Translation of Thucydides and His “Humanist” Period

When Thomas Hobbes began translating Thucydides in the 1620s, he was not yet the political theorist that we are all so familiar with. His most celebrated treatises –​ Elements of Law (1640), De cive (1642), and Leviathan (1651) –​were still far from being conceived and his tripartite philosophical system (Elementa Philosophiae) would develop only during the Thirties; so, in 1628 Hobbes was just a keen forty-​years-​old humanist who had devoted a large part of his life to the study of Greek and Latin authors.13 Born on 5 April 1588 in Westport, a parish on the north-​western area of Malmesbury, in north Wiltshire, Hobbes came from a well-​to-​do family that had grown prosperous in the cloth-​making business. Young Thomas was first educated at a grammar school in Westport by Robert Latimer, a clergyman who taught him Latin and Greek to such a high standard that around 1603 Hobbes matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and completed his ba in 1608. Soon after his graduation, he entered the service of William Cavendish, First Baron of Hardwick, as tutor and secretary to his second son, who also bore the name William Cavendish. 13

For Hobbes’ “humanist” phase and his later intellectual developments, see Skinner (1996), 215–​257, with the comments of Evrigenis (2014), 5–​12. On Hobbes’ biography between 1588 and 1628, cf. Skinner (1996), 215–​230; Malcolm (2002), 1–​9; Malcolm (2007), 1–​15, and Iori (2015), 111–​123.

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158 Iori Hobbes and the younger William soon became so attached to one another that the philosopher remained in his employment until summer 1628, when Cavendish died prematurely. In addition to fulfilling his secretarial duties  –​ which included assisting William in his public career at court, in Parliament, and in two trading companies  –​, Hobbes became a real mentor to his patron: he organized and assembled an impressive library at Hardwick Hall, the main residence of the Cavendish family, and presumably taught William liberal arts as well as ancient and modern tongues. From June 1614 to October 1615, Hobbes and Cavendish made also a continental tour, during which they resided in Paris, Rome, and Venice, where they spent almost one year and became well acquainted with Paolo Sarpi and Fulgenzio Micanzio, whom Cavendish kept up a correspondence with until 1628. Most importantly, William entered into personal contact with Francis Bacon, also for whom Hobbes did some secretarial work, taking down dictation and helping the old philosopher to translate some of his Essays into Latin, probably during the years immediately preceding Bacon’s death in 1626. As regards Hobbes’ literary production prior to the Eight Bookes, it comprises no more than a couple of occasional writings: the Latin poem De mirabilibus Pecci (published in 1636), and the English translation of the political pamphlet Altera secretissima instructio gallobritanno-​batava Friderico V data (ca. 1626), which has remained in manuscript form. He also followed closely the composition of Cavendish’s Horae subsecivae (‘Leisure hours’), a collection of seventeen essays written in Bacon’s manner,14 issued anonymously in 1620 and including a dyptic of texts devoted to ancient history: a commentary to the first chapters of Tacitus’ Annals (Discourse upon the Beginning of Tacitus), which dealt with Augustus’ rise to power in purely Machiavellian terms, and a small essay explaining the theoretical foundations of history (Of Reading Histories). Immersed in this environment, Hobbes was eager to explore the Greek-​Roman past as a source of moral and political lessons and it was precisely in this spirit that he started working on Thucydides. Preceded by a long gestation period, which probably began in 1624/​5,15 the Eight Bookes came out in December 162816 and immediately achieved wide recognition: they were the first English 14

Computer wordprint analysis carried out by Noel B. Reynolds has indicated that three of the essays may be by Hobbes: A Discourse of Lawes, Discourse of Rome, and Discourse upon the Beginning of Tacitus; see Reynolds and Saxonhouse (1995). The identification of these essays as being by Hobbes is nevertheless highly controversial, cf. Malcolm (2007), 6–​7. 15 Malcolm (2002), 72–​73. 16 See infra n. 57 and Malcolm (2007), 11: “The title page of the book gives the date of publication as 1629; but it was common practice to put the next year’s date on a book published in November or December”.

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translation of the History which was not based upon intermediary versions,17 but made directly from the original Greek “according to the Edition of Aemilius Porta” (Frankfurt, 1594).18 Moreover, Hobbes’ translation was adorned by an impressive scholarly apparatus, consisting of maps, learned critical marginalia and magnificent siege illustrations, which made the Eight Bookes one of the most original early modern attempts to integrate philology and erudition in the field of Thucydidean scholarship.19 However, beyond its literary and exegetical achievements, it soon became evident that Hobbes’ work had also a precise political penchant, which was not openly declared in the Eight Bookes20 but would be disclosed only several years later, when Hobbes wrote his Latin verse autobiography in 1672: During this period [i.e. 1608–​1628], I studied Greek, Latin and English histories; I also used to read poems. I had been well acquainted with Horace, Virgil, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Plautus, Aristophanes, and many others; and a lot of historians, too: but above all, I liked Thucydides. He demonstrated to me how inept democracy is, and how much wiser is the rule of a single man than that of a multitude. I decided to translate him, in order to make him speak to the English about the need to avoid the rhetoricians whom they were at that time planning to consult.21 17

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Before Hobbes’ Eight Bookes, no other English translation of Thucydides had been issued, except for the unsatisfactory version by Thomas Nicolls (London, 1550). Another complete English version by Francis Hickes –​a master-​weaver of Flemish origin –​has recently come to light in the library of Christ Church, Oxford; this translation most probably dates back to the first two decades of the seventeenth century, but it has never been published; cf. Gillespie and Pelling (2016). For a broad-​based introduction to the afterlife of Thucydides in early modern England, see Iori (2015). Cf. Hobbes (1629), sig. A2: “I resolued to take him [sc. Thucydides] immediately from the Greeke, according to the Edition of Aemilius Porta; not refusing, or neglecting any version, Comment, or other helpe I could come by”. On Aemilius Portus’ edition, see Pade (2003), 114, 157–​160, 175–​177. Cf. Iori (2015), 185–​214. In the Eight Bookes, Hobbes limits himself to simply stressing the educational value of Thucydides, cf. Hobbes (1629), sig. A2, with Iori (2015), 125ff. and 215–​217. Hobbes (1839), lxxxviii, vv. 75–​84:  “Vertor ego ad nostras, ad Graecas, atque Latinas | Historias; etiam carmina saepe lego. | Flaccus, Virgilius, fuit et mihi notus Homerus, | Euripides, Sophocles, Plautus, Aristophanes, | Pluresque; et multi Scriptores Historiarum: | Sed mihi prae reliquis Thucydides placuit. | Is Democratia ostendit mihi quam sit inepta, | Et quantum coetu plus sapit unus homo. | Hunc ego scriptorem verti, qui diceret Anglis, | Consultaturi rhetoras ut fugerent”. Similarly, in Hobbes’ prose autobiography (1676): “Inter historicos Graecos Thucydidem prae caeteris dilexit, et […] circa annum Christi 1628, in publicum edidit; eo fine, ut ineptiae Democraticorum Atheniensium concivibus suis patefierent” (Hobbes (1839), xiv; italics mine).

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160 Iori Hobbes’ memories were vivid and lively, but leave some open issues: how can we ensure that authorial statements made more than 40 years after the editio princeps really reflect the original purpose of the Eight Bookes? How can such a violent anti-​democratic attack be explained in the late 1620s historical framework? And finally:  who were those rhetoricians threatening the country? In order to answer all these questions, we shall start with an attentive examination of the Eight Bookes, ascertaining whether and to what extent Hobbes has shaped and conveyed a negative image of Attic democracy via Thucydides; only after doing so, will we try to contextualize Hobbes’ supposed anti-​democratic tirade within the political milieu of 1620s England. 3

Hobbes, Thucydides, and Athenian Democracy

If we closely examine text and paratext of the Eight Bookes, we cannot help but notice that the anti-​democratic theme actually stands out as the political focus of the whole work, powerfully emphasized by a pervasive and sophisticated rhetorical strategy that underlies the entire edition, presenting Thucydides as a strong and consistent voice against Athens’ popular government. The first evidence of such a strategy emerges even from its frontispiece, so to speak, the “entrance door” of the whole book. Signed by the engraver Thomas Cecill on the bottom left corner (“Cecill sculp.”), the title-​page was authorised by Hobbes, who must also have had a hand in creating it, considering the large amount of information about Thucydides’ narrative contained in Cecill’s design.22 As it will later happen with the more famous images of De Cive and Leviathan, the frontispiece of the Eight Bookes aimed at summing up per imagines the main contents of the work and it compared the war protagonists –​Sparta and Athens –​through a bipartite composition arranged in three superimposed registers of scenes (Figure 4.1).23 The first register shows the two cities: Sparta, on the left, borders the Eurotas River and appears “not close built and scatteringly inhabited, after the ancient manner of Greece” [Thuc. 1.10.2], while Athens, perched behind the Long Walls, is crowned by sumptuous buildings and gives the impression of 22 23

On this point, see at least Malcolm (2002), 200–​201; Skinner (2008), 7–​13; Iori (2015), 217–​ 220; and Skinner (2018), 247–​254. For the early modern English humanistic tradition of “comely frontispieces”, cf. Corbett and Lightbown (1979) and Skinner (2018), 222–​315. The frontispiece reworked ideas mostly taken from the two eulogies on the cities:  Archidamus’ first speech to the Spartan assembly (esp. Thuc. 1.84) and Pericles’ Funeral oration (esp. Thuc. 2.37–​41); cf. Iori (2015), 217–​219.

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­f igure 4.1  Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre Written by Thucydides the sonne of Olorus, trans. Thomas Hobbes, London 1629. Frontispiece by Thomas Cecill.

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162 Iori pomp and majesty. Two captions accompany these scenes:  ΕΝΔΟΞΟΤΑΤΗ ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙΜΩΝ, “the most glorious Sparta”, reworks a phrase from Archidamus’ first speech (Thuc. 1.84.1), while ΕΛΛΑΔΟΣ ΕΛΛΑΣ ΑΘΗΝΑΙ, “Athens, Greece of the Greece”, is taken from the so-​called “epitaph of Euripides” (Anth. Pal. 7.45), a funeral epigram anciently attributed to Thucydides and alluding to Pericles’ characterization of Athens as “the school of Greece” (Ἑλλάδος παίδευσιν) in Thuc. 2.41.1. Both the leaders, Archidamus and Pericles, appear in the second register. They are standing beside two columns, whose capitals reveal their ethnic origins: Doric for Archidamus, Ionic for Pericles. Moreover, the Spartan king, with the sword drawn and the shield held, embodied the Lacedaemonian fighting spirit celebrated in Thuc. 1.84.3: πολεμικοί γιγνόμεθα (“we are brave at war”); the Attic strategos is on the contrary leaning on a spear with the shield laid down, therefore assuming a tranquil posture expressing Athens’ more relaxed way of life, which was repeatedly extolled by Pericles himself in his Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.38.1, 39.1, 4).24 The third and last register is the most important for us because it compares the two forms of government: on the left side, the Spartan king presides over a small group of wise counsellors in a quiet and secluded room,25 while on the right a towering demagogue is haranguing a blurred Athenian crowd in a public square. The foreground provides an even starker contrast: on the left, we have the admirable decor of the Lacedaemonian meeting hall, with the books and the fine garments of the advisors, facing the plain clothes, the saddlebags, the loaves of bread and the sticks of the Athenian audience on the right. Finally, the captions make Hobbes’ verdict explicit: if the Athenian assembly is labelled with the generic ΟΙ ΠΟΛΛΟΙ (“the many”), the Spartan council –​led by the king –​is defined in openly eulogistic terms: ΟΙ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΙ (“the best ones”).26 24 25

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Hobbes emphasizes again this contrast in a marginal note to Thuc. 2.37.2: “He [sc. Pericles] glanceth againe at the Lacedaemonians, because they euer looked sowrely on soft and loose behauiour” (Hobbes (1629), 102). As Quentin Skinner acutely pointed out, it is of course possible that Hobbes was unaware that Sparta had been ruled by two hereditary kings and the political power had lain with a group of five annually elected Ephori. After all, Thucydides himself never openly stated that Sparta had two kings, nor told the number and the prerogatives of the ephors. Nonetheless, Skinner correctly notes, “it is equally possible that Hobbes is taking advantage of these silences on Thucydides’ part to give the impression that the government of Sparta resembled the kind of absolute monarchy he himself preferred” (Skinner (2018), 250–​251). It cannot be excluded that Aristotle’s Politics exercised a direct influence on this register, as regards both the strong association between poverty and democracy (Arist. Pol. 3.7, 1279b, 1–​10; 4.4, 1290a, 30 - 1290b, 20; 1291b, 2–​13) and the characterization of the government of Sparta as an aristocracy, i.e. a “right” and “not deviated” constitution (Arist. Pol.

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Clearly, the ultimate effect is to contrast Athens’ popular and chaotic government with Sparta’s well-​ordered monarchy, which, not surprisingly, allowed the Lacedaemonians to win the war. Moving from frontispiece to prefatory materials, the polemic against Athenian democracy grows bitter. In this regard, a pivotal section is the bio-​ bibliographical introduction Of the Life and History of Thucydides, where Hobbes recounted the life of the historian on the basis of ancient sources –​notably Marcellinus [= Vit. Thuc.], Pausanias, Plutarch –​highlighting Thucydides’ most problematic dealings with the Athenian citizens. At first, the philosopher recalled Thucydides’ descent from Thracian kings, not entirely dismissing the possibility that the historian belonged to the family of the tyrant Peisistratus;27 subsequently, we are informed about his apprenticeship with two fifth-​century largely unpopular intellectuals:  the philosopher Anaxagoras and the rhetorician Antiphon. The former was accused of atheism by the demos and the same charge was brought against his disciple Thucydides (Vit. Thuc. 22), even though Hobbes specifies this accusation later proved false: “by the light of naturall reason, Thucydides might see enough in the Religion of these Heathen, to make him thinke it vaine, and superstitious; which was enough to make him an Atheist in the opinion of the People”.28 The link with Antiphon anticipates Thucydides’ leaning towards anti-​ democratic positions; the historian, like his master, “was sufficiently qualified to have become a great Demagogue […], but it seemeth he had no desire at all to meddle in the gouernment, because in those times it was impossibile for any man to giue good and profitable counsell for the Common-​wealth and not incurre the displeasure of the People”. Therefore, Thucydides’ refusal to engage in any form of vita activa was not the outcome of any individualistic choice, but rather the result of the perverse Athenian regime, which was vividly presented by Hobbes as a kind of tyrannical democracy, in which the mob ruled under the sway of demagogues: For their opinion [sc. of the demos] was such of their owne power, and of the facility of atchieuing whatsoeuer action they vndertooke, that such

27 28

3.7, 1279a, 22–​40; 4.7, 1293b, 1–​21). In this respect, it is noteworthy that Hobbes himself, in a marginal annotation to Thuc. 8.48.6, described the difference between oligarchy and aristocracy in purely Aristotelian terms: “κάλοικἄγαθοι [sic!]. The best men, or Aristocracy, a difference from the Oligarchy, which was of the richest sort onely” (Hobbes (1629), 497; cf. Johnson (1993), 149–​156). Hobbes relies on Vit. Thuc. 2, 8, 11, 14–​19, 28 and Plut. Cim. 4.1-​4. Hobbes (1629), sig. a. Cf. Schlatter (1945), 361–​362 and Canfora (1992), 65–​68.

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164 Iori men onely swayed the Assemblies, and were esteemed wise and good Common-​wealths men, as did put them vpon the most dangerous and desperate enterprizes. Whereas he that gaue them temperate, and discreet aduice, was thought a Coward, or not to vnderstand, or else to maligne their power. And no maruell; for much prosperity (to which they had now for many yeeres been accustomed) maketh men in loue with themselues; and it is hard for any man to loue that counsell which maketh him loue himselfe the lesse. And it holdeth much more in a Multitude, then in one Man; For a man that reasoneth with himselfe, will not be ashamed to admit of timerous suggestions in his businesse, that he may the stronglyer prouide; but in publique deliberations before a Multitude, Feare, (which for the most part aduiseth well, though it execute not so) seldome or neuer sheweth it selfe, or is admitted. By this meanes it came to passe amongst the Athenians, who thought they were able to doe anything, that wicked men and flatterers draue them headlong into those actions that were to ruine them; and the good men either durst not oppose, or if they did, vndid themselues.29 In the following paragraph, we are faced with an unprecedented interpretation of Thucydides’ constitutional thought. According to Hobbes, “it is manifest that he least of all liked the Democracy” and “upon diuers occasions hee noteth the emulation and contention of the Demagogues, for reputation, and glory of wit”; however, Thucydides never “magnifieth any where the authority of the Few” [i.e. the oligarchy], disapproving their inexorable tendency towards internal dissent (Thuc. 8.89.3), while he appreciated the mixed government of the Five Hundred, capable of combining and tempering democratic and oligarchic elements (Thuc. 8.97.2). But above all –​Hobbes stated –​Thucydides preferred monarchy, as shown by his outspoken praise of Peisistratus’ tyranny (Thuc. 6.54.5) and Pericles’ government, “Democraticall in name, but in effect Monarchicall” (according to a free adaptation of Thuc. 2.65.9).30

29

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Hobbes (1629), sig. a.  Hobbes evidently reworked some famous Thucydidean passages (2.65.10-​11; 3.38.3; 3.43.1, 3; 4.65.4; 6.9–​24), but his picture also recalls Aristotle’s description of “despotic democracy”, where “the multitude have the supreme power, supersede the law by their decrees” and “demagogues spring up” (Arist. Pol. 4.4, 1292a, 4–​38). Hobbes would refer again to the Aristotelian passage in Elements of Law, chap. 21.5, where democracy is depicted as “the rule of demagogues”, cf. Tuck (2006), 184ff. and infra n. 61. Hobbes (1629), sigg. a-​a2. The contents of this paragraph have been widely discussed by scholars in connection with Hobbes’ later political philosophy: cf. e.g. Schlatter (1945), 359–​361; Borrelli (1984), 27–​30; Canfora (1992), 68–​73; Johnson (1993), 150–​156; Hoekstra

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Anyway, despite his beliefs, the historian never avoided his civic duties: he served in the Athenian army during the Peloponnesian War, being unjustly exiled because of his misfortune during the Amphipolis campaign (424–​3 bce), a rash decision –​advocated by the demagogue Cleon (Vit. Thuc. 46) –​which illustrates, once again, how impulsive and short-​sighted the Athenian decision-​ making process could be. But it would be Thucydides’ death which would put a definitive end to his difficult relationship with his motherland: after spending his exile in Thrace, he had the chance to come back to Athens on the initiative of Oinobius (Paus. 1.23), but while returning he was killed “by treachery” and finally buried in the Cimoneia near the Melitides Gate.31 Therefore, Thucydides’ biography so reconstructed became a symbol of Athens’ distorted regime: the historian, who decided not to participate in government affairs in the name of his social, cultural and political incompatibility with the demos, was unfairly convicted, exiled and martyred. At the same time, Thucydides’ work, which resulted from his tragic experience, represented the spiritual testament transmitted by an irreproachable man, who deliberately abandoned active life to devote himself to a detached and rational scrutiny of historical events in order to speak against the foolishness of the Athenian system: It is therefore no maruell, if he meddled as little as he could in the businesse of the Common-​wealth, but gaue himselfe rather to the obseruation and recording of what was done by those that had the mannaging thereof. Which also he was no lesse prompt diligent and faithfull by the disposition of his mind, then by his fortune, dignity, and wisedome, able to accomplish.32 The anti-​democratic polemic is not however confined to the title-​page and the prefatory materials of the Eight Bookes, but it also spreads throughout the

31

32

(2006), 198–​203. For Thucydides’ actual, more nuanced views on democracy and oligarchy, see at least Raaflaub (2006). Hobbes (1629), sig. a2. Hobbes explicitly rejects the ancient biographical traditions reporting: a) that Thucydides died in Thrace and his remains were then brought back to his homeland (Plut. Cim. 4.3 + Vit. Thuc. 31, 55); b) that Thucydides was sentenced to death immediately after his return to Athens following the 413 bce amnesty (Vit. Thuc. 32). The still open debate on Thucydides’ exile and death is summed up by Hornblower (2008), 44–​45, 50–​53. Hobbes (1629), sig. a2. Norbrook (1999), 60–​61 points out that Thucydides is here presented as a model of “intellectual citizen” radically different from the one celebrated by the republican tradition.

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166 Iori work, thanks to a sophisticated interaction of marginal notes and free renderings. A shining example of this is provided by Thuc. 2.40.2, one of the most famous passages of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, where the Attic strategos praises the high degree of popular involvement in Athenian democracy: ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς οἰκείων ἅμα καὶ πολιτικῶν ἐπιμέλεια, καὶ ἑτέροις πρὸς ἔργα τετραμμένοις, τὰ πολιτικὰ μὴ ἐνδεῶς γνῶναι.33 Moreover there is in the same men, a care, both of their owne, and of the publique affaires, and a sufficient knowledge of State matters, euen in those that labour with their hands. hobbes (1629), 103

Hobbes’ version is substantially faithful to the Greek original,34 but it is accompanied by a caustic marginalium, which mocks at lower-​class participation in public debates: In Athens no men so poore but was a Statesman. So S. Luke, Act. 17. 21. All the Athenians spend their time in nothing but hearing and telling newes. The true character of politicians without employment. In the same vein, another bitter annotation highlighted the perverse logic driving Athenian assemblies faced with unexpected military failures; in 4.65.3-​4, Thucydides reports that the Athenians exiled and fined three generals –​Pythodorus, Sophocles, and Eurymedon –​on the mere presumption that they had been bribed to accept a disadvantageous peace agreement on behalf of the city. Hobbes’ marginalium promptly stigmatizes the arrogance of the demos and the vile maneuvers of the demagogues: Nothing was more frequent in the Athenian Assemblies at this time, then when things went amisse, to accuse the author of bribery for it was a sure 33 34

Portus (1594), 124. Nonetheless, Hobbes places a special emphasis on the concept of popular participation by rewording syntactically the Greek sentence and by adding the adverb “euen”. In the same spirit, he expressively renders the phrase ἑτέροις πρὸς ἔργα τετραμμένοις (“others who have their work to attend”) with “those that labour with their hands”; this choice was probably influenced by the ancient scholium on this passage: Ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς] οἷον, τοῖς δημιουργοῖς, καὶ γεωργοῖς, καὶ κυνηγοῖς, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἰδιώταις καὶ χειροτέχναις. (“Ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς]: as for example, craftsmen, and farmers, and hunters and the other citizens and handworkers”). The scholium was printed in Portus (1594), 124.

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way to win fauour with the people, who thought that nothing was able to resist their power.35 But even more significant was the way Hobbes translated the Greek sentence that explained Athenians’ behaviour:  αἰτία δ’ ἦν ἡ παρὰ λόγον τῶν πλειόνων εὐπραγία, αὐτοῖς ὑποτιθεῖσα ἰσχὺν τῆς ἐλπίδος36 (“The cause of this was the success, beyond any prediction, of most of their operations, and this had fuelled their hope”). Clearly departing from the plain meaning of the original, Hobbes rendered the phrase ἡ παρὰ λόγον εὐπραγία (“success beyond any prediction”) with an important semantic disambiguation, which condensed into a single lexical choice his negative judgement on the entire Athenian political system: The cause whereof, was the vnreasonable prosperity of most of their designes, subministring strength vnto their hope. hobbes (1629), 247

In this interpretation, the successful conclusion of Athens’ undertakings was not merely ‘unexpected’ –​as Thucydides stated and Portus’ Latin version correctly rendered (inopinata felicitas) –​but ‘unreasonable’, that is to say ‘not based upon sound reason’, in a sense much closer to the meaning of the adjective ἄλογον (‘irrational’/​‘absurd’) than to the one conveyed by the phrase παρὰ λόγον.37 The same negative vision of democracy seems to influence Hobbes’ rendering of Thuc. 3.38.3-​4, in which Cleon reproaches his fellow citizens for being too sensitive to the demagogues’ rhetorical charm, particularly in the first few lines of the passage, where the speaker blames the Athenians for their mismanagement of the public assemblies, depicted as “festivals of oratory” (κακῶς ἀγωνοθετοῦντες). According to Cleon, the Athenians tend to attach greater importance to what they listen to than to what they can effectively verify: ἡ δὲ πόλις ἐκ τῶν τοιῶνδε ἀγώνων τὰ μὲν ἆθλα ἑτέροις δίδωσιν, αὐτὴ δὲ τοὺς κινδύνους ἀναφέρει. αἴτιοι δ’ ὑμεῖς, κακῶς ἀγωνοθετοῦντες, οἵτινες εἰώθατε

35 36 37

Hobbes (1629), 247. Portus (1594), 295. By contrast, it should be noted that Hobbes does faithfully translate παρὰ λόγον in Thuc. 2.64.1: “unlesse when any thing falleth out aboue your expectation fortunate” (Hobbes (1629), 115). For Hobbes’ rendering of ἄλογον, cf. e.g. Thuc. 6.85.1: “now to a Tyrant or Citie that raigneth, nothing can bee thought absurd, if profitable, nor any man a friend, that may not bee trusted to” (Hobbes (1629), 397).

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168 Iori θεαταὶ μὲν τῶν λόγων γίγνεσθαι, ἀκροαταὶ δὲ τῶν ἔργων38 (“But in these contests the city bestows the prizes upon others, while she herself undergoes all the risks. And you are to blame, for your management of these contests is wrong. You like to be spectators of words and hearers of deeds”). In the face of such a withering criticism of the Athenians’ ineptitude, Hobbes interpreted the phrase κακῶς ἀγωνοθετοῦντες (“your management of these contests is wrong”) with a certain degree of malice and translated it as “by the euill institution of these matches”: Now of such matches [of eloquence] as these, the Citie giueth the prizes to others, but the danger that thence proceedeth, she her selfe sustaineth. And of all this, you your selves are the cause, by the euill institution of these matches, in that you use to bee spectators of words, and hearers of actions. hobbes (1629), 164

The semantic ambiguity of the adjective “euil”, which can mean ‘defective’, but more frequently ‘harmful’/​‘detrimental’,39 seems to emphasize the anti-​ democratic tone of Cleon’s tirade. In the English version, therefore, Cleon’s words no longer sound like a condemnation of the mismanagement of the Athenian assemblies, but rather like a disapproval of the establishment itself of popular assemblies.40 This kind of reading might appear surprising on the lips of a most violent demagogue, but it is definitely plausible in the light of the broader argumentative context in which the sentence is uttered, especially if we consider the smug gloss Hobbes inserted right next to these lines: “The nature of the multitude in counsell, liuely set forth”. Finally, the desire to bring out the image of a pro-​monarchical Thucydides underlies many other renderings distorting the meaning of the Greek text.41 For example, in 1.17, Thucydides states that ancient tyrants did not undertake great military campaigns, but governed their cities in the safest way possible,

38 Portus (1594), 195. 39 Cf. OED, s.v. “euil”, A.i.2 and A.ii.8. 40 Portus faithfully translates “Qui huiusmodi certamina perperam instituitis” (Portus (1594), 195): the adverb “perperam” stresses the procedural faults in the organization of the “rhetorical contests”, cf. OLD, s.v.: “Incorrectly (in respect of procedure, the imparting information, etc.), wrongly, amiss”. 41 Cf. Iori (2015), 232ff.

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“having regard for their own interests only, both as to the safety of their own persons and as to the aggrandizement of their family”: Tύραννοι δὲ ὅσοι ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς πόλεσι, τὸ ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν μόνον προορώμενοι, ἔς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἐς τὸ τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον αὔξειν, δι’ ἀσφαλείας ὅσον ἐδύναντο, μάλιστα τὰς πόλεις ᾤκουν. ἐπράχθη τὲ ἀπ’ αὐτῶν οὐδὲν ἔργον ἀξιόλογον, εἰ μὴ εἴ τι πρὸς περιοίκους τοὺς αὐτῶν ἑκάστοις42 (“As for the tyrants in the Greek cities, since they had regard for their own interests only, both as to the safety of their own persons and as to the aggrandizement of their family, security was as far as possible their greatest political aim. And nothing notable was done by any of them, other than perhaps in a campaign against their neighbours”). This passage does not pose any particular exegetical problem and Portus’ translation is even more explicit than the original Greek by openly referring to a tangible growth in tyrants’ family fortunes: Tyranni verò, quotquot in Graecis vrbibus erant, suis tantum rebus prospicientes, vt & corpus tuerentur, & suam familiam [ac patrimonium] amplificarent, quam tutissimè poterant, vrbes incolebant, [domique se continebant,] nullumque facinus memoria dignum ab illis est factum, nisi si quod contra vicinos quique suos [fecerunt].43 Hobbes’ version is, on the contrary, clearly unfaithful, since it deliberately excludes any reference to aggrandizement of wealth or power and presents the tyrants’ pursuit of self-​interest just in terms of personal protection: And as for the Tyrants that were in the Grecian Cities, who forecasted onely for themselues, how, with as much safety as was possible, to looke to their owne persons, and their owne Families, they resided for the most part in the Cities, and did no Action worthy of memory, vnlesse it were against their neighbours. hobbes (1629), 11

The outcome is surprising and seems to deliberately conceal a potential allusion to a well-​known Aristotelian anti-​tyrannical argument, which was

42 Portus (1594), 12. 43 Ibid.

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170 Iori widespread among Renaissance thinkers: unlike the legitimate king (basileus), who impartially pursues the public welfare, the tyrant (tyrannos) looks only after himself by increasing his own power and wealth.44 Finding this idea expressed by Thucydides –​who was trumpeted by Hobbes as a strong advocate of tyrannical government –​would probably have generated some confusion among English readers, which is the most likely reason why Hobbes decided to translate this sentence so freely. Such a rendering, far from being the result of a generally unfaithful approach to the Greek, was rather the extreme and paradoxical outcome of a translation method based on a maximum degree of transparency:  Hobbes tended to accurately convey the literal meaning of the original almost everywhere, but sometimes he swayed from the letter, in an attempt to make an aspect he perceived as not expressly (or properly) stated in Thucydides more explicit.45 The departure from the Greek we have just examined –​as well as the whole collection of passages so far discussed –​stems precisely from this kind of attempt and reflects Hobbes’ intention to harmonize the English renderings with the overall political interpretation of Thucydides’ History, thus confirming the anti-​democratic message as the political goal of the whole translation. 4

Athenian Democracy and the Early Years of Charles i’s Reign

If that is the case, how can we explain this specific message within the historical framework of the late 1620s? What was the point of speaking about democracy in a political climate that appears so distant from the republican revival flourished during the Civil War? Of course, it would be absurd and anachronistic to think that a popular government could be a real threat in 1620s England;46 nonetheless, it is another matter altogether when we assign to the term “democracy” a more general meaning and consider Hobbes’ anti-​democratic polemic as a reprimand against a political system granting unbridled power to an assembly. Seen in this light, the criticism against Athenian democracy fitted perfectly the context of Charles i’s early reign (1625–​1629). 44

45 46

Cf. Arist. Pol. 3.7, 1279b, 6–​7; 4.10, 1295a, 17–​24; 5.10, 1311a, 2–​4. For Renaissance thinkers, see e.g. the monarcomach treatise Vindiciae contra tyrannos, usually attributed to Philippe Duplessis-​Mornay (1579; quaestio iii) and De rege et regis insitutione by the Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1599; book i, chap. 5: “Discrimen Regis & tyranni”). On Hobbes’ translation method, cf. Iori (2015), 137–​184. This is correctly recognized by Hoekstra (2016), 550.

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The year in which the Eight Bookes were published (1628) marked the climax of a dramatic escalation of tensions between the king and broad swathes of English society, which gathered in unruly and quarrelsome Parliaments.47 The origins of the conflict go back at least to 1624, when Charles i’s immediate predecessor, James I, decided to intervene with greater determination in the Thirty-​Years’ War, siding with the Protestant countries against the Catholic powers; Parliament was even summoned five times in six years and the House of Commons started to play a crucial role in regulating the rising military expenditures. In 1624, Parliament –​inflamed by a deluge of anti-​Catholic propaganda –​financed the costs of a campaign against Spain; the Commons voted three rich subsidies with the promise of more to come, but it was exactly this kind of commitment, doomed to remain unfulfilled, that created the basis for further disagreements.48 Indeed, the war exerted an intolerable pressure on England, which was already suffering from a deep economic crisis and a violent plague, which had erupted in 1625. The administrative system proved incapable of accessing extra funding to wage the war and therefore unable to meet the needs of the central government, while the court was in constant uproar because of the countless benefits obtained by Charles i’s enterprising protégé, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. Given that situation, it was inevitable that the Parliament would turn itself into a battlefield among rival groups.49 The first signs of institutional crisis appeared in summer 1625. James had died in March and Charles i’s first Parliament refused to vote new subsidies for an expedition against Spain. A few months later, a second session of the same Parliament met in Oxford and the Commons reiterated their refusal to finance war, openly accusing Buckingham of mismanagement of public finances and of monopolizing great offices.50 At this point, the king dissolved the Parliament and sent a fleet against the Spanish port of Cadiz, but the expedition was so ill-​supplied that it turned out to be a fiasco of epic proportions. In early 1626, Charles summoned another Parliament in order to finance a renewed war effort, but the session soon resolved itself in an attempt to impeach Buckingham. The king refused to abandon his favourite and for the 47 48 49 50

Iori (2015), 235ff. provides a more comprehensive historical reconstruction of the events, also focusing on Lord Cavendish’s political activity. Cf. Cogswell (1989), who illustrates the impact of England foreign policy on 1624 Parliament. Cf. Russell (1979), 64–​84. See Russell (1979), 204–​259.

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172 Iori second time dissolved Parliament without having accomplished anything.51 What then could be done to recover the amount of money necessary for the war? Charles decided to employ extra-​parliamentary means and imposed a forced loan on English owners; between summer 1626 and spring 1627, the king’s agents raised over £ 240,000, so a new military campaign at the Île de Ré, near La Rochelle, was financed, with the evident target of hurting France, but again the English expedition ended in a complete debacle. Moreover, the economic success of the loan was achieved at the cost of bitter unpopularity, because the collection of revenues conflicted with the right of English subjects not to pay taxes not approved by Parliament. Faced with several oppositions, Charles i’s reaction was extremely coercive: military contingents were quartered on private householders and more than seventy gentlemen were arrested without specific charges. In response to it, a staunch defense of Parliament’s prerogatives spread across the country: more moderate voices invoked the Magna Charta; most radical ones proclaimed the right of resistance to the Crown.52 A larger-​scale dispute was now inevitable and the conflict blew up in spring 1628, when the Privy Council persuaded the king to summon a new Parliament to organize a second military campaign against La Rochelle. On this occasion, the House of Commons passed the Petition of Right, which reasserted some fundamental tenets undermined by Charles i’s recent initiatives: the right not to pay arbitrary taxes; the right not to be exiled or killed without a trial; the right not to be jailed without any specific reason being given. After much debate, the House of Lords approved the Petition and the king grudgingly accepted it on 2 June, receiving in exchange a £ 275,000 subsidy; tension, nevertheless, did not diminish: the Commons fell again upon Buckingham and new raging debates opened up on the legal interpretation of the Petition, prompting the king to hastily conclude the session. So, while the confrontation between the Commons and the Crown was reaching its peak in spring 1628, the printing process of the Eight Bookes was already under way. Following closely Lord Cavendish’s parliamentary activity between 1624 and 1628,53 Hobbes’ keen eye had been long considering the strong relationship existing between Westminster’s agitated assemblies, the growing political instability and the repeated failures of military campaigns. To a sophisticated classical scholar like him, the association between 1620s England and Periclean and post-​Periclean Athens must have sprung up almost 51 52 53

Cf. Cust (1987) and again Russell (1979), 260–​322. Cf. Cust (1987), 164–​185. Cf. Iori (2015), 239–​244.

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spontaneously in his mind; so, confident as he was in the exemplarity of ancient history, Hobbes provided Englishmen with a translation of Thucydides, which was not only a philological masterpiece, but also a prompt response to the “parliamentary crisis” of 1624–​1628. Probably composed during this period, the Eight Bookes seem to highlight precisely the dangers of Athenian democracy in order to warn English people against the risks of any political system granting excessive powers to unruly assemblies –​certainly Athens’ arrogant ekklesia, but now also Westminster Parliament. But it was more than that. Like 1620s London, Thucydides’ Athens was a city at war: at first, flourishing under the Periclean “monarchy”; then, dragged down in ruin by demagogues, who persuaded the demos to undertake “most dangerous and desperate enterprizes”. More precisely, Pericles’ successors –​ Thucydides stated –​“through priuate quarrels about, who should beare the greatest sway with the people, […] both abated the vigour of the Armie, and then also first troubled the State at home with diuision”.54 While reading these observations, many readers must have instinctively drawn a parallel between Athens’ misfortunes and the defeats at Cadiz and Île de Ré, both preceded and in some way influenced by Parliamentary excesses. At the same time, the ghost of internal dissension, continually fueled by factional conflicts within the Houses, fully materialized on 23 August 1628, when Buckingham was murdered, just before sailing for the second time against La Rochelle, by a naval officer found in possession of a copy of the Commons’ remonstrance against the Duke. Therefore, against the backdrop of the Thirty-​Years’ War, Thucydides’ anti-​ democratic message gained greater significance, interweaving constitutional meditation and military analysis. While denouncing the complete inadequacy of Athens’ decision-​making process, the History also illuminated the necessary connection between military disaster and a form of government in which the most important decisions were taken by disorderly assemblies, thus impacting not only English domestic policy, but also its foreign one.55 And, exactly at the moment when the relations between the Crown and the Commons were strained to breaking point, in early 1628 Hobbes started the publication process of his translation. On 18 March, the day after the first session of Parliament opened, the printer of the Eight Bookes, Henry Seile, entered 54 55

Thuc. 2.65.11 = Hobbes (1629), 117. On this point, see also Hoekstra (2016) and Warren (2015), 127–​159, who nonetheless overstates the importance of the international context as the essential key to understanding Hobbes’ political aims. For a general account on Thucydides’ role as a standard authority in Renaissance debates on international relations, cf. Hoekstra (2012).

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174 Iori on the register of the Stationer’s Company “for his Copie (…) a booke Called The Historye of THUCIDIDES in English by Master HOBB[E]‌S”.56 In December, the printing must have been completed so as to allow the philosopher to present a copy to a friend as a New Year’s gift on 1 January 1629.57 5

Conclusions

Being so closely related to the political context of the 1620s, Hobbes’ version easily achieved public success in a very short time: twice reissued (1634; 1648), the Eight Bookes were republished in a new edition in 1676 and already in 1657 the Newcastle bookseller William London could mention them in his Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England.58 This literary consecration ensured a wide dissemination of Hobbes’ translation, marking a real turning point in seventeenth-​century English reception of Athenian democracy. Before Hobbes, indeed, no scholar had ever assigned such a paradigmatic importance to Athens’ military defeat in the Peloponnesian War. This unprecedented choice, coupled with the literary success of the Eight Bookes, ensured that Athens’ misfortunes in the late fifth-​century become a historical topic most worthy of discussion by the English elites to grasp the present and form the future;59 a kind of perspective that was openly fostered by Hobbes himself in the introductory section of his version: For the principall and proper worke of History, being to instruct, and enable men, by the knowledge of Actions past, to beare themselues prudently in the present, and providently towards the Future, there is not extant any other (merely humane) that doth more fully, and naturally performe it, then this of my Author [sc. Thucydides].60 However, the impact of the Eight Bookes on seventeenth-​century English reception of Athenian democracy did not end there. As suggested earlier, 56 57 58 59 60

Arber (1877), 161. Cf. Malcolm (2007), 11. Cf. London (1657), s.v. “Mr Hobbs” (section: “History”). For the various editions and reissues of the Eight Bookes, see Macdonald and Hargreaves (1952), 1–​3. Cf. Iori (2015), 249–​256. It is significant that the first English work explicitly devoted to ancient Athens –​Archeologiae Atticae libri tres by Francis Rous –​was published at Oxford only in 1637; cf. Zabel (2016), 71ss. Hobbes (1629), sig. A2.

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Hobbes’ translation made a crucial contribution to the consolidation of that widely shared image of Athenian government as a mob tyranny under the sway of demagogues we have discussed at the beginning of the chapter. In this way, thanks to the Eight Bookes, Athenian democracy did establish itself as a universally valid anti-​model in early-​Stuart imagery and Thucydides came to be increasingly quoted as a consistent anti-​democratic voice in the constitutional debates of the following decades.61 Finally, the Eight Bookes also contributed to shape a polemical topos that became popular among seventeenth-​century pamphleteers: the identification of the Commons and the unruly Athenian ekklesia, which underlies Hobbes’ whole translation and would frequently be referred to in the course of English history whenever conflicts between the king and the lower House grew acute: for example, in the initial stages of the Civil war and in the outrage over the abortive impeachment of the Whig ministers at the turn of the century.62 In both cases, the political landscape was clearly different from that surrounding the Eight Bookes, but the juxtaposition of the English Parliament and the Athenian assembly cannot help but recall the deeper anxieties that had driven Hobbes –​in the 1620s –​to reflect upon Greek history in order to illuminate contemporary issues.

Bibliography

Arber, E. (ed.) (1877) A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London 1554–​1640 A.D. Vol. IV. London: [priv. print]. Baker, P. (2013) “The Franchise Debate Revisited: The Levellers and the Army,” in Taylor, S. and Tapsell, G. (eds) The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 103–​122. Bodin, J. (1606) The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, trans. R. Knolles. London: G. Bishop.

61

62

E.g. Harrington (1656), 175 –​extensively quoting Hobbes’ Thucydides (8.97.2) –​, Harrington (1659b), 61 [book iii], and Sidney (1698), 150, 154. As regards Hobbes’ philosophical treatises, he would no longer explicitly mention Athens except for some brief remarks in Elements of Law, chap. 16.12, 24.8; De Cive chap. 10.7, 12.3, 13.14; Leviathan chap. 12.8, 21.7–​9, 29.5, 29.13, 31.41, 44.7, 46.7, 46.35. Nevertheless, he continued to attribute to democracy the same defects he once attributed to the Athenian government: demagoguery, internal dissensions, involvement of politically untutored citizens (cf. Elements of Law, chap. 21, 24; De Cive, chap. 7, 10; Leviathan, chap. 19). For Hobbes’ vision of democracy in his later treatises, cf. at least the competing accounts of Tuck (2006) and Hoekstra (2006). Roberts (1994), 148–​154.

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176 Iori Borrelli, G. (ed.) (1984) T. Hobbes, Introduzione a ‘La guerra del Peloponneso’ di Tucidide. Naples: Bibliopolis. Braddick, M. (2009) God’s Fury, England’s Fire. A New History of the English Civil Wars. London: Penguin Books. Cambiano, G. (2000) Polis. Un modello per la cultura europea. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Canfora, L. (1992) “Hobbes e Tucidide,” Quaderni di storia 18: 61–​73. Cogswell, T. (1989) The Blessed Revolution. English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–​ 1624. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, M. and Lightbown, R. (1979) The Comely Frontispiece. The Emblematic Title-​ Page in England, 1550–​1660. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Cust, R. (1987) The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626–​1628. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Elyot, T. (1531) The Boke named the Gouernour. London: Thomas Berthelet. Evrigenis, I.D. (2014) Images of Anarchy. The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’ State of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Filmer, R. (1680) Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings. London: R. Chiswell. Fink, Z.S. (1945) The Classical Republicans. An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-​Century England. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Floyd, T. (1600) The Picture of a Perfit Common Wealth. London: S. Stafford. Foxley, R. (2013) The Levellers. Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gillespie, S. and Pelling, C. (2016) “The Greek Translations of Francis Hickes (1565/​6–​ 1631),” Translation and Literature 25: 315–​338. Glover, S.D. (1999) “The Putney Debates: Popular Versus Elitist Republicanism,” Past and Present 164: 47–​80. Harrington, J. (1656) The Commonwealth of Oceana. London: D. Pakemam. Harrington, J. (1659a) Aphorisms Political. London: H. Fletcher. Harrington, J. (1659b) The Art of Law-​Giving in III Books. London: H. Fletcher. Hobbes, T. (1629) Eight Bookes Of the Peloponnesian Warre Written by Thucydides the sonne of Olorus. London: H. Seile. Hobbes, T. (1839) Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis opera philosophica quae latine scripsit, omnia in unum corpus nunc primum collecta, ed. W. Molesworth. Vol. I. London: John Bohm. Hoekstra, K. (2006) “A Lion in the House: Hobbes and Democracy,” in Brett, A., Tully, J. and Hamilton-​Bleakley, H. (eds) Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 191–​218. Hoekstra, K. (2012) “Thucydides and the Bellicose Beginnings of Modern Political Theory,” in Harloe, K. and Morley, N. (eds) Thucydides and the Modern World. Reception, Reinterpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 25–​54. Hoekstra, K. (2016) “Hobbes’ Thucydides,” in Hoekstra, K. and Martinich, A.P. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes. New York: Oxford University Press, 547–​574. - 978-90-04-44300-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 01:34:07AM via University of Exeter

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Hornblower, S. (2008) A Commentary on Thucydides. Vol. iii. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Iori, L. (2012) “Thomas Hobbes traduttore di Tucidide. Gli Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre e le prime tracce di un pensiero hobbesiano sulla paura,” Quaderni di storia 75: 149–​193. Iori, L. (2015) Thucydides Anglicus. Gli Eight Bookes di Thomas Hobbes e la ricezione inglese delle Storie di Tucidide (1450–​1642). Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Johnson, L.M. (1993) Thucydides, Hobbes and the Interpretation of Realism. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press. London, W. (1657) A Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England, Orderly an Alphabetically Digested. London: W. London. Macdonald, H. and Hargreaves, M. (1952) Thomas Hobbes. A Bibliography. London: Bibliographical Society. Malcolm, N. (2002) Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malcolm, N. (2007) Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years’ War. An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mendle, M. (ed.) (2001) The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, the Levellers, and the English State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nedham, M. (1647) Mercurius Pragmaticus 9 [9th-​16th November]: 65–​72. Nedham, M. (1650) The Case of the Common-​wealth of England, Stated. London:  E. Blackmore. Nedham, M. (1656) The Excellencie of a Free-​State, or, The Right Constitution of a Common-​wealth. London: T. Brewster. Nelson, E. (2004) The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norbrook, D. (1999) Writing the English Republic. Poetry, Rhetoric, and Politics, 1627–​ 1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pade, M. (2003) “Thucydides,” in Brown, V., Hankins, J. and Kaster, R.A. (eds) Catalogus translationum et commentariorum. Vol. viii. Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 103–​181. Pocock, J.G.A. (1975) The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Portus, Ae. (1594) Thucydidis Olori filii, de bello Peloponnesiaco libri octo. Frankfurt: A. Wechel. Raaflaub, K. (2006) “Thucydides on Democracy and Oligarchy,” in Rengakos, A. and Tsakmakis, A. (eds) Brill’s Companion to Thucydides. Leiden and Boston:  Brill, 189–​222. Reynolds, N.B. and Saxonhouse, A.W. (eds) (1995) T. Hobbes, Three Discourses. A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Roberts, J.T. (1994) Athens on Trial. The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - 978-90-04-44300-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 01:34:07AM via University of Exeter

178 Iori Russell, C. (1979) Parliament and English Politics, 1621–​1629. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schlatter, R. (1945) “Thomas Hobbes and Thucydides,” Journal of the History of Ideas 6: 350–​362. Sidney, A. (1698) Discourses Concerning Government. London: n.p.; sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster. Skinner, Q. (1996) Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (1998) Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (2008) Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (2018) From Humanism to Hobbes. Studies in Rhetoric and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, T. (1583) De Republica Anglorum. The Maner of Governement or Policie of the Realme of England. London: G. Seton. Strumia, A. (1991) L’immaginazione repubblicana. Sparta e Israele nel dibattito filosofico-​ politico dell’età di Cromwell. Florence: Le Lettere. Tuck, R. (1993) Philosophy and Government (1572–​1651). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tuck, R. (2006) “Hobbes and Democracy,” in Brett, A., Tully, J. and Hamilton-​Bleakley, H. (eds) Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 171–​190. Warren, C.N. (2015) Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580–​1680. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woodhouse, A.S.P. (ed.) (1992) Puritanism and Liberty. Being the Army Debates (1647–​9) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents. London: J.M. Dent & Sons; Rutland: C.E. Tuttle. Wootton, D. (1991) “Leveller Democracy and the Puritan Revolution,” in Burns, J.H. and Goldie, M. (eds) The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–​1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 412–​442. Zabel, C. (2016) Polis und Politesse. Der Diskurs über das antike Athen in England und Frankreich, 1630–​1760. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Zabel, C. (2017) “From Failed Republic to Polite Polis: Ancient Athens in Seventeenth-​ and Eighteenth-​Century England,” in Velema, W. and Weststeijn, A. (eds) Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination. Leiden and Boston:  Brill, 131–​156.

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­c hapter 5

The Reception of Athenian Democracy in French Culture from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire Pascal Payen 1

Prolegomena

Athenian democracy is one of the most complex political and cultural objects to have been developed over the period marked, in France, by the Enlightenment and the development of liberal thinking right up to the Second Empire (1852–​1870). The difficulties faced by the Ancien Regime in the eighteenth century followed by its disappearance, open the way to a broad debate covering other political experiments, above all Rome and Sparta up to the Revolution. The historical interest conferred on Athens as a democracy is both slower and later, but nonetheless constant starting in the 1730s, throughout the eighteenth century and covering the first half of the nineteenth century, although the humanists’ rediscovery of Thucydides and Plutarch, the two main ancient sources, could have served to spotlight the nature of the Athenian regime. Because Thucydides had indeed been translated, admittedly badly, as early as 1527 by Claude de Seyssel, using Lorenzo Valla’s (1448–​1452) Latin version published in 1483, and the Life of Pericles was available in Jacques Amyot’s fine translation, along with all the Parallel Lives, in 1559. To no avail, and Athens remained a great unknown, largely down to the highly critical regard focused by these sources on the city. For Thucydides, Athenian “democracy” is merely a “name” masking the domination of the “first citizen” (Thuc. 2.65.9). And as for Plutarque, he is against this sort of politeia on principal (Per. 9.1; 11.1; 12.2). How then could the notion of “Athenian democracy” have surfaced in French pre-​Enlightenment culture? Thucydides’ and Plutarch’s resistance to this association, postpones the advent of a concept that will only really figure in modern European political science history with the arrival of George Grote’s History of Greece (1846–​1856).1 In the meantime, monarchical theorist Jean Bodin (1530–​1596), in his Methodus ad facilem Historiarum cognitionem (1566), deemed the Athenian misthophoric system to be everyday rabble-​rousing 1 See Kierstead’s chapter in this volume.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_007

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180 Payen (chap. vi). Bodin took his cue from the Athenian constitution (1.3; 1.13), an anonymous oligarchic pamphlet, included by one of those accidents, characteristic of manuscript tradition, in the works of Xenophon, on which he was highly knowledgeable. In his Les Six livres de la République (1576), he considers that a study of Thucydides’ texts brings proof that Athens is a democratic city,2 for which the crucial turning point in the “popular” nature of the regime is due to Aristides and Pericles.3 Henceforth, throughout the seventeenth century and the construction of absolute monarchy, the Athenian democratic regime could only project itself as a radical counter model, even if the official line they would like to stress was the monarchic traits of Thucydides’ (2.65.8–​9) as well as Plutarch’s (Per. 15.1) Pericles respectively. Athens, along with Pericles4 is more or less ignored around this time, plus it should also be remembered that during the illustrious “Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns” (1687–​1714), the Greeks, defended by the Ancients, tasted defeat.5 Thus it is that on the eve of the Age of Enlightenment, the notion of Athenian democracy is as fragile as the Greek legacy is almost bereft of substance: the classical authors and especially the historical sources have a minute place in the collège6 curricula; published work, whether critical or not, is lacking7, and knowledge of the language is the reserve of a small elite, to the “detriment” of the all-​powerful Latin.8 Nothing would appear able to stop a long period of decline, starting in the years 1560s at the end of the Council of Trent (1548–​1563), without the erudite humanist movement and the period of the “Antiquarians” being able to curb this. Finally, it is worth recalling that from within the ranks of iconic figures, the true heroic and moral underpinnings of democratic Athens, no one politician between Solon and Cleisthenes, between Aristides and Pericles seems to have prevailed in the long term. From the Greek side, the great politician towering above the others is in fact the Spartan Lycurgus9 whose laws guarantee stability in contrast to the anarchy of democracy. Despite this multitude of obstacles, Athens is increasingly perceived under the guise of its “popular government”. This stems not only from ancient sources

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Cambiano (2003), 170–​9. Cambiano (2003), 183. Bouvier (2010), 704. Lecoq (ed.) (2001). Grell (1995), 984–​988. Burke (1966); Morineau (1988), 425–​460; Momigliano (1992), 45–​60; Grell (1995), 287–​301. Waquet (1997). Quantin (1989).

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reasoning in terms of politeia or of democracy, from Herodotus to Aristotle and to Plutarch, but also to a panoply of contemporary historiography maintaining that the primary legacy of the Greeks is politics: “man is a political animal” or better “a predestined city dweller” (politikon zoon: Arist. Pol. 1.2, 1253a2-​3) and “the Athenians have at the outset been citizens”.10 The avowal of the “primacy of politics in all areas of human thought”11 goes hand in hand with the emergence of “critical” reflection. And these words from Claude Mossé, in a recent French historiographical classic, Histoire d’une démocratie: Athènes (1971), are the prolongation of Jean-​Pierre Vernant’s own in another classic: Les origines de la pensée grecque (1962): the “questions of general interest” define political scope, and “the art of politics, chiefly comprises handling the language”, from logos.12 The backdrop to this political activity is the city (polis), whose cornerstone “spiritual universe” is formed by equality between the citizens. Nonetheless, this political equality, founded on the “equal sharing”13 of responsibilities between the citizens, involves social inequalities. In a book devoted to these problems, Giuseppe Cambiano has shown that ancient Greece and the Athenian democracy heritage, have, for a long time, disappeared from our cultural memory, since the abstracts of Justin, Orosius and Isidorus de Seville14 up to the Renaissance and to the dawn of the French revolution. And it is from the nineteenth century and the aftermath of this major event that “we once more include Greece on the list of contemporary European ancestors”.15 If Petrarch could ask himself: “What is the sum of all history if not a eulogy to Rome”, the people of the Enlightenment have reinterpreted this tautological vision of history by adding little by little the contribution of “Athenian democracy” and its mutations to our list of references. And as we shall see, it is only with the advent of the years 1720–​1730 that the necessary conditions for Athens to find its place in a critical political history are met. Rollin situates the beginnings that then develop right up to the dawn of the Revolution, with the Travels of Anacharsis the younger in Greece (1788) by Jean-​Jacques Barthélemy. The Thermidorian and liberal model16 then opens another route via Pierre-​Charles Lévesque’s (1795) translation of Thucydides and Grote’s work, admired in France by Victor Duruy, a supporter of Napoléon 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Mossé (1971), 179. Mossé (1971), 180. Vernant (1962), 45. Vernant (1962), 56. Cambiano (2003), 7–​8 and passim. Cambiano (2003). Avlami (2000), 71–​111.

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182 Payen iii and himself Education Minister from 1863 to 1869. The core hypothesis guiding this study will be to understand how this change of model in favour of Athenian democracy took place in France. 2

Rollin and the Emergence of a Democratic Athens

At the dawn of the eighteenth century, the knowledge base of the people of the Enlightenment concerning Greek heritage came from two main, although not of the same order, sources. First and foremost this was Plutarch, where access to the Parallel Lives had been modernized thanks to André Dacier’s (1721–​1724) translation, more accessible than Amyot’s (1559), although nonetheless retaining all its prestige. But this vast corpus does not limit access solely to the history of Republican Rome, Sparta and Alexandria. Eight Lives are in fact devoted to the Athenians: Solon, Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, accompanied by Theseus, the mythical founder of synecism and democracy. Overall, these biographies cover the same period and the same city: the history of democratic Athens from its Solonian foundations right up to Demosthenes’ ambivalent heritage thereafter, until the city staggers under the onslaught of the Macedonians. The second source consists of Rollin’s Histoire ancienne. The Jansenist Charles Rollin (1661–​1741) is the first in Europe to publish, between 1731 and 1738, a thirteen-​volume, wide ranging historical work, initially destined to teaching history in the colleges, under the title: The ancient history of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Grecians and Macedonians. And he clarifies in his four-​volume programmatic work Traité des études, published a few years earlier (1726–​1728), that this enumeration embodies “all ancient history apart from that of Rome”.17 Rollin’s originality here stems from two elements. On the one hand, this “consistent history of Antiquity” is based on the corpora of Greek historians, studied in the original language of which Rollin, a rare occurrence, possesses exceptional knowledge. He is interested not only in the “facts” but also in the basis of the history in the “analyses”, which he esteems to be much more important, searching for causes and the sequence of events. Thus we learn thanks to history “how the sciences and arts have been invented, cultivated, perfected […], their origin and their progress”.18 Rollin is close to the philosophical mindset founded on the analysis of the progress of reason, and

17 18

Rollin (1819 [1726–​1728]), 1.58. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), Preface, 1.24.

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the other innovation he introduces is insistence on the political dimension of Athens which leads to the rediscovery of Thucydides, long overshadowed, at least in part, by Plutarch, because he is a great admirer of the Athenian historian. And the important and logical question arising now is: what is the nature of the Thucydidean take on the experience and history of Athens that will be championed by Rollin? In the face of early centuries republican Rome, cradle of arms and righteousness, or of Sparta, model of participation and political liberties, how does Athenian history measure up? Does Rollin adopt the premise of Athens as a city of freedom of thought and undertaking, a city of arts and trade which, especially in England and France, will cream the historiography of the nineteenth century? He is assuredly not alone in reflecting on these issues. At the moment of publication of the Histoire ancienne volumes, Jean-​ François Melon, John Law’s secretary, publishes a well-​received Essai politique sur le commerce (1734). The history of the great individualities is now embraced and supplemented by that of the cities, and faced with Sparta which bestrode eighteenth-​century Greece, Athens plays an increasingly important role. And in the first chapter of Book 10 of the Histoire ancienne, entitled “Du gouvernement politique”, Rollin opts for the tradition of parallelism between the two cities. The summary of Athens’ history stresses the times of popular government, starting with Solon, who established “freedom” and “equality” by “also giving the poor some place in government from which they were excluded”, up to 404.19 However, Athens was not just a political city. Via the education that it provided, wrote Rollin, it “was per se the school and the home of the fine arts and sciences”; and he continued: “the study of poetry, of eloquence, of philosophy, of mathematics were much in vogue”.20 In short, the Athens suggested by Rollin is ambivalent: a political and a cultural Athens, but not yet “a bourgeois Athens”,21 the archetype of representative regimes and of liberal democracies, that which we find in George Grote and his follower Victor Duruy.22 19 20 21 22

Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 22–​24. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 48. As named by Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet (1990 [1979]). At the same time, there is the burgeoning controversy as to the place of luxury and riches in the State’s functioning, giving Athens a leading role. To Jean-​François Melon’s previously cited Essai politique sur le commerce, must be added, still in the same 1730 decade, the stand taken by Voltaire in Le Mondain and the Défense du mondain ou apologie du luxe (1736), plus the article “Luxury” in the Dictionnaire philosophique (“What good did Sparta do for Greece? Did they never have a Demosthenes, a Sophocles and a Phidias? The luxury of Athens has produced all kinds of great men”; cf. Mat-​Hasquin (1981)), and Montesquieu’s analyses, De l’Esprit des Lois (1748), book xxvi, chap. vi (“Du commerce des Anciens”) and vii (“Du commerce des Grecs”). The classical Athens owes its prosperity to the circulation of wealth and of products, assisted by techniques, the sciences and

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184 Payen The “On the government of Athens” section elutes the main elements of the historical narrative constructed using Thucydides’ new input. And Rollin does not just summarize his sources. The historiographical undertaking that he implements comprises three main components. 1. Firstly, the account’s main theme is centered on an almost term-​by-​term confrontation situating Athens relative to Sparta. Rollin roots this out as much in the arguments of Pericles’ last speech,23 as in the Mytileneans’ speech at Olympia,24 which is why he chooses to bring them both in, at length for the first and entirely for the second. Here, Sparta emerges as “Athens’ ancient and perpetual rival”, and the Mytileneans offering gives “a true picture […] of the people’s opinions concerning the Athenians and Lacedaemonians”;25 this opposition is the very vector of the cities’ histories. Similarly, after having dealt with the events in Corcyra, in book iii, he returns with the blockade of Sphacteria and of the occupation of Pylos, which opposes the two cities very directly. 2. Next, Rollin, within this established pairing, gives priority to Athens. He eliminates anything that could be to its disadvantage, when it seems to wield the justice of the powerful, against Melos, or be more or less involved as to the causes of the widespread stasis gripping the world of the cities, rooted in the situation prevailing in Corcyra. Conversely, he dwells on the moments where it appears to be the victim of excessive harshness, in the Syracuse latomies (quarries). And in this context, the reason why the funeral oration is dismissed in only three lines could appear strange, especially as the only Greek citation from Thucydides comes from Rollin: “great men arise where merit is best rewarded”. One could object that, if Rollin uses Athens as a model, it means that he does not follow the Thucydidean thesis according to which the errors and woes of the city have led to its collapse; choosing Athens and holding it up as an example on the one hand, being a follower of Thucydides on the other, would seem to be two conflicting orientations. And to this objection there exist several possible answers. Firstly, Rollin does not read Thucydides as the history of an Athens in decline because, as he is also an avid reader of Plutarch, he focuses on Pericles, the city’s “statesman”. Whereas, it is indeed Thucydides the first who states, before Plutarch: “it was in his time that it was the greatest” (megiste: 2.65.5). Next, Rollin recognizes and respects Thucydides’ ambivalent and complex position concerning Athenian history and the Athenian

23 24 25

the arts. In which case, next to Plut. Per. 12, we can call on Thuc. 2.38–​40, 1. Cf. Borghero (1974). Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 104–​106 = Thuc. 2.60–​64. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 116–​120 = Thuc. 3.9–​13. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 120.

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experience: on the one hand, Athens “was indeed the school and the home of fine arts and the sciences”,26 much as it was for Pericles, “the school of Greece” (tes Hellados paideusin: 2.41.1); on the other, it has established a “tyrant empire” which has used its “strength” in a “despotic” manner, but from which it has become impossible for the Athenians to split away, at the risk of disappearing themselves (Thuc. 2.63.1-​3). Thucydides’ only interpretation, cited by Rollin in an underlined note, that Athens is great because it produces great men, a line of interpretation developed by Plutarch, also explains the reasons for Rollin’s choice, distilling the funeral oration into this one sentence.27 3. Finally –​the third main theme in establishing the Athenian paradigm –​ Rollin, via Pericles, defines an Athens which excels under the dual reign of its political institutions and “of trade and the arts”. On one side, Athens is the city where the political “word” holds sway –​“very carefully nurtured” by Pericles –​and on the other, the “public deliberations”.28 Rollin endorses Thucydides’ words (2.65.8-​9), portraying the Athenian regime as an ideal mixed constitution associating royalty  –​where he gives credit to Sparta in “Of the government of Sparta” –​and “popular government”29: “Pericles, writes Rollin, amassed so much kudos in the eyes of the population that it was as if he had acquired a monarch’s power […] under a republican government”.30 In another way, Athens stands out by “the means that [Pericles] knew how to inject to obtain thriving trade and blossoming arts”, thus earning “the confidence of all the Athenians”.31 It goes without saying that this general agreement resulting from reflections in the mind is obviously not without a whiff of the funeral oration (Thuc. 2.38, 40.1). The Athens defined by Rollin, via reading Thucydides, and in line with that of Plutarch, is a political Athens, endowed with the institutions of a “democratic and popular government”, according to Solon, a regime tinged by the royalism of its great statesmen. This dual political component produces an enlightened city open to both the arts and literature. In this way Rollin sets out the conditions for Athens to be able to hold its own against Sparta, and for it to become the city of freedom of movement, of trade and exchange, a model of representative regimes. A fresh historiographical paradigm has been

26 27 28 29 30 31

Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 48. For Rollin, “history is the work of great men who have managed to combine their own interests with those of the State”: Cambiano (2003), 310. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 111 and 27–​28. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 21, 36: “un gouvernement démocratique et populaire”. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 32, cf. Thuc. 2.65.9. Rollin (1846 [1731–​1738]), 4.10, 111, close to Thuc. 2.65.8.

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186 Payen established, on which studies on Antiquity are still largely dependent. Rollin’s work has thus greatly contributed to making philosophers discover the Greeks in the unending eons of their history, based on the cities’ political experiments, themselves viewed through the parallel between Sparta and Athens. On publication, Histoire ancienne becomes a reference work, with German translations appearing in 1759, and Italian in 1792. Rollin’s work is read by Montesquieu, by Voltaire, by Frederick ii, and by Rousseau, for the Discours sur les sciences et les arts. Rollin’s influence is conclusive for the birth and constitution of the Athenian paradigm. This influence still remains difficult to grasp through lack of monographic studies devoted to this corpus. 3

The Democratic Athens from Montesquieu to Barthélemy (1748–​1788)

The accent here is on the large number of seminal works dealing with this problem in the subsequent decades. De l’Esprit des lois is published in 1748, wherein Montesquieu endeavors to find expressly political “laws”, simultaneously taking into account the Greek cities and their institutions. In 1749 the Observations sur les Grecs by Mably is published, and in the following year Rousseau’s first Discours sur les sciences et les arts, where the Greeks are portrayed as the anti-​ model. Antoine Yves Goguet, a counselor in the Paris parliament, initiates a criticism of Rousseau and of Mably, primarily concerning the supposed superiority of Sparta’s constitution, in a 1758 book entitled: De l’origine des lois, des arts et des sciences, & de leurs progrès chez les anciens peuples du Déluge au retour des Hébreux de la captivité de Babylone.32 In 1764, Jean-​Pierre de Bougainville published a brief essay in favour of the Greek institution, read at the French “Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres”: “Vues générales sur les Antiquités grecques du premier Âge et sur les premières histoires de la nation grecque”. Mably amends his views of 1749 in his Observations sur l’histoire des Grecs ou des causes de la prospérité et des malheurs des Grecs (1766). The Greeks and not just the Romans, thus, appear in the years 1730–​1760 as vectors of political experience and able to contribute to more general observations. Let us return to the main stages of this phenomenon. Athens’ place and function in Greek history begins to be recognized around the middle of the century, and not just because Sparta’s rival city is increasingly seen, as in Rousseau and Mably, as a theoretical fiction removed from history, 32

We owe this reference to Grell (1995), 508–​513, especially 512.

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but for two other important reasons. Firstly, the appearance of the initial signs of a history of Athens whose power depends not on arms but on trade, as in the Essai politique sur le commerce by Melon (1734). In 1772, Diderot confirms what will establish the identity of the modern era: “The spirit of trade has without doubt [become] the spirit of the century”.33 Secondly, Montesquieu situates Athens in De l’esprit des lois –​for him, it is the city of Solon with its tenancy regime –​on a par with Rome, as a model of “good democracies”, that is those for which “the love of the republic is that of the democracy; and the love of democracy is that of liberty”.34 In the comparison between Rome and the Greek cities, Athens takes Sparta’s place for the first time, acquiring all its virtues, notably “frugality”. This victory of Athens is also that of the Ancients over the Moderns: The Greek politicians who lived in the popular government, knew of no other supporting force than that of virtue. Those of today only speak to us of manufacturers, finance, riches, and even luxury.35 Yet Montesquieu’s source, Pierre Vidal-​Naquet recalls, is a passage from the funeral oration delivered by Pericles, marking the first year of the Peloponnesian war (Thuc. 2.37.1)36 in autumn 431, and reconstituted by Thucydides who had in all likelihood been present. This text is a defense and illustration of just why the Athenian war dead have consented to sacrifice their lives: the democratic city. That is each citizen’s individual virtue (arete) shared by all. Rousseau does not avoid the problem of democracy and he touches on the question of Athens, albeit indirectly, when he speaks of Sparta, both a rival city and a reference, in his eyes. But his approach is completely different, and he explains this in the second version of the Contrat social (1762): democracy, he writes, is “a government so perfect (that it) is unsuitable for mankind”, such that, he states further on, “taking the term in its strict sense, a true democracy has never existed, nor will it ever exist”.37 Rousseau’s Greece, as with the cities of Sparta or Athens, are not those of the historians and historical criticism;

33

Diderot, “Pensées détachées ou Fragments politiques échappés au portefeuille d’un philosophe”, quoted in Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet (1990 [1979]), 162. 34 Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, v, 3: “Ce que c’est que l’amour de la république dans la démocratie”. 35 Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, iii, 3: “Du principe de la démocratie”. 36 Vidal-​Naquet (2000), 232. 37 Rousseau (1964 [1762]), 406, 404.

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188 Payen they are historico-​political myths.38 In the Discours sur les origines et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1754), Greek Antiquity provides Rousseau with the framework –​“I will presume that I am in the Athens Lycée” –​allowing him to have “the whole Human race listening”, but this context is, above all, theoretical: To start with we will rule out all the facts, because they do not really concern the question. The Research under which we can enter the Subject, must not be taken for historical truths, but merely for hypothetical and conditional reasoning.39 Already in the Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750) there appears the famous expression identifying Sparta as a “Republic of demi-​gods, rather than men”, “as famous for its blissful ignorance as for the wisdom of its laws”.40 Athens can only come over as an anti-​model, and the reference to the democracy does not work, it is neither a value nor an anti-​value, which is confirmed by this judgment taken from the Discours sur l’économie politique: “Athens was not a democracy, but a consummate tyrannical aristocracy, governed by speakers and scholars”.41 Rousseau’s condemnation of Athens at least provided proof that at this moment in time, any discussion concerning the city, Greek in particular, cannot dispense with the notion of democracy, even if only to criticize it, as does Mably in his Observations sur l’histoire de la Grèce (1765) and his Entretiens sur Phocion sur les rapports de la morale et de la politique (1763). The great debate between admirers of Sparta and proponents of Athens  –​not forgetting nonetheless that it is still Rome in the vanguard of the ancient cities  –​remains highly active right up to the eve of the Revolution, at which point it transpires that the Greek legacy was not exclusively Lacedaemonian.42 And from among the Athens supporters, Camille Desmoulins is not as isolated as was sometimes thought; indeed we need to count him 38

39 40 41 42

That is also in part due to the men of the Enlightenment’s poor knowledge of Athens. Thus, in an article of the Encyclopédie written by Turpin (“Supplement” i, 1776, p. 669–​ 676), entitled “Athens”, the information is generally unreliable and the spirit violently antidemocratic. The main error concerns Cleisthenes where all the reforms are attributed to Peisistratus, qualified as a “peaceable tyrant […] all the more dangerous because he only appeared to use his power to solicit public approbation”, although acknowledging some merit in the democratic regime. Rousseau (1964 [1754]), 132–​133. Rousseau (1964 [1750]), 12: cf. Roberts (1994), 166–​168. Rousseau (1964 [1755]), 246. Cf. Nippel’s chapter in this volume.

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among the physiocrates Turgot and Condorcet. In 1743, Diderot translated The Grecian History (1707–​1739) by Temple Stanyan, and the surprising Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, published in Berlin, in 1787, and in Paris, in 1788, are the work of Cornelius de Pauw, a protestant, in favour of Athens and hostile to Sparta.43 Concerning the latter he denounces their obsession for warmongering, the degrading manner of women in particular, the social inequality, the absence of any written laws which (and this is rare) amounts to making a critical analysis of the Lycurgus laws. In the report to Antiquity, the French Revolution in particular signifies an attention to the figures of the legislators. The Constituents and members of the Convention take as their models and inspiration, those who have forged just laws or who have demonstrated by their actions the “progress of reason”: Lycurgus from Sparta, Solon, Aristides, Socrates and Phocion from Athens. And they take a significant part of their inspiration from a remarkable work by Abbot Jean-​Jacques Barthélemy, the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce dans le milieu du quatrième siècle avant l’ère vulgaire, which was published in Paris, in the same year as Pauw’s Recherches philosophiques, in 1788. Here, the question of Athenian democracy has a very important place. The account by Barthélemy, whose vast first hand scholarship goes hand in hand with the absence of any historical distancing between the eighteenth-​ century present and the fourth century bce in which his hero is supposed to wander, devotes quite long analyses to Cleisthenes in a section nonetheless entitled “Siècle de Solon”.44 Barthélemy is perhaps the first to take the time to ponder upon a problem that will henceforth be taken up again and again: is there a continuity from Solon to Cleisthenes, or does the latter really break new ground by inventing democracy? His answer is convoluted and the whole of his presentation needs to be examined in detail.45 Obviously, he must begin with the continuity argument: “He [Cleisthenes] strengthens the constitution established by Solon, and that the Peisistratidae would never think of destroying”.46 None of them “took the title of king”, and logically therefore, they acted like Chief Magistrates, and everlasting leaders of a democratic state, and had such an influence on public proceedings”.47 Cleisthenes’ originality disappears behind the “democratic” uniformity of the Solon-​Peisistratus-​Cleisthenes trio. All three of them are the authors of the democracy that blossomed in the time 43 44 45 46 47

Mossé (2007). Barthélemy (1788). Barthélemy (1788), 145–​70. Barthélemy (1788), 169. Barthélemy (1788), 170.

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190 Payen of Cleisthenes. But after, Barthélemy stops short of saying what would really carry the day and constitute the strength and value of the regime: the Solonian inheritance or Cleisthenes’ innovations? In particular, “these tribes, like so many little republics”: “increasing their numbers and giving them more things to do, was to indiscriminately commit all the citizens to become involved in public affairs”,48 which is not without danger since they then needed to be “compensated”. Publishing that in 1788 assumed the author was mindful of the political stirrings of the immediate present. However, the victories in the Persian wars showed the warped side of the democratic regime; “The multitude” needed to be rewarded, which Aristides accomplished with political rights, and his successor Pericles, “that most dangerous of courtiers”, by granting compensation. Which is why “restoring the Solon government”,49 meaning the “constitution of ancestors” dear to Isocrates (Areopagiticus 16),50 was or should have been, for Barthélemy, Clisthenes’ watchword. 4

Athenian Democracy in the Culture of the People of the Revolution

The speakers in the revolutionary assemblies are blessed with a rather rudimentary classical culture, with their favourite heroes above all the two, often confused, Brutuses and the legislator Lycurgus from Sparta. Among the Athenians, only Solon is a reference on a par with these, whom the Moderns can imitate; democratic Athens is daunting because it grants too much to the people. Rousseau, seeking the ears of the Genevans, his former fellow citizens, has proclaimed in the ninth of the Lettres écrites de la Montagne, published in 1764, that any imitation of the Ancients had become futile and above all dangerous, with the risk of losing the only real, worthwhile freedom, political freedom: The Ancient peoples are no longer a model for the Moderns; in all respects they are too far removed from them. Above all, you the Genevans, stay where you are and don’t even consider the lofty eventualities presented to you in order to hide the abyss we are digging in front of you. You are neither Romans nor Spartans; you are not even Athenians. Save yourself from these great names who don’t concern you at all.

48 49 50

Barthélémy (1788), 173–​4. Barthélémy (1788), 176. Cf. Vidal-​Naquet (2000), 230.

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The relationship with the Ancients is thus ambivalent. Nevertheless, before posing the question along with the Thermidorians, whether it is the act of aping the Ancients that is responsible for the excesses of the Revolution,51 especially under the Mountain National Convention and the “Terror” in the year ii (June –​July 1794), rather let us ask ourselves what place Antiquity has occupied in parliamentarians’ considerations and work.52 The most representative person is the legislator.53 That is why Lycurgus and the Spartan constitution are omnipresent, and Athens, along with Solon, occupy a previously unheard-​of place. This identification with the great men comes from Plutarch and prompts the presence, from 10 May 1793, of the busts of Lycurgus and Solon in the Convention meeting room, at the Tuileries. If we consider the emergence of democracy throughout the city of Athens and of the principle of equality with Lycurgus from 10 August 1792, and the proclamation of the Republic for the first time in France, the models most frequently cited are Dracon, Agis and Cleomenes for legislators, and Themistocles, Thrasybulus and Demosthenes from among the democrats. Virtue (arete), the main founding principle of Republics, is illustrated for Athens, by the figures of Miltiades at war, of Aristides in politics and of the legislator Phocion, whose austerity measures for Athens paralleled those of Lycurgus.54 Camille Desmoulins (1760–​1794) is certainly the most highly cultivated of all the partisans of the Athenian model. In Le Vieux Cordelier, a newspaper he founded at the end of 1793, he calls the Athenians “the most democratic people that have ever existed”, and he goes against the overly severe Spartan model, outlining the main arguments in favour of a liberal Athens: “Therefore I think that liberty does not consist of an equality of privations”. Arrested with Danton, in the period of the great Terror, he was guillotined on the 31 March 1794,55 and so could not have read in the seventh and last edition of the Vieux Cordelier, his final plea in favour of Athens, in the form of a fictitious dialogue between himself and the old Cordelier, who asks him: “Do you know what a republican people is, a democratic people?” To which Camille replies: I only know of one from among the Ancients. It is not the Romans; there, people hardly ever talked freely, only by uprising in the heat of 51 52 53 54 55

Hartog (2000), 9–​13; Roberts (1994), 194–​197. Nippel’s chapter in this volume. Vidal-​Naquet (1990), 214–​215 (“La place de la Grèce dans l’imaginaire des hommes de la Révolution”); Hartog (2000), 14–​16. Mossé (1989), 89–​90. Avlami (2000).

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192 Payen the political factions […]; but the dyed in the wool republicans, the convinced democrats by instinct and as a matter of principle, were the Athenians. Derisive and canny, not only the Athenian people felt free to talk and write, but we can see from what remains of their theatre that there was no greater entertainment than to see their generals, ministers, philosophers, their committees performing on stage; and even better for the people to see themselves playing. Read Aristophanes who was a comedy writer three thousand years ago, and you will be struck by the strange resemblance between Athens and democratic France. […] In a word a three-​thousand-​year-​old Antiquity, with us as its contemporaries.56 When, in the weeks following 10 August 1792, it was a question of setting up a constitution for the newly proclaimed Republic, the mp Corrèze Brival enthusiastically exclaimed that not only had they to “interview Lycurgus”, but also to turn to Solon’s Athens for help: “Let us question Solon: he will answer that it was by establishing the principle of equality that allowed his homeland to triumph. […] The most destitute peasant from Attica, endowed with the status of citizen, marched side by side with the richest of Athens”.57 Nevertheless, while it was relatively easy to demand the main tenets on which the ancient “Republics” were founded, beginning with equality, it became much more difficult to adapt their institutions, as it is witnessed by the projects for constitutions formulated during the first months of 1793. And the same can be said of the Athenian example, in particular, how did the direct democracy of ancient Athens measure up to France with a population of twenty-​ six million, was it possible? And in May 1793, Robespierre did not hesitate to suggest adoption of a measure which immediately brings to mind the institution of the misthoi, the official allowances allocated to Athenian citizens: In order that the inequality of assets does not destroy the equality of rights, the constitution requires that the citizens, who provide for their own livelihood, will be compensated for the time that they spend on public affairs in the people’s assemblies where they are summoned by law. […] It is only in democracy where the State is truly the homeland of all the individuals who compose it, and can count on as many defenders of the cause as there are citizens.58

56 57 58

Text cited by Mossé (1989), 94–​95. Text cited by Mossé (1989), 99. Text cited by Mossé (2013), 126.

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The formation in March-​April 1793 of the Public Welfare committee and the instigation of the Reign of Terror overshadows the institutional question.59 Camille Desmoulins, the most Athenophile of the Conventionals, eulogizes nonetheless the freedom of thought that reigned in Athens, above all illustrated by ancient comedy. And here, this Athens is also that of Pericles, where, on the slopes of the Pnyx, as much as on the benches of the Dionysus theatre it is permitted to address the city’s leaders and hold them accountable. However, with the end of the Montagnard Terror, the 9 Thermidor, and the execution of Robespierre, the imitation of ancient models is called very much into question. How is it possible to continue to refer to such inegalitarian societies, where the largest social group, made up of slaves, is deprived of liberty and any rights? Volney, in his Leçons d’histoire from the year iii (1795), delivered at the Collège de France, is one of the first to broach this debate.60 5

“The Imaginary Liberal” and the Development of a “Bourgeois Athens” by Pierre-​Charles Lévesque to Benjamin Constant (between 1795 and 1819)

The best possible knowledge concerning the ancient cities that the Thermidorians had, came from increasingly easier access to sources, either indirectly through contact with scholarly works such as Rollin’s Histoire ancienne, or the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis by Abbott Barthélemy, or via direct access thanks to reliable translations: Herodotus was translated by Pierre-​Henri Larcher in 1786, and in 1798 Abbott Ricard produced a new full translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. And as for Thucydides, he gains inspiration from Pierre-​Charles Lévesque’s remarkable French version, printed as early as 1795. Yet through these authors the Thermidorians learn to view direct democracy experiments with circumspection, whether this be with Peisistratus flattering the demos, or the debates concerning the Sicily expedition, and above all when they have ample opportunity to compare these with the time of the Terror. Henceforth, the ancient republicans must be kept at arm’s length and no longer imitated. Lévesque’s work marks Thucydides’ slow return to favour, since Rollin and the beginning of the obliteration of Plutarch; which signifies that Athens is increasingly perceived as a civilization and not as an historical exemplum. Thus we can state with some confidence that Thucydides and Athens rose

59 60

Avlami (2000). Roberts (1994), 198–​199.

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194 Payen phoenix-​like in France with this translation. Following the events of the Thermidorians and the “torment”, ancient Greece became a fresh historical landmark within the Institute founded in 1795, and, amidst this, of the moral and political sciences class. Lévesque, already a historian of Russia (1781) and of the France of the first Valois (1788), sets himself the task of making available the greatest number of ancient texts and historico-​philological knowledge. The long preface to his translation sets out with clarity and to a nicety the main features of this new Thucydides who, for Lévesque, is “the one historian who deserves the most confidence” 61. However, the reason is primarily political: Of all historians, Thucydides is almost certainly the one who is the most studied in those countries where all the citizens can aspire one day to a part in government. A highly knowledgeable English mp is quoted as saying that in the Houses of Parliament no question existed upon which Thucydides could not throw some light. Even more than Tacitus, he is the historian of policies, because he gives the people’s political action with regard to the people, whereas Tacitus has only the opportunity to depict the prince’s political action regarding the courtiers and of the latter between themselves and towards the prince. Charles-​Quint, the shrewdest politician of his time, studied Thucydides via Seyssel’s French translation, and took this book with him even on warfaring expeditions, just as Alexander was never without his Homer in the midst of his conquests 62. Exit the history of the great men and room for the cities and the peoples opens up. “Between Greece and the historian came the Revolution”.63 How did Thucydides become the basis for a new model, that of the liberal and Thermidorian bourgeoisie? Lévesque explains this in his preface. In accordance with the humanist tradition, it is all a question of style in the predictable comparison with Herodotus. The father of history is “a majestic river which, always swollen never strident, flows uninterruptedly and peacefully”, because he understands how to weave extra episodes into his story while augmenting them at the same time. Conversely, Thucydides “far from wishing to stand out and please by the style’s richness, […] thinks only of trimming back. And sometimes he even becomes obscure, too sparing with his words”. The reader thus finds himself obliged to make a concerted effort of thought: “since he thought a lot while

61 62 63

Lévesque (1795), preface, xx. Lévesque (1795), xxvii–​x xviii. Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet (1979 [1990]), 194.

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writing, it is the same to be able to read him”.64 The discourse, characteristic of Thucydides, best illustrates this focusing of the expression: “he concentrated the style which, even pared down to the minimum, was still not sufficient”.65 The characteristics of his style, according to Lévesque, thus stem directly from Thucydides’ two main virtues: he is both a “deep thinker” and the historian of politicians. In short, because he “endeavors to offer his readers more than just words”,66 he becomes, according to Rollin and even more than this latter, an historical source, a figurehead of knowledge for Athens which, thanks to him, finds itself in a position to become part of the century’s history. Thucydides is read carefully by Benjamin Constant (1767–​1830), who is preoccupied by the allocation of the necessary leeway for citizens’ “individual rights”. And in order to uncover the fundamental difference between Ancients and Moderns he analyses, through the eyes of the Athenian historian, the nature of each individual’s liberty.67 Thus for the Ancients, the liberty enjoyed by the citizens is very clearly political and collective by nature; leading above all to the equality of all before the Assembly and the Judiciaries. The liberty of the Moderns conversely, is economic and individual; it is the freedom of opportunity and movement, and Athens is the city best illustrating this divide. In 1819, well after the Revolution, Constant makes this very clear in a conference given at the Athénée Royal in Paris, entitled, “On the liberty of the Ancients compared to that of the Moderns”: Of all the Greek republics, Athens, as I have already pointed out, had the accent very firmly on trade, and it thus also gave its citizens infinitely more individual freedom than Rome or Sparta […] Trading had erased in the Athenians several of the differences distinguishing the Ancient peoples from the Moderns. The Athenians’ entrepreneurial spirit was akin to today’s traders […] commerce had imbued them with the ability to move around, to circulate.68 Constant demonstrates that the very size of modern States is such that, given the number of citizens, each one can no longer have the possibility of directly exercising his or her political freedom; whence the imposed idea that citizens can only exercise their powers through representatives. And this fact had 64 65 66 67 68

Lévesque (1795), xvi-​x vii. Lévesque (1795), xxiii. Lévesque (1795), xvii. Hartog (2000), 30–​32. Constant (1997 [1819]), 600. About this liberal Athens cf. Roberts (1994), 168–​173, 222–​26.

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196 Payen already been expressed by Lévesque: the English Parliament is the place and the example of this delegation of powers. However, each citizen is nonetheless perfectly within his rights to exercise his or her individual liberty, freedom of movement, of “circulation” and entrepreneurial freedom. And it is Pericles’ Athens, under this new evaluation, that surfaces as the city of freedom, lord of the seas, authorizing all its citizens to become wealthy themselves, in short a “bourgeois Athens”, replacing war with trade, whereas Sparta is still a community of warriors.69 The building of the great English and French colonial empires, in the generation following Benjamin Constant in the middle of the nineteenth century, will engrave this new interpretation of a liberal Athens –​ that is one which is both representative, imperialist and commercial  –​not merely ideologically, but also in the university historical research with Victor Duruy. Liberal Athens becomes the authorized version within the confines of the fledgling “Science of the Antiquity”. 6

The Reception of the “Liberal” Athens in France, from George Grote to Victor Duruy

It is English historiography in France over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century which modifies the image of Athens. The latter displaces Sparta and becomes the city of reference. And this transformation is set out in Grote’s History of Greece, published in ten volumes between 1846 and 1856, which invents a political Athens based on the liberal model, an Athens free to produce, and with free circulation of people and ideas. George Grote (1794–​ 1871), a banker, member of the “radical philosophers” group, follower of David Ricardo, James Mill and Jeremy Bentham,70 is a fervent admirer of the Greek cities’ democracy and of their parliamentary system, which he likens to that of England, drawing on his own political experience between the years 1831–​1841. Thus, on the one hand, Thucydides is the main source for the construction of the image of a democratic Athens, and on the other, the Athenian historian appears highly critical of the manner in which Athens imposes its domination within the “Delian league”. We know that the continued development of Athenian power is, in his view, “the most likely reason” (Thuc. 1.23.6) for Sparta’s fears and the conflict that opens in 431 bce. Athens’ behaviour during the Peloponnesian war, as much with its allies as with its enemies, often illustrates,

69 70

Vidal-​Naquet (1990), 214. Momigliano (1955 [1952]).

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with cynicism and pragmatism, the justice of the powerful, as with Melos, in 416 (Thuc. 5.84–​116), destroyed for having refused to abandon its neutrality policy. In this historiographical context, the Modern supporters of Athens prefer to trust Grote’s analysis rather than Thucydides’ criticism. And so to Victor Duruy (1811–​1894). A follower of Michelet, whose lessons he attends at the École Normale Supérieure, Duruy is a Thermidorian liberal who votes against Napoleon iii’s plebiscites in 1851–​1852. However, he sides with the Empire, and more meaningfully with the Emperor in person when he becomes a member of the commission responsible for helping him with the writing of his Histoire de Jules César (1860), and subsequently when he is summoned to be “Minister of Public Instruction”, from 1863 to 1869. Duruy keeps a close watch on the regular publication of Grote’s volumes.71 And, although he is a Roman history specialist, in 1851 he publishes a Histoire grecque, reworked and completed in 1862, in two volumes, using Grote’s expertise, and then in a three-​volume, illustrated edition published between 1887 and 1889. As his contemporaries Droysen and Grote, Duruy has no doubt about the “modern nature” of Antiquity; in his Notes et souvenirs written towards the end of his life,72 he puts this into practice in his thinking. In all three editions he agrees in essence with Grote’s main arguments, puts to ruin the Spartan model that he qualifies as “merely a war which ends up by destroying itself”, and continues to sing the praises of Pericles’ Athens, “this golden age of the human mind”. This complete turnaround in favour of democracy, is illustrated especially by the figure of Cleisthenes, based on Grote’s new ideas. The latter devotes a sixty-​ five-​page long section to this emblematic figure in volume v of his History of Greece.73 The main thrust of the argument is outlined almost immediately: “His association with the people gave birth to Athenian democracy: this was a real and key revolution”.74 Cleisthenes is endowed with the founder’s attributes, and this explains the first major fracture concerning the relation with Solon. While reminding us of “these pre-​existing institutions on which it has been possible to build”, Grote stresses that Cleisthenes “simultaneously modifies and develops the main components of Solon’s political constitution”,75 and that these changes are in the direction of progress almost to the point of breaking away, without however going to the extent of making the Alcmaeonids heroic saints. The more 71 72 73 74 75

In the same way as Mérimée; cf. Payen (2011), 35, note 111, and Pontier (2010). V. Duruy, Notes et souvenirs, Paris 1901, 2 vol. Grote (1862 [1846–​1856]). Grote (1862 [1846–​1856]), v, 302. Grote (1862 [1846–​1856]), v, 310.

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198 Payen the presentation advances, the more the character takes on true political substance and the more the breakup with the Solonian legacy seems to prevail: Such was the first Athenian democracy, partly due to the reaction against Hippias and his dynasty but also to the memorable association, be it spontaneous or obligatory between Cleisthenes and the unprivileged multitude. The distinction can be drawn as much between Solon’s earlier timid oligarchy as from the symmetrical democracy once completely developed, which prevailed afterwards following the onset of the Peloponnesian war. This was indeed a remarkable revolution […] by the visible change it engendered in social and political life.76 Similarly, at the beginning of the presentation, Duruy’s Cleisthenes77 splits away from Solon, by allowing inscription on the deme register, the very basis of the “new organization”, of those persons who had previously been excluded, even though they had been present in Attica sometimes for over several generations, in particular skilled tradespeople and merchants”.78 With Cleisthenes, the beginnings of the “bourgeois Athens” appear in Duruy’s texts, but these are always locked into their political dimension. Previously “political unity was the genos”; for Cleisthenes it is now the demos,79 including the armed demos, who overcome Sparta and Thebes, in keeping with the image inherited from the Revolution: “Democracy gloriously inaugurated its coming with two major victories in two days”.80 The end of Duruy’s presentation re-​establishes a continuity with the Solonian legacy –​by which he distances himself from Grote –​and above all transforms it into a free meditation and a synthetic analysis of a liberal Athens, the image and model for the French second empire and Victorian England. It is worth citing this text since it for long defines, and this well after the second industrial revolution, democratic Athens’ function in the French cultural tradition: Following a plethora of troubles and revolutions, we have just witnessed the rapid arrival of Athens onto the road to democracy and become, that which Solon had wanted it to be, a meeting of citizens within which 76 77 78 79 80

Grote (1862 [1846–​1856]), v, 343. Duruy (1851), 207–​217. Duruy (1851), 207–​209. “In modern political language, this was no more than the establishment of universal suffrage”: Duruy (1851), 209. Duruy (1851), 214.

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neither families, nor corporations, or castes had any special and hereditary rights. Equality before the law, the safety of people and possessions, freedom of access to jobs, to the tribunals, to the general assembly, written laws preventing the arbitrary, a public domain really belonging to the said public. Because for example, mine production was divided between the citizens, when the city did not lay claim to them for its needs, however, the business directorate was the reserve of the rich, since they had greater freedom and could, if need be, make greater sacrifices. Amongst all this newness, the respect for the great names, the old families and the ancient religion of the country, such that all links with the past not being severed, the State could not throw itself with temerity towards an unknown future. And that the Athenian nobility, like that of England, remained both the city’s ornament and its strength, without posing a threat and being a peril. There you have what Athens was for Solon and Cleisthenes, a government which encouraged the free unfurling of individual’s faculties, to the utter devotion of all for the common greatness.81 Vulgate of a liberal Athens and, even more, sometimes termed, insipid! Agreed, Duruy’s analysis has nowhere near the complexity of Grote’s, however, this vulgate throws up questions, incites debate and spreads, above all in France. Thus Mérimée accords several reviews of the first volumes between 1847 and 1854 in the Revue des Deux-​Mondes,82 before the appearance of the complete French translation. Plus there is another seemingly very different classical study in this same context, La Cité antique by Fustel de Coulanges (1864) with its explicit sub-​title: Étude sur le culte, le droit, les institutions de la Grèce et de Rome, which reflects a concern for maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the Ancients, in an effort however, to stress the differences dividing us from them. Because the antique city, having served as a model for that of the Moderns, has lead the latter into the Revolution and to the Terror. Indeed, Fustel de Coulanges is crystal clear about it in his introduction: “To know the truth concerning the Ancient peoples, it is best to study them without a thought for what we are, as if they had nothing to do with us”.  All this news holds sway up to the Histoire grecque from Gustave Glotz (1862–​1935), in the 1930’s. Glotz takes inspiration mainly from the liberal model, but one painted with a strong republican and social tint. His democratic Athens, relocated in the reality of the Third Republic, is about “a well thought out policy of mutual help and social preservation”

81 82

Duruy (1851), 216. Ponthier (2010), 636.

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200 Payen allowing each and every person “to exercise their civil rights”.83 We have overrun the chronological confines of this contribution, but it is Glotz himself, driven by nostalgia for the first Republic, who brings the Athenian model towards the French Revolution, with a view to preparing a brief overview of “the social equilibrium in the fifth century”: Submission to the sovereignty of the people and to the established authorities, obedience to the laws, and especially those ensuring protection of the weak. Herewith the very foundations on which the political and social balance of a town which, pre-​dating the French revolution by over two thousand years, have managed to develop, an unwritten draft, a declaration of the rights and responsibilities of Man and of the Citizen.84 It is difficult to pinpoint which reference –​the Athens of the fifth century, the Republic of Glotz or that of the Conventionals –​serves as a benchmark, such is the feeling that Antiquity and the present appear to be watching each other in the same mirror.

Bibliography

Ampolo, C. (1997) Storie greche. La formazione della moderna storiografia sugli antichi Greci. Turin: Einaudi. Avlami, Chr. (2000)  “La Grèce ancienne dans l’imaginaire libéral ou, comment se débarrasser de la Terreur (1795–​1819)”, in Idem (ed.) L’Antiquité grecque au XIXe siècle. Un exemplum contesté? Paris: L’Harmattan, 71–​111. Barthélémy, J.-​J. (1788) Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce dans le milieu du quatrième siècle avant l’ère vulgaire. T. I. 3rd edn. Paris: De Bure, 91–​170. Borghero, C. (1974) La polemica sul lusso nel Settecento francese. Turin: Einaudi. Bouvier, D. (2010) “Thucydide et Voltaire: enjeux et constructions d’une filiation problématique”, in Fromentin, Gotteland, Payen (eds) (2010), 693–​706. Burke, P. (1966) “A Survey of the popularity of Ancient historians”, History and Theory 5: 135–​152. Cambiano, G. (2003) Polis. Histoire d’un modèle politique. Paris:  Aubier (or. Italian ed. 2000). Charle, C. (1994) La république des universitaires. Paris: Seuil.

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Constant, B. (1997 [1819]) De la liberté des Anciens comparée à celle des Modernes, in Idem, Écrits politiques, ed. M. Gauchet. Folio edn. Paris: Gallimard. Duruy, V. (1851) Histoire grecque. Paris: Hachette. Fromentin, V., Gotteland, S. and Payen, P. (eds) (2010) Ombres de Thucydide. La réception de l’historien depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’au début du XXe siècle. Bordeaux: Ausonius. Glotz, G. (1931) Histoire grecque. T. II: La Grèce au Ve siècle. Paris: P.U.F. Grell, Ch. (1993) L’histoire entre érudition et philosophie. Essai sur la connaissance historique à l’âge des Lumières. Paris: P.U.F. Grell, Ch. (1995) Le Dix-​huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France, 1680–​1789. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation (vol. n° 330–​331). Grote, G. (1862 [1846–​1856]) History of Greece: from the earliest period to the close of the generation contemporary with Alexander the Great. 12 vols. London: Murray. Hartog, F. (2000) “La Révolution française et l’Antiquité. Avenir d’une illusion ou cheminement d’un quiproquo?”, in Avlami, Chr. (ed.) L’Antiquité grecque au XIXe siècle. Un exemplum contesté? Paris: L’Harmattan, 9–​46. Lecoq, A.M. (ed.) (2001) La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Folio edn. Paris: Gallimard. Lévesque, P.-​Ch. (1795) Histoire de Thucydide, fils d’Olorus, traduit du Grec. Paris:  J. B. Gail and P. F. Aubin. Loraux, N., and Vidal-​Naquet, P. (1990 [1979]), “La formation de l’Athènes bourgeoise. Essai d’historiographie, 1750–​1850”, in Vidal-​Naquet, P. (1990) La démocratie grecque vue d’ailleurs. Paris: Flammarion, 161–​209, 362–​383. Mat-​Hasquin, M. (1981) Voltaire et l’Antiquité grecque. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Momigliano, A. (1955 [1952]) “George Grote and the Study of Greek History”, in Idem, Contributo alla storia degli studi classici. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e di Letteratura, 249–​262. Momigliano, A. (1992) The classical foundations of modern historiography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morineau, D. (1988) La réception des historiens anciens dans l’historiographie française ( fin XVIIe –​début XVIIIe). Thèse de Doctorat. Paris-​I V Sorbonne. Mossé, C. (1971) Histoire d’une démocratie, Athènes. Paris: Seuil. Mossé, C. (1989) L’Antiquité dans la Révolution française. Paris: Albin Michel. Mossé, C. (2007) “Une image négative de Sparte à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. La quatrième partie des Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs de Cornelius de Pauw”, in Foucault, D. and Payen, P. (eds) Les Autorités. Dynamiques et mutations d’une figure de référence à l’Antiquité. Grenoble: Jérôme Million, 51–​57. Mossé, C. (2013) Regards sur la démocratie athénienne. Paris: Perrin. Payen, P. (2007), “L’autorité des historiens grecs dans l’Histoire ancienne de Rollin”, in Foucault, D. and Payen, P. (eds) Les Autorités. Dynamiques et mutations d’une figure de référence à l’Antiquité. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 171–​194.

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202 Payen Payen, P. (2010) “Thucydide et Rollin:  émergence du paradigme athénien au XVIIIe siècle”, in Fromentin, Gotteland, and Payen (eds) (2010), 613–​633. Payen, P. (2011) “Clisthène et Lycurgus d’Athènes: le politique entre révolution et tradition. Détours historiographiques”, in Azoulay, V. and Ismard, P. (eds) Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes. Autour du politique dans la cité classique. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 17–​41. Pontier, P. (2010) “Grote et la réception de Thucydide en France sous la IIe République et le Second Empire”, in Fromentin, Gotteland, and Payen (eds) (2010), 635–​648. Quantin, J.-​L. (1989) “Le mythe du législateur au XVIIIe siècle”, in Grell, Ch. and Michel, Chr. (eds) (1989) Primitivisme et mythe des origines dans la France des Lumières, 1680–​1820. Paris: Presse de l’Université de Paris-​Sorbonne, 153–​164. Roberts, J.  Tolbert (1994) Athens on Trial. The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rollin, C. (1819 [1726–​1728]) Observations sur la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles Lettres par rapport à l’esprit et au cœur, ou Traité des études. 4 vols. Paris: Audot. Rollin, C. (1846 [1731–​1738]): Histoire ancienne des Égyptiens, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Mèdes et des Perses, des Macédoniens, des Grecs, in Rollin, C. (1846) Œuvres complètes, ed. M. Letronne. 10 vols. Paris: Firmin Didot. Rousseau, J. J. (1964) Œuvres completes. Pléiade edn. T. iii. Paris: Gallimard. Rousseau, J.-​J. (1964 [1750]) Discours sur les sciences et les arts, in Rousseau (1964). Rousseau, J.-​J. (1964 [1754]) Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, in Rousseau (1964). Rousseau, J.-​J. (1964 [1755]) Discours sur l’économie politique, in Rousseau (1964). Rousseau, J.-​J. (1964 [1762]) Contrat social, in Rousseau (1964). Vernant, J.-​P. (1962) Les origines de la pensée grecque. Paris: P.U.F. Vidal-​Naquet, P. (1990) La démocratie grecque vue d’ailleurs. Paris: Flammarion. Vidal-​Naquet, P. (2000) Les Grecs, les historiens, la démocratie. Paris: La Découverte. Waquet, F. (1997) Le latin ou l’empire d’un signe (XVIe-​XX sièclese). Paris: Albin Michel.

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­c hapter 6

Athens and the Founders of the American Republic Carl J. Richard The founders of the United States learned three major lessons from studying the history of ancient Greece, and of Athens in particular. In the works of Herodotus and Plutarch the founders encountered the story of the Persian Wars, the near miraculous victory of the tiny Greek republics over the seemingly invincible Persian Empire. From this tale the founders learned that it was possible for a collection of small republics to defeat a centralized, monarchical empire in a war for survival. This was a crucial lesson because the founders faced such a task in the Revolutionary War. Just as few contemporary observers had expected the Greek republics to defeat the Persian Empire, the greatest power on earth in the early fifth century bce, few observers of the founders’ day expected the weak and undisciplined collection of American republics to defeat Great Britain, the greatest power of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, in the biographies of Plutarch the founders encountered the story of the growth of democracy in Athens, and in the writings of both Thucydides and Plutarch the tale of Sparta’s victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Since neither Plutarch nor Thucydides was sympathetic to the democratic system of government in Athens, it is not surprising that the founders connected the two developments, blaming Athenian democracy for the disastrous defeat. In addition, in Plato’s dialogues they encountered the story of Socrates’ execution by the Athenian masses on false grounds. The negative view of democracy the founders derived from ancient historians and philosophers played no small part in their decision to establish a “republic”, a system of mixed government in which the masses would have a share of government power but would be counterbalanced by a powerful executive and by a strong senate, rather than a simple democracy. Finally, in the works of Plutarch, Polybius, and Demosthenes the founders encountered the story of the conquest of the Greek republics by Macedon and Rome. From this tale most of them learned the importance of a strong central government to bind the American states together in a powerful union. Without such a union, these founders believed, there was a danger that the United States would suffer the same fate as the Greeks, who lost their liberty because of constant internal strife that left them vulnerable to foreign invaders.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_008

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204 Richard 1

The Founders’ Classical Education

The founders met the ancients at an early and impressionable age, in grammar school and at college. The “grammar” in “grammar school” referred to Greek and Latin grammar, not English, since the mother tongue was not taught in American grammar schools until after the Revolutionary War. Most eighteenth-​century Americans believed that precious school time should be reserved for serious academic subjects like the classical languages, not wasted on knowledge the child could learn at home.1 The founders’ training in the classical languages frequently began at age eight or so, whether under the direction of public grammar schoolmasters or private tutors. In the 1760s Donald Robertson’s boarding school near Dunkirk, Virginia, provided James Madison, the future economist John Taylor, John Tyler (father of the future president), and George Rogers Clark with a rigorous classical training. Having read selections from Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and numerous other classical authors at the boarding school, Madison then returned home in 1767 for two years of study under the Reverend Thomas Martin. Madison’s early training was so thorough that although he arrived at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) only two weeks before final examinations, he passed them all. Madison later testified regarding Robertson: “All that I have been in life I owe to that man”. As Noah Webster put it, “The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rome or to Great Britain; boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament”. Only the poorest areas lacked grammar schools.2 The college curricula were as standardized and classically based as the grammar school curricula and the college entrance examinations. Colleges typically required at least three more years of Greek and Latin. Schoolmates of Thomas Jefferson recalled that he carried his Greek grammar with him wherever he went. College students frequently joined secret societies that assigned them pseudonyms taken from ancient history. Commencement exercises often featured exhibitions in which students competed for prizes by reading Greek and Latin. A few possessed the wealth to obtain a classical education in Europe.3 1 Middlekauff (1963), 164. 2 Brant (1941–​61), 1.64–​5; Rutland (1962-​), 1.5; Peterson (1974), 16, 18; Davis (1964). 36; Rudolph (1965), 65; Cohen (1974), 83. 3 Hofstadter and Smith (1961), 1.120, 141–​2; Wilson (1991), 54; Eadie (1976), 87–​91; Godbold and Woody (1982), 7; Seed (1978), 3–​4; Zahniser (1967), 12–​15.

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While they were students, and frequently afterward, the founders kept commonplace books, notebooks in which they copied the literary passages that most interested them. Although Alexander Hamilton’s education at King’s College (now Columbia University) was cut short by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, which drew him into the Continental Army in January of 1776, he converted his military pay book into a commonplace book. There he copied large extracts from Plutarch’s Lives. Indeed, Hamilton’s sons later testified that Plutarch and Alexander Pope were his favorite authors. Madison quoted Plato and Aristotle in his own commonplace book and, in his “Brief System of Logick”, appropriated Aristotle’s ten categories of ideas and drafted a conversation between the “Theist” and the “Atheist” that was modeled on the Socratic dialogues.4 Hamilton was far from alone in his appreciation for Plutarch. Charles Lee, the Revolutionary War general, declared, “I have ever from the first time I read Plutarch been an Enthusiast for liberty […] and for liberty in a republican garb”. He noted regarding the tremendous influence of the ancient historians on the youth of his age, “It is natural to a young person whose chief companions are Greek and Roman Historians and Orators to be dazzled with the splendid picture”. As a young man, Benjamin Franklin relished an English translation of the Lives, later recording in his autobiography, “I still think that time spent to great advantage”.5 James Wilson, one of the principal shapers of the U.S. Constitution, expressed a similar reverence for Thucydides and Aristotle. Wilson wrote regarding the American states, “When some future Xenophon or Thucydides shall arise to do justice to their virtues and their actions, the glory of America will rival –​it will outshine the glory of Greece”. In a famous series of law lectures delivered at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), attended by President George Washington, Vice-​President John Adams, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and other cabinet members, Wilson also noted, “Among philosophers, Aristotle deservedly holds the chief place, whether you consider his method of treating subjects, or the acuteness of his distinctions, or the weight of his reasons”.6 The founders idolized Demosthenes both as one of the greatest orators in history and as one of the chief models for statesmen. Living in an age in which success as an orator was still crucial to political success, an age in which the written and spoken word still possessed a symbiotic relationship, they studied 4 Syrett (1961–​79), 1.390–​407; Flexner (1978), 47; Rutland (1962-​), 1.17–​18, 35, 37, 39–​41. 5 Reinhold (1984), 41, 258; Lemisch (1961), 26. 6 McCloskey (1967), 1.69–​71, 107.

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206 Richard the Athenian’s speeches closely and frequently made mention of him. In the autumn of 1758 John Adams exulted in the fact that law, his chosen profession, was “A Field in which Demosthenes, Cicero, and others of immortal Fame have exulted before me!” In 1774 he contrasted the First Continental Congress’ economic response to Parliament’s Coercive (or Intolerable) Acts with the bolder policy of Demosthenes. Adams noted, “When Demosthenes (God forgive the Vanity of recollecting his Example) went [as] Ambassador from Athens to the other States of Greece to excite a Confederacy against Philip, he did not go to propose a Non Importation or Non Consumption Agreement!” When Adams, who was one of the greatest orators of his day, rose before the Continental Congress on July 1, 1776, to rebut John Dickinson’s contention that American independence would be premature, the New Englander thought of Demosthenes. He recorded in his diary: “I began by saying that this was the first time of my Life that I had ever wished for the Talents and Eloquence of the ancient Orators of Greece and Rome, for I was very sure that none of them ever had before him a question of more importance to his Country and to the World”. Southerners called Patrick Henry “the Demosthenes of the American Revolution”. In 1777 Alexander Hamilton copied into his pay book a few lines from Demosthenes’ orations, including this significant one: “As a general marches at the head of troops, so ought wise politicians, if I dare to use the expression, march at the head of affairs; insomuch that they ought not to await the event to know what measures to take, but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the event”. If Hamilton’s tenure as the nation’s first secretary of the treasury is any indication, he certainly lived by this maxim. His nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, considered Demosthenes’ speeches the finest model for “senatorial eloquence”, which required logic. In 1781 John Adams criticized his son, the future president John Quincy Adams, for not reading Demosthenes and Cicero at the University of Leiden. The elder Adams launched into a tirade: “I want to have you upon Demosthenes. The plainer Authors you may learn yourself at any time. I absolutely insist upon it, that you begin upon Demosthenes and Cicero. I will not be put by. You may learn Greek from Demosthenes and Homer as well as from Isocrates and Lucian –​and Latin from Virgil and Cicero as well as from Phaedrus and Nepos. What should be the cause of the Aversion to Demosthenes in the World I know not, unless it is because his sentiments are wise and grand, and he teaches no frivolities. If there is no other Way, I will take you home and teach you Demosthenes and Homer myself”.7

7 Butterfield (1966), 65; Taylor (1977-​), 2.117; Butterfield (1961), 3.396–​7; Meade (1957–​69), 1.6–​7, 326; Syrett (1961–​79), 1.390–​407; Bergh and Lipscomb (1904), 15.353; Butterfield (1963), 4.144.

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Fixtures in the classical canon that had dominated the Western world since the Middle Ages, the historians, orators, and philosophers of Greece and Rome were virtually the sole source of knowledge concerning ancient history available in the eighteenth century. Since modern archeology was still in its infancy, there was no source of information regarding the ancient world other than these classics, a few modern histories that uniformly idolized and parroted them, and the scattered remains of Greek and Roman buildings and works of art. Furthermore, the classical authors’ eloquence, their narrative skill, and the nearly universal reverence their writings commanded all worked to inhibit the founders’ critical instincts. They accepted the accuracy of these select sources as an article of faith and remained largely oblivious to the authors’ aristocratic and other biases. 2

The Persian Wars and the Superiority of Republican Government

The founders accepted without reservation Herodotus’ conclusion as to the source of the Greek victory over the Persians:  “Free men fight better than slaves”. This insight inspired the founders to believe that they could defeat the British army and secure American independence at a time when few objective observers accepted the possibility of such an outcome. After the Coercive Acts were passed in 1774, John Adams expressed a common view: “The Grecian Commonwealths were the most heroic Confederacy that ever existed […] The Period of their glory was from the Defeat of Xerxes to the Rise of Alexander. Let Us not be enslaved, my dear Friend, Either by Xerxes or Alexander”.8 The founders idolized the heroes of the Persian Wars, especially the Athenian Themistocles, for their military prowess. When Jefferson wished to compliment John Adams, a staunch supporter of a strong American navy, he compared Adams with Themistocles, whose success in building the Athenian fleet had secured victory for the Greeks at Salamis. Jefferson also compared France’s universal acclaim with that of the Athenian. After noting that every Greek general had voted himself the best general in the war and Themistocles the second best, Jefferson wrote:  “So ask the traveled inhabitant of any nation, In what country on earth would you rather live? Certainly in my own, where all my friends, my relations, and the earliest & sweetest affections and recollections of my life [dwell]. Which would be your second choice? France”. But it is instructive that 8 Taylor (1977-​), 2.99.

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208 Richard the founders’ praise for Themistocles focused on his military skill, not on his status as the leader of the popular party in Athens.9 3

Athens and the Perils of Democracy

The founders learned the story of the growth of Athenian democracy from Plutarch’s Lives of Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, encountered the tale of the Peloponnesian War in Thucydides’ history and in Plutarch’s Lives of Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lysander, and learned the story of Socrates’ execution from Plato’s dialogues, especially the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo. As a result of studying these sources, the founders began to view Athens as the epitome of the democratic state, a chronically unstable, often hellish, society controlled by violent and erratic mobs that frequently executed their nation’s best citizens on the flimsiest of grounds. While acknowledging the polis’ stunning intellectual achievements, the founders either refused to attribute them to its democracy or considered them an inadequate reward for the cost. The leading forgers of the antidemocratic tradition that was to dominate Western political theory for two millennia not only suffered from a class bias but also had personal axes to grind. Thucydides had been exiled by the Athenian people for a military failure during the Peloponnesian War. Although the historian praised Pericles, he did so largely in order to contrast the Athenian statesman with the “demagogic” Cleon, the man most responsible for Thucydides’ exile. Thucydides (Thuc. 2.65.5-​13) emphasized that Pericles “restrained the people […] He was not led by them, but they by him”. Similarly, Plato was devastated by the public execution of his mentor, Socrates. Hence it is not surprising that Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War featured hair-​raising descriptions of the chaos and violence of Athenian democracy, that Plato advocated a simple aristocracy of guardians led by a philosopher-​king in the Republic, or that Plato’s most famous pupil, Aristotle, equated democracy with mob rule. The founders not only cited and praised Thucydides, Plutarch, Plato, and Aristotle, but also idolized the individual Athenians these historians and philosophers touted, most of whom had been critics of democracy. “Aristides” was a popular pseudonym throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Benjamin Rush considered the aristocratic leader a model of integrity. David Ramsay wrote of George Washington, “Enemies he had, but they were 9 Lehmann (1964), 93; Bedini (1990), 194.

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few, and chiefly of the same family with the man who could not bear to hear Aristides always called the just”. Alexander Hamilton selected “Phocion” for a 1784 open letter to the citizens of New York opposing a state law that would confiscate more loyalist property. According to Plutarch (Phoc. 36.3), Phocion was a fourth-​century bce Athenian statesman and critic of the masses who was so magnanimous that he befriended his own personal enemies, even to the extent of telling his son not to resent the Athenian people for sentencing him to death. Since Phocion always sought decent treatment of prisoners of war, Hamilton was suggesting that his fellow New Yorkers emulate Phocion’s wise magnanimity. South Carolina Federalist Christopher Gore praised the aristocratic Areopagus for its principles of justice: “From such motives did the wise Athenians so constitute the famed Areopagus, that, when in judgment, the court should sit at midnight, and in total darkness, that the decision might be made on the thing, and not the person”. In 1771, after noting that a group of Australian aborigines had been deemed stupid for declining gifts, Benjamin Franklin wrote: “But if we were disposed to compliment them, we might say, Behold a Nation of Philosophers, such as him we celebrate [Socrates] for saying as he went thro’ a Fair, ‘How many things there are in the World that I don’t want!’ ”10 Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were so enamored of Socrates, the great philosopher and critic of Athenian democracy, that they occasionally distorted the historical record concerning him. In his autobiography Franklin audaciously paired Socrates with Jesus as the two greatest models of humility. Whatever Socrates’ virtues, humility had never been one of them. In spite of the philosopher’s claim that he knew nothing, the gleeful arrogance with which he had enticed his opponents into admissions of inconsistency persuaded few Athenians to consider him a humble truth-​seeker. Similarly, Jefferson so revered Socrates that he refused to acknowledge that the Athenian philosopher had ever believed that the gods had spoken directly to him, a belief at odds with Jefferson’s own convictions regarding divine behavior. Jefferson speculated that the daimon (divine entity) that Socrates claimed spoke to him was reason. Jefferson wrote regarding the Athenian, “He was too wise to believe, and too honest to pretend, that he had real and familiar converse with a superior and invisible being. He probably considered the suggestions of his conscience, or reason, as revelations, or inspirations from the Supreme Mind, bestowed, on important occasions, by a special superintending providence”.

10

Ford (1971), 167; Butterfield (1951), 1.173; Schroeder (1855), 315; Syrett (1961–​79), 3.488; Elliot (1968), 2.113; Labaree (1959-​), 18.210.

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210 Richard Such a view ignored Socrates’ faith in the oracle of Delphi, as depicted not only in Plato’s Apology (20d-​21b) but also in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (3.1.5-​7). Jefferson’s attempt to make Socrates’ views accord with his own is a testimony to his reverence for the philosopher.11 The founders not only followed the classical authors in praising the Athenian opponents of democracy, but also joined them in criticizing its supporters. In 1766 George Mason compared British Prime Minister George Grenville, the leading advocate of the Stamp Act, with Pericles, recalling Plutarch’s accusation that Pericles had drawn Athens into the fatal Peloponnesian War in order to deflect attention from his own misuse of funds. Mason wrote regarding the repeal of the Stamp Act, “No thanks to Mr. Grenville and his party, who, without his genius or abilities, has dared to act the part that Pericles did when he engaged his country in the Peloponnesian War, which, after a long and dreadful scene of blood, ended in the ruin of all Greece, and fitted it for the Macedonian yoke”. Alexander Hamilton used the same story to argue, in Federalist No. 6, that a strong central government was necessary to prevent warfare between the states. Surely, Hamilton contended, the American states could not remain forever free of such leaders as Pericles, who had started the Peloponnesian War, a war that “terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth”, to cover up his own misdeeds. It is significant that Mason and Hamilton chose to follow Plutarch’s account in this regard rather than Thucydides’, which made no such accusation against Pericles.12 The founders were even more fervent in their denunciation of Pericles’ successors, Cleon and Alcibiades, whose vices Thucydides had so vividly recounted. In his highly influential Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768) John Dickinson warned that American passions against Britain should not overwhelm reason to the point at which “the sway of the Cleons […] the designing and detestable flatterers of the prevailing passion, becomes confirmed”. In 1767 Benjamin Franklin compared British Tories who supported violent action against America with Athenian demagogues like Alcibiades, who had urged the ill-​fated invasion of Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. Franklin argued ominously: “Athens had her orators. They did her sometimes a great deal of good, at other times a great deal of harm, the latter particularly when they prevailed in advising the Sicilian war, under the burthen and losses of which war that flourishing state sank, and never again recovered itself. To the haranguers

11 12

Lemisch (1961), 95; Bergh and Lipscomb (1904), 10.380. Rowland (1964), 1.386; Hamilton (1941), 27–​8.

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of the ancients succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and newspapers and your coffee-​house talkers”.13 Thus, it is not surprising that the founders favored mixed government over democracy when drafting federal and state constitutions. In the fourth century bce Plato (Leg. 756e-​757a, 832c; Pol. 291d-​303c) identified three simple forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy –​rule by the one, the few, and the many. Because each of these forms granted absolute power to a single person or group, each degenerated over time: monarchy into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into ochlocracy (mob rule). Plato suggested that the best form of government would be a mixed government, one that balanced the power of the three orders of society. (This theory represented a marked departure from the one elaborated in the Republic more than a decade earlier.) Aristotle then immortalized mixed government theory, making it the centerpiece of his Politics (3.7), in which he cited numerous examples of mixed government in the ancient world. Two centuries later the historian Polybius (6.5–​18) cited the alleged mixed government of the Roman republic as the secret of its success in conquering the Mediterranean basin. Cicero concurred (Republic 2.23–​30). Thinkers as disparate as Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Niccolò Machiavelli, James Harrington, and Algernon Sidney endorsed mixed government in the centuries thereafter.14 The framers of the new state constitutions that emerged from the American Revolution never doubted that their governments should be mixed. Rather, their dilemma was how to mix them in a society that no longer possessed a monarch and that had never possessed a titled aristocracy. The framers decided that these essential roles should be played by an elected governor and a senate consisting of an aristocracy of wealth. Ten of the thirteen states created a senate, nearly all of them establishing property qualifications for senate candidates that exceeded those for members of the lower house.15 John Adams was the most visible and persistent proponent of mixed government in America. As early as 1763 he claimed, in “An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power”: “No simple Form of Government can possibly secure Men against the Violences of Power. Simple Monarchy will soon mould itself into Despotism, Aristocracy will soon commence on Oligarchy, and Democracy will soon degenerate into Anarchy, such an Anarchy that every Man will do what is right in his own Eyes, and no Man’s life or Property or Reputation or Liberty will be 13 14 15

Ford (1970), 327; Le May (1987), 590. Conkin (1974), 146–​7; Calvin (1970), 2.656–​7; Machiavelli (1950), 1.212–​5; 2.7–​12, 271–​315; Pocock (1977), 459, 607; Sidney (1969), 130, 139–​40, 434. Wood (1969), 203, 208, 213–​4, 232–​3.

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212 Richard safe”. In 1776 Adams published his Thoughts on Government, a series of essays urging the Virginia and North Carolina legislatures to establish mixed governments in their new constitutions. The pamphlet exerted a tremendous influence on the framers of the state constitutions. In 1780 Adams played a leading role in drafting the Massachusetts Constitution, then widely considered the best of all the state constitutions. Under the Massachusetts Constitution representation in the Senate was based on the amount of taxes paid by each district. A  higher property qualification was required for the senators’ electors than for the representatives’ electors. The governor possessed the veto power and broad powers of appointment. In 1787 Adams wrote the Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, which remains the fullest exposition of mixed government theory by an American.16 Adams turned directly to the ancients for mixed government theory. In the Defence he summarized the genesis of the theory in Plato’s work and its development by Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. While respecting modern advocates of mixed government, Adams considered them overrated, emphasizing that “the best part” of their writings came directly from the ancients. Indeed, Machiavelli’s shady reputation and Harrington’s support for “agrarian acts” (land redistribution laws) could not have endeared these authors to the conservative New Englander.17 What Adams feared most in the American states were democratic, single-​ assembly governments like that which had controlled Athens and its allies. The consequence of the states’ failure to maintain a balance between the few and the many would be a repetition of Greek history –​that is, “two factions which will struggle in words, in writing, and at last in arms”. Having cited Thucydides on the barbaric acts of “the aspiring few” and “the licentious many” in many of the Greek city-​states during the Peloponnesian War, Adams ascribed this class conflict to their single-​assembly governments. He then pleaded: “In the name of human and divine benevolence, is such a system as this to be recommended to Americans in this age of the world? […] Without three orders, and an effectual balance between them, in every American constitution, it must be destined to frequent, unavoidable revolutions”. Adams further contended: “The history of Greece should be to our countrymen what is called in many families on the [European] continent a boudoir, an octagonal apartment in a house, with a full-​length mirror on every side and another in the ceiling”. He added that a nation the size of the

16 17

Taylor (1977-​), 1.83; Wood (1969), 434. Adams (1971), 1.xxi, 169–​82, 209, 325.

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United States had even more to fear from simple governments than the tiny Greek republics had.18 The simple government to which Americans were most apt to fall prey was, of course, democracy. Adams claimed that democracy never had a patron among men of letters because the people applauded “artifices and tricks […] hypocrisy and superstition […] flattery, bribes, [and] largesses”. “It is no wonder then”, he added, “that democracies and democratical mixtures are annihilated all over Europe, except on a barren rock, a paltry fen, an inaccessible mountain, or an impenetrable forest”. Later on in the same volume Adams expanded on his view of democracy: “An usurping populace is its own dupe, a mere under-​worker and purchaser in trust of some single tyrant, whose state and power they advance to their ruin, with as blind an instinct as those worms that die while weaving magnificent habits for beings of a superior order. The people are more dexterous at pulling down and setting up than at preserving what is fixed; and they are not fonder of seizing more than their own than they are of delivering it up again to the worst bidder, with their own into the bargain. Their earthly devotion is seldom paid to above one at a time, of their own creation, whose oar they pull with less murmuring and more skill than when they share the leading or even hold the helm”. Democracy, Adams concluded in Polybian fashion, was a mere way station on the road to tyranny.19 According to Adams, the Athenians had condemned their own society to destruction by consolidating all power in the hands of the masses and failing to balance that power with a strong executive and a powerful senate. Adams wrote that simple democracies like Athens were “but a transient glare of glory, which passes away like a flash of lightning, or like a momentary appearance of a goddess to an ancient hero, which by revealing but a glimpse of celestial beauties, only excited regret that he had never seen them”. He added, “The republic of Athens, the school mistress of the whole civilized world for more than a thousand years in arts, eloquence, and philosophy, as well as in politeness and wit, was, for a short period of her duration, the most democratical commonwealth in Greece”. But through the establishment of a mixed government and through such modern innovations as representation and the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers, the United States could escape “the tumultuous commotions, like the raging waves of the sea, which always agitated the ecclesia at Athens”. Adams concluded regarding the American experiment, “This will be a fair trial whether a government so popular can

18 19

Adams (1971), 1.iv-​vii, 139–​41, 183, 210. Adams (1971), 1.xii, 104.

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214 Richard preserve itself. If it can, there is reason to hope for all the equality, all the liberty, and every other good fruit of Athenian democracy without any of its ingratitude, convulsions, or factions”. Thus, while Adams rejected Thomas Hobbes’ arguments for absolute monarchy, he shared Hobbes’ estimate of democracy, an estimate both men based largely on Thucydides’ depiction of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.20 Even Thomas Jefferson, the future champion of representative democracy, fervently embraced mixed government during the Revolution. In 1776 Jefferson argued that “the wisest men” should be elected to the Virginia Senate and should be, “when chosen, perfectly independent of their electors”. Experience taught Jefferson “that a choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom”. He proposed a nine-​year, nonrenewable term for Virginia senators, so that they would not always “be casting their eyes forward to the period of election (however distant) and be currying favor with the electors, and consequently dependent on them”. Jefferson could even accept Edmund Pendleton’s suggestion “to an appointment for life, or to any thing rather than a mere creation by and dependence on the people”. Thus, Jefferson proposed the indirect election of state senators and the elimination of all previous restrictions on the Senate’s power to originate or amend any bill. He added that the governor should appoint the state’s judges, in order to make the jurists “wholly independent of the Assembly –​of the Council –​nay, more, of the people”.21 Similarly, at the Constitutional Convention, James Madison (who is often called “the Father of the Constitution”) argued for a nine-​year term for U.S. senators, declaring: “Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other [the many]. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body, and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. Various have been the propositions, but my opinion is, the longer they continue in office, the better will these views be answered”. It was useless to deny the existence of an American aristocracy, though there were no “hereditary distinctions” and though inequalities of wealth were minor by comparison with Europe. Madison added, “There will be debtors and creditors and an unequal possession of property, and hence arises different views and different objects of government. This, indeed, is the ground work of aristocracy, and we find it blended in every 20 21

Adams (1971), 1.281, 285. See Luca Iori, “Hobbes, Thucydides, and Athenian Democracy”, in this volume. Wood (1969), 213, 436.

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government, both ancient and modern”. In Madison’s notes for Federalist No. 63, in which he again championed an aristocratic Senate, Madison cited Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, all supporters of mixed government and opponents of democracy. Madison warned Jefferson, “Wherever the real power in Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of constituents”. For that reason, Madison endorsed a federal veto on state laws, claiming that, without it, states would continue to be controlled by “interested majorities” who would trample “on the rights of minorities and individuals”. John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Dickinson, and numerous other founders endorsed the Constitution as having established a mixed government that balanced the power of the one (the president), the few (represented by the Senate), and the many (represented by the House of Representatives). Both the president and the Senate were indirectly elected, the president by the Electoral College and the Senate by the state legislatures. When we consider that even among the more radical French revolutionaries Roman heroes and symbols continued to hold sway, it is not surprising that the American founders, with their strong preference for mixed government, should regard the allegedly mixed system of the Roman republic, rather than the simple democracy of Athens, as their principal ancient model, and should adopt Roman architecture and political terms, such as president and Senate.22 By the 1790s the Democratic-​Republican Party, led by Jefferson and Madison, began to endorse reforms that would create a more democratic government. These reforms included an end to property qualifications for voting and the linkage of the Electoral College to the popular vote. But even then the Democratic-​Republicans tended to use the term “republic” rather than “democracy” concerning their favored system and tended to emphasize the crucial role of representation. No one endorsed the direct democracy of Athens, so brilliantly vilified by the classical authors. Nevertheless, even the limited reforms of the Democratic-​Republicans were enough to send John Adams into despair. In 1806 Adams complained, “I once thought our Constitution was quasi or mixed government, but they have now made it, to all intents and purposes, in virtue, in spirit, and effect, a democracy. We are left without resources 22

Farrand (1966), 1.422–​3, 431; Hamilton (1941), 410–​1, 415; Rutland (1962-​), 10.274; Wood (1969), 410, 473, 557–​9; Adams (1971), 505–​6; Ford (1970), 34, 43, 57–​8, 65, 189–​90. See Pascal Payen, “The Reception of Athenian Democracy in French Culture from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire”, in this volume.

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216 Richard but in our prayers and tears, and having nothing that we can do or say, but the Lord have mercy upon us”. The specter of a new Athens hung ominously over Adams’ head.23 Not until the next generation, the “Age of the Common Man”, when democracy ceased to be a dirty word, was Athens thoroughly rehabilitated. Only then did Athens replace the Roman republic as the preferred ancient model for the United States. Colleges began to promote the study of the Greek language, which had always occupied a secondary position to Latin, with greater fervency and began to assign the works of the Athenian dramatists.24 4

The Fall of Greece and the Need for a Strong Central Government

The final lesson that some of the founders learned from ancient Greece concerned the need for some centralization of power. The founders encountered the story of the fall of Greece to Macedon and Rome in Plutarch’s Lives of Agesilaus, Demosthenes, Philip ii, and Alexander, in Demosthenes’ Philippics, and in Polybius’ Histories. From this tale the Federalists among them learned that the Greeks had lost their liberty to Macedon and Rome because of their failure to unite under a strong central government. At the Constitutional Convention, at state ratifying conventions, and in published essays, the Federalists repeatedly cited ancient Greece as a civilization destroyed by decentralization. James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison all made this case at the Constitutional Convention. Hamilton noted regarding the Greeks, “Philip [ii of Macedon] at length taking advantage of their disunion, and insinuating himself into their Councils, made himself master of their fortunes”. Americans could expect to be subjected to foreign domination as well, Hamilton insisted, if they remained a weak, disunited collection of republics similar to the Greek city-​states. The next day James Madison reiterated the point: just as Greek disunity had allowed Philip ii to “practice intrigues” resulting in their enslavement, so American disunity would produce the same result. Citing Plutarch, Madison also contended that the constant warfare between the Greeks might be repeated among the American states unless they were bound together by a strong central government. At the New York ratifying convention Hamilton noted regarding the incessant wars between the Greek poleis, “Those that were attacked called in foreign aid

23 24

Adair and Schutz (1966), 66–​7. Richard (2009), 11–​15, 46–​53.

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to protect them, and the ambitious Philip, under the mask of an ally to one, invaded the liberties of each, and finally subverted the whole”.25 Hamilton and Madison made the same argument in the Federalist essays. In Federalist No. 6 Hamilton again cited the failure of the Greeks to rally around a strong central government as the chief reason for the fall of Greece to Philip, who became its master “through intrigues and bribes”. In No. 18 Madison wrote, “Had Greece, says a judicious observer on her fate, been united by a stricter confederation and persevered in her union, she would never have worn the chains of Macedon, and might have proved a barrier to the vast projects of Rome”.26 Madison had spent the three years prior to the Constitutional Convention studying ancient confederacies, especially the Achaean League, for the very purpose of learning lessons concerning federalism in anticipation of drafting a federal constitution for the United States. The founders had no choice but to turn to the ancient confederacies (and to the modern Dutch and Swiss confederacies) for such lessons since Britain lacked any tradition of federalism.27 Thus, the lesson that the founders had learned from the Persian Wars during the Revolutionary War was partially reversed by a lesson learned from the fall of Greece thereafter. While the Persian Wars had proven that a small cluster of republics, animated by patriotism and a love of liberty, could triumph over a large, centralized monarchy, a lesson vital to the United States during the Revolutionary War, the fall of these same republics to the centralized powers of Macedon and Rome also proved instructive to the founders in their quest to build a stronger union following the war. The founders learned that a certain degree of centralized power was necessary even for a confederacy of republics.

Bibliography

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218 Richard Brant, I. (1941–​61) James Madison. New York: Bobbs-​Merrill. Butterfield, L.H. (1951) The Letters of Benjamin Rush. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Butterfield, L.H. (1961) The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Butterfield, L.H. (ed.) (1963) Adams Family Correspondence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Butterfield, L.H. (1966) The Earliest Diary of John Adams. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Calvin, J. (1970) Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. H. Beveridge. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman. Cohen, S.D. (1974) A History of Colonial Education, 1607–​1776. New  York:  John Wiley and Sons. Conkin, P.K. (1974) Self-​Evident Truths. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Davis, R.B. (1964) Intellectual Life in Jefferson’s Virginia, 1790–​1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Eadie, J.W. (ed.) (1976) Classical Traditions in Early America. Ann Arbor: Center for the Coordination of Ancient and Modern Studies. Elliot, J. (ed.) (1968) Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution. New York: Burt Franklin. Farrand, M. (ed.) (1966) The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. 3rd edn. New Haven: Yale University Press. Flexner, J.T. (1978) The Young Hamilton: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown. Ford, P.L. (ed.) (1970) The Political Writings of John Dickinson, 1764–1774. New York: Burt Franklin. Ford, P.L. (ed.) (1971) Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States:  Published during the Discussion by the People. New York: Burt Franklin. Godbold, S.E. and Woody, R.H. (1982) Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Hamilton, A., Jay, J. and Madison, J. (1941) The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States. New York: Random House. Hofstadter, R. and Smith, W. (eds) (1961) American Higher Education: A Documentary History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Labaree, L.W. (ed.) (1959) The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven:  Yale University Press. Lehmann, K. (1964) Thomas Jefferson: American Humanist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Le May, J.A.L. (ed.) (1987) The Writings of Benjamin Franklin. New  York:  Library of America.

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Lemisch, L.J. (ed.) (1961) Benjamin Franklin:  The Autobiography and Other Writings. New York: Penguin. Machiavelli, N. (1950) The Discourses of Niccolò Machiavelli, trans. L.J. Walker. New Haven: Yale University Press. McCloskey, R.G. (ed.) (1967) The Works of James Wilson. Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press. Meade, R.D. (1957–​69) Patrick Henry. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Middlekauff, R. (1963) Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteenth-​Century New England. New Haven: Yale University Press. Peterson, M.D. (1974) James Madison: A Biography in His Own Words. New York: Harper and Row. Pocock, J.G.A. (ed.) (1977) The Political Works of James Harrington. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reinhold, M. (1984) Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Richard, C.J. (1994) The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Richard, C.J. (2009) The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rowland, K.M. (ed.) (1964) The Life and Correspondence of George Mason. New York: Russell and Russell. Rudolph, F. (ed.) (1965) Essays on Education in the Early Republic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rutland, R.A. (ed.) (1962-​) The Papers of James Madison. Charlottesville:  University Press of Virginia. Schroeder, J.F. (ed.) (1855) Maxims of George Washington. New York: D. Appleton. Seed, G. (1978) James Wilson. Milkwood, N.Y.: kto. Sidney, A. (1969) Discourses concerning Government. London:  Gregg International Publishers. Syrett, H.C. (ed.) (1961–​79) The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. New York: Columbia University Press. Taylor, R.J. (ed.) (1977-​) The Papers of John Adams. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Wilson, D.L. (1991) “What Jefferson and Lincoln Read”, The Atlantic 267: 51–​62. Wood, G.S. (1969) The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–​1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Zahniser, M.R. (1967) Charles Cotesworth Pinckney: Founding Father. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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­c hapter 7

The Character of Democracy Grote’s Athens and Its Legacy James Kierstead The importance of Athens to the larger scheme of Grote’s History is difficult to exaggerate.1 In his review of the work (and clearly under its influence), J.S. Mill described the whole sweep of Greek history as “an epic, of which Athens, as a collective personality, may be called the hero”.2 Less sympathetic readers were no less certain of the centrality of Athens to Grote’s vision: for Eduard Meyer, for instance, Grote’s work was “not a history but an apologia for Athens”.3 For all Grote’s pervasive influence on later historians, it was his treatment of Athenian democracy that later scholars were forced to come to terms with, whether they liked it or not. In 1854, for example, even before the final volume of Grote’s History had seen the light of day, the German scholar G.F. Schömann had already published an extensive monograph dedicated to Grote’s views of the Athenian constitution.4 That Grote’s portrayal of Athens should still attract attention and controversy today is something of a paradox. Grote was, to say the least, working at a disadvantage in comparison with modern scholars, without the benefit of a number of important literary texts (Menander),5 inscriptions (mostly pertaining to the Empire),6 and, most importantly, without any knowledge of the 1 This is a revised version of Kierstead 2014. I thank Dino Piovan for allowing me to re-​present it here and for encouraging me to add some additional material on Karl Popper (for which see the final section). I also thank an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions. 2 Quoted in Clarke (1962), 121. 3 Clarke (1962), 126. 4 Schömann (1854). Cf. Momigliano (1952). 5 For the rediscovery of the text of Menander’s Dyskolos, see e.g. Handley (1965), 40–​55 (the editio princeps is Martin (1958)). For use of the play to shed light on Athenian history, see e.g. Lape (2004). 6 The large number of inscriptions not available to Grote includes the Athenian tribute lists published as Meritt et al. (1939–​53). The discovery and publication of epigraphic documents of this type was of course partly a product of the intensification of archaeological activity in the last century (e.g. the American excavations in the Agora from 1931 on; for a history of that project, see Camp (1970), 12–​13). Liddel (2014) argues that while Grote showed an up-​to-​date knowledge of some inscriptions that were published during his time, he can also be accused of downplaying others in line with his sunny view of the Athenian Empire.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_009

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Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, pulled from the sands of Oxyrhynchus only in 1879 and first published by Kenyon twelve years later.7 Of course, although beginners in Greek history were apparently until fairly recently sometimes urged to “purchase ‘a Grote’ and to start reading it”,8 and even though contemporary scholars (especially in England) occasionally insist that Grote’s analysis of some aspect of Athenian society is “still well worth reading”,9 on the whole it is impossible to deny that we read Grote today (if at all) as an exercise in intellectual history, in classical reception, and not as a reliable guide to historical realities. Peculiarly enough, that we view Grote in this way would not have surprised his nineteenth-​century critics. It quickly became a commonplace of critical readings of Grote that his Greeks are “no more than disguised Englishman from the middle of the nineteenth century”, to use the words of Julius Beloch.10 This allegation has remained a staple of Grote criticism ever since, from E.H. Carr’s 1961 remark in passing that Grote’s History tells us more about English Philosophical Radicals in the 1840s than it does about the ancient Greeks, to Tritle’s recent (1999) re-​statement of the claim in nearly identical terms (Grote’s History “tells us more about the Victorian George Grote and Philosophic Radicalism than Athens in the fourth century bc”).11

7

8 9 10 11

For the rediscovery of the [Arist.] Ath. Pol., see Rhodes (1981), 1–​5 (the editio princeps is Kenyon (1891)). The importance of this text to modern understanding of Athenian democracy can scarcely be summarized here. But note that in one crucial matter, the centrality of the reforms of Cleisthenes, Grote’s judgment (cf. Mitford (1822 [1784–​1810], 1.284) has been validated by the Aristotelian treatise (see 21–​23 of that work, and esp. 22.1-​2); “in other words, at a point in time when the Athenaion Politeion of Aristotle had not yet been discovered, Grote comes to think of Cleisthenes […] and to recognize him as the founder of the Athenian democracy” (Avlami (2011), 157). Cleisthenes’ role in the coming of the democracy is, of course, given some emphasis in Herodotus, 5.66–​80. For more on the importance of Cleisthenes’ reforms to Grote and to contemporary ancient historians, see below, 246–248. For these categories of evidence, cf. Momigliano (1952), 15: [Since Grote’s day] “Menander can speak for himself, the study of Athenian constitutional history has been transformed by the discovery of the Atheniensium res publica, and the history of the Athenian Empire has been made possible by inscriptions”. “I had been told at the age of nineteen by my Harvard teacher, Sterling Dow, to purchase ‘a Grote’ and to start reading it. Good advice that I followed”: Calder in the Preface (ix) to Calder and Trzaskoma (1996). “Grote’s perceptive analysis of the Athenian judicial system is still well worth reading”: Todd (1993), 156 n. 12. Quoted in Chambers (1996), 19. For Carr’s remark, see Tritle (1999), 368; for Tritle’s re-​statement, 376. Though most readers have assimilated Grote’s Athens to Victorian England, one at least saw in it a reflection of revolutionary France. For Prosper Mérimée, writing in the May 1850 edition of the

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222 Kierstead Grote himself, needless to say, would have rejected this allegation in vigorous terms. It was, in fact, one of his main complaints against earlier historians that they failed to enter into the ancient way of seeing things, which led to predictable errors of evaluative judgment. Moderns found it difficult to comprehend the revulsion the Athenian felt at the profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries but their revulsion was in fact (Grote insisted) quite understandable.12 Grote’s royalist predecessor Mitford, when writing about the archaic tyrants, could see only the constitutional monarchs of nineteenth-​century Europe. But as Grote reminded readers of the Westminster Review, the Greeks “felt towards kings only fear and hatred”, a feeling “we cannot construe or criticize […] by reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of England, respecting kingship”. “It is this application”, Grote concludes, “sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this unsuitable standard, which renders Mr. Mitford’s appreciation of Greek politics so often incorrect and unfair”.13 Critics of Grote such as Tritle who consider that his “image of Athens” is “barely disguised as London”14 are paying insufficient attention not only to his scrupulous employment of the critical method in handling sources, but also to those leaps of imaginative sympathy by which an atheist utilitarian was able to enter into the religious sympathies of the Athenians in a way which had eluded even his explicitly Christian predecessors. They are also ignoring the way in which Grote’s democratic inclinations arguably put him in a better position to understand the workings of ancient democratic city-​states than the more orthodox political creeds of many of his contemporaries. That Grote’s view of Athens was partly a result of his own milieu in liberal London is undeniable; that this resulted in a distortion of the real nature of Athenian democracy is more difficult to prove.15

12

13 14 15

Revue de deux Mondes, the “little Athenian republic” was comparable to the “great French republic” (quoted in Avlami (2011), 155; cf. also Roberts (1994), 248–​9). Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), vol. 7, p.  247, where readers are encouraged, for comparative purposes, to imagine what would have happened in a contemporary Catholic country “if instead of the Eleusinian mysteries we suppose the Sacrifice of the Mass to have been the ceremony ridiculed”. See further 7.247–​50, esp. the long notes on pp. 248 and 250, and below, 255–256. Quoted in Demetriou (1999), 86. Tritle (1999); for the quotation, 376. In other words, evaluation of a historical work must depend primarily on an assessment of the accuracy of its historical claims. A historian’s ethical or political views (however loudly proclaimed) or intellectual context (however fascinating or distasteful) are, strictly speaking, irrelevant to this assessment. Rhodes (2003) 8, predicts that “although total objectivity and disengagement are not and never have been possible, scholars who aspire to objectivity and disengagement are likely to do better history”. But this may be

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Grote’s Athens was a genuinely revolutionary one.16 It overturned almost at a stroke the image of an idle and fickle, and yet at the same time aggressively oppressive, ochlocracy that had been built up over centuries by a derisive (and surely defensive) scholarly elite. It rescued the sophists and demagogues from the retrospective contempt in which they had been held for much of subsequent history, and restored them to a more credible place as ordinary (even valuable) intellectuals and politicians. More importantly, it decisively and irrevocably displaced Sparta as the would-​be constitutional engineers’ utopia of choice, placing ancient and modern democrats in a single lineage for the first time, and transforming Athens from a conservative bugbear to an argumentative resource for liberals.17 Grote’s History achieved all this partly because, and not in spite of, its similarly revolutionary distrust of the sources, its careful weighing of evidence, and its exhaustive scope. And yet the observation that Grote’s History now has value for us mainly as a document of the time in which its author wrote is no less true than before. In what follows, I aim to fulfill two tasks. The first is to retell the familiar story of George Grote’s revolutionary rewriting of Athenian history against the background of his intellectual context, the development of his own thinking, and with a view to his considerable influence on the development of a liberal theory of democracy.18 The second is to refine

16 17 18

disputed, esp. if scholars who aspire to objectivity are more likely to suffer the effects of unacknowledged prejudices and suppositions. Grote certainly did not hide his democratic sympathies; whether these sympathies led to error and misrepresentation in his account of classical Athens is for every reader to judge. For doubts, see e.g. Murray’s introduction to Bulwer-​Lytton (2004 [1837]). Obviously Grote’s liberal reading had predecessors, but it was Grote’s work that changed the way historians wrote about Athens (see the essays by Richard, Nippel, and Payen in this volume). The task of displacing Sparta had admittedly already been attempted in France; for more on this point, see below, n. 56. For other forebears of Grote in France (esp. Rollin), see the essay by Payen in this volume. Although Grote’s History is in many ways thoroughly Whiggish, one of the reasons the work was so significant was that it disrupted earlier liberal narrative of progress. From Grote onwards, it could no longer be complacently assumed that modern representative systems stood at the end of centuries of uninterrupted improvement. Greek history henceforth presents an opportunity not only for liberal self-​congratulation, but for radical criticism of current forms of “democratic” governance. On such points, Grote’s successor Louis Ménard was more explicit (and more radical): “La valeur des idées ne depend pas de leur date, et la vérité n’est pas une question d’almanach […] Cessons donc de proscrire les forms que l’antiquité a données à ses institutions et de faire dater de notre siècle l’avènement des lumières” (quoted in Avlami (2011), 159). For more on Ménard, see below, n. 121. For complacently progressivist narratives by earlier liberal writers, see e.g. Condorcet’s (1864 [1795]); with Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet (1979) 186–​7; and Avlami (2011) 143–​5.

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224 Kierstead our understanding of the ways in which Grote’s work can accurately be seen as a product of its time: not in its distortion of historical realities due to liberal democratic bias, but in its surprising retention, in the interpretation of those realities, of a number of peculiarly Victorian ideas, chief among them the notion of character. Grote’s Athenians, as we shall see, are undoubtedly democrats; but they are meant to earn our respect and our attention mainly because of the good character which democratic institutions instilled in them. I  begin with a brief account of the background of Grote’s History, both in terms of his own thought and of the thinking of his age more generally. I  then move on to define and defend my claims about the presence of the Victorian notion of character in Grote’s work; this informs the next section, which details the main ways in which Grote’s Athens was a revolutionary one. I close with a brief discussion of the Nachleben of Grote’s Athens, focusing particular on its influence on two key figures in the modern liberal tradition, J.S. Mill and Karl Popper.19

19

It was, of course, the view of James Madison that the modern American republic would constitute an advance over the democracies of old; see e.g. Madison et al. (1987 [1788]) no. 10 (representative government controls the dangers of factionalism), and 14 (representative government allows for greater scale in a polity). This view depended largely on a uncharitable reading of Greek history, in which Athenian history specifically is a catalogue of failures (for Madison’s ancient history, see e.g. 28). It is arguable that with a different account of Greek history, Madison would have been less anxious to protect his constitution from the apparent dangers of what he termed “pure democracy”. That aside, to the extent that Grote overturned a negative view of Athens, he limited the rhetorical options of those who wanted to argue that the mixed constitution was a simple improvement on, and not a dilution of, ancient direct democracy. It is certainly not my intention here to obscure what is most important about Grote’s achievement. This is, beyond doubt, that he overturned the conventional wisdom about Athens. I also believe that his substantive view of Athens as a strong state which enjoyed real popular rule is correct (on the first point, see e.g. Ober (2008a), Chapter 2, “Performance”; on the second, Ober (1989), passim). But this is a point that has been made many times (by e.g. Roberts (1994); Chambers (1996); Demetriou (1999); and cf. Avlami (2011), 156:  “Many have rightly emphasized [the opposition between Grote’s views and those of his anti-​democratic predecessors]”). The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to the centrality of moral character in Grote’s understanding of democracy. It is partly an exercise in intellectual history, which demands an accurate reconstruction of past systems of thought, however much we may want to dispense with certain aspects of them. But it is partly also an invitation to democratic theorists, to see whether there might be something in Grote’s view of the recursive interaction between character and institutions that is worth salvaging. For a recent reading of Athenian politics along these lines, see Balot (2009).

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Grote’s Athens in Its Context

The revolutionary nature of Grote’s Athens, as well as the centrality of character to the debates of his time, can only be understood in their intellectual context. Athens before Grote was, more often than not, an exemplar of all that was wrong with the idea of democracy, and a warning to those who would seek to revive it. The long and venerable tradition of anti-​democratic ancient history, entertainingly recounted by Roberts, had recently received fresh impetus in the form of a number of substantial English-​language works that began to appear in the eighteenth century.20 In 1774 the Anglo-​Irish playwright and man of letters Oliver Goldsmith published his History of Greece, a history that differed little from those contained in Temple Stanyan’s uncritical rehashing of his sources (most slavishly Plutarch) in his Grecian History of the 1740s. In 1786 the Scottish court historian John Gillies composed an explicitly monarchical and anti-​democratic dedication to the King for his own History of Ancient Greece: The history of Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence of democracy, and arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing the incurable evils inherent in every form of Republican policy, it evinces the inestimable benefits resulting to liberty itself from the lawful dominion of hereditary kings, and the steady operation of well-​regulated monarchy.21 By far the most influential of these works was William Mitford’s History of Greece from the Earliest Period, published in ten volumes between 1784 and 1810. Mitford’s work stood out from the crowd for many of the same reasons that Grote’s was to later: careful weighing of sources, attentiveness to detail, and monumental scale. Mitford’s History, like that of Grote, also had the advantage, 20

21

Partly for reasons of space, and partly because one of the burdens of this essay is the peculiar Englishness of Grote’s History, I cannot engage in any lengthy discussion of the French reception of Athenian democracy in this period. For the French context, see Avlami (2011), Payen (this volume), and esp. the influential paper of Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet (1979), where the multiple French liberal perspectives on Athens are distinguished and traced. The multiple perspectives included (at least) visions of a mercantile, a liberal, and a more specifically democratic Athens. Various combinations of these aspects of Athens were proposed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the mercantile, liberal, and democratic versions of the city-​state were frequently in tension, not least in the thinking of Constant (on which see Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet 1979, 209–​16). In this context, Grote’s Athens can be seen as an assertion that Athens was at once mercantile, liberal, and (especially) democratic. Gillies (1790 [1786]), 1.iii.

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226 Kierstead from a literary perspective, of being organized around and shaped by a clear and unrelenting philosophical thrust: in Mitford’s case, the exposing of what he called “the inherent weakness and the indelible barbarism of democratic government”. The poet Byron, Mitford’s contemporary, ably summarizes the historian’s virtues (and vices): His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of ancient Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues: labour, learning, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.22 Mitford’s virtues were considerable enough that James Mill would later put his History into the hands of his son John, faute de mieux, albeit with a warning against the author’s “blackening of popular institutions”.23 As for his vices, these are usually said to be the mirror-​image of those imputed to Grote: undue eagerness to press the monarchist case. Anyone who reads the final third of Grote’s review of Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici in the Westminster Review, in which he systematically dismantles Mitford’s narrative of Philip of Macedon by focusing in on a number of mistranslations and unjustified inferences from the relevant Greek texts, may have their doubts that partiality is the worst charge that can be laid at Mitford’s door. But that partiality is in any case understandable. Like his fellow parliamentarian Edmund Burke, Mitford was a man profoundly influenced (and profoundly shaken) by the French Revolution. Like Burke, he was a man of conservative instincts compelled by events to find or build more secure foundations for his political creed. While Burke located those foundations in a kind of philosophy of institutional history, Mitford found them in Greek history, and his writings on the subject were explicitly designed to prevent England from following the path followed by France (or, worst of all, Athens).24

22 23 24

Byron’s own note on the last two lines of Canto 12 of Don Juan: “And Mitford! in the nineteenth century/​gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek [=Plutarch] the lie”. Quoted in Roberts (1994), 247. It hardly needs to be pointed out that Mitford and Burke were in many respects quite different, not least in that the latter was a professed Whig (although he has of course been taken up as a foundational figure by modern conservatives). For similarities between Burke’s views on national character and those of Grote, see below, n. 28.

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England, of course, was in Mitford’s day not as badly run as Athens. In England, after all, the democratic element in the constitution was “more wisely given, and more wisely bounded, notwithstanding some defects, than in any other government that ever existed”.25 At the same time, there were signs that things might be taking a turn for the worse, and the mob rule of the Athenians could not be considered entirely “strange among ourselves, where country meetings, too frequently, and the common hall of London, continually exhibit perfect examples of that tyranny of a multitude” that was characteristic of Athens.26 To help make sure things did not get out of hand, Mitford wrote a Greek history that was, more than anything else, a display case for the vices of the Athenians. Even such ostensibly inoffensive acts as the request of the Athenian prisoners to Philip for clothes in which they could return home were promptly denounced by Mitford as evidence of “the arrogance and levity of the Athenian Many in that Age”.27 Mitford’s case against Athens, it turns out, depends in large part on the character of its democratic citizens. This, as we shall see, would become one of the chief elements in Mitford’s picture of Athens that Grote would seek to overturn. But it was also crucial to the Whiggish rearguard action that followed the publication of Mitford’s History. Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his 1824 review of Mitford in the Knight’s Quarterly, criticized the Tory (as Grote would later) for anachronism in inferring from the suitability of constitutional monarchy to modern Britons that it would have been equally suitable for ancient Athenians. A good government, insists Macaulay, like a good coat, is that which fits the body for which it is designed. A man who, upon abstract principles, pronounces a constitution to be good, without an exact knowledge of the people who are to be governed by it, judges as absurdly as a tailor who should measure the Belvidere Apollo for the clothes of all his customers. The demagogues who wished to see Portugal a republic, and the wise critics who revile the Virginians for not having instituted a peerage, appear equally ridiculous to all men of sense and candour.28 25 26 27 28

Mitford (1822 [1784–​1810], 1.278. Mitford (1822 [1784–​1810], 9.74. Mitford (1822 [1784–​1810], 8.392 with Roberts (1994), 204. Quoted in Roberts (1994), 236. For Grote’s use of this idea, see below, 242–245. The genesis of this idea in Grote’s mind seems not to have been due specifically to Macaulay. Rather, it seems to have been a staple of liberal ideology in this period. This is suggested by its presence in the thought not only of Grote, Macaulay, and Mill (on which see the final section below) but also in that of Burke. As Grote himself points out, Burke “in his speeches at

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228 Kierstead As other passages in his review make clear, Macaulay is nonetheless certain that democracy (in its British form) is the highest form of political organization known to man. But certain peoples are not yet ready for it, and in the work of the constitutional designer the development of citizen character and the introduction of democratic institutions must go hand in hand. As Macaulay’s review of Mitford in the Knight’s Quarterly attests, the debate over Greek history, far from being confined to the academy, was the subject of lively controversy in the pages of a number of literary reviews read widely among the educated public. One paper that deserves mention beside the Knight’s Quarterly is the Edinburgh Review, first published in 1802; but the two journals which engaged most earnestly in the argument about the Greek past were the conservative Quarterly Review (which came into existence in 1809) and its nemesis, The Westminster Review, the organ of the Philosophical Radicals (which began being printed in 1824). Both journals sought unashamedly to

the beginning of the American war” distinguished “between the principles of government proper to be followed by England in the American colonies, and in British India” (Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 12.192). Grote makes this remark in the context of a discussion of the influence of the ideas of Aristotle on Alexander’s policy in the East (for a more recent discussion along similar lines, see Ober (1998), Chapter 6, “Political Animals, Actual Citizens, and the Best Possible Polis: Aristotle Politics”). In Grote’s reading, Aristotle effectively advised Alexander to prescribe different forms of government to Greeks and barbarians, by behaving “to the Greeks as a leader or president, or limited chief–​and to the barbarians (non-​Hellenes) as a master” (Grote 1907 [1846–​56]), 12.191). That he failed to implement this advice was due, in Grote’s view, to Alexander’s “temper and character, as modified by a few years of conquest” (192). In other words, the institutional setting into which Alexander thrust himself (absolute monarchy) undermined his character, which meant that he was unable effectively to prescribe different institutional settings to Greeks and non-​Greeks. The effects in terms of the long-​term survival of Alexander’s empire were, of course, ruinous. Here the British reader might have been reminded of the supposedly superior policy of his own empire in which (at least in theory) different peoples were ruled in different ways. That Grote and Burke meet at this point of Whiggish ideology is all the more striking for the contrast in their views of Athenian democracy. Cf. e.g. Burke (1969 [1790]) 139: “No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortation or rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects”; and 228–​9 (quoting Arist. Pol. 4.4 to the effect that in democracy and tyranny, “the ethical character is the same”–​Burke’s rendering of το ἦθος το αὐτὸ). For examples of Burke’s positive views on character and institutions in his own words, see e.g. 203, “the world on the whole will gain by liberty, without which virtue cannot exist”; and his letter to Claremont of August 9 1789: the spirit of the French revolution may be due to “character rather than accident”, and “men must have a certain fund of moderation to qualify them for Freedom else it becomes noxious to themselves and a perfect nuisance to every body else” (quoted in O’Brien’s Introduction to Burke (1969 [1790]), 13–​4).

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appropriate Greek history to their own contemporary political ends, and in the battle to secure their ground they took no prisoners (partly because writing in both reviews was often unsigned). The author of a review of a new edition of Demosthenes by Planche decided to employ the occasion to denounce the vapidity of the Attic orators in terms that he felt sure would appeal to an English audience: Athenian oratory, he asserted, was in its blend of cunning and deceitfulness comparable only to “the learning of the Popish doctors”.29 The Westminster Review soon hit back, complaining that the reviewer treated human flaws that appeared in all societies as if they were the exclusive preserve of Athenian democrats: We might as well blame the men of Athens for permitting the tooth-​ache to torture their argumentative mouths, and allege in accusation, that when any of these detestable democrats, who was not accustomed to the sea, went on board ship, he basely suffered himself to be afflicted with a most distressing sickness; the countryman of Pericles turned pale and lost his appetite, and the hateful slave of the worst of tyrannies, a mobocracy […] was thoroughly uncomfortable.30 The tone is facetious, but the argument is one that Grote would employ with some frequency against those who would blame all the ills of Athenian history upon its form of government. The world of the London reviews –​in which history and politics, scholarship and conviction met –​was very much Grote’s world. Although he had the benefit of a classical education at Charterhouse, Grote never went to university (his later appointment as Chancellor of the University of London is something of a historical irony). Instead, he worked long hours at his family bank on Threadneedle Street in the City of London until his father’s death in 1830. Even though he was by that time already deep into his History of Greece (begun in 1823), Grote did not take up the opportunity his father’s death might have presented of transitioning into a life of learned leisure. Instead, he became actively involved in politics, publishing a tract on the Essentials of Parliamentary Reform shortly before the passage of the First Reform Bill in 1832. In December of 1831, Grote was elected to parliament.31

29 30 31

Quarterly Review 27 no.54 (1822): 382–​404; passages from literary reviews are as quoted in Roberts (1994), 231–​8. Westminster Review 3 (January 1825): 233–​5. See the entry on Grote in the Dictionary of National Biography, 23.287.

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230 Kierstead Grote’s Athens is rightly seen as a product of his distinctive experience as a financier and politician. But we should be careful not to be too mechanical in our thinking about how Grote’s professional career shaped his scholarly work. We might justly question the many assertions by Grote’ critics that his Athens resembles London; for example, despite all his experience as a banker, there is surprisingly little in Grote’s History about finance and economics.32 His Athens is not therefore to be dismissed as anachronistic simply because its author was a man of his own, very different time. On the contrary, Grote was able to produce a revolutionary account of Athens precisely because his education had been so different to that of the majority of the academic historians of his time. Grote’s great advantage was that he was able to look at the past from a perspective that was entirely free of the deadening influence of the ancient seats of English learning, where donnish wisdom had long made up its mind on the character of the jurymen who had made Socrates drink hemlock. What advanced education Grote had he received from personal acquaintances. Grote first met James Mill in 1819, at the age of twenty-​five; his reverence 32

Explicit comparison of Athens and London (even England) is not frequent in Grote’s work; it is, of course, among the central arguments of this essay that when such comparisons do occur, they tend to focus not on mercantilism or finance but on moral character. Such comparisons are also often accompanied by extensive discussions of other “European” cultures, esp. France and the United States. Moreover, assertions that Athens and England were more or less the same are thin on the ground; though Grote does sometimes depict Athens as a more radical version of England. A good test-​case of his comparative approach is to be found in his discussion of the Athenian dikasteria in comparison with European jury-​courts (6.24–​45–​most of the comparative material is contained in a series of enormous footnotes). Among other legal cultures, Grote considers the French system (32, n. 2) as well as the American (34, n. 1). His conclusion is that “the dikast trial at Athens effected the same object, and had in it only the same ingredients of error and misdecision, as the English jury: but it had them in stronger doses” (38). Whether Grote’s History contains implicit comparisons with London is a matter of interpretation. But given the paucity of explicit comparisons, it may be wondered why Grote’s critics have insisted so strongly on this eminently debatable point. To the extent that Grote’s Athens is mercantile (it is not, in my view, overwhelmingly so), critics might accuse Grote of anachronism only granted the premise that classical Athens had no independent economic sphere. But this is itself a claim that needs to be argued rather than assumed. In other words, Grote’s Athens is only unduly London-​like if we assume that mercantilism was something that could only have been imposed on Athens from the outside, rather than simply being a feature of the ancient city. For a long time, the Finleyite paradigm in the study of ancient economics insisted that an independent economic sphere was indeed absent from ancient Greece; but in recent years this paradigm has effectively collapsed under the pressure of both evidential and theoretical considerations. For the Finleyite paradigm see e.g Finley (1973); Millett (1991); and for its collapse, see e.g. Morris (1994); Morris and Manning (2005).

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for the philosopher was life-​long.33 Grote’s first significant literary intervention, his 1822 Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind, was written at the request of Jeremy Bentham, from four volumes of notes that the utilitarian had himself compiled. The atheism that Grote espoused in this early work was a matter of deep personal conviction: in personal letters from this period, we can observe Grote in act of guiding his sister-​in-​law, Frances Lewin, away from her ancestral faith.34 The place in Grote’s life that might have been filled by religion was filled instead by his zeal for utilitarianism, which a friend described (in a letter to JS Mill) as “a belief […] most deep and conscientious, for which he chiefly lives, and for which he would die”.35 Grote’s association with John Stuart Mill seems, in the beginning at any rate, to have been more of an intellectual partnership than a spontaneous friendship; and Mill expresses some reservations about Grote in an extant letter to Carlyle.36 Nadia Urbinati in her book on Mill has laid particular emphasis on Mill’s rejection of Benjamin Constant’s earlier distinction between the liberties of the ancients and those of the moderns. For Mill, participation in democratic institutions and protections against domination were part of the same package, and this is undoubtedly an idea that Grote would have had no hesitation in sanctioning. But we might quibble with Urbinati’s occasional tendency to magnify Mill’s contribution to our view of Athens almost to the exclusion of Grote. “Mill had the political intelligence”, she writes “to free the only democracy in Western history from scholarly discredit and to vindicate its superiority”; though she elsewhere gives Grote more credit, it may be worth pointing out that it was less Mill’s political intelligence that secured that particular result as Grote’s scholarly industry.37 In the last section of this essay, we will pick up 33

34 35 36

37

For Grote’s reverence for James Mill, see Grote (1866), a review of the younger Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy which includes a paragraph-​long encomium of the elder Mill, paying particular attention to his qualities as a historian (“Mr. John Stuart Mill has not been the first to bestow honour on the surname which he bears. His father, Mr. James Mill, had already ennobled the name. An ampler title to distinction in history and philosophy can seldom be produced than that which Mr. James Mill left behind him”). See e.g. the letters quoted in Chambers (1996), 4–​6. Elliot (1910), no. 58. Grote “is a man of good, but not first-​rate intellect, hard and mechanical, not at all quick; with less subtlety than any able and instructed man I ever knew […] After all I had said of him you will be surprised to learn that he reads German” (quoted in Momigliano (1952), 11). Urbinati (2002), 5. Mill’s ability to integrate a novel view of Athens into liberal theory and to present it to a broad audience should certainly not be underestimated. But the central task of reassessing Athenian history was an essentially empirical one, and it was Grote who carried it out.

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232 Kierstead the story of Grote’s influence on the younger Mill, and it will be enough at this stage to note that Grote’s History (1846–​56) was already complete when Mill published his great essays On Liberty (1859) and On Representative Government (1861). Grote’s thinking, then, developed through personal conversation and correspondence rather than formal education, was designed to fulfill political purposes rather than academic requirements, and had an influence far beyond the universities (although it certainly had an impact there). One way of tracing its development before he embarked upon his grand historical project is to read the charming series of letters he exchanged with his sister-​in-​law, which I have already mentioned above. In these, the political is constantly found to be implicit in the personal. A letter dated to January 27, 1823, ostensibly concerning a trip to France, contains one of the more direct arguments for democracy to be found in Grote’s writings: No one ever concluded that the people make no mistakes; what is contended is, that the people are right upon the long run –​right more frequently than they are wrong –​and above all, that they have no interest in going wrong; consequently that it is possible to point out their errors, and that whoever does so, will secure their esteem. Whereas an unresponsible one, or an unresponsible few have a permanent and incurable interest in plundering and depressing the people in order to gratify their own appetites for wealth and power, and therefore however wise they may be, their wisdom will never be applied to the benefit, but to the injury of the people.38 Grote’s argument here demonstrates that even at this early stage, his belief in democracy is founded on an analysis of the various incentives that operate on individuals in different political systems. To this extent, his thinking shares in the perspectives of contemporary utilitarianism. But by this time Grote was already taking his first steps as a historian, and direct insight into the development of his thought on the classical Athenians is now readily available in the form of a previously unpublished 1821 essay “Of the Athenian Government” recently printed by Calder and Trzaskoma. Written when Grote was only 27, the essay must come as a crushing disappointment to admirers of the historian’s later production. It displays an unsteady grasp of primary sources (the piece depends almost entirely upon Demosthenes, with 38

Chambers (1996), 5.

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Aeschines the only other orator cited –​and that only once), as well as a complete lack of critical distance from the authors he does cite (so Demosthenes’ denunciations of the Athenians for their sluggishness are taken unquestioningly as evidence that the Athenians were, in fact, remarkably slow to act). To read the essay in conjunction with those parts of the History that cover the same time period is be made painfully aware of the benefit of a decade of immersion in the primary evidence. “By the 1840s” as Calder and Trzaskoma say, “Grote’s thorough knowledge of the sources and his mature historical sense are a world away from the a priori theorizing of 1821”.39 Even more surprising than the shoddiness of the essay as a piece of historiography is that Grote seems to accept some of the main charges of the anti-​Athenian school that he was later to challenge so successfully. Grote catastrophically misinterprets Demosthenes’ remarks about the symmories (a novel system of joint liability meant to ensure the provision of triremes by the rich), and concludes that “this aristocracy [the symmories] completely governed the decision of the popular assemblies”.40 These assemblies were in any case “extremely quarrelsome and impatient” and “scarcely anything like an argument urged against this administration [again the symmories] was tolerated.” Moreover The people were deluded by all imaginable means. Venal orators were hired to flatter and cajole them, trifling offences were exaggerated into the most alarming magnitude, and presented to their attention in frightful colours; when their expectations were disappointed in any public affair, the officer to whom it had been entrusted was thrust forward as the victim of their fury, though himself perhaps blameless.41 What seems to be happening here is that Grote is making an early attempt to rebut one of the main tenets of the anti-​Athenian school of historiography: that there was in Athens a tyranny of the majority that oppressed the rich. He goes about doing so with a two-​pronged argument: not only were the rich always in charge of the people; but the people themselves were utterly unable to organize themselves for successful action. In view of these two facts, there was no way that the people of Athens could have successfully tyrannized a minority of worthy notables.

39 40 41

Calder and Trzaskoma (1996), 78. On the symmories, see first Hansen (1991); also e.g. Ruschenbusch (1978); Rhodes (1982). Grote (1996 [1821]) 84.

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234 Kierstead Grote will later criticize Mitford for wanting to have it both ways, by accusing the Athenians of being both efficiently tyrannical and completely incompetent. In this early essay, Grote is in effect embracing the second option as a way of avoiding the first. But this decision comes at quite a cost, since the Athens that emerges from the first part of the essay is hardly one that would serve as an inspiration or paradigm for democratic reform. “When [the Athenian people] did decree anything”, Grote assures us (on the sole authority of Demosthenes), “it very frequently remained undone, and their orders wholly disregarded”.42 Hardly a system that fills one with confidence, but the depiction is meant to reassure the nervous aristocrat: “When from any sudden mistrust or panic, the assembly were prevailed upon to pass a vote inimical to the aristocracy, the measure was never realized”.43 Members of the elite had nothing to fear from democracy: the example of classical Athens shows this. Grote begins to find his feet, and the confidently pro-​Athenian voice we associate with him, only near the end of his essay, when he turns from Demosthenes to the words of the writer we now know as the Old Oligarch. “From the mouth of this hostile witness”, Grote suddenly proclaims, “evidence may be deduced, proving incontestably that the Athenian Government was the best at that time existing in Greece”.44 This evidence turns out to hang upon the Old Oligarch’s grudging admiration for how the Athenian democracy was run, despite his belief that it was operated by the villainous for dastardly ends. Grote concludes that in Athens, “the poor, though they remained poor and did not invade the property of the rich, yet they were better secured against the inroads of the latter than in any other Grecian state”.45 Though the conclusion may not in fact stray too far from historical realities, it represents a difficult balancing act, especially in view of Grote’s earlier claims in the same essay. How could the poor be so well secured against the rich, we might well ask, when (as Grote has just asserted on Demosthenes’ authority) they were both unwilling to challenge the aristocracy in their assemblies, and unable to enact any decisions they eventually reached? The young Grote has no answers to these questions, and it is no surprise that this early essay was never published. Nor is it a surprise that the argumentative strategy of Grote’s History would be so different. That Grote developed into the formidable historian he was in his maturity was, ironically enough, in no small part due to William Mitford. As J.S. Mill’s 42 43 44 45

Grote (1996 [1821]), 86. Grote (1996 [1821]), 87. Grote (1996 [1821]), 90. Grote (1996 [1821]), 93.

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reminiscences of reading the work as a child make clear (the philosopher’s “sympathies were always on the contrary side to those of the author”46) there was an urgent need for a liberal alternative to Mitford’s staunchly conservative interpretation of classical Greek history. But more than simply inviting replacement, Mitford’s work set a demanding standard of fullness, detail, and critical acumen, one that Grote was forced to work hard to meet. Though Grote more than rose to the challenge, we should not be too quick to write off the contribution of his Tory predecessor. Without his combination of (as Byron put it) “labour, learning, research, wrath, and partiality” the liberal Greek history that would eventually have been produced would have looked very different. All the same, Mitford’s influence was a function of the focused hostility that he inspired in liberal thinkers, and it is no surprise that Grote is (for the most part) unsparing in his criticisms of his predecessor. Nothing else than full on attack would win the field; although, on the other hand, it would not do to display too much vitriol in a historical controversy, thus laying himself open to the charge that he was as partial a Whiggish writer as Mitford was a Tory one. Accordingly, in his 1826 review of Mitford in the Westminster Review (we can, at this point, forget about Clinton, whose book Grote was supposed to be reviewing), Grote is careful to give Mitford some credit for the conventional scholarly virtues with which he was widely associated. The task of rooting out and supplanting Mitford was a delicate one, and it involved masking a merciless critique in measured and inoffensive terms. Grote’s true feelings about Mitford’s work can be gauged from a fascinating series of manuscript notes uncovered and partially transcribed by Kyriakos Demetriou, in which the liberal historian notes down his reactions to various portions of the Tory’s work as he trawls through it: [3]‌General remarks upon Tyrants. Prodigious violence of factions among the Greeks:  wretched reasoning […] [8] “Gratifying the people as they had been accustomed to be gratified”–​it seems as if the tendency of any measures to convey immediate benefit to the people was a real objection to it in the eye of Mitford. [9] Mention of “extravagant and dishonest ambition” of the Athenian people: why more so than the appetite for conquest in a king? […] [16] “It is often extremely difficult to ascertain the real springs of political measures in a free society […]” (Nonsense–​see Hume’s essay).47

46 47

Quoted in Roberts (1994), 247. Demetriou (1999), 64.

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236 Kierstead Grote’s immediate and uncensored reactions to Mitford’s narrative and opinions show how restrained in comparison his later review was, despite its obvious polemical force. Grote opens his review with some a priori theorizing about what he takes to be one of the great questions of history: how the Greeks were able to produce so many brilliant artists and thinkers. Grote wagers that this was partly a product of their unrelenting competitiveness, a condition which was in its turn a result of the unusually high concentrations of population found in the Greek city-​states. The Greeks’ emulativeness found expression in sports, in the arts, in philosophical dialogue, but also in politics, and manifested itself in the form of democracies or (what for Grote is often very similar) moderate oligarchies. “It is to democracy alone”, he concludes, “that we owe that unparalleled brilliancy and diversity of talent which constitutes the charm and glory of Grecian history”.48 Grote’s piece of ex tempore speculation functions as a lead-​in to his critique of Mitford, and as such it is strongly performative, serving both as the public launch of a new, audacious historical voice (“this is how I approach Greek history, as a democrat”), and as a provocative first volley in the battle to come (the positive impact of democracy on Greek history is, it would seem, so obvious and well-​founded that it can practically be derived from axioms, before we even have to engage with the sources). It also marks a clear contrast between Grote’s own views, which are democratic and well-​formed, and those of Mitford, which he now goes on to demonstrate are not only anti-​democratic, but also internally inconsistent: Sometimes he describes the sovereign assembly at Athens as composed of fullers, shoemakers, braziers, etc. at other times he tells us that “a sovereign people would not work”; sometimes he reproaches them as inspired with a restless thirst of conquest, at other times he arraigns their self-​indulgence and luxury, because they will not serve on expeditions for conquest; in one place he talks awfully of the irresistible might of the sovereign assembly, in another he exhibits to us the “inherent impotence” of the most renowned ancient democracies.49

48 49

Grote (1826), 280. Grote (1826), 285. For a similar critique of Mitford, see Wood (1988), 15:  “The mass of Athenian citizens whose control of government corrupted the city was at one and the same time a mob of idle paupers and a class of labourers and craftsmen.”

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In this passage, Grote is not simply pointing out the incoherence of Mitford’s arguments in particular, but also signalling to a whole tradition of anti-​ democratic writers that they cannot have it both ways. Either the Athenian demos was idle or it was hyperactive, but it cannot have been both at once.50 Grote also picked up on another argument used by Mitford that had a long pedigree in anti-​democratic historiography. This is the idea that since Athens’ democracy made mistakes and had obvious flaws, it was the worst of all possible systems. For Grote, this is to compare Athens unfairly with an unrealized utopia, rather than with the concrete constitutional alternatives that were available at the time: We are far from wishing to dissemble, or to lessen their defects; but taking these defects at the utmost, and comparing the Grecian democracies with any other form of government, either existing in ancient times, or projected by the ancient philosophers, we have no hesitation in pronouncing them decidedly and unquestionably superior. That the securities which they provided for good government were lamentably deficient, we fully admit; but the oligarchies and monarchies afforded no securities at all, and aimed only at retaining the people under quiet subjection to bad government.51 In these final comments, Grote comes close to re-​stating the intuition behind his letter to Frances Lewin, his wife’s sister. Democracies may fail on occasion to protect citizens and provide good government; but since they are run by the people themselves they have every reason to try to do so. Autocratic forms of government, by contrast, do not simply fail to provide securities: they have no reason to want to provide them in the first place. For Grote, the people’s stable interest in correcting bad government makes democratic decision-​making a continual readjustment. But what for Grote is simply the healthy tendency of the system to correct itself has provided yet more ammunition for democracy’s critics. As Grote says, this “disposition to acknowledge and correct prior errors has been turned into a fresh reproach against the people, under the name of fickleness or inconstancy”. To which reproach he has a ready answer:

50 51

For this tradition, see again Wood (1988), Chapter 1, “The Myth of the Idle Mob”. Grote (1826), 293. For the tendency of critics of the democracy to compare it not with other real-​world polities, but with hypothetical utopias, see Ober (1998).

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238 Kierstead even granting this to prove that the popular assembly could not be relied upon as the steady supporter of wisdom and justice, we infer still more conclusively that it could never be employed as the habitual instrument of folly or injustice.52 It is an answer that provides an effective rebuttal to the anti-​democratic charge, skilfully accepting the charge of inconstancy and turning it to democracy’s advantage. But here a sceptic might point out that while Grote has succeeded in parrying the charge that democracy’s inconstancy means that it is condemned to produce injustice, he has not shown that an inconsistently unjust democracy would be superior to an enlightened autocracy that could sustain a constant measure of justice. As often, though, Grote’s pointed reply is only the tip of a deeper intuition about democracy. In the first place, Grote points out that inconstant decision-​making may be capable of adapting to changes in circumstances and understanding in a way that allows it to track justice better than its more constant alternatives. In the second place, whereas enlightened autocracies always run the risk of becoming unenlightened and thus a potent source of injustice, the repetitive nature of democratic decision-​making guarantees that it can never become the consistently harmful tool of any one interest. In the last third of his review, Grote pivots from rebutting Mitford’s criticisms of democracy on a general level to a careful analysis of his predecessor’s narrative of the wars between Philip of Macedon and Athens in the third quarter of the fourth century. We might well suppose that this was to the ordinary reader of the Westminster Review the least interesting part of the piece, and that it was around this point that Grote’s fellow bankers for the most part stopped reading. But for the classical scholar it is the most devastating part of the review, in that it engages closely with Mitford’s readings of (and inferences from) the sources, and shows in excruciating detail where they go wrong. Grote cannot be accused of mere pedantry here, since Mitford’s narrative of the period is freighted with normativity, and the question of which party was more often the aggressor in northern and central Greece was central to his readers’ evaluation of Philip and Athens (and hence, in a day when classical paradigms had considerable weight, to their evaluation of monarchy and democracy). Evaluation of monarchy and democracy as systems, in other words, was tied up closely with the moral evaluation of ancient monarchical and democratic agents. Was King Philip the aggressor or was the Athenian demos? Though Mitford and Grote did battle in philological and historical terms, their battleground 52

Both passages from Grote (1826), 295.

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was mainly moral. The issue of morality had as central a place in the larger conceptual debate about Athenian democracy as in the fight over the details of historical narrative. The fickleness of the Athenian people had been a staple of anti-​democratic literature since ancient times, but the various forms it has taken on in different eras can tell us much about the intellectual conditions of various periods. For Isocrates and Thucydides, inconsistent decision-​making could only be a sign of a failure of rationality in the lower orders;53 for Hobbes, it was fair warning for those who would seek to compromise the supreme principle of the stability of the state. For a Victorian like Grote, Mitford’s continual description of the Athenians as flighty and inconstant could only be perceived as a stain on their character, a smear which Grote himself was now well prepared to answer. 2

The Character of Democracy

Among the many values we associate with Victorian Britain –​thrift, industry, prudishness –​is the idea of character. Stefan Collini has stressed the importance of this concept in various fields of Victorian life, from the workhouse floor to the playing fields of Eton,54 and it is (I argue) no less important in understanding the terms in which Grote’s campaign to restore Athens’ reputation was fought. 53

54

As Isocrates puts it (Antid. 203), χρὴ δὲ τοὺς νοῦν ἔχοντας οὐκ ἀνωμάλως ποιεῖσθαι τὰς κρίσεις περὶ τῶν ὁμοίων πραγμάτων. (Cf. also Isocrates’ To Nicocles, one of whose burdens is that an individual sovereign is less vulnerable to inconsistency than a whole people.) Thucydides’ set-​piece description of the Mytilenian Debate (Thuc. 3.36–​50) is, I would argue, intended partly to showcase the inconsistency of the democratic Assembly. For Hobbes, the greater tendency of the people to inconsistency is one of the main considerations that speaks in favour of vesting sovereignty in one person rather than several (and on Hobbes’ scepticism about democracy, see further Iori’s chapter in this volume). As he says (1968 [1651]), 242), “the Resolutions of a Monarch, are subject to no other Inconstancy, than that of Humane Nature; but in Assemblies, besides that of Nature, there ariseth an Inconstancy from the Number”. Note that Grote’s character-​based argument is not designed to deal with Hobbes’ point about number, only with the more common argument that democracy produces men of bad character, who are therefore more inclined to flightiness. Perhaps not coincidentally, modern critics of democracy have preferred to focus on what Hobbes calls “Inconstancy from Number”, rather than on what might be called “inconsistency from character”. The most analytically rigorous of these critics is Arrow (1951); for a critique along the same lines, see also Buchanan (1954). For a possible way out of the impasse presented by Arrow, see now List and Pettit (2011). Collini (1985), who cites the Oxford English Dictionary (as below) on p. 33, tying it to its mainly nineteenth-​century context.

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240 Kierstead Character was, for the Victorians, in the first instance a virtue of individuals; it could in a secondary sense be attributed to whole nations, peoples, or races. Both of these senses are recorded in the (largely nineteenth century) Oxford English Dictionary, in which character is defined as the sum of the mental and moral qualities which distinguish an individual or race viewed as a homogeneous whole; the individuality impressed by nature and habit on man or nation; mental or moral constitution. But national character was not simply a matter of the aggregation of individual character. Individual character and national character were intertwined and recursively influential: the character of individuals influenced the character of the nation they were a part of, and the character of a nation’s institutions played a strong role in determining the character of the individuals that made it up. The relevance of such ideas to eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century receptions of ancient history is plain to see.55 The Spartan agoge was often held up as a model against the Athenian system precisely because it was designed to inculcate fortitude, endurance, and military discipline in its citizens. If Grote was to overturn the Spartan model,56 he would have to do so partly by showing that the Athenian constitution, rather than providing a framework for license as its many critics alleged, was equally capable of producing citizens 55

56

Cf. the epigraph to Avlami (2011), taken from Mably (1766), iv: “Ce seroit un grand malheur, si on lassoit d’étudier les Grecs et les Romains; l’histoire de ces deux peuples est une grande école de morale et de politique: on n’y voit pas seulement jusqu’où peuvent s’élever les vertus et les talents des hommes sous les lois d’un sage gouvernement; leurs fautes mêmes serviront éternellement de leçons aux hommes” (my emphasis). The importance of the Spartan model is clear in the work of as influential a thinker as Rousseau (cf. e.g. (2001 [1762]), 79 n.  a:  “l’institution de Lycurgue fit le Bonheur des Spartes”). Rousseau’s attitude towards direct democracy is a complex one: despite strong theoretical inclinations towards it (see now Cohen (2011)), he had doubts about its practical viability (see esp.  105–​7, with the notorious concluding hypothetical, “s’il y avait un peuple de Dieux, il se gouvernerait démocratiquement”). As with Madison (see n. 18 above) we can speculate that Rousseau’s support for democracy would have been less qualified had he had access to a different ancient history. On the use of Sparta by the reactionary Joseph de Maistre, see Loraux and Vidal-​Naquet (1979), 199–​200. It must be said, though, that French liberals had already chipped away at the Spartan model after the revolution (cf. note 17 above). See Avlami (2011), 151, who goes so far as to say that by the dawn of the nineteenth century, “in France, Sparta was basically a settled affair. It sufficed to pick up the eighteenth-​century discussion concerning its warlike habits, its inability to do business, and its contempt for the arts to show the pernicious character of Spartan egalitarianism”.

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with virtues that posterity could admire. In view of this, a counter-​narrative of Athenian virtue would have to rehabilitate the stock villains of Greek history (Cleon, for example), and unmask the true baseness of its familiar heroes (Nicias, say). Grote’s focus on individuals has often been misinterpreted as a sort of weakness, a concession to the school of Carlyle by a historian who should have known better. It would be better to see it as a rhetorical coup, an appropriation of the tools of novelists such as Dickens57 (for whom character is often, in the end, destiny) to historiographical ends. The idea of character may have been particularly important to Grote for more personal reasons. Collini has suggested that the notion of character, with its emphasis on hard work and self-​reliance, was characteristic of the new, urban and liberal managerial classes that were rising to replace the conservative landowners of old in the wake of the industrial revolution. That this distinction maps onto the debate between Grote and Mitford is almost too obvious to need pointing out; and yet, as we have seen, it can be argued that Mitford, too, was concerned about Athenian character.58 In any case, if Victorian London is present in Grote’s Athens to any degree, I would submit that its presence is confined to this narrow compass: Grote’s Athens is Victorian only insofar as its inhabitants display the moral virtues that the nineteenth-​century intelligentsia laid claim to and admired. That Grote was Victorian enough to place great emphasis on character should come as no great surprise, although it may come as a disappointment 57 58

Among the 5 Dickens novels serialized during the writing of Grote’s History, see e.g. the divergent fates of characters such as Esther Summerson and Mr. Tulkinghorn in Bleak House (1852–​3). On Mitford’s role in framing the debate, cf. Turner (1981), 204 (quoted in Wood (1988), 17): “So complete had been his condemnation of the character of the Athenian state and so widespread was the acceptance of his views that he had in effect also established the grounds on which the reputation of Athens would have to be restored. The civic virtues that Mitford denied Athens possessed and, by implication, that a democratic polity could possess were features of government prized by Englishmen of various political persuasions. Later liberal historians consequently had to prove that Athens and, by implication, democracy had actually achieved these virtues”. Turner’s discussion of “civic virtue” in Grote (213–​34) partly anticipates my focus on “character” here. Though I am in full agreement with his main claims, my account differs from his in several matters of phraseology and emphasis. For instance, Turner sometimes presents Grote’s concern with character as predominantly a result of his engagement with Mitford (e.g. 215: “Paradoxically, while refuting Mitford’s indictment of Athens, Grote embraced as his own many, though by no means all, of the political virtues that Mitford had espoused”). But this may go too far: certainly, men like Macaulay and J.S. Mill, who shared Grote’s interest in character, were not primarily concerned to refute Mitford’s History of Greece.

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242 Kierstead to any who are accustomed to seeing him as the first modern historian of ancient Greece (in the English-​speaking world at least).59 More unexpected is the close connection that seems to have existed in the minds of some of Grote’s fellow radicals between good character on the one hand, and liberal democracy on the other. This should not be too unexpected: we are altogether too liable to forget that Adam’s Smith apologia for liberal capitalism in the Wealth of Nations had been framed partly in terms of a defence of the compatibility of commercial society with particular virtues.60 And we should also remember here Macaulay’s opinion, stated in his review of Mitford, that particular constitutions were suited to particular peoples.61 J.S. Mill seems to have believed (as Macaulay certainly did) that the English were particularly well suited to democratic government: so much can be read from his reference to “that point of character which beyond any other fits the people of this country for representative government”. In his System of Logic, Mill went further, seeking to make the principle universal by declaring that “the laws of national character are by far the most important class of sociological laws”; it was indeed, “the power by which all those of the circumstances of society which are artificial, laws and customs for instance, are altogether moulded”.62 Elsewhere, he pronounces character “the determining issue in the question of government”.63 It is not difficult to discern issues of character in Grote’s nineteenth-​century antecedents in Greek history, even outside of Britain. Wachsmuth had stressed, according to Roberts, “the role of bad character in the failure of the Athenian democracy”, and had identified credulity and irascibility as the most prominent features of the classical Athenian. Schömann had lambasted the mob “haunting the ports and the marketplaces”, characterizing the Athenian demos as “naturally fickle, seditious and idle” (my emphasis).64 That character should

59

60

61 62 63 64

E.g. Rhodes (2003), 32: “His History of Greece was perhaps the first history of Greece which we can still recognize as a work of what we should understand as serious scholarship”. For an attempt to push the origins of modernity in the study of ancient history back into the eighteenth century, see now Ceserani (2008). On commerce and the virtues in the thinking of Adam Smith, see Fitzgibbons (1997); Griswold (1999); Hanley (2009). Though they disagree on the precise conception of the virtues Smith was defending, these scholars all agree that one of Smith’s major concerns was to stipulate a set of institutions and practices that could preserve morality against the corrupting impact of unregulated commerce. Quoted in Roberts (1994), 236. Both quotations taken from Collini (1985), 41. Collini (1985), 31. Both quotations from Roberts (1994), 251.

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play such a significant role in Grote’s Athens will not seem an eccentric hypothesis if we consider that he himself identified the distinctive features of his historiography as “earnestness of moral interest, combined with the laborious study of evidence”.65 The centrality of character in Grote’s History was noted by his most perceptive reviewer, JS Mill. Grote’s long disquisition on mythology is, according to Mill, “incident to the design, which no one before had seriously entertained, of making the history of Greece a picture of the Greek mind”. Commenting on a long passage in which Grote links the cultural achievements of Greece with their habit of discussion in agoras and assemblies, Mill remarks that Not only the oratory of Demosthenes and Pericles, and the colloquial magic of Socrates, but also the philosophical speculations of Plato, and the systematic politics, rhetoric, and logic of Aristotle, are traceable to the same general tendencies in the minds of the Grecian people; and we find the germ of these expansive forces in the senate and agora of their legendary government. Here we see the connection between institutions and (intellectual) character that are such an important feature of Grote’s theory. Grote’s description of the expedition of Cyrus, and the retreat of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand is for Mill “an episode fertile in exemplifications of Grecian and of Asiatic characteristics”.66 The word “character” eventually becomes a kind of leitmotif of Mill’s review: “There is no point in the character of the Athenians more remarkable, than their respect and attachment to the forms of their Constitution”; “Cleisthenes, an eminent man, to whose character and historical importance no one before Mr. Grote had done justice”; the view that Grote presents “of some points in the character and disposition of the Athenian Many” will be instructive to readers. In particular cases Mill seems to go even farther than Grote in his faith in the distinguishing power of national character, as in his claim that the Delian League would never have become an empire had it not been for the indolence of some “comparatively unwarlike and unenergetic Asiatic Greeks” among the allies.67 Grote’s rehabilitation of the character of Athenian democracy depends on a complex strategy that combines several tactics. Grote occasionally in his 65 66 67

Clarke (1962), 106. All three passages from Mill (1846); the longer passage addresses Grote (1907 [1846–​56]) 2.104–​6. All four quotations from Mill (1853).

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244 Kierstead History is content to defend Athens against the charges laid against it in the minimal, defensive way he had in his review of Mitford –​by pointing out that the accusations of its critics were often self-​contradictory. So, for example, the arguments which Thucydides ascribes to the Athenians in the Melian Dialogue “are not in harmony even with the defects of the Athenian character” as Athens’ critics usually portray them; that is, the Athenians are usually accused of “equivocal wording”, but in Thucydides’ text they display instead “a sort of audacious frankness”.68 At times he depicts the Athenians as paradigmatic Greeks, in that they have the characteristic features of the Greek people –​brilliance, fortitude, and so on –​writ large: “The citizen-​soldier of Greece generally, and especially of Athens,” Grote informs us, “possessed in a high degree both personal bravery and attachment to order and discipline.”69 Non-​Athenians who are particularly enterprising or brave are often said to be displaying the virtues of an Athenian; Brasidas, for instance, was in his self-​reliance and probity “in character more Athenian than Spartan, yet with the good qualities of Athens predominant.”70 Since his predecessors had almost never given the Athenians the benefit of the doubt, Grote often errs on the side of positive assumptions. Hence when he cannot deflect Thucydides’ allegation that the Athenian people had erroneous ideas about Hippias and Hipparchus, Grote comments that “we are surprised at such a degree of historical carelessness in the Athenian public.”71 The “we are” here approaches “we should be”. The dark side to Grote’s rehabilitation of the character of democratic Athenians is that he often pursues his aim by denigrating the character of foreigners. In 510, for instance, the Thessalians abandon Cleomenes’ army “with a faithlessness not unfrequent [sic] in the Thessalian character.”72 The typical Greek soldier under Brasidas possessed “the sentiment […] of a certain place which he has to fill and duties which he has to perform”, a feeling which had “no response in the army of Xerxes, or the Thracian Sitalces, or the Gaul Brennus”. This is due to the fact that “the Illyrian or Gaul […] obeys only the instigation of his own pugnacity, or vengeance, or love of blood, or love of booty”. Indeed, “it is the Greek soldier alone who feels himself bound to his comrades by ties reciprocal and indissoluble”.73 It goes without saying that this applies to the Athenians most of all. 68 69 70 71 72 73

Grote (1907 [1846–​56) 7.162. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 5.65. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 7.11. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.287. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.297. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 7.18–​9.

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At times Grote seems to have felt that the contrast between Athenians and ancient non-​Greek peoples did not go far enough; for a really instructive comparison, he had to bring in contemporary peoples. Hence his remark that in the Athenian character “the pressure of necessity was less potent, as a stimulus to action, than hopeful confidence and elation” while “in the character of some other races, the Jews for instance, the comparative force of these motives appears to be reversed”.74 Very occasionally, Grote brings things even closer to home. The “co-​existence of freedom and self-​imposed restraint” that Grote attributes to the Athenians can, he says “be found in […] England […] as well as in the democracy of the American United States” while “the many violences of the first French revolution illustrate, among various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence”.75 The disparagement of the French at the end of this passage (only partly concealed here beneath the veil of scholarly qualification) is in the time-​honoured English manner, but we should remember the valence that the revolution had for men like Mitford and Burke. It is undoubtedly true that Grote transformed our image of Athens mainly by pointing out how well functioning democratic institutions actually were. But this passage is equally part of his intellectual war against Mitford, and the idea behind this particular move seems to be more nineteenth century than liberal. Athenian democracy, Grote seems to be suggesting, did not end up like the French Revolution partly because of the character of the people involved in it: where the French (despite their high intelligence) lacked self-​discipline, the Athenians had it, and it is partly this that determined the different fates of their societies. The English, naturally, also had this quality, and so readers of Grote would not have to think very hard to come up with a convenient explanation for why their empire had long eclipsed that of their rivals across the Channel. This convenient reconciliation of Athenian and British democracy by reference to a similarly sterling character was, of course, exactly what Macaulay would have wanted. It may also, more troublingly, have won the approval of J.S. Mill. But to be fair to Grote (and Mill), the story here is a slightly more complex one than the simple derivation of political destinies from initial endowments of virtue. It is true that, for Grote, “no system of government […] can ever pretend to accomplish its legitimate end apart from the personal character of the people, or to supersede the necessity of individual virtue and vigour”.76 But 74 75 76

Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 7.352. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.325. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.348.

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246 Kierstead it is also true that what seems to set the conditions for the development of that necessary individual virtue and vigour is, for Grote, the establishment of suitable political and social institutions. This is Grote’s answer to the Spartan agoge: instead of military mess-​halls, Athenians had political associations, and these educated Athenian citizens in fellow-​feeling just as effectively as the mess-​halls trained soldiers in solidarity:77 It was necessary [for Cleisthenes] to create in the multitude […] that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality –​a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action subject only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those very authorities as to all their public acts –​combined too with a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of a party contest, that the form of the constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own.78 We may detect here something of the Englishman’s pride in his own parliament’s notion of a loyal opposition, but the importance of the passage lies mainly in its clear attribution of credit for various moral virtues to democratic institutions. Where the Spartans had Lycurgus, the Athenians had Cleisthenes, and it is “from the time of Kleisthenes downward” that “the creation of this new mighty [democratic] impulse makes an entire revolution in the Athenian character”.79 Athens’ stunning military victories shortly after the establishment of the new system are evidence of “the rapid improvement wrought in the Athenian people by their new democracy”, and Xerxes’ invasion of Greece would provide the first real test of “the altered position and character of the Athenians”.80 Drawing attention to the true importance of Cleisthenes’ reforms was, it should be pointed out, one of the key elements in Grote’s revolutionary rewriting of Athenian history, and (carrying with us 77

78 79 80

For a less moralistic account along similar lines, drawing on the modern theory of social capital, see Kierstead (2013), with explicit engagement with Grote at 188–​9. That Grote’s view might have won the approval of J.S. Mill should not be taken to imply that Mill had no views of his own on this topic: for a thorough study of them, see Varouxakis (2002). For Varouxakis, although Mill’s interest in race has been over-​emphasized, national character was one of the philosopher’s central concerns at virtually every stage of his career. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]) 4.325. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.347. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 5.173.

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a sense of the centrality of character) it is to this revolution that we must now turn. 3

A Revolutionary Athens

In contrast to the majority of his predecessors, Grote is clear that the “great democratical impulse […] commences properly with Kleisthenes, and not with Solon”.81 He later qualifies this judgment by saying that Cleisthenes’ system, “though highly democratical, stopped short of the mature democracy which prevailed from Perikles to Demosthenes, in three ways especially”, these being the continuing use of archons as judges rather than citizen jurors; the continuing election (rather than allotment) of archons; and the continuing exclusion of the poorest class of Athenians from magistracies.82 For these reasons, the Cleisthenic constitution “is to be distinguished” not only from “the mitigated oligarchy established by Solon before” but also from “the full-​grow and symmetrical democracy which prevailed afterwards from the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, towards the close of the career of Perikles”.83 Nonetheless, nowhere does Grote come close to withdrawing his pronouncement that Cleisthenes’ “partnership with the people gave birth to the Athenian democracy: it was a real and important revolution”.84 81 82

83 84

Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 3.340. For an influential modern statement of this claim, see Ober (1993), now in revised form as Ober (2007a). For the influence of this idea in France (esp. on Duruy), after the publication of Grote’s work, see Payen’s essay in this volume. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.319. The singling out of these three specific reforms is slightly idiosyncratic. The pre-​Solonian use of archons as judges (for which see e.g. Sealey (1987), 111–​4) seems to have ceased sometime in the 480s, around the time of the change in the method of their selection from election to sortition (usually dated to 487/​6: [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 22.5; Hansen (1991), 36; Ober (1989), 76). This change, of course, is distinct from the more famous reform of Ephialtes, in which the judicial role of the Areopagus (composed of ex-​archons) was severely restricted (discussed by Grote at 4.320-​1; for Ephialtes’ reforms as a cardinal moment for the democracy, see the next note). In referring to the opening of magistracies to the lower classes, Grote probably had in mind the reform of 458/​7, in which most of Athens’ magistracies (but not the archonship or the treasury of Athena) were opened to the third of the four Solonian property-​classes, the zeugitai (but not yet to the poorest class, the thetes; see Ath. Pol. 26.2; Hansen (1991), 37; Ober (1989), 80). Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.333. For recent arguments that Athenian democracy started with the reforms of Solon or Ephialtes, see Wallace (2007) and Raaflaub (2007) respectively. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.301. For a modern defence of the term “revolution” in the context of Cleisthenes’ reforms, see again Ober (1993) and the title of Ober (1996). For doubts, see Rhodes (2003), 77.

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248 Kierstead That Grote was convinced of this, and that he was able to state his unorthodox view so confidently, is partly because of the importance he attached to the development of democratic character. Though with Solon “the seeds of the subsequent democracy had been sown”, nonetheless “nothing in the nature of a democratical sentiment had yet been created”, and it was this that was crucial to the establishment of democracy.85 A consequence of Grote’s view of Cleisthenes’ role as fundamentally ideological and social is that he sometimes underplays the concrete constitutional changes that Cleisthenes introduced. After the expulsion of Hippias, Grote writes, “the enslaved forms” of the ancestral constitution “became at once endued with freedom and reality” almost as if the coming of democratic government was a simply a matter of boosting citizen morale.86 “For more than thirty years” Grote writes, “the old [Solonian] constitution had been a mere empty formality”;87 in Grote’s view, Cleisthenes’ major contribution was in remodelling and revivifying that constitution, not in overhauling it. “Kleisthenes preserved”, he insists, “but at the same time modified and expanded, all the main features of Solon’s political constitution”. This applies especially to the two major institutions of state, the “senate [i.e. the council] and the public assembly”, which, Grote assures us, were “far more popular and vigorous [after Cleisthenes] than they had been under the original arrangement of Solon.”88 More important, for Grote, was Cleisthenes’ introduction of a new system of tribes and demes that mixed citizens up and brought them together in ways which fostered a sense of nationhood.89 It also fostered particularly democratic virtues; and it seems at times as if the entire Athenian political experiment was for Grote at bottom an attempt to encourage virtue and guard against vice. After all 85 86 87 88 89

Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.279. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.300. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.303. Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.308. Of course, Grote also notes the main institutional changes to these bodies, e.g. the expansion of the Solonian Council of 400 into a Cleisthenic Council of 500. Ath. Pol. describes Cleisthenes as “wishing to mix up” (ἀναμεῖξαι βουλόμενος) the people. For an aggressive reading of the reforms in terms of nation-​building rather than democracy, see Anderson (2003), esp.  44:  “the primary purpose of this mixing seems to have been to generate a stronger sense of common interest and purpose within the citizen community as a whole”; whatever the merits of Anderson’s argument that the reforms were more concerned with solidarity than democracy, the reforms certainly would have increased inter-​citizen cohesion. The most accessible introduction to the Cleisthenic institutional architecture is probably Osborne (1996), 292–​308; for a more advanced guide to the dynamics of the system, see Ober (2008a), 134–​56.

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Beyond the judgment of the people (so the Athenians felt), there was no appeal. Their grand study was to surround the delivery of that judgment with the best securities for rectitude, and the best preservatives against haste, passion, or private corruption.90 The revindication of the Athenian political system in the eyes of a Victorian public had, as we have seen, to take the form of a revindication of the moral character that its institutions instilled in its citizens. It is for this reason that Grote’s History, otherwise so forward-​thinking in the attention it gives to institutions and to geography, focuses so intently on the case for and against particular figures in Athenian history. These individuals were not, we should remember, merely figures in Athenian history. They were also characters in a European historiographical tradition that went back very nearly to the time it described. Like Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist (1838) or Esther Summerson in Bleak House (1852–​3), the major characters in the histories of Mitford and Grote vividly embody the moral assumptions of their authors both in their positive and negative forms. It is because of this that Grote’s task is not simply to rehabilitate staple democratic villains, but also to destroy the reputation of the darlings of aristocratic historiography. Chief among these was Nicias, the powerful statesman and general who, despite his early opposition to the expedition, was in joint command of the Athenian forces in Sicily when they were annihilated at the hands of the Syracusans. Nicias’ fellow aristocrat Thucydides (from whose account all subsequent writers took their cue) is ambivalent about the general. On the one hand Nicias is “excessively inclined to augury and things of that sort”91 and his insistence on a delay recommended by soothsayers is part of what seals the Athenians’ fate in Syracuse. On the other hand, after describing Nicias’ execution at the hands of the Syracusans, Thucydides comments that he was “the least deserving of the Greeks of my time to have come to such an extremity of misfortune, because his way of life was wholly dedicated to virtue”.92 Most of Grote’s predecessors were content to take the latter assertion at face value and to take Thucydides’ scornful references to Nicias’ superstition as evidence of something they could approve of, piety. By the time of Grote’s immediate forerunners, Nicias had achieved heroic status beside Socrates as a

90 91 92

Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 4.327. Thuc. 7.50.4: ἦν γάρ τι καὶ ἄγαν θειασμῶι τε καὶ τῶι τοιούτωι προσκείμενος. Thuc. 7.86.5: ἥκιστα δὴ ἄξιος ὢν τῶν γε ἐπ᾽ἐμοῦ Ἑλλήνων ἐς τοῦτο δυστυχίας ἀφικέσθαι διὰ τὴν πᾶσαν ἐς ἀρετὴν νενομισμένην ἐπιτήδευσιν.

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250 Kierstead good man done to death by the delusions and follies of the Athenian mob.93 For Gillies, he was straightforwardly “the most pious, the most virtuous […] man of the age in which he lived”,94 and Goldsmith confessed he could not “forbear shedding tears at the tragical fate of […] Nicias, who, of all men of his time, seemed least to merit so ignominious and untimely an end”.95 (Both these historians’ dependence on Thucydides is striking.)96 Grote’s judgment of Nicias was very different. Since his critique was at the same time so devastating and so mould-​breaking, I quote it at some length: Admitting fully both the good intentions of Nikias and his personal bravery, rising even into heroism during the last few days in Sicily, it is not the less incontestable that, first, the failure of the enterprise, next, the destruction of the armament, is to be traced distinctly to his lamentable misjudgment. Sometimes petty trifling, sometimes apathy and inaction, sometimes presumptuous neglect, sometimes obstinate blindness even to urgent and obvious necessities, one or other of these, his sad mental defects, will be found operative at every step, whereby this fated armament sinks down from exuberant efficiency into the last depth of aggregate ruin and individual misery […] The man whose flagrant incompetency could bring such wholesale ruin upon two fine armaments entrusted to his command, upon the Athenian maritime empire, and ultimately upon Athens herself, must appear on the tablets of history under the severest condemnation.97 For the writer of what was known as “philosophical history”, it was the historian’s prerogative and duty to judge, and in condemning Nicias Grote also reprieved the Athenian people of the charge that they had been unduly harsh to a blameless man.98 93 94 95 96

97 98

Cf. Turner (1981), 229: “Nicias, who had long enjoyed an unblemished reputation for piety, honesty, patriotism, and bravery […] Grote dissected […] with the keenest of polemical blades”. Quoted in Demetriou (1999), 105. Goldsmith (1825 [1774]), 169. At times their accounts verge on being straightforward translations of Thucydides’ text. Cf. e.g. Gillies’ “of the age in which he lived” and Thucydides’ ἐπ᾽ἐμοῦ; as well as Goldsmith’s “seemed least to merit so ignominious and untimely an end” with Thucydides’ ἥκιστα δὴ ἄξιος ὢν … ἐς τοῦτο δυστυχίας ἀφικέσθαι (for the quotations from Thuc., see n. 92 above). Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 6.182. For eighteenth-​century philosophical history, see e.g. Pocock (1976) on Gibbon. As Pocock describes it, “philosophical history […] may be seen as a tradition of continuous debate about certain questions [pursued through historiography]”. Grote’s use of Greek history

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This is most obvious in Grote’s treatment of the occasion partway through Nicias’ mission in Sicily when he sends a letter to the Athenians reporting on the unpromising state and lack of progress of the expedition.99 When, Grote says, we consider “the character generally ascribed by historians of Greece to the Athenian people; that they are represented as fickle, ungrateful and irritable, by standing habit” we might expect them to react harshly. Instead, the people refuse even to relieve Nicias of his command, even though the demoralized and ailing general has explicitly asked them to do so. We learn from this, Grote instructs his readers, a clear lesson, that the habitual defects of the Athenian character were very different from what historians commonly impute to them. Instead of being fickle, we find them tenacious in the extreme of confidence once bestowed, and of schemes once embarked upon: instead of ingratitude for services actually rendered, we find credit given for services which an officer ought to have rendered, but has not: instead of angry captiousness, we discover an indulgence not merely generous but even culpable, in the midst of disappointment and humiliation: instead of a public assembly, wherein, as it is commonly depicted, the criminative orators were omnipotent, and could bring to condemnation any unsuccessful general however meritorious, –​we see that even grave and well-​founded accusations make no impression upon the people in opposition to pre-​established personal esteem; –​and personal esteem for a man who was not only no demagogue, but in every respect the opposite of a demagogue; an oligarch by taste, sentiment, and position, who yielded to the democracy nothing more than sincere obedience, coupled with gentleness and munificence in his private bearing.100 The Athenians’ treatment of Nicias, rather than reflecting shamefully on them, is in fact an excellent example of their steadfastness and loyalty.

for political ends is, of course, obvious to both his admirers and his detractors, see above, 221–222. For continuities between Grote and the eighteenth-​century enlightenment, see n. 60 above. 99 Thuc. 7.10–​8. 100 Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 7.311. Cf. Grote’s later use of the career of Demosthenes to make a similar point. Despite the eventual defeat of the orator’s anti-​Macedonian policy, the Athenians never turned against him. Indeed, “that he always came off acquitted, and even honourably acquitted, is a proof of rare fidelity and steadiness among the Athenians” (12.215).

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252 Kierstead Grote is not entirely on firm ground with Nicias. Although no historian today would describe the Athenian general (or anyone, for that matter) as a model of virtue, it seems unfair for Grote to blame him for the failure of the entire expedition.101 As we have already noted, Nicias was against the expedition in the first place, and if his dithering and misjudgement contributed in a significant way to the Athenians’ eventual obliteration, it can hardly be denied that ultimate responsibility for the disastrously over-​ambitious mission lies with the Assembly itself. Equally, although the Athenians’ reaction to Nicias’ letter certainly absolves the Athenians of the charge of constantly going back on their decisions, it still stands out as a spectacularly destructive example of the human tendency to reinforce failure. Though Nicias was certainly far from perfect, Grote’s remarks about his “sad mental defects and flagrant incompetency” sometimes descend to the level of name-​calling and for the most part fail to stick. But if his destruction of the aristocrats’ hero was only partially successful, his rehabilitation of their bête noire would be more so. In the anti-​democratic tradition of history writing, Cleon was the villain of the tale, an anti-​Nicias who embodied everything that was wrong about the rule of the people. As with Nicias, aristocratic historians took their cue from their aristocratic predecessor, Thucydides, who introduced Cleon to his readers as being “the most violent of the citizens” of Athens.102 Later on, when the historian is describing Cleon’s fulfillment of his pledge to bring the Spartans on Sphacteria to Athens, he writes that “the promise, even though it was insane,

101 For a more comprehensive analysis of why the Sicilian expedition failed, see Hornblower (2002), 163–​72, who cites (168) diplomatic failures, insufficient cavalry, procrastination and dithering, the recall of Alcibiades, and the failure to recall Nicias after his letter home. Whatever we think of this list, it at least reminds us that the failure of the expedition was too complicated an affair to be blamed on any single individual. (For this claim by Grote, see the last sentence of the passage quoted on the previous page.) Of course, as Hornblower admits (170–​1), Nicias should bear part of the blame, but to make him bear the whole of it is to take too simplistic a view of the causality of a complex series of events. Though contemporary historians may avoid engagement with the question of Nicias’ character, he remains a focal point in discussions of the quality of Athenian democracy. A common theme in these discussions is that Nicias is a sub-​par deliberator. Yunis (1996), 101–​9 offers a reading of Thucydides in which the debate over the launching of the Sicilian expedition provides an example of how “pursuing personal rather than communal goals, rhetores lie to the demos and inflame their emotions” (101). For Ober (1998), 104–​21, Nicias embarks upon “a deceitful rhetorical strategy” which “results in evil outcomes for Athens” (113). Similarly, in the opinion of Flaig (2013), 331–​40, “die Deliberation misslang, weil [Nikias] seine Meinung nicht offen und ehrlich aussprach, sondern einen Trick anwandte” (340). 102 Thuc. 3.36.6: βιαιότατος τῶν πολιτῶν.

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was carried out”,103 as if the successful conduct of operations had been simply a matter of luck. Thucydides’ low opinion of Cleon was eagerly taken up by subsequent historians keen to heap their insults onto the back of a convincing democratic scapegoat. Stanyan in his Grecian History called Cleon “rash, arrogant and obstinate, contentious, envious, and malicious, covetous and corrupt” (a description in which, as Demetriou says, he “exhausted all his depreciatory adjectives”). Even the comparatively mild Bishop Thirwall labeled him a “master of impudence”.104 Nobody, it seemed, was a more improbable candidate for historiographical redemption than Cleon. And yet a measure of redemption is exactly what Grote provided. Grote’s Cleon is not entirely innocent of blemishes, and Grote shows more even-​ handedness than some of his rivals in admitting that “the powerful and violent invective of Kleon” was “often dishonest”, though this had to be balanced by a positive appreciation of his “self-​confidence and audacity in the public assembly.”105 All the same, Grote’s intention is clearly to provide Cleon with a counsel for the defense, a luxury the politician had gone largely without through nearly two thousand years of historiography. Cleon’s promise to capture the Spartans besieged on Sphacteria was not mad at all, Grote asserts, but “a reasonable and even modest anticipation of the future.”106 This judgment seems itself to be a reasonable and even modest one, and it is alarming in retrospect how many historians had accepted at face value Thucydides’ implication that it was brash to promise that 440 Spartan hoplites besieged on an island could be captured by a vastly larger Athenian force.107 Equally reasonable is Grote’s defense of Cleon’s self-​made wealth; the statesman was “not a leather-​seller of impudent and abusive eloquence, but […] munificent and affable, having credit not only for the largesse which he bestowed, but for all the insolences which as a rich man he might have committed but did not commit”. Grote’s does occasionally stoop to special pleading: his attempt to Cleon’s character by insisting that he was not the only one to be calling for the Mytileneans to be executed en masse after their revolt does not entirely remove the moral stain, nor does his follow-​up plea that Cleon was only proposing what was conventional at the

1 03 104 105 106 107

Thuc. 4.39.3: καίπερ μανιώδης οὖσα ἡ ὑπόσχεσις ἀπέβη. Quotations from Stanyan, Demetriou, and Thirwall: Demetriou (1999), 100. Quoted in Chambers (1996), 17. Chambers (1996), 16. On this point, see now Flaig (2013) 327: “Der Plan, die Insel mit überlegenen Kräften zu stürmen, war ja alles andere als dumm, er war eigentlich naheliegend und führte tatsächlich zum Erfolg”; and again, 329, re. Thuc. 4.39.3:  “Wie kann wahnsinnig sein, was der Stratege Demosthenes an einem Tag schaffte?”

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254 Kierstead time. But both points should be seen as part of a deeper logic at work in all Grote’s writing on Athenian politics. For Grote, Cleon and his fellow orators in the assembly could only propose motions that they thought had a good chance of winning the support of Athenians at the time. Whether the Athenians’ inclinations always pointed towards justice was another matter, but to accuse men like Cleon of corrupting them was to put the cart before the horse. Grote’s defense of Cleon is part of a wider argument over the character of Athenian “demagogues” –​although for Grote they were less the people’s manipulators than their servants. Grote himself uses the term, although he excuses himself for it in a staggeringly straight-​faced passage: I here employ the term demagogues because it is that commonly used by those who denounce the class of men here under review: the proper neutral phrase, laying aside odious associations, would be to call them, popular speakers or opposition speakers. The rhetoric here is that of the impassioned advocate earnestly insisting that he, unlike his opponents, is unwaveringly objective (even though Grote has just called the demagogues “the vital movement of all that was tutelary and public-​spirited in democracy”).108 For all that, if we bear in mind his picture of Cleon, it does seem somewhat more well-​rounded than that painted by his predecessors, and as usual Grote’s underlying argument is a sound one.109 The demagogues were not a hateful band of wreckers intent on corrupting the people, but a necessary and integral part of the Athenian system, in which unrestricted debate was of paramount importance.110 Grote’s rehabilitation of the demagogues should be taken together with his similar rescue of the sophists, a rescue summed up by Stanley in an 1851 edition of the Quarterly Review: According to the common notion they were a sect; according to him they were a class or profession. According to the common view they were the propagators of demoralizing doctrines, and (what from them are termed) “sophistical” argumentations. According to Mr. Grote, they were the regular teachers of Greek morality, neither above nor below the standard of the age. According to the common view, Socrates was the great opponent of 1 08 Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 8.38. 109 For Grote’s picture of Cleon as well-​rounded (and including occasional criticisms of the politician) see Chambers (1996), 17. 110 The point has been re-​made in more recent times by Finley (1962).

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the Sophists, and Plato his natural successor in the same combat. According to Mr. Grote, Socrates was the great representative of the Sophists, distinguished from them only by his higher eminence and by the peculiarity of his mode of life and teaching. According to the common view, Plato and his followers were the authorised teachers, the established clergy of the Greek nation, and the Sophists the dissenters. According to Mr. Grote, the Sophists were the established clergy, and Plato was the dissenter–​the Socialist, who attacked the Sophists […] not as a particular sect, but as one of the existing orders of society.111 Stanley’s précis of Grote’s position in terms of the religious landscape of Victorian England sits oddly with the secular tone of Grote’s writing, but he has grasped the historian’s central point: the sophists, like the demagogues, were part and parcel of Athenian society. Curiously enough, one of the cardinal episodes in Grote’s transformation of our views of Athenian history concerns religion, and it is one, as I have said, which has him entering into the Athenians’ religious sensibilities in a way no previous historian had done. This is curious partly because one of the main lines of attack against Grote in his day was that his work was not religious enough:  Carlyle described Grote’s work as “a fetid quagmire, with nothing spiritual about it”, and Stanley regretted the absence of “touches of Christian feeling” and “direct allusions to […] Providence” at work in historical events.112 The episode I have in mind is of course the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Athenian reaction to which most historians had seen as exaggerated at best, and at worst downright irrational. Employing the comparative method in an audaciously unscholarly way, Grote argues that the Athenian reaction to these events was in fact markedly better than that of modern, Christian peoples in the face of comparable desecrations (Grote could see that they were comparable precisely because he did not share the faith of men like Thirwall, for whom there was simply no comparing pagan superstition and revealed truth). Grote appeals to the violent reaction of the English after the (fictitious) Popish Plot in 1678–​9, that of the French in 1766 after a crucifix was damaged by two young men, and that of the Italians in 1630 in the case of the Untori (anointers accused of spreading the plague in Milan by means of ointments applied to doors of houses). The continental cases were especially grisly:  the two young Frenchmen were condemned to have their right hands cut off, their tongues cut out, and then to be burnt at the stake; the 1 11 Quoted in Clarke (1962), 118. 112 Quotations from both Carlyle and Stanley in Clarke (1962), 122.

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256 Kierstead Untori were extensively tortured before being publically executed. Grote is not shy in pointing up the moral (after all, in the French case, this was a sentence passed “not by the people, nor by any popular judicature, but by a limited court of professional judges”): we learn from such cases the degree to which public excitement and alarm can operate to poison and barbarise the course of justice in a Christian city, without a taint of democracy, and with professional lawyers and judges to guide the whole procedure secretly–​as compared with a pagan city, ultra-​democratical, where judicial procedure as well as decision was all oral, public and multitudinous.113 Time and time again, atrocities such as the execution of Socrates had been lain at the door of the Athenians and used as incriminating evidence in the trial of democracy. This had been done largely without any reference to the crimes committed by other societies which were not democratic. The constant harping on such acts of violence by the people was for Grote a form of libel, a calumny that could only be erased by appealing to evidence of equally gory transgressions on the part of Athens’ accusers. Since Athens’ accusers included many men –​and many historians –​of Grote’s own time, it is no surprise that his History did not make him universally popular.114 But it did exercise a huge influence, not only on modern views of Athens, but on the modern theory of democracy itself, and it is with a brief sketch of this impact that this essay will close. 4

The Impact of Grote’s Athens

In truth, there is space here for the examination only of one strand of Grote’s influence. (Fortunately, Grote’s influence on subsequent academic writers has 1 13 Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 6.37. 114 It goes without saying that Grote’s contemporary opponents were not identical with Athens’ ideological opponents of previous ages, still less were they members of the historical societies whose crimes Grote is often eager to highlight in his History. The Christian and conservative intellectuals of Grote’s own day were hardly participants in the reaction to the “Popish Plot” of 1678–​9; and yet, for Grote, they are often implicated in the same tradition. “The uniform tendency of Christian legislation, down to a recent period”, he declares, “leaves no room for reproaching the Athenians with excessive cruelty” (Grote (1907 [1846–​56]), 7.248). This telescoping of the many centuries of Christian history is partly a product of the long perspective afforded by Grote’s survey of Greek history; but it is equally part of the rhetoric of Grote’s work.

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already been treated, with unsurpassed elegance, by Arnaldo Momigliano, in a lecture published sixty years ago now.)115 But nowhere is the impact of Grote’s Athens in particular more visible than in its influence on the liberal democratic tradition, especially as carried forward by John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper. And it is equally arguable that Grote’s History deserves commemoration less for its impact on academic history writing than for the impetus it lent to the wider intellectual project of defending and advancing democracy as a practical ideal.116 We have perhaps already heard enough of the criticisms directed at Grote from the academy. But it is worth beginning this section by quoting a final passage by one of Grote’s most eloquent critics, Julius Beloch, if only because it once again reminds us of what academic readers found most problematic about the English banker’s History: The Greeks are for Grote no more than disguised Englishmen from the middle of the nineteenth century. And since the author belonged to the liberals, the Greek democrats are always right and the oligarch always wrong; Grote’s history becomes a glorification of the Athenian democracy. As a reaction against the underestimation of that democracy, which was common down to that time, this was completely justified and useful; but it is just as unhistorical as the opposite conception. It is surprising that Grote, who was involved in economic affairs, showed no understanding of such matters. Among the present generation Grote has received unbounded admiration, especially in the Anglo-​Saxon countries, where his history is still considered a standard work, but also in the liberal movement in Germany. But scholarship is the like the ancient Kronos, it devours its own children, and Grote has not escaped this fate, which looms before us all.117 115 Momigliano (1952), his inaugural address at University College London. For the importance of this address (and an attempt to move beyond it) see now Ceserani (2008). 116 For Grote’s impact on the British utilitarian tradition, see also Avlami (2011), 156–​7. 117 Quoted in Chambers (1996), 19–​20. Contrast the view of François de Champagny, for whom Grote’s position in a still “aristocratic” England undermined his pretensions to radicalism. For de Champagny, indeed, Grote’s Athens could afford to be so gloriously democratic not because it was a reflection of contemporary London, but because of the great gulf of time that separated it from contemporary London. “Pendant que nous autres, en France, nous nous débattons contre les revolutions […] en Angleterre, on a l’esprit tellement libre […] qu’un homme politique, un membre du Parlement, un radical passe son temps à étudier la politique d’Athènes […] Je vois ici un trait de cette sécurité goguenarde en vertu de laquelle […] on affecte là-​bas non seulement de ne pas craindre

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258 Kierstead Beloch was not quite correct about the fate of Grote’s work. But he clearly identifies the chief criticism of Grote’s Athens: there was too much of Grote in it, and too little of Athens. Beloch’s criticism is slightly unfair: although Grote’s text does act as a corrective to previous anti-​democratic accounts of Greek history, he is often (as in his account of Cleon) more balanced than we might expect, and we should remember that his view did not have to be extreme to be perceived as such in comparison with the norm set by his predecessors.118 All the same, Beloch puts his finger upon a central weakness of Grote’s approach: in organizing his defense of the Athenians around a rehabilitation of their character, Grote lay himself open to the charge that for him, all democrats were good democrats. In his defence of Grote, fellow liberal Edward Freeman tries to offset this impression by laying emphasis on Grote’s comparative method: A fair examination of Grecian history will assuredly lead us to the conclusion that this mob clothed with executive functions made one of the best governments which the world ever saw. It did not work impossibilities; it did not change earth into paradise nor men into angels; it did not forestall all the improvement which has since appeared in the world; still less did it forestall all the improvements which we may trust are yet in store for mankind. But that government cannot be called a bad one which is better than any government of its own time. And surely that government must be called a good one which is a marked improvement upon every government which has gone before it. les revolutions mais de les aimer. On nous fait compliment de toutes nos émeutes; on se prend d’enthousiasme pour toutes nos insurrections […] Et pour que le livre en question nous arrive […] avec plus forte teinte d’ironie, l’auteur, au milieu de l’aristocratique Angleterre, s’y pose en démocrate. A deux mille deux cents ans de distance, l’admiration est peu dangereuse” (Le Correspondant 28 (1851): 385–​413, quoted in Avlami (2011), 155). For Grote’s influence on German scholarship, see Nippel’s essay in this volume. 118 Strictly, Beloch’s argument here is not that Grote was too democratic, but that he was unhistorical. But this claim can hardly be established –​as Beloch seems to believe it can –​ simply by pointing out that Grote was a democrat. For a similar perspective on more recent scholarship on democratic Athens, cf. Rhodes (2003), e.g. 89: “If we look too hard in ancient Greece for lessons for today’s world we risk finding what we want to find rather than what was there”. Of course, inaccuracy is always undesirable in the writing of history. But the risk of it would not be reduced to zero if scholars simply ceased to look for modern lessons in ancient history. It may be that scholars who spiritedly reject modern parallels are as likely to distort the past as those who enthusiastically employ them. For this risk, cf. n. 32 above. On Rhodes (2003) cf. n. 16.

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For Freeman, Grote did not claim that democracy made men into angels; it was just that it fared very well when compared to most other systems of government in the historical record.119 But the element of character in Grote’s account of Athenian democracy would prove more enduring than Freeman supposed. We have already seen how J.S. Mill in his review of the History was quick to pick up on the ideas about character that (I have argued) were a crucial part of the theory behind Grote’s rehabilitation of Athenian democracy. In what remains of this chapter, I want to draw attention to the presence of the same idea in a more significant part of Mill’s oeuvre, his 1861 essay Considerations On Representative Government. Urbinati has already explored the connection between Grote’s remarks on the nomothetai and Mill’s advocacy of certain restraints on popular sovereignty.120 This aligns Grote with the more republican strain in Mill’s thinking and in the liberal tradition more generally. As a complement but also a corrective, I want to suggest here that Grote’s History is responsible for some of the more radically participatory parts of Mill’s democratic theory, and that his influence can be thus be seen to have been just as democratic (in the sense of advocating popular sovereignty) as it was liberal (in the sense of calling for limits on state power).121

1 19 Quoted in Roberts (1994), 248. 120 Urbinati (2002). 121 Grote’s successor Louis Ménard (for whom see n. 18 above, Avlami (2011), 158–​62) is in many ways an interesting comparison (though I do not have time to develop the comparison at any length here). Ménard represents an even more radical version of Grote, in that his use of Athens to criticize modern “democratic” institutions is markedly sharper. Radical though he was, Grote was largely content to pursue democratic aims within the evolving representative institutions of his homeland; Ménard’s rhetoric is more revolutionary. Ménard’s democracy is primarily the direct democracy of Rousseau, not the representative democracy of the Mills. For this last point, note the clear echo of Rousseau (2001 [1762], 134: “Le peuple Anglais pense être libre…”) in Ménard’s complaint that “Un Grec ne serait pas cru libre parce qu’il aurait pu, tous les six ou sept ans, deposer dans une urne électorale le nom des deputés…” (unremarked by Avlami, but cf. her conclusion, 162: “With Ménard, in any case, Rousseauvian democracy finally finds a name: Athens”). Part of Grote’s achievement, then, was to present participatory democracy in a form that was (at least occasionally) acceptable to one of the central streams of British thought. Note that Pappé (1979), despite its title, focuses quite narrowly on the Platonism of J.S. Mill. Finally, my argument that Grote’s work on character helped push Mill (at times) in a particularly participatory direction is not meant to show that Mill derived his ideas on character entirely from Grote. Mill’s ideas on character were developing as early as the 1830s, and were by the System of Logic of 1843 fully-​formed. What Grote may have provided his friend in his History was empirical basis for this theory. His observations on the

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260 Kierstead Most of Mill’s remarks on democracy and character are contained in the famous third chapter, in which he raises the spectre of the perfectly virtuous despot, asking whether there would be anything objectionable about government by a single enlightened man (supposing it were possible). As most students of political philosophy will remember, Mill’s answer is ultimately an Aristotelian one: a perfectly virtuous despot would still be objectionable, in that his unlimited power would be depriving all other citizens of the opportunity (and motivation) to develop certain moral and intellectual capacities associated with political activity.122 What most of us forget is that Mill’s description of these moral capacities is couched in terms of the suitability of various forms of government to various ethnicities: so Oriental peoples, who are characterized by inactivity, are suited to despotism.123 In the case of the French, despotism (in a neat circularity) and Catholicism have “made submission and endurance the common character of the people”.124 This is contrasted with “the striving, go-​ ahead character of England and the United States which is “the foundation of the best hopes for the general improvement of mankind.” In a sentence reminiscent of Macaulay as much as Grote, Mill concludes that “the passive type of character is favoured by the government of one or a few, and the active self-​helping type by that of the Many”.125 At the same time (and here Grote’s ideas are to the fore), one of the main means by which a passive character can be transformed into an active one is through participation in political institutions. Infusing Grote’s idea of character with a cerebral element of his own (an element already present in his Logic), Mill declares that “the practice of the dicastery and the ecclesia raised the intellectual standard of an average Athenian citizen far beyond anything of which there is yet an example in any other mass of men, ancient or modern”. Indeed, “a benefit of the same kind” can be observed in “Englishmen of the lower middle class by their liability to be placed on juries and to serve parish offices”.126 We might expect the argumentative momentum that Mill has built up in this chapter to carry him towards an outright endorsement of a strong form

122

1 23 124 125 126

Athenian past may also have encouraged Mill’s views on the peculiarly character-​forming qualities of participatory institutions in particular. For a recent re-​statement of Mill’s answer, see Ober (2007b). The importance of this response to the liberal tradition can be gauged by the incorporation of a version of it in Rawls (1971), Chapter 65, “The Aristotelian Principle”, with reference to Mill’s Utilitarianism in n. 20. This is however noticed by Said (1978), 14. For “Orientals”, Mill (1991 [1861]), 250. Mill (1991 [1861]), 250. Mill (1991 [1861]), 252 (last two quotations). Mill (1991 [1861]), 254.

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of participatory government. The penultimate sentence of the chapter looks close to such an endorsement, but the final sentence immediately brings us back down to the everyday terrain of government by representation: From these accumulated considerations it is evident, that the only government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state, is one in which the whole people participate; that any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful; that the participation should everywhere be as great as the general degree of improvement of the community will allow; and that nothing less can be ultimately desirable, than the admission of all to a share in the sovereign power of the state. But since all cannot, in a community exceeding a single small town, participate personally in any but some very minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a perfect government must be representative.127 Mill’s last-​minute climb-​down is embarrassingly sudden. The philosopher does, of course, argue extensively for limited government elsewhere in his essay. What is remarkable is how far the argument from democratic character has driven him towards a radical participatory vision of democracy he usually shied away from. If Grote managed to lead his friend Mill, the great theorist of representative government, to participatory water, he could not quite make him drink it. Something similar seems to have happened in the case of another later and significantly different figure, that of Karl Popper, who offered a famously forthright critique of Plato as an enemy of the “open society” in a work written against the backdrop of the Second World War.128 Popper was Viennese, and a perceptive recent essay has seen his very political reading of Plato as a product (and response to) the emphasis that had been placed on a political Plato in German-​language scholarship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.129 And yet, as that perceptive recent essay also points out, Popper can and should also be read as part of the Anglophone tradition of liberal (or liberal-​democratic) political thought. This is something that has, of course, been said by others; the great Platonist Gregory Vlastos even speaks of a “Grote-​ Popper” hypothesis.130 And any reader of The Open Society and its Enemies (at 1 27 128 129 130

Mill (1991 [1861]), 256. Popper (2011 [1945]). Bonazzi and Chiaradonna (2018). Vlastos (1977). See also Piovan (2003), 113.

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262 Kierstead least the ones who read the endnotes) will quickly see that it makes sense to see the two men as part of the same lineage: Popper mentions Grote a number of times, invariably favourably, and it is clear that he sees himself as, in some measure, carrying on some of his predecessor’s work.131 In what particular ways does Popper follow Grote? We can begin with a relatively unimportant one –​at least, one that is less directly bound up with questions of democracy and liberalism than the one I will bring in in the next paragraph. Popper, like Grote, has a relatively benign view of the Athenian Empire. For Grote, this relatively benign view was often mediated by comparisons with the British Empire; both empires, Grote thought, had hardened into empires gradually, and not entirely deliberately.132 Popper, in some sense, went further still, placing considerable emphasis on the idea that the tribute paid by Athens’ allies was nothing more than a taxation scheme –​and a pretty lenient one, at that.133 What Popper credits Grote with most of all is for helping him arrive at his very critical view of Plato’s politics.134 But he has taken even more than that from Grote (and Mill), adopting his characteristic (and perhaps unexpected) combination of dislike of Plato as a totalitarian, and reverence for Socrates as a proto-​democrat (or, at least, a proto-​rationalist).135 As we have seen, part of Grote’s project was to rehabilitate the sophists, reading them (against the grain of the Platonic dialogues) as part and parcel of the open and participatory world of democratic Athens. Socrates, for Grote (again, pace Plato), was the sophist par excellence, and all the better for it. His commitment to dialogue and dialectic is, in particular, what Grote (and some subsequent commentators) seems to have seen as his key liberal-​democratic virtue (and a key liberal-​ democratic virtue more generally).136 And yet, this virtue may not be as radically democratic as it might at first seem. Popper professes a particular debt to Grote in pointing out how the ideal states in the Republic and the Laws would seem to have made Socrates’ philosophical activity impossible –​and even to sanction the kind of process that led to Socrates’ death. It is the way that Plato’s ideal states would limit free speech and the contest of ideas that most seems to exercise Popper here. Interestingly enough, though (and revealingly), before citing Grote on this point, Popper identifies him as “the great democrat”.137 1 31 132 133 134 135 136 137

See e.g. Popper (2011 [1945]), 561, 584, 625, 642, 648. See esp. Liddel (2014b). Popper (2011 [1945]), 167–​174. For a similar reading of tribute as taxes, see Kierstead (2016). See esp. Popper (2011 [1945]), 85, 561. For this point, see again Bonazzi and Chiaradonna (2018). For Socrates the democrat, see esp. Euben (1997). Popper (2011 [1945]), 584.

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And yet the point Popper was using Grote to reiterate wasn’t, strictly, a democratic one, but a liberal one. In any case, viewing Socrates as a devotee of dialectic only takes us so far towards a democratic Socrates; for all the emphasis that some scholars continue to place on the civil (if ironic) exchange of ideas, there are still some questions about Socrates’ involvement with the Thirty Tyrants that remain stubbornly unanswered.138 Rationality and reasonableness are surely democratic virtues, and the idea of deliberation has plainly matured into a key democratic ideal; but it’s possible to be a rationalist without being a democrat, and the ideal of government by wise and temperate discussion is as compatible with various sorts of traditionalism as it is with democracy.139 As I have argued elsewhere, the main purpose of Popper’s polemic in The Open Society was to attack Plato, rather than to defend Athenian popular government; it was to defend liberalism more than democracy.140 Popper’s own vision of democracy was a surprisingly elitist one, one that followed Popper’s contemporary and countryman Joseph Schumpeter in its emphasis on elections, not popular participation.141 The point was to make sure the people could vote the government out if necessary, not to create institutions by which the people could govern themselves in any more energetic sense. In a particularly revealing passage, Popper states that democracy cannot be exhausted in the “meaningless principle that ‘the people should rule’ ” but should instead be based on a “faith in reason.”142 A more optimistic account of the possibilities of democratic character might have given Popper more faith in human beings; considering his own personal history, though, it may not be surprising that he preferred to place his trust in something else. But if reason is to be our guide –​even to the point of taking pride of place ahead of the people’s will  –​then what we have is already at some distance from democracy. Worse still for Popper’s polemic, it opens up a loophole for Plato, since the idea that government should be by reason (or at least knowledge) was precisely what lent the ideal states of the Republic and the Laws their technocratic character. And we might go further still. Isaiah Berlin, a key figure in the delineation of the liberal tradition we have been discussing, was

1 38 See recently Carawan (2013), 203–​232. 139 I remember an organizer of “deliberative polls” once speaking about how he had been warmly welcomed by the elders of a Chinese village, for whom the idea was perfectly compatible with their custom of deciding village affairs through discussion among a small group of respected men. 140 Kierstead (2019). 141 Schumpeter (1942). 142 Popper (2011 [1945]), 177.

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264 Kierstead notoriously suspicious of a particular sort of “rationalism” in otherwise apparently liberal thinkers –​Rousseau, for ­example –​and the way it could lead, at some point down the line, to a fetishizing of an idea of reason over and above the preferences of ordinary individuals (or indeed, groups of individuals).143 In de-​coupling the rational and liberal aspects of Grote’s Athens from its democratic dimensions, we may worry that Popper has left a gap, not only for technocracy to enter in, but for liberalism to exit. This might be a good place to end our very cursory sampling of Grote’s liberal democratic Nachleben. It might be a good place to end, not only for reasons of length, but also because J.S. Mill and Popper may together have shed a little light on the centrality that Grote should be accorded in the modern tradition of liberal political thought (at least in the Anglophone world). Grote’s position is central because he stands, as it were, on both liberal-​democratic feet, grounded as he is in the liberal values of rationality, reasonableness, and abstract freedoms, as well as on the democratic values of genuine popular rule and participation. The distance from which they depart from Grote may provide some measure of how far thinkers like Mill and Popper drifted from the liberal-​democratic centre –​in both cases, and, perhaps, in the Anglophone liberal tradition more generally, towards ever more substantive accounts of liberalism, but ever more attenuated and ad hoc conceptions of democracy. This re-​positioning of Grote at the centre of the Anglophone liberal tradition only adds, of course, to the sense in which Grote’s Athens was a revolutionary one. It was, we should now recall, also revolutionary in overturning centuries of historical prejudice against Athens’ democracy, in providing the definitive response to Tory writers like Mitford, and in giving a fillip to liberal democratic theorists such as J.S. Mill. But it has been the central argument of this essay that it achieved its revolutionary aims partly through the use of staple nineteenth-​century ideas about character. Grote’s Athens was one in which the democratic villains of the past were rehabilitated and in which the heroic figures of aristocratic historiography were exposed as fully deserving of their fates. Grote’s Athens was one in which individual character and political institutions were joined in a loop of recursive causality, each feeding into the other. The heritage of Grote’s Athens today is plain to see in the growing impact of positive portrayals of Athens on contemporary democratic theory and discourse.144 The challenge of Grote’s Athens for us is that we would like to 1 43 See especially Berlin (1969). 144 The literature on Athenian democracy and modern democracy is large and growing: for a recent review of work on the subject in the fields of ancient history, political theory, and political science, see Ober (2008b).

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affirm (to a great extent) its democratic robustness and its considerable successes, while also dispensing with the idea of character to which both of these were, for our historian, inseparably bound. It is up to us, it would seem, to see if these ideas can be separated; or if, failing that, we can construct a new conception of the character of democracy that breaks free of the prejudice and condescension of Grote’s.145

Bibliography

Anderson, G. (2003) The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508–​490 B.C. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Arrow, K. (1951) Social Choice and Individual Values. New Haven: Yale University Press. Avlami, C. (2011) “From Historia Magistra Vitae to History as Empirical Experimentation of Progress,” in Klaniczay, Werner and Gecser (2011) 135–​62. Balot, R.K. (2009) “Virtue Politics in Democratic Athens,” in Salkever (ed.) (2009) 271–​300. Berlin, I. (1969) “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 118–​172. 145 The centrality of moral character to Grote’s idea of democracy was largely a product of his intellectual environment. At the same time, it was partly derived from a reading of Plato and Aristotle (for both these points, see note 28 above). Grote’s views of these thinkers are beyond the scope of this essay, but there is time for me to hazard a further hypothesis in closing. Grote associated Plato and Aristotle with the vibrant culture of democratic Athens. If he had read them in a more radically critical light (cf. e.g. Ober (1998)), he may have been led to reject these philosophers’ coupling of individual character and types of state. All the same, as I have suggested, the notion that democracy and character are linked via institutions is one that perhaps deserves renewed attention (see n. 19), although not in the precise form that Grote formulated it. One way of reincorporating a version of Grote’s theory into contemporary debates is to view his character-​based theory as an unsophisticated precursor of the modern theory of social capital. In the theory of social capital, participation in associations improves citizen sociability through a range of mechanisms (e.g. diffusion of norms, creation of trust networks). Increased citizen sociability or social capital then improves the functioning of democratic institutions (Putnam (1993) is the seminal treatment). This improves upon Grote’s theory in several ways (not least, by dispensing with nineteenth-​century notions of race) while retaining the central insight that democracy is a social as well as a political phenomenon. For racism in Grote, see e.g. 12.110, n. 1. In the main text, Grote passes on the report of Xenophon that Cyrus the Younger would often have recourse to bodily mutilation as a form of punishment. In the note, Grote adds that “similar habits have always prevailed among Orientals” and then cites in support of this contention the History of British India of James Mill.

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266 Kierstead Bolgar, R.R. (ed.) (1979) Classical Influences on Western Thought, A.D. 1650–​1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bonazzi, M. and Chiaradonna, R. (2018) “Quale Platone per la politica?” Lo Sguardo 27: 13–​28. Buchanan, J.M. (1954) “Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets,” Journal of Political Economy 62: 114–​123. Bulwer-​Lytton, E. (2004 [1837]). Athens: Its Rise and Fall. London: Routledge. Burke, E. (1969 [1790]). Reflections on the Revolution in France. London: Penguin. Calder, W.M. and Trzaskoma, S. (eds) (1996) George Grote Reconsidered: A 200th Birthday Celebration with a First Edition of his Essay “Of the Athenian Government”. Hildesheim: Weidmann. Camp, J.M. (1970) The Athenian Agora: Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens. London: Thames and Hudson. Carawan, E. (2013) The Athenian Amnesty and Reconstructing the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ceserani, G. (2008) “Modern Histories of Ancient Greece: Genealogies, Contexts and Eighteenth-​Century Narrative Historiography,” Princeton/​Stanford Working Papers in Classics. Chambers, M. (1996) “Grote’s History of Greece,” in Calder and Trzaskoma (eds) (1996) 1–​22. Cohen, J. (2011) Rousseau: A Free Society of Equals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Collini, S. (1985) “The Idea of ‘Character’ in Victorian Political Thought,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35: 29–​50. Condorcet, N. de (1864 [1795]) Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. Paris: Dubuisson. Clarke, M.L. (1962) George Grote: A Biography. London: University of London Press. Demetriou, K.N. (1999) George Grote on Plato and Athenian Democracy: A Study in Classical Reception. Frankfurt: Lang. Demetriou, K.N. (ed.) (2014) Brill’s Companion to George Grote and the Classical Tradition. Leiden: Brill. De Sanctis, G. (1898) Atthis: storia della repubblica ateniese dalle origini alle riforme di Clistene. Torino: Bocca. Elliot, H.S.R. (1910) The Letters of John Stuart Mill. 2 vols. London: Longmans. Euben, J.P. (1997) Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Finley, M.I. (1962) “Athenian Demagogues,” Past & Present 21: 3–​24. Finley, M.I. (1973) The Ancient Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fitzgibbons, A. (1997) Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of the Wealth of Nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Flaig, E. (2013) Die Mehrheitsentsheidung: Entstehung und kulturelle Dynamik. Paderborn: Schöningh. Gillies, J. (1790 [1786]) The History of Ancient Greece, its Colonies, and Conquests, from the Earliest Accounts till the Division of the Macedonian Empire in the East. Part 1. 2 vols. Basel: Tourneisen. Goldsmith, O. (1825 [1774]) The History of Greece from the Earliest State to the Death of Alexander the Great. London: Baynes. Griswold, C.L. (1999) Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grote, G. (1996 [1821]) “Of the Athenian Government,” in Calder and Trzaskoma (eds) (1996). Grote, G. (1826) “Fasti Hellenici by H.F. Clinton,” Westminster Review 5: 269–​331. Grote, G. (1907 [1846–​56]) A History of Greece. 12 vols. London: Dent. Grote, G. (1866) “John Stuart Mill on the Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton,” Westminster Review 29: 1–​39. Handley, E.W. (1965) The Dyskolos of Menander. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Hanley, R.P. (2009) Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hansen, M.H. (1991) The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Nelson: Oklahoma University Press. Hobbes, T. (1968 [1651]) Leviathan. London: Penguin. Hornblower, S. (2002) The Greek World: 479–​323 B.C. 3rd edn. London: Routledge. Kenyon, F.G. (1891) On the Constitution of Athens. London: British Museum. Kierstead, J.C. (2013) A Community of Communities:  Associations and Democracy in Classical Athens. Stanford dissertation. Kierstead, J.C. (2014) “Grote’s Athens: The Character of Democracy,” in Demetriou (ed.) (2014) 161–​210. Kierstead, J.C. (2016) “The Delian and Second Athenian Naval Leagues: The Perspective of Collective Action,” in Armstrong, J. (ed.) Circum Mare: Themes in Ancient Warfare. Leiden: Brill, 164–​184. Kierstead, J.C. (2019) “Karl Popper’s Open Society and its Enemies, and its Enemies,” Journal of New Zealand Studies 28: 2–​28. Klaniczay, G., Werner, M. and Gecser, O. (eds) (2011) Multiple Antiquities–​Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures. Frankfurt: Campus. Kurke, L. and Dougherty, C. (eds) (1993) The Cultural Politics of Archaic Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lape, S. (2004) Reproducing Athens: Menander’s Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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268 Kierstead Liddel, P. (2014a) “From Chronology to Liberal Imperialism:  Greek Inscriptions, the History of Greece, and Historiography from Selden to Grote,” Journal of the History of Collections 26: 387–​398. Liddel, P. (2014b) “The Comparative Approach in Grote’s History of Greece,” in Demetriou (ed.) (2014) 211–​254. List, C. and Pettit, P. (2011) Group Agency: The Possibility, Design and Status of Corporate Agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loraux, N. and Vidal-​Naquet, P. (1979) “La formation de l’Athènes bourgeoise:  essai d’historiographie 1750–​1870,” in Bolgar (ed.) (1979) 169–​222. Mably, G. B. de (1766) Observations sur l’histoire de la Grèce. Genève: Compagnie des Libraires. Madison, J., Hamilton, A. and Jay, J. (1987 [1788]) The Federalist Papers. London: Penguin. Martin, V. (1958) Ménandre: Le Dyscolos. Cologny-​Genève: Bibliotèque Bodmer. Mellor, R. and Tritle, L. (eds) Text and Tradition: Studies in Greek History and Historiography in Honor of Mortimer Chambers. Claremont, CA: Regina. Meritt, B.D., Wade-​Gery, H.T. and McGregor, M.F. (1939–​53) The Athenian Tribute Lists. 4 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Mill, J.S. (1846) “A History of Greece by George Grote, Vols. 1–​2,” Edinburgh Review 84: 343–​77. Mill, J.S. (1853) “A History of Greece by George Grote, Vols. 9–​11,” Edinburgh Review 98, 245–​47. Mill, J.S. (1991 [1861]) “On Representative Government,” in Idem, On Liberty and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 203–​467. Millett, P. (1991) Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Mitford, W. (1822 [1784–​1810]). The History of Greece. 10 vols. London: Cadell. Momigliano, A. (1952) George Grote and the Study of Greek History. London: University of London Press. Morris, I. (1994) “The Athenian Economy Twenty Years after The Ancient Economy,” Classical Philology 89: 351–​366. Morris, I. and Manning, J.G. (2005) “Introduction,” in Morris and Manning (eds) (2005) 1–​44. Morris, I. and Manning, J.G. (eds) (2005) The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (1993) “The Athenian Revolution of 508/​7 B.C.: Violence, Authority, and the Origins of Democracy,” in Kurke and Dougherty (eds) (1993) 215–​32. Ober, J. (1996) The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Ober, J. (1998) Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (2007a) “ ‘I Besieged that Man’: Democracy’s Revolutionary Start,” in Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace (eds) (2007) 83–​104. Ober, J. (2007b) “Natural Capacities and Democracy as a Good in Itself,” Philosophical Studies 132: 59–​73. Ober, J. (2008a) Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (2008b) “What the Ancient Greeks Can Tell Us about Democracy,” Annual Review of Political Science 11: 67–​91. Osborne, R.G. (1996) Greece in the Making: 1200–​497 B.C. London: Routledge. Pappé, H.O. (1979) “The English Utilitarians and Athenian Democracy,” in Bolgar (ed.) (1979) 295–​307. Piovan, D. (2003) “Pericle e la società aperta: Tucidide II, 40, 2 secondo Karl Popper,” Quaderni di Storia 58: 95–​118. Pocock, J.G.A. (1976), “Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian,” Daedulus 105 (3): 153–169. Popper, K. (2011 [1945]) The Open Society and its Enemies. London: Routledge. Putnam, R. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Raaflaub, K. (2007) “The Breakthrough of Demokratia in Mid-​Fifth-​Century Athens,” in Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace (eds) (2007) 105–​54. Raaflaub, K., Ober, J. and Wallace R. (eds) (2007) Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, P.J. (1981) A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, P.J. (1982) “Problems in Athenian Eisphora and Liturgies,” American Journal of Ancient History 7: 1–​19. Rhodes, P.J. (2003) Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology. London: Duckworth. Roberts, J.T. (1994) Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rousseau, J.-​J. (2001 [1762]) Du Contrat Social. Paris: Flammarion. Ruschenbusch, E. (1978) “Die athenischen Symmorien des 4. Jh. v. Chr,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 31: 275–​284. Said, E.W. (1978) Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Routledge. Salkever, S. (ed.) (2009) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schömann, G.F. (1854) Die Verfassungsgeschichte Athens nach George Grote’s History of Greece. Leipzig: Weidmann.

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270 Kierstead Schumpeter, J. (1942) Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper. Sealey, R. (1987) The Athenian Republic:  Democracy or the Rule of Law? University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Todd, S.C. (1993) The Shape of Athenian Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tritle, L. (1999) “The Athens of George Grote: Historiography and Philosophic Radicalism,” in Mellor and Tritle (1999) 167–​78. Turner, F.M. (1981) The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain. New Haven:  Yale University Press. Urbinati, Nadia (2002) Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Varouxakis, G. (2002) Mill on Nationality. London: Routledge. Vlastos, G. (1977) “The Theory of Social Justice in the Polis in Plato’s Republic,” in North, H.F. (ed.) Interpretations of Plato. Leiden: Brill, 1–​40. Wallace, R.W. (2007) “Revolutions and a New Order in Solonian Athens and Archaic Greece,” in Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace (eds) (2007) 49–​82. Wood, E.M. (1988) Peasant, Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy. London: Verso. Yunis, H. (1996) Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Classical Athens. Cornell University Press: Ithaca.

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­c hapter 8

German Evaluations of Athenian Democracy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Wilfried Nippel Since the late eighteenth century German culture developed a specific affinity to the ancient Greek one.* The Greeks were understood as representing true humanity as, among others, Friedrich Schlegel1 and Wilhelm von Humboldt2 expressed again and again. And it were only the Germans who were able to truly understand and revitalize Greek culture –​in contrast to other European people, especially the French who always had imitated the Romans. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a true European figure, was posthumously made the founding hero of German culture. Graecophilia (or Neo-​Humanism) was an attempt to overcome French political and cultural hegemony and to build a Kulturnation despite of Germany’s political fragmentation. Humboldt maintained that “the Greeks are, for us, not merely a historical people about whom it is useful to know, but an ideal”,3 and consequently made the study of Greek culture the core of the curricula for (Prussian) universities and gymnasia (though the practical reasons for more training in Latin still prevailed). German philologists were proud of developing Altertumswissenschaft (Friedrich August Wolf), a new “scientific” approach to antiquity, and German scholarship took undoubtedly the lead during the nineteenth century. Admiration of Greek, and that meant especially Athenian, philosophy, literature, art and architecture did not imply that one considered Athenian democracy as a model political order. That had never been the case in the European tradition. Following the general criticism of Plato and Aristotle, reading Thucydides and Xenophon on the turmoils of Athenian politics, regarding the unpleasant features of Athenian democracy as seemed to be revealed by the Attic orators, Athenian democracy had always been perceived as instable if not tending towards “mob rule”; or at least it was considered as only adequate * I have drawn on the pertinent chapters in Nippel (2008), making use of the English translation (2016) by permission of Cambridge UP. 1 Schlegel (1979 [1795–​96]), 276. 2 Humboldt (1986b), 92. 3 Humboldt (1986a), 65.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_010

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272 Nippel for a city-​state, not for great states and especially not for a commercial society that could not permanently occupy its citizens with political and military engagement. In the late nineteenth century Jacob Burckhardt wrote that “during the intervening millennia it has not been Athens as a state, but as a cultural potential, that has remained the source of inspiration”.4 This statement expressed an opinion prevailing all over Europe (and the USA as well) at least until the mid-​nineteenth century when “democracy” became a political catchword which, however, in the eyes of the educated and propertied classes had been discredited by the 1848 revolutions. German discussions on Athenian democracy were not peculiar; they were indeed strongly influenced by the political developments and discourses elsewhere, especially in France and Great Britain. 1

Repercussions of the French Revolution

The French Revolution had retrospectively changed the image of the ancient republics for the worse. Since the fall of Robespierre the Jacobins were blamed to have aimed at a return to popular rule like in antiquity and had practiced terreur as the only means to achieve such an anachronistic goal. Though this argument aimed especially at the alleged Laconophilia of the Jacobins (and was a grotesque exaggeration), Athenian democracy became a sort of collateral victim. This debate was also echoed in Germany. The Göttingen classicist Christian Gottlob Heyne was known for his ceremonial speeches, in which he would recount current events in terms of their ancient parallels. In 1793 he compared demagoguery in Athens with the present one in France.5 The following year the Göttingen historian Arnold Heeren compared the Athenian decree of 427 bce to punish the secession of Mytilene with the National Convention’s decision of October 1793 to destroy counter-​revolutionary Lyon. The “Athenian rabble and its leaders” were “no better, if anything wilder and more bloodthirsty” than their Parisian match. The role of demagogues in Athenian democracy had only become really clear in the light of experience with the leaders of the Jacobins.6 In the same year, the philosopher Christian Garve wrote that the disadvantages of democracy were as plain in antiquity as they were in the present.7 Johann 4 5 6 7

Burckhardt (1977), 224. Heyne (1793), 182. Heeren (1821 [1794]), 244. Garve (1796 [1794]), 455.

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Gottfried Herder who before the French Revolution had praised the “common republican spirit of the Greeks” as an expression of “Greek liberty”,8 wrote in 1795: “Wishing to be back in the times of Greece and Rome would be foolish; […] even if we could be so transported, we could scarce gain in the exchange anything that we really desired”.9 Ernst Moritz Arndt, a propagandist for German resistance to Napoleon, warned in 1806 against a revival of free states on the Greek model, since these had all been based on the oppression of slaves. Association with this model would be “the most disgraceful misfortune of the human race. […] God preserve us eternally from such freedom and equality, and such republics”.10 For Hegel, slavery was “a necessary condition for a good democracy [Athens] where each citizens had the right and the duty to both give and hear lectures on state administration held in public, to exercise in gymnasia, and participate in festivals”. The precondition for all this was that “the labour associated with daily life was done by slaves”; “the equality of the citizens presumed that slaves would be excluded from this”.11 2

Burckhardt, Weber and the Subordination of the Individual to the State

The post-​Thermidorian discourse on a fatal orientation of the Jacobins towards antiquity has been summed up in Benjamin Constant’s famous 1819 lecture De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes. Though Constant had in effect differentiated between Sparta, Athens and Rome and had especially attested Athenian democracy quite liberal features, the lesson drawn from his text was that never and nowhere in antiquity the rights of the individual had been protected. This idea was further fostered by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges’ Cite antique (1864).12 The line from Constant and Fustel leads on to Jacob Burckhardt. His Grie­ chische Kulturgeschichte was published posthumously between 1898 and 1902, based on his Basel lecture notes from the period 1872–​1886. The Swiss Burckhardt, a former pupil of August Böckh in Berlin who in 1871 was offered the 8 9 10 11 12

Herder (1891 [1775]), 620f. Herder (1953), 483. Arndt (1912), 79f. Hegel (1986a), 311 [Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, part  2, section 2, ­chapter 3]. On Constant and Fustel see Payen’s chapter in this volume (Editor’s note).

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274 Nippel succession to Ranke’s chair in Berlin (which he declined), was despite certain reservations on both sides a member of the German scholarly community. Burckhardt depicted Athenian democracy as a peculiar example of the Greek state. The “Greek idea of the state” –​a common notion in contemporary scholarship13 –​implied the complete subordination of the individual to the collectivity; antiquity knew of no such thing as human rights.14 Burckhardt thought that while this was true of all poleis, it was especially true of Athenian democracy. The great mass of poor citizens sought to use their political power to effect a redistribution of wealth. This was the purpose both of day payments and liturgies, the consequence was the state’s falling “into the hands of a moody and greedy demos”.15 In this “tyranny of the majority”16 the court system played a very special role, dominated as it was by the “public terrorism” of sycophants, semi-​professional accusers who focussed especially upon “the innocent, particularly if they had some property, placing them in a constant state of siege”.17 The criminal justice system lacked “all fairness and objectivity in sentencing, all proportion between delict and punishment, and so the basic matters that we expect of criminal law”.18 This led to a “complete uncertainty about justice, since people were found guilty solely because the confiscation of their possessions was thought to be something that would help the public finances”.19 It would have been more consistent with the aims of the Athenian populace “to have acted more openly […] and said that one or another citizen had to die because the state needed his property”.20 The Athenian people constantly treated the “property of victims” as “possible booty”, enjoying trials as “artful theatre […] in which the unlucky and those under threat had to flatter the people and clown publicly”.21 Circumstances in Athens, where “the popular assembly and the courts with all their official formalities allow themselves to be used as the stage and instrument of the most vicious chicanery and persecution” are like those prevailing during the Jacobin Terror of 1793–​1794, except that in Athens “there must have always been proportionally more actively heinous people than in any other big city of our times”.22 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Ahrens (1860). Burckhardt (1977), 1.80, 72. Burckhardt (1977), 1.218. Burckhardt (1977), 1.216, n. 486. Burckhardt (1977), 1.228f.; 232. Burckhardt (1977), 1.231. Burckhardt (1977), 1.237. Burckhardt (1977), 1.238. Burckhardt (1977), 1.220f. Burckhardt (1977), 4.323f.

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Nonetheless, Burckhardt did note the freedom of Attic comedy as compared to conditions prevailing during the French Revolution. It was, he said, “historically unique” that the “Peloponnesian War and the associated domestic and foreign crises” coincided with “the most sublime satire”. Furthermore, Athens “willingly looked into this distorting mirror. On the other hand, during the French Revolution anyone who expressed the slightest doubt about its pathos, or even depicted it grotesquely, would have soon enough lost their head”.23 Burckhardt’s rejection of ancient democracy corresponds to his distaste for modern democratic ideas, and especially the way in which these had come to be expressed as demands for social reform. Since the time of the French Revolution democracy had, he wrote, been linked to “a thousand different sources”, but in each case the state was expected to do what society was not prepared to do:  provide “individual castes with a particular right to work and subsistence”.24 Burckhardt’s concern about the development of democracy was at first shaped not so much by his perspective upon his larger European neighbours, but rather by what was happening in Switzerland, and especially his own city of Basel. In the course of the nineteenth century various movements for constitutional reform had overcome (in diverse cantons) the rule of a small patriciate and succeeded in the introduction of broad suffrage and elements of direct democracy based upon referenda. A late echo of the kind of critique of antiquity outlined here can be found in Max Weber’s manuscript “The City”, published posthumously in 1921 but written sometime between 1911 and 1914. Weber was familiar with the work of Benjamin Constant, Fustel de Coulanges and Jacob Burckhardt, and there is here an unmistakable resonance of these authors. Weber’s text on “The City” bundles together a number of universal-​historical perspectives that had in part already been aired in other writings, the central question being the uniqueness of the way in which urban community in the Occident was characterised by a politically-​engaged citizenry. He compared both ancient and medieval Europe with the Orient, but he was also interested in the differences between the ancient and medieval eras; for although there were obvious parallels in their political and institutional development, it was only in the medieval period that the conditions for “modern capitalism” and the “modern state” emerged. Weber organised the contrast between an ancient order centred upon politics, war and plunder, and a medieval order oriented to the peaceful pursuit of trade and commerce in terms of the ancient homo politicus and the medieval

23 24

Burckhardt (1977), 3.252f. Burckhardt (1982), 370f.

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276 Nippel homo oeconomicus. The ancient citizen was said to be a member of a “warrior caste”, for whom there was in principle “no freedom of choice in the way one led one’s life”: The citizenry took whatever steps it thought necessary in dealing with the individual. A disorderly household, the squandering of the inherited estate, […] marriage breakdown, the careless upbringing of a son, mistreatment of parents, impiety, hubris –​any and every form of behaviour that endangered military and civil order or that might bring down the displeasure of the gods on the polis was harshly punished, despite whatever Pericles might have said in his funeral oration recorded by Thucydides about each being able to live his own life in Athens.25 Athenian democracy in particular made demands upon its citizens in regard to politics and military service that were “historically unprecedented for all previous and subsequent developed cultures”.26 In exchange, they were offered the rewards of an expansionary politics: allocations of land and booty, together with payment for military and political service. This prevented the development in the mass of the citizenry of any inclination for “peaceful economic gain and rational economic conduct”.27 The financial obligation laid upon well-​to-​do citizens represented a constant threat to private wealth: “The democratic polis laid its hand upon the property of any citizen that seemed substantial”.28 The popular courts were another source of peril, composed as they were of “hundreds of jurors bereft of knowledge of the law”, whose “absolutely arbitrary qadi justice” posed such a threat to formal legal security that one was “more surprised by the continued existence of property than by the rapid changes of fortune that accompanied every political calamity”.29 By “qadi justice” Weber meant legal systems which supposedly favoured an orientation to material justice at the expense of formal legal security. In this respect Athenian jury courts were comparable to the Revolutionary Tribunals of the French Revolution, and also to the respective courts established during the German Revolution of 1918–​1919 that had failed to limit their remit to politically relevant cases. The dominance of the popular assembly inevitably led to the rule of a demagogue, whose role was a consequence of the

25 26 27 28 29

Weber (1999), 283 and 285. Weber (1999), 286. Weber (1999), 288. Weber (1999), 286. Weber (1999), 286f.

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constitutional structure,30 rendering null and void the usual moral contrast drawn between Pericles and Cleon.31 Compared to the “wild demagogy” of the prophets of ancient Israel, decision-​making in the Athenian popular assembly was distinguished by “rationally-​ordered consultation”;32 the political rhetoric of Athenian demagogues should not necessarily therefore be regarded negatively. All the same, the process of political decision-​making in Athens was a long way from the “rational assessment” that was characteristic of the conduct of politics by the senate in the Roman republic.33 Nonetheless, for all the distinctions that Weber makes in individual cases, he does accept that in all of antiquity there was a lack of individual liberty. Given his central question concerning the conditions for the emergence of modern capitalism, he saw the consequence of this in obstacles for the development of economic rationality. Weber considered that direct democracy in modern times was possible only under the kind of conditions prevailing in the Swiss cantons, which were inapplicable in a powerful nation state. When in 1917 he argued for the necessary constitutional reform of Germany (the demand for ministerial responsibility among other things) and Prussia (franchise reform) it was parliamentarism that he favoured above all as the means for selecting suitable political leaders. In this context even the demagogic tendencies of a parliamentary leader had positive features,34 since this involved leadership qualities that Weber considered necessary for any kind of democracy, the more so in modernity given the way that unavoidable bureaucratic tendencies clogged the workings of the political system. Even in democracies there were major decisions that could only be taken by one person: “this unavoidable circumstance means that since the time of Pericles the positive successes of mass democracy have always been at the cost of significant concessions to the Caesarist principle in the selection of leaders”.35 3

Topical Criticism of Athens by Nineteenth Century German Classicists

Constant, Fustel de Coulanges, Burckhardt, and Weber shared the view that antiquity should above all be discussed in universal-​historical terms. They 30 31 32 33 34 35

Weber (1999), 219f.; Weber (1973), 483. Weber (1992), 191. Weber (1921), 335. Weber (1999), 298f. Weber (1984), 537f.; Weber (1992), 162 and 191. Weber (1984), 540.

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278 Nippel were however outsiders from the point of view of the guild of classical scholars formed in the nineteenth century. But professional students of antiquity could neither avoid such basic questions, nor would they have wished to, if they had any sense at all of the “relevance” of their work to their own contemporaries. And so there is, after all, a mutual relationship between discussion of the “big questions” about the specific character of antiquity, and the conduct of specialised historical research. A  sample of the points raised in German works will follow. It was commonly agreed that the lack of a system of representation in antiquity necessarily led to mob rule.36 It was assumed that in Athens “the purest form of autocratic popular rule” prevailed, where “the division of powers was replaced by the union of powers” in a demos that developed “the sense of ruling consciousness of sovereignty”.37 It was further asserted that in Greece the “individual had no rights in his relation to the state”.38 In his Staatshaushaltung der Athener of 1817 August Böckh had characterised the combination of payments to citizens and the apparently confiscatory policy of the courts as follows: It was therefore not enough that these distributions robbed the state of its best forces for advantageous and profitable undertakings, but the desire for alien goods was aroused, and the tension between the rich and the poor was nourished; in the states of antiquity this was a constant and highly dangerous evil, as it can also be today.39 In the lectures on the “Encyclopedia and Methodology of the Philological Sciences” that Böckh regularly gave between 1809 and 1865 he had dubbed ancient liberty as “popular tyranny”: the “liberty of ancient states appears in the process of political development to be only an intermediate link between oriental despotism and the constitutional liberty of modern states”. He did also note that the complete realisation of the constitutional state had yet to be achieved: “If the modern state achieves its aim, then it will far surpass the liberty of antiquity. But it has not yet reached this point everywhere …”.40 There is no space to review in any detail the range of criticisms made by scholars of particular faults in the system of Athenian democracy. Some 36 37 38 39 40

Heeren (1817b [1812]), 181. Pöhlmann (1914), 224f. (sequence of quotations altered). Zeller (1859), 111. Böckh (1886a [1817]), 276. Böckh (1886b [1877]), 268f. (sequence of quotations altered).

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examples must suffice. Under democracy, the citizen offered “his whole life to the state, and in return enjoyed the greatest possible degree of participation in making legislation”. The downside was the “dishonesty of administration, […] the destruction of the common weal, […] the defamation and persecution of those who were less corrupt”.41 Criticism focussed up the role of “demagogues” who “deceived the people” in the same way that Robespierre had,42 and “who said what citizens wanted to hear and sought to satisfy their baser inclinations”, if they did not at the same time (like Cleon) “terrorise” the popular assembly.43 The introduction of payments in return for the assumption of political functions was taken to be a “waste of public money” for the benefit of “the great mass, which for the most part lives at the expense of the state”;44 thus political pay was seen as “a means of promoting mob rule”.45 Wilhelm Roscher drew a parallel between the Athenian practice of day payments, which had advanced “the craving for confiscation and idleness on the part of the great mass”, and corresponding practice for those attending Section assemblies during the “time of the French Terror”.46 Again and again criticism was made of a legal system that provided inadequate protection to property: This neglect of private law […] is proof […] that under the republican spirit the life of the individual exhausted itself in the public realm, and was to an extent so far identified with this realm that all value and meaning was lost for private existence.47 In the jury courts the payment of allowances was said to have attracted “the lowest rabble among an Athenian citizenry already inclined to idleness”.48 These jurors, who had an “average level of education […] similar to that of the workers in our large cities”49 and “had one sole norm in making judgements, and that was the subjective whim of the judge”50, these courts had 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

W. Wachsmuth (1829), 12f. W. Wachsmuth (1828), 154. Curtius (1874), 410, 464. Heeren (1817a), 185. Böckh (1886a [1817]), 709. Roscher (1893), 372. Platner (1824), 11f. Heffter (1822), 485. Beloch (1884), 9. Fränkel (1877), 109f.

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280 Nippel implemented “arbitrary acts […] of the sovereign demos”,51 and practiced “despotism of the people”.52 The little Athenian took pleasure in “seeing the rich, before whom in his social life he must bow, shaking in their sandals”.53 In the courts the Athenian luxuriated “in the full enjoyment of his sovereignty”, finding “great titillation for his sense of self-​worth in seeing rich and aristocratic people trembling at his feet, seeking to curry his favour”.54 This all led to “crude class rule, […] a tyranny of the majority over the propertied minority”,55 or to the endangering of citizens’ life and property, “of such a kind that we can hardly imagine today, living as we do under the protection of a monarchical state based upon the rule of law”.56 Filling positions by sortition came in for much less criticism than other Athenian procedures. This could have been because it is also quite suited to nondemocratic systems; the semi-​aristocratic Swiss cantons of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries made use of the practice to avoid dirty election campaigns or bribery of the electorate.57 Added to this was the fact that scholars since the Renaissance had directed their attention to the “technical” question of the date on which this system had been introduced in Athens, the (supposed) identification of Solon as its originator helping here as well, since he was not suspected of radical tendencies.58 In any case, it was recognised that the Athenians deviated from the principle of selection by lot when it came to some important posts in the magistracy, “where skill and experience are necessary for rule”.59 By contrast, the institution of ostracism was repeatedly criticised as an expression of the “tyrannical legislation of the popular community”60 over political leaders; or as “one of the most horrible creations of democratic despotism”,61 which also carried the risk for strategoi that “their appointment in the field […] would end with their becoming a martyr”.62

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff (1910), 114f. Holm (1889), 227. Hermann (1875 [1831]), 613. Droysen (1837), 9f. Beloch (1884), 10. Pöhlmann (1913), 42f. Roscher (1847), 84; Curtius (1903), 313. Lugebil (1871), 567ff. Böckh (1886a [1817]), 201. Niebuhr (1843 [1813]), 149. Krug (1816), 10. Curtius (1874), 413.

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Quite often, the “scandal trials” of the late fifth century were discussed as revealing the true nature of Athenian democracy. The persecutions of those suspected to be involved in the mutilation of the Herms and the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries in 415 bce was called a “monster trial” replete with “illegalities and arbitrary actions”; the investigative commission was compared with the Committee of Public Safety in the French Revolution.63 Or it was said that “the investigative commissions and denunciations, persecution and judicial murder remind one in many ways of the worst period of terrorism during the French Revolution”.64 The second great scandal, “a stain on Athens’ record, or rather on the constitution under which such things could happen”,65 was the condemnation and execution of the Athenian board of generals who in 406 bce won a great naval battle during the Peloponnesian War over the Spartans off the Arginusae islands (near Lesbos, near to the Asia Minor coast) but had not saved those who had been shipwrecked (or failed to pick up their bodies for decent burial). One followed Xenophon’s tendentious report on the proceedings in the popular assembly, shifting all the blame on to an angry mob that was not prepared to accept any procedural rule. It was thus a short step to the interpretation that the proceedings were unlawful, tumultuous, that they involved “irresponsible judicial murder”.66 In this scholars saw “the terrorism of an enraged mob”,67 and the “anarchistic madness of a court lacking all legal form”,68 all of which was a reminder of the “bloodthirsty Revolutionary Tribunals” of the French Revolution.69 Or parallels with the 1848 Revolution were drawn: in the demand that the people could decide whatever they wanted one could hear the brutal siren voice of the demagogy that, sovereign in its stupidity, we got to know in the fateful year of 48 as the most effective partner of reaction. This is the democracy of the streets, of that “extreme left” who call for “the law of the people’s will”, but for whom the people is any rabble that has been drummed up.70 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Goetz (1875/​76), 562, 552 and 563. Köchly (1859 [1855]), 307. Beloch (1893), 99; Meyer (1902a), 650, talks of an “irremovable brand” that Athenian democracy had imprinted upon itself. Busolt (1904), 1609; Vischer (1877 [1861]), 517. Lipsius (1905), 185. W. Wachsmuth (1853), 128. He here also talks of a “murderous mood among the rabble”. Herbst (1855), 56. Köchly (1859 [1855]), 323.

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282 Nippel While some of the scholarship dealing with the scandals of 415 and 406 bce quite understandably reflected contemporary revolutionary experiences, it was different with the trial of Socrates. The case of Socrates has always been an issue in European intellectual history. In the eighteenth century a few studies were published that did justify the condemnation of Socrates. Nonetheless, criticism of a scandalous judgement predominated, so that it was possible in the nineteenth century to argue that the judgement against Socrates “has survived for millennia in the memory of humanity as the greatest crime of Athenian history”.71 Hegel’s interpretation became very influential, seeing in Socrates the founder of an independence of spirit and subjective morality which was ahead of its time, with the outcome that the Athenians, caught in a tragic conflict, could only see Socrates as a foe of their order.72 At the end of the nineteenth century Robert Pöhlmann thought that this reading of the trial of Socrates already represented the prevailing view, so that he had to counter it. According to Pöhlmann the “judicial murder” of Socrates was proof that “if the idea of liberty comes into conflict with the instinct for equality, we find out how little the great cultural interest of liberty means compared with the mass idea of equality”.73 But in the case of Socrates, the formal procedural rules had been properly followed. That is why some authors pointed out that Athens was not a police state and that, given the structure of the Athenian penal system, the judgement made against Socrates created no precedent.74 4

Positive Images of Athens

Other aspects of Athenian public life created a positive image. This holds especially true to the Athenian comedies. Scholarly interest was primarily directed to questions of historical or antiquarian interest, or of the sources for the plays organised by the polis and presented to a public made up of a significant part of the Athenian citizenry. There was felt to be a need to account historically for the way in which Pericles appeared in the comedies of his time as a kind 71 72 73 74

Meyer (1902b), 227. Hegel (1986a), 328–​330 [Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, part 2, section 2, ­chapter 3]; Hegel (1986b), 496ff. [Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Part 1, section 1, ­chapter 2]. Hegel’s point was taken up by Forchhammer (1837). Pöhlmann (1899), 107, 112 and 103. Holm (1891), 37f., n. 4.

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of tyrant (only fragments of these comedies have survived); and how, in the midst of a war, Cleon could be so vehemently attacked by Aristophanes as an unscrupulous and corrupt popular orator. As already stated by Wieland in 1794, this observation conveyed “a curious sense of the character of a sovereign people […] who were relaxed enough to laugh about themselves in public, and generous enough for such an unbridled political farce to disadvantage neither the writer nor the demagogues they pilloried”.75 Aristophanes had not only represented the Athenians as “sheep” who “treat the demagogue as a bellwether, following after him and repeating what he says”,76 but had voiced his hostility to the court system and cash payments; and so the question arose how far these plays were merely skilful although inconsequential entertainment, and how far they might be considered critical of the system. In an essay of 1844 Theodor Bergk noted that “the openness of the public realm was the lifeblood of any free state”. He added: One is not wrong in judging the strength of a state from the degree of liberty enjoyed by speech and writing; every restriction of public opinion is always a result of mistrust of its own powers by the ruling body of a state. When Athens was at the height of its power the writing of comedies enjoyed the most complete freedom.77 Despite of the text’s character as a historico-​philological account the allusion to contemporary restrictions on freedom of opinion are obvious. Comparisons of this sort could lead to more positive assessments of Athenian democracy. For instance, Friedrich Wilhelm Tittmann’s Darstellung der griechischen Staatsverfassungen (1822) began with remarks about the “different nature of liberty in ancient and modern states”, evident above all in the way in which, today, state power was subject to the law. This was an idea that would have been alien to the Greeks, fixated as they were upon participation in decision-​making. Tittmann did however indicate that the Athenians were nevertheless familiar with the idea of the legal restriction of majority opinion, as proofed by the proceeding against an unlawful popular decision (graphe paranomon). He went on to show that, despite all appropriate criticism relating to the insecurity of property given the lack of a foundation in natural law, the lack of clear norms of punishment, the arbitrariness of sentences or ostracism, on religious freedom and freedom of speech the overall picture was not 75 76 77

Wieland (1988 [1796]), 233. Droysen (1836), 47. Bergk (1886 [1844]), 452 and 449.

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284 Nippel that gloomy. He noted the many procedural rules designed to prevent harmful factors, so that in the comparison of ancient and modern procedure the balance was no longer so much against the former. Even in respect of some particular Athenian constitutional institutions there were different opinions expressed during the nineteenth century. It was for example recognised that the function of ostracism in the developed form of democracy was to make a choice between two politicians competing for the leadership of opinion in the popular assembly, and by exiling one of them maintain a stable majority.78 One of the first was Wilhelm Roscher, whose image of a “constitutional change of ministers”, however, obscured the fact that ostracism was needed exactly because there was no government in the modern sense.79 Wilhelm Oncken rightly judged that it was a matter of “the internal and external unity of those governing the state, and it was not those who had become ‘too powerful’ who were affected, but instead one of two rivals who had the most votes against him”.80 5

The “Rehabilitation” of Athenian Democracy

The impulse for a thorough revision of German attitudes towards Athenian democracy came from outside, namely George Grote’s History of Greece from the Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great (12 volumes, 1846–​1856).81 Grote thought that the modern critique of Athens was driven by the contemporary rejection of the democratic principle. He countered with a vindication of the Athenian democracy that refuted the usual criticisms of election by lot, of day payments, of the courts, of ostracism, the role of demagogues like Cleon and of the scandal trials. In Athens liberty was based upon popular participation and the rule of law. This did not mean that Athens provided a model for institutional solutions. Grote was no supporter of popular direct democracy, but sought instead a careful reform of Britain’s parliamentary monarchy. Grote’s history was in England quickly recognised as a standard work; in Germany the reception was more ambiguous. Nevertheless, the impact was so marked that it was possible to assert (with only slight exaggeration) hat “all the German studies on Greek history of the last fifty years of the nineteenth 78 79 80 81

Lugebil (1860). Roscher (1842), 380, n. 4. (this footnote continues over several pages). Oncken (1866), 57f. About Grote’s work and concepts see Kierstead’s chapter in this volume (editor’s note).

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century are either for or against Grote”.82 In England it later became a cliché that German scholars struggled to properly understand Grote’s position because they were not, like him, a member of a free parliament. A German literature survey of 1857 noted that The English historian [Grote] has been accused of allowing his own democratic partisanship an unwarranted influence upon the historical account; while Grote for his part has accused German philologists of being prejudiced against Greek democracy, and against the Athenian demos in particular. The author suggested that Grote was more in the right than his critics, allowing that the “prejudice against Greek democracy in many philologists could not be denied”, deriving however not merely from their “own way of political thinking”, but rather more “from their constant involvement with ancient writers who took any and every opportunity to express their scorn, derision or hatred of the people and of popular rule”.83 In 1865 Wilhelm Oncken enthusiastically greeted Grote’s “epoch-​making work” and used it as the basis for his own apologia for the Athenian court system as a “nursery of public morality” and a “school for legal sense”.84 Other authors followed Grote’s vindication of Cleon’s honour so that a later writer mocked an “entire cult literature of a liberal Cleonphilism”.85 A forerunner in this respect was Johann Gustav Droysen, who in his forewords to his Aristophanes translations from 1835 to 1838 had presented a positive image of the demagogue Cleon.86 Droysen, however, had praised Cleon as a representative of Athens’ imperial policy not of its democratic system. There was a distinct prejudice among certain German classical scholars against Grote’s “gospel of democracy”, its “illusions […] regarding the cultural and political value of a democracy” that had proved itself in recent times to be “such a fateful illusion”,87 together with the idea that his “rehabilitation” of Athenian democracy was heavily marked by the political values of an “unhistorical Liberalism”.88 Writers of quite different political persuasion and scholarly bent like Robert Pöhlmann (who accused Grote of ignoring social tensions) and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff shared the view that 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Momigliano (1955), 225. Müller (1857), 741f. Oncken (1865), 9 and 286. Landwehr (1888), 110. Droysen (1837): “Einleitung zu den Rittern”. Pöhlmann (1902), 12; Pöhlmann (1895 [1890]), 320. Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff (1893), 378.

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286 Nippel Grote’s account of the Athenian demos glossed over a great deal. All the same, it was recognised that this amounted to little more than a correction to the ideological condemnation that had prevailed for so long, and that the time had now come for detailed studies of law and constitution, a position that Wilamowitz supported in the light of the rediscovery of Aristotle’s text on the Athenian constitution.89 Curt Wachsmuth thought the “deep and penetrating assessment of the political life of the Athenians and their great statesmen” to have great merit, but criticised the underlying “individualist political economy” of the “Manchester School”. Nonetheless, he finally concluded that Grote’s work “is such a great advance on everything previously written on the subject that it has been greeted on all sides with pleasure and admiration”.90 Even a politically-​conservative scholar like Wilamowitz had no problem in having a much more positive attitude to Athenian democracy, at least in certain respects. In his 1877 speech, “On the Magnificence of the Attic Empire”, Wilamowitz admired the Delian League as “the sole attempt in antiquity to achieve the uniting of a people through a federation”. At the same time he praised the fact that Athenians were conscious of living in a state based upon the rule of law.91 The attribution here of national unification to the Athenians can be explained by the (very dubious) assumption of an federalist equivalence between the Athenian Empire and the German Empire of 1871. Wilamowitz considered Athens to be the “first state based on liberty and civil duty”; the world should regard it “with awe, as long as it recognises these foundations itself”.92 One fellow scholar saw in Wilamowitz’s forced parallel a “fateful error”, since here “German history and politics is constantly discovered in the Greek past, while the German history of the previous century is meant to have taught us how to understand that of fifth-​century Hellas”. He went on to ask whether the public was now thoroughly confused: was Athens or Macedonia supposed to be compared with Prussia, and was it Alcibiades or Antipatros (vice-​regent after the death of Alexander the Great), who were to be compared with Bismarck?93 Eduard Meyer claimed for his generation that “we have become less partisan in political questions, and so have gained a more correct and more comprehensive historical judgement”.94 He thought that Athens had achieved a “higher humanity”, 89 90 91 92 93 94

Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff (1893), 378–​381. C. Wachsmuth (1895), 39 and 41. Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff (1912 [1877]), 31f. Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff (1910), 3. Bauer (1889), 88f. Meyer (1901), 293.

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more noble and moderate, a truly free perspective and treatment of human and state life of which the narrowness and pettiness of any other state would not have been capable.95 6

From the First World War to the Third Reich

Among the war literature produced from 1914 to 1918 (besides comparisons with the Peloponnesian War as regards the question of who had started the war) a monograph by Engelbert Drerup was published dealing with fourth-​ century Athens as an “advocates’ republic”. The belittlement of the (naturally) corrupt “professional politician” Demosthenes was also aimed at the enemy politicians in France and England.96 During the Weimar Republic Athenian democracy was invoked both by its supporters and its critics; the former seeing in it a model for contemporary times, especially in respect of the plebiscite, the “most genuine” democratic element in the Constitution.97 From a different perspective in the mid-​1920s Ulrich Wilcken had criticised Athen’s misconceived “social policy”, using as a standard Bismarck’s social legislation. In Athens, he contended, the people treated the state as a welfare institution. Since metics were excluded from payments and grain distributions, the system was really about the “exploitation of a majority lacking rights by a privileged minority”, and so was far removed from “our German social policy, as inaugurated on 17 November 1881 through imperial decree [introducing social insurance]”.98 Apart from this, the traditional criticisms of Athenian democracy were repeated, using arguments that were either explicit or implicit criticisms of the present. Victor Ehrenberg wrote in 1923 that Athenian courts represented the “degenerative features of a consistent democracy”, namely “demagogy, bribery, mass instinct”.99 However, employment of the Athenian example to construe the tension existing between democracy and the security of individual rights was nullified by general disillusionment with parliamentary democracy in the Weimar Republic. Large sections of the bourgeoisie were sceptical of, or even hostile to, 95 96 97 98 99

Meyer (1902a), 9. Drerup (1916). Cauer (1931), 267. Wilcken (1926), 112. Ehrenberg (1965 [1923]), 14.

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288 Nippel parliamentary rule, political parties, and to “liberalism”. They longed for the rebirth of a strong state, a sentiment cultivated in the mythology of Bismarck as the “Iron Chancellor”; or for salvation through a political messiah. During the National-​Socialist era classical scholars sought to emphasise the importance of the Graeco-​Roman heritage, competing here with reference to the ancient Germans. This was sometimes a means of securing the place of ancient languages in school and classical studies in the university. Since there was no hegemonic historical narrative for antiquity at least, competition developed among scholars jockeying for the regime’s favour; everything was on offer, be it Sparta, Athens or Rome.100 As for Athens, there developed a perhaps surprising positive re-​evaluation of its democracy. Those features that had hitherto been included in the usual negative criticism of Athens now counted as positives. In an article of 1934 Wolfgang Schadewaldt characterised Jacob Burckhardt’s critique of “the enslavement of the individual by the state” as a misunderstanding, arising from the liberal spirit of the nineteenth century. The Greek state was instead in a sense more powerful, and created closer bonds, than most modern states; but even with this great power it preserved in the individual a feeling of liberty and independence of a kind that is absent in a liberal state because its idea of liberty, to be a just liberty, is too harmless. In Athens, as a total state, there is a very special reciprocity between liberty and restraint, an identity of self-​sacrifice and self-​assertion.101 This new perspective upon Athenian democracy manifested itself in various ways. Examples include the drawing of parallels between the political thought of Thucydides and Hitler’s Mein Kampf;102 the interpretation of Pericles’ legislation on citizenship as protection from “the mingling of foreign blood”103 and a measure aimed at maintaining the “racial strength of Athens”;104 the interpretation of the form of democracy prevailing in Athens as “the essential expression of the people’s nature” and legal equality as the “necessary consequence of blood equality”.105

100 That is not to deny that a great number of traditional publications without political implications appeared during the Nazi period. 101 Schadewaldt (1934), 21 and 32. This is the text of a lecture given on 9 November [!]‌ 1932. 102 Berve (1938a), 49. 103 Taeger (1934), 10. 104 Erasmus (1939), 77. 105 Harder (1934), 499.

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We should deal with Helmut Berve in rather more detail here, whose views were in many respects already developed before he became a prominent and influential representative of Nazi ancient history. His Griechische Geschichte (1931/​1933) described the participation in public affairs that Athenian citizens enjoyed, thanks to day payments as “the fulfilment of true communal life”, so that “the totality of citizens melded itself with the state”.106 Berve justified the condemnation of Socrates, writing that Socrates represented an “individualist ethic”, that he was “an open protagonist of a life-​norm antagonistic to the state” and should be seen as “a harmful element who had to be eradicated”.107 Since 1927 Berve had held a respected chair in Leipzig, moving to Munich in 1943; he joined the nsdap in 1933 and then was active at many levels of academic politics. During the Third Reich his scholarly reputation made him the most important representative of those classical scholars who sought to contribute to the National-​Socialist conception of history. He now concentrated on popularizing ancient history in books, articles, lectures, and broadcasts for a general public and in talks for schoolteachers, army-​, ss–​and police-​officers. On the one hand, Berve was an admirer of Sparta: specifically, of “the education of youth, communal spirit, soldierly life, subordination and heroic attitude of the individual”. This all helped create a “type of Herrenmensch”, thanks to “natural selection” and the “community of blood”.108 On the other hand, he sought to defend Athens against the “accusation” that it had been a democracy; he pointed out that the citizenry had always been in a minority.109 Berve praised the “readiness for sacrifice” of the Athenians, their massive “commitment of blood and property for the polis”.110 The history of the fifth century bce showed a truly shocking commitment of the best blood among the Athenian citizenry. The Parthenon was built not by a generation enjoying a golden period of peace, but by one that sacrificed countless numbers of its best men, and was hourly prepared to sacrifice itself for the polis.111 In February 1940, Berve made Pericles the subject of his speech as Rector of Leipzig University. The talk is typical of the genre. Connections to the present are sketched out for the public, while at the same time suggesting the relevance of the 1 06 107 108 109 110 111

Berve (1931) 273. Berve (1933), 62. Berve (1937), 7, 39 and 45. Berve (1934), 1329f. Berve (1938b), 12. Berve (1936), 725.

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290 Nippel speaker’s specialist area to modern life. Pericles is portrayed as a true leader. With his “demonic strength of leadership” he succeeded “in activating all the strata of the Athenian people, moulding them together into a genuine living community within the state”; the provision of day payments for political functions and service in the fleet and in building works were all part and parcel of this. To finance them “foreign undertakings” were needed, “which both satisfied the lust for power and created the material basis for the new state community”. The exploitation of allies served to provide “material security for a life worthy of the Attic Herrenvolk”. Since “Pericles’ will and the healthy instinct of the citizenry harmonised naturally”, the great man and his people appeared “to have fused into one”.112 This was not a novel insight; we can read in a text from the late nineteenth century that “Pericles and the Attic state were to a certain extent one, or grown into one”.113 But this was now understood in the sense of a “true democracy” in which the Führer is the embodiment of Volksgemeinschaft. Berve is aware of the danger that his glorification of Pericles might cast a shadow over Hitler. He therefore cautions against direct comparisons with the present, not least because the Athenian “war on many fronts” from 461 bce, and the result of the Peloponnesian War, were not especially encouraging examples, or could represent a warning against a “short-​sighted frenzy of conquest”.114 Instead, he suggests that any such direct comparisons not only sin against the historical past, but just as much against our National-​Socialist present, its Führer and their unique, but not yet final, creations. […] We who experience contemporary politics on a gigantic scale certainly have no need of the past to enable us to feel the breath of great deeds and revolutionary events. But for our inquiring minds to grasp, amidst the storms which rage around us, the unchanging laws of the life of Indo-​Germanic peoples, some acquaintance with such an exemplary history as that of the Greeks can here be of some assistance.115 7

No German Exceptionalism

After the Second World War “democracy” was installed as an ideal, the sole legitimate political order. Thus, it became very unlikely that Athens was 1 12 113 114 115

Berve (1940), 13, 7f., 20 and 22. Schmidt (1877), 177. Berve (1940), 9 and 27. Berve (1940), 28.

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condemned as being a democracy per se. Numerous studies of Athenian democracy have appeared, investigating a range of individual issues, and seeking to reconstruct the way in which the political system worked. Studies coming from the Marxist-​Leninist camp have contributed very little to this discussion; they have addressed their attention to the socio-​economic basis of the system, namely slavery, and its social location.116 Western democracy, however, was based on representation, separation of powers, guarantees of civil and human rights etc. In relation to this type of democracy Athens could either be praised as having achieved a far higher degree of political participation for which representative democracy was only an insufficient surrogate; or Athens could be (anachronistically) criticized as “not really democratic” because of the exclusion of women and metics or the lack of human rights. This is an ongoing debate on an international level and thus one cannot single out a specific German line of thought in contrast to American, British, French, Italian etc. attitudes. With respect to classical scholarship the work of Christian Meier on ancient Greece may be considered as a genuine German contribution (which does not necessarily mean that it is representative for the mainstream of German scholarship since the 1970s). Meier adopts Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history), which had been developed by Reinhart Koselleck with respect to the transformations of political terminology between 1750 and 1850, in order to reconstruct the development of the polis as a community based on citizenship and finally the emergence of democracy. He is especially interested in a sort of intellectual revolution that made the way to democracy possible though not inevitable.117 In his view, this system should not only be understood in terms of institutions and procedures118 but also as rooted in its specific culture; especially tragedy is a necessary complement as a medium to reflect the dramatic changes in politics and society.119 A consequence of this approach, however, is Meier’s concentration on fifth-​century Athens,120 whereas the fourth century (with quite better documentation with respect to the institutions) is more or less ignored. Meier’s work can be read as a new evaluation of Athens as a “cultural potential” in Burkhardt’s sense though Meier presents a positive image

116 A representative sample of East German (and some Western Marxist) scholarship is provided by the collective volumes edited by Welskopf (1973–​74). The underlying concept of a “crisis of the polis” is rather dubious. 117 Meier (1980). 118 As in the work of his German contemporary Bleicken (1994). 119 Meier (1988). 120 Meier (1993).

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292 Nippel of democracy in striking contrast to Burckhardt’s gloomy one. Behind Meier’s stress on the “political identity” of the Athenians there is an implicit argument that in modern times democracy cannot survive without a sense of civic responsibility that is quite distinct from the representation of private interests. At the same time Meier states that the structural conditions of the present leave open no way back to the institutional forms of antiquity.

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Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, U. v. (1912 [1877]) “Von des attischen Reiches Herrlichkeit,” in Idem, Reden und Vorträge. 3rd edn. Berlin: Weidmann, 30–​66. Wilcken, U. (1926) Griechische Geschichte im Rahmen der Altertumsgeschichte. 2nd edn. München: Oldenbourg. Zeller, E. (1859) “Der platonische Staat in seiner Bedeutung für die Folgezeit,” Historische Zeitschrift 1: 108–​126.

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­c hapter 9

Liberty Ancient and Modern in Twentieth-​Century Italy Between Classical Scholarship and Political Theory Dino Piovan An analysis of the reception of Athenian democracy in twentieth-​century Italy cannot avoid focusing on the very lively discussion about the value of Greek freedom that arose in the 1930s among some historians of the ancient world.1 At that time Fascism had already abolished the liberal regime and begun to build a totalitarian state, even if the old constitution, released by Piedmont’s king Carlo Alberto in 1848 (the so-​called Statuto albertino), was formally still in effect. During the Fascist regime in Italy (1922–​1943) the cult of ancient Rome became part of the official ideology and Roman history and culture were the object of heavy manipulation and exploitation. On the contrary, ancient Greece was less easy to abuse, therefore it was underestimated and partly marginalized even in the academic field.2 This was the context of the debate about Greek liberty, that is, Athenian democracy, as it was mentioned when politicians and academics spoke of ancient Greece. It is not casual that the word liberty and not democracy was usually employed. Fascism had abolished both liberty and democracy so the philo-​Fascist historians did not distinguish between them, whereas the non-​Fascist intellectuals were influenced by the political thought of Benedetto Croce (1866–​1952). As it is well known, Croce had a complex relationship with democracy. Before Fascism went to power, in fact, Croce had been a critic of democracy or, to put it in clearer terms, he was against “the populist theory of democracy stemming from Rousseau, or

1 I am thankful to Carlo Franco and Giovanni Giorgini for their comments and suggestions and to Lucy Simonato for helping me to revise my English. The translations from the quoted passages, originally in Italian, are my own. 2 About the Fascist cult of Rome see Giardina (2000), 212–​296; Belardelli (2005), 206–​236; Nelis (2013) and Nelis (2018); about Greek history studies during the Fascist age see Piovan (2018a). About the Italian intellectuals in the face of Fascisms and anti-​Fascism see the very keen and well-​balanced essays by Angelo Ventura, now collected in Ventura (2017).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_011

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what might be called simply egalitarianism” in favor of a liberalism that for him “means primarily two things—​pluralism and anti-​egalitarianism”.3 At the beginning Croce was not against Fascism since, as many other Italian Liberals, politicians as well as intellectuals, he was convinced that it would be only a short pause in the constitutional government and a bulwark against the danger of Bolshevism. It was only after the totalitarian laws of 1925, when many liberties were suppressed, that Croce changed unequivocally his stance so far as to become the moral and cultural leader of the anti-​Fascist opposition. At the same time, he began to deeply revise and elaborate his political conception and to write historical works such as the History of Italy and the History of Europe that had a large impact both on the anti- ​and the non-​Fascist culture.4 These works influenced also the students of the new generation who had not known the liberal age, such as Arnaldo Momigliano (1908–​1987) and Piero Treves (1911–​1992). Momigliano and Treves, then very young scholars, were both students of Gaetano De Sanctis (1870–​1957), who was then the major Italian professor of ancient history and, incidentally, one of the very few university professors who refused to take the oath of loyalty to Fascism in 1931 and was consequently dismissed from his chair in Rome.5 De Sanctis himself was another protagonist in this discussion, together with another of his former students, Aldo Ferrabino (1892–​1972), already a well-​known scholar and then professor in Padua. As we shall see, the debate among them was much more than a controversy among specialists of the ancient world, as it included many different intertwined perspectives: philological and historical analysis, theory of history and philosophy, ideological and political suggestions. Maybe it was then that Greek history happened to be the field of a very dense confrontation on the values of political freedom and liberty of thought as ever before in Italian culture.

3 Finocchiaro (1999), 131, 132. 4 Croce’s fundamental work on theory of history is Croce (1989 [1917]), while during the Fascist age his principal books on politics and history are Croce (1931) and Croce (1966 [1938]) and the most relevant historiographical ones are Croce (1928) and Croce (1991 [1932]). About Croce’s theory and practice of history see Chabod (1952); Cantimori (1971); Sasso (1986); Roberts (1999); Viti Cavaliere (1999); Sasso (2017). About Croce’s political thought see Bobbio (1955); Matteucci (1992); Finocchiaro (1999). For a general profile see Galasso (1990); for a concise introduction in English see Trafton and Verdicchio (1999). 5 About the rejection of the Fascist oath see De Sanctis (1970) 143–​157; Goetz (1982); Goetz (2000).

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300 Piovan 1

Moral Liberty versus Hedonistic Liberty: Croce on the Ancients and the Moderns

The starting point of our research will be the debate about the famous lecture “The Liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the Moderns”, originally held in 1819 in Paris by the French-​Swiss liberal thinker Benjamin Constant (1767–​1830).6 This essay was the object of a short contribution by Croce in 1930, and soon after was reviewed by both Momigliano and Ferrabino. Thus it may be taken as a “litmus test” to grasp not only the position of these three intellectuals about Constant, but especially the positive or negative judgment on Athenian democracy as well as the categories of thought they employed to interpret it. Before proceeding, the central thesis of Constant should be summarized: The Ancients did not recognize individual liberty or, to use the terminology of contemporary political philosophy, they recognized only positive liberty and not its negative counterpart. According to him, the personal liberty of the Moderns resided in this: it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practise it, to dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone’s right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interest, or to profess the religion which they and their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is most comparable with their inclinations or whims. Finally, it is everyone’s right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Modern liberty refers above all to the rights belonging to the individual in relation to the state, while the liberty of the Ancients, according to Constant:

6 Constant (1988 [1819]). About Constant’s lecture see the lengthy introduction to the Italian translation by Paoletti (2001a); about Constant’s relation to classics cf. Paoletti (2001b).

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consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. Summarizing the differences, Constant argued that “among the ancients the individual, almost always sovereign in public affairs, was a slave in all his private relations”,7 that is, there was collective liberty but not individual liberty. Athens would be an exception only partially. While the citizen indeed enjoyed a greater individual liberty in Athens than elsewhere, the policy of ostracism would reveal how society had full authority over all its members.8 In his own lecture, first delivered in 1930 in Naples, Croce judges Constant’s speech “memorable” even in its title, which attested his awareness of something new in the modern idea of liberty; moreover it was worth praising because of placing the character of modern liberty in a totality and universality of free feeling and acting (unlike the ancient one which limited itself to direct government of public by citizens), and for having understood that modern liberty aims at something other than the so-​called happiness of individuals, it speaks to human improvement, and in other words it is not hedonistic but ethical. What the Italian philosopher thinks of as necessary is on the one side, analyzing in depth the content and genesis of the modern idea of liberty, in connection with the simultaneous development of philosophical thought, and, on the other side, correcting what appears rigid and simplistic in the contrast between ancient and modern liberty, by searching for and demonstrating all the phases liberty went gradually through, such as Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment. 7 All the quotations are from Constant (1988 [1819]), 310–​311. 8 This is not the right place to deal more extensively with Constant’s views, which were also a reaction to the use and abuse of ancient politics and models by such philosophers as Rousseau and revolutionaries as Robespierre to legitimize the supremacy of the state over the individual. For a fuller discussion see Roberts (1994), 222–​224; Nippel (2008), 201–​207; Piovan (2008), 316–​321; Cartledge (2018), 291–​292; and Payen’s chapter in this volume.

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302 Piovan Croce is a philosopher who belongs to that current of Storicismo (Historicism, Historismus) which recognizes its own origin in Hegel, therefore in his opinion the ancient concept is just a first step which history has overcome, but it should not be completely rejected: “liberty in its ancient meaning was a necessary moment of that broader liberty that is ours”.9 It is also interesting to note that while Croce praises Constant, he strongly deplores the treatment of the same topic given by Georg Jellinek (1851–​1911), a German legal thinker who enjoyed a very good reputation at that time,10 in his Allegemeine Staatslehre (‘general theory of the state’). Jellinek had criticized Constant’s thesis and stated that ancient Greeks had actually enjoyed a lot of personal liberty, even if they had not developed a legal awareness of it, due to the lack of contrast between individual and state. Croce was generally reluctant to deal with the legal and institutional dimension of freedom and believed it could lead to a nostalgic consideration of the ancient state, free from the split between citizens and state typical of modernity; something that was, therefore, appealing “to political authoritarian and reactionary conceptions with persuasive pedantry”.11 In this conclusive sentence what is perceivable is Croce’s urgent demand that ancient liberty should not be used to legitimate modern forms of authoritarian regimes, a request similar to Constant’s, who in the post-​revolution age had protested against the return to the ancients invoked by Jacobins such as Robespierre.12 It seems probable that here Croce is hinting to Fascism but, if it is true, he is overshadowing the fact that it was ancient Rome and not ancient Greece which was being appropriated by Fascism. However, it is more important to observe, as another philosopher, Guido Calogero, later did,13 that when Croce attributes an ethical character to modern liberty in contrast with the hedonism of the Ancients, he is superimposing his own conception of freedom to that of Constant. The latter thought that “the danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence, and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we should surrender our right to share in political 9 All the three quoted passages are translated from Croce (1931), 294–​296. 10 Jellinek’s Allgemeine Staastlehre was also translated into Italian and published after the First World War with a preface by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, an eminent liberal jurist who had also been a Prime Minister of Italy from 1917 to 1919. For a more detailed discussion on Jellinek’s arguments see Nippel (2008), 267–​270. 11 Translated from Croce (1931), 301. 12 One could feel some analogy to what Isaiah Berlin will do during the Cold War in the 1950s, when this liberal thinker emphasized negative against positive liberty:  see the essays now included in Berlin (2002), especially the chapter “Introduction” (ibidem, 3–​ 54), originally published in 1969 as introduction to his famous Four Essays on Liberty. 13 Calogero (1947), 68–​69.

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power too easily”. For Constant political liberty had a great moral value, impossible to drop, because it “establishes among [the citizens] a kind of intellectual equality which forms the glory and power of a people”. “Institutions—​ Constant added—​must achieve the moral education of the citizens”.14 The coherent conclusion of Constant was that the Moderns must learn to combine the two sorts of freedom, a point that Croce seems to miss. As mentioned above, Croce’s thought on ancient and modern liberty is actually influenced by his historicist philosophy, in which what comes earlier is later overcome by a necessary and providential step, so the ancient meaning of freedom is something primitive. Furthermore, the emphasis Croce put on the moral value of modern liberty is strictly connected to his philosophy, in which liberty has a moral, spiritual and even religious dimension, one could say, whereas the political and institutional liberties are overlooked. So, he did not grasp what in Constant is very prominent, namely his concern to limit power, as Norberto Bobbio remarked.15 Moreover, he also neglected that neither of Constant’s two liberties was “the liberty in a transcendental meaning, the liberty of will as pure autonomy and responsibility. They were both social forms of liberty”.16 In fact Croce focuses essentially on the ethical dimension of Liberalism, whose importance in an age of totalitarianism nobody can undervalue, but he neglects the institutional and legal aspects, the empirical ways, forms and institutions in which this liberty can become concrete, a fact which was criticized even by those who deeply estimated Croce.17 As we shall see, both Croce’s emphasis on the moral value of liberty and his own historicistic perspective had remarkable influence on some scholars of ancient Greek history in the age between the two world wars. 2

Greek Liberty and Universal History: Arnaldo Momigliano

Momigliano’s review of Croce’s essay on Constant, published in 1931, can be identified as the theoretical premise and the general sketch of most of the problems that will remain at the center of his long-​spanning intellectual activity. He agrees with both Constant and Croce on the definition of Greek freedom as the right to participate in government, while later in the Hellenistic age the bond between freedom and a specific form of government would dissolve in 14 15 16 17

All the quotations are from Constant (1988 [1819]), 326–​328. Bobbio (1955), 249. Translated from Calogero (1947), 73. Cf. Matteucci (1992), 55–​59.

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304 Piovan favor of a more interiorized notion of liberty, in opposition to the state. It was with Judaism and especially with Christianity that the religious consciousness subordinated the state to itself, thus anticipating modern freedom: “State, first conceived as condition of liberty and later as boundary of liberty, eventually became the fulfillment of liberty itself”.18 While Momigliano accepts the difference between ancient and modern freedom as it is formulated by the two liberal philosophers, he, on the other hand, tries to elaborate a line of development and progressive enrichment of freedom in the ancient world, in which each period has its own value and many civilizations –​Greece, Hellenism, Judaism and Rome –​flow into one another and tie to modern consciousness through Christianity. This concept, which reveals a tight link with Croce’s historicism, is the basis for his subsequent research, starting from his essay on Demosthenes, whose historical value had been intensely debated since J.G. Droysen had discovered Hellenism and praised Philip of Macedon as heroic and forward-​thinking in opposition to the pathetic and deluded Attic orator.19 Momigliano does not blame Demosthenes nor glorifies him, but judges him anyway as unable to overcome the municipalism of the polis.20 The Italian scholar finds an ideological alternative to the polis in the idea of common peace and in those writers of the fourth century bce, such as Isocrates and Theopompus, who contributed to prepare, maybe unwittingly, the path to Philip ii and cooperated to turn Greek civilization into Hellenism.21 Therefore Philip of Macedon is considered neither the brute destroyer of Greek civilization nor the founder of a Greek national state, but the herald of values like peace, harmony and the end of reciprocal oppression: “in the West Philip originates a mentality that will dissolve the strongly selfish Greek freedom and later that of the republican Romans and that will disappear only when Christianity creates the conditions for a selfless and human freedom”.22 At the same time, Momigliano follows Croce’s teaching that historians must know the historiography of the problems they are studying and himself reconsiders modern studies on Greek history. He suggests going back to Droysen, who had formulated 18 19

20 21 22

Translated from Momigliano (1975b [1931]), 907. Demosthenes was the object of extremely conflicting judgments between nineteenth and early twentieth century. After Droysen also Beloch, the German teacher of Gaetano De Sanctis, blamed him for blocking Greece’s unification; for the different, modern evaluations of Demosthenes see Carlier (1994 [1990]), 208–​218; Roberts (1994) 293–​294; Cagnetta (1995). Canevaro (forthcoming) is essential to put the modern debate on Demosthenes in a very old tradition, born in the first Hellenistic period. Momigliano (1975c [1931]). Momigliano (1966b [1934]); Momigliano (1934) 183–​199. Translated from Momigliano (1934), 179.

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the concept of Hellenism as a cultural and religious unity, integrating it with the awareness of the function of the Roman Empire, considered the bridge between Hellenism and Christianity, as Hegel had already thought.23 This historical vision comes from the encounter between De Sanctis’ critical method and the historicist conception of a rational development of history, in which what follows goes beyond what precedes and there is no space for ages which are only negatively considered as of mere decline.24 Sometimes it seems that Momigliano embraces also the communion of philology and philosophy proposed by Croce: in fact freedom is the universal and philosophic value that is examined in its concrete expressions through philology; nonetheless it is possible to perceive in him a kind of discomfort about it.25 To completely understand Momigliano’s concept, perhaps we should not undervalue another element of his culture, Judaism, intended as the heritage of a very old cultural tradition. Actually, Momigliano was educated in a very religious and orthodox family, but at the same time he very precociously discovered a secular point of view through his kin Felice Momigliano (1866–​1924),26 a scholar of Giuseppe Mazzini,27 so as to write around 1930 that he did not believe in Judaism as a religion but was “a believer in modern philosophy”.28 While sharply rejecting Zionism, Momigliano felt and presented himself as a Jew fully integrated in Italian history and society.29 However, the effect of a 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

See Momigliano (1955b [1933]) and Momigliano (1955c [1935]). See the revealing expression “the rationality of the rhythm of that history” in Momigliano (1934), 179. For Momigliano’s relationship with Croce see Gigante (2006); about Hegel’s presence in Momigliano’s work see Bonacina (1989/​90). See the original introduction to Philip of Macedon where Momigliano states that “it is necessary to ascertain the events before interpreting them, even though this distinction may not sound philosophic”: Momigliano (1934), vii. For Felice Momigliano’s intellectual biography see Tarquini (2011); about the influence of Felice on Arnaldo see Momigliano (1987b), xxix-​x xxi. Mazzini (1805–​1872) was the leader of a republican revolutionary movement for the reunification of Italy during the Risorgimento. For an introduction to Mazzini see Monsagrati (2008). In a private letter from Momigliano to De Sanctis published posthumously in Polverini (2006b), 18. See the anti-​Zionist letter to the President of the Roman Jewish Community, published posthumously in Di Donato (1995), 225–​226. As to his attempt to link his Jewish roots with his belonging to the Italian nation see the short review of 1933 in which he maintains that Italian Jews integrated themselves in the Italian state during the Risorgimento similarly to how the different regional identities like Piedmont or Sicily flowed into a single national identity:  Momigliano (1987c [1933]). This opinion, judged “historically unfounded” by Dionisotti (1989), 19, was never recalled after the Fascist racial laws and the Second World War.

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306 Piovan tradition not anchored in a particular nation but cosmopolitan as Judaism, can be perceived in his interest in the meeting of civilizations (Hellenism and later the Roman Empire).30 Moreover, some moral and intellectual anxieties can be noticed in his focusing on the peaceful coexistence of different peoples. Such apprehensions could be linked to the rise of Nazism, which took power in Germany just in 1933. Therefore, his studies on ancient liberty can be seen as contemporary history according to Croce’s famous motto that “all historiography is contemporary history”.31 As it is well known, 1938 was a dramatic year in Momigliano’s life: Fascism decided to follow Nazism in the persecution of Jews and adopted the racial laws, so he was expelled from the Italian university and went into exile in England. There he decided to stay even after the end of the Second World War, renouncing also Croce’s invitation to return to Italy and direct the Istituto Italiano per gli studi storici (‘Italian Institute for Historical Studies’), a postgraduate history school which the philosopher had just founded in Naples and hosted in a wing of his home, Palazzo Filomarino. This refusal, among other reasons, may signal also the presence of an increasing distance from Croce’s philosophy. As a matter of fact, after the war Momigliano deeply revisited Historicism, as he said later.32 However that process had not begun yet, when he arrived in England, as the lectures he delivered in Oxford and Cambridge in the spring of 1940 on “Peace and Liberty in the Ancient World”,33 show. As noticed by Oswyn Murray, “their theme is the philosophical one inspired by Benedetto Croce, of the unity of Greek and Roman history as an expression of the fundamental truths of western society”.34 Indeed they are the same themes Momigliano had dealt with in the time before his exile. If we consider for example the Oxford lecture, which is a synthesis of the Cambridge ones, his starting point is a praise of Constant, who was the first to see clearly that the modern conception of liberty, as it emerged from the English, American and French Revolutions and as 30 31

32 33 34

See Pesante (2002). See Croce (1989 [1917]), 14. About the meaning of Croce’s motto see Trafton (1999), 103:  “According to Benedetto Croce, all history is contemporary history, by which he means that all serious study of the past is informed by the problems and needs of the writer’s own time; the more conscious historians are of their contemporary motives, the more searching and accurate their investigations of the past and the more useful their reconstructions.” See Momigliano (1980b [1974]). They were published posthumously in Momigliano (1992) and Momigliano (2012) and translated into Italian in Momigliano (1996). Murray (2010), 139.

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coloured by the German Philosophy, was something different from ancient forms of liberty –​something deeper.35 In this “something deeper” it is still possible to perceive the echo of Croce’s essay on Constant, in particular his distinction between ethical (that is modern) and hedonistic (that is ancient) liberty. About this sentence it is also interesting to notice that Momigliano puts together two different traditions of the modern conception of liberty, that of the revolutions and that of German philosophy, as it was then normally done by Italian intellectuals of historicistic culture,36 a practice criticized after the decline of Historicism. According to Momigliano, the fault of Constant would be to have forgotten the problem of religious liberty, on which Lord Acton focused in his work: “As Christianity established a higher authority than the State –​the authority of a religious conscience –​Christianity consequently appeared the fundamental turning point in the history of liberty”.37 The Greeks, he maintains, first elaborated the ideal of freedom, but they were not able to reconcile it with the need for peace which became so urgent as to remain the only content of freedom. Also in Rome the search for peace sacrificed liberty, which survived in the opposition to the Empire by such Stoics as Cato Uticensis and Brutus, partly absorbed by Christianity. But the Christian opposition to State authority in the name of religious conscience identified peace with freedom of the soul, i.e., with a kind of individual freedom unknown to Greeks and Romans. In sum, the way in which Momigliano kept looking at the problem of ancient liberty after he left Italy was clearly influenced by Croce’s philosophy, which stressed the moral value of modern liberty while Constant’s call to recover also the ancient and political dimension is just mentioned, but not really dealt with. If in these 1940 English lectures there is a shift in the consideration of the Roman Empire as opposed to earlier essays,38 there is no news at all about Athenian liberty and democracy. The Cambridge and Oxford lectures were intended by the author as part of a very vast research on “Liberty and Peace in Antiquity” that he hoped to conclude in a couple of years and about which he also drafted a summary in 35 36

Momigliano (1992), 484. See the History of European Liberalism by Guido De Ruggiero (1888–​1948), a very important book for the anti-​Fascist culture: De Ruggiero (1995 [1925]). 37 Momigliano (1992), 485. 38 This conference was published posthumously by Dionisotti, one of Momigliano’s friends: Dionisotti (1989), 109–​130.

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308 Piovan private letters. It was a project which went from fifth-​century Greece to St. Augustine, including the complete political thought of antiquity.39 He never managed to end it, perhaps because it was too broad or maybe because it was built on the basis of a historicist philosophy, with which after 1945 he began to be more and more dissatisfied.40 It may be suggested that it was impossible to keep thinking of “the rationality of the rhythm”41 of history after Auschwitz. However, it would not be exact to say that he definitively abandoned this theme. After many years he came back to the topic of ancient liberty but in a much more limited perspective, in his essays on freedom of speech and impiety and heresy in antiquity.42 In neither of them, however, we can find a sentence like this one present in the Oxford lecture: “liberty is the eternal force of human activity”,43 in which the reader could still feel the lesson of Croce’s History of Europe. 3

Greece versus Rome: the Anti-​liberal Point of View of Aldo Ferrabino

Aldo Ferrabino,44 another former student of De Sanctis, who in 1931 had the chair of Ancient History at the prestigious university of Padua, also wrote a review of Croce’s essay on Constant. There he flatly refuses the historicist point of view and even more flatly affirms the necessity to distinguish between Greece and Rome. On the one hand “the liberty of the Greeks is exclusively political, as it is inseparable from the polis, which is conceived and felt, wanted and loved, as an ethnos, i.e., a closed human group”; on the other hand, the liberty of the Romans is defined by him as “civil”, not founded on the existence of a natural and closed group. One could say that the essential difference is that Greek

39 40 41 42 43 44

See e. g. what Momigliano wrote in some private letters: Momigliano (1996), 142–​146. About Momigliano’s revision of historicism see Momigliano (1980b [1974]). Whether Momigliano actually left definitely historicism it is still debated: for different points of view see Berti (1988), 310; Ginzburg (1988), 413; Gigante (2006); Piovan (2018b), 99–​130. Thus sounds the sentence that Momigliano had used in 1934 about Philip of Macedon: see Momigliano (1934), 179. See Momigliano (1980c [1971]) and Momigliano (1980d [1971]). Momigliano (1996), 58. Although Ferrabino is today a forgotten scholar, he held very important offices in his life, especially after 1945: he was rector of the university of Padua in 1945, then he was elected senator in the Italian Parliament in 1948 and later became president of the Institute of Italian Encyclopedia in 1954, after the retirement of De Sanctis. For a full biography and cultural profile see Treves (1996); Piovan (2018b), 77–​97.

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liberty has an ethnic basis whereas that of Rome has a legal one, but it is true that Ferrabino’s definition of the latter is quite vague: “[that] had its essence in the concept of a good mainly communicable and communicative, expandable and inclusive until to include all the world. […] The citizens were covered by it but also transcended. The republic as the whole of citizens was transcended”. Ferrabino asserts that the concept of civil liberty would have remained in Rome for twelve centuries even through different relations between state and individual. So, while Greek liberty is called “fake” because it was “particular for the subject to whom it applies and arbitrary for its origin”, Roman liberty appears to him as a moral and universal principle that would come close to Christian charity: Christianity had its seat in the Roman empire, not in the Greek polis at all: the Christian morality finds its true approximation in the civil and universal liberty, not in the particular and dissolving liberty. So the modern and Christian spirit, as the ancient and pagan one, should necessarily prefer the Roman to the Greek way. The ideological and also political message is therefore “to go back to that idea of individuality which coincides with solidarity and to that idea of state which coincides with imperial equity”.45 This criticism of Greek liberty was in tune with the Fascist celebration of Rome and the Fascist blame on modern democracy; in a previous essay46 Ferrabino had assumed that force is the supreme state law, a statement in which we may recognize a direct influence of the political thought of Giovanni Gentile (1875–​1944), an idealist philosopher who, unlike Croce, strongly supported Fascism and became one of its most influential intellectuals for many years.47 Gentile favored the ethical state already theorized by Hegel but without any distinction between state, family and civil society. In those years Gentile presented his vision as “absolute liberalism” but in fact he suggested an identification between authority and law and eclipsed the difference between free, manipulated or extorted consensus; it is

45 46 47

All the quotations are translated from Ferrabino (1931), 387–​390. It is worth remembering Croce’s hard reply: Croce (1960 [1932]). See Ferrabino (1962), 75–​87. Gentile held a lot of relevant offices during Fascism: among many others, he was minister of education from 1922 to 1924, rector of the Normale School of Pisa and scientific director of the Italian Encyclopedia; his most significant philo-​Fascist writings are collected in Gentile (1990–​1991). For Gentile’s life and works see Sasso (2000); for a comparison with Croce’s political theory and stances see Roberts (1999), 210–​214.

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310 Piovan not surprising that this theory was later judged as totalitarian by a very liberal philosopher such as Norberto Bobbio.48 Going back to Ferrabino, he had extensively illustrated his own conception in his 1929 essay The Dissolution of Freedom in Ancient Greece.49 There Greek history is seen as dominated by the conflict between the liberty of the poleis and their desire of hegemony, a contrast which explodes in the fifth century bce when Athens, and then other cities, try to create unity and fail; but if unity was impossible, the enslavement of Greece to Rome should be considered right. Ferrabino criticizes both Grote’s conception of Greek history50 as a drama of liberty and Beloch’s thesis of Philip as the man who united Greece. Ancient Greeks were unable to choose between liberty and power whereas the right equilibrium was reached by Romans, the only people in the ancient world to achieve a perfect synthesis of individuality and universality, anarchy and panarchy, democracy and theocracy, so as to found the Italian nation. It is undeniable that here there are some points in common with the Fascist ideology, even though this fact has sometimes been minimized.51 The glorification of Romanità and the asserted continuity between Rome and Fascism assumes tones and lexicon typical of Fascism:  while Greece is associated to democracy and anarchy and the East to slavery and theocracy, according to an Orientalist point of view,52 Rome is the happy medium, the fusion of authority and people, the creator of the concept of nation, “the institution that can conciliate the opposite parties of the few and the many”.53 We should not forget that Fascism pretended to be the legitimate heir of ancient Rome as well as to have found an alternative to both Capitalism and Bolshevism in the ideas of nation and corporatism, even though its attempts to establish a real corporative organization failed.54

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

See Bobbio (1990), 155–​160. See Ferrabino (1929). About Grote’s History of Greece see Kierstead’s chapter in this volume. Among those who minimize is Accame (1980), 339, but contra see Canfora (1980), 78–​79; Cagnetta (1990), 115–​117. With Orientalism I  mean the western representations of the East sharply analyzed by Edward Said; see Said (2013 [1978]). Translated from Ferrabino (1937), 137. It is worth remembering that since the enactment of the racial laws and even more during the Second World War Ferrabino distanced himself from Fascism; see Ventura (2017), 153 n., 167, 198–​199. After the war he embraced a kind of Christian mysticism.

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311

Demosthenes as the Hero of Liberty: Piero Treves

In the debate about the value of Greek, i.e., Athenian freedom and democracy, the name of Piero Treves is often absent;55 it is true that he did not write any comparative essay on Ancients and Moderns but his contribution to Greek studies does not lack originality and strength and cannot be ignored. Treves, born in 1911, was then even younger than Momigliano (born in 1908), with whom he shared both a Jewish origin and the fact of being a very promising student of De Sanctis. But differently from his older mate he came from a strongly anti-​Fascist family: his father Claudio had been one of the leaders of the Italian Socialist Party between the nineteenth and the twentieth century and a personal opponent of Mussolini even before the Fascist seizure of power. In addition, the milieu in which he grew up was secular: he was an admirer of Italian and European poetry and literature, without any ostensible sign of Judaism.56 The encounter with De Sanctis is decisive in his education insomuch as he follows his teacher from Turin to Rome, where he gets his degree in November 1931 with a thesis on Demosthenes, published two years later by Laterza (thanks to Croce, who was the mentor of this publishing house).57 Treves’ book is not a biography of the Athenian orator but rather a reconstruction of a period of Greek history from the battle of Chaeronea (338 bce) to Demosthenes’ death (322/​321 bce). His perspective is quite different from the academic tradition: there is neither a close examination of single events nor a detailed analysis of probable or possible sources, what was called Quellenkunde (‘study of sources’) in German classical studies, but much more a moral and political history according to the model which Croce had theorized in his Ethics and politics and realized in his History of Italy and History of Europe.58 So, in Treves’s Demosthenes and the Greek freedom the moral and spiritual forces, the political and cultural ideals count more than military strategies, organization or assets. He refuses at the same time the depreciation of Demosthenes as a short-​sighted politician and the praise of Philip as the author of Greek national unity. On the one hand, Treves recognizes the limits of the Demosthenian

55 56 57 58

Treves is ignored by Tessitore (1984), which is nonetheless a useful essay to frame the philosophic perspective of this debate. About the “bad luck” of Treves’s book on Demosthenes among specialists of antiquity see Casali (1980), 146. To reconstruct biography, education and works of Piero Treves are essential Pertici (1994); Franco (2011); Clemente (2016); a synthetic introduction is provided by Pertici (2019). About the publishing history of Treves’ book see Mocellin (2020). See Croce (1931), 273–​283; Croce (1928); Croce (1991 [1932]).

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312 Piovan conception that made Athenian freedom and its hegemony on Greece overlap; on the other hand, the ancient orator is celebrated for the highest moral and spiritual consciousness of his fight for freedom and is compared several times to Giuseppe Mazzini: both are defined “apostles of freedom”.59 It is apparently surprising that such a book was published without any censorship while Fascism kept extending its control on culture; in 1931, just two years earlier, an oath to the Fascist regime had been imposed on all university professors and only twelve of them refused to pledge. This thing is understandable in the light of the contradictory character of Fascist cultural policies, which placed coercion and tolerance side by side; they became totalitarian later but only partly so, as the case of Croce and his little group of collaborators seems to show.60 Nonetheless, Treves’ book was strongly criticized by people close to Fascism as is testified by the reviewer who spoke of the author as “an affectionate sentimental man” who “lacks personality” and sets a “libertarian demoness” up.61 From a different point of view, Arnaldo Momigliano too was quite harsh in his review: he blamed Treves for comparing ancient and modern liberty in such an anti-​historical way to almost result in verbiage,62 which was and still is a very ungenerous judgment. Indeed, Treves is able to distinguish between ancient and modern concepts much more than Momigliano acknowledges; it is also untrue that Treves does not understand the meaning of Droysen’s conception of Hellenism; what he resolutely rejects is the teleological point of view, the idea that history has a “rational rhythm” and the consequent underestimation of victa causa (the ‘defeated cause’)63: Treves thinks and will always keep thinking that the defeated people contribute to history both conditioning the winner and influencing following generations by means of their example. “No victa causa […] was so alive in history as the victa causa

59 60 61 62 63

Translated from Treves (1933), 67, 131. See Belardelli (2005), 36–​85, where some model cases are analyzed in detail. Translated from Caioli (1934), 370. Translated from Momigliano (1975d [1935]), 939. That is clearly one or maybe the main criticism Treves leveled at Momigliano’s Philip of Macedon in his two reviews of the book: see Treves (1936a), 68 and Treves (1936b), 207. There had been already earlier and there will be also later discussions and even rivalry between them: see Dionisotti (1989), 34–​46; Franco (2011), xiii-​x xiv is very useful to highlight the different historiographical perspectives of these two scholars. Instead, Canevaro (forthcoming) originally points out what Momigliano and Treves had in common in their, albeit very different, judgments on Demosthenes: on the one hand, they shared a Crocean historical perspective and through it a bond with the Hegelian tradition of which Droysen had been the best exponent in ancient history studies; on the other hand, they both put at the center of their work the question of liberty.

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of Demosthenes”, who gave to posterity “an everlasting word of freedom”.64 Treves’s book was inspired by authentic ideal fervor, supported by a sound knowledge of ancient sources, and it is not possible to lessen his courage, especially if compared to Italian classical studies of the Fascist period. It is meaningful that his Demosthenes was included in the list of books that, according to Aldo Capitini, who became the intellectual leader of Italian non-​violence in post-​war Italy, circulated among young anti-​Fascist around 1935;65 it reveals that its value was really understood even out of the academic readership. 5

Greatness and Limits of Athens: Gaetano De Sanctis

One could find it odd that we turn our attention to Gaetano De Sanctis66 after and not before speaking of Ferrabino, Momigliano and Treves, who were all his then-​current or former students and still maintained with him a strong relationship even when they were following their own research paths, far away from their current or former teacher. To be true, De Sanctis had begun his academic career at the end of the nineteenth century with a book about Athenian history,67 but afterward he dedicated himself to ancient Rome writing a monumental History of Rome,68 which gave him also an international consideration. (He was also rewarded for it with a honoris causa degree in Oxford in 1925 together with Winston Churchill.) It was only at the end of the 1920s that De Sanctis returned to Greek history, examined with a perspective different from that of his youth. In this turn there is a clear and significant coincidence with the stabilization of Fascism. As said above, the atmosphere was heavier and heavier in Roman studies; on the other hand, De Sanctis had a very reactive personality, open to problems studied by his students with whom he had an intense dialogue in those years. In particular, he was stimulated both by the condemnation of Greek history pronounced by Ferrabino and by the 64 65 66 67

68

Translated from Treves (1933), 192 f. Capitini (1966), 100. For De Sanctis’ life and works see Treves (1991); more about his concept of Greek history in Piovan (2018b), 49–​75. This book, Atthìs, which was first published in 1898 and then revised in 1912, was about the birth of an ancient state from archaic tribes and was influenced by the idea of nation typical of German ancient historians (De Sanctis had been the student of the German scholar Julius Beloch) and the experience of Italian Risorgimento, as later De Sanctis himself admitted: see De Sanctis (1936), 97. Indeed, the History of Rome was never completed, even if it included eight volumes from the origins to 133 bce.

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314 Piovan historicistic perspective of Momigliano to originally rethink the entire Greek history; nor was he insensitive to Croce’s conception that history is history of liberty; the result was his 1939 two-​volumes History of the Greeks. The problem of dealing with the history of a people that never managed to build a nation like the modern ones leads De Sanctis, in the introduction of his book, to define a political history of ancient Greece theoretically impossible; however, the practical interdependence of politics and civilization makes that history possible. So, beside the traditional problem of the so-​called national unity of the Greeks, he gives much importance to moral and cultural values and to the birth and evolution of Athenian democracy. Just like Grote, De Sanctis too thinks of Cleisthenes as the founder of Athenian democracy: with his reforms “the sovereign power was no longer only in name, but effectively in the popular assembly”; the right to continuously vote on laws and officers is defined as “a solemn statement, maybe the first in universal history, of the right that is up to sovereign people to give themselves the set of rules, the regime and the government that match their own will”. About ostracism, De Sanctis’ judgement is more complex but eventually positive: even if apparently “uncivilized”, it “reduced the danger which the struggle among parties, becoming too violent, could cause to the State”. Finally, concerning the institutional system he finds that “for the first time in antiquity we find that the representative principle”69 is expressed in the polis Council (Boule). The Italian historian considers the lot for the Council an egalitarian principle but he does not approve of it when applied to officers, as it happened later. De Sanctis’ point of view is never trivial: for example, the payment for juries is defined by him as “one of the most characteristic marks of Athenian democracy and also one of the most efficient factors of the discredit in which it fell”, not because democratic justice was in itself worse than the aristocratic one, but for the much larger publicity of the trials. Anyway, Pericles managed to “prevent the dissolution of the state authority, which is the permanent danger in democratic governments” even though “he realized democratic liberty in Athens in a way never surpassed in antiquity either in Athens or elsewhere.” On the other hand, Pericles was responsible for the egoistic policy towards Athens’ allies which led to the disintegration of the maritime league and to the war with Sparta. It was the “exclusive conception of Athens’ interests and in particular of those of the popular masses” that eventually prepares and explains the fall of Athens and its empire.70 It is not possible here to analyze the chapters that De Sanctis devotes to the

69 70

The quotations are translated from De Sanctis (1939), 1.547, 549, 552–​553. De Sanctis (1939), 2.115, 139–​140.

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fall of the Athenian empire and democracy and to the civil war between oligarchs and democrats. It is enough to dwell on the pages about the amnesty of 403 bce, one of the most important clauses of the agreements with which the fighting parties pledged themselves not to reproach each other over past evils.71 It was an oath that bound especially the democratic partisans headed by Thrasybulus not to take revenge on their former opponents, which was a very strong temptation after the Spartans left Attica, and consequently left the oligarchs alone. De Sanctis praises the moral greatness of the Athenian people for abiding by the amnesty: “The generally admitted principle that revenge and returning evil for evil is licit was overcome in Greece indeed as never before”. But if traditional morality was so surpassed, it did not happen the same with political tradition, De Sanctis claims: the revolutionary proposal of Thrasybulus to grant citizenship to all the outsiders, aliens and even slaves, who had fought for democracy, was eventually rejected; “the egoism of the city […] had the upper hand”. According to De Sanctis the attempt to renovate the Athenian independence and power required a strong internal change: “the political resurgence […] could not have success if it did not associate with a deep moral transformation”.72 The man who pointed out the way to this necessary change was Socrates; to him De Sanctis reserves the last and the most moving chapter of his History of the Greeks. Socrates is described as “democratic at heart, even if he partly opposed democracy”. In his constant research “there is for the first time in the history of the western world the creation of a true morality”. The problem was that this new and intense moral life […] even if it agreed with the full respect of civil laws and even if it commanded that respect, was however in its nature and foundation alien to the polis and transcended it, broke the indiscriminate original unity of civic life even more unwaveringly than lawbreakers did for private egoistic or criminal reasons or lust for power. If Socrates represents “the conscious affirmation of the sacred and intangible rights of human personality as opposed to those of the city”, the city too had its own rights which Anytos, the principal accuser, claimed. Thus, Socrates’ condemnation is right “if the word is interpreted in a concrete and contingent meaning”. The position of De Sanctis is neither contradictory nor hesitant: “A new element had entered human history, and so it would only occur 71 72

About the reconciliation agreement and the so-​called amnesty of 403 bce see Loening (1987); Carawan (2002); Loraux (2006 [1997]); Joyce (2008); Piovan (2011). Translated from De Sanctis (1939), 2.473, 474, 477.

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316 Piovan in the tension between the two poles of individual personality and state”. It was necessary that Athenian people give up their traditional egoism, but in the end they did not. The contrast between a more mature morality and the state was resolved by Socrates by accepting martyrdom. It was “the secret of the future”, so the book ends, whether the city would overcome itself, as Socrates had hoped, or it would continue to estrange, in Athens and outside, the best part of its citizens.73 As Emilio Gabba correctly observed,74 this uncertainty did not concern Greek history as much as the historical age in which De Sanctis was living; when he speaks of Socrates one can glimpse De Sanctis’ own drama, that of a liberal intellectual who was strongly criticizing the current historical circumstances but who at the same time felt, as a Catholic and a scholar, a mission in the service of Italy. In his History of the Greeks, Greece and especially democratic Athens were an eternal model of love of freedom, science and politics; this love, however, was connoted by the same tendency to exclude people which De Sanctis found typical of the ancient world, and which in his opinion was surpassed only by Christianity.75 6

Modern Democracy: Nothing to Do with Athens?

The debate re-​enacted above was the most important confrontation about the value of Greek freedom and democracy among classical Italian scholars, besides being, mainly, an outstanding example of intellectual resistance to and, in one case, of compromise with the totalitarian regime. It could be also seen as a remarkable ­example of 73 74 75

Translated from De Sanctis (1939), 2.482, 485, 496, 500–​504. See Gabba (1971), 12–​13. See the essay on “Essence and characters of ancient history” in De Sanctis (1932), 29–​61. The book that De Sanctis a few years later devoted to Pericles offers no new insight on Athenian democracy: De Sanctis (2011 [1944]), whereas his stance on this theme is well summarized in De Sanctis (1983 [1947]), in which Constant’s 1819 speech is openly criticized for its narrow and one-​sided concept of modern liberty and its vision of ancient liberty is definitely rejected because Constant’s paradigm of liberty would be Sparta and not Athens (ibidem, 491–​492). The Athenian form of government is defined “a direct and in some way totalitarian democracy”, in which the people is “the true sovereign” and liberty and legality are strictly interdependent and normally not in contrast each other; the trial of Socrates is an exception and not the rule (ibidem, 496–​497, 500). The major flow of Athenian democracy would be its exclusivism, that is the tendency to exclude from citizenship both non-​citizens that lived in Attica (metics, slaves) and those that were outside, which would prevent the city-​state from becoming a nation state (ibidem, 503).

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the Italian vocation […] to conceive historiography not as talking and conversing only between historians and scholars but also, or even especially, as a response by historians and scholars to what in social and civil, moral and cultural life, stirs and concerns as a present problem of the subjects implied and concerned by such urgency and pressure.76 Anyway, nothing of this kind can be found after the Second World War, partly because of the increasing and pervading tendency to strict specialization and partly because of the need for many scholars to avoid hot issues after having been involved with strong ideologies such as nationalism and Fascism.77 The climate changed in the 1970s, when a new generation of scholars such as Luciano Canfora, Diego Lanza and Mario Vegetti, influenced by Marxism, opened a lively debate on the ideology of the ancient city through the recently-​founded journal Quaderni di storia, but this subject is dealt with by Carlo Marcaccini in another chapter in this volume. Therefore in the next two paragraphs this paper will be limited to an examination of a few notable and different positions on the above theme, coming from non-​classicist intellectuals who, in Italy, returned to the debate on democracy ancient and modern after World War II. We shall begin with Giovanni Sartori (1924–​2017), the most eminent Italian political scientist up to his death, very well-​known even outside Italy for teaching in many American universities and for his books translated in many different languages.78 In his 1957 Democracy and Definitions, translated by himself in English a few years later, he dedicates a whole chapter to the comparison between Greek and modern democracy, where he shows his awareness of Croce’s and Calogero’s already quoted essays about Constant’s concept of liberty, even if Sartori does not mention the contributions of the classical scholars. He clearly states that ancient democracies cannot teach us anything about building a “democratic State”, and about conducting a democratic system that covers not 76 77

78

Translated from Galasso (2017), 234–​235. A little exception is represented by Pugliese Carratelli (1976 [1945]), but it was the only, and indeed short, essay that the very long-​lived and prolific classical scholar Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli (1911–​2010), who in his youth was influenced by Croce and Croce’s circle in Naples, devoted to Athenian democracy. The intellectual roots of Carratelli’s essay are investigated by Cambiano (2013). For a biographic and intellectual profile of Sartori see Morlino (2017). It is worth mentioning in this context that Sartori began his very precocious university career as a professor of history of modern philosophy and one of his first books is on State and Politics in Benedetto Croce’s Thought (1966).

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318 Piovan merely a city but a large expanse of territory inhabited by a vast collectivity […] the difference between ancient and modern democracies is not simply one of geographic and demographic dimensions requiring completely different solutions, but also one of ends and values. Sartori maintains that the direct democracy of the ancients is neither preferable nor possible. On the one hand, ancient democracy required such an enormous amount of time and energy to create a balance inside society to the detriment of economy; so this system itself was the first cause of the class struggle between rich and poor which eventually was to destroy it. On the other hand, the Italian scholar goes back to Constant and denies that the Greeks knew the notion of individual liberty based on personal rights, as the example of ostracism, “a punishment for no crime”, could prove. The polis had full supremacy on the individual while “modern democracy is meant to protect the freedom of the individual as a person”. Therefore “if the Greek concept of democracy were applied to the modern world it would correspond exactly to a totalitarian despotism”;79 modern democracy is and cannot be other than liberal democracy.80 As a political scientist Sartori is a strong supporter of the theory of the elite, first formulated by Gaetano Mosca at the end of xix century, according to which in every political system, beyond its own name, real power is exercised only by a little group of people;81 therefore, the aim of elections is for him not 79

80

81

The quoted passages are from Sartori (1962), 250–​277; even if this book has a different title (Democratic Theory), it is the English version, edited by the author himself, of Sartori (1957). The chapter about “Greek Democracy and Modern Democracy” remains nearly unchanged in this book’s latest revised edition, entitled The Theory of Democracy Revisited: Sartori (1987), 278–​297. It would seem that Demokratia of the classical scholar Domenico Musti (1934–​2010) has as implicit target to refute just the view of ancient Athens as a totalitarian democracy by arguing that it knew very well the distinction between public and private; see Musti (1995). See Mosca (1939 [1896]); an incomplete but very useful reprint is Mosca (1994). For a concise introduction to Mosca and his political theory cf. Bobbio (1996b); Bobbio (1996c); Sartori (1987), 1.46–​48, 148–​152; a very interesting essay on the intellectual relationship between Mosca and Croce is Finocchiaro (1999). Inside the so-​called elitist school of political theory other scholars are normally included such as Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels, who is credited with the so-​called “Iron Law of Oligarchy” which “has become (at least implicitly) a central tenet of modern political sociology” (Ober (1989), 16). It is fair to say that elitism is not necessarily an anti-​democratic theory of minority dominion, as it is sometimes interpreted. For a critical assessment of elitist theories in relation to Athenian democracy cf. Finley (1992 [1973]), 3–​37; Finley (1993 [1983]), 105–​106; Finley (1998 [1985]), 151; Ober (1989), 333–​336; Ober (1996), 5, 18–​19, 21–​22, 26, 125.

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to develop democracy but to select the best leadership. However, if people’s judgment is to be distrusted, how can the best leaders be elected? That is an aporia to which he does not succeed to reply.82 Moreover, his refusal of direct democracy seems motivated by the persuasion that it leads to insufficient care in economic activities and therefore to dangerous class struggle. It may perhaps be conjectured that his theory, as Isaiah Berlin’s emphasis on the negative liberty in the same years,83 is influenced by the Stimmung of the Cold War, especially by the desire to prove that the only acceptable democratic system is that of Western countries, liberal and representative, in contrast with the so-​called “popular democracies” of Eastern Europe then dominated by a soviet model; a kind of democracy which was not liberal at all, but which, in the 1950s, seemed attractive to some leftist political parties and to social forces interested in social and economic equality. In his critique of ancient democracy Sartori seems to go back to conservative historians of the nineteenth century such as Fustel de Coulanges84 or Burckhardt.85 7

Modern Democracy: Something to Do with Athens?

1931 was not only the year in which Croce delivered his lecture on Constant, but also when the twelfth volume of the Italian Encyclopedia86 was published with the entry “democracy”, largely dedicated to ancient Greece. More specifically, the part devoted to ancient conceptions of democracy was written by Guido Calogero (1904–​1986), a former student of Giovanni Gentile and author of some brilliant studies on ancient philosophy.87 Calogero summarizes the ancient debate on democracy as a contrast between freedom and wisdom which does not find any plausible solution either in Plato or in Aristotle. Only 82 83

See Bachrach (1974 [1967]), 67. I am thinking especially of Berlin’s famous conference on “Two Concepts of Liberty”, originally delivered in 1958; see Berlin (2002), 166–​217. For a criticism of Berlin’s conception of democracy see Pettit (2015), 1–​5. 84 About Fustel’s La cité antique (Fustel 1972 [1864]) see Momigliano (1975e [1970]); Hartog (1988); Roberts (1994), 291–​292; and Payen’s chapter in this volume. 85 About Burckhardt’s Griechische Kulturgeschichte (Burckhardt 1955 [1898–​ 1902]) see Momigliano (1984 [1955]); Roberts (1994), 270; and Nippel’s chapter in this volume. 86 The Italian Encyclopedia has been one of the greatest editorial achievements ever published in Italy; its first edition (1929–​1936) had as a scientific director Giovanni Gentile who invited to collaborate thousands of scholars, even anti-​Fascist as De Sanctis, to make it “a mirror of the Italian nation”; cf. Turi (2002); about De Sanctis as Antiquity section director of Italian Encyclopedia see Cagnetta (1990), 91–​205. 87 For a biographic and intellectual profile of Calogero see Visentin (2019).

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320 Piovan one document surges above this contrast, namely Pericles’ funeral speech in Thucydides’ history, where freedom is a mean to conquer wisdom and the latter is a mean to control the former, “and therefore democracy results, one can say, nearly raised to liberalism”.88 Thus Calogero does not only present ancient democracy in a positive light, which was not a little achievement in that time and in that work, but he also distances himself from Croce’s historicism, appraising the Athenian experience as Croce never did. He had already become politically an anti-​Fascist and, with Aldo Capitini,89 a few years later he secretly founded the liberal-​socialist movement, an important network of young anti-​Fascist intellectuals, whose ideas will be revived by the Partito d’Azione (‘Action Party’) during the Resistance against the Fascist and Nazi occupation of Italy.90 In those years Calogero devoted himself to seriously meditate on the values necessary to found a true democracy; he discovered that the fundamental attitude of the democratic mind is the dialogue. Inspired by two different historical moments, ancient Greece and modern England, he outlined an integral democracy in which there is no true liberty without social justice.91 Some of his ideals seem to be present in the new Italian Constitution, drafted just after the war, even if it is not easy to understand exactly where and how much, because many other political and ideological traditions (Marxism, Labour movement, Liberalism, Catholicism) contributed to it with a larger parliamentary representation. Anyway, it is suggestive to think that some principles of the Italian Constitution could be a modern formulation of some utterances of Pericles’ funeral speech.92 A significant consonance with Calogero’s stress on the positive value of Athenian democracy as a paradigm can be found in Nicola Matteucci (1926–​ 2006), a Crocean political philosopher, who played a leading role in the foundation of Il Mulino (‘the Mill’), a very influential cultural association, provided 88 89 90

91 92

Translated from Calogero (1931), 594. About Capitini (1899–​1968), a leading figure in non-​violence, Italian movement, see Craveri (1975). For the Action Party’s history see De Luna (2016). Even if this party had a short life, its members were much present in the post-​war cultural life, especially in the press; according to Orsina (2018), 220–​221, 317, it was the Action Party that first promoted in Italy a model of democracy grounded on citizens’ direct and active participation in public affairs and on hostility to institutional mediation. In fact the Action Party’s legacy in the 1948 Constitution is perceivable in some articles such as the no. 75, which introduces the possibility to hold referendums to abolish a law, that is still the only effective instrument of direct democracy in post-​war Italy. See Calogero (2012 [1968]). An example could perhaps be article 33, which asserts that the State should help the good and deserving students to study even if they are without means.

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with a journal and a publishing house; in it differently oriented intellectuals tried to discuss public issues in the Cold War period beyond ideological contrasts.93 In his essay on “The equality of the Ancients compared to that of the Moderns” Matteucci asserts that we have to “rediscover the function of authentic public opinion, which is born only by talking citizens”, who are equal and without delegates. Modern law must be the result of a dialogical process, made by sharing and not by imposition; therefore “it is necessary to go back to the Greek isegoria, to the equal possibility to access the agora of speech, that is to say to the real experience of men”.94 A sign of Calogero’s attention to Athens can perhaps be seen also in the work of Norberto Bobbio (1909–​2004), who was the most important Italian political philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century (one could say that he replaced Croce in that field).95 As a young man, Bobbio was also a member of the liberal-​socialist movement and in one of his latest writings called Calogero the youngest of his maestri.96 Even if Bobbio never wrote a specific essay on the Athenian system, it seems not insignificant that, when he compares ancient and modern democracy, he disagrees with Sartori, whom he often quotes positively. If Sartori thinks that there is only a very slight resemblance between ancient and modern democracy, for Bobbio Pericles’ funeral speech is enough to reduce this distance.97 Bobbio identifies two main differences between the ancients and the moderns; one is that representation replaced direct democracy because of the transformation from the city-​state into the large territorial states; the other one is the change of opinion about democratic systems, which went from negative to positive, due to the acknowledgment of human rights, a modern achievement linked to an individualistic conception unknown to the ancients. But Bobbio also recognizes that the idea of equality by nature, which is the basis of modern democracy, is already present in ancient philosophy and that some forms of contemporary individualism tend to cut off the individual from society, thus favoring the bellum omnium contra omnes imagined by Hobbes. Looking to the future, Bobbio hopes that representative democracy 93 94 95 96 97

This association is still very active. It is worth saying that a couple of former Italian Prime Ministers belonged to it, among whom one was later President of EU Commission. The quotations are translated from Matteucci (1997), 221 and 233. About Bobbio’s life and work see Portinaro (2014). Bobbio (2009b [2001]). Bobbio (2009c [1987]), 1127–​1128. This point is largely developed by Bovero (2000), who maintains that the individual is the principle of both democracy, the ancient and the modern, and what has really changed since antiquity is not the political conception but the anthropological one, hinting at slavery. Bovero is a former student of Bobbio and admittedly elaborates his former teacher’s thought on these topics.

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322 Piovan will partly go back to the ancient model by broadening the spaces of direct democracy. That is a kind of requirement that has often been brought up in the following decades, in which the crisis of representative democracy has deepened and is still far from being solved.98

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This is not the proper place to deal with the contemporary crisis of Italian as well as Western democracy; for a concise analysis and some bibliographical references see Piovan (2019a) and Piovan (2019b).

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pa rt 3 Modern Philosophy in the Face of Athenian Democracy

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­c hapter 10

What Has Marxism Got to Do with Ancient Athens? Marx and Marxist Historiography on Ancient Democracy Carlo Marcaccini 1 Introduction1 “Is such a book possible? And, most important, can it be good?” Thus begins Pierre Vidal-​Naquet’s foreword to the French translation of Moses Finley’s Democracy Ancient and Modern.2 The book, published in 1973, created an uproar. Finley presents Athens as a model for modern democracies, and in so doing reignites the nineteenth-​century debate on freedom in antiquity.3 The project is bold to the point of appearing methodologically unsound, but Vidal-​Naquet explains that the book’s legitimacy resides precisely in the political application of its content, one in line with a centuries-​old tradition. Finley thus belongs to a “tradition of Greek democracy” which, since the eighteenth century has been consistently revived for propaganda aims. Jean-​Jacques Barthélemy, William Mitford, Camille Desmoulins, Volney, and George Grote all gave it different interpretations, depending on their convictions and their times. It is “Athenian democracy seen from elsewhere”, as reads the title of Vidal-​Naquet’s now 1 This paper revisits a theme I have in part already discussed in my Atene sovietica. Democrazia antica e rivoluzione comunista: Marcaccini (2012). Here, I have developed some aspects from nineteenth-​century historiography on ancient democracy. I do not propose an examination of the whole of Marx’ Ethnological Notebooks; rather I focus only on two questions (the demes and the election of the magistrates). I have also expanded on the post-​war Marxist historiography. For this, I have received precious assistance from Giorgio Camassa and Ettore Cinnella, whom I thank. I wish also to thank the editors of this volume, Giovanni Giorgini and Dino Piovan, who gave me useful advice upon accepting my paper, and Ada Bronowski, who translated this article from the original Italian. Finally, I would like to express my special thanks to Erin Larkin and Filippo Naitana, my great friends, who revised the English translation. 2 “Comment un tel livre est-​il possible? Comment, surtout, peut-​il être un bon livre?”. The foreword is entitled: Tradition de la démocratie grecque, in Finley (1976). The original text I am referring to is Finley (1985a). 3 On the freedom for the ancients and the moderns, cf. Guerci (1979); Raskolnikoff (1990); Avlami (2001); Camassa (2004), 5–​28; Vlassopoulos (2010).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_012

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334 Marcaccini classic 1990 volume, in which he systematically analyses the many different appropriations that have been made of the myth of Greek democracy.4 Since then, it has been inevitable to think that ancient history—​beyond the layer of erudition and specialized language it involves—​also lives in the wake of political interests tugging at it from all sides. And this applies to Finley as well, whose book—​a “good book”—​is therefore “possible”. But we must ask another question; one that does not concern the possibility of a comparison between ancients and moderns, but the point of view of the person making the comparison in the first place. Finley is a Marxist but should his claims about democracy be considered Marxist in nature? In other words, what have Marxists got to do with ancient Athens? At first glance, nothing. For between Marxists and Athenian democracy there is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle: namely slavery, a kind of economic oppression. That is to say, it is the manifestation of class conflict and, according to materialist doctrine, the state in antiquity is the political incarnation of such an abuse of power: “Without slavery, no Greek State, no Greek art and science”, as Engels declares in his Anti-​Dühring.5 In order to accept ancient democracy, or even to put it forward as a model, the Marxist scholar should separate the political from its economic foundations, and assess ancient democracy as an absolute, setting aside a macroscopic phenomenon such as slavery. Otherwise, they should consider that the exploitation of slavery was not classist and that, in effect, in Athens there was no such thing as class conflict. In both cases, this would come down to giving up one of the defining features of historical materialism. Finley, Vidal-​Naquet, and Vernant follow this second path, contending that the Greeks did not have a notion of work as a social factor, and that slaves had no class conscience, let alone the poor.6 They argue that the ancient world was anthropologically different from the modern, because the political dimension contained within itself the economic one.

4 Vidal-​Naquet (1990). For an equally excellent overview, see Cambiano (2000). 5 mecw 25, 168 (mega i/​27, 370: “Ohne Sklaverei kein griechischer Staat, keine griechische Kunst und Wissenschaft”). 6 Finley (1981), 106–​107: “There are no complaints […] that slaves deprive free man of a livelihood, or compel free men to work for lower wages and longer hours. There is nothing remotely resembling a workers’ program, no wage demands, no talk of working conditions or government employment measures or the like … Nor did the free poor take the other possible tack of joining with the slaves in a common struggle on a principled basis”. According to Finley, the exceptions are the Ilots because they belong to one and same ethnic group: the social link in this case is the result of common roots (ibid., 109). Cf. in addition, Vernant (1965), 5–​18 (reprinted in Vernant (1974), 11–​29); Austin, Vidal-​Naquet (1972), 11–​43.

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They are convinced that, in order to understand the ancient world, we cannot make use of our moral and intellectual categories, nor can we apply onto it the schema of the class conflict, which presupposes the priority of economics over politics.7 In opposition to the modernist analysis of ancient society, they put forward a primitivist outlook that enables them to study and appreciate some of its aspects precisely because of how archaic it actually is.8 This approach owes a great deal to Max Weber, Karl Polanyi and cultural anthropology in general; yet it seems to obscure Marxist theory, or at least subject it to a radical contamination.9 This would naturally put an end to the debate surrounding the Marxism of Moses Finley and other scholars, and it would tend also to yield a negative answer to the initial question: no, Marxism has nothing to do with Ancient democracy.10

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Finley (1981), 111:  “It seems to me that […] if we could emancipate ourselves from the despotism of extraneous moral, intellectual, and political pressures, we could conclude, without hesitation, that slavery was a basic element of Greek civilisation”. Vidal-​Naquet, in Finley (1976) 11, writes that “M.I. Finley est au premier rang de ceux qui, à la question fondamentale: la civilisation grecque reposait-​elle sur l’esclavage, ont répondu par l’affirmative” (“M.I. Finley is amongst the front liners who considered that the answer to the question of whether Greek civilisation rested on slavery was that it does”), but he does so without noting that Finley detaches himself from Marxist anachronism on this point. Finley adds that his conclusion constitutes a starting point and not the end point of his research. On the necessity of liberating historical research from a moralizing approach regarding ancient slavery, cf. Finley (1980), 11–​66 and the rich bibliography. See Finley (1985b), 47–​51, against the use of the category of class and for the concept of status, a more vague term in which economic, political and religious elements merge; Finley (1991), 9–​11 (esp. 10 n. 26, where he argues against G.E.M. de Ste. Croix). Cf. Finley (1980), 44–​63, against the anti-​Marxist modernism of Eduard Meyer and German historiography after the Russian revolution and the Second World War; Finley (1977). Cf. Weber (1999), 199–​299; Polanyi (1968), 78–​115 (already in Polanyi, Arensberg and Pearson (1957), 64–​94). For a discussion of the contamination of Marxism with anthropology, see Humphreys (1978), 7–​8: “Finley’s emphasis on the essential nexus between slavery and the political rights extended to all citizens in the Greek polis […] was another indication of the need to transcend the ethnocentrism of the crude Marxist distinction between the ‘political’ and the ‘economic’. Similar considerations have led the neo-​ Marxist school of Maurice Godelier, in economic anthropology, to develop Polanyi’s conception of the pre-​industrial economy as embedded in social relationships into a flexible Marxist analysis of primitive societies which recognizes that ‘relations of production’ may be found in institutions which the anthropologist would prima facie classify as belonging to the domain of kinship, religion, etc”. For a critical assessment of the eclecticism of the Neo-​Marxists, see Di Benedetto (1981), 13–​24. According to Di Benedetto (1981), 22, Finley, in his book The Ancient Economy, is an anti-​Marxist.

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336 Marcaccini 2

The Polis According to Marx

But Marx himself seems prey to some incoherence in his theory when he speaks of classical civilization: for he too seems to place the Greeks at a distance from the dialectic of oppressor versus oppressed, saving them from the violent mechanisms of history. Could it be that not even Marx is a Marxist? Or might he be so only intermittently? This seems a paradox, but it is not. Let us consider what he says about the world of the polis, in the claims that emerge from his massive work. Marx is profoundly knowledgeable about Greek culture and full of admiration for it. He gives an account of it which goes far beyond the purpose of his economic theory. In a famous passage of the Einleitung (Introduction) from 1857, he states that Ancient Greece was the cradle of humanity, a stage destined to be surpassed but containing within it the basis for its future development. Greek civilization represents the natural truth of the history of humankind, a truth still not fully expressed, and yet self-​complete in its finitude.11 In his Grundrisse, written between 1857 and 1858 yet unpublished until 1939, in the section devoted to the Formen die der kapitalistischen Produktion vorhergehn (Forms preceding capitalist production),12 Marx presents the ancient world in similar terms, contrasting it with the vulgarity of modernity: the latter, in actualizing its enormous potential for productivity, appears to be emptying out its very being; it thus objectivizes human nature, which appears as estranging itself from itself and for that reason is contemptible. The ancient world, on the other hand, with all its material constraints, has as its ultimate end, the realization of humankind.13 With Marx, morality plays an 11

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mecw 28, 47–​48: “An adult cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does not the naiveté of the child give him pleasure, and must he not himself endeavour to reproduce the child’s veracity on a higher level? Does not the specific character of every epoch come to life again in its natural veracity in the child’s nature? Why should not the historical childhood of the humanity, where it attained its most beautiful form, exert an eternal charm as a stage that will never recur? There are unbred children and precocious children. Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. The Greeks were normal children”; mega ii/​1.1, 45: “Ein Mann kann nicht wieder zum Kind werden oder er wird kindisch. Aber freut ihn die Naivetät des Kindes nicht, und muß er nicht selbst wieder auf einer höhern Stufe streben seine Wahrheit zu reproduciren? Lebt in der Kindernatur nicht in jeder Epoche ihr eigner Charakter in seiner Naturwahrheit auf? Warum sollte die geschichtliche Kindheit der Menschheit, wo sie am schönsten entfaltet, als eine nie wiederkehrende Stufe nicht ewigen Reiz ausüben? Es giebt ungezogne Kinder und altkluge Kinder. Viele der alten Völker gehören in diese Categorie. Normale Kinder waren die Griechen”. mecw 28, 399–​439; mega ii/​1.2, 378–​415. mecw 28, 412: “That is why, on the one hand, the childish world of antiquity appears as something superior. On the other hand, it is superior, wherever fixed shape, form and

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important role, for indeed the contents of his Formen depend to a great extent on Aristotle, especially the first book of the Politics, which distinguishes between a good way of making a profit (aimed at the realization of human nature and the ‘good life’) and a bad way whose aim is the accumulation of wealth.14 Progress for Aristotle, as for Marx, consists in overcoming the latter, that is to say exchange for the sole sake of creating profit.15 Aristotle merely observes the phenomenon and proposes as a solution the sense of a limit (πέρας) capable of adapting true well-​being to the pursuit of wealth.16 Marx, on the other hand, hopes that the desire for wealth and accumulation of capital will disappear and that there will be a return to the way things were at the beginning.17 In a certain sense, he imagines the polis as an ideal moment in which the economy is in equilibrium because there is a regime with a fundamental sense of equality in the exchanges carried out. This is the stage to which humanity should return, with no further impulse to change, without any further transformation being possible.18 established limits are being looked for. It is satisfaction from a narrow standpoint; while the modern world leaves us unsatisfied or, where it does appear to be satisfied with itself, is merely vulgar”; mega ii/​1.2, 392: “Daher erscheint einerseits die kindische alte Welt als das Höhere. Andrerseits ist sie es in alle dem, wo geschloßne Gestalt, Form, und gegebne Begrenzung gesucht wird. Sie ist Befriedigung auf einem bornirten Standpunkt; während das Moderne unbefriedigt läßt, oder wo es in sich befriedigt erscheint, gemein ist”. 14 Arist. Pol. 1256a1-​1259a36, part. 1257b1-​1258a14. For the economics section of book I of the Politics, see Meikle (1997). Cf. also Lotito (1980a); Lotito (1980b); Lotito (1981); Venturi Ferriolo (1983). Very useful is Schütrumpf (1991), 298–​363, but Newman (1887), 165–​208 is still valid. An excellent starting point to go from in studying the relation between Marx and Aristotle and ancient moral philosophy is McCarthy (1992). For more details, refer to Marcaccini (2012), 55–​68. 15 Cf. mecw 28, 432–​434; mega ii/​1.2, 410–​412. It should be said that for Marx, it is not money on its own which determines capitalist exploitation but the diffusion of the exchange value which alters the relations of production, creating free work. 16 Arist. Pol. 1257b30-​1258a2. 17 mecw 28, 433–​434: “If labour is once again to relate to its objective conditions as to its property, another system must replace that of private exchange. For, as we have seen, private exchange posits the exchange of objectified labour against labour capacity, and therefore the appropriation of living labour without exchange”; mega ii/​1.2, 412: “Damit die Arbeit sich wieder zu ihren objektiven Bedingungen als ihrem Eigenthum verhalte, muß ein andres System an die Stelle des Systems des Privataustauschs treten, der, wie wir gesehn Austausch von vergegenständlichter Arbeit gegen Arbeitsvermögen, und darum Aneignung der lebendigen Arbeit ohne Austausch sezt”. 18 mecw 28, 436:  “Though the urban trades are essentially based on exchange and the creation of exchange values, the immediate, principal object of this production is not enrichment or exchange value as exchange value, but the subsistence [of the producer] as an artisan, as a master craftsman, i.e. use value. Production is therefore everywhere subordinate to a presupposed consumption, supply to demand, and it expands only slowly”;

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338 Marcaccini We can already see from these brief observations that there are enough elements in Marx for an analysis of antiquity that goes beyond Capital, and even the dogmas of the Manifesto. It is no coincidence that in 1964, at the time when Finley and others were intent on studying slavery in the ancient world without the ideological filter of previous studies, Eric Hobsbawm published an English translation of the Formen with a rich introduction precisely in order to present a different side of Marx, for sure less systematic and yet able to elicit less ideologically charged enquiries on ancient civilizations.19 Ten years later, the outlook broadened still further:  in 1974, another unpublished work by Marx came to light, undoubtedly one of the most important from a historiographical perspective and perhaps not as yet fully appraised in that respect. These are the Ethnological Notebooks collected from 1880 to 1881, shortly before Marx’ death.20 In these notebooks, Marx summarises and comments on the ethnographical works of Henry Sumner Maine, John Lubbock, John Budd Phear and most of all on the celebrated work by Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society.21 The Ethnological Notebooks were used by Engels when he wrote the Origins of the Family, Society and the State in which works by Morgan and other anthropologists were read and re-​elaborated according to the tenets of historical materialism. For this reason, it had always been supposed that Marx had taken the same approach.22 However, a reading of the Notebooks reveals some remarkable innovations, especially in Marx’ assessment of Athenian democracy. His admiration for Greek culture is not absent in other works, an admiration

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mega ii/​1.2, 414: “Bei dem städtischen Handwerk, obgleich es wesentlich auf Austausch beruht und Schöpfung von Tauschwerthen, ist der unmittelbare, der Hauptzweck dieser Production Subsistenz als Handwerker, als Handwerksmeister, also Gebrauchswerth; nicht Bereicherung, nicht Tauschwerth als Tauschwerth. Die Production ist daher überall einer vorausgesezten Consumtion, die Zufuhr der Nachfrage untergeordnet und erweitert sich nur langsam”. Hobsbawm (1964), 9–​65. Krader (1974). Krader (1974), 95–​241 (summary of Morgan). The full title of Morgan’s book is Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. The essay was published in 1877. I will refer here to the edition published by E. Burke Leacock: Morgan (1974). David Rjazanov, the founder of the Marx-​Engels Institute in Moscow presents them in a conference in 1923 without however disseminating them: Rjazanov (1925), 399 = Rjazanov (1969), 74. A few years later, in 1927, Rjazanov speaks of them again and attributes to Marx the intention of reworking his notes on Morgan from the perspective of historical materialism: the paper was published in 1929 in a French translation in “La revue marxiste”, in the issues spanning the 6th July to the 7th August; it can be found in an Italian translation under the title Comunismo e matrimonio: Rjazanov (1977), 61. For the bibliographical listing of Rjazanov’s own works, cf. Burkhard (1985), 51, n. 28, 43.

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that already attached to the world of the polis some exemplary connotations. But with the Notebooks we are faced with something quite different, which seems to open the historical dialectic outlined until that point. For Marx opens up his perspective to anthropology and places the polis within the symbolic universe of the primitive world. In this way, classical civilization is deprived of a modern make-​over and becomes even an exemplary terrain for a prospective revolution. Furthermore, in the section of the Notebooks devoted to the history of Athens, Marx puts Morgan’s work together with other texts at his disposal, an operation which demonstrates two points: first and foremost, that Marx means to support Morgan’s claims that Athens realized a true popular regime; secondly, that Marx is not original in this sense, but influenced by the historiography of his time which, in part, was moving in that very same direction. The notebooks undoubtedly belong to the historiographical debate of the nineteenth century on ancient democracy and are part of the “tradition of Greek democracy” to which twentieth-​century Marxists cleave. 3

A “Republican Yankee” in Russia

Before discussing the contents of the Notebooks, we should give a better definition of the intellectual itinerary of Marx’ last years. When Marx read Morgan’s book, he had already modified his historical and political perspective thanks to his encounter with Russian populism. In the 1870s he acquires an ever-​increasing familiarity with the Russian Populists (the narodniki).23 They are the ones who initiate the encounter that leads him to support the cause of the Russian revolution. Marx is gratified by their interest but at first points out that their principles are in opposition to his theory. The narodniki were in favor of a peasant revolution and wished to bring back to the forefront the ancient Russian rural commune (mir or obščina), the village community in which a sort of primitive socialism prevailed.24 Marx, on the other hand, had always maintained that political revolution had to be the offspring of industrial development. For this reason, in the 1850s he had sung the praises of the civilizing process begun in England, which was destroying archaic forms of society in its colonies, preparing thus (in spite of itself) the way for communism.25 Over 23

See Cinnella (1985); Cinnella (2014). See also Shanin (1984). On Russian populism, see Venturi (1972). 24 On mir see Pipes (1992), 91–​120. 25 See in particular “The British Rule in India”, published on 25th June 1853 in the New-​York Daily Tribune: mecw 12, 125–​133; mega i/​12, 166–​173.

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340 Marcaccini the years, Marx had already dealt with the question of rural communities in Europe, as we can see in the Formen, but this new contact with the populists rekindles and develops his interest in a highly unexpected way.26 For indeed, in the 1880s, Marx seems to be converted to the cause. But not only: he also seems to adhere in part to the principles of the Russian populists. There is no place here to go into details about this conversion; instead, I shall limit myself to outlining some of its most significant moments. One of these is most certainly the French edition of Capital in 1875, in which Marx admits that the process of primitive accumulation—​that is to say, the fundamental pre-​condition of capitalism—​was only definitively carried out in England, whereas in other countries a different path was being pursued.27 A subsequent stage is marked by a letter Marx writes in 1877 to a Russian journal; in it, he suggests that there could be different paths to economic development, different from the tribulations of the capitalist regime.28 The final act of this long reconsideration is constituted by the drafts of a letter to Vera Zasulič dated 8th March 1881, which leads us straight back to Morgan and the Ethnological Notebooks.29 Zasulič is a subversive activist in exile. On the 16th of February 1881, she writes to Marx asking what the revolutionary socialists should do in Russia: should they save the obščina from the fiscal reforms of the Tsarist state or let the obščina follow its destiny of decadence? In other words, would the socialist revolution come about thanks to the development of capitalism or from the restoration of an archaic form of society? In his reply sent on March 8th, Marx claims that the historical necessity of going through the capitalist phase was valid only for Western countries and that in Capital there is nothing that goes against the rural commune; what is more, the latter could be considered the foundation for “social regeneration in Russia”.30 Marx does not add any particular explanation, apart from referring to a more developed analysis whose contents however he does not divulge. For this reason, the four drafts of this letter are crucial, in particular the first one: there, Marx develops this argument 26 27 28 29 30

On Marx’ interest for Russian rural communities in India and in the Slavic and German world, see Cinnella (1985), 686–​694; Cinnella (2014), 67–​86. Nikolaj Francevič Daniel’son was influential in bringing Marx’ attention to the rural question. mega ii/​7, 634. mecw 24, 196–​201; mega i/​25, 112–​117 (letter from 1877, written in French and never sent off). For a discussion of these documents, cf. Cinnella (1985), 694–​697; Cinnella (2014), 87–​96. mecw 24, 346–​371; mega i/​25, 219–​242 (both the sent letter and the four drafts). The letter was in effect censured by Zasulič; David Rjazanov published it, together with the drafts, only in 1926: see Cinnella (2014), 141–​143. mecw 24, 371; mega i/​25, 241.

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in more detail, referring back to Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society. Here, he quotes Morgan: “In a word, it [the Russian Commune] finds it  [the capitalistic social system] in a crisis which will only end in its elimination, in the return of modern societies to the ‘archaic’ type of communal property, a form in which, in the words of an American writer quite free from any suspicion of revolutionary tendencies and subsidized in his work by the Washington government, ‘the new system’ towards which modern society tends ‘will be a revival in a superior form of an archaic social type’. So, we must not let ourselves be alarmed by the word ‘archaic’ ”.31 Morgan, the “Yankee Republican”, as he is described in the Notebooks,32 enables Marx to reconcile the revolutionary process with the return to an archaic configuration of society.33 Morgan considered the historical process in cyclical terms; he thought that the revolution was nothing other than the reaffirmation, in new form, of an original communitarian spirit. The words quoted by Marx come from the last chapter of Ancient Society:  “Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes”.34 According to Morgan, the family organization was the primitive stage of society and was characterized by a common administration of goods, just like the rural Russian commune. It is clear that Marx, in his letter to Vera, conflates Morgan’s gentes with the obščina; in it, he finds a historical justification for the revolution. But 31

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mecw 24, 350; mega i/​25, 220: “Elle [the russian commune] le [the capitalistic social system] trouve en un mot dans une crise qui ne finira que par son élimination, par un retour des sociétés modernes au type ‘archaïque’ de la propriété commune, forme ou, comme le dit un auteur américain, point du tout suspect de tendances révolutionnaires, et soutenu dans ses travaux par le gouvernement de Washington, ‘le système nouveau’ auquel la société moderne tend, ‘sera une renaissance (a revival) dans une forme supérieure (in a superior form) d’un type social archaïque’. Donc il ne faut pas trop se laisser effrayer par le mot ‘archaïque’ ”. For a detailed analysis of the contents of these drafts, cf. Cinnella (1985), 718–​734, esp. 727–​730, which highlights the deep changes in the approach Marx undertook with respect to the classification of pre-​capitalist society as shown in the Grundrisse and, in general, with respect to the theory of historical materialism. See also Marcaccini (2012), 73–​77, in which I assume a continuity in Marxist thought—​an approach I have now in part modified but which is justified in the substantial presence of the ancient model in the works of Marx, especially in the unpublished works. Krader (1974), 206. Morgan’s essay is given to Marx by a Russian author, Maksim Maksimovič Kovalevskij, who had worked on communitarian property of land:  see Cinnella (1985), 701–​705; Cinnella (2014), 110–​116; cf. Krader (1974), 6–​7; Krader (1975), 190–​208. Morgan (1974), 561–​562.

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342 Marcaccini interestingly, it is mostly the Greeks—​and in particular the history of Athens and the foundation of democracy—​that inspire Morgan and, subsequently, Marx himself.35 For Morgan, Athenian democracy as it was inaugurated by Cleisthenes was not an absolute novelty but a “revival” of the equality in place in an earlier period. According to him, Athenian democracy had always existed in embryonic form. For in the archaic assemblies of citizens, the Athenians “were preparing themselves for the full democracy subsequently established by the constitutions of Cleisthenes”.36 When the old system began to decline due to economic development, Athenian reformers brought it up to date: first Theseus, then Solon and finally Cleisthenes substituted the obsolete family alliances, the territorial subdivision into tribes and demes.37 So Athens is not only a model by virtue of the reforms carried out at the time, but also because its own institutional development exemplifies a revolutionary itinerary. What happened in Athens—​namely the restoration of primitive democracy by means of social reform—​could be repeated once more. According to Morgan, this happened in the Unites States, where townships and their local governments correspond to the Cleisthenic demes.38 For Marx, this would happen in Russia, with the resurrection of the obščina. This is the way to read the Athenian section of the Ethnological Notebooks, which would be incomprehensible without taking into account the influence of Russian populism. 4

The Schoolmaster and the Erudite Philistine

In the Notebooks, there are other additional historiographical contributions that are in line with the ideological framework of the text. Marx takes up Morgan’s debate with George Grote, the “erudite philistine”39 who, in his History of Greece, presented Cleisthenes’ democracy as the culmination of an evolutionary process.40 Grote had a linear conception of progress and thought that the government of the polis in the archaic period was a monarchy and only subsequently developed into a democracy. Grote was thinking of the development 35 36 37 38 39 40

Morgan discusses the polis and in particular Athens in chapters viii-​x of the second part of Ancient Society: Morgan (1974), 221–​284. Morgan (1974), 253 and 260: “Democratic ideas had existed in the knowledge and practice of their forefathers from time immemorial, and now found expression in a more elaborate, and in many respects, in an improved government”. Morgan (1974), 265–​267 (Theseus), 271–​277 (Solon), 277–​284 (Cleisthenes). Morgan (1974), 277–​278 (on the demes). “Schulgelehrter Philister”: Krader (1974), 201. Grote (1888) 3, 346–​398, on the birth of Athenian democracy.

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of modern states, and in particular of England, where the people had emancipated themselves gradually thanks to economic and technological progress. For this reason, he inevitably pinpoints a correspondence between general well-​being and political reforms. Morgan does not take this into account; he has a primitivist vision of democracy based on a circular conception of history, in which each element of progress is the actualization of a pre-​existing condition. For him the ancient Greek kings were not absolute monarchs, but were elected by the people within a regime that was already essentially democratic.41 In comparison with Grote, this is a decidedly conservative position. Indeed, it was the conservative historians who had presented ancient democracy as an archaic, primitive phenomenon, in order to contrast it with the actualizing and politically progressive view of Grote. It is therefore not surprising that in these notes Marx conflates Morgan’s text with the work of a Prussian scholar with reactionary tendencies, Georg Friedrich Schömann. Marx draws copiously from the first edition of Schömann’s Griechische Alterthümer, published in 1855,42 to corroborate information he found in Morgan. He uses it to describe the composition of the pre-​Cleisthenic tribes and to highlight the democracy reigning in the Homeric assemblies, emphasizing thus the importance of the demes to the reforms of Cleisthenes. In addition, he uses Schömann to fill a gap in Morgan’s work, namely the radicalization of democracy realized by Pericles.43 Naturally enough, Marx is not unaware of Schömann’s conservatism (he describes him as the “schoolmaster”).44 But he finds an undeniable conceptual affinity between Morgan’s outlook and the account of this Prussian historian,

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Morgan (1974), 254:  “The true statement, as it seems to an American, is precisely the reverse of Mr. Grote’s; namely, that the primitive Grecian government was essentially democratical, reposing on gentes, phratries and tribes, organized as self-​governing bodies, and on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity”; Morgan (1974), 281–​282: “In the new political society they realized that complete democracy which already existed in every essential principle, but which required a change in the plan of government to give it a more ample field and a fuller expression. It precisely here, as it seems to the writer, that we have been misled by the erroneous assumption of the great historian, Mr. Grote, whose general views of Grecian institutions are so sound and perspicuous, namely, that the early governments of the Grecian tribes were essentially monarchical. On this assumption it requires a revolution of institutions to explain the existence of that Athenian democracy under which the great mental achievements of the Athenians were made. No such revolution occurred, and no radical change of institutions was ever effected, for the reason that they were and always had been essentially democratical”. Schömann (1855). Krader (1974), 197, 206, 209, 214, 215–​217. Krader (1974), 216: “Schulmeister”. Di Benedetto (1981), 70, notes the offensive nature of the epithet.

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344 Marcaccini which lies precisely in their methodologies, so clearly different from Grote’s. It is therefore worthwhile to redirect our attention to the debate between Grote and Schömann, representatives of two historiographical lines in stark opposition in the middle of the nineteenth century, but which even today have a lasting echo in current discussions of ancient democracy. Grote was a banker but also a radical philosopher who was politically engaged alongside John Stuart Mill. The History of Greece reflects his ideas and passion for civic questions.45 When he says that Cleisthenes “imparted the political franchise to the excluded mass” by giving the vote to metics and some categories of slaves—​and thus came close to the principle of universal suffrage46—​, he elevates democratic Athens and Cleisthenes’ reforms to a model for his times. His History is political and when he speaks of ancient democracy, the tone and style flares up: Cleisthenes’ reforms, which are described in detail, are exalted because they assert the principle of the sovereignty of the people for the first time.47 Grote underlines that the division of the demes into ten tribes was contrived in order to stifle local conflicts for the sake of the general interest of the whole state.48 This marks a break with the sixth century, characterized by strife between various factions. Grote admits that some institutions were already present under Solon (the assembly, a counsel—​though restricted to four hundred members—​, the annual election of magistrates) but emphasizes the discontinuity in their conception. After the reforms of 508 bce the assembly gains in power and the counsel of the Five Hundred is more inclusive, since its members come from ten tribes and no longer four as it was at the time of Solon.49 According to Grote, democracy has an educational function, teaching the people how to govern, making them more active, united and aware of their own role.50 His conception is that of a utilitarian: in exchange for these privileges, the people acquire a sense of morality and politics they did

45 46 47 48

49 50

For Grote’s works, personality and philosophical and political engagement see Calder iii, Trzaskoma (1996). In particular on his History of Greece see Chambers (1996). See also Demetriou 2014; Marcaccini (2019); and Kierstead’s chapter on this volume. Grote (1888), 3.347 and 348. Grote (1888), 3.394. Grote (1888), 3.352–​353: “Kleisthenes distributed the city (or found it already distributed) into several demes, and those demes among several tribes […] so that there were no local advantages either to bestow predominance, or to create a struggle for predominance, of one tribe over the rest. Each deme had its own local interests to watch over; but the tribe was a mere aggregate of demes for political, military, and religious purposes, with no separate hopes or fears apart from the whole state”. Grote (1888), 3.354–​355. Grote (1888), 3.394–​398.

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not have before, a sense of belonging and respect for the law that are not easy to acquire; but once attained, they produce a stable government, such as the British and the American.51 Schömann was an utterly different kind of person. He did not own a London bank, nor was he active in politics; he was an academic. Born in Stralsund on the Baltic Sea, he moved to Greifswald, a small university town nearby where he went to study and later took up a successful career as a teacher. He wrote important essays, was well recognised, and became the rector of his university three times; but he did not like to put himself on the front line, preferring to focus on research and teaching few, very devoted students. His main interests were ancient law, the history of institutions and religion.52 Schömann preferred analysis to synthesis:  he did not write essays on political history and seems to have been more interested in understanding ancient society in detail than giving comprehensive interpretations. And yet, he too had an overarching vision, alternative in every way to that of Grote. In Germany, the History of Greece made a great impression and divided scholars into two groups: those for and those against the British historian.53 Schömann is amongst the critics, for he is against democracy; he thus attempts to take away from Cleisthenes the laurels of a revolutionary reformer, an absolute political innovator. In

51

52

53

Grote (1888), 3.372–​373:  “This co-​existence of freedom and self-​imposed restraint  –​of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it –​may be found in the aristocracy of England (since about 1688) as well as in the democracy of the American United States: and because we are familiar with it, we are apt to suppose it a natural sentiment; though there seem to be few sentiments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community, judging by the experience of history. We may see how imperfectly it exists at this day in the Swiss Cantons; while the many violences of the first French Revolution illustrate, among various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceble; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong enough to conquer ascendency for themselves …”. According to Grote, this was the reason Cleisthenes thought of ostracism. De comitiis Atheniensium libri tres dates from 1819, whilst his dissertation De sortitione iudicum apud Athenienses, which he presents as his Habilitation for teaching dates from 1820; in 1824 he publishes, together with M.H.E. Meier, Der attische Proceß, in four volumes and in 1838 a complex treatment of Greek public law, the Antiquitates iuris publicis Graecorum. But undoubtedly, one of his most important works is his Griechische Alterthümer published in 1855 and reprinted many times over the following years. For a concise description of Schömann’s works, see Bursian (1883), 1154–​1160; for a more biographical account, see Baumeister (1891). Momigliano (1955[1952]), 224–​225.

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346 Marcaccini order to show this, Schömann highlights the continuity between Solon and Cleisthenes; he contests the presumed historical hiatus of the reforms of 508. According to him, Cleisthenes is a political realist who changes some rules in order to get the upper hand over his rival Isagoras, and reverts to the ancestral democratic constitution.54 The subdivision of Attica into demes and the electoral system are crucial points of argument in this debate, for they reflect contemporary issues such as the administration of territories and the vote of the people. However, these questions were tackled by Grote and Schömann without their being acquainted with the fundamental text of Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia, discovered and published only in 1891.55 They rely on the description of the reform passed down by Herodotus, on the remarks made in fourth-​century orations, on the lemmata of the lexicographers (Harpocration, Pollux, Photius), and on the scholia to ancient comedy. In addition, there was none of the epigraphical data we have today on the functioning of the Athenian institutions and the role of the demes. Thanks to the information provided there, we know today that the deme was fundamental in selecting by lot the members of the boule of the Five Hundred. Each deme provided a number of counsellors proportionate to its own dimensions, so that the council gave representation to the whole territory.56 We also know that in all likelihood, the lots for the nomination of magistrates had already been introduced by Solon and included a preliminary selection (κλήρωσις ἐκ προκρίτων); after the hiatus produced by the tyranny and Cleisthenes’ reform, the selection by lot was re-​introduced and the selection of the candidates, the πρόκρισις, was gradually broadened so as to enable access to offices to a greater number of citizens.57 In the middle of the nineteenth century, all this was unknown. But that did not prevent Grote, Schömann and Morgan from giving comprehensive interpretations of Athenian democracy that would continue to influence later historiography, however erroneous they later were revealed to be on numerous points of detail. It is also true that ancient testimonies such as the Athenaion Politeia or an 54 55 56

Schömann (1855), 337–​344, on the development of democracy after 508 bce. Kenyon (1891). Rhodes (1972), 11–​12; Traill (1975); Whitehead (1986), 264–​270; Ruzé (1997), 372–​376; Paga (2010), 351–​384. On the election and the functions of the boule, see also the commentaries to the Athenaion politeia by Rhodes (1992), 510 ff., and Chambers (1990), 338 ff. 57 Arist. Ath Pol., 8.1; 22.5; 26.2, on which see Chambers (1990), 174–​176, 241–​243, 263; Rhodes (1992), 149–​150, 272–​275, 329–​330. On the election of the magistrates in Athens cf. Badian (1971); Develin (1979); Abel (1983); Hansen (1986); Hansen (1990), 55–​61; Marcaccini (2013). On the electoral reforms in the fifth century see also Hansen’s essay in this volume (Section 4: History).

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epigraphical text can be accepted, discussed or contested on the basis of the ideas, schemata and beliefs which, in the attempt to nail down a phenomenon in all its complexity, inevitably sacrifice some details in order to highlight others. This is true especially for the archaic history of Athens, which is fundamental to understand Cleisthenes’s contribution, i.e. whether it was utterly innovative or whether, on the contrary, it was merely a revival that brought a pre-​existing arrangement up to date. In the nineteenth century, as in the present day, everything depended on what there was before 508 precisely because, from that period, information is still scarce.58 5

The Ethnological Notebooks, a Contaminated Text

Let us now turn to the question of the demes before addressing that of the selection by lot. I shall first report Schömann’s point of view in his Griechische Alterthümer in order to see more clearly the extent of Marx’ debt to him.59 In contrast with Grote, Schömann insists on the fact that the demes already existed before Cleisthenes, whose sole innovation would then be not to have invented them, but to have distributed ten of them for each tribe, thus transforming them into administrative districts (Verwaltungsbezirke).60 It is obvious that Schömann is influenced by the fourth-​century orators who backdate democracy to times earlier than Cleisthenes, describing Solon already as a δημοτικός.61 In his view, during the archaic period, demes were already called 58 59 60

61

See Roussel (1976), 193–​208 on the four tribes existing before Cleisthenes’ time; we must bear in mind the particularly corrosive analysis of Bourriot (1976), 508–​521 (on Cleisthenes’ reforms). On the contamination of Morgan with Schömann see Di Benedetto (1981), 65–​76, esp. 69–​72. Schömann (1855), 337–​339, 367–​368. The hypothesis of a hundred demes was based on Hdt. 5.69.2: δέκα δὲ καὶ τοὺς δήμους κατένειμε [Κλεισθένης] ἐς τὰς φυλάς. Schömann joined δέκα to δήμους; later scholars preferred to correct δέκα into δέκαχα (“in ten groups”): cf. Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff (1893), 149–​150 and n. 9. In the last posthumous edition of the Griechische Alterthümer the editor J.H. Lipsius notes that the hypothesis of ten demes per tribe is outdated (Schömann (1897), 387 n.  4). Grote had already challenged that view:  Grote (1888) 2.351–352 and n.  1. On the demes, before and after Cleisthenes, see Whitehead (1986), 3–​38. On reforms by Cleisthenes, see also the essay by Hansen in this volume (Section 4: History). Cf. Aesch. 3.257; Dem. 18.6. For these and other testimonies on the patrios politeia see Fuks (1953); Ruschenbusch (1958); Finley (1975), 34–​59; Mossé (1979), 425–​437; Raaflaub (1992), 37–​40; Witte (1995). Grote is not misled by the mirage of the founding fathers’ constitution which he considers to be molded by propaganda: “Demosthenês and Æschinês lived under it [democracy] as a system consummated and in full activity, when the stages of its

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348 Marcaccini thus, belonging to small settlements all over the Attic territory; even the term δῆμος existed before the reforms and was used to designate a kind of district. Thanks to this new territorial organization which, according to this view, would be merely echoing the previous arrangement, Cleisthenes’ success actually consisted in augmenting the number of citizens (as can be inferred from a passage from Aristotle’s Politics)62 and stripping the aristocrats of their privileges within the rural districts. He would thus have re-​established the power that Solon had already given to the people and that tyranny and then Isagoras had taken away. Indeed, for a short while after the fall of the Peisistratids, Isagoras had taken the upper hand and attempted to establish an oligarchy. Schömann reaches this conclusion with the support of Herodotus 5.68.2: τῶν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον πρότερον ἀπωσμένον τότε πάντων, where πρότερον is taken to refer back to the period of conflict between Cleisthenes and Isagoras and not to the time of the tyranny. Schömann writes the following (from the English translation of 1880): “But when, after the fall of the Pisistratidae, the struggle broke out afresh, and the nobility, under the leadership of Isagoras, for a time won the victory, the people in reality ran the risk of losing the freedom of which Solon had thought them capable, had not Clisthenes succeeded in conquering this faction of the nobility”.63 In a way, for him there had always been democracy in Athens, because the participation of the people had always been acknowledged in some form or another, and it was grounded essentially in the self-​government of citizens in their villages. Cleisthenes’ reforms would ultimately help avoid the degeneration into oligarchy of an initial form of democracy and not the democratic development of an oligarchical system. This view fit perfectly with Morgan’s reconstruction. I  quote here a passage from the Ethnological Notebooks, reproducing Krader’s edition previous growth were no longer matter of exact memory; and the dikastes then assembled in judgment were pleased to hear their constitution associated with the name either of Solôn or of Thêseus. Their inquisitive contemporary Aristotle was not thus misled” (Grote (1888), 2.498). On the other hand, he credits Cleisthenes’ times with a democratic spirit that is wholly new though hard to justify as an absolute innovation: “The proceedings of Kleisthenês indicate a hearty and spontaneous popular sentiment” (Grote (1888), 2.494). 62 Arist. Pol. 1275b37-​38: πολλοὺς γὰρ ἐφυλέτευσε ξένους καὶ δούλους μετοίκους. The passage is controversial; probably an analogous concept is set out more clearly in Arist. Pol. 1319b19-​ 27 and Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.2: see Chambers (1990), 225; Rhodes (1992), 249–​250. 63 Schömann (1880), 335 = Schömann (1855), 338 and n.1. The passage from Herodotus cited by Schömann in a note is slightly different:  τὸν δῆμον πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων. The passage transcribed in the text is that from the Teubner edition established by H.B. Rosén. For modern interpretations see Camassa (2007), 55–​60.

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from 1974 in which I  am including in full the words abbreviated by Marx (e.g.: whslich = wahrscheinlich; u. = und etc.): Second member der organic territorial series: 10 demes, united in a larger geographical district, was called a local tribe … Each district named after an Attic hero; einige der 10 demes waren detached (nicht locally contiguous) wahrscheinlich in consequence of the local separation of portions des original consanguine tribe who desired to have their deme incorporated in the district of their immediate kinsmen. [Morgan nennt die topischen Phylen counties, Schoemann aber nennt die Unterabtheilung der topischen Phylen auf Wohnsitze und Theile der Stadt und Landschaft gegründet, ihre Unterabtheilungen Gaue (δῆμοι) oder Ortschaften (κῶμαι). Er sagt von Kleisthenes: Er theilte das gesammte Land in 100 Verwaltungsbezirke, hiessen δῆμοι und die einzelnen Demen wurden theils nach den kleinen Städten oder Flecken, theils nach ausgezeichneten Geschlechtern benannt … Lang vor Kleisthenes gab es Bezirke, Städte und Flecke die sich Demen nannten.64 The notes are a linguistic patchwork mixing English, German, Latin and Ancient Greek but they also are a historiographical potpourri. In this passage the insertion of some Schömann into Morgan’s text is obvious. Marx quotes the Prussian historian in order to claim that there were ten demes per tribe and these were already present before Cleisthenes. The division of Attica into districts (δῆμοι = Gaue, Bezirke) was based on a previous subdivision, preserving thus its original function. In the following lines, Marx continues to blend the two authors:  Morgan gets quickly summarized where he describes the central institutions of Athens, such as the boule and the various magistracies.65 Immediately after this, though, Schömann gets re-​used to clarify the meaning of the territorial reform of Cleisthenes. It is evident that Marx was most impressed by this, rather than by the institutional appearance of Athenian democracy. And this reflects his interest in the Russian rural commune. The passage taken from the Griechische Alterthümer is long and also introduces the reforms of Aristides, Ephialtes and 64 65

Krader (1974), 214; Morgan (1974), 278–​279, very much abridged. Morgan (1974), 279–​283. This is not a detailed presentation because Morgan is mostly intent on highlighting that, precisely where there is an absence of executive roles, “the new element which gave stability and order to the state was the deme or township, with its complete autonomy, and local self-​government” (ibid., 283).

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350 Marcaccini Pericles, which Morgan does not mention. Here I quote the part referring to Cleisthenes: Als nach Sturz der Pisistratiden der Adel unter Isagoras eine Zeitlang den Sieg gewonnen, das Volk in Gefahr seine Freiheit zu verlieren, wenn Kleisthenes nicht die Adelspartei besiegt. (Darauf bezieht sich Herod. V 69. “τὸν δῆμον πρότερον (vor Kleisthenes unter Isagoras) ἀπωσμένον πάντως”) Kleisthenes vermehrte erst die Zahl des Volks durch Einbürgerung vieler in Attica ansässigen Nichtbürger oder Metöken, wozu auch die Freigelassenen gehörten. (Arist. Polit. iii, 1, 10.) Seine Abschaffung der Eintheilung in 4 Geschlechtphylen, tribes, theils nöthig, weil in der alte Eintheilung die Neuaufgenommenen nicht einrangirt werden konnten, andrerseits aber verlor dadurch Adel den Einfluss, den er bisher (als chiefs of gentes) in den Ländlichen Districten geübt. Kleisthenes besetzte mehre und zwar bedeutende Aemter, namtlich das Collegium der 9 Archonten statt wie bisher durch Volkswahl—​durch Loos, aber diese Losung fand nur unter Bewerbern statt aus den 3 Oberen und für Archonten nur aus der ersten Klasse statt.66 In the first lines, Schömann’s claim quoted above is easily recognizable: if it had not been for Cleisthenes, the people would have lost their freedom. This is very different from saying that without Cleisthenes the people would not have attained freedom, given that the people already had it, whereas Isagoras wanted to take it away. The contribution of Cleisthenes loses the absolute value that Grote had attributed to it and is considered merely an episode, though an important one, in the long Athenian history. Cleisthenes thus takes on the qualities of a shrewd and pragmatic politician who appreciates the situation and knows how to turn it to his advantage. The abolition of the four tribes enabled him to include new citizens within the polis; this had not been possible with the old system and leads to the aristocracy’s loss of control over the territory. The passage from Aristotle is taken from Schömann (see n.  62). In addition, Cleisthenes also established that many of the magistrates, including the archons, would be nominated not through election as had been the case until then, but through a system of lots. Marx notes that only the members of the first class of the Solonian census could be nominated archons. We have thus moved on to the question of the nomination of the magistrates. We are used to thinking of the drawing of lots as the highest form of 66

Krader (1974), 216.

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democracy, because it places everyone at the same level (as long as the lots are actually drawn by all citizens and not by a restricted group). To claim that Cleisthenes had introduced lots to choose the archons, though reserving the actual office only to the richest citizens, comes down to attributing to him a decidedly anti-​democratic outlook. Grote firmly denies that this could have been the case and defers this kind of practice several decades to a time in which access to the highest offices was also allowed to other classes of the census.67 But Schömann defends the opposite view and supposes that Cleisthenes, in order to prevent Isagoras from influencing the people during the election, had preferred to introduce the selection by lot so that the supporters of his rival would have less chance of taking on official positions. Thus Schömann writes: Many indeed have found it utterly incredible that such a mode of filling up offices, which seems to them adapted only to the most absolute democracy, can have been introduced so early as the reforms of Clisthenes. We have, however, already remarked that the institution of the lot must not always be regarded as a proof of democratic absence of restraint, but that it was adopted as a means of avoiding the intrigues of party contests which occur only too easily at popular elections.68 Marx does not report this explanation but accepts the conclusion. He likely perceives a lacuna in Morgan concerning the methods of nomination and fills the gap by using Schömann. This strengthens the image of Cleisthenes as a realist without the idealist aura that Grote gives him. Once again, and more than ever, Marx chooses the conservative historiographical line of interpretation and not the progressive one. A small treatise by Schömann proves that this is so; it was written in 1854, one year before the publication of the Griechische Alterthümer. The short essay is entitled Die Verfassungsgeschichte Athens nach G. Grote’s History of Greece kritisch geprüft (Leipzig 1854). In it, the author analyses the chapter on the birth of Athenian democracy from the History of Greece, anticipating many points of argumentation that were to be dealt with extensively in the longer work. Here is how Cleisthenes’ introduction of the lot is justified (I’m quoting from 67 68

Grote (1888), 3.361–​368. Cf. also Grote (1888), 2.499:  “The lot was a symptom of pronounced democratical spirit, such as we must not seek in the Solonian institutions”. Schömann (1880), 337 = Schömann (1855), 339; these words are excised from Schömann (1897), 354, where the editor, Lipsius, adds that three years after the battle of Marathon the selection by lot was re-​introduced as at the time of Solon on the basis of the Athenaion Politeia.

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352 Marcaccini the English translation of 1878): “Such intrigues Kleisthenes thought it his duty to provide against. Therefore he abolished popular elections, and introduced selection by lot for a great part of the offices; believing that this would secure appointments in most cases no worse, and in many much better, than those made by the votes of a populace misled by faction and intrigue”.69 The concept is the same as discussed above: the selection by lot was considered more objective than a democratic election, in which intrigue and battles between factions raged. But Schömann does not stop here and writes: “I should have thought that even in England there had been enough opportunity to judge of the value of this kind of popular election. At least, here in Germany we have had experience which would justify us in concluding, that it was impossible to make worse appointments by the chance of the lot than by the votes of the masses, guided by demagogues and party-​leaders”. The present comes into contact with antiquity, but in a way that is diametrically opposed from how Grote saw it. The popular vote does not produce better choices than drawing lots because it is necessarily conditioned by “party-​leaders”. In addition, elections do not help to recognize the competence of the real experts: the result is thus random, as in the drawing of lots, and can even be worse. Schömann could not have stated more explicitly his aversion to universal suffrage as a political instrument, that is to say as a method for emancipation of the masses and governing the state. I will add an oddity concerning the Verfassungsgeschichte, which is however relevant. The English translation of 1878 is by Bernard Bosanquet, a representative of British neo-​idealism. Bosanquet had studied Classics (his teacher for Greek language and literature had been Benjamin Jowett). At the time he was translating the text, he was teaching in Oxford at University College. Naturally for him as for Marx, the Greeks were a source of inspiration but his political vision was ethical in nature and had little to do with Grote’s utilitarianism.70 It is evident that the English translation of the Verfassungsgeschichte, in which critique of Grote’s liberalism is explicit, answers an ideological requirement and is not done out of mere erudite interest. The idealist view is more adapted to Schömann’s conservative thesis, according to which Athenian society was already intrinsically democratic, not needing instrumental reforms. In an essay written a few years later, Bosanquet appeals directly to the classical model, claiming that in order to include more citizens in the state, it is necessary to 69 70

Schömann (1878), 81. On the political conception of Bosanquet with relation also to ancient Greece see Mander (2011), 489–​503; Cavallari (1990), 27 (on Bosanquet’s classical education), 47–​54 (on Bosanquet’s admiration for Periclean democracy).

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revitalize the spirit of the polis and the “municipal duties” which characterize it.71 It is an integralist interpretation of democracy: indeed, the essay is entitled Some Socialistic Features of Ancient Societies. At this point, the historiographical and ideological nucleus of the Athenian section of the Ethnological Notebooks seems clear. In his last years, Marx had gotten close to Russian populism and had revised some of his theoretical positions. The discovery of Morgan was congruent with this conversion. It is also true that Marx always admired Greek culture, which leads him to sing the praises of Athens as a model of democracy. This is explicit when he abandons his dialectical materialism and gives up on applying the pattern of class conflict not only to Russia but also to the past, in particular to ancient Greece. The contamination of Morgan’s ideas with those of Schömann is part of this new order of thought: the use of the German historian is consistent with the ethnographical interests of Marx’ final years. Adopting a new method of anthropological analysis, he cannot but distance himself from the modernist approach of a liberal historian such as Grote. He thus welcomes the primitivist vision of Schömann, the conservative. In this way Marx strips from the liberal political use of the ancient model and engages in a war of ideologies. We cannot know what form Marx’ notes would have taken had he lived long enough to complete his writings. Engels’ Origin of the Family, for which the Notebooks were used, conveys their spirit in part, and on one point remains faithful to the original. Though seeing in slavery an enormous limitation—​to the extent that it is the cause of the decline of the polis system—​Engels considers Athenian democracy a perfect organism that enabled its citizens to be totally equal.72 When writing about Athens, Engels also separates socio-​economic analysis from his considerations on political form. 6

What is Left of Marxist Historiography?

Let us now return to post-​war Marxist historiography. The nineteenth-​century debate on ancient democracy—​so well documented in the Ethnological Notebooks—​teaches us that there are two different ways of understanding it: either as the result of liberal reform which places fifth-​century Athenian citizens close to those of a modern state; or as the embodiment of the democratic spirit that was intrinsic to Athenian society. On the one hand, we have a formal 71 72

Bosanquet (1891), 48–​70, esp. 61. mecw 26, 213–​222 (mega i/​29, 214–​223), on the Athenian state, esp. p. 222, where Engels states that it is slavery that ruined Athens and not democracy.

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354 Marcaccini view of democracy as the consequence of a delicate and precise constitutional architecture; on the other, a substantial conception of it, in which laws are secondary and what really counts is a cultural and mental habitus. Contemporary historiography follows these two lines of interpretation. Mogens Herman Hansen, for instance, belongs to the first line, as he considers the polis a state and sees in the structure of Athenian democracy a foreshadowing of modern institutions through which citizens express their political rights. It is not by chance that his work has been likened to Grote.73 Indeed, Hansen, like Grote, does not admit that at the time of Solon there had been selection by lot, though the Athenaion Politeia bears witness to it.74 This reflects the very same developmental and institutional approach. Moreover, Hansen believes that in the fifth century bce the Athenians were governed by a more popular and creative democracy, and it was only in the fourth century bce that they recognized the sovereignty of the law in the legislative process and transformed into a kind of judicial democracy.75 This thesis was challenged by Edward Harris: he too does not believe that Athens was a stateless society;76 yet, unlike Hansen, he argues that throughout the Classical age, Athenian legislation was inspired by the modern principles of the rule of law, namely equality before the law, accountability of officials, accessibility and clarity of the law, and impartiality of the courts.77 In this sense, Harris represents a modernist historiographical trend more than Hansen.78 Marxist historiography, on the contrary, shows a primitivist conception, at least since the Second World War. In Democracy Ancient and Modern, Finley defends the view that in a modern democratic state, power is in the hands of the elite, whereas in classical Athens, leaders depend on the decisions of the assembly. He sets up Athenian democracy as a model for the future and prophesizes the invention of “new forms of popular participation, in the Athenian spirit though not in Athenian substance”.79 In his book, he quotes John Stuart Mill and, when referring to the educational advantages of democratic institutions, he is clearly alluding to Grote. However, his thesis is a far cry from

73

Hansen (1991), 74; Hansen (1998), 123; Hansen (2010). On the affinity linking Hansen to Grote see Liddel (2007), 2. 74 Arist. Ath. Pol. 8.1; Hansen (1990). 75 Hansen (1974); Hansen (1991), 150–​155, 300–​304. A similar thesis also in Ostwald (1986). 76 Harris (2013), 21–​59. 77 Harris (2013), 3–​18; Harris (2017). 78 Harris (2013), 11–​12: “[…] there is no reason to think that the Athenian view of the rule of law was largely “rhetorical” and differed fundamentally from modern views”. 79 Finley (1985a), 36.

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nineteenth-​century English utilitarianism.80 For Grote, Cleisthenes’ revolution had already taken place and had left a legacy very much alive and kicking in modern liberal states, in particular in the England of his day. Finley, on the other hand, uses Athens as a political paradigm for a social revolution. The cross-​pollination with cultural anthropology which is characteristic also of Marx’s final years helps to get rid of the obsolete pattern of the class struggle for the sake of a new conception of conflict, this time between political ideas. And thus, the people—​the demos—​turn from social class into a political one possessing its own conscience, capable even of guiding the elite. The concept of reform, so dear to liberals, fades away in the face of the political maturity of the citizens, which in some form or other exists even before the state takes shape; for in effect it is the condition of the state’s coming into being, rather than the result of its existence. In Cleisthenes the Athenian, which appeared in 1964, Pierre Lévêque and Pierre Vidal-​Naquet argue that Cleisthenes put into motion a secular revolution through the geometrical redefinition of territory.81 However, they cannot but assume certain political and social pre-​conditions that were capable of supporting the reforms. In their view, the Athenian demos had emancipated itself thanks to economic expansion throughout the years of tyranny; at the time of Cleisthenes, the demos was ready to become for the first time a “classe politique”.82 The source is yet again Herodotus, according to whom Cleisthenes, defeated by Isagoras, decided to ally himself with the people: οὗτοι οἱ ἄνδρες ἐστασίασαν περὶ δυνάμιος, ἑσσούμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται.83 There is no decisive philological support to clarify exactly what Herodotus meant by προσεταιρίζεται. Depending on one’s point of view, the passage can be interpreted in two different ways, following either of the lines of historiographical interpretation mentioned above:  Cleisthenes can be reckoned a friend of the people, granting them privileges in exchange for help in his struggle against his rival; or else, it is the demos itself, already a political faction capable of making precise demands from its “partner” Cleisthenes, namely a “program”, which needs to be brought about through the implementation of the reforms. Lévêque and Vidal-​Naquet tend towards this latter interpretation,

80

81 82 83

Finley seems to shift towards a more explicitly utilitarian view in Finley (1991), 70–​121, where he speaks of the instrumental use of the vote by the people; here, however, his analysis covers Rome as well, and not only Greece and Athens. On p. 97, n. 2, his polemics with Meier (1980), 258–​259 are significant (Meier quotes Marx in his attack of Finley). Lévêque, Vidal-​Naquet (1964), 13–​24, 77–​106. Lévêque, Vidal-​Naquet (1964), 49. Hdt. 5.66.2; cf. 5.69.2.

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356 Marcaccini which considers the demos an active agent alongside the reformer and no longer submissive to him.84 A remnant of this view, according to which Athens was already potentially democratic before 508, can be found in Denis Roussel writing about the Greek tribes in archaic and classical times. When Roussel speaks of the Attic demes, he takes them to be already in existence before the reform; he acknowledges that the originality of Cleisthenes consists in having reconfigured the city according to traditional principles—​true enough on a broader scale, and without imposing the rules of a centralized administration that is typical of modern territorial states. Cleisthenes remains a genius, but his initiative has deep roots in Attic social and cultural conformity grounded in local self-​government. In this case too, there is a pre-​existing structure present before the reform which is consistent with it.85 The problem of slavery too, as discussed at the beginning of this essay, is resolved from within a cultural conception of ancient democracy. Finley is undoubtedly original in affirming that the Greeks were the first to formulate the concept of citizens’ freedom, in this way giving positive meaning to the opposition between citizens and slaves. In eastern civilizations, such an opposition did not exist because the idea of political freedom had not been developed.86 Ellen Meiksins Wood pursues Finley’s suggestion further, trying to overturn the prejudice according to which Athenian society would have been molded by an aristocratic contempt for work.87 In her view, it is necessary to distinguish between the blame attached to the slave’s position and the rejection of productive activity: in Athens the two things do not coincide because democratic freedom implies a popular and anti-​aristocratic conception of work, which is indeed expressed through democracy.88 According to Meiksins Wood, present-​ day states are corrupted by capitalist ideology, which imposes a formal vision of democracy in which rights are conceded to citizens by the ruling class.89 She argues against two different fronts:  on the one hand, against Grote and the British Utilitarians, who present a liberal view of Athenian democracy in which an enlightened elite decides to extend gradually some of its privileges to the people; on the other front, she argues against certain Marxist historians, 84 85 86 87 88 89

Thus also Ober (1996), 51; but on the anachronistic use of προσεταιρίζομαι by Herodotus cf. Chambers (1990), 221. On the opposed interpretations of the verb see the status quaestionis presented in Camassa (2013), 319–​320. Roussel (1976), 284. Finley (1981), 114–​115. Meiksins Wood (1988), 5–​41 on the myth of the laziness of the masses, from Mitford to Marxism. Meiksins Wood (1988), 126–​145. Meiksins Wood (1996), 121–​137.

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such as G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, who interpret antiquity according to the pattern of class struggle and subsume under it the question of slavery.90 These are the two aspects of the modernist analysis of antiquity and both belong to the first line of interpretation of democracy, namely that which considers the polis an anticipation of the modern state (for better or worse, depending on the political perspective). This is how we can explain, some simplification notwithstanding, the polemical debate between Ste. Croix and Finley on the use of the concept of class91: it is the same opposition we find between a modernist and a primitivist view that characterizes the historiographical debate of the nineteenth century. The collection entitled Marxismo e società antica edited by Mario Vegetti in 1977 is an attempt to revive Marxist studies of classical antiquity in Italy. The book is an anthology of essays previously published by Finley, Vernant, Vidal-​ Naquet, de Ste. Croix and others.92 Generally speaking, Italian academics have always expressed doubt with regard to structuralism and cultural anthropology whether applied to history or philology and literature.93 Yet Mario Vegetti and Diego Lanza wrote an essay for the collection on the ideology of the polis in which they distance themselves from old-​style Marxists and go beyond a merely class-​oriented analysis of Greek society. For them, the term ‘ideology’ does not mean quite generically the propaganda carried out by the elite (that would correspond to the old-​style Marxism). It has a much broader meaning, expressing the complexity of behaviors, bodies of knowledge, and thoughts—​ in short the mental habitus—​through which, even merely out of instincts, the members of a community behave and interact with one another. Naturally, ideology thus understood ends up concealing (but also resolving) the contradictions, or even the conflicts, within the society of the polis.94 This reveals itself to be a fruitful approach. From the 1970s onwards, the concept of ideology of the polis has circulated in classical studies, perhaps rather superficially as when something becomes fashionable; but it has also produced some first-​rate books such as Nicole Loraux’s L’invention d’Athènes.95

90 91 92 93 94 95

de Ste. Croix (1981). de Ste. Croix (1981), 58–​59, 62–​66, 91–​94. As to Finley, see the passages quoted in n. 8. Two years earlier, the journal Arethusa had devoted an entire issue to the same themes: Sullivan (1975). Cf. Di Benedetto (1981), 78–​87 (the chapter is entitled Come si manipola Marx (How to manipulate Marx) and is devoted precisely to Vegetti’s books). A more dialectic publication is Analisi marxista e società antiche: Capogrossi, Giardina and Schiavone (1978). Vegetti, Lanza (1977); see also the introduction to Vegetti’s collection: Vegetti (1977), 11–​65. Loraux (1981).

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358 Marcaccini The neo-​Marxists are directly influenced by the thought of Louis Althusser, an apostle of student protests, who in an essay of 1967 explained that the ideology “concerns the experience of the relation of human beings with their world […] In an ideology people express not their relations with their living conditions but the way in which they live their relations with their living conditions. This supposes both a real relation and an ‘experience of this relation’, which is ‘imaginary’ ”. For Althusser this phenomenon is inevitable because an ideology is a human characteristic. However, there is a distinction between a good ideology and a bad one; or better still, between an ideology that is the result of a good society and an ideology resulting from a bad society: “In a class-​based society, the ideology is the means and the thing itself which regulates the relations between people and their living conditions to the advantage of the dominating class. In a classless society, the ideology is the means and the thing itself in which the relations between people and their living conditions are experienced to the advantage of all”.96 It is obvious that the ideology behind Athenian democracy, which is not class-​based (despite the slaves) belongs to this second kind: it is a kind of ideal glue, though based in reality, that unites the Athenians and is part and parcel of their culture. This way of conceiving the ideology of the polis has been revived by Josiah Ober in more recent studies. He openly declares his debt to Althusser though his own interpretation of the ancient democratic phenomenon shows the influence of many other theoretical contributions.97 Ober starts off with a position similar to Finley’s, but goes beyond him. He exalts the efficiency and success of Athenian democracy and refutes the idea that it was merely an institutional device or depended on slavery and maritime domination. Ober claims that the success of the popular Athenian regime was due to a cultural and social sub-​structure so that actions and words corresponded to what was daily debated in the assembly and the tribunals.98 This point of view 96

97 98

Althusser (1967), 209 and 211: “[l’ideologia] concerne il rapporto vissuto dagli uomini col loro mondo […] Nell’ideologia, infatti, gli uomini esprimono non i loro rapporti con le condizioni di esistenza, ma il modo in cui vivono i loro rapporti con le loro condizioni di esistenza, la qual cosa suppone al tempo stesso un rapporto reale e un rapporto ‘vissuto’, ‘immaginario’ ”; “in una società classista l’ideologia è il relè attraverso il quale, e l’elemento nel quale il rapporto tra gli uomini e le loro condizioni d’esistenza si regola a beneficio della classe dominante. In una società senza classi l’ideologia è il relè attraverso il quale, e l’elemento nel quale il rapporto tra gli uomini e le loro condizioni d’esistenza è vissuto a vantaggio di tutti gli uomini”. Ober (1989), 3–​52, esp. 38–​40. Ober (1989), 35: “This process of communication constitutes the ‘discourse of Athenian democracy’. It was a primary factor in the promotion and maintenance of social harmony, and it made direct democratic decision making possible”.

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corresponds to the winning ideology of the masses that gets imposed in 508, defeating the aristocracy. Ober sees the Athenian revolution as relying not on the reformative enterprise of Cleisthenes but on popular initiative. It is worth quoting a passage from his Athenian Revolution: “And thus, dēmokratia was not a gift from a benevolent elite to a passive demos, but was the product of collective decision, action, and self-​definition on the part of the demos itself”.99 According to Ober, in this period, the people already had a democratic conscience to which Cleisthenes merely brought his support. It is not the reformer who educates the people, as Grote thought, but the people who educate the reformer. The institutional set-​up that constitutes the practical articulations of a democracy is something that gets added on at a later stage: this would not be anything different from the formal implementation of a political and cultural substance already active within society. It is obvious that Herodotus, Aristotle, the epigraphical texts can be read in different ways and some conclusions may be a matter of opinion,100 but one thing is certain: it would be difficult to say more and with such wealth of argument on the alleged popular revolution in Athens.101 For this reason Ober is most certainly the end point of the whole anti-​liberal and anti-​Grote historiographical tradition spanning from the nineteenth century to the present-​day. The debate is lively especially in the English-​speaking world. Not only in the United States but also in England, there is ongoing discussion on the modern reception of ancient democracy and the influence of the Greek models on Western political thought, as is attested by The Legacy of Greek Political Thought (lgpt), an international network of scholars created at the University of Reading. In Italy, the debate is waning, though there are a number of scholars who have worked on the idea of democracy and the influence of classical culture on modern culture.102 Luciano Canfora, for instance, has addressed this topic many times. In Ideologie del classicismo (1980) he states that the study of the classics in the twentieth century is part and parcel of an elitist ideology: “the attempts to expunge the ‘ideology’ from this privileged area of knowledge are vain. The basic concepts which can be recovered from the very

99 Ober (1996), 35. 100 On this, see the remarks of Samons (1998), 107–​120, and Rhodes (2003), 60–​69, 72–​77, 82–​83. 101 In addition to Mass and Élite –​Ober (1989) –​see the other two books Ober himself considers as forming a trilogy:  Political Dissent in Democratic Athens  –​Ober (1998)  –​and Democracy and Knowledge: Ober (2008). 102 Amongst whom there are also non-​specialists such as Norberto Bobbio: see Dino Piovan here in this volume.

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360 Marcaccini contents of culture (that culture which is sometimes pompously called “the lessons for life obtained from the classics” and which is such a conspicuous part of the “common sense”) are concepts which are gradually taken in by the conservative ideologies and become organic parts of them”.103 In a more recent essay, Canfora re-​asserts that Athenian democracy is aristocratic and elitist, just like the culture it produces. According to him, the idea of a truly popular regime is not born in Greece, but with the French revolution and the Jacobins. The latter misunderstand the historical reality of ancient democracy; they raise it to the status of a paradigm of freedom and equality and thereby turn these into universal values for the first time. Conversely, conservative historians have offered a better interpretation of ancient culture only to belittle the idea of democracy and protect a person’s liberty to be rich against the violent attacks of the masses.104 Naturally, one of Canfora’s goals is to demystify the liberal-​progressivist model handed down by Grote. Giorgio Camassa is more eclectic (and less of a militant) as he accommodates numerous points of view. In Atene. La costruzione della democrazia, he begins with Ober’s thesis and accepts, though cautiously, the idea of a popular revolution.105 He speaks of a “construction” emphasising the importance of reforms that are envisioned and applied progressively over the years. But Ca­ massa also stresses the great fragility of democracy, the instability that drives it at times to exalt its leaders and at times to destroy them. This is a line of thought derived from the conservative historiography of the nineteenth century and in particular from Jacob Burckhardt, for whom Athens was “la città dolente”. Camassa always looks to the present but discreetly, without the appeal to an actualization of antiquity so typical of Ober but also –​from the other point of view –​of Victor David Hanson.106 From the work of this scholar it emerges a certain degree of nostalgia for the past that, though chaotic, was certainly creative. Similarly, Camassa’s La lontananza dei greci from its title alone reflects this spiritual and intellectual approach to the study of the ancient world, in which scholar and man become one and the same, speaking and confessing to each other. Modern civilization, especially in Europe, has

103 Canfora (1980), 280: “I tentativi di espungere l’ ‘ideologia’ da questo campo privilegiato del sapere sono vani. I concetti-​base che si ricavano dai contenuti stessi della cultura (quella che talora pomposamente ancora viene chiamata ‘la lezione di vita che si ricava dai classici’ e che è parte così cospicua del ‘senso comune’) sono concetti via via assunti dalle ideologie della conservazione e ne fanno organicamente parte”. 104 Canfora (2004), 31–​79, esp 69–​73; cf. Canfora (1980), 19. 105 Camassa (2007), 74–​77. 106 I refer here to Hanson (1998).

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continued on a path that has carried it far from Greek culture. It has sought to liberate itself, but in this distancing there is also pain, which implies a connection all the same. The Greeks may have been barbarians in their primitive or conflictual democracy, but someone like Schömann devoted himself to them, finding something there worthy of his interest. Camassa, who certainly is no reactionary, recalls him: he, like the Prussian scholar, is interested in religion and ancient law, in addition to Cleisthenes and Pericles.107 The history of scholarship is made of many intersections, strange unions and unforeseen affinities. Theoretical coherence and, also, political affiliation become secondary in the face of the intellectual impulses stirred by curiosity, personal experience or even by a particularly fascinating reading. Erudite stratification dominates whatever kind of label one might have, even that of “Marxist”, because the texts themselves can take us in unsuspected directions. Marxism can imply the choice of an area of interest; it can impose a limit in a field of study and also explain the political use of certain contents. But the way one reaches a conclusion is not necessarily the result of an ideology or a theory; on the contrary, it is often the result of a betrayal. In this way, it is possible to reap some elements of truth, though the initial intention had little or nothing to do with historical research. This is, all in all, a great consolation. Back in his day, Vernant wrote that if historians had limited themselves to the definition of antiquity as a social form characterized by a slave-​based productivity, they wouldn’t have had much to say about the Greeks or the Romans.108 But it was Marx himself who first understood this. In his Ethnological Notebooks, we find Morgan and Schömann together: the former at the outer limits of utopia, the latter a stark reactionary. The synthesis of the two that Marx creates cannot but go beyond his theory. In the post-​war period, Marxist scholars have followed in the same direction. In this way, they too got entangled in the web of historiographical intersections, reviving lines of thought, themes, hypotheses, schemas and categories that were initially foreign to their theoretical points of 1 07 Camassa (2005); Camassa (2011). 108 Vernant (1965), 5:  “Mais peut-​on en conclure sans autre précaution que l’histoire de l’Antiquité classique tout entière doit être considérée comme le champ où se seraient affrontées les deux classes antagonistes des esclaves et des propriétaires d’esclaves? Si la théorie marxiste devait se réduire à une formule aussi sommaire, aussi figée, aussi antidialectique, elle ne serait guère susceptible d’éclairer le travail des historiens”. (“But can we conclude, without further caution, that the whole of the history of classical Antiquity should be considered as the field of inquiry in which two antagonistic classes would be facing one another, the slaves versus the slave owners? If the Marxist theory were to be reduced to such a succinct formula, so fixed, so anti-​dialectical, it could not possibly guide the work of the historian”.).

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362 Marcaccini departure. Their legacy in the twenty-​first century consists in having revived a way of interpreting ancient democracy already present in nineteenth-​century historiography and characterized by both conservative and utopian trends. Ober and Hedrick claim that liberalism is no longer recognized as a valid theory; after the fall of the communist regimes neither is there much confidence in Marxism.109 I see in this an element of truth, perhaps one that is not political but certainly historiographical: liberalism has lost sight of the polis as a democratic model and Marxism—​which has sought to take it away in the post-​war era—​has in turn also exhausted itself having chosen to fight liberalism on the same grounds. In the 1960s, when this direction was taken, one could speak of a contaminated form of Marxism. But Marxism is now only one feature of that contamination, a washed out, worn out residue of a vast and sinuous historiographical and ideological tradition of anti-​liberalism.

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364 Marcaccini Finley, M.I. (1985b) The Ancient Economy. 2nd edn. London: The Hogart Press. Finley, M.I. (1991) Politics in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fuks, A. (1953) The Ancestral Constitution: Four Studies in Athenian Party Politics at the End of the Fifth Century B.C. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goldmann, L. (1969) L’ideologia tedesca e le tesi su Feuerbach. Roma:  Samona e Savelli. Grote, G. (1888) A History of Greece from the earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great. 5th edn. i–​x . London: J. Murray. Guerci, L. (1979) Libertà degli antichi e libertà dei moderni. Sparta, Atene e i “philosophes” nella Francia del ‘700. Napoli: Guida. Hansen, M.H. (1974) The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C. and the Public Action against Unconstitutional Proposals. Odense: Odense University Press. Hansen, M.H. (1986) “ΚΛΗΡΩΣΙΣ ΕΚ ΠΡΟΚΡΙΤΩΝ in Fourth-​Century Athens,” Classical Philology 81: 222–​229. Hansen, M.H. (1990) “When was Selection by Lot of Magistrates introduced in Athens?” Classica et Mediaevalia 41: 55–​61. Hansen, M.H. (1991) The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Structure, Principles and Ideology. Oxford, Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell. Hansen, M.H. (1998) Polis and City-​State. An Ancient Concept and its Modern Equivalent. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Hansen, M.H. (ed.) (2010) Démocratie athénienne—​démocratie moderne: tradition et influences. Vandoeuvre—​Genève: Fondation Hardt. Hansen, M.H. (2010) “Ancient Democratic eleutheria and Modern Liberal Democrats’ Conception of Freedom,” in Hansen (2010), 307–​339. Hanson, V.D. (1998) Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harris, E.M. (2013) The Rule of Law in Action in Democratic Athens. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Harris, E.M. (2017) “Dal potere popolare al rule of law? Il cambiamento costituzionale ad Atene nel quinto e nel quarto secolo a.C.,” Rivista di diritto Ellenico 7: 63–​84. Hobsbawm, E.J. (1964) “Introduction,” in Marx, K. (1964) Pre-​Capitalist Economic Formations, ed. E.J. Hobsbawm. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Humphreys, S.C. (1978) Anthropology and the Greeks. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Kenyon, F.G. (ed.) (1891) Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krader, L. (1974) The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx. 2nd edn. Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp. B.V. Krader, L. (1975) The Asiatic Mode of Production. Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp. B.V.

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Lévêque, P., Vidal-​Naquet, P. (1964) Clisthène l’Athénien. Essai sur la représentation de l’espace et du temps dans la pensée politique grecque de la fin du VIe siècle à la mort de Platon. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Liddel, P. (2007) Civic Obligation and Individual Liberty in Ancient Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loraux, N. (1981) L’invention d’Athènes: histoire de l’oraison funèbre dans la cité classique. Paris: Mouton. Lotito, G. (1980a) “Aristotele su moneta scambio bisogni (Eth. Nic. V 5),” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 4: 125–​180. Lotito, G. (1980b) “Aristotele su moneta scambio bisogni (Eth. Nic. V 5),” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 5: 27–​85. Lotito, G. (1981) “Aristotele su moneta scambio bisogni (Eth. Nic. V 5),” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 6: 9–​69. Mander, W.J. (2011) British Idealism. A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcaccini, C. (2012) Atene sovietica. Democrazia antica e rivoluzione comunista. Pisa-​Cagliari: Della Porta. Marcaccini, C. (2013) “Rivoluzione oligarchica o restaurazione della democrazia? I Cinquemila, la πρόκρισις e la patrios politeia,” Klio 95: 405–​428. Marcaccini, C. (2019) “Democrazia e impero ad Atene nella History of Greece di George Grote,” Gerión 37: 489–​514. McCarthy, G. E. (ed.) (1992) Marx and Aristotle. Nineteenth-​century German Social Theory and Classical Antiquity. Savage, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Meier, Ch. (1980) Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Meikle, S. (1997) Aristotle’s Economic Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meiksins Wood, E. (1988) Peasant-​Citizen and Slave. The Foundation of Athenian Democracy. London-​New York: Verso. Meiksins Wood, E. (1996) Demos versus “We, the People”: Freedom and Democracy Ancient and Modern, in Ober, Hedrick (1996), 121–​137. Momigliano, A. (1955 [1952]) George Grote and the Study of Greek History, in Momigliano, A. (1955) Contributo alla storia degli studi classici. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 215–​231. Morgan, L.H. (1974) Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. Gloucester, Mass: P. Smith. Mossé, C. (1979) “Comment s’élabore un mythe politique: Solon, “père fondateur” de la démocratie athénienne,” Annales (HSS) 34: 425–​437. Newman, W.L. (1887) The Politics of Aristotle. II. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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366 Marcaccini Ober, J. (1996) The Athenian Revolution. Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (1998) Political Dissent in Democratic Athens. Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (2008) Democracy and Knowledge. Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Ober, J., C. Hedrick (eds) (1996) Dēmokratia. A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ostwald, M. (1986) From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society and Politics in Fifth-​Century Athens. Berkeley: University of California Press. Paga, J. (2010) “Deme Theaters in Attica and the Trittys System,” Hesperia 79: 351–​384. Pipes, R. (1992) The Russian Revolution 1899–​1919. London: Fontana Press. Polanyi, K. (1968) Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies. New York: Doubleday & Company. Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C.M., and Pearson, H.W. (eds.) (1957) Trade and Market in the Early Empires. New York: Free press; London: Collier-​Macmillan. Raaflaub, K. (1992) “Denken und Krises der Polis. Athen in Verfassungskonflikt des späten 5. Jahrhunderts von Chr.,” Historische Zeitschrift 255: 1–​60. Raskolnikoff, M. (1990) Des Anciens et des Modernes. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Rhodes, P.J. (1972) The Athenian Boule. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, P.J. (1992) A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, P.J. (2003) Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology. London: Duckworth 2003. Rjazanov, D. (1925) “Neueste Mitteilungen über den literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels,” Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung 11: 385–​400. Rjazanov, D. (1969) “Comunicazione sull’eredità letteraria di Marx ed Engels,” in Goldman (1969), 53–​76. Rjazanov, D. (1977) Comunismo e matrimonio, in Vicari, G., Vicari V. and Pisa Audino (1977) 41–​70. Roussel, D. (1976) Tribu et cité: études sur les groupes sociaux dans les cités grecques aux époques archaïque et classique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Ruschenbusch, E. (1958) “ΠΑΤΡΙΟΣ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ:  Theseus, Solon und Kleisthenes in Publizistik und Geschichtsschreibung des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.,” Historia 7: 398–​424. Ruzé, F. (1997) Délibération et pouvoir dans la cité grecque de Nestor à Socrate. Pa­ ris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Samons, L.J. (1998) “Mass, Elite, and Hoplite-​Farmer in Greek History,” Arion 5: 99–​123. Schömann, G.F. (1854) Die Verfassungsgeschichte Athens nach G.  Grote’s History of Greece kritisch geprüft. Leipzig: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.

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Schömann, G.F. (1855) Griechische Alterthümer. I, Das Staatswesen. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. Schömann, G.F. (1878) Athenian Constitutional History, as represented in Grote’s History of Greece critically examined. Oxford and London: James Parker & Co. Schömann, G.F. (1880) The Antiquities of Greece. The State. Oxford and Cambridge: Rivingtons. Schömann, G.F. (1897) Griechische Alterthümer. I.  Das Staatswesen. 4th edn. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. Shanin, T. (ed.) (1984) Late Marx and the Russian Road. Marx and the Peripheries of Capitalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schütrumpf, E. (1991) Aristoteles, Politik, Buch I. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Sullivan, J.P. (ed.) (1975) “Marxism and the Classics,” Arethusa 8. Traill, J.S. (1975) The Political Organisation of Attica. A  Study of the Demes, Trittyes and Phylai, and their Representation in the Athenian Council. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vegetti, M. (ed.) (1977) Marxismo e società antica. Milano: Feltrinelli. Vegetti, M., Lanza, D. (1977) L’ideologia della città, in Vegetti (1977), 259–​288. Venturi, F. (1972) Il populismo russo. i-​i ii. 2nd edn. Torino: Einaudi. Venturi Ferriolo, M. (1983) Aristotele e la crematistica. La storia di un problema e le sue fonti. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Vernant, J.P. (1965) “Remarques sur la lutte de classe dans la Grèce ancienne,” Eirene 4: 5–​19. Vernant, J.P. (1974) Mythe et société en Grèce ancienne. Paris: F. Maspero. Vicari, G., Vicari, V., Pisa Audino S. (eds) (1977) Contro la morale borghese. Sesso, famiglia e religione nella società capitalistica. Roma: Savelli 1977. Vidal-​Naquet, P. (1990) La démocratie grecque vue d’ailleurs: essais d’historiographie ancienne et moderne. Paris: Flammarion. Vlassopoulos, K. (2010) Politics. Antiquity and its Legacy. London-​New York: I.B. Tauris. Weber, M. (1999) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, in Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, Abt. I, Bd. 22–​5. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr. Whitehead, D. (1986) The Demes of Attica 508/​7-​ca. 250 B.C. Princeton:  Princeton University Press. Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff, U. von (1893) Aristoteles und Athen. II. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. Witte, J. (1995) Demosthenes und die Patrios Politeia. Von der imaginären Verfassung zur politischen Idee. Bonn: Habelt.

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­c hapter 11

The Philosopher and the City

Leo Strauss’ Reading of Athenian Democracy Giovanni Giorgini The twentieth century was a difficult time for democracy in most parts of the world. Even if we do not accept Elie Halevy’s definition of it as “the age of tyrannies”,1 we may safely say that it was characterized by totalitarian experiments in most of Europe and in many countries of Asia, including such major political entities as Russia, Japan and China. It is noteworthy, then, that the interest for classical Athenian democracy, its functioning and its legacy, reappeared immediately after the end of World War ii in Europe. Interestingly enough, this revival of interest for Athenian democracy involved not only classicists but also, and maybe pre-​eminently, political theorists and historians of political thought. Athens was seen as the city where philosophy was born and where the first democratic experiment was tried. The spirit with which this revival was undertaken was therefore not merely philological but rather infused with the desire to appropriate something of the Athenian experience, sometimes in stark polemic with contemporary totalitarian regimes. The Cold War, especially, shaped this return of interest for the first democratic experiment and, in no less degree, for the confrontation between Athens and Sparta, which looked very much like the confrontation between the two contemporary superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.2 We might say that the Cold War saw a renewed “quarrel between the ancients and the moderns” as well as a re-​enactment of the Peloponnesian War, which was also the confrontation between two cities with different political arrangements and opposed ideologies and ways of life.

1 Halevy (1965 [1938]). 2 One may see the excellent four-​volume history of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan, written with an obvious eye to the contemporary ‘cold’ war between Western democracies and Soviet communism: Kagan (1969–​1987).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_013

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Leo Strauss and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns

In this political and intellectual climate, the German American philosopher Leo Strauss (1899–​1973) occupies a special position. For he put forth the most forceful argument for a return to the experience of classical Athens and to ancient political thought as an antidote to the dramatic problems of political modernity; in so doing, he often had sharp intellectual confrontations with leading contemporary political scientists. Strauss was not alone in this effort to revive ancient political thought and practices. The two authors who proceeded on most similar lines as his are Eric Voegelin (1901–​1985) and Hannah Arendt (1906–​1975), two other German émigrés who found shelter from Nazism in the United States and had a profound impact on American philosophy and culture. Voegelin devoted a conspicuous part of book 2 of his monumental work Order and History (1956–​1987), titled The World of the Polis (1957), to an examination of “the Athenian century”. Persuaded that “the order of history emerges from the history of order”, Voegelin conducted a complex and sophisticated examination of the symbolic forms that human beings have elaborated to interpret and describe the order of their society in time. He contrasted the Jewish experience, which started with knowledge of the true order (the Revelation), with the Greek awareness of disorder and crisis in society which leads to the creation of political order. Voegelin devoted some very insightful pages to the development of history from Herodotus to Thucydides, which in his view mirrored “the hardening temper of Athenian democracy”.3 Thucydides was influenced by the results of the Hippocratic school and used medicine as a model for his scientific history and conceived of “the rationality of power as standard of action”. Voegelin also drew a very interesting comparison between Thucydides, who used the notion of ‘motion’ (kinesis) to understand the Peloponnesian war and, more generally, human history; and Plato, who placed the notion of ‘order’ at the centre of his political science: the former was interested in a science of crisis and disease while the latter elaborated a political science of order. Hannah Arendt (on whom see Guaraldo’s chapter in this volume) elaborated a liberal theory of action in an age of conformism and in a mass society, which she considered always prone to become totalitarian in character. Arendt was interested in Athenian democracy because she considered it the best implementation of the notion of political plurality and equality, which is the essence of action as a part of the human condition. Action, founded upon language,

3 Voegelin (1957), 42.

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370 Giorgini enables human beings to avoid repetition, which characterizes inferior forms of human activity such as labour and work. Whereas action in the Homeric poems was depicted as performing great deeds and pronouncing great words, it consisted in speaking in public in Athenian democracy; action happens in a network of human relations (inter homines esse) and thus sets in motion some unforeseeable re-​actions.4 Arendt saw in Periclean Athens the model of active citizenship (politeia), characterized by the political equality of citizens who are socially and economically different (isonomia). And she identified in Plato, and in his utter rejection of democracy, the origin of authoritarianism in Western political philosophy. In addition, Plato’s philosopher-​king, whose wisdom solves the difficulties inherent in political action as if these were problems amenable to being solved by knowledge, eliminates the essential plurality of the political sphere.5 Arendt then contrasted the Athenian democratic experience with the expropriation of politics typical of modernity, which turned our societies into labour societies. Strauss’ interest for ancient Athenian democracy is part and parcel of his project to recover classical Greek political thought. This interest, in turn, is spurred by what Strauss perceived as the contemporary crisis of Western civilization, which could only be countered by a return to ways and ideas of classical political philosophy. Strauss was conscious that such a return could only be “tentative and experimental” and required a sophisticated methodology, which is usually labelled the “hermeneutics of reticence”. We realize immediately that Strauss’ vision of Athenian democracy and his interpretation of classical political philosophy are subtle and far from straightforward. In the following pages I will argue that Leo Strauss looks at the experience of Athens and at classical political thought because he is searching for a solution to the crisis of his time. I will then examine the ways of this return to classical Greece as well as the method Strauss used to read ancient authors. In so doing, I will bring to light what he perceives as the precarious condition of the philosopher, citizen of a specific political arrangement but at the same time faithful to his philosophic quest for universal truth, which places him in the awkward position to reveal the results of his research to a selected audience and in a subtle and discrete manner. In his reconstruction, classical Athens stands as a symbol in a twofold way: it embodies the notion of society and the common-​ sense view of the world, but it is also the emblem of philosophy (as opposed to politics and to religion). I will conclude on Strauss’ other main concern, the

4 Arendt (1958), 20. 5 Arendt (1958), 162.

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relation and contrast between philosophic (quest for) truth and revealed truth, epitomized in the relation between two cities, Athens and Jerusalem. The best starting point for our investigation is tentatively Strauss’ book The City and Man (1964). The opening paragraph (we will see the importance of this position) reads as follows: It is not self-​forgetting and pain-​loving antiquarianism nor self-​forgetting and intoxicating romantism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, toward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West.6 The elegant and careful phrasing points to the practical reason for a return to classical political thought: it is not philological accurateness, historical curiosity or romantic delusion but the very survival of those values and ways of life which “the West” was able to elaborate and implement in its long history. We are “impelled to do so”, if not altogether forced, just like Plato’s philosophers were compelled to re-​enter the cave for love of their fellow-​cave-​dwellers. It is a moral, not an academic duty. Strauss’ awareness of such a crisis dates to the 1930s and, in his view, it involved a philosophical as well as a political crisis, which were intertwined. Strauss traced back the philosophical crisis to the advent of modern political philosophy, heralded in by Machiavelli and Hobbes. These two authors rejected classical political philosophy deeming it unrealistic in its quest for the best regime and in its view of man as by nature a political being. Instead, they advocated a view of man as a-​social and selfish by nature and accordingly lowered the standard of political action: now it did not aim at the creation of the best regime anymore but rather at the preservation of human life. From the pursuit of the summum bonum to the avoidance of the summum malum. Strauss then reads the history of modern political philosophy as a progressive decline, marked by three distinct “waves”, which culminates in the twentieth century:7 this age sees the quasi demise of political philosophy at the hands of the two most powerful intellectual movements of the time—​Positivism and Historicism. From different perspectives, these two intellectual trends converge in considering political philosophy unscientific and outdated. In the twentieth century the main tenets of Positivism were incorporated in the view of the 6 Strauss (1964), 1. 7 See L.  Strauss, “The Three Waves of Modernity” in Strauss (1989a), 81–​98. For penetrating criticism of Strauss’ depiction of modernity see Pippin (1992).

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372 Giorgini social sciences, and especially political science, as “value-​free”; namely, as issuing only “judgements of fact” and restraining itself from “value-​judgements”—​ to use Max Weber’s famous distinction. On the other hand, Historicism, which considers every intellectual enterprise as the product of specific historical and social circumstances, rejects the ambition of political philosophy to arrive at a vision of the best regime universally valid because values are conceived as inevitably connected to a time and a place. The result of such joint attacks is to be seen in the intellectual crisis of Western civilization, characterized by relativism that readily leads to nihilism. Strauss maintains that the “crisis of the West consists in the West’s having become uncertain of its purpose”;8 namely the construction of a society embracing equally all human beings, a free and prosperous universal society characterized by human rights, liberal values and democratic rule. In this view, the whole globe should be a democracy, in a movement toward a universal society or universal State. But the West lost faith in its core values, in its image of the human being, in its vision of the just society, which were once deemed to be universal and suitable to be propagated in the entire world. The Western man lives as if he was suspended in this situation of uncertainty, not knowing what ends to pursue or what way he should live. In Strauss’ words: “The crisis of modernity reveals itself in the fact, or consists in the fact, that modern western man no longer knows what he wants—​ that he no longer believes that he can know what is good and bad, what is right and wrong”.9 As Stanley Rosen, one of Strauss’ most original pupils, would later put it: “Modernity is not simply a historical period but a metaphysical condition of the human spirit”.10 The philosophical crisis (brought about by relativism) leads to a political crisis, in a time when no yielding is permissible. In fact, Strauss stresses the political import of this crisis and it seems evident that Cold War anxieties played an important role in his determination to furnish Western democracies with intellectual tools to counter Soviet Communism, the greatest enemy.11 In a rare venture into contemporary politics, Strauss described 8 9 10 11

Strauss (1964), 3. Strauss (1989a), 81. Many insightful comments on Strauss’ Zeitdiagnose may be found in Pippin (2003). Rosen in Smith (ed.) (2009a), 121. Although Strauss was more at home with lofty philosophical analyses than with practical politics, he saw Communism as a great danger for Western civilization and its liberties. One may see the scattered remarks in the Introductions of his works, e.g. Strauss (1958), Strauss (1964), Strauss (1968). The conclusion of his Introductory Essay for the English translation of Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason out of the Source of Judaism (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972) is also very interesting: praising Cohen for showing how

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Communism as the synthesis of British industry, the French Revolution and German philosophy. And, in a very classical Greek perspective, added that politically Communism is “an extreme form of Eastern despotism”.12 Regaining the perspective of classical political philosophy enables us to evaluate political regimes. Strauss writes that “Today the most interesting subject for a political scientist is cold war, or the qualitative difference which amounts to a conflict, between liberal democracy and communism”.13 The return to classical political philosophy is thus made necessary by the failure of modern political philosophy.14 This failure became apparent in the rise of totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century, which contemporary political science could not prevent nor even identify; for contemporary political science is obsessed with the idea that calling a regime a ‘tyranny’ implies uttering a value-​judgement and therefore being unscientific. In this positivistic perspective, objectivity and freedom from values constitute “intellectual honesty” and are the characteristics of political science. On the other hand, Historicism leads inevitably to relativism and even nihilism, to be conceived as the conscious rejection of the principles of civilization. Before proposing his tentative solution to the crisis of his time, Strauss deems therefore necessary to confront Positivism and Historicism, the twin intellectual trends of the age. Strauss considers the great sociologist Max Weber the most important representative of contemporary Positivism for his famous distinction between “judgements of fact” and “value-​judgements” and his advocacy of “intellectual probity” for the social scientist. Although Weber’s rectitude, passionate commitment and liberal leaning prevented him from falling into nihilism, his view of the conflict between the gods who preside over values which cannot be resolved by reason inevitably leads to relativism: human beings cannot rationally argue for their choice of values; they can only point to the emotional reasons for their choice. In this perspective, “the way of life of ‘specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart’ is as

12

13 14

Jews could live with dignity as Jews in a hostile world, he added that Cohen “did not provide what no human being could have provided, a way of dealing with a situation like that of the Jews in Soviet Russia, who are killed spiritually by being cut off from the sources of Judaism. It is a blessing for us that Hermann Cohen lived and wrote”: Strauss (1983), 247. Strauss (1964), 8.  It is noteworthy that in 1957 the German American historian Karl Wittfogel published his Oriental Despotism, where Soviet Communism was depicted as another instantiation of that Asian bureaucratic despotism necessary to keep up an “hydraulic empire”. Strauss (1962), 319. On the radicalness of Strauss’ critique of the Enlightenment and of modernity in general see McCormick (2011).

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374 Giorgini defensible as the ways of life recommended by Amos or by Socrates”.15 Strauss argues that Positivism and positivistic, i.e., “value-​free”, social science present two problems: they are impossible and they are wrong and dangerous. Strauss maintains that it is impossible to do social science without uttering value-​ judgements; this is because the social scientists necessarily understand what they observe through a conceptual framework, which is mainly provided to them by the circumstances of their society and is characterized by values: for instance, the view that democracy is a good thing. The consistent positivistic social scientist will continue upholding democracy while stating that it is a value as good as its opposite. “Social science positivism –​Strauss concludes –​ fosters not so much nihilism as conformism and philistinism”.16 In addition, if social scientists abstain from value-​judgements, they will be unable to correctly describe a phenomenon. Such was the situation, for instance, with the rise of Nazism, the worst tyranny human beings ever experienced and, yet, undetected as such by contemporary social scientists. This is because A social science that cannot speak of tyranny with the same confidence with which medicine speaks, for example, of cancer, cannot understand social phenomena as what they are. It is therefore not scientific. Present day social science finds itself in this condition.17 Historicism, especially in its radical form, maintains that all knowledge presupposes a frame of reference, “a comprehensive view within which understanding and knowing take place”.18 Ideas and values are therefore inevitably connected to a specific age and society, to a time and a place. Strauss considered Heidegger the most radical historicist of his age and unceasingly engaged with his thought. Strauss finds Historicism to be intrinsically self-​ contradictory because it argues that all claims to truth are historically relative whilst at the same time asserting that its own truth is universal and stands above history.19 The historicist thus follows in the wake of Hegel, who “taught that every philosophy is the conceptual expression of the spirit of its time,

15 16 17 18 19

Strauss (1953), 42. Amos was one of the twelve minor prophets, active around 750 bce. In his book he put justice, also in the form of social justice and condemnation of inequality, at the centre of his preaching. Strauss (1959), 349. These are the opening lines of Strauss’ “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero” in Strauss (1959), 95. Strauss (1953), 26. Strauss (1953), 80.

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and yet he maintained the absolute truth of his own system of philosophy by ascribing absolute character to his own time”.20 Strauss takes Historicism seriously and brings it to its logical conclusion: if it is true that every intellectual enterprise is the cultural product of a specific time and place, one day, Historicism will be considered “a questionable premise of our age”,21 the product of a specific epoch of relativism. And this is indeed what subsequently happened. The combination of these two powerful intellectual forces brought about the moral crisis of the time, which is reflected in the comatose status of contemporary political philosophy.22 Political philosophy is conceived by Strauss as a normative intellectual endeavor which culminates in the search for the best regime. In his words: Political philosophy will then be the attempt to replace opinion about the nature of political things by knowledge of the nature of political things. […] Political philosophy is the attempt truly to know both the nature of political things and the right, or the good, political order.23 In view of the dire situation of political philosophy in his days, threatened in its very existence, Strauss argued for a return to the classics, to the language and aims of classical political philosophy, especially Greek. Classical political philosophy was “characterized by the fact that it was related to political life directly”.24 For the classics positioned themselves at the level of the good citizen concerned for his city, eschewing the lofty position of contemporary political scientists; they used a language which is not specialized, different from the jargon of ‘experts’; and their approach was never merely descriptive, because they were guided by the search for the best regime. This topic too was the subject of real political controversies and by elaborating a project about the best political arrangement the classical political philosopher became the teacher of legislators. Strauss believed that the best regime imagined by philosophers always retained a human, political aspect: the best regime is built by men and 20 21 22

23 24

Strauss (1953), 29. Strauss (1953), 73. On the relation between Strauss’ critique of Historicism and his proposal of a Socratic sceptical rationalism see Melzer (2006). The opening sentence of Strauss’ 1971 essay “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy” reads: “Whoever is concerned with political philosophy must face the fact that in the last two generations political philosophy has lost its credibility”:  Strauss (1989a), 29. Strauss (1959), 344–​5. Strauss (1989a), 59.

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376 Giorgini never approaches an order governed by god as a supreme lawgiver. In his examination of natural right doctrines Strauss noted: To summarize, one may say that it is characteristic of the classic natural right doctrine to culminate in a twofold answer to the question of the best regime:  the simply best regime would be the absolute rule of the wise; the practically best regime is the rule, under law, of gentlemen, or the mixed regime”.25 It is my persuasion that Strauss thought that the classic alternative, epitomized by Plato and Xenophon, was still the best solution to the problem of the best regime.26 Strauss was aware that his proposed return to classical political philosophy, and its implicit vision of the best regime, was “both necessary and tentative or experimental”. He added that “we cannot reasonably expect that a fresh understanding of classical political philosophy will supply us with recipes for today’s use […] Only we living today can possibly find a solution to the problems of today”.27 The purpose of such a return was to achieve “an adequate understanding of the principles” in order to analyse present-​day society. In his critical engagement with Collingwood’s idea of history Strauss remarked: History takes on philosophic significance for men living in an age of intellectual decline. Studying the thinkers of the past becomes essential for men living in an age of intellectual decline because it is the only practicable way in which they can recover a proper understanding of the fundamental problems.28 In an age of confusion, looking back to the classics provides us with a method and a vision that counteract contemporary relativism: classical political philosophy is like the North Star in the relativistic quagmire of modernity. In the opening line of one of his most evocative works, Strauss states: “All the hopes that we entertain in the midst of the confusion and dangers of the present are

25 26 27 28

Strauss (1953), 142–​3. From this descends his influence as a teacher of generations of political theorists and of politicians, as well as the criticism he incurred by many opinionated interpreters. See Drury (1988). Strauss (1964), 11. Strauss (1952b), 585.

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founded, positively or negatively, directly or indirectly, on the experiences of the past”.29 From the 1950s onwards Strauss’ project was the revival of ancient political philosophy, both for its approach to politics and for its vision. And, we may add, he pursued it with unstinting faith in the transformative power of philosophy: When [a historian of thought] engages in the study of classical philosophy he must know that he embarks on a journey whose end is completely hidden from him. He is not likely to return to the shores of our time as exactly the same man who departed from them.30 2

A Tale of Two Cities

It is at this stage that Strauss’ encounter with the Athenian experience takes place. Athens stands out among the ancient political arrangements and is exemplary for many reasons. It was the first democratic experiment and, as Thucydides’ Pericles remarks, it allowed a complete liberty in the private realm to the citizen to take care of his own education while providing excellent laws; it was ‘liberal’ in this sense and it stood in stark contrast with its antagonist, Sparta. It is in the grim months that precede World War ii that Strauss contrasts the Athenian liberal attitude with Sparta’s demand from its citizens to absolute dedication. In a sophisticated essay on Xenophon’s Constitution of the Spartans, he argued that “the spirit of Sparta” lied in “the conviction that man belongs, or ought to belong, entirely to the city”;31 Sparta embodied that all-​ encompassing vision of politics where the citizen is one and the same with the State, a view which fascinated numerous philosophers and especially Rousseau.32 This dangerous fascination was again widespread in the totalitarian regimes of the day.33 Strauss found in Thucydides, the author who praised Periclean Athens with words which went down to posterity, the best qualities of Athenian 29 30 31 32 33

Strauss (1967), 45. Strauss (1946), 331; see Strauss (1952b), 583. Strauss (1939), 531. On the Spartan myth see the classic Ollier (1933) and Rawson (1972). R.S. Ruderman, “ ‘Through the Keyhole’:  Leo Strauss’ Rediscovery of Classical Political Philosophy in Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaimonians” in Burns (ed.) (2015) aptly comments:  “The spirit of Sparta, then, was alive and well, so to speak, in the ‘taste’ of Stalin and of Hitler (not to mention Marx and Heidegger)” (Ibidem, 215).

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378 Giorgini democracy: his work was indeed “a possession for all times”. Strauss devoted a very thorough treatment to Thucydides’ work because he found in him the intellectual counterpart to Plato. First of all, Thucydides was a unique kind of historian because he thought that he had grasped the universal in the particular: by studying an event set in time and space (the war between Sparta and Athens), he believed he had identified some universal truths about war and human nature.34 In this he was similar to Plato, who had found in one specimen of human being –​Socrates –​the universal nature of the philosopher: the role played by the Peloponnesian war in Thucydides’ history is played by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. Thucydides depicts the Peloponnesian war as the climactic Greek war and thus—​Strauss comments—​“by understanding the Peloponnesian war, one grasps the limits of all human things. One understands the nature of all human things”.35 For instance, internecine war (stasis) in many cities amidst the confrontation between Sparta and Athens brings about a re-​barbarization of Greece and reveals the precarious and fragile nature of civilization. The primary and fundamental fact is barbarism, Greekness is derivative; similarly to Heraclitus, war, and not peace, is considered “the father of all things” because it reveals things and men for what they are. Secondly, Thucydides’ history describes Athens at the peak of its power in the confrontation with Sparta: this is why he considered the present war “the greatest motion” of all times. Thucydides’ narration shows that Greekness at its peak has two poles, Sparta and Athens, and therefore to understand Greekness means “to understand the difference between Sparta and Athens—​to understand the character of Sparta and Athens, the specific limitations of Sparta and Athens, the specific virtues of Sparta and Athens”.36 Thucydides admires the Spartan capacity for moderation since he believes that moderation is a moral virtue produced by true wisdom. Strauss subtly notes that Thucydides did not overtly praise Athens in his work, he left that task to Pericles.37 Strauss makes another very interesting point. Thucydides’ Athens was the best polity in history, the best city “in motion”, whereas Plato described the best city at rest: Kallipolis is the best regime across time, universally. Thucydides’ and Plato’s works therefore complement each other; far from being incompatible, they supplement one another. For Thucydides had a very different perspective from Plato’s: 34 35 36 37

Strauss (1989b), 76. Strauss ((1989b), 84. Strauss (1989b), 85. Strauss (1989b), 96.

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Thucydides sees political life in its own light, he does not transcend it; he does not stand above the turmoil but in the midst of it; he takes seriously political life as it is; […] he presents to us political life in its harsh grandeur, ruggedness, and even squalor.38 Thucydides gives us the citizen’s or the common-​sense view of politics; he looks at politics in the perspective of the citizen and the statesman. Thucydides makes us appreciate that politics is a serious matter and describes “the spirit of the polis”, providing us the picture of “men who are dominated by the spirit of republican virtue”.39 In the Funeral Speech his Pericles describes Athens as the peak of civilization, “the school of Greece”.40 Pericles was not bragging, and the Athenians realize the truth of his words when they are utterly defeated at Syracuse. Noticing that its enemies had to adopt Athenian ways and strategies in order to win, Strauss subtly remarks: In accordance with all this, Athens’ defeat is her triumph: her enemies have to become in a manner Athenians in order to defeat her; she is defeated because she has succeeded in becoming the teacher of Hellas.41 Strauss finds that “there is indeed a profound kinship between Thucydides’ thought and the daring which is characteristic of Athens”: it is the daring displayed by Thucydides in his views about the gods, empire and human nature. Therefore, he comments, “not Periclean Athens but the understanding which is possible on the basis of Periclean Athens is the peak. Not Periclean Athens but the work of Thucydides is the peak. Thucydides redeems Periclean Athens”.42 Strauss concludes that, by understanding Thucydides’ thought, we become wise and we see that his wisdom was made possible by Athens, by her power and wealth, by her defective polity, by her spirit of daring innovation, by her active doubt of the divine law. By understanding his work one sees with one’s own eyes that Athens was in a sense the home of wisdom.43

38 39 40 41 42 43

Strauss (1964), 139. Strauss (1989b), 74. See Thuc. 2. 41. Strauss (1964), 226. Strauss (1964), 229–​230. Strauss (1964), 231.

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380 Giorgini Thucydides preserves in his work the political and philosophical wisdom elaborated at Athens and offers it to his readers. This is another reason to consider it “a possession for all times”: Athens’ story of rise to power and utter defeat is a cautionary tale about human nature and the limits of human action; a story narrated in a strikingly similar way to Homer’s clash of heroes, who are all destined to be defeated someday. The Athenians, as opposed to the Spartans, were not capable of preserving moderation in prosperity, they developed a spirit of daring innovation which brought them to disaster. By reading Thucydides’ history we are taught a lesson in moderation.44 Athens is unique also for another reason:  it is there that philosophy was born. Strauss encapsulates this conviction in the evocative title of one of his works: The City and Man. Athens is the city and Socrates is the man. Going back to Athens in the effort to revive the Greek experience of philosophy and politics is necessary because in Athens philosophy had its beginning and in it the first philosopher, Socrates, was born and lived. And in it he died dramatically, thus teaching a permanent lesson to actual and prospective philosophers. Socrates’ fate points to the difficult coexistence between the philosopher’s quest for truth and society’s reliance on common opinion: the very activity that characterizes philosophy entails questioning the shared beliefs of society. Strauss noticed at an early stage of his intellectual enterprise the “disproportion between the intransigent quest for truth and the requirements of society”.45 He thought that this was obvious for regimes such as the Spartan kosmos, which placed such an emphasis on total dedication to the city. Philosophy could not have emerged at Sparta because Spartan ‘virtue’ is incompatible with the search for truth. But this is valid of any political arrangement. In fact, Strauss defended Athenian democracy, and Plato, from well-​meaning contemporary critics, especially those who found a “totalitarian” streak in the Athenian philosopher.46

44

45 46

Strauss states that “moderation is akin to peace; daring and manliness belong to war”; he then goes on to argue that “these statements allow us to assert without hesitation that the moral taste of Thucydides is identical with the moral taste of Plato. I dare say that it is identical with the moral taste of all wise men, i.e., of all great thinkers prior to the modem era”: Strauss (1989b), 86. Strauss (1948), 27. Strauss’ contempt for Popper’s interpretation of Plato is notorious. For a fair assessment see Lane (1999). In a letter to Eric Voegelin dated 10 April 1950 Strauss reports that Popper gave a lecture in Chicago on the task of social philosophy that “was beneath contempt: it was the most washed-​out, lifeless positivism trying to whistle in the dark […]—​it was very bad”. Only a week later Voegelin replied with an even more incendiary letter, where he passed a scathing judgement on The Open Society and Its Enemies, which he considered “impudent, dilettantish crap. Every single sentence is a scandal […]”; Voegelin concluded

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Talking about the laws on impiety in the Laws Strauss comments: We mention these facts because their insufficient consideration might induce ignorant people to scold Plato for his alleged lack of liberalism. We do not here describe such people as ignorant because they believe liberalism calls for unqualified toleration of the teaching of all opinions however dangerous or degrading. We call them ignorant because they do not see how extraordinarily liberal Plato is according to their own standards, which cannot possibly be “absolute”. The standards generally recognized in Plato’s time are best illustrated by the practice of Athens, a city highly renowned for her liberality and gentleness. In Athens Socrates was punished with death because he was held not to believe in the existence of the gods worshipped by the city of Athens—​of gods whose existence was known only from hearsay. In the city of the Laws the belief in gods is demanded only to the extent to which is supported by demonstration […].47 Athenian democracy treated freethinkers with leniency and moderation: after all, Socrates was put to death at the age of seventy, which means that he roamed the streets of Athens asking questions for seventy long years,48 incurring only in ridicule.49 3

The Philosopher and the City

Strauss was strongly influenced by Plato’s philosophy and, more generally, by his vision of the world. In a telling passage, which was never published during his lifetime, Strauss stated: “The difference between the beginner and the philosopher (for the perfectly trained student of Plato is no one else but the genuine philosopher) is a difference not of degree, but of kind”.50

47 48 49

50

that “Popper’s book is a scandal without extenuating circumstances”: Emberley-​Cooper (1993), 66–​69. Strauss (1989a), 243. This, incidentally, is the same judgement on Athenian democracy passed by George Grote, an author with whom Strauss was well acquainted as we know from numerous mentions in his courses. Describing the antagonistic relation between Socrates and Aristophanes, Strauss comments:  “The philosopher is necessarily ridiculous in the eyes of the multitude and therefore a natural subject for comedy”:  Strauss (1966), 5.  Their relation captures the antagonism between poetic and philosophic wisdom (ibid., 311). Strauss (1986), 56.

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382 Giorgini Strauss conceived of philosophy in Platonic terms as a search for truth which inevitably starts by questioning the truth of religion and the truth of society. In an important passage of his essay “Progress or Return” he remarked: “So the divine law, in the real and strict sense of the term, is only the starting point, the absolutely essential starting point for Greek philosophy, but it is abandoned in the process”.51 At the same time, philosophers are prone to question and overturn the shared beliefs of their fellow-​citizens in their search for truth. In this respect Athens is doubly exemplary. Athens enabled philosophers to flourish, attracted thinkers from all around the world; but it was also the city which condemned to death Socrates, the man who epitomizes philosophy and its endeavour: the quest for truth. And it was a democratic government which convicted Socrates, thus showing that the tension between philosophy and the city is not mitigated by any regime. In fact Socrates was executed for not believing in the gods of Athens, in the gods of the city. By considering and reconsidering this fact, we grasp the ultimate reason why political life and philosophic life, even if compatible for almost all practical purposes, are incompatible in the last analysis: political life, if taken seriously, meant belief in the gods of the city, and philosophy is the denial of the gods of the city.52 At a more general level, Athens is the city because it stands for the pre-​ philosophic life: it embodies the notions and values which inform the everyday life of the ordinary citizen. And Socrates is the philosopher because he lives in the city, abides by the laws of the city and dies because of the laws of the city. Strauss points to an important fact: If we wish to understand Plato, we must take him seriously; we must take seriously in particular his deference to Socrates. Plato points not only to Socrates’s speeches but to his whole life, and to his fate as well.53 Socrates’ life, spent in the pursuit of truth about the most important matters for a human being, is the perfect embodiment of the life of the philosopher. Socrates was loyal to his city and fought for it; but even more “Socrates had a mission” and he tried throughout his life to improve the character of his 51 52 53

Strauss (1989a), 286. Strauss (1939), 531–​532. Strauss (1967).

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fellow-​countrymen. His tragic demise is a memento for all prospective philosophers. Strauss considered philosophy in the Platonic sense the solution to the most fundamental human problem, the problem of choosing the good life conducive to happiness. For philosophy, before it became an academic discipline, was a way of life, the life of unending quest for the truth.54 Strauss argued that “the very uncertainty of all solutions, the very ignorance regarding the most important things, makes quest for knowledge the most important thing, and therefore a life devoted to it, the right way of life”.55 Strauss tried to substantiate this view in a series of lectures on the prototype philosopher—​Socrates. There he stated clearly that “philosophy is a way of life” and went on to characterize it as a “zetetic” enterprise –​the unending quest for truth. For “philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems” –​as he had stated in On Tyranny.56 During this quest we weigh and often discard beliefs held by ordinary people, we test the ‘idols’ of society and we realize that the attainment of truth is a goal we never completely achieve: we learn to appreciate “the elusive character of the truth”.57 The meaning of the enterprise is in the journey, not in the destination, which is never appointed. This is evidently a very Socratic understanding of philosophical activity, very different from the contemporary analytical version. Strauss believed that the worth of this way of life must be argued for and then defended on two fronts, namely against the claims of political life and of the life of faith. His book On Tyranny (1948), which is a close investigation of Xenophon’s dialogue Hiero, does not serve only the purpose of re-​introducing the word ‘tyranny’ into the vocabulary of political science and therefore argue for a normative notion of political philosophy; it is also an examination of the respective merits of the philosophical and the political life, a contest about the superiority of one over the other. Strauss believed that “according to the classics, political life as such is essentially inferior in dignity to the philosophic life”.58 4

Jerusalem and Athens

Strauss read the conflict between philosophy and society in a very Platonic perspective. The conflict was inevitable because for Strauss the philosopher 54 55 56 57 58

On this see Smith (2009b). Strauss (1952c) in Strauss (1989a), 298. Strauss (1948), 196. Strauss (1959), 38. Strauss (1953), 145.

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384 Giorgini is not just a specialist, a professional, but someone who devotes his life to a mission –​the quest for truth. And in this quest he finds his happiness. Philosophy must therefore be justified, and defended, before the city. Philosophy is a way of life and, as such, an alternative to the political life: it is the choice of a private, instead of a public life. Socrates remains the emblem of philosophy because he thought that philosophical investigation did a service to the community: by questioning his fellow-​citizens and revealing their ignorance and presumption to knowledge, Socrates paved them the way towards knowledge and, therefore, happiness. However, this is only part of the question with philosophy. Philosophy as a way of life must defend itself also from another alternative, the religious life, the life of faith. Strauss symbolized this alternative, and confrontation, as the choice between two cities: Jerusalem and Athens. The idea of a choice between reason and faith is evocative, and dramatic, and was explored by Strauss in many ways throughout his life.59 One may contend that this alternative was in fact the deepest and most intimate concern of his entire life, because of his personal condition—​a philosopher and a Jew—​and of the role of the ‘Jewish question’ in politics (it showed the limits of Liberalism).60 Strauss recognized that the two cities are the foundations of Western civilization. They embody two alternative views of the world, biblical faith and Greek philosophy, respectively; faith in the Revelation and the quest for truth: “Western man became what he is, and is what he is, through the coming together of biblical faith and Greek thought”.61 Such metaphorical identification of the two pillars of Western civilization was, obviously, not an invention of Strauss:  Tertullian, in the second century, had already posed the question of “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”; Augustine gave a powerful answer in The City of God.62 The confrontation between Hebraism and Hellenism had been the subject of Matthew Arnold’s reflections on education in Culture and Anarchy 59 60

On the origin of this opposition see Janssens (2008). On Strauss personal condition as a Jew and a philosopher, I am inclined to think that he lived it as a dramatic alternative and in the end opted for philosophy. I am well aware that judgment depends very much on where one lays the emphasis in Strauss’ writings, but I believe that there is ample evidence for Strauss’ choice of philosophy over religion in his works. In addition, I  find most persuasive the fact that he repeated twice to his close friend Gershom Scholem the remark made by Averroes: “moriatur anima mea mortem philosophorum”; see Letter to Scholem 22/​11/​1960 in Strauss (2008) 3: 742; Letter to Scholem 30/​9/​1973 in Strauss (2008) 3: 770–​771. See also the Letter to Scholem 7/​7/​1973 in Strauss (2008) 3: 769. 61 Strauss (1967), 45. 62 Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics, ­chapter 7.

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(1869); finally, the theme had been recently revived by Strauss’ former teacher Hermann Cohen in one of his last essays.63 Strauss is less interested in Athens as an historical entity –​the city that created democracy, the imperial power of fifth century bce –​than in it as the cradle of philosophy: this is the real, perennial glory of Athens, once the sound and fury of the empire have faded. And Jerusalem is “the city of righteousness, the faithful city”; indeed, before launching himself into an investigation of Greek political philosophy before a Jewish audience, Strauss remarked “I shall not for a moment forget what Jerusalem stands for”.64 The two cities have something very important in common, for there is a notion that “both the Bible and the greatest works of the Greeks claim to convey”: wisdom. They both claim to teach wisdom and reveal the truth to mankind. It is therefore important to see the difference between Biblical wisdom and Greek wisdom, knowing that both claim to have the real wisdom and deny that of the other. Strauss then writes that According to the Bible, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers, the beginning of wisdom is wonder. We are thus compelled from the very beginning to make a choice, to take a stand. Where then do we stand? Confronted by the incompatible claims of Jerusalem and Athens, we are open to both and willing to listen to each. We ourselves are not wise but we wish to become wise. We are seekers for wisdom, “philo-​sophoi.” Yet since we say that we wish to hear first and then to act or to decide, we have already decided in favor of Athens against Jerusalem.65 The seeker of wisdom who wants to listen to the two contenders before making a decision has, in fact, already decided in favour of philosophy; for religion asks for immediate acceptance of its truth. Strauss repeats this alternative, in a very similar way, in many of his works, showing that this was his deep conviction.66 63

64 65 66

In a posthumously published essay Cohen argued that “Plato and the prophets constitute the two most important sources of modern culture”: Cohen (1924): i, 306–​330. Plato offered the truth of science and the prophets that of ethics; Cohen tried to harmonize the two truths while Strauss emphasized their irreconcilability as well as their inseparableness. Interestingly enough, for Cohen, as for Strauss, Plato was the emblem of Athens. Two other works on this topic Strauss was likely acquainted with are Auerbach (1953 [1946]) and Shestov (2016 [1936]). Strauss (1959): 10. Strauss (1967): 46. Fine observations may be found in Orr (1995).

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386 Giorgini However, Strauss did not settle the problem simply this way; for he added that human beings cannot live without knowledge of the good which can guide their lives, and this knowledge can be acquired either through the Revelation or through human efforts, namely philosophy. It is characteristic of Strauss to conceive human beings, in a very Platonic manner, as seekers for a kind of wisdom, somehow forgetting the many who live without feeling such need. For him the confrontation between the two contrasting claims to knowledge and wisdom is dramatic and personal:67 no compromise position or synthesis is possible; for it is impossible to be a philosopher and remain an observant Jew, as the examples of Strauss’ cherished philosophers testify –​Maimonides and Spinoza.68 The very idea of a ‘Jewish philosophy’ or a ‘philosophy of Judaism’, or a philosophy of religion, is a contradiction in terms.69 During his examination of Weber’s thought Strauss inserts this elevated passage: No alternative is more fundamental than this: human guidance or divine guidance. The first possibility is characteristic of philosophy or science in the original sense of the term, the second is presented in the Bible. The dilemma cannot be evaded by any harmonization or synthesis.70 The confrontation is dramatic and cannot be settled by human reason. No harmonization or synthesis between the two contenders is possible either; for in any synthesis, however refined, one of the two elements is sacrificed to the other:  philosophy becomes the handmaid of theology, or faith is made the handmaid of philosophy.71 In a very evocative passage Strauss explained that Philosophy demands that revelation should establish its claim before the tribunal of human reason, but revelation as such refuses to acknowledge that tribunal. In other words, philosophy recognizes only such experiences as can be had by all men at all times in broad daylight. But God has said or decided that he wants to dwell in mist.72 67 68 69 70 71 72

Meier (2006) argues persuasively that the theologico-​political problem is the central theme of Leo Strauss and that he faced it as a political philosopher (differently from Carl Schmitt, who was instead a political theologian). This conviction explains Strauss’ criticism of Julius Guttmann’s position as expressed in his book Die Philosophie der Judentums (1933). See Strauss (1995 [1935]), ­chapter 2. On this point see Altini (2014). Strauss (1953), 74. Strauss (1989a), 72–​3. Strauss (1952c) in Strauss (1989a), 305.

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The result is that “If we take a bird’s-​eye view of the secular struggle between philosophy and theology, we can hardly avoid the impression that neither of the two antagonists has ever succeeded in really refuting the other”.73 Strauss concluded that “the very life of Western civilization is the life between two codes, a fundamental tension”. This unresolved conflict is the secret of the vitality of Western civilization. There is no definite solution to this alternative: every human being must make their choice and opt for one alternative. And, as if to give a hint to the readers interested in knowing where he stood, Strauss added that no-​one can be beyond the conflict between philosophy and theology or attempt a synthesis of both.74 But “Everyone of us can be and ought to be either the one or the other, the philosopher open to the challenge of theology or the theologian open to the challenge of philosophy”.75 5

Writing between the Lines

In the middle of the 1930s Strauss re-​discovered the “forgotten art” of exoteric teaching and writing. Surely many suggestions came together to induce Strauss to conclude that most philosophers adopted a peculiar style of writing –​“writing between the lines” –​in order to transmit their teaching without incurring into persecution:  his Platonic view of philosophy and the problematic relation between the philosopher and society; his study of medieval Jewish and Islamic authors; the Talmudic exegetic tradition; and, not least, contemporary concerns aroused by the experience of totalitarian regimes, censorship and the repression of free thought in Communist countries76 during the Cold War.77 All of these factors contributed to prompting Strauss’ interest in exoteric writing. 73 74

75 76 77

Strauss (1953), 75. There is a huge controversy among Strauss’ pupils and interpreters concerning the relationship between Jerusalem and Athens in Strauss’ thought. For a good introduction to the problem see Bernstein (2015). Interesting observations from an unusual perspective in Ranieri (2004). Strauss (1952c) in Strauss (1989a), 290. I believe Strauss identified himself with the former. In a very insightful essay, Rémy Brague describes Strauss’ intellectual career as a voyage from Jerusalem to Athens: see Brague (1989), 315. But also in the United States: Persecution and the Art of Writing was published in 1952, during the years of operation of the Committee on Government Operations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. It is enough to read the opening lines of the essay “Persecution and the Art of Writing”: “In a considerable number of countries which, for about a hundred years, have enjoyed a practically complete freedom of public discussion, that freedom is now suppressed and replaced by a compulsion to coordinate speech with such views as the government

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388 Giorgini Later in his life he will reminisce that he “became familiar with the problem mentioned while studying the Jewish and Islamic philosophy of the Middle Ages”.78 And he went on to argue that most philosophers of all ages adopted a style of writing which revealed their true teaching only to people eager to learn it and prone to work hard to elicit it from their works: “[…] Lessing was the last writer who revealed, while hiding, the reasons compelling wise men to hide the truth: he wrote between the lines about writing between the lines”.79 As a consequence, “inquisitorial brutality and recklessness” are necessary “for extorting his serious views from an able writer who tries to conceal them from all but a few”.80 Strauss believed that, such being the relation between the philosopher and the society he lives in, it was only natural that philosophers would develop a style of writing which accommodated two all-​important requirements:  eluding persecution while revealing the result of their inquiries to their fellow-​citizens. However, avoiding persecution is not the only reason which induces philosophers not to openly reveal their real teaching. In fact, philosophers are motivated by two purposes in putting into writing their thoughts:  they feel they have the responsibility to enlighten other human beings as well as the duty not to upset the social order; for philosophy is a teacher of moderation.81 At the same time, they wish to avoid Socrates’ fate, not just because they fear death (in fact, they do less than other human beings) but also because their demise would mean the end of their search for truth. Strauss will later describe the relation between philosophy, society and style of writing in a ‘syllogistic’ way: I arrived at a conclusion that I can state in the form of a syllogism: Philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion by knowledge; but opinion is the element of the city, hence philosophy is subversive, hence the philosopher must write in such a way that he will improve rather than subvert the city.82

78 79 80 81 82

believes to be expedient, or holds in all seriousness. It may be worth our while to consider briefly the effect of that compulsion, or persecution, on thoughts as well as actions”: Strauss (1952a), 22. Strauss (1952b), 5; cf. 8. Strauss (1986), 52. Strauss (1947), 185. Strauss (1959), 221–​222. Strauss (1970), 4.

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It is thus a mixture of fear of persecution83 and moderation, the desire not to upset their fellow-​citizens by shaking their beliefs, which induces philosophers to carefully select their audience and to adopt certain literary devices: obscurities in the plan of a book, contradictions, the use of pseudonyms, wrong repetitions of previous statements, weird expressions are all features that do not wake up careless readers from their slumber; however, they immediately catch the eye of the attentive reader. It follows that the real opinion of an author is not necessarily the one repeated most often; and certain features, such as numeric symbolism and the place where a word or a statement appears, as well as where a chapter is placed in a book, are of the utmost importance. The dedicatees of such art are the clever and loyal readers, and especially prospective young philosophers. Strauss went on to argue that the task of the historian of ideas is to understand past thought “as it really was”, namely as the past authors understood themselves. This is the only possible criterion of historical ‘objectivity’. Strauss’ method is evidently completely at odds with the historicist’s stance which, seeing thought as the product of the society where the author lived, presupposes a perfect harmony between thought and society. The historicist is wrong in believing that thought is in direct relation with a society and thus takes what authors say at face value, discounting the possibility that they might deliberately wish to lead them astray. This is why a “hermeneutics of reticence” is required to properly assess the message an author wishes to convey to readers. Even from a cursory reading of his works one immediately notices that Strauss was himself a careful writer, attentive in his use of words, sometimes pedantic in his attempt to examine a question under many points of view, always scrupulous in respecting academic conventions in citing authors and works. However, in his writings we find hidden quotes and startling statements, blunders that even a minimally attentive scholar would spot, placed in those conspicuous, special positions described by Strauss as serving the purpose of alerting the careful reader.84 Also, Strauss preferred to hide his opinions under a veil of scholarship, disclosing them only occasionally whilst

83 84

Strauss explains that the word ‘persecution’ covers a wide array of phenomena, varying from the Spanish Inquisition to social ostracism; it also covers a wide time span, from fifth-​century bce Athens to contemporary totalitarian regimes. As Steven Smith put it:  “No reading, we have been taught to believe, is ever innocent, and Strauss was scarcely a naïve reader. He was in fact one of the great ‘masters of suspicion’ ”. I fully subscribe to his conclusion that “Strauss did write cautiously and reticently, especially with regard to the American regime, but certainly not to conceal some sinister intent”: Smith (2006), 7–​9.

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390 Giorgini commenting other authors’ texts.85 Indeed, his books mostly have the appearance of commentaries on the works of great philosophers of the past. In doing this exercise, in presenting his exegesis of texts, Strauss exploited the “specific immunity of the commentator”.86 What, then, should we think when an interpreter of Spinoza starts his investigation by providing an account of his methodology and writes: “It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully”.87 The question naturally arises whether Strauss himself was, for many reasons, an esoteric writer.88 But, in that case, what was the message Strauss wished to convey to his careful and interested readers?89 6

Beyond the Veil

Regardless of the merits (or demerits) of his methodology, it is important to stress that Strauss was never a mere historian of political thought.90 His accurate reconstructions of the thought of ancient philosophers aimed at a better understanding of these authors for a practical purpose: Strauss believed that the classics had both diagnosed and offered a solution to the main political problems, which are the same and recurrent since the inception of political philosophy. Plato was the author Strauss looked to as a guide. Plato’s qualms 85 86 87 88

89

90

He once demurely stated:  “I know that I  am only a scholar”:  “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism” in Strauss (1989b), 29. Strauss (1952b), 14. L. Strauss “How to Study Spinoza’s Theological-​Political Treatise” in Strauss (1952a), 144. In his Introductory Essay for the English translation of Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason out of the Source of Judaism Strauss notices a peculiarity in the title of one of the chapters and wonders whether it was deliberate and comments: “One cannot say that this is intentional: Cohen does not write like Maimonides”: Strauss (1983), 240. Did Strauss write like Maimonides? There is a huge controversy about whether Strauss was himself an esoteric writer. Catherine and Michael Zuckert, who were direct pupils of his, forcefully argue that he was not: see Zuckert (2006). However, a philosopher who maintains that most philosophers in the past had to hide their real thought and write between the lines puts his readers in a difficult, if not paradoxical, situation. See also Pangle (2006), Frazer (2006) and Tanguay (2007). On this, and more generally on Strauss’ hidden agenda, see Burnyeat (1985) and Drury (1988). In the opening sentence of one of his early works, when he was more outspoken, Strauss stated: “There is no investigation into the history of philosophy that is not at the same time a philosophical investigation”: “Der Streit der Alten und der Neueren in der Philosophie der Judentums” in Strauss (2013), 30.

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about Athenian democracy echo in Strauss’ qualms about contemporary liberal democracy: the difficult relation between the philosopher and the society he lives in is still the same; the sophists have their counterparts in contemporary public intellectuals, who go on television, become pundits and celebrities but never question the status quo; education in mass-​society becomes indoctrination into conformism. Plato’s answer to the dire situation of his times was the construction of philosophy as the search for the truth about the most important matters; Plato’s philosopher becomes the educator of his fellow-​citizens (as Socrates did in his life) but also the creator of a new, better kind of society: the perfect city where all human beings, notwithstanding their differences, can flourish—​including philosophers. Strauss reckoned that he lived in no less dire times than Plato’s and he, too, believed that the philosopher has an all-​important task, which should be pursued as a duty towards both fellow-​citizens and mankind in general. First of all, the philosopher has the moral and political task of re-​proposing the question of the just society, of the best regime human beings can create. This is what Strauss tried to do with his revival of political philosophy:  for him political philosophy is “the conscious quest for the best regime. Now –​he adds –​the quest for the best regime is only the political form of the quest for the good life”.91 We should therefore interpret Strauss’ works after World War ii as the products of intellectual and political engagement, his weapons in the Kulturkampf he waged against the most dangerous products of modernity: relativism and totalitarianism. Studying Maimonides and the falasifa he realized that in order to succeed he needed to adopt their same cautiousness. These authors taught him that, in pursuing his task, the philosopher’s wisdom must never be separated from moderation; the philosopher must be bold in his ideas and restrained in his demeanour. Out of a combination of modesty and prudence, the philosopher should refrain from openly questioning the beliefs of his society while, at the same time, trying to avoid persecution. As Strauss put it with reference to Spinoza:  “The philosopher who knows the truth, must be prepared to refrain from expressing it, not so much for reasons of convenience as for reasons of duty”.92 Spinoza’s choice was this: He was cautious in so far as he did not state the whole truth clearly and unequivocally but kept his utterances, to the best of his knowledge,

91 92

Strauss (1989b), 98. “How to Study Spinoza’s Theological-​Political Treatise” in Strauss (1952a), 180.

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392 Giorgini within the limits imposed by what he considered the legitimate claims of society.93 Strauss himself made the same choice as Spinoza. He chose to be vehement in his attack on the pervasive relativism and nihilism of his times while being restrained in his philosophical-​political proposals, which he addressed only to attentive listeners and readers. We may thus pose the question of what kind of audience Strauss had in mind, who were the addressees of his message? An unpublished conference that he delivered at The New School for Social Research in 1941, titled “German Nihilism”, throws light on the fact that Strauss initially joined into the effort of explaining the intellectual roots of National-​Socialism.94 He tried to understand why German youth was attracted to the nihilist doctrine which underpins Nazism and he argued that it was a combination of revulsion from communism and lack of faith in liberalism—​ the result being that “warlike virtues” set aside moderation and prudence. In this lecture Strauss defended Britain as a counter-​model for its commonsense view of virtue which eschews sacrifice and death. He thus addressed the predicament of the European youth, and of European people more generally. After World War ii and the ensuing Cold War Strauss’ scope becomes larger. His addressee is now the entire Western civilization, with its faltering belief in universal values and the just society. But what could a simple philosopher do in front of a task of such magnitude? Strauss was undeterred and embarked on a project which can be compared only to Heidegger’s in twentieth-​century philosophy, albeit with a fundamental difference, for Strauss’ project revolved around the political significance of philosophy. The two authors, Strauss and Heidegger, radically challenged contemporary philosophy, and both looked to Plato as the foundational thinker from whom to start: indeed, their respective philosophical projects revolved around a new interpretation of Plato. However, for Heidegger Plato was the author from whom “the oblivion of being” and metaphysics had begun, and he proposed a return to Pre-​Socratic philosophy; for Strauss, Plato was the thinker who gave philosophy its zetetic character and depicted it as the quest for knowledge which arises from an awareness of one’s own ignorance.95 93 94

95

“How to Study Spinoza’s Theological-​Political Treatise” in Strauss (1952a), 183. Many thinkers in German culture during and after World War ii tried to explain the rise and success of Nazism by tracing its intellectual roots and elaborating political, sociological and psychological explanations. See for instance Cassirer (1945); Lukacs (1980 [1952]); Adorno (1950); and, for the open-​minded reader, Reich (1980 [1933]). In a letter to Eric Voegelin dated 17 December 1949, where he compares the ancient sophists to contemporary “intellectuals”, especially existentialists who dismiss the notion of

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Strauss’ Plato is a Socratic philosopher in every respect. He is dialectical but selective in the choice of his audience. Strauss’ last works were devoted to a painstaking analysis of Xenophon’s Socratic works. Strauss found Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates very congenial because it lets us appreciate both the audience of Socrates’ teaching and its content. Strauss noticed that Socrates, often teased for speaking of tillers, butchers and other craftsmen, in fact entertained in his discussions only young gentlemen (like Alcibiades, Critias and Plato himself). In addition, he pursued the cultivation of these young gentlemen by providing them with an education which would make them appropriate members of the new ruling class. Socrates took the side of the gentlemen, not that of the hoi polloi. Strauss’ ambition, through his works and his teaching, was to have a similar influence on his listeners and readers to Socrates’. In order to do this, Strauss believed it was important to have a correct appreciation of ancient authors. He therefore deemed it important to chastise liberal interpretations of ancient political thought which anachronistically looked for such ideas as human rights or liberal values in ancient authors. This was the case of Eric Havelock’s book The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (1957), which received a long and harsh review. Among other precise remarks and critiques, Strauss pointed out that the Sophists never argued for human beings’ common nature or world citizenship; Hippias, for instance, taught that “by nature all wise men are kinsmen and fellow citizens, whereas all other kinship and fellow citizenship rests on law or convention.”96 R.G. Collingwood, on the other hand, epitomized the historicist approach to classical political thought. Strauss spelled out the difficulties and inconsistencies of such an approach. The historicist believes that scientific history is the re-​enactment of the thought of past philosophers but will fail to appreciate it because the historicist will understand it as the product of the (material and spiritual) circumstances of a certain society; whereas the ambition of philosophers has always been to achieve universal truths in the persuasion that this is a meaningful enterprise. Strauss also believed that it was illusory and impossible to find the solution to the predicament of our time directly in the teaching of ancient authors. In so doing we modernize and distort them. Our reasons for turning to the writings of ancient authors are not identical to their reasons for writing them. Strauss

96

“objective truth”, Strauss writes: “The question Plato or existentialism is today the ontological question”; Emberley-​Cooper (1993), 63. Strauss (1968), 59. The review originally appeared as “The Liberalism of Classical Political Philosophy,” in Review of Metaphysics 12 (1959), 390–​439.

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394 Giorgini found such problems, for instance, in John Wild’s book Plato’s Theory of Man (1946).97 Strauss remained Platonic in his faith in the transformative power of philosophy and in the ability of the philosopher to effect a change in society. He took his role, the role of the philosopher, to be that of educating human beings so that they can become critical reasoners. Strauss called this activity with the old-​fashioned name of “liberal education”: this is an education in the exercise of critical reason, in questioning the common opinions and the received beliefs, which aims at dispelling conformism and uncritical acceptance of one’s society’s creed. Strauss’ final message follows his own model of liberal education, which he describes as consisting in listening to the debate among the great minds of the past, an exercise which inevitably ends with the listener’s taking a stand: since the great minds of the past have different views on the most important matters for a human being, listening to them involves taking a position and becoming a critical reasoner.98 Plato was a critic of democracy for both intellectual and political reasons. He was convinced that human beings are born unequal and very few have the intellectual capacity and the perseverance to question the beliefs of their society and search for the truth; hence the hoi polloi cannot make good decisions and the best political arrangement is that in which an intellectual aristocracy rules for the common good. Politically, democracy was for him the rule of one faction (the demos) in its sole interest and against the rest of the population (as Thrasymachus thought with respect to every form of government). Strauss’ experience with totalitarian regimes, which were established with the support of the masses, made him wary of democracy and suspicious of the “wisdom of the multitude”. He thought that democracy should be “ennobled” by creating an intellectual ruling class composed of people who both knew and pursued the common good. Plato created the Academy, a school for philosophers and statesmen, to implement his educational and political ideas; Strauss, more or less deliberately, created a school of scholars and politicians strongly influenced by Plato’s ideal of the philosopher-​king.99

97 98 99

See Strauss (1946). Many interesting observations may be found in Culp in Burns (ed.) (2015), 147–​168. Strauss (1968). Strauss’ school, ‘the Straussians’, has been much maligned as a sect of anti-​democratic, sometimes right-​wing sometimes nihilist conservatives; see, for instance, Drury (1997), Norton (2004), Devigne (2009). It is worth pointing out, however, that many scholars (such as Eric Voegelin, Karl Loewith, Hans-​Georg Gadamer) who knew Strauss well and who had the same cultural background (although sometimes opposed opinions) did not consider him a covert, reactionary nihilist.

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Strauss thought that liberal education so conceived could be the ‘addition’ needed by modern Liberalism in order not to shift into relativism: liberal education provides human beings with the critical tools to defend themselves from indoctrination, conformism and blind obedience to the laws of the State. Strauss’ educated individual would have known that the Nurnberg laws were still laws of the Reich, and therefore legally valid, but he would have recognized them as unjust; and, like Socrates under the Thirty Tyrants, he would not have obeyed their injunctions.

Bibliography

Adorno, T.W. (ed.) (1950) The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers. Altini, C. (2014) “Leo Strauss between Politics, Philosophy and Judaism,” in History of European Ideas 40: 437–​449. Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Auerbach, E. (1953 [1946]) Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bernstein, J.A. (2015) Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History. New York: suny Press. Blau, A. (2012) “Anti-​Strauss,” in The Journal of Politics 74: 142–​155. Brague, R. (1989) “Athènes, Jérusalem, La Mecque. L’interprétation ‘musulmane’ de la philosophie grecque chez Leo Strauss,” in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 94: 309–​336. Burns, T.W. (ed.) (2015) Brill’s Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Ancient Political Thought. Leiden: Brill. Burnyeat, M. (1985) “Sphinx without a Secret,” in The New York Review of Books May 30: 30–​36. Cassirer, E. (1945) The Myth of the State. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cohen, H. (1924) Juedische Schriften. Vol. i. Berlin:  Schwetschke. (Reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1980). Culp, J.F. (2015) “ ‘On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History’ and ‘On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy’,” in Burns (ed.) (2015): 147–​168. Devigne, R. (2009) “Strauss and ‘Straussianism’: From the Ancients to the Moderns?” in Political Studies 57: 592–​616. Drury, S. (1988) The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss. New York: St Martin Press. Drury, S. (1997) Leo Strauss and the American Right. London: MacMillan. Emberley, P. and Cooper B. (eds) (1993) Faith and Political Philosophy. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press. Frazer, M.L. (2006) “Esotericism Ancient and Modern. Strauss Contra Straussianism on the Art of Political-​Philosophical Writing,” in Political Theory 34: 33–​61. - 978-90-04-44300-6 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 01:34:07AM via University of Exeter

396 Giorgini Halevy, E. (1965 [1938]) The Era of Tyrannies. Garden City: Anchor Books. Janssens, D. (2008) Between Athens and Jerusalem. Philosophy, Prophecy, and Politics in Leo Strauss’s Early Thought. New York: suny Press. Kagan, D. (1969–​1987) The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (1969); The Archidamian War (1974); The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (1981); The Fall of the Athenian Empire (1987). Ithaca-​London: Cornell University Press. Lane, M. (1999) “Plato, Popper, Strauss, and Utopianism: Open Secrets?,” in History of Philosophy Quarterly 16: 119–​142. Lukacs, G. (1980 [1952]) The Destruction of Reason. London: Merlin. McCormick, J.P. (2011) “Post-​Enlightenment Sources of Political Authority:  Biblical Atheism, Political Theology and the Schmitt-​Strauss Exchange,” in History of European Ideas 37: 175–​180. Meier, H. (2006) Leo Strauss and the Theologico-​Political Problem, trans. M. Brainard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melzer, A.M. (2006) “Esotericism and the Critique of Historicism,” in The American Political Science Review 100: 279–​295. Norton, A. (2004) Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. New Haven-​ London: Yale University Press. Ollier, F. (1933) Le Mirage Spartiate. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Orr, S. (1995) Jerusalem and Athens. Reason and Revelation in the Works of Leo Strauss. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Pangle, T.L. (2006) Leo Strauss. An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pippin, R. (1992) “The Modern World of Leo Strauss,” in Political Theory 20: 448–​472. Pippin, R. (2003) “The Unavailability of the Ordinary: Strauss on the Philosophical Fate of Modernity,” in Political Theory 31: 335–​358. Ranieri, J. (2004) “Leo Strauss on Jerusalem and Athens: A Girardian Perspective,” in Shofar 22: 85–​104. Rawson, E. (1972) The Spartan Tradition in European Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reich, W. (1980 [1933]) The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New  York:  Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Shestov, L. (2016 [1936]) Athens and Jerusalem, trans. B. Martin. Athens:  Ohio University Press. Smith, S.B. (2006) Reading Leo Strauss. Politics, Philosophy, Judaism. Chicago-​London. University of Chicago Press. Smith, S.B. (ed.) (2009a) The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, S.B. (2009b) “Philosophy as a Way of Life: The Case of Leo Strauss,” in The Review of Politics 71: 37–​53.

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Strauss, L. (1939) “The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon,” in Social Research 6: 502–​536. Strauss, L. (1946) “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy” in Social Research 13: 326–​367. Strauss, L. (1947) “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-​Political Treatise,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 17: 69–​131. Strauss, L. (1948) On Tyranny. New York: Political Science Classics. (New corrected and expanded edition Chicago-​London: University of Chicago Press, 2013.) Strauss, L. (1952a) Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe: The Free Press. Strauss, L. (1952b) “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History” in Review of Metaphysics 5: 559–​586. Strauss, L. (1952c) “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization,” in Strauss (1989a): 249–​310. Strauss, L. (1953) Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1958) Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1959) What is Political Philosophy? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1962) “Epilogue,” in Storing, H. (ed.) Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Strauss, L. (1964) The City and Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1966) Socrates and Aristophanes. Chicago-​London: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1967) “Jerusalem and Athens. Some Preliminary Reflections,” in Commentary 43.6: 43–​57. Strauss, L. (1968) Liberalism: Ancient and Modern. New York: Basic Books. Strauss, L. (1970) “A Giving of Accounts,” in The College 22: 1–​8. Strauss, L. (1983) Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, ed. T.L. Pangle. Chicago-​ London: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1986) “Exoteric Teaching”, ed. K. Hart Green in Interpretation 14.1: 51–​60. Strauss, L. (1989a) An Introduction to Political Philosophy. Ten Essays by Leo Strauss, ed. H. Gildin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Strauss, L. (1989b) The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism. An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. T.L. Pangle. Chicago-​London: University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1995 [1935]) Philosophy and Law. Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, trans. E. Adler. New York: suny Press. Strauss, L. (2008) Gesammelte Schriften, Band 3, ed. H. Meier. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Strauss, L. (2013) Gesammelte Schriften, Band 2, ed. H. Meier. 2nd edn. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Tanguay, D. (2007) Leo Strauss. An Intellectual Biography, trans. C. Nadon. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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398 Giorgini Voegelin, E. (1957) Order and History, vol. 2: The World of the Polis. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press. Wittfogel, K.A. (1957) Oriental Despotism. A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale University Press. Zuckert, C. & M. (2006) The Truth about Leo Strauss. Chicago-​London: University of Chicago Press.

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­c hapter 12

“The Political Sphere of Life, Where Speech Rules Supreme” Hannah Arendt’s Imaginative Reception of Athenian Democracy Olivia Guaraldo 1

The Loss of Tradition With the loss of tradition we have lost the thread which safely guided us through the vast realms of the past, but this thread was also the chain fettering each successive generation to a predetermined aspect of the past. It could be that only now will the past open up to us with unexpected freshness and tell us things no-​one has yet had ears to hear.1

As Barbara Cassin has pointed out, Hannah Arendt’s relationship with antiquity was “a free one”, ready to dwell with interpretative freedom into the archive of the past, in order to remove from its transmission the worn-​out trivialities, the clichés, the no-​longer lively capacity of irradiating a meaningful message.2 Since the thread of the tradition has been inexorably broken –​at first with the modern refusal of the triad traditio, religio, auctoritas, consequently with the advent of totalitarian regimes –​and the past has ceased to shed light on the future, Arendt does not think we must concede to despair. On the contrary, the unusual position of those who find themselves in the ‘gap’ between past and future, deprived of a tradition, of a testament with which to proceed forward, in the hope of overcoming the effects of the catastrophe, is one of “unexpected freshness”.3 It is with this esprit that Hannah Arendt goes back to Greek antiquity to recover, with philological freedom and interpretative creativity, a notion of the political that Western tradition has completely lost. As Miriam Leonard has recently put it, “she has repeatedly been criticized for her unhistorical, not to say anachronistic, engagement with antiquity”, yet her commitment to antiquity was aimed at “primarily making a theoretical rather than 1 Arendt (1968a), 94. 2 Cassin (1990), 31. 3 Arendt (1968a), 94.

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400 Guaraldo historical point.”4 Or, again, as Cristina Basili has clarified, Arendt’s intent in recovering antiquity is “the phenomenological intent of illuminating the forgotten layer of the life in common.”5 Europe had been the theatre of two world wars and the thanato-​political experiments of totalitarian concentration and extermination camps. This of course can be considered the main impellent reason why Arendt decides to direct her intellectual efforts, after the book on the scrupulous and radical diagnosis of the evils of totalitarianism, towards the possibility of nurturing a theoretical imagination on the political that is affirmative and generative.6 Yet her claim that the Western tradition has never had a pure notion of the political because, as she wrote to her friend and former professor Karl Jaspers, “Western philosophy has never had a clear concept of what constitutes the political [einen reinen Begriff des Politischen], and couldn’t have one, because, by necessity, it spoke of man the individual and dealt with the fact of plurality tangentially”,7 renders her recovery of antiquity more than a mere post-​ totalitarian appeal to freedom. Hannah Arendt’s relationship with the Greeks is multifaceted and extremely complex. It certainly exceeds the scope of an article –​and of a single scholarly expertise –​to be able to account for such a complexity, which in the case of Arendt has primarily to do with the “tradition of German philosophy” –​to which she once claimed to belong8 –​in its privileged connection to Greek philosophy. Yet while analyzing Arendt’s reception of Athenian democracy I will purposely leave aside the complex philosophical pattern that links Arendt to Heidegger and Heidegger to Plato, or Heidegger to the Presocratics. What is significant and worth analyzing, in this specific context, is Arendt’s attempt at recovering ancient Greece in terms of what she calls its political experience. If Plato has something to do with this recovery it sums up to a hindrance to the task. And again, if a comparison with Heidegger might be drawn, in relation to the Presocratics, it tells us –​as again Barbara Cassin rightly puts it –​that for Arendt the Presocratic moment is the paradigm of an experience “which is not original but rather ‘prephilosophic’ ” and where, to put it bluntly, at stake was not truth but freedom.9 For freedom is, claims Arendt, by definition not 4 5 6 7 8 9

Leonard (2018), 10. Basili (2020), 7 (my translation). Arendt (1979). Arendt, Jaspers (1985). Arendt, Scholem (2018). Cassin (1990), 39.

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a philosophical concept but a political one, “an exclusively political concept, indeed the quintessence of the city-​state and of citizenship. Our philosophical tradition of political thought, beginning with Parmenides and Plato, was founded explicitly in opposition to this polis and its citizenship. The way of life chosen by the philosopher was understood in opposition to the bios politikos, the political way of life”.10 The polemic point of view from which Arendt moves, in her recuperation of Athenian democracy, or, to use her exact terminology, “the Greek city-​state”, is the rise of a “philosophical tradition of political thought” that has its origins in fifth century democratic Athens. The trial and death of Socrates led both Plato and Aristotle, in response to this traumatic fact, to “make the world safe for philosophy”11 by introducing, against the plural, often conflictual realm of the polis, “theoretical foundations and practical ways for an escape from politics altogether”.12 To Arendt the conflict between politics and philosophy is at the core of our tradition of political thought. Her intention is that of contesting that tradition, especially once the thread of the tradition has been inexorably broken. The “unexpected freshness” of Arendt’s relation to the Greeks, therefore, is determined by the kairos of a historical moment where despair seemed to reign supreme, but she stubbornly believed there was a margin for hope. To use the words of Dolf Sternberger –​the German political scientist who had personally known Arendt during their study years  –​in an essay written soon after her death, Arendt’s treatment of the Greek agonal spirit, the rhetorical context of the public debate, is carried out “without any pedantry always guided and sometimes carried away by an impassioned cogitative imagination”.13 Moreover, her argument is “wholly free from resignation and romantic gloom. We never hear her lament”.14 The “impassioned cogitative imagination” she resorts to in her reception of Athenian democracy is a fortunate definition we could take up to refer to her original restorative methodology: without nostalgia she is in search of a precedent, and she manages to find in the Greek polis an illustrious one, and, more precisely, one able to ground and sustain her original notion of the political.15 10 Arendt (1968a), 157. 11 Villa (1998), 153. 12 Arendt (1958), 222. 13 Sternberger (1977), 134. 14 Ibidem, 138. 15 As Leonard again rightly claims, “while she remains committed to that ancient model, she does not advocate its restoration. She calls for a conceptual return not one to be performed in practice,” (Leonard (2018), 9).

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402 Guaraldo She does so by way of a double movement. The duplicity, or ambivalent character of her Greek recovery will hopefully become clear at the end of this article. 2

Democracy versus Isonomia

Sternberger recalls Arendt’s face “light up when Herodotus was discussed at a seminar in Chicago and his story of the Persian Otanes who turned down a kingdom was mentioned”.16 Indeed the Persian character narrated by Herodotus can be a good starting point to illustrate Arendt’s reading of the Greek political experience. As it is well-​known, Otanes is one of the three Persian characters that after the revolt against the Magi sit down to discuss which would be the best form of government to adopt for Persia. Otanes appears in the Histories as the defender of a system of government based on the rule of the many, which, according to his speech, “has the loveliest name of all”. Here is the passage: But the rule of the multitude [plethos] has in the first place the loveliest name of all, equality [isonomie], and does in the second place none of the things that a monarch does. It determines offices by lot, and holds power accountable, and conducts all deliberating publicly. Therefore I give my opinion that we make an end of monarchy and exalt the multitude, for all things are possible for the majority”.17 In comparison with isonomia, the evils of a single-​man rule, monarchy, are plainly visible. They depend on the fact that “he can do what he wants with impunity” and even the best man on earth, if given limitless power, becomes insatiable, reckless, inconsistent. It is against the unavoidable hybris of any single-​man rule, that isonomia qualifies as the best form of government, where the plethos is essentially an argin to the omnipotence of the monarch.18 16 17 18

Sternberger (1977), 138. Hdt. 3.80.6 (trans. A.D. Godley). Gregory Vlastos’ article on the notion of isonomy (Vlastos (1953)) –​which Arendt might have read, along with Victor Ehrenberg’s entry “Isonomia” in the Pauly-​Wissowa Lexicon (Ehrenberg (1940)) –​sustains the thesis of a “historical priority of isonomia as the name of democracy” and adds that isonomia had to do with both with “equality before the law” and “equal distribution in political power,” (Vlastos (1953), 357). In his reading of Otanes’ speech –​which he opposes to Plato’s conviction that the virtuous man, philosophically trained, should be entrusted with absolute power –​Vlastos affirms that rule by one, for Otanes, is bad because of its “vicious scheme of unequal power”, and it could capture in its predatory game even the best of men. The tyrant’s hybris is the result of his privileged

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Otane’s peroration of isonomy continues in different terms when, at the end of the discussion, he acknowledges that his cause shall not be pursued: Fellow partisans, it is plain that one of us must be made king (whether by lot, or entrusted with the office by the choice of the Persians, or in some other way), but I shall not compete with you; I desire neither to rule nor to be ruled; but if I waive my claim to be king, I make this condition, that neither I nor any of my descendants shall be subject to any one of you.19 Otanes’ speech not only defends a democratic system of government (offices by lot, power held accountable, public deliberation), but of that system he enhances its being alien to the very notion of rule. He, as the spokesman for isonomia, desires “neither to rule nor to be ruled [oute gar archein oute archesthai]”.20 Arendt’s reading of this passage is telling: when she refers to it she clearly overlooks the evident description of the democratic procedures exposed by Otanes and instead concentrates on the ‘existential’ aspect that would sum up the whole essence of isonomia, namely the refusal of the notion of rule. Her first reference to Otanes’ speech is contained in The Human Condition, the work in which Arendt develops her phenomenology of the vita activa, and relies extensively on the Greek model in order to give substance to her tripartite division of the active life in labor, work and action. Here she rarely mentions

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position, of his unequal share of power (ibid., 358). On the contrary, the rule of the people, isonomia, because it is based on an equal distribution of power among the people (and not because the people are, by nature “just and wise”), protects, so to say, from the hybris that even the best of monarchs cannot avoid (ibid., 359). Hdt. 3.83.2 (trans. A.D. Godley). This phrase anticipates by about a century Aristotle’s more famous claims in Book vi of Politics that freedom is the basic principle (hypothesis) of democracy, and that being ruled and ruling in turn (through holding and vacating offices) is an important part of this freedom (Arist. Pol. 1317a40–​b3). It is, in other words, the structure of the polis –​ so evidently expressed by the double negation “oute gar archein oute archesthai” (neither rule nor being ruled) by Herodotus, while by a double affirmative by Aristotle “archein kai archesthai en merei” (to rule and being ruled in turn) –​the means by which men can defy the potential hybris inherent in all and at the same time institutionalize their ‘being together’. According to Vincent Farenga, Otanes’ “special deal” underscores a dimension of freedom in citizen agency that is sometimes overlooked:  “ideally a democrat might wish to be ruled by no one, but he will settle for freedom defined as a voluntary participation in the exchange of offices (archai) over time, with its corresponding participation in the protocols of commanding (ruling) and obeying (being ruled)” (Farenga (2015), 107). On the actual functioning of the participatory practices in Greek city-​states see Rhodes (2015).

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404 Guaraldo the word democracy when speaking of the ancient polis, and instead prefers to qualify that political experience in terms of an active participation that implied an excercise of freedom that was possible only among peers: “To be free meant both not to be subject to the necessity of life or to the command of another and not to be in command oneself. It meant neither to rule nor to be ruled”.21 With clear reference to Fustel de Coulanges’s reading of the Greek polis, she claims: “the whole concept of rule and being ruled, of government and power in the sense in which we understand them, was felt to be prepolitical and to belong in the private rather than the public sphere”.22 Equality and freedom, in the Greek polis, were strictly interdependent, and isonomy was the institutional form, so to say, of this interdependence. Freedom was possible only among equals, in the space that the polis allowed and rendered possible: “Equality, therefore, far from being connected with justice, as in modern times, was the very essence of freedom: to be free meant to be free from the inequality present in rulership and to move in a sphere where neither rule nor being ruled existed”.23 Furthermore, in her 1963 book On Revolution, where she discusses the American and French revolutions, she recurs once again to Otanes in order to recast her no-​rule argument. Compared to the modern Declarations of Rights, and their notions of freedom and equality, Arendt states that in the Greek city-​state freedom and equality had a totally different meaning. Far from being abstract principles pronounced by universal declarations (as in modern revolutions) they concretized as practices of political participation, made possible by a 21 22

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Arendt (1958), 32. Fustel de Coulanges, along with Jacob Burckhardt and Werner Jaeger –​these two were very common readings in any German philosophically oriented early twentieth century Bildung on antiquity  –​, seem to be the most influential historical sources of Arendt’s approach to the Greek city state. She might have come to know of Coulanges during her long exile in Paris between 1933 and 1940, from her friend Walter Benjamin, who quotes the French historian in his Thesen über den Begriff der Geschichte. Coulanges approach to antiquity, as Pascal Payen shows in his article in this volume, “reflects a concern for maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the Ancients, in an effort however, to stress the differences dividing us from them” (quoted from Payen’s chapter). In an approach that can be reminiscent of Coulanges, Arendt revives the Greek polis (not necessarily Athenian democracy) to highlight the otherness of the ancient political experience with regards to the modern one. Yet this otherness or alterity, as I hope to make clear at the end of this article, can at some specific historical times, suddenly turn into a surprising familiarity. It can be noted here, parenthetically, that the sudden outbreak of the past into the present, as the epiphany of an unexpected experience, is reminiscent of Benjamin’s notion of Jeztzeit, developed in his Thesen: cf. Benjamin (1988). See on this Leonard (2018), 60, Lindroos (1998), 101. Arendt (1958), 33.

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“form of a political organization in which the citizens lived together under conditions of no-​rule, without a division of rulers and ruled. This notion of no-​ rule was expressed by the word isonomy”.24 The “outstanding characteristic” of the word is the absence of the notion of rule, both as arche and kratos, and, claims Arendt, democracy was a sort of derogatory term for isonomy, “originally coined by those who were opposed to isonomy and who meant to say: What you say is ‘no rule’ is in fact only another kind of rulership; it is the worst form of government, rule by the demos”.25 Arendt insists that it is isonomy the real political invention of the Greek polis, not democracy. As strong as this claim can appear, we have to keep in mind that she is trying to save from oblivion a political experience of active participation that the word ‘democracy’ only ambiguously, if not marginally, contains.26 As it has been pointed out, “the polis is for Arendt a space of isonomia, of no-​rule, rather than a space for democracy, that is majority rule”.27 In isonomy what counts is “being free among equals”, enabled only by the isotes the polis rendered possible:  “Isonomy guaranteed isotes, equality, but not because all men were born or created equal, but, on the contrary, because men were by nature (physei) not equal, and needed an artificial institution, the polis, which by virtue of its nomos would make them equal. […]The equality of the polis, its isonomy, was an attribute of the polis and not of men, who received their equality by virtue of citizenship, not by virtue of birth”.28 Isonomy serves the 24 Arendt (1963) 30. 25 Ibidem. 26 It is interesting to note that also in her subsequent book, On Revolution, when speaking of the modern revolutionary events in America and France, Arendt highlights (here in relation to Roman antiquity) the predominance of the term ‘republic’ over that of ‘democracy’: “If we wish to draw a line in purely linguistic terms, we might insist on the relatively late date of the word ‘democracy’, which stresses the people’s role, as opposed to the word ‘republic’ with its strong emphasis on objective institutions. And the word ‘democracy’ was not used in France until 1794; even the execution of the king was still accompanied by the shouts: Vive la république” (Arendt (1963) 111–​112). 27 Kreider (1973), 6–​7. On the incompatibility of Arendt’s reading of the Greek experience and modern democratic principles see Wolin (1983). 28 Arendt (1963) 30–​31. Arendt’s argument resonates with Victor Ehrenberg’s discussion of isonomy, when he compares the different meanings of democracy and isonomy:  “The very nature of each of the two expressions suggests that they did not mean the same. They were almost contemporary; but democracy was a form of government, a constitution, while isonomia (like eunomia) was not a constitution, nor a state of equal law for everybody; it was the ideal of a community in which the citizens had their equal share” (Ehrenberg (1950), 535). It is this idea of “equal share” that reinforces the notion of political power as participation and active involvement, leaving aside the archein or kratein aspect of power.

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406 Guaraldo scope of enhancing the radical alterity of the Greek political experience in relation (in opposition) to our consolidated notion of democracy as majority rule (and its corollaries of freedom and equality as invididual dimensions of ‘rights’). By means of the notion of ‘no-​rule’ Arendt emphasizes this alterity, thereby exhibiting her tendency to force certain notions to the extreme. In this case Arendt recuperates the Greek concept of isonomy with a certain degree of exaggeration.29 3

The Polis as Experience of Interdependence

Hauke Brunkhorst, in a comparative essay devoted to the different approaches Arendt and Foucault have as regards the ‘recovery’ of the Greeks, underlines that for the French thinker what counts in his reading is the individual ethical freedom of the subject, while for Arendt it is the political freedom of the citizen within the self-​organized and domination-​free public dimension of the polis.30 Moreover, according to Brunkhorst, what Arendt emphasizes of the Athenian political experience is not so much its being universal but rather its being both spatially and temporally limited, through the walls of the city and the time of its assemblies. Outside that space-​time men, even the free men of Athens are bounded to the unfree dimension of biological necessity, the dimension of life-​ itself. It is because Arendt wants to emphasize this aspect, namely the absence of domination among free and equal citizens in the limited space of the polis, that she does never (or rarely) refer to democracy when speaking of the polis, but prefers the term isonomy. Interestingly enough, Brunkhorst translates isonomia as it appears in Herodotus with “Ordnung der Gleichen”, “the order of equals”.31 This translation –​which differs from the standard terms “equality” or “rule of law” that have often been used to render the Greek isonomia –​can be of help in unfolding, so to say, the Arendtian argument with respect to Greek (Athenian) democracy.

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See, on the notion of “exaggerated thinking” in Arendt’s theoretical strategy of criticizing the tradition in order to make space and plausibility for a different notion of the political, Bernstein (2013), 97–​98. 30 By referring to the public freedom of the citizen, Brunkhorst claims that it is unknown to Foucault. His Greek ideal of freedom is individual and sovereign: “Solche Freiheit kennt Foucault nicht. Sein Ideal griechischer Freiheit ist die Freiheit des Individuums, die in der Herrschaft über sich selbst und andere besteht. Sie ist subjektiv und herrschaftlich” (Brunkhorst (1999), 234). 31 Ibid., 234.

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Consider, for the purpose of this argument, Arendt’s etymological analysis, in The Human Condition, of the verb ‘to act’: to define action ancient Greek had two verbs, archein and prattein, while Latin had agere and gerere. Arendt emphasizes the fact that these verbs define two different moments of action: the “setting into motion” or act of beginning (archein, agere) “made by a single person” and the “achieving” or “bearing” moment (prattein, gerere), in which “many join” and eventually finish the enterprise. These two moments became eventually blurred, or, better said, only the second moment of action (prattein, gerere) “became the accepted word for action in general” and the first moment, the beginning (archein, agere), came to be indentified only with the act of leading and ruling, rather than ‘to set into motion’. As a consequence, claims Arendt, the idea and act of beginning (individually spontaneous but, as such, rather frail and volatile and therefore strictly dependent upon others who would ‘intervene’ and become part of the ‘motion’) was lost, and with it “the original interdependence of action, the dependence of the beginner and leader upon others for help and the dependence of his followers upon him for an occasion to act themselves”.32 This split within action itself had severe consequences, according to Arendt. The major one was the separation of rulers and ruled, the division of human beings among an isolated individual who helds the ruling function (archein) and the rest, destined only to the executing one (prattein). It is not by chance that the section in which she discusses the unfortunate ‘split’ within action, is followed by a section titled “the Greek solution” where she thematizes, finally, ancient politics as it concretized in the Greek polis or “city-​state”. She only occasionally mentions Athens in her reference to “the Greeks” (actually the name of the city occurs, in the whole book, five times in the text and three times in the footnotes), yet the reference she makes to Thucydides’ recount of Pericles funeral oration functions, in the argument she is making, as crucial. The polis is first of all an institution that has grown out of the idea that it is “worthwile for men to live together”33 and this worth consisted, as Aristotle put it, in “sharing words and deeds”.34 Since Homer, she claims, actions and words were considered, paradoxically, the most fragile and volatile of human activites, yet the ones which qualified the mortals against the immortal gods and the 32

Arendt (1958), 189 (emphases mine). Patchen Markell rightly defines the “interrelatedness of these two action-​terms, archein and prattein” as crucial to the understanding of the “mutual vulnerability that Arendt says characterizes action” (Markell (2006), 4). 33 Arendt (1958), 196. 34 Arist. Eth. Nic. 1126b12 (trans. J. Barnes).

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408 Guaraldo eternal cycle of nature. “On the one hand everything was measured against the background of things that are forever, while, on the other, true human greatness was understood, at least by pre-​Platonic Greeks, to reside in deeds and words, and was rather represented by Achilles, ‘the doer of great deeds and the speaker of great words’ ”.35 Futile and yet essential to the glorification of humans, actions and words need a space in which to appear, and in order to manifest themselves they need testimony, they need an audience. Each human being wishes to appear, to show his value, in the never-​weakened agonal spirit the Greeks inherit directly from Homer. Words and deeds could attain immortality –​thereby defeating their futility  –​only isofar as they could be remembered. The polis offered a space for actions and words to appear, to be seen and heard, to be remembered, to be reassured that life was not lived in vain. Human life together, in the institutional form of the polis, “seemed to assure that the most futile of human activities, action and speech, and the least tangible and most ephemeral of man-​made ‘products’, the deeds and stories which are their outcome, would become imperishable”.36 Following Pericles’ praise of the greatness of Athens,37 Arendt emphasizes the autonomous capability of the polis in offering occasions for kleos, independently of any poet who eventually could sing the deeds: “Not historically, of course, but speaking metaphorically and theoretically, it is as though the men who returned from the Trojan War had wished to make permanent the space of action which had arisen from their deeds and sufferings, to prevent its perishing with their dispersal and return to isolated homesteads”.38 The polis, therefore, qualifies in Arendt’s reading as a space of interdependence in a twofold sense: on one hand, within the polis, archein and prattein retain their unity within the notion of isonomia or no-​rule, or freedom among peers; on the other hand the polis as an institution of “organized remembrance” enables each individual deed to escape its futility by way of the memory of the community. Without the polis –​just as without the epic song of Homer –​each act would have dissolved into oblivion. 35 36 37

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Arendt (1968a), 46. Arendt (1958), 197–​198. “Through great proofs, and by exhibiting power in no way witnessed we will be admired by this and future generations, thus requiring no Homer to sing our praises nor any other whose verses will charm for the moment and whose claims the factual truth will destroy, since we have compelled every sea and land to become open to our daring and populated every region with lasting monuments of our acts of harm and good” (Thuc. 2.41, trans. S. Lattimore). Arendt (1958), 198.

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A synchronic interdependence therefore qualifies the space of the polis as a site of equal share in participatory power, isonomy; a diachronic interdependence, one that builds the identity of the community on its ability to remember the deeds of its citizens, qualifies the polis as “organized remembrance”. In both senses, politics has to do with a relational dimension that is at the core of Arendt’s thinking. Politics, just like in Otanes’ ‘existential’ plea, can be an experience of no-​rule, where human beings relate to eachother in a space of mutual dependence that, paradoxically, becomes a space of freedom among equals.39 A space in which there is no “desire of ruling or being ruled”. Politics, just like in Pericle’s funeral oration, is a space in which human deeds, because of their greatness, will be remembered. The polis is the limited space that allows this specific type of freedom and greatness to appear. As Arendt notes, in her Denktagebuch, it was agon and aristeuein the modalities through which citizens dealt with eachother in the public space. To compete in order to excel favoured the virtuous combination of the individual, particular dimension and the communal one.40 Differently put, power, freedom and equality become, within this space, the terms of a relational experience that, in Arendt’s reading, configure the human condition as quintessentially political. It is worth noting that her phenomenological presentation of the vita activa, in The Human Condition, describes, albeit with different words, a political space of interaction and interdependence that is in many ways similar to her idea of the Greek polis. The political space of the polis, in other words, is the model she chooses to give concreteness to what she otherwise calls “the space of appearance”, in which human beings appear and relate to each other in a mundane, public context where the vita activa (as opposed to the solitary dimension of the vita contemplativa) unfolds. It is in this space of public appearance that we can at once reveal our uniqueness (‘each human being is different from every other’) and our plurality (‘we are many’). Arendt reformulates this relational appearing scene in theoretical terms when she claims: “[i]‌n man, otherness, which he shares with everything that is, and distinctness, which he shares with everything alive, becomes uniqueness, and human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings. Speech and action reveal this unique distinctness”.41 Human beings through action and speech reveal their most inherent feature, that is uniqueness, the fact that they are “uniquely new” because they 39 40 41

Arendt (1963) 30–​31. Arendt (2003), xvii, 6. Arendt (1958), 176 (my emphasis).

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410 Guaraldo were born.42 Natality is a central category for Arendt’s political thought, and is linked to the element of novelty that each human being brings to the world by way of being a beginner. Through action human beings actualize their potentiality as beginners, never in a solitary dimension but always in a communal one. Just like the double movement of archein and prattein, Arendt’s conceptualization of human action –​that is, her ‘distillation’ of the political –​has to do with simultaneously individual and communal activities that can take place only in a context that is public, shared, plural. Moreover, action as beginning something new combines with speech, which unequivocally qualifies the speaker, thereby showing his/​her uniqueness. To sum up, whereas action is for Arendt the ability to begin something new and is rooted in the human condition of natality, “speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique being among equals”.43 Plurality is the feature of the human condition if considered from a perspective of togetherness: what do we make of each uniqueness if we consider it from a larger (common) perspective? Arendt gives to this question a political answer, namely she claims that politics is the space of appearance in which uniqueness becomes plurality, insofar as each uniqueness can appear in front of others on an equality basis. The relational, discursive dimension of the vita activa is therefore alien to the very notion of self-​sufficiency and mastership (and its political corollary of rule): archein and prattein conceived together, as simultaneously individual and communal activities, discard the notion that traditionally equates freedom with sovereignty: “[N]‌o man can be sovereign because not one man, but men, inhabit the earth”.44 The reality of plurality eliminates, so to say, the very possibility of sovereignty. The single actor cannot be sovereign because many different actors, with different wills and intentions, populate the public sphere. In order to be politically sovereign, therefore, one must not only dominate and control his/​her own actions but also dominate arbitrarily over all others. Sovereignty, in other words, entails the inevitable dimension of rule and domination (Herrschaft), and is one with the vision of politics and power that Arendt seeks to dismantle. The tyrant, she often recalls by recurring once again to Herodotus, is sovereign but lonely, and therefore not free. The Greek scene, according to the Arendtian interpretive exercise in “cogitative imagination”, by contrasting a tradition of political thought that discards the very notion of plurality, aims at showing how the polis gave institutional 42 Ibid., 178. 43 Ibid., 178. 44 Ibid., 234.

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shape to this ‘ontological dependence’, through the notion of isonomy. Another way of putting it would be the following:  her recuperation of ancient isonomy is an ambitious attempt at thinking ‘the common’ –​to koinon/​to demosion –​in its opposition to the private –​to idion/​to oikeion, in times of an undisputable victory of the latter over the former. This recuperation entails both an argument in favour of an autonomy of the political as well as an existential argument in favour of its importance and dignity: The reason for this insistence on the interconnection of freedom and equality in Greek political thought was that freedom was understood as being manifest in certain, by no means all, human activities, and that these activities could appear and be real only when others saw them, judged them, remembered them. The life of a free man needed the presence of others. Freedom itself needed therefore a place where people could come together –​the agora, the market-​place or the polis, the political space proper.45 4

A Difficult Recuperation?

We could summarize the complex intertwining of ontology and history that Arendt carries out when discussing the vita activa, as follows: a mutual dependence of uniqueness and plurality means that each of us depends on others to appear and therefore to exist. Politics rather than being a strategy of containment of a domination drive in order for humans to live together (power as rule, arche or kratos), is the theatre where each human being can appear and gain confirmation of his/​her existence. The polis, the space and time in which our political vocabulary was formed, represents a possible alternative narrative of what politics could be: a space devoid of violence, where “speech rules supreme”,46 where freedom qualifies as mutual dependence, or as “institutionalized intersubjectivity”,47 and equality has to do with an equal share in power. An “order of equals” (isonomia) stabilized itself in the Greek polis, and the task Arendt, as a political theorist, sets for herself, is to test and imaginatively revisit the validity of that model in order to regain, after totalitarianism, a radically different notion of the political. The radical alterity of isonomy Arendt wants to emphasize has the scope of distancing politics, the virtuous politics of the 45 Arendt (1963), 31. 46 Ibid., 31. 47 Musti (1995), vii.

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412 Guaraldo “order of equals”, from its totalitarian perversion. Democracy, given the precedent of the ‘democratic’ rise of totalitarianism, is too compromised a word. The difficulty inherent in the recuperation of the isonomic experience, nevertheless, depends on a tradition of obliteration of the political as such, according to Arendt. In order to cast her argument in favor of isonomy, Arendt investigates “the roots of a persistent, long-​lived, interpretation of political action as another type of making or fabrication”,48 that originated, according to her, in the philosophic tradition which began within the Greek polis, but fundamentally against it:  Plato (and to a certain extent Aristotle) transformed the political experience of the Greek polis –​the “sharing of words and deeds” –​into the theoretical investigation around the “fashioning of a just polis”.49 This ‘craftsman’ attitude towards the realm of politics determined what Arendt called the “substitution of acting with making”, the alteration of the realm of praxis with the criteria derived from the field of fabrication, poiesis. This substitution characterized the whole tradition of political thought, where action came to identify a sort of fabrication. In order to succeed, ‘making’ –​as opposed to ‘acting’ –​required an expertise that could not belong to all, but only to an intellectual elite, such as Plato’s philosopher-​kings. Contrary to this craftsman attitude, the isonomic experience, by way of its providing an equal share of power within the limited space of the polis, by way of involving its citizens in the no-​rule experience of political participation, determined a “politics for its own sake” mentality. As Dana Villa points out, the Greeks “did not view political action and participation –​the bios politikos –​as subsidiary to, or derivative of, some allegedly higher activity”, they “practiced democratic politics, in a sense, for its own sake”, embracing the contingency and “seeming haphazardness that flowed from the participation of a large number of civic equals who held diverse opinions.”50 What counted, for them, was not the sovereign power, expression of a unanimous will, able to shape and control reality. Reality can be faced only politically, with courage, ability, foresight –​that is, it can be faced only with others, or against them, in a plural (non-​sovereign) dimension of debate, thereby enjoying one’s existence in it, beyond individual, private and solitary doubts. Politics, in its best name, as it appeared on the Athenian democratic (or isonomic) scene, is the ability to “embrace rather than reject human plurality, civic equality, diversity of opinion and the central activities of public debate and deliberation”.51 Connected to these practices 48 Villa (2018), 67. 49 Ibid., 67. 50 Ibid., 63. 51 Ibid., 63.

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was the conviction that one’s presence was not superfluous, that each citizen, equal and free, could really matter. These aspects were crucial to Athenians’ convinced adherence to political participation.52 Aristotle, of course, was critical of the Platonic political project of “making” a political community according to high moral intellectual standards. He was aware of the fact that politics had its own criteria, that needed to be understood and respected. Nevertheless his fault, according to Arendt, was that of not considering the realm of praxis and phronesis (the polis) as the primary space of human self-​realization and therefore ‘forgetting’ the original political experience of the Greeks. When in Politics Aristotle lists the forms of government and claims that interest rules over the political sphere, it is as if he had already forgotten what the subsequent tradition would leave in total oblivion, that is, the connection among speech and freedom: “From then on, that is, almost immediately after Aristotle, the problem of power became the decisive political problem, so that this whole realm of human life could be defined, not as the realm of living together, but as the realm of power struggles in which nothing is so much at stake as the question of who rules over whom”.53 The polis, in other words, ceased to be an end in itself but, as Aristotle claims in the Nicomachean Ethics, the means by which the good life could be possible. As a philosopher, Arendt laments, Aristotle put at the highest level of the scale of human values the activity of thinking itself: the good life, therefore, involved civic participation but was eventually destined to elaborate the form of ‘rule’ which best allowed the exercise of contemplation. Politics and the polis become in the end the instruments through which the happy life of the philosopher is possible. Strong and forced as this interpretation of Aristotle may seem, it has the merit of highlighting how the autonomy of the political sphere has been, even by Aristotle himself, subsumed, or rendered instrumental to a higher activity. If, in other words, the highest form of life that Greek philosophers celebrate, is the life of the philosopher himself, the life of theoria, this means that all other activites become secundary, accessorial, marginal if not 52

53

See, on this, Piovan (2019), 94–​96. Carried by a certain degree of enthusiasm for the essentially public space of the polis (agora, theatre, assemblies), Arendt could have agreed with what Camille Desmoulins, in his final plea for Athenian democracy, said in Le Vieux Cordelier:  “the convinced democrats by instinct and as a matter of principle, were the Athenians. Derisive and canny, not only the Athenian people felt free to talk and write, but we can see from what remains of their theatre that there was no greater entertainment than to see their generals, ministers, philosophers, their committees performing on stage; and even better for the people to see themselves playing” (quoted from Payen’s chapter in this volume). Arendt (2002), 303.

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414 Guaraldo instrumental to theoria itself. The primacy of contemplation, in other words, entails a ranking of human activities, where the primacy of a sovereign subject that can master reality through a theorizing attitude belongs only to a specialized elite, duly educated and prepared not only to contemplate, but also to govern: “This change can best be observed in the definitions of the forms of government, which no longer were understood as various ways of living together but as various forms of rulership among citizens”.54 The ranking of human activities and its subsequent political effect is that of applying to archein and prattein the criteria of poiesis, namely fabrication. The sphere of praxis is to be governed by exact criteria that only the theorically trained mind can produce. By contrasting the primacy of this frame Arendt wants instead to evidentiate the non-​specialized character of the Greek polites, and at the same time the non-​occasional engagement that the polites himself had within the polis. It was not a matter of being reluctantly coopted by the polis and having to perform one’s duty. It was a matter of being part and parcel of a community that was self-​ruled. Each member of the community had to participate in the democratic organization: none was governed, since all governed. Isonomia excluded, as we have seen, the very concept of rule, but it also exluded the notion of specialization or professionalization of the political activity.55 54 55

Ibid., 303–​304. On the political identity of the polites, Arendt’s reading finds an interesting correspondence in the work of Christian Meier, whose historical insights on the identity of the Greek notion of citizen and citizenship insist on an autonomous dimension of the political, both in its genesis and in its persistence: see Meier (1990). Meier also insists on the interdependence and mutuality that characterized the democratic experience of the Greek polis, as well as the “politics for its own sake” that was a matter of course for the free citizens. In another essay Meier makes a quick reference to the fact that the autonomy of the political in ancient Greek democracy had something to do with the ability of the institution to channel, so to say, “potential impulses” that it was possible to discover, indicate and strengthen within the plastic structure of human instincts. Political engagement became a strong need [Bedürfnis], perhaps the most important one. This need had to do with the demand for an appropriate status, one that could compete with aristocratic prestige. Democratic politics gave to the people the possibility to reach this status, or, in Arendtian terms, to find an audience for their uniqueness (see Meier, Veyne (1998), 66 and about Meier’s perspective Nippel’s chapter in this volume). One could connect this aspect to Ober’s reading of Cleisthenes’s reform as discussed by Carlo Marcaccini in this volume. According to Ober, in fact, “the people, at this period, already had a democratic conscience to which Cleisthenes merely brought his support. It is not the reformer who educates the people, as Grote thought, but the people who educate the reformer” (quoted from Marcaccini’s chapter in this volume). As Meier would put it (and Arendt would agree), Cleisthenes rightly saw that there was a widespread desire for political participation and managed successfully to interpret such desire; see Meier, Veyne (1998), 18.

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Against this background of a contemplative tradition that discards the polis or, at its best, wants to produce criteria for ruling it, Arendt revives Athens in its pre-​philosophical fashion, drawing from poets and historiographers to elaborate an alternative model, which she maintains as equally Greek.56 Yet within this other Greece, she resorts to isonomy rather than democracy. 5

The Re-​emergence of Isonomy

Paradoxical as it may be, the very concrete space from which Western civilization derives its term ‘politics’, has been forgotten precisely in its political meaning. Arendt’s enterprise is –​as said before –​devoid of nostalgia, and rather the Greek political experience works in her oeuvre as a counter-​factual model that can render explicit how much we have distanced ourselves from it, and at what price. So the Greek polis, in its flourishing, in its pre-​philosophical dimension of isonomy, is for Arendt a possible counter-​model against which to measure the modern inability to frame the political, to understand its autonomy and therefore to practice it. A pure sense of the political –​in the letter to Jaspers she uses the German adjective “rein”, ‘pure’ –​appeared for the first time in ancient Greece, and its crucial importance for the world lies in the fact that there, in the Greek polis, the fragile political dimension made of words and deeds, found a way of enduring, a mode of relative permanence, an institutional space in which to unfold, flourish, and eventually disappear. Because of this appearance, testified both by Otanes’ speech reported by Herodotus and Pericle’s funeral oration reported by Thucydides, there might still be a hope of overcoming the craftsman attitude in politics, and at least compensate for the traditional inability to understand its plurality. The productively ambivalent character or Arendt’s reappropriation of Greek isonomy lies precisely in this:  on one hand she highlights, by way of her pre-​philosophical recuperation of the political experience of the polis, an

56

This approach is strikingly different from  –​if not opposed to  –​that of Leo Strauss, a German Jewish philosopher who, like Arendt, fled to the United States and there remained for the rest of his life. As Giovanni Giorgini claims, in his illuminating essay on Strauss in this volume, Strauss “is less interested in Athens as an historical entity –​the city that created democracy, the imperial power of fifth century bce –​than in it as the cradle of philosophy: this is the real, perennial glory of Athens, once the sound and fury of the empire have faded” (quoted from Giorgini’s chapter). On the different perspectives on Athens in Arendt and Strauss see Villa (1998).

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416 Guaraldo almost absolute alterity of that experience if compared to our modern one. On the other hand, since “[t]‌he Greek polis will continue to exist at the bottom of our political existence—​that is, at the bottom of the sea—​for as long as we use the word ‘politics’ ”,57 she provocatively makes a claim of familiarity for that experience. When discussing modern revolutions, Arendt notes that their inaugural moments had been “the time-​space where action, with all its implications was discovered, or, rather, rediscovered for the modern age” after being “overshadowed by contemplation” and the realm of public affairs had been for centuries invisible to the majority of the people 58. It is as if, after centuries of predominance of contemplation over action on one side, and of de-​ politicization for the majority on the other, politics, in its isonomic aspect reappeared in modern revolutions, and with it re-​appeared a different notion of power. According to Paul Ricoeur, Arendt’s notion of power as “acting in concert” –​ namely the fact that a plurality of beings consent to act together in order to begin something new –​has been in our tradition overshadowed by power as “domination”. Power in its pure dimension of action, has been forgotten. Yet at times, claims Ricoeur, “pure power”, understood as the coming (constituting) together of a human plurality, comes to the fore, manifests itself: [w]‌e must not fail to insist that the true traces of pure power are to be best identified in modern revolutions:  the Soviets, the Hungarian Revolution, the Czech resistance, certain aspects of the student revolt, civil disobedience; in short, in those privileged moments which constitute interruptions of the relation of domination and, in this sense, the emergence of isonomy, of power of equals. So, if that which is close is forgotten, there are some stirring circumstances where that which is forgotten becomes close.59 Forgotten to a certain pervasive extent, the political as space of no-​rule, where power appears as an experience of freedom and equality –​alien to cohercion, domination and rule –​sometimes reappears. The extraordinary of this reappearance is that people recognize it as a familiar human experience, in spite of its conceptual non-​existence.

57 58 59

Arendt (1968a), 204. Arendt (2018 [1962]), 218. Ricoeur (2010), 27 (emphases mine).

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The Western philosophical tradition has never had a “clear concept” of the political, it has never been able to conceive of the political as the space where human beings reveal their uniqueness in plurality, it hardly endured the apparently cahotic and futile dimension of a public assembly, it always displayed an impositive attitude of order and rule, it substituted praxis with poiesis. Yet the political reappears, in spite of its conceptual inexistence, in experiences of “acting in concert”, where human freedom re-​surfaces in the public, and the world of human affairs becomes public and common again. People make petitions, take to the streets, organize a council, participate in an assembly, make claims to their “share in public business”60 as Thomas Jefferson liked to say. The political as experience of isonomy, no-​rule, might be “forgotten by theory yet very familiar to political praxis”.61 What Arendt saw “flaring up” in the spontaneous arrangements that people took in the beginning of Revolutions (township assemblies in the American Revolution, societées populaires in the French revolution, Councils, Soviets and Räte in nineteenth and twentieth century inchoative revolutionary moments) was “a possibility of the politics of the polis”.62 Or, to put it differently, we can gain access to the experience of freedom, action, power in a sense that is radically different, alien to the one our tradition has handed down, because the “polis is less a physical entity or specific historical configuration than an ever-​ present possibility, even under the inhospitable conditions of modernity”.63 Arendt’s method of “cogitative imagination” in the recovery of the Greek experience is similar to that of Homer and Thucydides, the “telling a story about such experiences to sustain us in the absence of their presence”.64 It is as if the ‘existential’ dimension of isonomy could mysteriously reappear –​with “an utmost weird precision”65 –​on the scene of history and make its claim, launch its call: humans recognize it and respond. 60 61 62

Arendt quotes this expression by Thomas Jefferson in Arendt (1963), 119. Guaraldo (2018), 413. Sternberger (1977), 143. On this aspect, namely the reappearance of that original, inaugural experience of the political, see, in this volume, Marcaccini’s discussion of Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks where the German thinker quotes extensively Lewis Henri Morgan’s Ancient Society. Marx seemed to have appreciated Morgan’s comparison of Cleisthenes’s demes to the municipal free government of the American Colonies (see Marcaccini infra). Arendt would have agreed with this comparison, since it was the locally enacted freedom among peers that she welcomed in the Greek political experience (not exclusively democratic, but aristocratic in origin) and that she considered possibly repeatable, in spite of historical and cultural differences. 63 Euben (2006), 162. 64 Ibid., 162. 65 Arendt (1963), 249.

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418 Guaraldo To conclude, Arendt’s reception of Athenian democracy comes as an eccentric, even exaggerated imaginative exercise that, within her oeuvre, is primarily focused at contesting a tradition that thinks of the political in terms of a leading activity where some rule and others obey, power is understood primarily as domination of some over others, action (praxis) is framed as fabrication (poiesis). Politics, in this tradition, is never an end in itself, never practiced for its own sake, but always instrumental to something else. The polis, in its pre-​ philosophic dimension of isonomia, offers an alternative way of looking at the political: a limited space-​time where “speech rules supreme”, where there is no distinction between rulers and ruled, where each citizen has an equal share in power, where what is at stake is a desire to appear and be seen, with others, by others, in a dimension of mutual generative dependence. Arendt forces the interpretation of Athenian democracy in the direction of an alternative model that has been forgotten, because of a philosophic tradition that saw in it the dangers of plurality, the vanity of speech, the fragility of human deeds and sought, in contrast to the polis, to produce firm criteria of political order. The forgetfulness of that experience, though, does not impede us to recognize its vitality when it happens. This is the core of Arendt’s argument in favor of isonomia. At the end of her book On Revolution, in what could be considered no less and no more than a plea to the polis as making sense of life, Arendt quotes Theseus, “the legendary founder of Athens and hence her spokesman”. Against the nihilistic complaint of Oedipus in Sophocles’ play of old age Oedipus at Colonus, “not to be born prevails over all meaning uttered in words”, Theseus claims that it was the polis that enabled ordinary men, young and old, to bear life’s burden. Only the polis, “the space of men’s free deeds and living words […] could endow life with splendour –​ton bion lampron poiesthai”.66

Bibliography

Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Arendt, H. (1963) On Revolution. New York: Viking Press. Revised edition 1965. Arendt, H. (1968a) Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace and World. Arendt, H. (1968b) Between Past and Future. Six Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Viking Press.

66 Ibid., 280.

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Arendt, H. (1979) The Origins of Totalitarianism. New  York:  Harcourt Brace and Co. Harvest. Arendt, H. (2002) “Karl Marx and the Tradition of Political Thought,” Social Research 69, No. 2: 273–​319. Arendt, H. (2003) Denktagebuch, 1950–​1973. Munich: Piper. Arendt, H. (2018 [1962]) “Action and the Pursuit of Happiness,” in Arendt, H. (2018) Thinking Without a Banister. Essays in Understanding, 1954–​1975, ed. J Kohn. New York: Shocken, 201–​219. Arendt, H., Jaspers, K. (1985) Hannah Arendt-​Karl Jaspers Briefwechsel 1926–​1969. München: Piper 1985. (English edition 1992, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). Arendt, H., Scholem, G. (2018) The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Basili, C. (2020) “El poder de la polis. Notas sobre la crítica arendtiana de la filosofía política platónica,” Res Publica. Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas 23, No.1 [forthcoming]. Benjamin, W. (1988) “Über den Begriff der Geschichte”, in Idem, Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften 1, Frankfurt a/​M: Suhrkamp. Bernstein, R. (2013) Violence. Thinking without banisters. Cambridge: Polity. Brunkhorst, H. (1999) “Ästhetik der Existenz, Foucault, Hannah Arendt, die Griechen und Wir,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 53, No. 208 (2): 223–​240. Camerotto, A. and Pontani, F. (eds) (2019) Utopia (Europa). Ovvero del diventare cittadini europei. Milan: Mimesis. Cassin, B. (1990) “Greeks and Romans: Paradigms of the Past in Arendt and Heidegger,” Comparative Civilizations Review 22, No. 22: 28–​53. Ehrenberg, V. (1950) “Origins of Democracy,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 1, No. 4: 515–​548. Ehrenberg, V. (1940) “Isonomia,” in Paulys Realenzyklopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Supplement 7. Muenchen-​Stuttgart: Druckenmuller, 293–​301. Euben, P. (2006) “Arendt’s Hellenism,” in Villa (2006), 151–​164. Farenga, V. (2015) “Liberty, Equality, and Authority: A Political Discourse in Greek Participatory Communities,” in Hammer (2015), 101–​112. Guaraldo, O. (2018) “Public Happiness: Revisiting an Arendtian Hypothesis,” Philosophy Today, 62, No. 2: 397–​418. Hammer, D. (ed.) (2015) A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic. Chichester: Wiley and Blackwell. Kreider, D. (1973) Isonomia: The Greek idea of freedom. Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 5244 https://​scholarworks.umt.edu/​etd/​5244 (last retrieved on August 12th 2019). Leonard, M. (2018) “Arendt’s Revolutionary Antiquity,” Classical Philology 113: 53–​66.

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420 Guaraldo Lindroos, K. (1998) Now-Time/Image-Space. Temporalization of Politics in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of History and Art. Jyvaskyla: SoPhi. Markell, P. (2006) “The Rule of the People: Arendt, Archê, and Democracy,” American Political Science Review 100, no.1: 1–​14. Meier, C. (1990) The Greek Discovery of Politics, trans. David McLintock. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P. Meier, C., Veyne, P. (1998) Kannten die Griechen die Demokratie?. Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach. Musti, D. (1995) Demokratia, origine di un’idea. Laterza: Roma-​Bari. Piovan, D. (2019) “Atene o l’utopia della democrazia”, in Camerotto, Pontani (2019), 87–​100. Rhodes, J.P. (2015) “The Congruence of Power: Ruling and Being Ruled in Greek Participatory Communities,” in Hammer (2015), 129–​145. Ricoeur, P. (2010) “Power and Violence,” Theory, Culture & Society 27, No. 5: 18–​36. Sternberger, D. (1977) “The Sunken City: Hannah Arendt’s idea of Politics,” Social Research, 44, No. 1: 132–​146. Villa, D. (2018) “Totalitarianism, Tradition and The Human Condition,” Arendt studies, 2: 61–​71. Villa, D. (1998) “The philosopher versus the citizen. Arendt, Strauss and Socrates,” Political Theory 26, No. 2: 147–​172. Villa, D. (ed.) (2006) The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vlastos, G. (1953) “Isonomia,” The American Journal of Philology 74, No. 4: 337–​366. Wolin, S. (1983) “Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political,” Salmagundi 60: 3–​19.

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­c hapter 13

Philosophy as a Political Praxis Foucault’s Use of the Classics Giovanni Leghissa 1

Foucault, the Classical Heritage, and the Enlightenment

It is a matter of fact that there is an imbrication between the way in which Foucault, during the last phase of his life, explores the classical tradition from Socrates to the Church Fathers and the way in which he articulates the possibility both to transform the current and established definition of what subjectivity is and to disclose new forms of subjective self-​fashioning –​whereas this transformation is explicitly meant to possess a political significance. In order to explain the meaning of this imbrication it is important, first of all, to account for the pivotal role that the concept of subjectivity plays in the broader context of Foucault’s philosophy. Foucault’s approach to the emergence of modern subjectivity envisages not a simple historical reconstruction, but rather the disclosure of discursive domains that should enable the conception of new forms of subjectivity. The possibility of this self-​fashioning rests on the fact that there is no given subjectivity as such, but various processes of subjectivation. These involve both the materiality of institutional interventions and the “immaterial materiality”1 of those regimes of truth the performativity of which frames the narrative each subject has to cope with –​and, if necessary, to resist to –​in order to build its own space of freedom and become an autonomous individual. To problematize the processes of subjectivation means, thus, to give place to a not yet established and shared experience of the self, or –​which is not so much different in Foucauldian terms –​to conceive of how individuals can transform their position within the power relations they are involved in. 1 Within the inaugural address at the beginning of his activity at the Collège de France, in 1971, Foucault expresses the wish to give birth to a “materialism of the immaterial” that should help us to define the peculiar materiality possessed by discursive formations (Foucault 1972a). Through this oxymoric expression he refers to the performative power of those regimes of truth that shape the position of the speaking subject.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_015

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422 Leghissa “Ontology of actuality” –​or “ontology of ourselves” –​is the expression he has chosen in order to define the set of philosophical operations required to trigger this transformation.2 But thanks to what he calls “ontology of actuality” Foucault defines as well a peculiar way of keeping the tradition of the Enlightenment alive. The meaning of the philosophical stance that stems from the tradition of the Enlightenment consists not so much in questioning the truth and its grounding function within the philosophical discourse, but precisely in asking how we became what we have become and, as a consequence, in figuring out whether it is possible both to give place to different forms of power relations and to fashion our identity in a different way. Of course, Foucault’s aim at building a critical stance that can contribute to shape a new form of subjectivity does not depend on his dealing with ancient philosophy. In several occasions Foucault made clear that, since the beginning of his philosophical career, his own way toward a critical philosophy coincides with the redefinition of the relationship between the subject and the set of discourses needed to delimit the space of its agency.3 What I wish to highlight in the present context is that the study of ancient philosophy assumed a pivotal role precisely in the moment in which Foucault’s attempt to conceive of new possible forms of resistance to power took the form of a description of what Greek philosophers have written on the work one has to do on oneself in order to loosen the grip of power exerted over it.4 Not by chance, the course held at the Collège de France in 1982–​1983 devoted to analyzing the meaning of Greek parrhesia opens with an explicit reference to the political meaning of the Kantian Aufklärung. The subject that sustains the performativity of the Enlightenment is willing both to undergo the critical gaze of philosophy and to summon the age he lives in to appear before the court of reason. And this critical attitude, which is supposed to shape the subject’s life in its wholeness, cannot be merely seen as the cultural product of a past epoch of Western civilization. It seems to me that philosophy as the surface of emergence of a present reality, as a questioning of the philosophical meaning of the present reality of which it is part, and philosophy as the philosopher’s questioning of this “we” to which he belongs and in relation to which he has to situate 2 Foucault (2001b), 1506. 3 See, e.g., Foucault (1997a) and (1998b). In Foucault’s view, it was strategic to hinder those misleading interpretations of his work according to which the main topic of his philosophy were to be seen merely in the question of power. 4 McGushing (2007), 242–​288; Cremonesi (2008), 189–​212.

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himself, is a distinctive feature of philosophy as a discourse of modernity and on modernity.5 While insisting on the fact that the critical stance that characterizes the Enlightenment is not something that belongs to the past, but rather a living part of the unfinished project of modernity, Foucault makes clear at the same time that the best way to revitalize this project consists in nourishing it with new lifeblood coming from antiquity. Before looking at Foucault’s Lectures devoted to the analysis of ancient philosophy in a more detailed manner,6 it is important as well to remember that Foucault’s use of antiquity in order to underpin his critical stance goes back to a tradition deeply rooted within modernity. To say that does not mean to diminish the originality of Foucault’s attempt to use ancient sources in order to introduce a different approach to our current ideas of subjectivity, democracy, or power relations. Even less does it mean to suggest, more or less surreptitiously, that the reference to the classical tradition covers the entire path that led to the birth of the modern age, as if this reference were a transhistorical invariant. It means, rather, to identify the place occupied by the late Foucault’s philosophy within the broader context of those modern attempts to take what seems to be necessary –​or simply useful –​in order to carry on a critique of the present from the Greek conception of individual freedom. The genetic process that, starting with the Italian Renaissance, gave birth to western modernity is filled with figures of thought emerging from antiquity. Each phase of this process is characterized by referring to a peculiar shape of what the ancient world was supposed to be –​by reconstructing it through historical investigation, or by dealing with its remnants (artifacts of different nature or written texts) as if they were a living part of the present. The function of the cultural pattern resulting from this reconstruction, within which the historical consciousness of temporal distance often merges with imaginary projections, was to instantiate an otherness representing either the shape of a subjectivity still to be forged, or, in a more general way, the touchstone required to evaluate the present and to imagine an alternative to a given set of institutions, shared values, ways of conduct, forms of life. In other words, it

5 Foucault (2010), 13. 6 Further reading on this topic can be found in: Gros and Lévy (2003), Detel (2005), McGushin (2007), Cremonesi (2008), Montanari (2009), Bernini (2011), Boyle (2012), Lorenzini, Revel and Sforzini (2013).

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424 Leghissa seems difficult to reconstruct the emergence of modern subjectivity overlooking the role played by the constant reference to classical models.7 Foucault’s reading of ancient philosophy and culture can be easily included in this framework. For Foucault the reference to Greece constituted, on one hand, a strategic tool used to shape and reinforce the critical stance of philosophy and, on the other, the instantiation of a past cultural dimension that cannot be brought back to life any more. The last point is also tied with the awareness that there are important reasons to resist the lure of antiquity. Foucault, in fact, was induced to consider antiquity, taken as a whole, as “a deep mistake”.8 Such a negative judgment is due to the fact that, on the one hand, the ethics of Greeks and Romans concerned only a small number of people and, on the other, it took the form of a spiritual path and, therefore, its philosophical and literary expression was, to a certain extent, not far from that of a religion. 2

The Care of the Self and the Political Domain

Being the ethics the Greek philosophers spoke about part of a discourse addressed to small groups of men enjoying both wealth and civil rights, it is clear that the distance between us and the Greeks is not only due to the temporal difference. Nevertheless, Foucault makes a detour through the philosophy of the classical and Hellenistic period in order to forge a philosophy of the self, which he confers a decided critical potential to. The philosophy of the self Foucault outlines within his analysis of ancient thought has an ideal-​typical feature, and therefore can play the function of a mirror: by looking at it we can discover a peculiar articulation of the relationship between subject and truth that might not be simply included within our practice of everyday life, but can surely disclose a different perspective starting from which it is possible to put in question the supposed self-​evidence of our present relationship to ourselves. It is important to focus on the starting question that allows for any further articulation of Foucault’s analysis of the care of the self (epimeleia heautou). What can I  do  –​and, above all, what should I  do  –​as a subject in order to take care of myself in an appropriate way? To answer this question required not only the acquaintance with a specific set of doctrines, but above all the

7 Leghissa (2007). 8 Foucault (2001c), 1517.

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willingness to turn one’s own individual life into a series of exercises. What Foucault highlights is the fact that the scope of these exercises was in no way external to the practice they consisted in: the specific form of ascetic conduct that had to be improved through these exercises was nothing but a form of self-​government. And precisely the question of government is what interests Foucault at most. The last point must be put in evidence in order to avoid a dangerous –​and common –​misunderstanding. Foucault pays a lot of attention to the fact that the care of the self did not lead to establish a normative system of ethics; the goal of the philosophical ascesis was the self-​fashioning of the subject, the transformation of its habits and inclinations. This transformation had an aesthetic dimension as well: it implied the readiness to modify both the way in which the subject looked at himself and the way others looked at him. It implied, therefore, the possibility to take a certain distance from oneself. To manage this distance meant to make a decision as regards the various options available for the subject to shape his existence, to make a specific use of his freedom, of his time, of his intellectual capabilities, of his body. The analysis contained both in the second and in the third volume of the History of Sexuality, for example, shows how important it was for a free man to submit his desires and natural instincts to a specific control, in order to avoid doing something that could be in contrast with the social position that he occupied.9 But what we could define as the aesthetic moment of this ascesis must not be overestimated. Pierre Hadot, whose work on the spiritual exercises in antiquity constituted an important reference for Foucault, suggests that the way in which Foucault interprets the care of the self in antiquity results in the attempt to offer the model of an aesthetics of existence that could maintain a positive value for an individual living in our time; but, if this were the only meaning of Foucault’s analysis, then Hadot would be right in affirming that Foucault’s investigation of the care of the self would be nothing but a new form of Dandyism.10 It is true that Foucault himself speaks of an “aesthetics of existence”, which he defines as “a way of life whose moral value did not depend either on one’s being in conformity with a code of behavior, or on an effort of purification, but on a certain formal principles in the use of pleasures, in the way one distributed them, in the limits one observed, in the hierarchy one respected”.11 But this expression is strictly tied to the question of how it is possible for a subject to 9 10 11

Foucault (1986) and Foucault (1990). Hadot (1989). On the way Hadot read Foucault’s analysis of ancient philosophy, see Davidson (2003). Foucault (1990), 89. See also Foucault (1988a), 49.

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426 Leghissa loosen the grip of the techniques of government on which the states of domination are based. In other words, the question Foucault articulates when he introduces the notion of “care of the self” is entirely a political one. But it would be misleading to see the culture of the self developed in antiquity as if it would result in a direct political intervention: once the decision to take care of oneself is taken, the subject is caught in a specific game of truth that should enable him to understand to which extent a certain power can be exerted over him –​or, in other words, to which extent the subject can let others conduct his own conduct. Thus, the work on oneself is to come first as regards any political action meant as a direct form of resistance against institutional power. In addition, it is worth pointing out that Foucault was not prone at all to share the idea that liberation from power should constitute a positive and essential aspect of political action. The sheer concept of liberation seems to be wrong as far as it implies the idea that “there exists a human nature or base that, as a consequence of certain historical, economic, and social processes, has been concealed, alienated, or imprisoned in and by mechanisms of repression”. If it were so, “all that is required is to break these repressive deadlocks and man will be reconciled with himself, rediscover his nature or regain contact with his origin, and reestablish a full and positive relationship with himself”.12 A further point to add in order to better understand the range of what is to be seen as the political significance of the care of the self is that Foucault posed the exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to transform oneself within a network of power relations that he, starting from the second middle of the seventies, decided to subsume under the term “governmentality”.13 Within this network the subject does not exist as a subject of law, as a subject that has –​or has not –​some specific rights. Governmentality has rather to do with “the whole range of practices that constitute, define, organize, and instrumentalize the strategies that individuals in their freedom can use in dealing with each other”. Those who want to exert a certain control over others, or limit the freedom of others, “are themselves free individuals who have at their disposal certain instruments they can use to govern others”.14 Governmentality, thus, precedes the definition, the organization and the management of those forms of power that can be pinpointed as states of domination. The techniques of government that permeate society are, rather, what governmentality is made of. This implies that specific forms of power 12 13 14

Foucault (1997a), 282. On this subject, see, among others, Dean (1999). Foucault (1997a), 300.

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operate at every level of human relationships –​a statement that must be correctly understood as well. Within Foucault’s decennial reflection on power structures the idea that there is a form of power overarching society –​or even small human groups –​is definitely absent. There is no such thing as “power”, spread everywhere and forcing individuals to behave in this or that way. What all individuals are involved in is a set of networks within which each individual occupies a given position, but the latter is never stable and permanent. The possibility to negotiate one’s own position, to shift from one position to another one, or even to change the rules of the power game is a constitutive element of what binds individuals to each other. And it is precisely within this game that subjectivation, meant as an ongoing process, takes place. “There are two meanings of the world subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-​knowledge”.15 Thus, the political significance of the care of the self does not consists in creating a space removed from the strategic interplay among individuals, a space where one’s self-​positioning coincides with the enjoyment of absolute freedom: according to Foucault, in fact, even such a space can never exist. The care of the self enables an individual to create an autonomous sphere of action, within which it becomes possible to experience –​and, above all, to measure  –​the degree of freedom one is willing to enjoy. Or, better: it enables an individual to perceive to which extent others are allowed to intervene within one’s own way of conduct, to which extent others are allowed, from their point of view, in the name of their interests or goals, to manage one’s own process of subjectivation. 3

The Construction of Philosophical Ethos

It is now important to focus on the mediatedness that characterizes the relationship between the exercise required to construct a sphere of subjective autonomy and the praxis that can –​or could –​lead to transform a given social order. Isn’t this praxis what we usually think of when we refer to the political action? Isn’t the political sphere that domain within which subjects negotiate their position in order to achieve more freedom and improve their agency? Or, more precisely: Isn’t the political character we use to ascribe to an action –​ individual or collective –​strictly tied either with the modification of the existing power structure brought about by that action, or with the maintenance 15

Foucault (1983), 212.

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428 Leghissa of this power structure, in the case in which the subject occupies a dominant position? I have already mentioned the distance Foucault takes from the idea that what matters when we take into consideration the meaning of political action can be reduced to the question of emancipation. What he seeks when he draws his –​and our –​ attention to the care of the self, I suggest, is to make much more complex the relationship between any possible intervention aimed at transforming a given power structure and what one must do in order to acquire the critical attitude needed simply to conceive of any political action. In other words, there must be a consciously constructed gap between the space within which decisions that possess political relevance are taken and the space within which one performs any critical discourse. This is due to the fact that the latter is meant as the result of a work on oneself, or, better, as the utterance produced by a subject whose conduct of life constitutes per se a critical statement. In the text of the course held in 1981–​1982, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault investigates the role of the philosopher as a counselor of those who exercise a form of political power during the Roman Empire. In the first centuries of our era, the philosopher finds himself more and more involved in the political life as a professional advisor, whose competence goes from the way in which one must conduct one’s life to the way in which the state must be governed. But this situation means in no way that the philosophical discipline as such increases its significance. On the contrary, it loses its own specificity as a separate domain –​and precisely such separateness allows for its critical function. The philosopher “is the person who guides and initiates someone who is both his patron, almost his employer, and his friend, but his superior friend. […] The counselor is also a sort of cultural agent for a circle into which he introduces both theoretical knowledge and practical schemas of life as well as political choices. […] So we find them [i.e., the philosophers] everywhere, involved in political life and in great debates, conflicts, assassinations, executions, and revolts that mark the middle of the first century […]”. But, Foucault continues, as this figure of the philosopher develops and his importance becomes more pronounced, so also we see that he increasingly looses his singular, irreducible function external to daily life, to everyday life and political life. We see his function, rather, become more integrated within advice and opinion. The practice will be intertwined with the essential problems posed to individuals in such a way that as the profession of the philosopher becomes more important, so it is deprofessionalized. The more one needs a counselor for oneself, the more one needs to have recourse

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to the Other in his practice of the self, then the more philosophy needs to assert itself, the more the philosopher’s specifically philosophical function becomes increasingly blurred as well.16 This long quotation makes clear that what counts within Foucault’s analysis of the care of the self is not to be referred to the direct impact this practice is supposed to have within that domain where political decisions are taken and political power is exerted. If we can consider the care of the self as a form of resistance, if we are allowed to interpret it as the first step along the way forward the practice of freedom, this is due to the fact that the ethics of the self implies the enjoyment of a certain loneliness, meant not only as a detachment from any direct involvement in the game of power (a point sufficiently underscored above), but, above all, as an uninterrupted examination of the truth of one’s own thoughts, inclinations and desires. The fact that this examination is part of the care of the self is what makes the latter a philosophical praxis. To take the point made here from the reverse side: that philosophy turns itself from the discourse that simply deals with truth and defines its function within the theoretical domain into the discourse that proves the truth of one’s own conduct is precisely what allows to consider philosophy as a form of praxis. And philosophy can reveal its political significance only as a practice of the truth: if the work on the self carried out by the philosopher had no reference to the truth, it would remain a merely individual issue, totally disconnected from what concerns the collectivity. The askesis analyzed in The Hermeneutics of the Subject, in fact, could be defined as the embodiment of the logos. It would be wrong to let this embodiment resonate with the Christian idea of incarnation: the question, of course, is not how to bridge the gap between the transcendent sphere where deity has its place and the immanent sphere where fleshy beings live their lives enclosed within the cycle of generation and corruption. The question, rather, is how to act in such a way that the truth-​telling –​which sets out philosophy as a discourse –​becomes an integral part of one’s conduct of life. In order to achieve this goal, the subject must undergo a specific set of exercises. It is necessary to prepare oneself to face every unexpected event that may occur within individual life. This requires the development of a peculiar attitude which is not far from the one needed by the athlete: the latter is supposed to maintain his balance and composure in every circumstance, being the source of any hurdle or assault coming from the adversary unknown in advance. A second series of 16

Foucault (2005), 143.

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430 Leghissa exercises consists in embedding in one’s mind a certain set of logoi, which are not simply propositions, statements or axioms concerning the laws of nature but are, rather, praecepta, or dogmata: their content is about what one has to do in order to deal with specific circumstances of life. They constitute reasonable guidelines for one’s conduct of life. By repeating them it is possible to embed them in one’s mind, so that they can result always available. Only in this way it becomes possible to modify one’s behavior: the presence of these logoi in our mind does not cause the emergence of specific convictions, but induce the subject to act in this or that way. They are truly inductive schemas of action that can aid the subject when unexpected difficulties arise in our life. The whole complex of exercises needed to achieve these schemas constitutes what the authors taken into consideration by Foucault (like Plutarch or Marcus Aurelius) call paraskeue. Thanks to the paraskeue, the logos transforms itself in ethos –​and this transformation is, according to Foucault, the most interesting feature of ancient askesis. The askesis may then be defined as the set, the regular, calculated succession of procedures that are able to form, definitively fix, periodically reactivate and, if necessary, reinforce this paraskeue for an individual. The askesis is what enables truth-​telling –​truth-​telling addressed to the subject and also truth-​telling that the subject addresses to himself –​to be constituted as the subject’s way of being. The askesis makes truth-​telling a mode of being of the subject.17 Few other examples of the set of exercises needed to transform the care of the self in a philosophical ascesis will make clearer why Foucault pays so much attention to it. An interesting form of paraskeue is the stoic praemeditatio malorum, which was an attempt to point one’s attention to all possible evil and damaging events. The latter are not posited in the future, are not considered as more or less probable occurrences along a temporal continuum. They are rather presentified events, which stand in front of the subject with their affective charge. The scope of the exercise is not to prepare oneself to cope with bad events in the moment of their occurrence, but to consider how flimsy and 17

Foucault (2005), 327. In this context, it is also worth mentioning the importance that authors like Nietzsche, Bataille, and Klossowski had for Foucault. In Foucault (2001a), for example, he refers to their legacy in order to explain the genesis of his own attempt to problematize philosophy as a mode of being. But it must be underscored as well that the reflection upon the concept of parrhesia confers a totally new significance to the idea that philosophy can be seen as a personal experience.

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inconsistent are all misfortunes and dooms that may occur in life. As pointed out in Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius 24, the stoic sage, in contrast to normal people, is able to evaluate and recognize if a bad event is bearable or not. And for the stoic sage almost all pains are supposed to be tolerable –​only death does not obviously belong to the number of tolerable pains, but the brevity that characterizes its occurrence makes the worry over it inappropriate. It is principally within the praemeditatio malorum that the concern with death becomes an element of the ascesis. In order to overcome the fear of death, it is necessary to consider the possibility of its occurrence in every moment of life and to live, consequently, every moment as if it were the last one. Far from remaining a remote content of thought, the presence of death becomes part of everyday life. This presence transforms our perception of time and, above all, the way in which we manage our duties and business. If each day can be the last one, and if the end of the day can coincide with the end of life, then our life gains in significance and we pay much more attention to our moral improvement. But Foucault is much more interested in another result of the exercise the subject accomplishes when concerned with the possibility that the present day can be the last one. Foucault remarks that death meditation allows individuals to fashion a new and different self-​perception. First of all, the death meditation makes possible an “instantaneous view of the present from above”, it “enables thought to make a cross section of the duration of life, the flow of activities, and the stream of representations. By imagining that the moment or day we are living is the last, we immobilize the present in a snapshot, so to speak”. In this way all our activities can be evaluated with accuracy and precision, so that it becomes possible to take decisions in compliance with the decrees of reason. The second view of oneself made possible by this kind of gaze of death is the retrospective view over the whole of life. “When we test ourselves as being at the point of dying, then we can look back over the whole of what our life has been. And the truth, or rather the value of this life will be able to appear”.18 It is also remarkable to notice that, by analyzing the ancient sources (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus among others) within which the topic of death mediation plays a pivotal role, Foucault underscores very carefully the fact that this form of askesis entail a form of philosophical care of the self that does not coincide entirely with what the classical tradition usually understood under the notion of “gnothi seauton”. The point is not to underestimate the 18

Foucault (2005), 479.

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432 Leghissa importance of intellectual knowledge: what makes the care of the self a philosophical matter is, after all, the concrete possibility to connect one’s life and experience to the truth, to scrutinize one’s actions through the lens of reason. But what really matters is that such a self-​scrutiny can lead to an embodiment of the logos within one’s every day conduct of life, and that the subject can make the experience of how the care of the self merges with the performativity of a given set of logoi that are supposed to become part of the individual’s frame of mind. The care of the self designates a permanent occupation, “a work with its methods and objectives”. So, if the precept expressed by the formula “gnothi seauton” refers to the mental attention one must pay to oneself, the practical –​but we could even say “athletic” –​dimension envisaged by the formula “epimeleia heautou” refers, rather, to “a whole domain of complex and regular activities”.19 4

Parrhesia as Resistance

The examples just reported above are surely enough to give a brief account of what is at stake within Foucault’s analysis of ancient askesis. These examples, however, are still not enough to make us understand in which sense Foucault’s efforts to present ancient philosophy as ethos are a deliberate detour in direction of how to represent the necessary relationship between philosophy and the critical attitude that is required in order to generate a specific form of political resistance. Foucault was perfectly aware of the necessity to extend his analysis of ancient sources far beyond the stoic and epicurean (or, more generally, Hellenistic) domain –​no matter how important stoic and epicurean sources can be as regards the richness and length of indications they convey about how to carry on the care of self that characterizes the philosophical ethos. If antiquity is to be seen as a set of images we can use to fashion a certain representation of ourselves, the final feature of our self-​representation will depend on the choice made among the different images we decided to pay attention to. If it is so, the bulk of material which Foucault accounted of in The Hermeneutic of the Subject have seemingly led him to face a question that can be put as follows. How is it possible to consider the epimeleia heautou as the first step that must be accomplished toward a practice of freedom that can be exercised beyond the sphere of the oikos if the philosopher of the Hellenistic age operates as “a guide, a director”20 –​or, briefly, as what we would today call a 19 20

Foucault (2005), 493. Foucault (2005), 137.

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“personal coach”? It is not simply an abused historiographical topos to say that the end of the polis coincided with the end of a political culture that not only allowed for, but also improved much more participation in public and civic life. Such participation did not require that the members of the assembly were all philosophers, but surely stimulated the emergence of specific rhetorical and political competences, at least among the ruling elite.21 During the period in which authors like Philodemus, Musonius, Dion of Prusa or Epictetus flourished, on the contrary, the competence that one was able to acquire by attending the teaching offered by the various philosophical schools served as a way to improve oneself, to change one’s attitude, to submit one’s desire to a sort of therapy. Thus, the various exercises aiming to improve the care of the self that the philosopher was able to impart could not lead to breed a free citizen. In this sense, Foucault’s analysis of antiquity is well aligned with our received idea about the great gap that exists between the degree of freedom enjoyed by the male citizen of the Athenian polis and the impossibility for the citizen of the Roman Empire to act autonomously as a political actor.22 The fact is remarkable not because it tells us something about Foucault’s accuracy as regards his reconstruction of antiquity, but because it raises the suspicion that the political significance of his analysis of antiquity could better fit the real purpose he wanted to pursue –​namely to carry on a critique of the present –​if we mirror ourselves in the life of a Roman citizen and not in that of a citizen of the Athenian democracy. The point becomes clear if we consider that Foucault begins his lectures about The Hermeneutic of the Subject with an accurate analysis of Plato’s Alcibiades. The issue discussed in this dialogue concerns the education the young Alcibiades deserves as a descendant of an aristocratic family moving his first steps toward a political career. Socrates shows how insufficient was the education Alcibiades has previously received in order to become a political leader and then invites the young ambitious man to acquire the techne that is necessary in order to take care of oneself. In fact, only who is concerned about oneself, only who has learnt how to care for oneself, is then able to govern the polis. Foucault seems to be deeply concerned with what Plato’s dialogue stands for so clearly: the emergence of the problematization of the need to take care of oneself insofar as one has to govern others. Socrates’ statement about the deep tie between self-​government and government of the polis is representative of a historical phase of Greek history in which the philosophical discourse 21 22

Ober (1989). On the consequences of this fact upon the production of the philosophical discourse, see –​among others –​Donini (1982).

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434 Leghissa about the care of the self could be perceived as one of the basic presuppositions for the establishment of a government based on the logos and not simply for the improvement of those attitudes that are required to conduct a good individual life. The meaning of Plato’s dialogue (questions related to the authenticity of it are not an issue for Foucault) stands out both with regard to past models of self-​ empowerment and with regard to the Athenian political situation contemporary to Socrates. Foucault remarks that several religious practices of purification, which were well established in the Greek culture, forerun the technology of the self whose inception he locates in Plato’s Alcibiades.23 He refers –​rather randomly, it must be added –​both to those techniques that aimed at concentrating the soul, namely at avoiding the dispersal of the vital force that keeps the body alive, and to those techniques that allowed the subject to withdraw itself from the external world; the latter, for which the Greeks used the term anachoresis (a term, as Foucault correctly underscores, that has played an important role within the history of spirituality), consists of a detachment from ordinary life, from one’s own engagement in the external world. Another important axis along which to locate the emergence of Plato’s discourse on the care of the self is to be found in the Athenian debate about the education of young citizens. This debate focused, on one hand, on the difference between the Athenian and the Spartan education. The young Spartiates could enjoy a more radical and continuous education, which enabled him to partake in the social and political life of the polis since the beginning of adulthood. On the other, it aimed at reflecting upon the relationship between adults and adolescent males. This relationship, albeit important and well-​integrated as a social feature within the Athenian way of life, was not always sufficient to allow for the full training and development of the future citizen. It is because of the manifest flaws of the Athenian educational system that, according to Foucault, the issue of the epimeleia heautou became central on the philosophical agenda –​an issue that encompasses not only how to “take care of the self”, but also the dialectic between “governing” and “being governed”.24 In this context, Plato still remains an important author within his analysis, but, as we will see shortly, it is thanks to the reference to other ancient sources as well that Foucault articulates the relationship between philosophy as a praxis and philosophy as a form of political action aiming to put in question the existing power relations. The last two lectures held at the Collège de 23 24

Foucault’s analysis of this aspect of the archaic Greek culture drew on previous research in this field; see for example Gernet (1968), Vernant (1983) and Detienne (1996). See Foucault (2005), 45.

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France, The Government of Self and Others (1982–​83) and The Courage of the Truth (1983–​84), are entirely devoted to show how the truth-​telling –​or parrhesia –​constituted one of the most intensive moments of the strain between the philosophical praxis and the political domain where the art of government is exerted. When the philosopher plays the role of the parrhesiast, of the truth-​ teller, according to Foucault, his position in face of the realm of politics is one of exteriority. This exteriority allows for a form of critique that can affect political life far deeper than that one instantiated by the prince’s advisor or by the “couch” of young scions of well-​off roman families. And precisely this exteriority must be maintained today as well if philosophy still aims at building a world where justice and individual freedom can be granted. Philosophy as exteriority with regards to a politics which constitutes its test of reality, philosophy as critique of a domain of illusion which challenges it to constitute itself as true discourse, and philosophy as ascesis, that is to say, as constitution of the subject by himself, seem to me to constitute the mode of being of modern philosophy, or maybe that which, in the mode of being of modern philosophy, takes up the mode of being of ancient philosophy.25 It is parrhesia, the truth-​telling, what marks this exteriority, what puts, in other words, the philosopher in a position that forces the members of the polis to listen to him not because he is one of those “masters of truth” so vividly depicted by Marcel Detienne,26 but because he instantiates the possibility of grounding a political community in the truth that stems from the logos. After the first lesson, where he has shown –​as reminded above –​how important it is not to remove Kant’s concept of Aufklärung from our horizon, Foucault establishes a narrow relationship between govern of self and others and the notion of parrhesia by defining the latter as “the obligation and possibility of telling the truth in procedures of government”, assuming, furthermore, that the truth-​telling “can show how the individual is constituted as subject in the relationship to self and the relationship to others”. The relationship to self becomes evident by considering what Foucault defines as a pact: it is the “pact of the speaking subject with himself”.27 In this way the subject binds himself to the statement he has just made, to the truth conveyed in the statement. At the same time, through this pact the subject binds himself to himself as the 25 26 27

Foucault (2010), 354. Detienne (1996). Foucault (2010), 64.

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436 Leghissa subject that has stated the truth. This double element of the parrhesiastic pact leads Foucault to define the parrhesiast as “someone who emphasizes his own freedom as an individual speaking”.28 Now, this freedom can be dangerous, because it can bring the subject to face situations in which the truth-​telling can cost his own life:  “parrhesiasts are those who, if necessary, accept death for having told the truth”.29 The problem is not simply that one’s utterance can be refused, or judged false. By challenging the power that rules the polis –​ no matter whether detained by a tyrannos or by the assembly –​truth-​telling aims at transforming the frame within which the political game takes place and, therefore, can be seen as a danger for the balance of the political community. This is due to the fact that the parrhesiastic discourse does not partake of the structure that characterizes the persuasive discourse of rhetoric. In the case that we want to consider parrhesia as a figure of thought, we must recognize that it is the plainest of all figures:  referring to Quintilian’s Institutio 9.2.27, Foucault highlights that parrhesia represents “the most basic form of rhetoric, where the figure of thought consists in not using any figure”.30 In other words, the philosopher, when standing in front of those who govern to speak to them about the way they should govern others and govern themselves, does it by occupying a position of exteriority with regards to politics. But the fact that he does it without using the force of persuasion, addressing directly the political issue at stake, implies the possibility that he risks his life. The fact that truth-​telling could entail a danger for the philosopher’s existence lays at the core of Foucault’s argument about the relationship between philosophy as a form of resistance and philosophy as care of the self. First of all, truth-​telling as a dangerous attitude constitutes the only way in which philosophy can prove itself as a praxis that has a political significance, in the sense that it can bring the polis to reflect upon the truth needed to govern according to the logos. This is not in contradiction with the exteriority of philosophy in front of the polis described above. Quite the contrary. The philosopher as parrhesiast, precisely because of the irreducibility of his position toward politics meant as the ordinary art of government, can address the political game as a whole: “the object of the philosopher’s intervention must be the entire regime of the city, its politeia”.31 He speaks not in order to give advice upon a specific issue, upon a single trouble affecting the political community, or upon all matters of the government of the polis; of course, he says what is to be done, but 28 29 30 31

Foucault (2010), 65. Foucault (2010), 56. Foucault (2010), 53; on this point, see also 351–​374. Foucault (2010), 233.

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he explains why a certain decision must be taken and, by doing so, offers the possibility to rethink entirely the city’s regime. Furthermore, Foucault is very careful in showing that only the specific work on self that Greek philosophers defined as epimeleia heautou can constitute the presupposition on which parrhesia proceeds. Not only in the sense that parrhesia can be performed only if the parrhesiast perceives it as an utterance that involves the whole existence of the philosopher –​a point already made above; but, more deeply, in the sense that the readiness to put one’s life in danger implies the will to act as an outsider, to act as somebody that can suffer a deep loss if the parrhesiastic utterance finds itself in opposition to shared opinions, or to prince’s moods. Because of the complex and conflicting relationship he had with Dionysius of Syracuse, Plato could very vividly perceive how ephemeral and fickle the prince’s mood might be. Foucault’s analysis of Plato’s Seventh Letter, in which what drove Plato to accept Dion’s invitation to Syracuse is detailed, serves two scopes. On the one hand, Plato’s Seventh Letter offers us the opportunity to deal with a representative case study of parrhesiastic behavior: had Plato missed the kairos offered by Dion’s invitation, he would have lost a unique opportunity to carry out in practice his ideas about laws and constitutions. On the other hand, the fact that Plato acted in obedience to reason and justice reminds us of which kind of inner necessity ties philosophy as a form of responsibility toward the logos and philosophy as a form of critique envisaging the foundation of political life. Two other sources Foucault analyzed within his Lectures must be mentioned here, which are among the few referred to Athenian democracy. First of all, Thucydides’ treatment of Pericles’ role as a guide of the polis. Pericles’ speeches –​the first after the coming of Spartan legation (Thuc. 1.140–​144), the second being the famous Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.35–​46), and the third held in occasion of the outbreak of the plague (Thuc. 2.61–​64) –​express the relationship between how Athenian democracy concretely worked and the role played by somebody who was willing to address the assembly not in his own name, but in the name of the whole political body. According to Foucault, what Thucydides’ text helps us to grasp is the ideal of a democratic polis that is grounded in the proper use of parrhesia: it is from Pericles’ mouth, in fact, that we learn that democracy is defined not by the fact that “each can speak and give his opinion, but by the fact that the city is administered in the general interest”.32 32

Foucault (2010), 178.

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438 Leghissa There are four elements that characterize the relationship between Athenian democracy and parrhesia. The first condition for the exercise of parrhesia is democracy as a form of government that accords equality to all citizens. The second condition is the presence of group of individuals who are able to partake in the public discussions in virtue of their authority and competence, who possess the capability to persuade and move the assembly with respect to the decisions that are to be taken. The sheer presence of democracy as a set of formal rules of government, however, is not enough; what counts more is that those who speak to the assembly tell the truth. The parrhesiastic discourse must be true, it must be recognized as a form of truth-​telling. The fourth element concerns the attitude of those who want to persuade their audience. Due to the high degree of rivalry and competition among the political actors involved in the democratic process of decision making, those who want to deliver a discourse of truth must demonstrate courage. But Foucault’s main concern with regard to the Athenian context within which the parrhesiastic discourse took its shape aims, above all, at questioning “how democracy can withstand the truth”.33 What Foucault shows by analyzing the figure of Pericles according to the Thucydidean reconstruction is the complex and uneasy role that truth-​telling played within Athenian democracy. Pericles’ plans run always the risk of being refused: Pericles’ position is surely clear and unambiguous, anybody can put in question neither his competence nor his willingness to act in the name of the common good; moreover his familiar ancestry is outstanding (from his mother’s side he comes from the powerful family of the Alcmaeonids), nevertheless the path he intends to follow during the conduct of war is uneven, hazardous and unpredictable. Thus, it is possible that his fellow citizens do not agree with his strategy. In other words, neither Pericles’ insights nor his peculiar strategic intelligence were able, as such, to prevent his political guidance of the polis from failure. Then the question:  what assured Pericles’ success? Foucault’s answer is unambiguous:  his parrhesia. Pericles could see the truth, he revealed to be capable to tell it, and was devoted to the general interest. Moreover, he could prove to be morally reliable, honest, and incorruptible. Only by having these qualities he was able to exercise “the ascendancy necessary for a democratic city to be governed –​in spite of or through democracy”.34 In other words, Foucault’s reconstruction of the Thucydidean text does not lead to the result that parrhesia and democracy are necessarily coupled together for the good of the polis; only under specific

33 34

Foucault (2010), 174. Foucault (2010), 180.

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circumstances, whereas the peculiar character and the talent of the politician play an important role, the exercise of parrhesia and truth-​telling entails an ascendancy of the ruler over the city from which the latter can take a fruitful advantage. Not by chance Foucault’s analysis of Athenian democracy goes on by taking into consideration Isocrates’ speech On the peace. In this text we find the example of the fact that parrhesia can also constitute a danger for the polis. What appears here is the presence of individuals who, lacking the courage that characterized Pericles’ behavior, address the assembly just to “ensure their own safety and their own success by pleasing the listeners, by flattering their feelings and opinions”.35 What they bring to expression is the prevailing opinion, which does not necessary lead to take the best decision for the polis. The relationship between democracy and parrhesia is thus an ambiguous one: there cannot be democracy without parrhesia, “but democracy threatens the very existence of true discourse” by giving to anyone, even to those who speak only in the name of their own interest, the opportunity to speak. That parrhesia and democracy are strictly tied to each other is an important element within Foucault’s argument, but the latter cannot be reduced to this tie. Otherwise, it could be hard for Foucault to ascribe –​as he effectively does –​ an ideal-​typical feature to the philosopher’s attitude instantiated by parrhesia. Thus, it is no surprise that Foucault kept describing the historical development of parrhesiastic behavior by taking into consideration the role played by Cynicism within classical philosophy. His death occurred in June 1984, short after the end of the Lectures The Courage of the Truth, the second half of which is entirely devoted to describing how far Cynicism went in radicalizing the parrhesiastic nature of philosophy meant as a mode of being. These Lectures are his last statement about the way to get through the achievement of individual freedom, and therefore can be read as his ultimate legacy. Cynicism constitutes the extreme form of parrhesia, by far the most radical one. The cynic philosopher embodies the short way to virtue, the one that is entirely based on an ascetic praxis. There are two ways, one of which is lengthy, relatively easy, and does not call for great effort, which is the way by which one achieves virtue through the logos, that is to say, through discourses and learning them […]. Then there is the other, short way, which is the difficult, arduous way which rises straight to the summit over many obstacles and which is, as it 35

Foucault (2010), 183.

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440 Leghissa were, the silent way. Anyway, it is the way of exercise, of askesis, of practices of destitution and endurance.36 The topos of the two ways is not specific to Cynicism, but cynic philosophy confers to it a new significance. By emphasizing to an extreme degree the importance of transforming his own life in a visible and concrete proof of the truth he ascribes to the grounding concepts of his own thought, the Cynic transforms the meaning of parrhesia as well. Parrhesia ceases to be the hallmark of an attitude that, on occasions, generates a specific behavior under specific circumstances, leading the subject to act in the name of truth, when the general interest of the polis is at stake, even if it can cost his life to do so. The parrhesiastic behavior of the Cynic coincides rather with his entire existence, is an ongoing series of silent utterances spoken by the body language and by behavioral choices that can be immediately perceived as revolutionary by others. The revolutionary character of Cynicism explains, according to Foucault, the reason why some of ancient sources showed a deep disappointment toward the radicalism of the cynic way of life. The behavior of the Cynic in every day life has been seen, in fact, as a sort of distortion of what true philosophy was supposed to be. This led many authors of antiquity (Seneca, Epictetus, the Emperor Julian among others) to distinguish between Cynicism as a universal philosophical standpoint, as a possible instantiation of what philosophy is or can be, and Cynicism as a caricature of philosophy that renders a misleading image of the latter. It is the broken mirror in which every philosopher can and must recognize himself, in which he can and must recognize the very image of philosophy, the reflection of what it is and should be, and of what he is and would like to be. And at the same time, the philosopher sees in this mirror something like a grimace, a violent, ugly, unsightly deformation in which there is no way in which he could recognize either himself or philosophy. All of this amounts to saying, quite simply, that Cynicism was seen, I think, as the banality of philosophy, but its scandalous banality.37 Despite the fact that the Cynic way of life runs the risk of bringing the parrhesiastic attitude to such a point that it becomes nearly impossible to recognize

36 37

Foucault (2011), 207. Foucault (2011), 232.

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its positive value, the way in which Foucault describes Cynicism reveals his fascination with this mode of practicing philosophy. Cynicism seems indeed to embody the most complete and radical form of a philosophical existence that puts in question the political and social order. By challenging all the customs and conventions that are based on commonsense and are therefore supposed to be self-​evident, the Cynic aims, thanks to his unconventional behavior, not only at marking these customs and conventions as artificial, relative and groundless, but also at proving that a different social order is possible –​a social order based on the decrees of nature. Foucault underscores the importance that the reference to the realm of nature assumes within Cynicism. Different from the ordered and harmonic conception of nature we can find within stoic thought, the image of nature Cynicism conveyed had the function to represent a form of radical otherness that the mental models shared within contemporary society could not encompass without generating a sense of unease. In this context, the very association of the name of the philosophical movement with the name of an animal (the dog) becomes meaningful, as Foucault does not miss to highlight. Motivated by the willingness to conduct a straight life, the Cynic derives directly from the realm of animality the criterion according to which it is possible to judge what is wrong and what is right among human beings. This criterion helps to cut away from our ordinary conduct of life all that is to be seen as redundant or superfluous. The Cynic does not mean that the distinction between human beings and animals must disappear, but he confers a new meaning to this distinction: the animal ceases to be the projection of all that we find inferior, or, worse, repugnant; instead, animal life becomes the paradigm we need in order to shape a life-​style that is not in contrast with nature. So, within Cynicism, animality will be charged with positive value, it will be a model of behavior, a material model in accordance with the idea that the human being must not have as a need what the animal can do without. […] When need is a weakness, a dependence, a lack of liberty, man must have no other needs than those of the animal, those satisfied by nature itself. […] Animality is not a given; it is a duty. Or rather, it a given, offered us directly by nature, but at the same time to be continually taken up. Shortly –​and icastically –​Foucault defines animality as an “exercise”.38 Like an animal, the Cynic is someone that knows perfectly well what he needs and therefore cannot suffer from the uninterrupted emergence of new desires as 38

Foucault (2011), 265.

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442 Leghissa people normally do. He lives according to his own principles, and precisely this coherence between theory and praxis makes him free. Of course, this freedom is the result of his ascetic conduct of life, it is the direct consequence of the work he does on himself by observing carefully his thoughts. Thus, parrhesia and epimeleia heautou are so strictly intertwined to each other that Foucault describes their mutual connection as a “relationship of physical, corporal conformity, so to speak, between the Cynic and the truth”.39 Furthermore, Foucault points his attention to the fact that the freedom the Cynic enjoys is to be understood as a form of sovereignty. The Cynic is free not only in the sense that his blessed life does not depend on the realization of unmanageable desires, but also in the sense that he establishes a relation of enjoyment to himself: his life is a life of possession of itself. “Being sovereign is first and foremost being one’s own, belonging to oneself”. Moreover, the Cynic is able to take pleasure in himself, to find in himself “all the sources and foundations of true delight, which is not that of the body, or that which depends on external objects, but the delight one can have indefinitely without ever being deprived of it”.40 This sovereign life implies not only a peculiar form of relation to oneself, but also opens out onto a relationship to the other and others. The sheer presence of the Cynic among other members of the human assembly constitutes a sort of gift, a blessing. First, the Cynic is a true master, not a master whose role is limited to pass knowledge on to those who come to listen to him. He is a master that establishes a relationship of care, assistance, and help. In short, he is more like a physician that can alleviate other’s ills. Second, his sovereign life is useful and beneficial to others also because it is a sort of lesson of universal significance that is given to humankind by the very way in which he lives. Cynic’s sovereign life assumes a further significance when confronted with the legitimate source of political power. In this context, Foucault cannot help giving an account of the famous anecdote that describes the confrontation between Diogenes and Alexander,41 a matrix scene to which the Cynics constantly referred. Even in front of the king’s glory the cynic maintains his sovereignty –​and we would miss the punch line of the story if we were not able to grasp that Diogenes’ sovereignty, not Alexander’s, is the only true one. The cynic is of course a hidden king, ignored as such by most of people because of his poverty, nakedness, and shamelessness. But the core of cynic parrhesia lies entirely in this dramatization of what is normally understood as sovereign life. 39 40 41

Foucault (2011), 310. Foucault (2011), 271. Foucault (2011), 275 ff.

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But what Foucault is at most interested in is the peculiar militantism that characterizes the bios philosophikos of the Cynic –​a militantism entailed by his sovereignty, his endurance, his willingness to challenge the accepted rules on which society is based. Foucault confers an archetypal value to this militantism, in the sense that all the features assumed by the revolutionary subject along the western tradition can be brought back to the cynic attitude. The Christian martyr, the Christian monk that decides to detach himself from the world and to spend his life in the desert, the member of a secret society,42 the member of a revolutionary party that aims at establishing a new social order, the artist and all those who choose a style of existence that contrast radically with the conventions, habits, and values of society: in sum, all those who bear witness by their own life and behavior of the concrete possibility of an other life perform a militancy that found its first and most complete expression in the cynic militantism. In the Lecture of 29 February 1984, Foucault draws particular attention to the deep connection between art and militantism –​thus suggesting that modern art can be seen as the true heir of ancient Cynicism. Modern art has what could be called an essentially anti-​cultural function. The consensus of culture has to be opposed by the courage of art in its barbaric truth. Modern art is Cynicism in culture; the cynicism of culture turned against itself. And if this is not just in art, in the modern world, in our world, it is especially in art that the most intense forms of a truth-​ telling with the courage to take the risk of offending are concentrated.43 So, if Plato’s Socrates can be seen as someone whose main intention was to change the rules governing the polis, the Cynic philosophical program aimed at transforming the world: by displaying a mode of being that everybody could observe and perceive as radically different from the common one, the Cynic intended to affect the shared frame of mind of peers as well as to bear witness of the fact that a different world was possible. “The aim of this practice of the 42

43

Here a further  –​even if short  –​explanation is necessary. According to Foucault, the Christian monk accomplished a form of parrhesia that maintained the essential traits of the classic one. But Foucault is very careful in distinguishing the context in which monastic life arose from the context in which ancient parrhesia has been developed. What he emphasizes is the fact that the Christian monk was prevented from making the experience of freedom that, on the contrary, was supposed to be the result of the care of the self. The goal pursued through the Christian ascetic conduct of life was to create men and women who were able to obey, for whom, better, the practice of obedience was to become part of their whole conduct of life. On this subject, see Foucault (2014). Foucault (2011), 189.

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444 Leghissa truth characterizing the Cynic life is not just to say and show what the world is in its truth. Its aim […] is to show that the world […] will be able to transfigure itself and become other in order to get back to what it is in its truth, only at the price of a change, a complete alteration, the complete change and alteration in the relation one has to self”.44 Thus, the Cynic attitude so vividly described in Foucault’s Lectures of 1983–​ 84 seems to meet the main urgencies he gave expression to during the last phase of his philosophical career –​namely, how to build an ethics of the self that can at the same time embody what is required in order to challenge the existing power structure. Already in the Lectures of 1981–​82, in fact, Foucault claimed that the impossibility of bringing the ancient philosophical ethos to life again couldn’t be seen as a reason for renouncing the acknowledgement of its importance for us:  despite the difficulties related to this project, the constitution of an ethic of the self is “an urgent, fundamental, and politically indispensable task, if it is true after all that there is no first or final point of resistance to political power other than in the relationship one has to oneself”.45 5

Nussbaum’s Theory of Justice –​or, What Foucault’s Philosophy Lacks

It is true that an ethic of the self based on the cynic model cannot be reconstructed and brought back to life in our contemporary society as well as it is problematic to assume that the militantism of the artist constitutes a form of resistance that could hint at alternative modes of self-​fashioning –​a path, the latter, that Foucault deliberately explored also in a text of 1984 devoted to the question of the Enlightenment, where, emphasizing how Baudelaire’s conception of the artist helps us to understand the genesis of modern subjectivity, he affirms that modern man “is not the man who goes off to discover himself, his secrets and his hidden truth; he is the man who tries to invent himself. This modernity […] compels him to face the task of producing himself”.46 Nevertheless, the task Foucault formulated by analyzing the ancient ethos based on parrhesia must be recognized as an issue that cannot be set apart or erased with a simple gesture, as if this issue were not to concern us any more. But the sense of unease that might affect the reader of Foucault’s last Lectures on ancient philosophy does not concern the suggestion that we should question what we 44 45 46

Foucault (2011), 315. Foucault (2005), 252. Foucault (1997b), 312.

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are, or, better, how we have become what we are as subjects, but concerns rather the philosophical presuppositions that support this suggestion. So, coming back from the journey through Greece Foucault has invited us to make, even if we can barely expect that modern individuals shape their subjectivity according to the ancient ethos, we are not like an empty-​handed Anacharsis: we have learnt that only the construction of a new form of subjectivity based on the care of the self constitutes an essential presupposition for any collective practice of freedom. Yet, the young Anacharsis, into whom we turned ourselves for a moment, must either way acknowledge that the outcome of the whole journey is not satisfying. Almost unavoidably, in fact, the following question must be asked: is Foucault suggesting that any collective action that must be undertaken in order to improve individual freedom occurs only as a result of specific changes that affect the individual way of conduct and the personal life-​style? If the answer were positive (and I think that no other answer is possible), then the political significance of his position would be nothing more than an attempt to bring again to life the old liberal stance  –​or, better, the republican stance, within which the willingness not to be governed arbitrarily has played a stronger role than within the liberal tradition.47 In a nutshell, what Foucault proposes is a scenario where well-​educated individuals, possessing enough time to take care of themselves, are supposed to possess, above all, the insight that the care of the self must generate a behavior that constitutes per se a challenge to the accepted rules governing the society they live in. Whether the claim that a social and political change stemming from the efforts done by some progressive individuals can be sustained with enough evidence is a question I prefer to leave aside, being it a question that pertains the domain of sociology. After all, the objection that must be raised regarding the philosophical foundations of Foucault’s argument is serious enough. The objection I want to formulate is not primarily related to the care of the self: the latter can be seen as a form of therapy the subject undergoes for the sake of his/​her own well-​being. Problematic is rather the motivation that is required to sustain the willingness to confer to one’s own work on self a political significance. This motivation can only stem from a theory of justice, which Foucault’s work lacks completely. As noticed before, Foucault’s position presents some similarities to the liberal one (taken in a very broad sense). A sympathetic affinity with the latter can be traced in the Lectures held in 1978–​79. In these Lectures he reconstructs the genesis of neoliberal governmentality, which constitutes not a development, 47

Pettit (1997).

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446 Leghissa but a radical transformation of the classical liberal stance. Foucault opposes liberalism and neoliberalism in such a way that the judgment about the first is positive, while the second is depicted as a form of government of individual life that leaves a narrower space for individual agency –​not insofar as the neoliberal project gives birth to a totalitarian system, but insofar as individuals are led to act within a preconceived architecture of choice, no matter whether the organization they act within is a public institution or a firm. Nevertheless, the main topic of the Lectures of 1978–​79 was the genesis of modern biopolitics, not the possibility of opposing the liberal stance to the neoliberal governmentality.48 So, in this case as well, the question posed above remains without an answer. To conclude: generally speaking, more than a generic plea for challenging the power rules governing our present society cannot be found in his writings. Hence, from a systematic point of view, in order to complete Foucault’s appeal for the construction of new forms of subjectivity and to make it more persuasive it is necessary to search for a solution elsewhere. A good solution, I  suggest, would consist in taking into consideration Martha Nussbaum’s work.49 The reasons for doing this are threefold. First, Foucault is aware of the fact that freedom “is not defined as a right to be free, but as a capacity for free action”,50 but he never develops this point in a consistent way. On the contrary, Nussbaum’s attempt to complete the liberal conception of freedom is precisely based on a theory of central human capabilities.51 Second, Nussbaum turns her attention to the contribution that comes from the Aristotelian perspective according to the assumption that the latter can better produce the anthropological foundation needed by whatsoever theory of justice52 –​ instead, Foucault’s reconstruction of ancient thought lacks any reference to the Aristotelian tradition. Third, Nussbaum’s analysis of the care of the self, to which she devoted one of her most important work on ancient philosophy, raises very clearly the issue I referred to above, namely how to turn the work on self we are invited to carry on by ancient authors into a conscious politicization of subjective self-​fashioning that can effectively support the need for more individual and collective freedom.53 48 49 50 51 52 53

Foucault (2008). See also Tobias (2005). Foucault (2010), 310. Nussbaum (2001), 404 ff. Nussbaum (1990b). Nussbaum (1996), 484–​510.

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Nussbaum’s theory of central human capabilities offers the opportunity to complete and broaden Rawls’ theory of justice in such a way that it becomes possible to take into consideration the real and concrete functioning of human beings without presupposing any essentialist conception of human nature. Nussbaum’s approach starts from the way in which men and women build their own relationship to themselves and to other members of our species (without neglecting members of other species); this approach aims at providing the conceptual tools a reasonable individual needs in order to judge whether other individuals are involved in a social or political context that might prevent them from conducting a good life. Furthermore, Nussbaum is also aware of the fact that individuals need to be educated in order to know what a good life is, how it looks like, to which extent it is reasonable to make a conscious effort in order to achieve it. She has devoted a noteworthy effort to better articulate the question of how to improve both the subjective perception of one’s condition and the capability to imagine the steps one has to undertake in order to pursuit one’s happiness. The Aristotelian premise of Nussbaum’s discourse comes to light with great evidence here: since the domain of practical reason cannot be managed thanks to the body of knowledge that has the form of the episteme, we need a conception of rational choice that leaves room for the emotions and the imagination. The latter form, so to speak, what a rational individual needs in order to value the real constituents of the good life being conscious of the fact that these constituents cannot be measured in a way that we could define as “scientific”.54 Hence the necessity to improve our acquaintance with the classics: both confronting the experience of life we find in classical literary works with the one that is proper to us as inhabitants of the modern era and learning to appreciate the universal value of human efforts toward self-​realization as represented in Greek tragedies or in works belonging to other literary traditions constitute that what one needs in order to cultivate one’s own imagination; and this exercise of imagining human experience in its more general and universal form sharpen our moral judgment, so that it becomes possible to evaluate the bad or good conditions that affect the life of other individuals, even when they are far from being members of the close and small community we belong to. What is at stake here, in other words, is the consciousness that societies shape the judgments that form the cognitive content of compassion. Starting from this consciousness, it becomes important to contrast those narratives that prevent individuals both from imagining the injustice suffered by 54

See in particular Nussbaum (1990), 54–​105.

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448 Leghissa others and from longing for a world where the most brutal forms of injustice have no place anymore. Precisely in this context the acquaintance with the classical literature allows for a work on self that can lead to a radical transformation of individual subjectivity. In a certain way, this work on self is not essentially different from the work on self discussed in Foucault’s last Lectures on parrhesia and epimeleia heautou. But there are important differences as well. Nussbaum’s discourse about the ethical and political significance of the work on self that might originate from a certain acquaintance with the classics presupposes more a well performing public school system, to which everybody has access, than the good will shared by a small elite that feel unease with the prevailing social order and wish therefore they were able to make clear that a different world is possible simply by embodying a different mode of being. Yet, what really matters for the purpose I pursue here is the fact that Nussbaum’s conception of the way in which the use of the classics might affect our contemporaneity rests on a theory of justice that is both self-​consistent and able to stand in front of an assembly where individuals belonging to different cultural traditions sit together in order to prove its cross-​cultural significance.55 Precisely because she is willing to follow Pericles’ suggestion according to which the love of artistic excellence is deeply connected “with the production of a certain sort of independent and passionate citizenry”,56 Nussbaum seems to be perfectly aware of the fact that justice is a matter of reason as well. Our present task consists thus in embedding the good reasons for living in a society based on principles of justice in a shared narrative that can affect both the imagination and the emotions. A task that we can better commit ourselves to, I think, if we are ready to combine Foucault’s and Nussbaum’s philosophical perspectives –​despite the unwritten call coming from the academia for a clear and good-​mannered separation of scientific domains and philosophical traditions.

Bibliography

Association pour le Centre Michel Foucault (ed.) (1989) Michel Foucault philosophe: rencontre internationale, Paris 9, 10, 11 janvier 1988. Paris: Seuil. Boyle, B. (2012) “Foucault Among the Classicists, Again,” Foucault Studies 13: 138–​156.

55 56

Nussbaum (2006), 9–​95 and 224–​324. Nussbaum (2001), 433.

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Bernini, L. (ed.) (2011) Michel Foucault, gli antichi e moderni. Parrhesia, Aufklärung, ontologia dell’attualità. Pisa: ets. Cremonesi, L. (2008) Michel Foucault e il mondo antico: spunti per una critica dell’attualità. Pisa: ets. Davidson, A.I. (2003) “Ethics as ascetics: Foucault, the history of ethics, and ancient thought,” in Gutting (ed.) (2003), 115–​140. Dean, M. (1999) Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: sage. Detel, W. (2005) Foucault and Classical Antiquity. Cambridge-​New  York:  Cambridge University Press. Detienne, M. (1996) The masters of truth in Archaic Greece. New York: Zone Books. Donini, P. (1982) Le scuole, l’anima, l’impero: la filosofia antica da Antioco a Plotino. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier. Douglass, R.B., Mara, G.M., and Richardson, S. (ed.) (1990) Liberalism and the Good. New York-​London: Routledge. Dreyfus, H.L. and Rabinow, P. (1983) Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1972a) “The discurse on language,” in Foucault (1972), 215–​237. Foucault, M. (1983) “The subject and power,” in Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983), 208–​226. Foucault, M. (1984) The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1986) The Care of the Self. Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1988) Politics Philosophy Culture. Interviews and Other Writings 1977–​1984, ed. L.D. Kritzman. New York-​London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1988a) “An Aesthetics of Existence,” in Foucault, M. (1988), 47–​53. Foucault, M. (1990) The Use of Pleasure. Volume 2 of The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1997) Ethics. Subjectivity and Truth, ed. P. Rabinow (The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–​1984, volume one). New York: The New Press. Foucault, M. (1997a) “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in Foucault (1997), 281–​301. Foucault, M. (1997b) “What is Enlightenment?” in Foucault (1997), 303–​319. Foucault, M. (1998) Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. J.D. Faubion (The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–​1984, volume two). New York: The New Press. Foucault, M. (1998b) “Structuralism and Post-​ structuralism,” in Foucault (1998), 433–​458. Foucault, M. (2001) Dits et écrits II, 1976–​1988. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2001a) “Entretien avec Michel Foucault,” in Foucault (2001), 860–​914. Foucault, M. (2001b) “Qu’est-​ce que les Lumières?” in Foucault (2001), 1498–​1507. Foucault, M. (2001c) “Le retour de la morale,” in Foucault (2001), 1515–​1526.

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450 Leghissa Foucault, M. (2005) The Hermeneutics of the Subject, ed. F. Gros. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–​79, ed. M. Senellart. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, F. (2010) The Government of Self and Others. Lectures at the Collège de France 1982–​1983, ed. F. Gros. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, F. (2011) The Courage of the Truth (The Government of Self and Others II). Lectures at the Collège de France 1983–​1984, ed. F. Gros. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, F. (2014) On the Government of the Living. Lectures at the Collège de France 1979–​1980, ed. M. Senellart and F. Gros. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gernet, L. (1968) Anthropologie de la Grèce antique. Paris: Maspéro. Gutting, G. (ed.) (2003) The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge-​ New York: Cambridge University Press. Gros, F. and C. Lévy, C. (ed.) (2003) Foucault et la philosophie antique. Paris: Kimè. Hadot, P. (1989) “Reflexions sur la notion de ‘culture de soi’,” in Association pour le Centre Michel Foucault (1989), 261–​270. Leghissa, G. (2007) Incorporare l’antico. Filologia classica e invenzione della modernità. Milan: Mimesis. Lorenzini, D., Revel, A. and Sforzini, A. (ed.) (2013) Michel Foucault: éthique et verité. 1980–​1984. Paris: Vrin. McGushin, E.F. (2007) Foucault’s Askesis. An Introduction to the Philosophical Life. Evanston (Ill.): Northwestern University Press. Montanari, M. (2009) Hadot e Foucault nello specchio dei Greci. La filosofia antica come esercizio di trasformazione. Milan: Mimesis. Nussbaum, M. (1990) Love’s Knowledge. Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford-​ New York: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (1990b) “Aristotelian Social Democracy”, in Douglass, Mara and Richardson (eds) (1990), 203–​252. Nussbaum, M. (1996) The Therapy of Desire. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2001) Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge-​ New York: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2006) Frontiers of Justice. Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge (MA)-​London: Harvard University Press. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elite in democratic Athens: rhetoric, ideology and the power of the people. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pettit, P. (1997) Republicanism. A  theory of freedom and government. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tobias, S. (2005) “Foucault on Freedom and Capabilities,” Theory Culture and Society 22: 65–​85. Vernant, J.-​P. (1983) Myth and Thought among the Greeks. London: Routledge.

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pa rt 4 Athenian Democracy and Contemporary Political Science

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­c hapter 14

Classical Athens as an Epistemic Democracy Josiah Ober 1

Introduction: Theories of Epistemic Democracy1

Contemporary democratic theory has many mansions:  theories of competitive, pluralistic, and deliberative democracy have generated large literatures.2 Among more recent developments is “epistemic democracy,” which focuses on the quality of the decisions made by democratic groups. The core premise of theories of epistemic democracy is that the legitimacy of democracy as a system of governance ought to be predicated on the results of decision-​making, and not only the procedural rules and practices. How good or bad decisions are ought to be testable against some independent criterion of value. Thus, even if a given decision is procedurally impeccable by democratic standards (e.g. it was predicated on strict standards of equality of influence among decision-​makers and those affected by the decision), if the decision itself was substantively bad, the epistemic democrat will say that something has gone seriously wrong. Decisions may be judged bad either by a deontological moral standard (e.g. the decision resulted in the violation of certain persons’ rights), or by a practical efficacy standard (e.g. the decision resulted in outcomes that were detrimental to welfare or security interests common to residents of the relevant community). If democratic decisions are to be substantively good, decision-​making processes must aggregate privately-​held useful knowledge as well as individual preferences or interests. In brief, a democracy may be said to be “epistemic” to the degree to which it employs collective wisdom to make good policy.3 1 This article originally appeared as “Epistemic democracy in classical Athens: Sophistication, diversity, and innovation,”, in Elster and Landemore (eds) (2012), 118–​47. Sections 2–​5 of this chapter are adapted from Ober 2008a, especially ­chapter 4. 2 Competitive: Schumpeter (1947); pluralistic: Dahl (1971); deliberative: Cohen (1996). 3 The term epistemic democracy was coined by Cohen (1986). Survey of current work: Landemore and Elster (2012). Moral criteria: Estlund (2008). Practical efficacy: Landemore (2012); Page (2007). On epistemic features of democracy, see E.  Anderson (2006); Ober 2008a, ­chapter 1. Estlund (2008), esp. 232: “it is very natural and plausible to think that if democracy has any epistemic value it is partly to do with the sharing of diverse perspectives”. Page (2007) emphasizes both the epistemic potential and the problems associated with socially diverse groups of decision-​makers. Of course, even successful democracies experience epistemic

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_016

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454 Ober Given the implausibility of the claim that every democratic collectivity always makes good decisions, among the central questions that theorists of epistemic democracy must answer is whether a democratic collectivity can ever make good decisions (as good or better than might be made by a benevolent dictator or junta), and if so, under what conditions. Studying the epistemic efficacy of democratic decision-​making at the level of the state has proved difficult, because modern democratic states are characterized by complex systems of representation and balance of institutional powers, and because “common interest” is difficult to define under the conditions of modern political pluralism. Whereas political theorists are, for obvious reasons, concerned with democracy at the state level, much of the work on efficacious democratic decision-​making by theorists of epistemic democracy has focused on field studies of relatively small groups, or on mathematical models of decisions by hypothetical groups. These approaches are enlightening, but also limited, insofar as political theory is concerned with democracy as a form of self-​governance for large numbers of persons in autonomous states. Small groups have special features, including mutual monitoring-​based solutions to collective action problems, which limits the applicability of results to large groups. Modeling necessarily abstracts from some relevant features of real human societies. Classical Athens provides epistemic democrats concerned with practical efficacy with an important long-​term case study in state-​level decision-​making. Although the Athenian citizen body was obviously much smaller than the citizenry of the great majority of modern democratic states, it was nonetheless large enough to generate standard collective action problems (free-​riding, tragedy of the commons). While Athens is not a “pure” example of direct democracy, the primary decision-​making body was the citizenry gathered in assembly, and the decisions of that body were highly consequential. The democratic Athenian state lasted long enough to produce a very substantial record of successful and failed policies. The historical record of Athens is full enough for the pre-​and post-​democratic eras to allow meaningful longitudinal comparisons. And finally, as one of over 1000 city-​states in an extensive ecology of city-​states with a range of regime types, the performance over time of democratic Athens can be compared to peer polities with non-​democratic forms of government. Classical Athens is, in brief, a uniquely rich and valuable historical case by which the competing claims of democratic theorists interested in the potential and limits of collective wisdom may be put to the test.

failures; an epistemic democracy ought to be able to learn from its failures and to design institutions that make similar failures less likely in the future; see below.

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In work done in collaboration with Lu Hong, Scott Page, an economist and political scientist at the University of Michigan, has developed an intuitively plausible and mathematically sophisticated formal model of collective wisdom, in the sense of a group’s capacity accurately to predict or to characterize an outcome. The result is produced by two factors: the individual sophistication of participants and the diversity of their perspectives: more sophistication and more diversity yield better predictions and characterizations of outcomes. Although policy-​making involves more than accuracy in prediction and characterization of outcomes, it certainly does prominently involve those two features. Democratic Athens’ success, relative to pre-​and post-​democratic periods of Athenian history, and relative to city-​state rivals, can, at least in part, be explained by Page’s two factors of sophistication and diversity.4 2

A Successful Epistemic Democracy

Democratic Athens depended directly and self-​consciously on actively deploying the epistemic resources of its citizenry to hold its place in a highly competitive multi-​state environment. While the Athenian case cannot, in and of itself, prove the general validity of Hong and Page’s model, it may offer some insight into how, in the real world, increased sophistication and sustained diversity of many participants in a decision process produces positive results (i.e. good policy) over time. To be successful, real world epistemic democracies (like other governments) must indeed accurately predict and characterize outcomes. But they must also (inter alia) create institutions for setting agendas and implementing policy. The Athenian case suggests that, along with outcome prediction and characterization, an enhanced capacity for institutional innovation in the face of environmental change is a central feature of epistemic democracies. The capacity for institutional innovation is promoted by growing sophistication and sustained diversity of participants, while sophistication and diversity are, in turn, promoted by well-​designed institutions. In Athens, collective wisdom produced useful knowledge –​a matrix of experience, expertise, and information that in turn often (although not invariably) yielded good (if imperfect) solutions to complex problems. Knowledge useful to collectivities such as Athens is possessed by individuals, but it is also located in social networks, and reproduced by institutionalized processes.5 4 Hong and Page (2012). 5 The terms “data,” “information,” and “knowledge” are variously defined by organizational theorists. Davenport and Prusak (1998), 1–​6, suggest that data are facts about events, information

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456 Ober Athens outperformed its city-​state rivals at least in part because of its citizens’ superior capacity to produce new solutions to the ever-​changing menu of challenges confronted by the Greek city-​states. Athens beat its rivals by more effectively aggregating, aligning, and codifying the vast store of social and technical knowledge distributed across its large, diverse, and increasingly sophisticated population.6 Based on a variety of statistical measures of comparative city-​state performance across the classical era (ca. 500–​325 bce), Athens was preeminent among the 1000+ Greek city-​states. Moreover, Athenian state capacity (measured as a composite of military activity, public building, and domestic programs) was strongly and positively correlated with the development of Athenian democracy (measured as a composite of the percentage of adult males holding full participation rights, the power of the demos to effect policy, and the authority of law). Athenian state capacity was considerably lower both before and after the democratic era. In comparative terms, by various measures, Athens in the later fourth century bce seems comparable in its level of economic development to Holland and England of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries –​that is, to the two most advanced early modern European economies.7 With the exception of two brief oligarchic interludes, arising at least in part from the democracy’s epistemic failures (411/​10 and 404 bce), classical Athens was governed “by the people” –​participation was widespread across is data that have been given relevance and purpose, and knowledge is a matrix of experience, values, insight, and contextual information which allows for the incorporation of new experiences and information. See also Dixon (2000), 13; Brown and Duguid (2000), 119–​202. Expertise, as an unusually high level of mastery of a particular domain of endeavor: Ericsson (1999). 6 For a detailed description of Athenian democracy, its history and institutions, see Hansen (1999). Athens is a good case study because its documented history includes pre-​and post-​ democratic eras, as well as a long (185 year) period of democratic self-​government. Athenian history can readily be subdivided into multiple phases, allowing us to assess democracy’s origins, recovery, persistence, and demise. The evidence base is rich: Substantial numbers of government documents (in the form of inscriptions) enable us to trace institutional changes. A large corpus of public speeches allows analysis of democratic ideology. Athenian democratic government was subjected to probing critical-​theoretical scrutiny by prominent contemporary intellectuals (e.g. Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle). 7 Comparative Athenian performance: Ober 2008a, c­ hapter 2; the statistical measures of Athenian success serve to confirm the communis opinio of specialists in ancient Greek history. Athens stood out in a high-​performing environment: When compared to other premodern societies, the world of the Greek city-​states was densely populated, highly urbanized, and characterized by high rates of economic growth: Ober (2010). Comparison with early modern England and Holland: Ober (2015), c­ hapter 4.

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a relatively large (ca. 30,000 adult native males) citizen body. Levels of active participation became more egalitarian over time: higher percentages of poorer and non-​urban citizens took part in state governance in the fourth century bce than in the fifth. Participation promoted social learning (mastery of institutions and political culture) across a citizenship that was socially diverse in terms of wealth, geography, and occupation (if not in religion, language, ethnicity, or gender). Yet Athens avoided the ossification and institutional stagnation that can accompany deep social learning. The democracy learned from its epistemic failures; new institutions were designed and implemented in the aftermath of the late fifth-​century crises. Athens’ rate of institutional innovation remained high throughout the democratic era, as attested by ancient opinion and the historical record.8 The conjunction of a highly participatory democracy with outstanding competitive success is surprising, in light of claims by social and organizational theorists that no truly participatory democratic organization can survive in a competitive environment.9 Athenian success cannot be explained by denying the reality of democracy through positing the existence of a cryptic ruling elite. Individual orators and generals certainly played important leadership roles –​Pericles provides a paradigm case, although he was hardly unique. Leaders were drawn from elites of education and wealth, but elite individuals gained and kept precarious leadership positions based on their proven ability to secure public goods; there was no entrenched “elite ruling class.” Athens’ distributed authority structure and lack of formal patronage structures denied organized groups of elites the usual mechanisms of political domination. It was the reality of the demos’ control of public affairs that drew the critical attention of Greek political theorists. Democratic ideology, promoted by public discourse, and the emergence of a vibrant culture of political dissent (subjects of my earlier work on Athens) were essential to the system’s functioning, but these factors, in and of themselves, are inadequate to explain why or how Athens did so well in such an intensely competitive environment.10

8 9 10

More egalitarian participation in fourth than in fifth century: Taylor (2007), Taylor (2008) and below. Danger of ossification:  Levitt and March (1988). Athenian diversity:  Ober (2005), ­chapter 4. Influential arguments that democracy is not sustainable or uncompetitive over time against authoritarian rivals include Michels (1962 [1911]) and Williamson (1975), Williamson (1985). The Athenian political elite: Hansen (1983), Hansen (1984); not a ruling elite: Ober (1989). Lack of formal patronage: Millett (1989); democratic ideology: Ober (1989); dissent: Ober (1998).

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458 Ober Aristotle points to an epistemic explanation for “unexpected” democratic success in an important passage in the Politics, in which he discusses conditions under which the “wisdom of the many” may outdo individual expertise. His point is that a “multitude [plethos] is like a single person, yet many-​footed and many-​handed and possessing many sense-​capacities [aistheseis]”. With its diverse perspectives, such a multitude may, under the right conditions, judge better than any individual: “for some judge a particular aspect [of the matter], while all of them judge the whole” (Arist. Pol. 3.11, 1281a40-​b10, trans. C. Lord, adapted).11 But if we are to understand the basis of Athens’ success, we need to go beyond Aristotle’s compressed account of collective wisdom, to focus on how institutional design promoted the aggregation of the useful knowledge possessed by many diverse individuals, the alignment of people’s effort based on their common knowledge, and the codification of rules that expanded access to institutions and increased the reliability and procedural fairness of legal judgments.12 This chapter focuses on the aggregation of knowledge, which is distinct from the aggregation of preferences, interests, opinions, or data. Knowledge aggregation, in the sense in which I am using it here, means bringing together, in a single “solution space,” a diverse array of useful information and expertise. Suppose, for example, that a state confronts an enemy attack by sea. Organizing an appropriate defense requires mobilizing expertise and accurate information in the domains of (inter alia) military strategy, ship-​building, public finance, and manpower availability. The totality of the relevant knowledge necessary to address a complex problem (e.g. naval defense policy) is unlikely to be possessed by any one individual. Of course, only certain kinds of social and technical knowledge will be useful for solving a given problem. Much of the knowledge possessed by residents of the state is strictly irrelevant to naval defense; Plato’s Socrates (Protagoras 319b-​c) claims that when the subject before the citizen Assembly was ship building, the “wise Athenians” refused to listen to anyone lacking expertise in naval architecture.13 11

12

13

Waldron (1995) underlines the importance of this passage and emphasizes its deliberative character. See Ober (1998), 319–​24, 2008a (110–​114), for discussion and bibliography. Estlund (2008), c­ hapter  12 contrasts Condorcet’s theorem (and variations thereof) to Aristotle’s diverse-​perspectives approach. Ober 2008a devotes individual chapters to the epistemic processes of knowledge aggregation (4), alignment (5), and codification (6), arguing that it is the integration of these three processes, over time, that produced the result of superior Athenian performance. On Arist. Pol. 3.11, see Ober (2013), with literature cited. Fleck and Hanssen (2012) usefully focus on another form of democratic knowledge, notably produced in Athenian law-​courts: common knowledge among the citizenry that the

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No two problems faced by a state will be exactly alike (next year, the big problem may be a flood), and so there is a constant demand for innovative solutions: last year’s armada is not the answer if this year we need to rebuild levies. Yet each problem is likely to present certain features that are relevantly similar to the features of other problems (some of the manpower and finance issues will cross over from naval defense to flood relief), and so there is a constant demand for social learning and the cross-​appropriation of expertise between domains.14 If the premises laid out in the previous paragraphs are correct, then (1) A better solution will emerge if (a) the specialized knowledge possessed by multiple sophisticated individuals is brought into the solution space, (b) irrelevant information and expertise is excluded from that space, and (c) each relevant knowledge input is given its appropriate weight in the final policy. (2) No fixed and limited set of experts will possess the range of knowledge necessary for addressing the multiplicity of problems that will confront a state (or other organizations) over time. (3) Adapting the aggregated knowledge relevant in one solution space to different but relevantly similar problems in another space will speed the process of innovating new solutions. Yet in order for these results to be achieved, certain conditions must pertain (section 3). This chapter argues that the constitutional reform that inaugurated democracy at Athens (in or shortly after 508/​7 bce) incorporated (consciously or not) design features that promoted individual sophistication and the aggregation of diverse perspectives (section 4). It focuses on an institution that was a key part of the new regime: the Council of 500 (sections 5 and 6). The deliberative Council of 500 played a prominent role in agenda-​setting, day-​to-​day administration, policy implementation, and certain legal matters. The Council employed techniques of lottery, rotation, and representative sampling to bring together groups of geographically and socially diverse decision-​makers –​persons with very different life experiences and knowledge-​sets. The experience of service on the Council tended to increase the political sophistication of individual citizens:  they became more expert in the conduct of public affairs. The institutional rules by which the Council was selected and governed gave each individual Councilor good reasons (in the form of strong social incentives) to share his knowledge with his fellows, and to attend in turn to what they knew, when deliberating in advance of making highly consequential public decisions.

14

incentives of individuals with various forms of expertise are well aligned with the interests of the mass of ordinary citizens. Cross appropriation: Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus (1997).

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460 Ober 3

Conditions for Knowledge Aggregation

Knowledge aggregation is grounded in joint action and complicated by political scale and social diversity. The information relevant to a given outcome, along with the social and technical knowledge necessary for processing it, is lodged in the minds of a great many individuals from many walks of life. Collecting knowledge in a large (beyond face-​to-​face) participatory democracy demands communication among people who are, at least in the first instance, strangers to one another. Communication among strangers requires overcoming a basic collective action problem: Why should a rational individual freely communicate potentially valuable information to someone who might prove to be a free rider? If the problem of knowledge aggregation is to be solved, individuals possessing potentially useful information must have some reason for sharing it. Moreover they must have access to appropriate communications technology –​a low-​cost means for bringing forward what they know and making it available to the community. The community, for its part must employ a sorting method, a means of discriminating between information that is more and less useful in any given decision-​making context.15 Because knowledge has exchange value it can profitably be hoarded under conditions of scarcity. Unique information and technical expertise may, for example, take the form of proprietary trade secrets that are valuable only so long as those in the know are few (e.g. the secret formula for Coca Cola). Ancient examples of proprietary knowledge might include sources of raw materials, trading partners, weather patterns, craft techniques, even military formations and tactics (in the fourth century bce, there was a ready “international market” for Greek mercenary soldiers and generals). In other cases (for example open source computer software –​or, in antiquity, improved rowing techniques for propelling many-​oared warships), information gains in value when it is widely known and used. In either case, if a productive epistemic equilibrium is to be achieved, incentives for communicating useful information must somehow correspond to the value of what is shared.16 Incentives need not be material. An implied contract between the knowing agent and those who desire access to her knowledge may be built into the common culture. Information sharing may be promoted by established 15 16

Interpretive problems introduced by scale and diversity:  Bratman (1999). Knowledge lodged in many minds: Hayek (1945). Collective action problems: Olson (1965). Trade secrets:  Davenport and Prusak (1998), 16–​17. Incentives as essential for effective knowledge sharing: Sunstein (2006), 69–​70, 201, 203–​5. Open source software and related forms of non-​market productivity: Benkler (2006).

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relationships of reciprocity in an “economy of esteem.”17 In a competitive culture, like that of ancient Greece, in which the publicly expressed esteem of others was an important part of individual utility, some incentives for knowledge communication could be cast in the form of public honors for winning victories in state-​sponsored “knowledge aggregation contests” –​that is, competitions that could only be won by those willing to share what they know and capable of persuading others to do likewise. The general point is that public incentives for knowledge sharing must be valuable because knowledge is recognized as having value to individuals and groups, as well as to the community as a whole. The first principle of institutional design for an organization attempting to solve epistemic collective action problems should be providing incentives to knowledgeable individuals such that they will choose to share what they know.18 Next, the communication technology  –​the means available to agents for communicating useful knowledge –​should be as nearly costless (i.e. easy to use and ready to hand) as possible because the greater the costs associated with the act of communicating, the higher the incentives must be for doing so. Reducing the cost of public communications means lowering the cost to individuals of communicating what they know by compensating them for the burdens they incur in moving information to the point in an organization at which it will do some good. Finally, there must be an epistemic sorting device, a means for distinguishing not only truth from falsity, but what sorts of expertise and what information may (in any given context) actually prove useful. If those involved in decision-​making are incapable of weeding out false or irrelevant information and disregarding inappropriate expert knowledge, they will be unable to produce good policy. The sorting mechanisms must be context sensitive:  Some technical knowledge that is of great value to a national assembly deliberating on matters of foreign policy will be useless to a village assembly discussing lease arrangements for communally-​owned land. In the participatory Athenian context, social knowledge served as a sorting device. Experienced citizens

17 18

Brennan and Pettit (2004). On the vocabulary of “honor-​loving” and Athenian public practices associated with it, see Whitehead (1983), 1993. Non-​material incentives for knowledge-​sharing: Davenport and Prusak (1998), 22–​51 (internal “knowledge markets”); Osterloh and Frey (2000). Walker 2004 discusses modern “word of mouth” marketing techniques, suggesting that for at least some people the experience of sharing some kinds of information (in this case about new products) with others is valued in itself, and that material incentives are relatively less important. Similarly: Dixon (2000), 6–​7.

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462 Ober learned habits of discrimination, of recognizing who to attend to and whose opinion to trust in what context. Sections 5 and 6, below, seek to specify how. The conjoined imperatives of incentives, low communication costs, and sorting mean that designing an aggregation process is inherently difficult. The difficulty increases with the complexity of what must be decided, the volume and diversity of the information necessary for decision-​making, and the multiplication of kinds of expert knowledge that must be brought to bear. Knowledge collection becomes more complicated as organizations grow larger and more diverse. Yet the costs to an organization of failing to collect and attend to the right kind of information before making major policy choices can be extraordinarily high, as the Athenians were reminded, for example, in the course of the catastrophic Sicilian expedition (415–​413 bce) –​a series of events that, if we are to trust the account of Thucydides, resulted in large part from an epistemic failure, and certainly contributed substantially to the crisis of the late fifth century.19 One solution to the problem of collecting knowledge is routinization, capturing the organization’s past experience by archiving data, establishing standard protocols, and socializing members into “the ways we do things around here.” Routinization can build expertise and thereby make work processes more efficient, and thus more productive. Yet, over-​socialization in established routines becomes counterproductive when circumstances change. Making effective use of archived data is difficult and an over-​emphasis on routines can lead to process ossification and a decline of productive capacity. In order for an organization to remain competitive in the long run and under new conditions, it must be able to innovate: must break with established routines and draw upon information sources outside the standard banks of data. Innovation depends on tapping latent knowledge held by people who have not been fully socialized into routine patterns of behavior. This in turn means that organizations in competitive and fast-​changing environments will pay a heavy price if they fail to maintain a diversity of experience, expertise, and social knowledge among their membership.20 Athenian democratic institutions and practices, when viewed in their social context, can be understood as a kind of machine whose design facilitated 19 20

Thucydides discusses the assembly debate leading to the launching of the ultimately catastrophic Sicilian Expedition in book 6. On epistemic failures in the debate, see further Ober (1998), 104–​20; Ober and Perry (2014). Difficulty of making effective use of archived data: Brown and Duguid (1991); Brown and Duguid (2000). Routinization versus innovation in organization theory: Levitt and March (1988).

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aggregating useful knowledge and produced benefits of routinization while maintaining a capacity for innovation.21 The machine of Athenian government was fueled by incentives, oiled by low communication costs and efficient means of information transfer, and regulated by formal and informal sanctions. The machine served to build, over time, special kinds of social knowledge among a large segment of the Athenian population: an increased capacity to discriminate among sources of expertise and information, and to cross–​appropriate relevant knowledge from one domain of application (e.g. a deliberative council) to another (e.g. a court of law). Those heightened capacities may be understood as a sort of political sophistication or expertise, an expertise in the operations of self-​government. This chapter argues that the Athenian machine performed better over time for the reasons specified in Page’s formal model: More citizens became more sophisticated while preserving diversity of perspectives; growth in sophistication did not entail homogenization of perspectives. As a result, learning and innovation were simultaneously supported, and Athens thrived, over time, in its competitive environment. In order to understand how the machine came into existence, we need to attend to the origins of Athenian democracy in the late sixth century bce: the constitutional reforms associated with Cleisthenes that were enacted, by the Athenian demos, in the aftermath of the Athenian Revolution. 4

Cleisthenes’ Reforms: Demes and Tribes as Social Networks

Consider a typical village (deme) of Athens, near the end the sixth century bce, just before the Athenian Revolution of 508 and the institution of the democratic political order.22 Prasiai was a settlement on the east-​central coast of Attica. Farming, supplemented with some fishing and local trade, formed the economic base. Along with some slaves and perhaps a few resident aliens, the total free population of Prasieis was probably in the range of 700 persons. Of these, perhaps 180–​200 were adult native males –​citizens of Athens who had enjoyed limited privileges in regard to participation and certain legal immunities since the reforms of Solon in 594 bce.23 21 22 23

Machine metaphor: Elster (2012). The revolution and the constitutional reforms: see note 17, below. Osborne (1990) answers the question “what is a deme and why does it matter?” See further, below. On Prasiai see Vanderpool, McCredie and Steinberg (1962); Whitehead (1986), index s.v.; Camp (2001), 281.

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464 Ober After the democratic revolution of 508 the adult male Athenian residents of Prasiai, as in the other villages and urban neighborhoods of Athens, were full citizens with extensive participation rights in the central institutions of polis government. They had the opportunity to meet periodically in a local village assembly in order to vote on admitting new citizens and to decide on various matters of local concern. By the late sixth century, many of the families of the village had lived there for generations. A century and a half later, by the middle of the fourth century, a number of Prasieis had moved away, to the city or elsewhere in Athenian territory. Yet by Athenian constitutional law they maintained membership in their ancestral deme and many of them still attended deme meetings.24 As a result of their long history of steady interaction –​social, economic, and religious if not yet extensively political –​the men of late sixth-​century Prasiai knew a lot about each other: By comparative reference to other small and relatively egalitarian pre-​modern rural communities, we can assume that many of the ties between adult male citizens of Prasiai were strong, in the sense that the term is used by modern theorists of social networks. That is to say, the local social network by which the Prasieis were connected to one another was based on regular face-​to-​face interaction and featured a good deal of overlap and redundancy. In a strong-​tie network, an individual’s friends are also one another’s friends. As a result of this strong-​tie linked network of social relationships, the level of mutual social knowledge in Prasiai was high: People for the most part knew, for example, who was technically skilled in various domains, who could be counted upon and in what circumstances, whose advice was valuable on what topics. Social norms of reciprocity and propriety were clear and dictated who shared what sort of information with which others and under what circumstances. Since network ties were strong both in the ordinary sense of the word (i.e. dependable), and in the network-​theory sense that a person’s friends were friends with one another, social norms were correspondingly strong. Commitments made in this context were credible because people knew a lot about each other’s business and when necessary free-​riders were sanctioned. The environment was “safe” in that cooperation was socially mandatory and defection was difficult. The key thing, from the point of view of organizational performance, is that small-​scale networks based primarily on strong ties are very good at distributing information internally, but they are poor conduits for

24

Deme life and diachronic history of residence patterns in rural Attica: Osborne (1985), Osborne (1987); Whitehead (1986); Jones (1999).

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importing or disseminating useful knowledge outside the local network itself. As a result of their inherently small scale and lack of diversity, closed strong-​ tie networks tend to be relatively unproductive. The problem is a lack of weak “bridging ties”. A weak tie is defined as a friendship (which may be close: weak ties need not be superficial relationships) between two individuals whose friends are not one another’s friends. In a classic article the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter demonstrated that small-​scale networks based on strong ties between individuals promote intensive interaction but do not allow for extensive bridging from one network to another. In the limit case, in which each of my friends is also each other’s friend, there may be no space for bridging at all –​every new tie I form must necessarily be a tie shared by all of my existing friends. There is, consequently, no feasible way for me to bridge to another strong-​tie network of persons. Strong-​tie networks tend to operate as small and closed cliques. Lacking bridges to other networks, these cliques are resistant to the free flow of information outside the local network. Cliques render large-​scale cooperation more difficult and impede coordination across an extended social network. As a result, it is harder to aggregate knowledge or to align action at larger scales. The gains potentially reaped from extensive cooperation remain limited –​and the problem of scale looms as unsolvable.25 If we imagine late sixth-​century Prasiai as characterized primarily by strong ties (either as a single strong-​tie network or as a collection of such networks), the residents of Prasiai would have had relatively few bridging ties outside their local community; relatively few men from Prasiai (and fewer women) would have had reason to make connections with men from other towns or neighborhoods in Attica. Of course the hypothetical limit case in which everyone’s friends were one another’s friends is unlikely ever to have existed in practice. But to the extent that strong-​tie networks were a general social norm in the many villages scattered across Athenian territory, overall Athenian capacity for effective joint action was likewise limited. Relatively low Athenian state capacity in the areas of military, building, and domestic policy in the pre-​democratic

25

Granovetter (1973). See, further, Granovetter (1983), Granovetter (1985); Krackhardt (1992); Gargiulo and Benassi (2000); Diani and McAdam (2003). Padgett and Ansell (1993) and Gould (1995) are notable examples of how social network theory can be used to explain an actual historical situation. M.T. Hansen (2002) explores knowledge networks in multiunit firms, an organizational situation with striking analogies to Athens and its constituent demes. Chang and Harrington (2005) emphasize the need for persistent diversity within networks and quality of ties for effective network performance based on both innovation and learning.

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466 Ober period is consistent with the hypothesis that sixth-​century Prasiai (and other Athenian villages and neighborhoods) were characterized, in the first instance, by strong-​tie networks.26 It seems very likely that, with a degree of local variation, this hypothetical “Prasiai situation” was replicated many times over in the pre-​democratic era, and throughout much of the territory of Athens. It certainly cannot be true that all sixth-​century Athenians were living out their lives entirely within local strong-​tie networks; we know, for example, that some Athenians were involved in regional and overseas trade so we can assume the existence of some weak ties. But it seems safe to say that something like the Prasiai model sketched above was the seventh-​and sixth-​century Athenian norm –​just as it was the norm throughout most of Greece. That social norm was the central problem faced by Cleisthenes in the months after the Athenian Revolution of 508 bce. At the moment of the revolution, the people of Athens demonstrated a capacity for at least short-​term collective action at a moment of extreme national danger: Confronted by the double specter of foreign domination and a return to the pre-​tyrannical oligarchic rule of a handful of “big men,” many of the ordinary people of Athens gathered in the city and forced the surrender of a Spartan-​led army after a three-​day siege of the Acropolis. They recalled Cleisthenes, who had been exiled by the would-​be oligarchic rulers of the city after having “taken the people as his comrades” and proposing popular institutional changes. Back in Athens and with expectations running high, Cleisthenes took on the task of rapidly creating a new government. Whatever else it accomplished, Cleisthenes’ new order had to be able to put a large and highly motivated military force into the field –​and had to do so very quickly. This was no mean feat, given that in all probability Athens had never had an organized “national army”. Earlier Athenian military actions had depended on ad hoc cooperation among the relevant local big men, but after the revolution, their authority was thrown into doubt.27 Cleisthenes’ comrade-​constituents, the demos that had recalled him from exile, expected a system of government suited to their newly-​expressed identity as participating members of a political community. Oligarchy and 26 27

Purcell (1990) rightly warns against overstating the insularity of archaic Greek villages. The point is that, in comparison with later Athenian history, Prasiai of the late sixth-​ century is likely to be relatively lacking in bridging ties. Athenian revolution: Ober (1996), ­chapter 5; Forsdyke (2005); Pritchard (2005); Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace (2007). No Athenian regular army before 508:  Frost (1984); Siewert (1982).

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tyranny, the familiar modes of archaic Greek political organization, had been discredited by the events leading up to the uprising. Although other Greek poleis experienced political upheavals in the sixth century and there was much experimentation with institutional forms, there was no “off the shelf” organizational model for Cleisthenes to follow. The “Prasiai situation,” the cliquish strong-​tie local networks that characterized ordinary Athenian social life rendered it difficult to achieve the large-​scale joint action necessary to defeat the expected Spartan attack –​and then to sustain a flourishing community so that Athens’ great potential (relative to its rivals) in terms of human and natural resources would be realized in fact.28 If “Prasiai” was the problem, the revolutionary uprising itself pointed to the solution. Cleisthenes had been recalled to Athens after the demos had demonstrated its potential for large-​scale joint action in the three-​day siege of the Acropolis. Athenians clearly now thought of themselves as sharing an Athenian identity, which could potentially come to mean belonging to an extended network that included the entire polis. The design opportunity for Cleisthenes was building on a capacity revealed in a moment of crisis and based on a shared Athenian identity. The challenge was creating institutional conditions for a productive equilibrium that would enable the Athenians to reap the individual and collective benefits of social cooperation. Although Cleisthenes lacked the theoretical apparatus of modern social science, the solution he devised makes sense when it is described in terms of social network theory. Cleisthenes created institutions that employed the principles of incentives for knowledge-​sharing, lowering communication costs, and context-​sensitive information sorting. A  key to the new system (although probably an unintended consequence of institutional design) was the emergence of many bridging weak ties between members of local strong-​tie networks. Granovetter showed that by contrast to strong ties, weak ties (i.e. the case in which my friends are unlikely to be friends with one another) do promote bridging across extended networks. Weak ties break down the claustrophobic environment of cliques by efficiently transferring information across an extended network. Weak ties are therefore an essential complement to strong-​ tie networks for social mobilization and for overall organizational cohesion. Granovetter’s key conclusion was that, “the more local bridges […] in a community and the greater their degree, the more cohesive the community and the more capable of acting in concert”. In the terminology used by ancient 28

Early Greek democracies: Robinson (1997).

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468 Ober commentators on his reforms, Cleisthenes “sought to intermix” (Arist. Ath. Pol. 21.2–​3) the residents of Athenian territory.29 Cleisthenes accomplished this intermixing by inaugurating ten new and blatantly artificial “tribes”. These new tribes would play important roles in the new political system. They would also become key markers of Athenian identity. Each of the ten new tribes was named after an Athenian mythical hero; according to Athenian memory, the ten heroes were chosen by Apollo’s priestess at Delphi from a much more extensive list. Notably, the new tribes would not be territorially contiguous; each tribe drew about a third of its membership from communities located in coastal, inland, and urbanized regions of Athenian territory.30 As a result of Cleisthenes’ tribal reform, Prasiai now became one of the eleven demes –​that is, towns, villages or urban neighborhoods –​constituting the newly created tribe of Pandionis. Prasiai was designated a coastal deme –​ as were three other, nearby villages, each located near the eastern coast of Attica. These four coastal demes of the tribe Pandionis made up the coastal “third” (trittys) of the tribe. They were administratively joined to four inland demes to the west (the inland trittys), and to three city demes: neighborhoods in or near the main city of Athens (the city trittys). The citizens of the eleven demes, grouped in these “thirds”, were now officially the tribe Pandionis. The same organizational principles were used in constituting the other nine tribes. The new system is represented schematically in Figure 14.1. Cleisthenes’ organizational design was at once radical and practical. It was predicated on conjoining long-​standing, familiar “natural” units –​the existing villages and neighborhoods of Athens with new, unfamiliar, and highly artificial units –​the ten new tribes. The tribes and their constituent “thirds” were the institutional bridges by which a stable local identity (“resident of Prasiai”) was linked to a desired national identity (“participatory citizen of Athens”). Tribes would now be the basis for mustering a newly created national army. The core of the army was heavy-​armed infantrymen (hoplites). Roughly speaking, these were the wealthiest one-​third of the Athenian population. In the aftermath of Cleisthenes’ reforms some 60 or 70 men of Prasiai might be expected periodically to march into battle as hoplites along with hoplite-​villagers from nearby towns in the coastal district. This would not be 29

30

Granovetter (1973), quote: 1376. The value of social networks in building “communities of practice, and thus to organizational performance is well attested in business literature:  Wenger (1998); Davenport and Prusak (1998), 37–​39, 65–​67; Brown and Duguid (2000), 142–​43; 157–​59; Benkler (2006). G. Anderson (2003) offers detailed review of Cleisthenes’ program, with bibliography.

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469

Classical Athens as an Epistemic Democracy Polis of Athens Pop. 250k?

Women 30-50k Children 60-100k

Metics 10-30k Slaves ???

Citizens (adult, male) 30-50k

Tribe I Erechtheis

Tribe VII Cecropis

Tribe II Aegeis Tribe IV Leontis

Tribe VIII Hippothontis Tribe V Acamantis

City trittys

Tribe VI Oeneis

Tribe III Pandionis 3-5k citizens

Tribe X Antiochis

Tribe IX Aiantis

Angele

Kydathenaion

Lower Paiania

Kytheros

Coastal trittys 1-1.5k citizens

Upper Paiania

Konthyle

Inland trittys

Oa

Steiria

Probalinthos

Prasiai 200 citizens

Myrrhinous

­f igure 14.1 Four levels of Athenian civic subdivisions: status groups, tribes, trittyes, demes

anything new; we can assume that the big men of the central Athenian coast had been mustering their heavy-​armed supporters against pirates and other local threats for generations. But now the men of Prasiai would also muster alongside members of tribe Pandionis who hailed from far away inland and city demes.31 Likewise, much of Athenian ritual life was now restructured on a tribal basis –​the Prasieis would sacrifice and eat ritual meals, march in parades, and dance in ritual contests with their fellow tribesmen, the Pandioneis. As 31

Tribe/​trittys/​deme based mobilization: Siewart (1982); Christ (2001).

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470 Ober a result, people with very different life-​histories and different sets of social and technical knowledge frequently found themselves in close social proximity to people they never would have otherwise known. The system very literally inter-​mixed Athenians from different geographic/​economic zones in a variety of psychologically powerful activities. Over time, the experience of marching, fighting, sacrificing, eating, and dancing together in this newly inter-​mixed grouping would, according to Cleisthenes’ plan, lead to a strengthened collective identity at the level of the polis. As we shall see, the system also promoted extensive bridge-​building across the existing strong-​ tie networks and these bridges were essential to the process of knowledge aggregation.32 5

The Council of 500: Structural Holes and Bridging Ties

Among key political institutions introduced or restructured in conjunction with the new deme/​tribe system was a new Council of 500, a linchpin institution that was given control of the vital agenda-​setting function. The Council was charged with agenda-​setting, deciding what matters should be discussed in the full Assembly of Athenian citizens. The Assembly, which all Athenian citizens in good standing were entitled to attend whenever they pleased, was a potentially chaotic legislative body. In the democratic era thousands of citizens attended its frequent meetings (40 per year in the fourth century). The Assembly was the embodied citizenry –​the demos –​and as such decided all important matters of state policy, including finance and matters of diplomacy, war, and peace. The Council met very regularly in Athens, eventually in a purpose-​built architectural complex. In addition to its vital function of setting the Assembly’s agenda, the Council had responsibility for the day-​to-​ day administration of state affairs, including meeting foreign delegations and reviewing the performance of out-​going Athenian magistrates. The Council also played an important executive role in ensuring that policy dictated by the Assembly was properly carried out.33

32

33

On the intertwining of ritual, financial, and civic life in the Athenian tribe, see Osborne (1994). Sacrificing and eating:  Schmitt-​ Pantel (1992). Marching:  Maurizio (1998). Dancing: Wilson (2000), esp. 56–​57, 75–​76; contra: Pritchard (2004). Tribal networks were also helpful, especially for non-​elite Athenians, in legal disputes: Rubinstein (2000). Rhodes (1985) is an indispensable description of the Council of 500, its origins, and its role in Athenian government; see esp. ­chapter 3 for an analysis of the Council’s main areas of responsibility: finance, army and navy, public works, and religion.

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1. Kydathenaion 11 2. Lower Paiania 11 3. Myrrhinous 6 4. Probalinthos 5 5. Oa 4 6. Angele 3 7. Steiria 3 8. Prasiai 3 9. Kytheros 2 10. Konthyle 1 11. Upper Paiania 1

­f igure 14.2 Tribe Pandionis’ delegation of Councilmen for one year (quotas by deme) City Demes = Italics Inland = Underlined Coastal = Bold

According to Cleisthenes’ plan, the new Council of 500 was to be made up of ten 50-​man delegations –​one delegation from each of the ten newly-​created tribes.34 The members of each tribal delegation were in turn selected at deme level. Each year every deme sent forward a certain number of Councilors, based on the deme’s citizen population.35 Prasiai annually sent three Councilors as part of Pandionis’ 50-​man delegation. Meanwhile, the large inland deme of Lower Paiania and the city deme of Kydathenaion each sent 11 men, while tiny Upper Paiania and Konthyle each sent only one. Tribe Pandionis’ annual delegation to the Council of 500 is represented schematically in Figure 14.2. What choices, made by an individual member of the Council, might either promote or hinder the Council’s overall capacity for joint action? Lacking any detailed first-​person narrative from antiquity, a thought experiment must suffice: So imagine a Councilor (bouleutes) from Prasiai, let us call him Poseidippos (at least one man of that name did later live in Prasiai), embarking

34 35

Rhodes (1985), 17–​18, favors a later date (ca. 462 bce) for the introduction of the tribal delegations serving in rotation as “presidents” of the Council, but he notes that the scholarly communis opinio is that the tribal teams were a Cleisthenic innovation. Quotas are based on fourth-​century evidence. Here I  assume that the system was put into place in the immediate post-​revolutionary period (see next note), and (with Traill (1975), 101–​103) remained essentially unchanged through 322 bce. The main lines of the argument I develop here would not be much affected by the kinds of changes that have been proposed to date, e.g. by Hansen et al. (1990).

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472 Ober

City

Coast

Inland

­f igure 14.3 Pandionis’ tribal team as a social network: starting position. Solid lines within deme networks (numbered 1–​11) are hypothetical strong ties. Dashed lines between deme networks are hypothetical weak ties. Prasiai is deme 8

upon a year’s service on the Council in the first year after the Council was founded.36 Poseidippos was probably selected by lot for service; this was, in any event, the later selection procedure. He took up temporary quarters in the city, rightly expecting to spend a great deal of time serving on the Council; in later years, at least, the Council met some 300 days each year (Rhodes (1985), 30). Let us stipulate, on the basis of our description of late sixth-​century Prasiai, that among the 49 other members of tribal team, Poseidippos had strong ties with his two fellow Prasieis but no bridging ties to any of his other fellow Councilors. The point is that when the year’s new group of Councilors first took up their office, many of the deme-​delegations that made up each tribal delegation of 50 were already likely to be strong-​tie networked, but there were relatively few bridging “weak ties” between the strongly-​tied local deme networks. This is a microcosm, at the level of 50 men, of the large-​scale problem Cleisthenes faced as he embarked upon his reform plan. The hypothetical “starting point” situation of the 50 members of the Pandionis team as they entered upon their year of service on the Council in 507 B.C. is represented in Figure 14.3. As he takes up his office, Poseidippos is (ex hypothesi) connected by strong-​ tie bonds with his two fellow Prasieis. He has no pre-​existing connections with 36

I am assuming here that the Council, along with the deme/​tribe system, was put into existence in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution of 508; an alternative view holds that the system was not fully functional until 501/​0: Rhodes (1985), 1, 191–​93; Badian (2000).

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his other fellow Councilors from tribe Pandionis. Yet he knows that he must work closely with 47 men with whom he has no current ties, weak or strong, and then with the other 450 Councilors from the nine other tribes. According to Cleisthenes’ plan, the 50-​man tribal teams were responsible for much of the work of the Council –​each tribe would take a leading role in directing the Council’s business for a tenth of the year in rotation with the other nine teams. During the period when a tribe-​team was exercising its presidency, a third of its delegate-​members were on 24-​hour duty. In later generations, in the fifth and fourth centuries, they would eat together (using vessels carefully labeled as “public property”) and sleep in a public building located in the Agora, Athens’ public square.37 If Poseidippos had known the terminology of contemporary network theory, he would have described the Pandionis team as a network riddled with “structural holes”. That is to say there were many substantial gaps, bridged by few or no weak ties, between the eleven deme networks, each of which featured a dense matrix of strong ties. The holes are evident on Figure 14.3: There are no existing weak-​tie bridges, for example, between demes 1 and demes 6 and 9 or between deme 8 and demes 7, 2, and 5. In one sense, these holes are an institutional design problem, in that, as we have seen, they represent the absence of the sort of dense networking via weak ties that Granovetter identified as a prerequisite for effective joint action. And so the holes represent a problem that Cleisthenes needed to solve by his new organizational design. Yet these same structural holes also represent opportunities –​both for the individual willing to take the effort to bridge them and for the organization as a whole. The presence of so many structural holes offered a key incentive to an ambitious and entrepreneurial Councilman. As the organizational theorist Ron Burt demonstrated in a series of influential studies, in a networked structure, the holes between densely linked sub-​networks are points of entrepreneurial opportunity because the individuals who bridge those holes gain social capital. They do so simply by taking up a strategic position in respect to the flow of useful information and social knowledge: They become the conduit through which information passes and they reap rewards accordingly. Burt showed that, in modern business firms, the social capital accumulated by diligent bridgers of structural holes translates into material gain (e.g. higher salaries) –​and thus individuals have strong incentives to identify structural holes and to establish bridging ties across them.

37

On the Tholos as the headquarters of the presiding tribal delegation, see Rhodes (1985), 16. Cf. Camp (2001), 69–​70.

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474 Ober The social capital that accumulates from bridging holes potentially benefits all members of the network, although the original bridge-​builders do especially well. Among Burt’s important general points is that networked organizations with many structural holes also present many opportunities for entrepreneurial gain by individuals willing and capable of occupying bridge positions. There is, therefore, a correlation between being “full of holes” and the development and maintenance of an entrepreneurial, innovation-​prone, organizational culture.38 Because a given Athenian Councilor’s term was limited to a year, the value of networking on the Council was likewise limited when it is compared to institutions (e.g. the U.S. Senate) in which continuous membership may span decades. The wealthiest and most socially prominent Councilors might regard network-​building under these conditions as unlikely to reward the effort. Let us stipulate, therefore, that Poseidippos is among the poorest and least well-​ connected Councilors on his tribal team. Like other Athenian fathers, Poseidippos seeks good marriages for his sons and daughters, but he cannot offer large dowries to suitors.39 The hope of advancing his family’s position gives Poseidippos a strong incentive to try to build social capital, which might stand in lieu of larger cash settlements. Stipulate further that Poseidippos is the sort of individual who intuitively recognizes the social capital gains (and the associated utility gains over time) available to a bridge-​builder. As such he will use opportunities offered by the frequent meetings of Pandionis’ tribal team of 50 to build bridges to men from other demes, starting perhaps on the basis of shared occupational interests, distant kinship relations, or common cult-​ membership. The personal interactions within the tribal delegation are intense, as its members struggle to accomplish their duties –​and thereby, since the assumed context is 507 bce, to save their polis and themselves from destruction at the hands of the angry Spartans. That intensity facilitates rapid tie-​formation, and thus makes it easier for Poseidippos to form friendship ties with strangers. The result is illustrated in Figure 14.4. As the year goes on, Poseidippos becomes an increasingly well respected and highly valued member of his tribal team because of his bridging position. He has a handle on more and more useful information –​that is, he learns what people in other demes know. He learns something, for example, about pottery manufacture from his city-​deme contacts and something about upland olive farming from his inland contacts. He also accumulates more and more

38 39

On structural holes, see Burt (1992), Burt (1997), Burt (2004); Gargiulo (2000). Dowries were very substantial expenses: Cox (1998).

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475

Classical Athens as an Epistemic Democracy

City

Coast

Inland

­f igure 14.4 Pandionis tribal team network, stage 2. Dotted lines represent hypothetical new weak ties established by “Poseidippos”

social knowledge. He knows who among the members of his Pandionis team is trustworthy and on what topics, who is friends and enemies with whom, and so on. He is therefore in a position to aggregate important items of information and social knowledge:  to bring disparate knowledge pieces together for problem-​solving. The social capital he stands to gain is a strong incentive to reveal his own latent knowledge –​that is, the expertise and experience he has gained in the course of his life –​and to share his newly aggregated knowledge with others. The intimate conditions of service on the Council reduce the costs of communication. Meanwhile, Poseidippos’ growing social knowledge promotes greater discrimination in respect to information sorting. As a source and a conduit of useful aggregated knowledge, Poseidippos assumes the role of informed leader in deliberations. He thereby accrues advantages for himself and he enables his tribal team to get its job done. Of course, Poseidippos is not the only one to see the advantages of building bridging links across local networks. Many, although not all, others on his team imitate his example. As a consequence, the Pandionis delegation is soon densely networked by weak-​links, as illustrated in Figure 14.5. The tribe-​team never becomes a strong-​tie network –​it is not the case that everyone is everyone else’s friend. But the multiple weak-​tie bridges ensure that information can flow readily from one strong-​tie network to another. Tribe Pandionis is not special, of course –​according to Cleisthenes’ design, each of the ten tribes features similar demographic diversity. Thus, structural hole opportunities exist in each tribal team, and on the Council as a whole. As

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476 Ober

City

Coast

Inland

­f igure 14.5 Pandionis tribal team network, stage 3. Dotted lines represent hypothetical new weak ties established by various team members

a result, the bridge-​building we have hypothesized for Pandionis went on within each of the ten tribal teams. Moreover, unlike strong-​tie networks, weak-​tie networks are scalable. The same bridge-​building process went on at an extensive network level between tribal teams of the Council. If the social capital for being a tribal team-​level bridger of local networks and aggregator of knowledge was considerable, it was that much greater at the level of an inter-​tribal bridge-​builder. And so, we can postulate that over the course of the year the membership of the Council as a whole becomes linked by weak-​ties and came to function as a single, extended network. The upshot is that the 500 members of the Council become more capable of working cooperatively, both at the level of the tribal delegations of 50 and as a committee of the whole. The networking process I  have hypothesized, above, based on the social composition and governmental responsibilities of the Council of 500, directly addresses the public action problems affecting knowledge aggregation. As weak-​tie bridges, formed by entrepreneurial individuals, link existing strong-​ tie local networks across regions, across kinship groups, across occupational groups, and across social classes, useful knowledge flows across the extended network with increasing ease. As the network becomes more dense and social capital grows, social knowledge is exchanged ever more freely. As they witness and experience the social capital gains that come with communication, experts in various technical domains are more willing to share proprietary information about sources of materials, trading partners, weather patterns, and so on. Others realize that their tacit knowledge of people and processes, formerly

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simply taken for granted as a sort of obvious “common sense” among the members of a strong-​tie network, is valuable when brought to the surface and made explicit within a diverse group of people possessing very different sorts of tacit knowledge. As the year goes on, both the latent specialized technical knowledge and the generalized tacit knowledge necessary to making good decisions, which had formerly been isolated inside individual minds and in closed networks, becomes increasingly accessible to the deliberations of the group as a whole. As Councilors become clearer about who is good at what, and who to go to for what sort of information, they can be more discriminating about their recommendations and as a result the whole Council becomes increasingly capable of doing its difficult job well. Moreover, as the Council overcomes its collective action problems and learns to work cooperatively towards its common goal, it can potentially access external knowledge resources distributed through the entire population of Athens –​and beyond. Because each Councilor has a network of contacts outside the Council, each Councilor is a bridge between the Council and a local subset of the larger population. As a result, the Council, as a body, can access, at fairly low cost, a good deal of the total knowledge available to the extended Athenian community. As a result, at least potentially, “Athens knows what the Athenians know”. Finally, because Councilors ordinarily serve only for a year, and are judged, and potentially rewarded, on the basis of how well they serve the public purposes of the polis, the Council as an institution never developed a self-​serving identity or corporate culture.40 The rules of order remained sufficiently simple and transparent to be learned by each year’s incoming class. Because each year’s turnover is complete, all Councilors enter upon their year on something approaching equal footing; there is no in-​group of “old Council hands” controlling the agenda. As Councilors build their extended networks and work together over the course of the year on problems of polis governance, they come to better grasp the larger governmental system of which they are (for a year) one part. Government ceases to be regarded as a black box, and Councilors can quite quickly become fairly expert at the work of politics. Their growing system-​level expertise conjoins with the Councilors’ growing social-​knowledge based information-​sorting capacity and so they are better able to judge the value of available knowledge to the larger purposes of the polis –​and thus better able to make good decisions in the exercise of their office. 40

This key insight was developed by Gomme (1951).

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478 Ober As a result, better agendas are set, the government is better run day-​to-​day, and so Athens does better overall. We can thereby begin to understand how participatory democratic institutions could help promote growth in productive capacity and overall organizational success. 6

Organizational and Individual Learning

So far we have focused on the first year after Cleisthenes’ establishment of the Council of 500 –​and so we have been assuming that Poseidippos and his 499 fellow bouleutai entered their first tribal team meetings and first full Council sessions innocent of what to expect, and with few pre-​existing weak-​tie bridges. Let us next imagine Poseidippos’ son, call him Poseidippos ii for simplicity’s sake, as he enters upon a year’s service on the Council some time in the mid 470s. Like his father, Poseidippos ii lives in Prasiai. He had been formally voted upon by his father’s demesmen when he reached age 18; because he had been accepted by them as a legitimate son of an Athenian man the vote was positive and thus Poseidippos ii became at once a demesman of Prasiai and a citizen of Athens. Like his father, as a councilor, Poseidippos ii is confronted with a new challenge –​the city had been sacked by the Persians in 480–​79. Rebuilding would be expensive. It would be more difficult because Sparta had opposed Athens’ plan to re-​fortify and would be of no help in building and maintaining the long-​term anti-​Persian alliance that most Athenians saw as essential to long-​term security and prosperity. Unlike his father, Poseidippos ii had a sense of what to expect on the Council –​he knew in advance many of the rules (written and unwritten) governing work on the Council. He had his father’s recalled experience to draw upon, but also the experience of a full generation of Prasieis who had served, three each year, and brought back much of what they had learned to the village. Over time, every Athenian citizen who cared to avail himself of it had easy and redundant access to men who had served on the Council and had faced a variety of crises and impasses. Both their successes and their failures became part of the general lore passed on across local social networks. Former Councilors’ accounts of their experience served as an incentive to future Councilors. Because he had observed men upon their return from government service over the years, Poseidippos ii knew that increased status and recognition could come with a year on the Council. He recognized that the work would be hard and at times frustrating and that he would be taken away from the pleasures and opportunities offered by his ordinary life. Yet these negative considerations were over-​ balanced by the anticipation of gaining honors and social capital by playing a

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bridge-​building role and by the substantial and long-​term benefits associated with that gain.41 Within Poseidippos ii’s own lifetime, the growing aggregate experience of Council service will have changed the structure of local and cross-​polis social networks. Poseidippos ii had grown up in a Prasiai in which social conditions were deviating from the tightly bounded world into which his father had been born. If we stipulate that Poseidippos I’s gain in social capital had enabled him to marry one of his daughters to a somewhat wealthier tribesman from an urban deme to whom he had “bridged” in the course of his Council service, Poseidippos ii would have kinship ties to a different social stratum and in a different region of the polis as a result of his father’s Council year.42 The point here is that the “weak-​tie” friendships that were forged in a year’s service (as well as in other tribal activities: war, religious ritual, and so on) ramified through the lives of many individual Athenians and thereby across the polis as a whole. As a result, each year’s group of Councillors began their work in a social environment featuring more pre-​existing weak-​ties between deme-​delegations. Local strong-​tie networks were supplemented at a polis level by an increasingly rich and complex network of strong-​and weak-​links. As an extensive social network of weak and strong ties, the polis as an organization had an enhanced opportunity to build a store of collective social capital and thus gained the ability to work more cooperatively and more effectively in addressing public action problems. At the same time, the Athenian population was large, and (at least in the early to mid-​fifth century) growing quite rapidly. As a result, even as the density of bridges across the extended network grew, there were always structural holes opening up and thus always new opportunities for entrepreneurial bridge-​builders –​the relatively great size of Athens and its constant exposure to demographic change (a function of, inter alia, war-​casualties, disease, immigration, and emigration) meant that there was no meaningful risk of network ossification –​the ties within the extended polis network never became so dense and overlapping as to threaten the entrepreneurial culture Poseidippos I first experienced in the late sixth century. We can now jump ahead to 325 bce, near the end of the democratic era of Athenian history. Assuming the family line of Poseidippos I has continued, 41 42

There is no obvious way to test whether the independent variable of Council service led to a rise in the dependent variable of individual or family utility. The question deserves further study; see, further, Taylor (2008). On inter-​deme marriages, see Osborne (1985), 27–​38 (documenting 32 intra-​deme and 131 extra-​deme marriages), with Cox (1998), 38–​67. More research is needed on the question of how public service might have affected marriage patterns.

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480 Ober his great-​great-​great-​great grandson, Poseidippos vi, might have served on that Council. Perhaps, like many Athenians over the generations, he has moved away from his home deme, and now lives in the city. But he still attends deme meetings (some of which are held in the city) and he literally wears his deme identity around his neck –​as a bronze citizen’s identification tag used (inter alia) in lotteries for service on boards of magistrates (Kroll 1972). Poseidippos vi still feels the pull of the network incentives that had motivated his ancestors. But over the generations the material incentives for Council service had been formalized. He was paid a daily wage for his service and the Pandionis tribal team competed for a prize offered by the demos, honoring the year’s best team.43 When serving as the Council’s presidents, Pandionis’ tribal delegation (and the other nine in rotation) still met in the Tholos that was being planned during Poseidippos ii’s term of service. But when he attended meetings of the full Council, Poseidippos vi usually sat in a New Bouleuterion. As before, most Council meetings were open to the Athenian public. The Old Bouleuterion, in which Poseidippos ii had deliberated over the rebuilding of the city, was now dedicated to the Mother of the Gods and used to house the state archives. Here, Councilors and other Athenians could consult the record of Athenian laws and decrees. A small staff of public slaves and citizen-​clerks was available to help with archives and technical matters, yet this staff never amounted to anything like a professionalized bureaucracy; the main work of the Council was still done by the Councilors themselves.44 By 325 bce, the accumulated and transmitted knowledge of 180  years of institutional experience and policy experiments, and the results of 180 years of networking among Athenians was potentially available, orally or in written form. The Councilors of the later fourth century, the age of Aristotle, had a very substantial store of knowledge to draw upon. In sum, because of a structured 43

44

Pay: 5 obols/​day for ordinary service, 6 obols (1 drachma)/​day for service while the members of the tribal team are serving as presidents: Rhodes (1985), 16–​17. Annual prize for best tribal delegation, offered by the Council in the early fourth century and by the demos by the mid-​fourth century: Rhodes (1985), 8, 22–​23. The Old and New Bouleuteria:  Rhodes (1985), 31–​33; Camp (2001), 44, 127. Meetings open to public: Rhodes (1985), 40–​43. Before the 360s a principal “secretary to the council” and, after the 360s other three citizen-​secretaries were annually assigned to the Council, but their tenure of office (like that of all Athenian citizen-​clerks) was annual. Secretaries: Arist. Ath. Pol. 54.3–​5 with Rhodes (1985), 16, 134–​42; Hansen (1999), 123–​24, 244–​45; Henry (2002). Public slaves (huperetai) looked after records in the Metroon and the records of the poletai and perhaps a half-​dozen other public slaves were available to assist the Council. Rhodes (1985), 142–​43 emphasizes the modest size of the Council’s staff: there is no warrant for imagining a substantial professionalized bureaucracy, comparable to that typical of parliamentary democracies, working in the background.

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capacity for passing on what was learned, the Athenian Council had developed the character of a learning organization. As valuable experience accumulated over time, a formal archival system was developed and many of the work routines for accomplishing the Council’s work were codified.45 Yet the regular turnover of Council membership and the diversity of experiences new Councilors brought to the table ensured that the socialization of the members of the Council never approached the level at which innovative solutions were likely to be suppressed in favor of ossified routinization. The Council was manned by amateurs, in that their experience as Councilors was limited to two terms. In practice and perhaps, therefore, in principle, terms were always non-​consecutive. Yet the apparent seamlessness with which knowledge, both innovative and routinized, could be aggregated and made available to decision-​makers on the Council enabled them to manifest some of the characteristics associated with experts who have thousands of hours of personal experience to call upon. The decision-​making process of Council itself had, over time, evolved into a sort of “expert system”, capable of addressing a wide variety of problems.46 7

Conclusions

The Council is only one example of how knowledge aggregation was facilitated by the “machine” of democratic governance in Athens; other Athenian institutions can also be better understood by reference to the role of incentives and sanctions, communication costs, and sorting within a knowledge-​based system.47 The Athenian system of government both encouraged (through incentives) and required (in order to broaden the range of information and expertise) participation in decision-​making and problem-​solving from a diverse population. Equality of opportunity for public participation was a cherished Athenian value.48 The institutional design model established by Cleisthenes, 45 46 47

48

The formulaic language of enactment and disclosure typical of Athenian decrees (Hedrick (1999)) is one piece of evidence for routinization. The term “expert system” ordinarily refers to electronic computing techniques that seek to simulate (and thereby regularize and make easily accessible to end users) the decision-​ making processes of experts: Jackson (1999). Lyttkens (1992), Lyttkens (1994), Lyttkens (2006) (taxation); Quillin (2002) (amnesty); Schwartzberg (2004), Schwartzberg (2007) (law and diplomacy); Fleck and Hanssen (2006) (agricultural economy); Kaiser (2007) (trierarchies); and Teegarden (2014) (anti-​ tyranny legislation) are notable examples of explanatory approaches to various aspects of Athenian institutions, which emphasize rational action and incentives, although they do not focus in the first instance on dispersed knowledge. Raaflaub (1996).

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482 Ober and elaborated through subsequent institutional innovations, was based on offering substantial incentives (honorary, social, and material) for public service. These incentives made public service possible and more desirable across class lines. Formerly inexperienced men had the chance to become experienced in political affairs, indeed, to become quite expert at the work of democratic politics. By gaining experience and therefore confidence in their own capacities, Athenian citizens lost a substantial disincentive to political activity. Substantial power inequalities remained between elite and non-​elite social strata. But opportunities for political activity were to some degree equalized across class lines by the use of the lot and pay for service.49 The model I have presented here predicts that, over the course of time, the population of “politically active citizens” should be increasingly representative of, and indeed functionally coextensive with, the citizen population as a whole. An initial over-​representation of wealthy citizens, and by those with easy geographical access to the city-​center, should lessen as poorer and more geographically distant citizens came to appreciate the potential value of their own participation, both to themselves and to their community. This prediction is borne out by the classical historian Claire Taylor’s demographic analysis of some 2200 politically active Athenians in the fifth and fourth centuries. In the fifth century 19% of identifiable politically active citizens were wealthy (i.e. from liturgy-​paying class: ca. 4% of the total population) and 58% came from near-​city demes (aggregate bouleutic quota 123/​500: ca. 25% of the total population). In the fourth century, by contrast, only 11% of citizens known to be politically active were wealthy and 31% were from near-​city demes. Taylor’s numbers do not prove that citizens’ growing experience with government processes (or any other candidate variable) caused the trend towards equalization in levels of participation. Her results are, however, consistent with the model offered above. The opposite result (growing inequality of participation) would, by contrast, falsify it.50 The social context of knowledge aggregation processes explains how Athenian institutional design promoted learning  –​both organizational learning, so that the system as a whole became more expert, and individual learning by 49 50

Taylor (2007). Taylor (2008), arguing persuasively that exogenous factors (e.g. demographic changes due to disease, war, rural migration to the city) are inadequate to explain the growth in participation. Taylor’s figures fit well with the conclusions of Morris (1998), 235–​36, who notes that in comparative terms, and especially in comparison with the pre-​democratic period, the pattern of landholding among citizens in fourth-​century Athens was “extremely egalitarian” (Morris’ emphasis: Gini coefficient of 0.382–​0.386); on Greek rule egalitarianism see further Ober (2010), 270–​275.

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citizens engaged in a lifelong civic education. The principles of representative sampling through a lottery and rotation inhibited emergence of a limited elite of entrenched policy experts. The circulation through a variety of kinds of public service (military, judicial, magisterial) by a great many citizens, who remained diverse in terms of age, geographic home, economic class, and occupation, facilitated innovative problem-​solving. Innovations emerged continuously as teams of citizen-​magistrates brought into being new constellations of social and technical knowledge by aggregating an ever-​changing repertoire of diverse information and expertise. Innovation was stimulated though cross-​appropriation of knowledge between domains of expertise, and from one solution space to another. Like all decision-​making processes, the Athenian system was fallible and sometimes produced bad policy. Yet overall and over time, democratic Athens fared well enough to outdo all of its city-​state rivals. The postulated value of aggregated knowledge, drawn from a large and diverse population, to problem-​ solving in the fluid and competitive environment of world of the Greek city-​ states solves the riddle of unexpected Athenian success. It offers at least a partial explanation for why Athenian democracy, with its costly participatory decision-​making institutions, is so strongly correlated to improved state capacity and superior competitive performance. Ancient Athens is obviously very different in many salient particulars from any twenty-​first-​century democracy. By the same token, there are notable similarities between the paths to political and economic development taken by Athens and by a handful of highly successful democratizing states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the modern era. That path is by the same token very different from the path of autocratic regimes, ancient and modern. Like early modern democratizing states, the trend in Athens was to relatively fairer rules and more open access.51 Those trends in turn promoted greater diversity and sophistication among decision-​makers. To the extent that the development of Athens does track early modern democratic development, the Athenian experience with epistemic democracy can be made relevant to contemporary democratic theory, despite steep differences in scale and in conceptions of rights. Like certain of the economists, political scientists, and legal scholars whose work is cited above, some contemporary democratic theorists are turning to classical Athens as an important case study for testing and broadening theories of democracy.52 Epistemic democracy seems likely to be 51 52

Athenian development compared to modern state development:  Carugati, Ober, and Weingast (2014). Open versus limited access: North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009). Athens as a case study for political science: Ober (2008b). Democratic theorists referencing Athens: Schwartzberg (2004); Balot (2014).

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484 Ober among the next frontiers in this ongoing process of reevaluating how a better understanding of the distinctive institutions and practices of classical Athens can be made into a resource for those seeking to understand and to improve contemporary democratic societies.

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Cohen, J. (1996) “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” in Benhabib, S. (ed.) (1996) Democracy and difference: Contesting the boundaries of the political. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 94–​119. Cox, C. A. (1998) Household interests. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Dahl, R.A. (1971) Polyarchy; participation and opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Davenport, T.H. and Prusak, L. (1998) Working knowledge. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press. Diani, M. and McAdam, D. (eds) (2003) Social movements and networks: Relational approaches to collective action. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Dixon, N.M. (2000) Common knowledge. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Elster, J. (2012) “The optimal design of a constituent assembly,” in Landemore and Elster (eds) (2012), 148–​172. Ericsson, A. (1999) “Expertise,” in The MIT Encyclopedia for the Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 298–​300. Estund, D.M. (2008) Democratic Authority. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fleck, R. K., and Hanssen, F.A. (2006) “The Origins of Democracy: A Model with Application to Ancient Greece,” Journal of Law and Economics 49: 115–​146. Fleck, R. K., and Hanssen, F.A. (2012) “On the Benefits and Costs of Legal Expertise: Adjudication in Ancient Athens,” Review of Law and Economics 8, no. 2: 367–​399. Forsdyke, S. (2005) Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Frost, F.J. (1984) “The Athenian Military before Cleisthenes,” Historia 33: 283–​94. Gargiulo, M. and Benassi, M. (2000) “Trapped in Your Own Net? Network Cohesion, Structural Holes, and the Adaptation of Social Capital,” Organization Science 11: 183–​96. Gomme, A.W. (1951) “The Working of the Athenian Democracy,” History 36: 12–​28. Gould, R.V. (1995) Insurgent identities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Granovetter, M.S. (1973) “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78: 1360–​1380. Granovetter, M.S. (1983) “The Strength of Weak Ties:  A Network Theory Revisited,” American Journal of Sociology 78: 1360–​1380. Granovetter, M.S. (1985) “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91: 481–​510. Hansen, M.H. (1983) “Rhetores and Strategoi in Fourth-​Century Athens,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 24: 151–​80. Hansen, M.H. (1984) “The number of rhetores in the Athenian ecclesia, 355–​322 B.C,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 24: 227–​38. Hansen, M.H. (1999) The Athenian democracy in the age of Demosthenes:  Structure, principles and ideology. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

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486 Ober Hansen, M.H., Bjertrup, H.L., Nielsen, T.H., Rubinstein, L., and Vestergaard, T. (1990) “The Demography of the Attic Demes: The evidence of the Sepulchral Inscriptions,” Analecta Romana 19: 24–​44. Hansen, M.T. (2002) “Knowledge Networks: Explaining Effective Knowledge Sharing in Multiunit Companies,” Organization Science 13: 232–​49. Hayek, F.A (1945) “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35 (4): 519–​530. Hedrick, C.W. (1999) “Democracy and the Athenian Epigraphic Habit,” Hesperia 68: 387–​439. Henry, A.S. (2002) “The Athenian state secretariat and provisions for publishing and erecting decrees,” Hesperia 71: 91–​118. Hong, L. and Scott E.P. (2012) “Some Microfoundations of Collective Wisdom,” in Landemore and Elster (eds) (2012), 56-71. Jackson, P. (1999) Introduction to expert systems. Harlow, England and Reading, Mass.: Addison-​Wesley. Jones, N.F. (1999) The associations of Classical Athens:  The response to democracy. New York: Oxford University Press. Kaiser, B.A. (2007) “The Athenian Trierarchy: Mechanism Design for the Private Provision of Public Goods,” Journal of Economic History 67: 445–​80. Krackhardt, D. (1992) “The Strength of Strong Ties: The Importance of Philos in Organizations,” in Nohria, N. and Eccles, R.G. (eds) (1992) Networks and organizations:  Structure, form, and action. Boston, Mass.:  Harvard Business School Press, 216–​39. Kroll, J.H. (1972) Athenian bronze allotment plates. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Landemore, H. (2012) Democratic Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Landemore, H. and Elster, J. (eds) (2012) Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levitt, B., and March, J. (1988) “Organizational Learning,” Annual Review of Sociology 14: 319–​40. List, C., and Pettit, P. (2004) “An Epistemic Free-​Riding Problem?” in Catton, P. and Macdonald, G. (eds) (2004) Karl Popper:  Critical Appraisals. London:  Routledge, 128–​58. Lyttkens, C.H. (1992) “Effects of the Taxation of Wealth in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C,” The Scandinavian Economic History Review 40: 3–​20. Lyttkens, C.H. (1994) “A Predatory Democracy? An Essay on Taxation in Classical Athens,” Explorations in Economic History 31: 62–​90. Lyttkens, C.H. (2006) “Reflections on the origins of the polis. An economic perspective on institutional change in ancient Greece,” Constitutional Political Economy 17: 31–​48.

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Maurizio, L. (1998) “The Panathenaic Procession:  Athens’ Participatory Democracy on Display?” in Dickmann Boedeker, D. and Raaflaub, K.A. (eds) (1998) Democracy, empire, and the arts in fifth-​century Athens. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 297–​317. Michels, R. (1962 [1911]) Political parties: A sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy. New York: Collier Books. Millett, P.C. (1989) “Patronage and its avoidance in classical Athens,” in Wallace-​Hadrill, A. (ed.) (1989) Patronage in Ancient Society. London: Routledge, 15–​48. Morris, I. (1998) “Archaeology as a Kind of Anthropology (A Response to David Small),” in Morris, I. and Raaflaub, K.A. (eds) (1998) Democracy 2500? Questions and challenges. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/​Hunt Pub. Co., 229–​39. Murray, O. and Price, S.R.F. (eds) (1990) The Greek city: From Homer to Alexander. Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press. North, D.C., Wallis, J.J., and Weingast, B.R. (2009) Violence and Social Orders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and elite in democratic Athens: Rhetoric, ideology, and the power of the people. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (1996) The Athenian revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (1998) Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (2005) Athenian Legacies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (2007) “Natural Capacities and Democracy as a Good-​in-​Itself,” Philosophical Studies 132: 59–​73. Ober, J. (2008a) Democracy and Knowledge. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. (2008b) “What the Ancient Greeks Can Tell Us About Democracy,” Annual Reviews in Political Science 11: 67–​91. Ober, J. (2010) “Wealthy Hellas,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 210: 241–​86. Ober, J. (2013) “Democracy’s wisdom: An Aristotelian middle way for collective judgment,” American Political Science Review 107 (1):104–​122. Ober, J. (2015) The Rise and Fall of Classical Athens. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ober, J. and Perry, T. (2014) “Thucydides as a prospect theorist,” Polis 31: 206–​232. Olson, M. (1965) The logic of collective action. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Osborne, R. (1985) Demos, the discovery of classical Attika. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Osborne, R. (1987) Classical landscape with figures. London: G. Philip. Osborne, R. (1990) “The demos and its divisions in classical Athens,” in Murray and Price (eds) (1990), 265–​93.

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488 Ober Osborne, R. (1994) “Ritual, Finance, Politics: An Account of Athenian Democracy,” in Osborne, R. and Hornblower, S. (eds) (1994) Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian democratic accounts presented to David Lewis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1–​24. Osterloh, M. and B.S. Frey (2000) “Motivation, Knowledge Transfer, and Organizational Form,” Organization Science 11: 538–​550. Padgett, J.F. and Ansell, C.K. (1993) “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400–​ 1434,” American Journal of Sociology 98: 1259–​1319. Page, S.E. (2007) The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pritchard, D. (2004) “Kleisthenes, Participation, and the Dithyrambic contests of late archaic and classical Athens,” Phoenix 58: 208–​228. Pritchard, D. (2005) “Kleisthenes and Athenian Democracy: Vision from Above or Below?” Polis 22 (1):136-157. Purcell, N. (1990) “Mobility and the Polis,” in Murray and Price (eds) (1990), 29–​58. Quillin, J. (2002) “Achieving Amnesty:  The Role of Events, Institutions, and Ideas,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 132: 71–​107. Raaflaub, K. (1996) “Equalities and Inequalities in Athenian Democracy,” in Ober, J. and Hedrick, C.W. (eds) (1996) Dêmokratia: A conversation on democracies, ancient and modern. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 139–​174. Raaflaub, K., Ober, J., and Wallace, R.W. (2007) The Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rhodes, P.J. (1985) The Athenian Boule. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Robinson, E.W. (1997) The first democracies. Stuttgart: Steiner. Rubinstein, L. (2000) Litigation and cooperation. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag. Schmitt-​Pantel, P. (1992) La cité au banquet. Roma: Ecole française de Rome. Schumpeter, J.A. (1947) Capitalism, socialism, and democracy. New York: Harper. Schwartzberg, M. (2004) “Athenian Democracy and Legal Change,” American Political Science Review 98: 311–​25. Schwartzberg, M. (2007) Democracy and legal change. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Siewert, P. (1982) Die Trittyen Attikas und die Heeresform des Kleisthenes. München: C.H. Beck. Spinosa, C., Flores, F. and Dreyfus, H.L. (1997) Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity. Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Sunstein, C.R. (2006) Infotopia. New York: Oxford University Press. Taylor, C. (2007) “An oligarchy of the city? The sociological impact of election and lot in Athenian democracy,” Hesperia 76: 323–​46. Taylor, C. (2008) “A New Political World,” in Osborne, R. (ed.) (2008) Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 72–​90.

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Teegarden, D. (2014) Death to Tyrants! Ancient Greek Democracy and the Struggle against Tyranny. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Traill, J.S. (1975) The political organization of Attica. Princeton, N.J.: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Vanderpool, E., McCredie, J. and Steinberg, A. (1962) “Koroni: A Ptolemaic Camp on the East Coast of Atica,” Hesperia 31: 26–​61. Waldron, J. (1995) “The Wisdom of the Multitude: Some Reflections on Book III Chapter 11 of the Politics,” Political Theory 23: 563–​84. Walker, R. (2004) “The Hidden (in Plain Sight) Persuaders,” New York Times Magazine December 5: 69–​76 and ff. Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, U.K. and New York: Cambridge University Press. Whitehead, D. (1983) “Competitive outlay and community profit: Philotimia in Democratic Athens,” Classica et Mediaevalia 34: 55–​74. Whitehead, D. (1986) The demes of Attica, 508 7-​ca. 250 B.C.: A political and social study. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Whitehead, D. (1993) “Cardinal virtues: The language of public approbation in democratic Athens,” Classica et Mediaevalia 44: 37–​75. Williamson, O.E. (1975) Markets and Hierarchies, Analysis and Antitrust Implications: A Study in the Economics of Internal Organization. New York: Free Press. Williamson, O.E. (1985) The economic institutions of capitalism:  Firms, markets, relational contracting. New York and London: Free Press. Wilson, P. (2000) The Athenian institution of the Khoregia. The Chorus, the city, and the stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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­c hapter 15

Sortition and Politics

From Radical to Deliberative Democracy –​and Back? Yves Sintomer 1 Introduction1 On December 11, 2004, after nearly 12  months of deliberation, a Citizen Assembly, selected by lot from the citizens of British Columbia in Canada, presented its Final Report on Electoral Change to the B.C. Legislature. It proposed to change the electoral system by introducing more proportionality (replacing the existing electoral system, the so-​called First-​Past-​the-​Post, with a new Single-​Transferable Vote system).2 This recommendation was then put to the electorate-​at-​large in a referendum held concurrently with the 2005 provincial election (in order to come into force, the proposed reform had to win at least 60 per cent of the votes cast throughout the province and at least 50 per cent in 60 per cent of its constituencies. Although it was approved in nearly all the constituencies, the reform received only 57.69 per cent of the votes at the provincial level; the electoral law was therefore not altered in the end). This process seems to have been only one of the most advanced of thousands of similar experimental uses of sortition in politics during the last three decades. According to many of the supporters of these deliberative instruments, the return of this technique in politics, after centuries of eclipse, implies that some of the ideals of ancient democracies are coming back. James Fishkin, who invented the deliberative poll, one such new deliberative devices, describes it as a “neo-​Athenian solution” and even argues that “the key infirmities in modern democracy can find a constructive response in modern refinements and improvements in the two essential components of the ancient Athenian solution—​random sampling and deliberation”.3 Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, two of the most convincing advocates of political sortition, express a similar opinion:

1 Translated from the French by Patrick Camiller and Sarah-​Louise Raillard. 2 Herath (2007); Waren and Pearse (2008). 3 Fishkin (2015).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004443006_017

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The assumption behind random selection in politics is that just about anyone who wishes to be involved in decision-​making is capable of making a useful contribution, and that the fairest way to ensure that everyone has such an opportunity is to give them an equal chance to be involved. Random selection worked in ancient Athens. It works today to select juries and has proved, through many practical experiments, that it can work well to deal with policy issues […] For democracy […] to be strong, it must contain the essential element of citizen participation, not just by a self-​selected few but by ordinary people who rightly can determine their own futures. Given the difficulty of involving everyone in such a deliberative process, we argue that random selection is an ideal means by which a cross section of the population can be involved.4 These experiments, born under the sign of deliberative democracy5 (or, less often, participatory democracy), embody a critique of those paternalist traditions that tend to reduce democracy to representative government. Their main set of supporters consider that civic participation in politics is crucial for the good health of our political system. They claim the political equality of all citizens in public discussion and, in some cases, in decision-​making. They believe that democratic legitimacy is closely linked to the expansion of deliberation in the sense of public debate: the more a decision comes from a lively and well organized public debate, the more it will be legitimate, both normatively and empirically.6 This line of thought is clearly a response to the growing distrust of the political system by the citizenry, which is a current and significant trend, at least in Europe and North-​America. In the deliberative democracy corpus, sortition plays a highly visible role.7 Beyond the obvious and important differences in the social, political, economic and institutional contexts of modern democracies on the one hand, and of ancient Athens on the other, is there a partial resurgence of the ideal of Athenian radical democracy taking place in the contemporary experiments, or do the practitioners and scholars who defend the latter misconceive the Athenian use of lot?8 In order to answer this question, this chapter shall first summarize the role and importance of selection by lot in Athens, emphasizing its radical democratic logic. It will then analyze how the Athenian experiment, 4 5 6 7 8

Carson and Martin (1999), 13–​14. Habermas (1989); Habermas (1996); Elster (1998); Elster (2013). Manin (1997); Habermas (1996); Dryzek (1990), Elster (1998); Elster (2013). Fishkin (1997); Dienel (1997); Waren and Pearse (2008). Farrar (2010).

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492 Sintomer which focused on what Thomas Aquinas would later define as “sors divisoria”, was highly unique among the various practices of random sortition in the premodern world. The second part of the chapter argues that current experiments based on randomly selected minipublics imply a substantially different political rationality, most notably because they rely on the notion of the representative sample, an unknown concept in Athens. Parallels and contrasts between these two universes are examined, especially regarding their claims to legitimacy and the challenges they need to overcome. These two historical experiences are included in a comprehensive typology of the various uses of random selection in politics. The conclusion brings together the main threads of this discussion and explains the conditions according to which contemporary deliberative minipublics could be combined with radical democracy, and therefore embody a truer descendent of the Athenian polity. 2

Athens: Sortition as a Tool for Radical Democracy

The close link between sortition and democracy was addressed by Herodotus. In book iii of his Histories, Herodotus recounts a discussion that allegedly took place in Persia, but which clearly reflected contemporary Athenian debates on the principles that should govern politics. One orator, Otanes, speaking in favor of popular regimes, described the latter as being based on the random selection of magistrates (Hdt. 3.80.6). In fact, more than in other Greek cities, selection by lot was a common procedure in Athens.9 The use of random selection grew pari passu with democracy itself. We do not know whether the selection by lot of some types of magistrates was first introduced by Solon in the early sixth century bce or by Cleisthenes in the second half of the sixth century (two key moments, in any event, for the establishment of the democratic regime)10, but it was certainly an integral part of Cleisthenes’s root-​and-​branch reform. Cleisthenes set up democratic courts (Heliaia) and a democratic Council (Boule) to the detriment of the aristocratic Areopagus. At that time, the most important magistrates were the archontes, who were elected. They only became selected by lot with Ephialtes’ reform (462–​461), which completed the democratization process of the Athenian political system. Selection by lot was massively used during the golden age of Athenian democracy, during the fifth and fourth centuries bce. At the time of Pericles, it was extended to the great

9 Hansen (1991); Ober (2015); Dowlen (2008); Buchstein (2009). 10 Lévèque, Vidal-​Naquet (1983).

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majority of public offices, while the democratic momentum took deeper root through the marginalization of the Areopagus, the establishment of daily allowances for Council members (bouleutai) and the randomly chosen juries of the people’s courts (461 bce). 2.1 Sortition in the Athenian Polity By condensing two centuries of tumultuous constitutional history, we can briefly summarize Athenian constitutional logic in the following manner. Outside the aristocratic forms inherited from the Archaic period, such as the Areopagus, Athenian institutions rested upon a procedural triptych: the people’s assembly, elections, and random selection. Aristotle considered that the three complemented each other in the establishment of democracy, but he added that it was mainly through the random selection of leaders that the profoundly democratic nature of a city was expressed. Election, though necessary to the overall balance, at least partly embodied a different principle: “It is considered democratic that offices should be filled by lot, and oligarchic that they should be elective” (Arist. Pol. 4.9, 1294b, trans. T.A. Sinclair, modified) Aristotle completed the picture by noting that, in the case of elections, they were oligarchic if the suffrage was based on a property qualification and democratic if all, or nearly, all citizens were able to participate. In his view, Athens had a “mixed system” of aristocratic and democratic elements. In fact, each citizen could stand for selection by lot, according to the principle of ho boulomenos (“whoever wishes”). This operated in three major types of institution. First, it served for the yearly constitution of the Boule, the main council of Athenian democracy. Each of the geographical demes composing the Athenian polis (whose boundaries were initially drawn by lot) was represented on the Council, not directly but through the ten “tribes” (or districts) that each contributed fifty citizens over thirty years of age; this made the Boule representative of the whole territory of Athens. Positions of responsibility within the Boule were also filled by allotment –​especially the position of chairman, which was renewed every day at sunset. Each chairman could thus state at the end of his term: “I was Athenian president for twenty-​four hours, but no more!”11 The random method was used to select a kind of Council executive, on which bouleutai from each tribe had to sit in turn for a month at a time (during which time they were known as prytaneis). Second, in addition to the Boule, most of the magistracies (600 out of 700) were filled by random selection; the ten main ones were the archontes, 11

Hansen (1991).

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494 Sintomer six of whom (the thesmosthetai) were guardians of the law and had responsibility for the courts. They were appointed in two stages: each of the ten geographical “tribes” selected ten of its members by lot, then a second, centralized procedure resulted in the selection of one from each tribe. The other magistracies –​police and highway officials, inspectors of markets, grain commissioners, weights and measures inspectors, officials responsible for public revenue, metics, and so on –​were likely filled by a centralized procedure.12 Third, in the fourth century, a kind of second chamber composed by randomly selected citizens, the nomothetai, revised the laws enacted by the assembly and verified their adequation to the Athenian “constitution”.13 Finally, all the judges were selected by lot. Citizenship entailed the unalienable right to participate in the assembly and to become a juror (Arist. Pol. 3.2, 1275a, trans. T.A. Sinclair). Each year, six thousand citizens were chosen by lot to form the tribunal (Heliaia), which sometimes met in plenary session but more often in a number of smaller law courts (dikasteria), in accordance with the business at hand. These courts were regarded as a key facet of democracy, their verdicts being delivered by popular juries with several hundred members each. Those in charge of managing the courts were also selected by lot. Members of the court could not deliberate, and could only vote after listening to the parties who appeared before them. The voluntary members of the Helaiai were required to show up in the morning and were then selected by lot and divided among the various courts. On this scale, and with this frequency, selection by lot became a routine activity. We may assume that this procedure, which Aristotle describes in The Athenian Constitution (Arist. Ath. Pol. 63–​67), lasted approximately one hour. More than two thousand citizens tried their hand at this “game” for two hundred or so days a year. Laid down in all its details, the procedure was manifestly impartial because it took place in public. In that regard, the kleroterion, the allotment “machine” most likely mentioned by Aristophanes as early as 393 bce,14 and designed in such a way that many witnesses could observe its operation, was crucially important. It made the procedure quicker and more straightforward, while simultaneously protecting it from any attempts at manipulation. Athenians had other forms of lottery, with oracles and dice (Hattler (2008), 26 ff.), but the kleroterion was reserved exclusively for judiciary and political purposes.

12 13 14

Hansen (1991), 231–​2. Pasquino (2010). Lopez-​Rabatel (2019).

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2.2 The Ideal of Radical Democracy In Athens, participation and deliberation were closely linked. In the Western world, the Greeks were the first to theorize a form of public debate that would involve all citizens. An apt reference here is Pericles’ funeral oration in honor of the soldiers who died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, as recounted by Thucydides, and wherein the orator defended his city’s political regime: We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless; but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy. The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action (Thuc. 2.40, trans. B. Jowett). This practice was inextricably linked with the city. It immediately became important, however, to determine whether this political system favored reasonable decision-​making or, on the contrary, enabled the manipulation of an ignorant population, the latter being a hypothesis defended by the vast majority of writers at the time, including Plato. Was well-​informed public deliberation compatible with participation by the greatest number? Before it could be given the philosophical treatment, this question was first and foremost a fundamental political issue. Among modern scholars, Ober has convincingly argued that Athenian democracy favored epistemic rationality.15 In any case, the different forms of Athenian debate were complex. In the people’s assembly, an essentially contradictory debate unfolded, wherein orators attempted to convince the audience: a practice conceptualized by Aristotle as rhetoric.16 Nonetheless, the public could actively participate. The practices of the Boule were doubtless more interactive, whereas one-​on-​one political discussions took place in the various public spaces of the agora.17 In the courts, on the contrary, juries were required to form their opinion by listening to the various parties but without deliberating, as all discussion among jury members was prohibited. Aristotle summarized the common features of all democracies as follows: (1) Elections: all citizens eligible for all offices; (2) rule: all over each and each in turn over all; (3) offices filled by lot, either all or at any rate those not calling for experience or training; (4) no tenure of office dependent on […] a property qualification or only on a very low one; (5) the same 15 16 17

Ober (2008), and his chapter in this volume. Manin (2011). Ruzé (1997); Villacèque (2013); Bouricius (2013).

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496 Sintomer man not to hold the same office twice or only very rarely –​a few permitted exceptions, notably offices connected with warfare; (6) short term of office for all offices or as many as possible; (7) jury-​courts all chosen from all the citizens and adjudicating on all or most matters and always on the most important and far-​reaching, such as […] the constitution, investigations, contracts between individuals; (8) the Ecclesia is the sovereign authority in everything, officials having no sovereign power over anything except quite minor matters, or at least the Council is sovereign in matters of greatest importance. (Arist. Pol. 4.2, 1317-​b, trans. T.A. Sinclair.) Selection by lot, rotation of mandates, equal and relatively active participation in political life, the obligation to account for mandates, the central role of the people’s assembly or council, deliberation in the public sphere: these were the institutional features that gave material form to the ideals of democracy. Not only the elite but all citizens (that is, all free adult men born within the city) could live in conformity with man’s nature as a zoon politikon, who had his origin and moral fulfilment only in the political community. The democratic ideal linked to the emergence of the polis constituted a political-​symbolic revolution: The polis appears as a homogenous universe, without hierarchy, without levels, without differentiation. The arche [power] is here no longer concentrated in a single person at the summit of society. It is evenly distributed throughout public life, in that common space where the city finds its center, its meson. Sovereignty passes in a regular cycle from one group to the next, one individual to the next, so that commanding and obeying are not opposed as two absolutes but become inseparable terms of one and the same reversible relationship.18 With the frequent rotation of the functions of power (most were allocated for a period between a few months and a year), random selection became a highly rational procedure. The coupling of rotation with selection by lot was particularly effective in warding off the professionalization of political activity and the monopolization of power by experts in a realm cut off from the citizenry. A number of experts were public slaves.19 From this perspective, the ideal of the city-​state was at once political and epistemological: that is, it defended the liberty of its members in equal measure, and it asserted that all had a 18 19

Vernant (1983), 99. Ismard (2015).

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legitimate share in political reflection and action, since neither of these was viewed as a specialized activity. The opposition between moderate and radical democrats focused on the role of elected leaders, as distinct from the mass of citizens. Thus, in his celebrated funeral speech to the soldiers of Athens, Pericles declared that, although all citizens were equal before the law and could speak if they so wished, regardless of their financial means, “we choose office-​holders according to their public esteem, so that citizens are appointed by merit rather than succeeding each other in turn” (Thuc. 2.37, trans. B. Jowett, modified). In contrast to this meritocratic principle, Cleon appealed to the wisdom of the common man: We should realize […] that lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are better governed by the man in the street than by people of more subtle intelligence […] the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws. […] But the other kind […] are prepared to admit that the laws are wiser than they are. Less adept at criticizing the arguments of a skillful orator, they let their judgement of affairs be guided by common sense, not by a competitive spirit. This is why their policies usually have beneficial effects (Thuc. 3.37, trans. B. Jowett, modified). In practice, the equality of all citizens proved to be imperfect.20 Despite important limitations, however, the democratic ideal at least partly corresponded to what actually happened on the ground. The Athenian way of life revolved around political activity, and citizens participated on a highly egalitarian basis in comparison with other systems known to history. Over a thirty-​year period, thanks to selection by lot and the rotation of functions, a quarter to a third of all citizens aged over thirty would serve for a year on the Council, and for a month as a prytanis, or a Council executive. Nearly 70 per cent of citizens aged over thirty were bouleutai at least once during their lifetimes,21 and a still higher proportion were called upon to be jurors, so that very few citizens indeed were left out entirely if they wished to participate. These institutions functioned as schools of democracy, in a society with a developed civic culture where face-​to-​face contact made mutual checking easy to achieve. Of course, the Athenian city-​state mostly excluded women and slaves from political life, and used its strength to subjugate allied cities. Yet, within the 20 21

Azoulay (2014). Finley (1991), 73 f.; Ruzé (1997), 380.

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498 Sintomer relatively narrow circle of citizens, power was largely exercised by the people (in the statutory sense of the whole citizenry), rather than only by representatives, and the power of powerful leaders was countervailed and controlled. As Moses I. Finley put it, in order to understand this system we have to go beyond the equation “democracy equals elections”. To a large extent, Athens refused to professionalize politics, believing that this was an activity in which all could and should (to a certain extent) participate.22 2.3 Divinatory Sortition and Distributive Sortition In order to really understand the radical innovation of Athenian sortition, we must contextualize this practice. In fact, sortition was widespread throughout the Mediterranean and Near-​Eastern world during Antiquity (Hdt. 1.94, 167; 2.32; 3.25, 84–​86, 128; 4.68; 7.23).23 The Greek myth of the world originally being arbitrarily divided up between Poseidon (the sea), Hades (the underworld) and Zeus (the heavens) was not unique to Athens (Hom. Il. 15.187–​195). Nevertheless, during the Archaic period random selection was imbued with divinatory signification: far from establishing equality between people, kleros (the “luck of the draw”, so to speak) revealed the fate (moira in Greek, fatum in Latin) that awaited each individual. In the most exhaustive passage on this topic, The Iliad demonstrates how kleros could be used to identify the hero that would confront the enemy on behalf of the Greeks as a whole. Used in a ritual fashion, this kind of sortition accomplished the dual function of reducing conflicts between peers and revealing the individual who had been previously chosen by the Gods to face destiny head-​on (Hom. Il.; Od.).24 The relationship between these Archaic practices and Classical Athenian methods is a topic of debate, however. While Fustel de Coulanges25 maintained one century ago that selection by lot had religious underpinnings, Mogens H. Hansen26 convincingly argues that the random selection of political offices was a secular process in ancient Athens, even if use of this method was accompanied by significant ritual. The meaning of sortition to attribute political functions was completely transformed by the spread of democracy, which systematized use of this practice. Random selection lost its association with divination and acquired a new, resolutely secular significance. From this point of view, no other cities in the rest of the Middle East were on par with Athens 22 23 24 25 26

Finley (1991), 70; Finley (1985); Castoriadis (1986), 282–​3; Castoriadis (1984); Meier (1990). See also Milano (2019); Cardano and Grottanelli (2001); Oppenheim (1977). Guidorizzi (2001); Demont (2010). Fustel de Coulanges (1891). See also Demont (2019). Hansen (1991).

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and the other Greek democracies; neither were the Roman uses of random selection a true equivalent.27 Many centuries later (1270–​1271), Thomas Aquinas established a distinction between the divinatory and secular uses of random selection which would later become canonical. Aquinas took into account the growing use of random selection for magistrates in the Italian Communes, as the latter were rediscovering a procedure that had apparently disappeared for centuries. He gave a theological foundation to the condemnation of luck-​based divinatory practices (“sors divinatoria”, or “sortes sanctorum”), which the Church had outlawed since the Council of Vannes in 462, but which widely remained in practice.28 The theologian also argued for the banning of random selection procedures for official Church positions, a prohibition that had in fact been issued by the Pope several decades earlier (Aquinas (2008)). To this end, Thomas Aquinas identified three types of random selection. The first, which he called “distributive sortition” (sors divisoria), was deemed the most legitimate. This procedure could be used in secular affairs, when it was unclear how to allocate goods or distribute functions. But since the Church had become an institution, it was forbidden from using such expedient measures: to do so would be to insult the Holy Spirit and the wisdom with which it had endowed its clerics, in particular its bishops. Hierarchy could always be relied on in cases of disagreement. The second type of selection, “consultative sortition” (sors consultatoria) was also permitted in secular affairs alone: it consisted of leaving a decision to chance when it was unclear which side to take after exhausting one’s reasoning capacities. The third kind of random selection, called “divinatory sortition” (sors divinatoria), entailed unduly soliciting God’s judgment by the use of divination techniques. Thomas Aquinas reiterated his prohibition and even expanded it, for divinatory sortition could only entail a pact with the Devil or, at the very least, allows demons to intervene in human affairs; the seriousness of the sins involved depended on the kind of divination practiced.29 This classification remains pertinent. If we put aside “consultative sortition”, which we can consider to be less fundamental than the two other types, and substitute instead the large number of games of chance, all random selection practices can be divided into three groups:30 (1) “distributive sortition” 27 28 29 30

Ehrenberg (1927); Stewart (1998); Jehne (2010); Taylor (1966); Rosenstein (1995); Hurlet (2006); Lopez-​Rabatel and Sintomer (2019). Rocquain (1880); Courcelle (1953). Aquinas (2008). Grottanelli (2001); Sintomer (forthcoming).

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500 Sintomer (sors divisoria) which consists of randomly distributing goods or functions; (2) cleromancy (sors divinatoria), a specific kind of divination (or, to use a different kind of vocabulary, of mantic, or knowledge of the divine) using the drawing of lots; and (3) games of chance. These three categories can in turn be subdivided. Distributive sortition (sors divisoria) can entail distributing goods (and different kinds of goods) or positions and functions. Cleromancy (sors divinatoria) can entail revealing someone’s destiny or the expression of a divine will –​the two not being the exact same thing. In fact, destiny can refer to a supernatural realm or a cosmic order that does not involve the personal will of a deity, and the idea of destiny or fate can persist in ritual uses even when secularization and rationalization have discredited belief in the direct intervention of the gods down below. Cleromancy can moreover refer to a number of various techniques. And finally, games of chance can be divided into many different categories, in particular depending on the instruments used (cf. ­table 15.1). Of course, these distinctions are largely analytical: in practice, the different domains influence each other and transfers frequently occur. The original unity of distributive sortition (sors divisoria) stemmed from a view of power as a sort of property over people, territories and movable objects. In that regard, it was logical to confuse the distribution of goods with the distribution of functions (which was no longer the case in Classical Athens, however). Moreover, the revelation of destinies and expressions of God’s will often have shifting borders, especially in societies where belief in the voluntary action of supernatural forces is strong. The idea that distributive sortition drew its significance from God’s intervention or some other manifestation of the divine was likewise very widespread throughout history (though this last dimension had almost entirely disappeared in Athenian democracy). Finally, the techniques and instruments used to operate random selections were often the same as those used by games of chance, cleromancy and politics; conversely, the creation of specific tools like the kleroterion generally marked one realm’s growing autonomy from another, and in particular the growing autonomy of politics with regard to religion. While random selection was a widespread practice in the ancient Near East, “distributive sortition” for magistracies never played a central role in political organization: it was used only sporadically, when it was necessary to solve a difficult problem, establish exceptional missions, or distribute powers between deities and individuals who were thus assigned their “lot”, or destiny by chance. In contrast, Athens was unique, as the random selection of political and judicial positions grew to occupy a central role in the city’s political system. It

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source: compiled by the author

Games of dice and anklebones (several millennia B.C.); lotteries (China, 200 B.C., Roman Empire, 15th-​century Europe); card games Extraction of an object (sors, kleros –​ (China, 9th century, cleromancy in the strictest sense), of Europe, 14th century); lotto cards (cartomancy), random selection of (Genoa, 16th century), etc. a book page (bibliomancy); divination using dice or astragals (astragalomancy), small sticks (achilleomancy);the burning of turtle scales (cheloniomancy); etc. Distribution of goods and functions as revealed destiny or the expression of God’s will Interpretation of fortune or misfortune in games as a sign of fate or (more rarely) divine will Potential use of the same instruments for distributive sortition, cleromancy and games of chance, shifting techniques from one realm to another

Reveals a destiny

Distribution of goods in Distribution of lots: land, territories, loot, functions: political, real estate, rare health military or religious care items, etc. “Negative” positions distribution: punishments, conscription, taxes, etc. Distribution of political powers seen as properties over the governed and their goods

Expresses a God’s will

Cleromancy: Divinatory Sortition (Sors Games of Chance Divinatoria)

Distribution of Goods and Functions: Distributive Sortition (sors divisoria)

­Table 15.1 The uses of random selection

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502 Sintomer is with regard to this specific modality that our comparison between ancient democracy and contemporary deliberative democracy becomes pertinent. 3

Sortition and Democracy, Ancient and Modern

From this perspective, how can we interpret modern references to Athenian practices, and to what extent are these references historically and theoretically relevant? 3.1 Randomly Selected Minipublics and Deliberative Democracy In the early 1970s, citizen juries (small groups of citizens randomly chosen to convey how the public sees some matter to the authorities) began to bring selection by lot back into politics, almost simultaneously in Germany and the United States.31 In the late 1980s, “consensus conferences” of fifteen randomly selected lay persons started to be held in Denmark to discuss broad scientific and technological options. And, during the same period, the idea of deliberative polls on certain issues, involving several hundred citizens, sprang up in the United States –​and would take concrete shape in the middle of the next decade. In the 2000s, the first citizen assemblies took place. All these devices are part of a broader trend placing citizen participation democracy on center stage. What is innovative is that they rely on randomly selected representative samples, or at least a fair cross-​section of lay citizens. They differ therefore from devices that involve voluntary or organized citizens (participatory budgeting, community development) or the whole body of citizens (citizen initiatives, referenda). During the 1990s and 2000s, these tools were adopted in other countries, resulting in many new experiments. More than 700 citizen juries met around the world, mostly in Britain, the United States, Germany, Japan and Spain;32 a good fifty consensus conferences were held, nearly half of them in Denmark;33 and the same number of deliberative polls were conducted in the United States and elsewhere, especially in Europe.34 Each of these procedures was also used in EU-​wide experiments. The Citizen Assembly of British Columbia became a source of inspiration for other regions. These models began to be combined with other instruments (such as participatory budgeting).

31 32 33 34

Dienel (1997); Crosby (1975). Vergne (2009). Joss and Durant (1995); Bourg and Boy (2005); Hendricks (2005). Fishkin and Farrar (2005).

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The trend has increased during the 2010s, with a second wave of experiments.35 In November 2009, Iceland, profoundly shaken by the financial crisis, created a citizen assembly of 950 randomly selected individuals and a few hundred qualified persons. The assembly was tasked with identifying the most important points for constitutional reform. Iceland repeated the process with a new assembly, this time entirely selected by lot, before using universal suffrage to elect a kind of jury from among the population, composed of twenty-​five ordinary citizens responsible for elaborating a new fundamental law based on the material produced by the previous assembly. In May 2015, Irish citizens voted in favor of a referendum to adopt a constitutional reform to legalize same-​sex marriage, thus adopting a draft law that had been produced by a citizen assembly largely selected at random.36 In May 2018, following nearly the same device, they chose to legalize abortion. France, originally behind the times, became in 2019 one of the most dynamic sites of citizen experimentation. Attitudes are changing very quickly. In 2006, Ségolène Royal –​who was canvassing to become French Socialist Party candidate for the 2007 presidential elections –​envisaged “popular scrutiny” of political leaders and a requirement that these should “regularly give an account of themselves to citizen juries selected by lot”.37 This vision triggered exceptionally violent reactions on the part of politicians who were otherwise at opposite ends of the spectrum. And yet, in the years that followed, the idea of reintroducing sortition in politics became increasingly popular and was defended by foundations and think-​tanks representing all points along the political spectrum. The yellow vests protest in 2018–​2019 has claimed more democracy, and part of it has proposed the institutionalization of citizens assemblies. French president Emmanuel Macron has partly accepted the idea and created a Citizen Convention for the Climate in 2019–​2020. Randomly selected citizens assemblies represent one of Extinction Rebellion’s four main claims in Europe. In Italy, one of the main parties, the Five Stars movement, has proposed to reintroduce sortition at various levels.38 3.2 Representative Sample and Descriptive Representation There are obvious differences between Athens and experiments like the Citizen Assemblies in British Columbia, Iceland, Ireland or France, and even more so with other deliberative devices involving randomly selected citizens. 35 36 37 38

Courant and Sintomer (2019). Suiter, Farrell and Harris (2016). Sintomer (2007), 7. Urbinati and Vandelli (2020).

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504 Sintomer In modern Western countries, nearly all adults are full citizens. The balance between elections and lottery is quite unequal: the technique of random selection is not yet routine, nor part of normal constitutional procedure (except in Mongolia, in the German community in Belgium, and partly in Oregon, USA). It is nearly only used at specific times, when a public authority freely decides to organize a citizen assembly, a citizen jury, a consensus conference or another kind of deliberative device. Before 2010, political experiments based upon sortition usually operated on the margins of politics, and the British Columbia experiment was the exception rather than the norm. Until 2015, the only example of a law making sortition routine and mandatory outside of the judicial realm was likely the Citizens’ Initiative Review adopted in 2011 in Oregon (the bill makes it necessary to organize a citizen jury to evaluate the proposals of the citizens’ initiatives before submitting them to a referendum).39 Another crucial, though less evident difference concerns the significance of random selection.40 In Athens, sortition and the rapid rotation of offices enabled citizens to govern and be governed in turn. Together with the importance of social and political networks,41 this is why one can speak of self-​government in this context, and this is why, in classical political thought, random selection had been associated with democracy and elections with aristocracy, an argument that Jacques Rancière42 reintroduced in the 2000s. The contemporary use of random selection is quite different. The real likelihood of being selected for a Citizen Assembly or similar body is very low. The idea is to use sortition to select a microcosm of the citizenry, a group that has the same features and the same diversity as the citizenry, but on a smaller scale. This would form a “mini-​populus”, as Robert A. Dahl43 first said, or a “minipublic”, to use the contemporary term. This becomes a statistical possibility when one takes a representative sample of the citizenry. A group of hundreds of randomly selected citizens tends to be representative of the people as a whole. A smaller group of ten to twenty persons, the size of most citizen juries, cannot be truly representative, but it incorporates some of the people’s diversity. This “fair cross-​section of the community”44 tends, at a small scale, to be similar to the population at large. Such panels embody a specific kind of “descriptive representation”,

39 40 41 42 43 44

Knobloch, Gastil and Reitman (2015). Röcke (2005); Sintomer (2011a). See Ober’s chapter in this volume. Rancière (2009). Dahl (1989), 340. “The Jury Selection and Service Act”, 28 U.S.C., secs 1861–​69, quoted in Abramson (2003), 100.

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which implies that political representatives have to be sociologically similar to the people.45 The notion of representative sample is familiar to twenty-​first-​century readers thanks to decades of its intensive use in statistics and opinion polls. This is why it seems “quite rational to see lotteries as a means to the end of descriptive representation”.46 However, the representative sample is a late nineteenth-​ century invention. It was first introduced in politics with the opinion polls in the middle of the twentieth century and it only became an instrument for selecting trial juries and various political juries and committees at the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s.47 There could be no relation between random selection and descriptive representation in Athens, as the idea that random selection statistically leads to a cross section of the population was not scientifically available at the time. Chance had not yet been scientifically “tamed” in the political sphere.48 Descriptive representation was important during the age of the French and North-​American revolutions. John Adams49 could thus write that the legislature “should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large.” Mirabeau50 likewise argued that the assembly should be “for the nation what a scaled-​down map is for its physical area; whether in part or in full, the copy should always have the same proportions as the original”. But because it was impossible to rely on the notion of a representative sample, promoters of descriptive representation ignored sortition and put forward other technical solutions.51 The Anti-​Federalists proposed small constituencies in order to favor the lower middle-​class –​a proposal that was not particularly convincing and was successfully criticized by the Federalists.52 Another solution suggested the separate representation of different social groups through corporatist methods53 –​ a proposal that was too closely identified with the Old Regime to convince radical democrats. In the nineteenth century, the upper classes’ de facto predominance among representatives regularly leaded to the idea of the specific representation of subordinate groups, and particularly of the working class.54

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Pitkin (1972); Mansbridge (1999). Stone (2009), 375–​397, 390. Abramson (2003). Hacking (1990). Adams (1851), 205. Mirabeau, “Discours devant les états de Provence” (1789), quoted in Rosanvallon (1998). Sintomer (2011a). Manin (1997). Mirabeau, “Discours devant les états de Provence” (1789), quoted in Rosanvallon (1998). Rosanvallon (1998).

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506 Sintomer Bernard Manin55 was the first to wonder why selection by lot disappeared from the political scene along with the modern revolutions. He gave a two-​part answer. On the one hand, the founding fathers of the modern republics wanted an elective aristocracy rather than a democracy, and so it was logical that they should reject random selection. On the other hand, the theory of consent, deeply rooted in modern conceptions of natural law, had gained so much ground that it seemed difficult to legitimize any political authority not formally approved by the State’s citizens. These two arguments are important, but they do not tell the whole story. In particular, they fail to explain why radical minorities did not demand the use of selection by lot in politics, even though they campaigned for a mirror-​like representation in which the representative body would resemble the people in its entirety. To understand these developments, one has to point to a number of other factors.56 We have to abandon the realm of “pure” political ideas and look at the way in which they take material shape through governance techniques and various tools and mechanisms. The lack of a statistical concept of representative sampling at the time of the French and American revolutions, when probability and statistics were already well established, is a crucial reason why political selection by lot seemed doomed in modern democracies, with their large populations and sizes –​as well as why those who upheld a descriptive conception of representation inevitably had to select other tools to advance their ideals. The sheer demographic and territorial size of modern republics seemed to forbid any serious consideration of political lotteries, since it could not allow all citizens to govern and be governed in turn and thus could not establish a minipublic. Conversely, the present comeback of random selection in a growing number of experiences also appears related to representative sampling. Random selection as it is practiced in politics today is inseparably bound up with that concept. In modern democracy, the deliberation of a fair cross-​section of the people is not the same as the people’s self-​government. It gives anybody the same chance to be selected; but because this chance is very small, it does not allow all citizens to hold public office in turn. It convenes people who have no mutual relations in the ordinary life. It leads instead to a minipublic counterfactual opinion that is representative of what the larger public opinion could be. John Adams could write that the microcosmic representation he was claiming for “should think, feel, reason, and act” like the people. For contemporary deliberative democrats, the statistical similarity between “descriptive” 55 56

Manin (1997). Sintomer (2011a).

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representatives and the people is only a starting point. The minipublic has to deliberate, and during this process, it changes its mind. It begins to think somehow differently, and this is precisely the added value of deliberation. This is quite clear when we read James Fishkin: “Take a national random sample of the electorate and transport those people from all over the country to a single place. Immerse the sample in the issues, with carefully balanced briefing materials, with intensive discussions in small groups, and with the chance to question competing experts and politicians. At the end of several days of working through the issues face to face, poll the participants in detail. The resulting survey offers a representation of the considered judgments of the public”. When traditional polls consist of only a “statistical aggregation of vague impressions formed mostly in ignorance of sharply competing arguments”, deliberative polls allow us to know “what the public would think, had it a better opportunity to consider the questions at issue”.57 3.3 Legitimacy and Challenges What sources of legitimacy can these devices rely on?58 Sortition as such as no essential political essence, and can be used in democratic as in aristocratic logics.59 Its meaning strongly depends on the conditions in which random selection takes place, and especially on the development of a strong culture of equality among citizens.60 They differ substantially from those on which sortition was based in ancient Athens. The assumption underlying current devices, namely that deliberation by lay citizens conducted in good conditions can lead to reasonable results, was the one that underpinned Athenian democracy. It tends to be broadly corroborated by empirical social science. The opinion of a minipublic is the outcome of good deliberation, and it can go on to influence the global public opinion if it is transmitted by the media. In the context of widely-​shared dissatisfaction with the political system, this can counterbalance politics-​as-​spectacle and the autonomy of the political class, and help make that class more responsible to citizens. The aim is to promote better communication between policy makers and citizens, as well as high-​quality deliberation with citizen involvement. In addition, the deliberative devices that bring lay citizens together can have epistemological advantages over representative government and committees of wise men: good deliberation must include diverse points of view, 57 58 59 60

Fishkin (1997), 162. Goodwin (1992). Farrar (2010). Blok (2014).

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508 Sintomer so that the range of arguments considered will be broader and discussion will be more inclusive.61 From this point of view, randomly-​selected minipublics have the advantage of being socially –​and therefore epistemologically –​richer than committees of experts or of political leaders; they are also socially and epistemologically richer than publics where the participants come purely from volunteers or from already organized civil society. The input of such minipublics is important in a world of increasing complexity and can increase epistemic democracy. In addition, to avoid the creation of “elites” based on certain socio-​economic characteristics, random sampling –​or, at least, stratified sampling followed by actions which target the inclusion of underrepresented constituencies –​is a powerful tool to avoid the self-​selection bias tainting other democratic experiments resting on voluntary participation. As only those who volunteered could be randomly selected in ancient democracy, this was not an Athenian concern. The third argument comes from radical democrats such as Carson and Martin. Advocates of representative government sometimes argue that the best political system would no doubt be a true “government of, by and for the people” (Abraham Lincoln), like in Athens, but that because such a system is impossible in large mass societies, representative government is the second-​ best option available. However, it is possible to maintain that in modern democracies the second-​best solution is to replace the self-​governing people with randomly-​selected minipublics, since this procedure affirms the fundamental democratic value of equality: each citizen has an equal chance of participating in the decision, and the diversity in the social composition of a minipublic reflects that of the people. The fourth, more consensual argument for randomly-​selected minipublics, derived from wide-​ranging historical experience, is their impartiality. Although not central, the idea that sortition was an impartial device existed already in Athens. In modern democracies, elected officials, experts and organized interests have a strong tendency to defend particular interests. Conversely, random selection tends to recruit non-​partisan people without career interests to defend, and they are encouraged by the deliberative procedural rules to reach a judgment tending towards the public interest –​an argument similar to Cleon’s. This feature is particularly valuable when it comes to dealing with long-​term issues such as the preservation of environmental and living conditions for future generations.62

61 62

Landemore (2012); Elster (2013). Bourg (2011).

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The last argument advocates for a new kind of representation –​the notion of representation was unknown in Ancient Greece, where the various activities that we might associate with this word were in fact considered as completely separate activities. Gordon Gibson, the creator of British Columbia’s Citizen Assembly and councilor of the Prime Minister, justified the initiative in the following manner: We are […] adding new elements to both representative and direct democracy. These new elements differ in detail but all share one thing in common. They add to the mix a new set of representatives, different from those we elect. As things stand now, both streams of decision-​making are highly influenced –​almost captured –​by experts and special interests. The idea of deliberative democracy is essentially to import the public interest, as represented by random panels, as a muscular third force. The traditional representatives we elect are chosen by majority consensus, for an extended period, as professionals, with unlimited jurisdiction to act in our name. The new kinds we are talking about are chosen at random, for a short period, as lay citizens for specified and limited purposes.63 However, random selection mechanisms face a number of challenges, which are often different from those that radical democrats had to confront in Athens. In the context of the present discussion, we shall analyze a number of these obstacles. The first challenge was well-​known in ancient Attica. It pertains to the relationship between deliberation and social inequalities. How can speaking be divided in an egalitarian way within a group that is socially and culturally heterogeneous, where some are more accustomed than others to public speaking, where having cultural capital tends to lower inhibitions and reinforce self-​confidence, and where discussions within a given procedural device can be strongly influenced by the experts being interviewed and the professionals managing the procedure?64 However, although equality is never perfect, sociological observations have shown that deliberative minipublics successfully minimize asymmetry when carefully moderated and that their effectiveness is often very impressive, especially during small group (“breakout”) sessions. The second challenge concerns the issue of responsibility.65 In ancient Athens, those who became members of the colleges of magistrates had to account 63 64 65

Gibson (2007). Fraser (1992). Urbinati and Vandelli (2020).

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510 Sintomer for their actions. Even though they certainly do not always respect their electoral promises, modern elected officials have legal responsibility when they hold executive positions, and are accountable to their electors if they wish to be re-​elected. To whom could and should today’s juries and citizens’ assemblies be accountable? Sociological studies have shown that this responsibility persists, though indirectly:  randomly selected citizens feel responsible with regard to the authority that chose them. In addition, they tend to mutually keep each other in check and potential troublemakers are very quickly ousted. Finally, juries feel accountable to public opinion, as they will have to explain their recommendations or proposals; when the latter are far-​fetched, they have no chance of being accepted, either by the authorities or the public opinion at large. A third and very serious challenge concerns the tension between deliberation by minipublics and deliberation by the masses. This challenge is substantially different from those experienced by Athenian democracy. By definition, deliberative minipublics aim to reach a counterfactual opinion of what public opinion could be –​they are better informed and enjoy a reasonably satisfactory setting in which to be formulated –​that may well differ from wider popular opinion. The way in which juries’ or citizens assemblies’ recommendations have been rejected in several key experiments clearly demonstrates that this is not merely a speculative risk. Deliberation and participation may be presented as opposite models of democracy.66 This must not be the case, but trade-​offs are inevitable, and there will always be those who privilege the logic of unrestricted participation over deliberation, and vice versa.67 The relationship between the deliberative opinion of minipublics and the public opinion at large is in any case a vast theoretical and political question.68 The fourth –​and perhaps biggest –​challenge stems from the last. It concerns the issue of sociopolitical change.69 Again, this is a modern problem, which had no equivalent in Athens. How can minipublics be truly relevant? Randomly-​selected citizens are extricated from their previous social contexts and placed together artificially. Minipublics therefore differ from other democratic experiments, such as participatory budgeting, which are more embedded in everyday social and political relations. Minipublics can often be experimental rather than efficacious. This is perhaps why there is a potential trade-​off between deliberation in the English sense of the term (good discussion), when 66 67 68 69

Held (2006). Sintomer (2011b). Goodin and Dryzek (2006); Lafont (2020). Fung (2005); Sintomer (forthcoming).

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developed within minipublics, and deliberation in the sense originally found in Latin-​based languages (decision of a collective body). Although they can have other kinds of impact,70 the first wave of minipublics have not produced substantial changes in the real world. Given that their existence has depended solely from the willingness of public authorities, it has been unlikely that they could really be subversive with regard to power structures. To impose positive change in a world where the structural resistance of dominant interests is enormous, instead of reasonable discussions in modest committees, would it not be more effective to call for indignation and a mass uprising against the injustices and perils threatening the planet? A majority of deliberative minipublics have not had much impact on the wider public sphere and in the worst case scenario, the democratic deliberation of a small circle of randomly selected citizens could replace a deliberative democracy including all citizens.71 In such circumstances, deliberative minipublics are implicated in a kind of elitism, at the antipodes of radical Athenian democracy, which would argue that the implication of lay citizens in politics could only ever take place within the managed arena of minipublics, other forms of participation being suspected of contributing emotional and non-​reasonable elements. This is probably why a second wave of experiments, which has developed in the 2010s, has promoted empowered minipublics, more directly linked with the decision-​making process and with forms considered as typical of direct democracy, such as citizens initiatives and referendums. An increasing number of scholars are defending the idea of legislature by lot, proposing various constitutional settings in this direction.72 3.4 Sortition and Politics: a Typology It thus seems that although the parallels between Athenian democracy and modern deliberative minipublics are real, they should not be overemphasized, as the differences between these two contexts are significant. Revisiting the notion established by Thomas Aquinas, we are in both cases dealing with distributive sortition, but the two forms stem from opposite logics. Before concluding this chapter, we shall examine these parallels and differences in a broader context that allows for a comparative historical sociological reading of the political significance of selecting public officials by lot.73

70 71 72 73

Goodin and Dryzek (2006). Chambers (2009). Gastil and Wright (2019); Courant and Sintomer (2019). Sintomer (forthcoming).

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512 Sintomer Sortition may be employed either alone or in combination with such methods as direct or indirect election from below, the co-​opting of a person from outside by their peers, the designation of a successor by their predecessors, appointment by a superior, the recruitment of volunteers, the purchasing of offices, the holding of competitions or exams, hereditary transmission through birth, or the use of iq tests, physical or military force. Only since the triumphs of representative government in the late eighteenth century have political offices been almost exclusively allocated through election or co-​optation (in ministerial appointments, for example), whereas high posts in state administration have been assigned through civil service examinations or co-​optation by superiors. For a long time, selection by lot was one of the most widespread ways of filling such positions in republican and democratic systems. It would nevertheless be wrong to interpret the political use of sortition in a one-​sided, reductionist manner, whether as an inseparable part of “true democracy”,74 or as essentially permitting the impartial resolution of conflicts.75 Sociological and historical analysis shows that, depending on its place in the selection of government personnel and on the groups and contexts involved, random selection may stem from rather different political logics. Although these may well be combined in actual practice, it is possible to distinguish five broad ideal-​types76 for the purposes of analysis. 1. Divination. Selection by lot may be given a religious or supernatural interpretation, and in particular viewed as a divine signal. The Bible clearly describes this use of random selection: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs, 16, 33). From this perspective, in order to manage their common affairs, human beings must follow God’s will or the mark of a destiny that they cannot know in any other way. The sors divisoria is intrinsically linked with the sors divinatoria. Although it is possible that political selection by lot did once have religious origins, such origins were at best of marginal significance in classical Athens, and are likewise irrelevant in contemporary deliberative democracy. 2. Impartiality. Random selection may also be thought of as an impartial means of resolving a disputed issue. One of Solomon’s proverbs expresses this pithily:  “Casting the lot settles disputes and keeps strong opponents apart” (Proverbs, 18, 18). This logic was quite widespread throughout history, but it too may be interpreted in various ways. (1) Sortition may assist conflict resolution by lowering the emotions associated with access to prestigious or important 74 75 76

Manin (1997). Dowlen (2008); Buchstein (2009). Weber (1946).

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offices, and by offering a mode of allocation that is “neutral” vis-​à-​vis the camps or individuals present in the field. This dimension played a role in Athens, but is not (yet?) particularly significant in contemporary experiments (the most important exception being the combination of election and sortition in Morena, the party of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who won Mexico’s presidential and legislative elections in 2018). (2) Conversely, selection by lot may impartially assign functions that are considered onerous, and for which there would probably not be enough volunteers. It long served for the recruitment of soldiers (and their punishment in the Roman practice of decimation), and it is of course still used to select people for time-​consuming and poorly paid (or unpaid) service on trial juries. (3)  Sortition may result in giving responsibilities to people who are less directly “involved” with a controversial issue than others would be, in the case of an election. Chosen at random rather than impelled by partisan motives or a thirst for power, they are likely to be more neutral. Impartiality is therefore associated with the nature of the procedure (how selection occurs) but also with its input (who is selected). This concept has primarily been developed in contemporary experiments, but it was also present (although not centrally so) in ancient Athens. 3. Self-​government, radical democracy. Selection by lot can also be seen as a procedure favoring the self-​government of all by all, in which everyone takes turns to govern and be governed. This means that the task of ruling is no longer entrusted to “the best”, to a social elite or professional politicians. In such cases, random selection is combined with procedures that facilitate the swift rotation of offices. In that way, everyone has the same chance of gaining access to decision-​making positions, without having to be part of a clientelist or party network. The types of self-​government and equality in question vary according to the nature of the group from which the selection by lot is made. (1) When it is a homogenous peer group, equality must be maintained between individuals, so that no one is given a value or qualities superior to those of anyone else in the group. (2) When the group is socially heterogeneous, lottery is a powerful means of combating social distinction; it then constitutes the democratic method par excellence. This element was central in Athens, and was a key dimension of its radical democracy. (3)  Selection by lot may also prevent power from being monopolized by a professional group of political, bureaucratic, judicial or technological experts, or at least make it possible to reduce their weight in comparison with the body of politically active citizens. This was also a key principle of ancient Athenian democracy. 4. The common sense of lay citizens. In rather a different way, sortition may be seen as a guarantee that power over all can be assumed by anyone: that is, by individuals who are interchangeable with others because they rely on their

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514 Sintomer “common sense”. This conception has mainly been developed in relation to trial juries, where the definition of “everyone” may vary considerably, and where some may be regarded as “more equal than others”. This argument was not absent from Athenian practices and is still found, though in somewhat mitigated fashion, in contemporary procedures. 5. Deliberative democracy. What distinguishes deliberative minipublics is that they mainly treat selection by lot as a way of achieving a representative sample (or at least a fair cross-​section) of the people. This counterfactual minipublic is able to form opinions, evaluate, judge and perhaps even decide in the name of the community, when it is not possible for everyone to take part in deliberations and social heterogeneity rules out the idea that all individuals are interchangeable. This perspective, which presupposes the concept of a representative sample, developed late in history. (1) In principle, a cross-​section may be thought of as providing a kind of miniaturized snapshot of all individual opinions. This is the case with all mechanisms, such as traditional opinion polls or satisfaction surveys, which do not include discussion among those selected by lot; criticism of such mechanisms has been at the heart of new experiments in deliberative democracy. (2) It may also reflect the diversity of the initial group, and therefore permit a richer and more equitable deliberation that takes in a greater number of viewpoints and social experiences. The new deliberative procedures are such examples. (3) The representative sample may also be seen as making it possible to represent the interests of the main population groups –​a kind of modernized corporatism in which the government consists of representatives of each corporation. During the last few decades, some trial juries, mainly in the USA, have been shifting in this direction, but such logic plays a marginal role in deliberative democratic experiments, which instead emphasize the fact that deliberation helps participants look beyond their own self-​interest.77 4

Conclusion

Many contemporary advocates for random selection in politics lay claim to the Athenian legacy, arguing that sortition was part and parcel of the invention of Western democracy. References to Athens play a significant role in contemporary experiments. However, such claims must be nuanced when scrutinized in the light of historical and theoretical comparisons. Coupled with the rapid 77

Mansbridge (1980).

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Sortition and Politics ­Table 15.2 The political logic of sortition

Divination

Impartiality

Knowing Neutrally one’s destiny/​ resolving God’s will disputes between powerful individuals and/​or factions

Self-​ government, radical democracy

The common Deliberative sense of lay democracy citizens

Permitting self-​ government of all by all, with everyone taking a turn

Relying on general common sense to find solutions for specific problems

Allowing for a representative sample or a fair cross-​section of the people to deliberate in optimal conditions

source: compiled by the author

rotation of the offices, political lotteries were crucial in Attica during the classical period in Ancient Greece. There were elements of real self-​government that composed a central dimension of the ideal of radical democracy. They helped to make Athens and other democratic Greek cities unique in the Ancient world: the sors divisoria (i.e., the use of sortition for distributing goods and offices) was essential there, whereas it was marginal elsewhere. Conversely, the sors divinatoria (i.e., the use of sortition for the purposes of divination), which was widespread at the time, had no real influence on political sortition in Athens. Contemporary schemes based on random selection rely on the concept of the representative sample, which was unknown before the end of the nineteenth century. These minipublics represent a counterfactual opinion –​ what the larger public might think if it could truly deliberate. Their first wave has been closely linked to the ideal of deliberative democracy, in a way which differs sharply from Athenian radical democracy. This comparison can be expanded to a more comprehensive typology, where radical democracy and deliberative democracy are only two of the five models of political sortition. One of the main challenges that randomly selected deliberative minipublics must face is the fact that the “enlightened” opinion they enable not only tends to differ from public opinion as a whole, but may actually be instrumentalized against it –​something that was inconceivable in Athens: even the veto that nomothetai could exercise against laws adopted by the citizens general assembly has to be understood as a democratic self-​limitation of the people and by the

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516 Sintomer people.78 In addition, most minipublics of the first wave have been top-​down instruments, dependent on the good will of political authorities, tightly controlled by their inventors, with the result that they can hardly effect substantial change in the real world. This kind of deliberative democracy was a minimal corrective to representative government. Nevertheless, although minipublics’ intrinsic logic differs from the Athenian one, it could gain new relevancy when combined with other procedures and social processes, something which has begun to take place with a second wave of experiments which has strengthened starting in the 2010s. Minipublics can be empowered. They can offer sources of legitimacy to be combined with, rather than opposed to, the legitimacy of radical or direct democracy, and contribute therefore to the pluralization of democratic legitimacy and a systemic transformation of the political systems.79 Numerous researchers and practitioners, very often with Athens in mind, have investigated how their quasi-​ideal deliberative norms could be articulated with more inclusive and heterogeneous discourse within the wider public sphere.80 This has led to wide-​scale experiments, like those combining Citizen Assemblies and referenda-​at-​large, or the Citizens’ Initiative Review in Oregon. With this second wave of experiments, sortition is once again associated with elections, but also is combined with decisions made directly by citizens as a whole, as was the case in most democratic and republican experiments throughout history. For this innovation to be truly meaningful, it must be legally institutionalized and not rely solely on the will of political leaders. Some scholars and practitioners understand this as a move beyond political conflicts, with an imaginary based on a reconciled society once the political class will have disappeared.81 Others, more realistically, understand empowered minipublics as a deliberative moment in a broader and conflictual process of sociopolitical change. In the twenty-​first century, it could well be that the old ideals and practices of the Athenian democracy experience a renaissance. It is not a question of eliminating elections, but of enriching the dynamics of democracy by incorporating this new element on a wide scale. It would be naive to think that politics will just continue as usual, with minor changes compared to the previous century. Given the combination of ecological, social, financial, geopolitical and health crisis, and the massive disrepute into which institutional politics has fallen, preserving status quo is neither realistic nor adequate. 78 79 80 81

Farrar (2010); Lanni (2010). Rosanvallon (2006); Mansbridge and Parkinson (2012). Steenbergen, Bächtiger and Pedrini (2015). For a strong critique of this imaginary, see Urbinati and Vandelli (2020).

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General Index of Names and Subjects Acciaiuoli, Donato 80, 120n34, 121–​123 Achilles 408 Adam 63 Adams, John 205–​207, 211–​216, 505–​506 Adams, John Quincy 206 Aelius Aristides 82–​83, 119, 144 Aeschines, 28, 30–​31, 31n13, 32–​37, 41–​43, 141, 233, 347n61 Agamemnon 62 Agesilaus ii, King of Sparta 216 Agis iv, King of Sparta 125n40, 191 Ahrens, Heinrich 274n13 Alberti, Leon Battista 9, 82, 90, 93, 93n67, 94n71, 95, 108, 112, 133 Albertus Magnus 65, 65n17, 65n18 Alcibiades 4, 9, 61, 66, 70, 72, 74, 79, 79n37, 90, 94, 94n73, 95, 115, 125, 136, 182, 208, 210, 252n101, 286, 393, 433 Alcmaeon 144 Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia 58, 68, 81, 144, 194, 207, 216, 228n28, 286, 442 Alfonso, Duke of Calabria 109, 114 Alfonso, King of Aragon 109, 109n11 Althusser, Louis 17, 358 American Revolutionary War  ix, 45, 58, 86, 203–​206, 211, 214, 217, 306, 405n26, 417, 505–​506 Ammirato, Scipione 139 Amnesty, Athenian 61, 118, 118n29, 125n39, 165n31, 315, 315n71, 481n47 Amos 374, 374n15 Amyot, Jacques 179, 182 Anacharsis 445 Anaxagoras 113, 163 Anderson, Greg 248n89 Andocides 30, 32–​33, 40–​42 Androtion 40 Antidemocratic tradition 3–​13, 3n4–​5, 15, 18, 28, 43, 46, 123, 129, 134, 142, 160, 163, 165, 168, 170, 173, 175, 179, 188n38, 196, 209, 224n19, 225, 233, 236–​239, 252, 258, 271, 278–​280, 282–​284, 287–​288, 298, 309, 318, 394, 394n99; see also

Historiography; Mob rule; Reception of Athenian democracy Antipatros, Macedonian general 286 Antiphon 28, 30, 163 Antiquarianism 9, 14, 67n19, 88, 138–​140, 140n66, 141–​142, 145n74, 180, 282 Anytos 315 Apollo 39, 227, 468 Archidamus ii, King of Sparta 160n23, 162 Arendt, Hannah  ix, 18, 369–​370, 399–​402, 402n18, 403–​404, 404n22, 405, 405n26, 405n27, 405n28, 406, 406n29, 407, 407n32, 408–​413, 413n52, 414n55, 415, 415n56, 416–​417, 417n60, 417n62, 418 Areopagus, the Council of the 32–​33, 38, 40–​41, 85–​86, 86n51, 87–​89, 94, 118, 123, 139n63, 142, 144, 156n10, 209, 247n82, 492–​493 Ares 38 Aristides 70, 72, 74–​76, 79–​80, 90–​91, 94, 110–​111, 115, 134–​136, 143–​144, 155, 180, 182, 189–​191, 208–​209, 349 Aristophanes 30–​32, 43, 141, 159, 159n21, 192, 283, 285, 381n49, 494 Aristophanes Byzantinus 30 Aristotle 3–​6, 6n13, 6n14, 8–​10, 15, 18, 28–​34, 34n40, 35, 38–​40, 40n79, 41–​46, 48, 60, 61n12, 62, 62n14, 63, 63n15, 64–​65, 65n17, 66–​68, 70, 78, 84–​88, 91, 94, 110–​112, 114, 116–​118, 120n32, 123–​124, 126, 129, 133–​134, 137, 140–​141, 143–​144, 144n72, 154, 156, 162n26, 163n26, 164n29, 169, 170n44, 181, 205, 208, 211–​212, 215, 221, 221n7, 228n28, 243, 247n82, 248n89, 260, 260n122, 265n145, 271, 286, 319, 337, 337n14, 337n16, 346, 346n57, 348, 348n61, 348n62, 350, 354n74, 359, 401, 403n20, 407, 407n34, 412–​413, 446–​447, 456n6, 458, 458n11, 458n12, 468, 480, 480n44, 493–​496 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 273 Arnold, Matthew 384 Artaxerxes i, King of Persia 136 Athena 112n17, 119, 247n82

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General Index of Names and Subjects

Athenian democracy  criticism of see Antidemocratic tradition; Mob rule; Reception of Athenian democracy debate on 14, 291, 317, 319, 353, 359 history of 2, 27, 38–​41, 58–​59, 79, 87, 105, 124, 144, 182–​183, 187, 203, 226, 314, 339, 342, 347; see also Constitution, Solonian; Constitution, Cleisthenic; Cleisthenes; Solon ideology of 3n5, 20, 27–​29, 317, 357–​359, 456n6, 457, 457n10; see also Equality; Freedom; Isonomia; Parrhesia in fifth century bce 2, 40 in fourth century bce 2, 41–​45 institutions of see Areopagus, the Council of the; Athenian law-​courts; Athenian popular assembly; Council of Five Hundred leaders of 4–​5, 7, 9–​10, 14, 17, 32, 34, 36–​38, 40, 43–​45, 62, 66, 71, 71n24, 74–​77, 81, 83, 85, 89, 94, 107–​108, 111–​113, 119, 133–​134, 136, 140, 142–​143, 162, 189, 192, 208, 210, 272, 277, 280, 290, 354, 360, 433, 457, 475, 493, 497–​498; see also Alcibiades; Aristides; Cimon; Cleon; Demagogues; Demosthenes; Nicias; Pericles; Themistocles; Thrasybulus tradition of 27, 45–​48, 183, 225, 333, 339; see also Antidemocratic tradition; Historiography; Liberal interpretations of Athenian democracy; Marxist historiography; Reception of Athenian democracy values of 1–​2, 5, 28, 264, 285, 314, 360, 382, 393; see also Equality; Freedom; Isonomia; Parrhesia with aristocratic or oligarchic elements 84, 360, 493 see also Constitution, Athenian Athenian law-​courts 27, 31, 32–​35, 40–​41, 43–​44, 85, 199, 230n32, 275–​276, 278–​ 280, 284, 287, 354, 358, 458n13, 492–​496 Athenian popular assembly 27–​28, 31–​34, 36–​37, 40, 43–​44, 46, 86, 111–​112, 132, 137, 141–​142, 156, 162, 175, 195, 199, 213, 234, 236, 238, 239n53, 248, 252–​254, 260, 274, 276–​277, 279, 281, 284, 314,

344, 354, 358, 433, 436–​439, 455, 458, 462, 470, 493–​496 Augustinus 63, 93, 308, 384 Augustus (Octavian) 58, 158 Aulus Gellius 141 Averroes 384n60 Avlami, Chryssanthi 259n121 Bacon, Francis 158 Barbaro, Francesco 80 Baron, Hans 77n28, 82–​83 Barthélemy, Jean-​Jacques 10, 181, 186, 189–​190, 193, 333 Bartolus of Sassoferrato 64 Basili, Cristina 400 Bataille, Georges 430n17 Baudelaire, Charles 444 Bauer, Adolf 286n93 Beccadelli, Antonio (known as Panormita) 109 Beccaria, Antonio 80 Begriffsgeschichte see Conceptual history Beloch, Karl Julius 221, 257–​258, 258n118, 279n49, 280n55, 281n65, 304n19, 310, 313n67 Benjamin, Walter 404n22 Bentham, Jeremy 196, 231 Benvenuto da Imola 62 Bergk, Theodor 283 Berlin, Isaiah 263, 302n12, 319, 319n83 Beroaldo, Filippo (the Elder) 76–​77, 120n34, 121–​124, 129, 138 Berve, Helmut 288n102, 289–​290 Biondo, Flavio 84, 139–​141 Birago, Lampugnino 126n44, 127–​128 Bismarck, Otto von 286–​288 Bleicken, Jochen 291n118 Bobbio, Norberto 13, 303, 310, 321, 321n95, 321n97, 359n102 Boccaccio, Giovanni 78, 94n73 Boccalini, Traiano 139 Böckh, August 46, 273, 278, 279n45, 280n59 Bodin, Jean 156, 156n11, 179–​180 Boethius 63 Bosanquet, Bernard 352, 352n70 Boule see Council of Five Hundred Botero, Giovanni 139 Bougainville, Jean-​Pierre de 186

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General Index of Names and Subjects Bovero, Michelangelo 321n97 Bracciolini, Poggio 9, 78, 82, 89–​93, 94n71, 112, 129, 133 Brague, Rémy 387n75 Brandolini, Aurelio Lippo 90, 120n33, 121–​123, 126n43, 129 Brasidas, Spartan general 244 Brennus, Gaulish chieftain 244 British Parliament 10, 46, 154, 158, 171, 171n24, 172–​173, 175, 194, 196, 204, 206, 226, 229, 246, 284–​285 Brival, Jacques 192 Bronowski, Ada 333n1 Brunetto Latini 62, 72 Bruni, Leonardo 9, 58n4, 59n6, 78–​89, 89n60, 92, 94, 119–​120, 120n33, 121–​124, 126, 129 Brunkhorst, Hauke 406, 406n30 Brutus, Lucius Junius 190 Brutus, Marcus Junius 82, 190, 307 Burckhardt, Jacob 8, 14, 272–​275, 277, 288, 292, 319, 319n85, 360, 404n22 Burke, Edmund 226, 226n24, 227n28, 228n28, 245 Burke Leacock, Eleanor 338n21 Burt, Ron 473–​474 Busolt, Georg 281n66 Byron, George Gordon Noel 226, 226n22, 235 Caesar 58, 277 Calder, William Musgrave iii 232–​233 Calogero, Guido 13, 302, 317, 319, 319n87, 320–​321 Calvin, John 211 Camassa, Giorgio 333n1, 360–​361 Cambiano, Giuseppe 181 Camiller, Patrick 490n1 Campano, Antonio 80 Canfora, Luciano 317, 359–​360 Capitini, Aldo 313, 320 Cardano, Girolamo 113n20, 139 Care of Self 424–​434, 436–​437, 442, 443n42, 445–​446, 448 Carlyle, Thomas 231, 241, 255, 255n12 Carneades of Cyrene 125n41 Carr, Edward Hallett 221, 221n11 Carson, Lyn 490, 508 Cartledge, Paul 59–​60

525

Cassarino, Antonio 79 Cassin, Barbara 399–​400 Cassirer, Ernst 16 Castiglione, Baldassar 127–​128 Cato, Marcus Porcius (Censor) 82, 125n41 Cato, Marcus Porcius (Uticensis) 307 Cauer, Friedrich 287n97 Cavalcanti, Giovanni 81n42, 108 Cavendish, William, Baron of Hardwick, first Earl of Devonshire 157 Cavendish, William, second Earl of Devonshire 157–​158, 171n47, 172 Cecill, Thomas 160 Cecrops, King of Athens 119 Champagny, François-​Joseph de 257n117 Charles i, King of England 46, 153, 170–​172 Charles v, Holy Roman Emperor 194 Charles viii, King of France 124 Chrysoloras, Manuel 78–​81, 89 Churchill, Winston 313 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 7, 7n16, 46n119, 62, 65–​66, 68, 69n22, 70, 73, 76, 82–​83, 86n51, 91, 94n72, 110–​112, 115–​116, 118, 120n32, 135–​136, 204, 206, 211–​212, 215 Cimon 74–​76, 79, 90, 111, 115, 125, 165, 182, 208 Cinnella, Ettore 333n1 Citizen Assembly 490, 502–​504, 509–​510 Citizen Juries 502–​504 Clark, George Rogers 204 Cleanthes of Assos 91 Cleisthenes 1, 16–​17, 38–​39, 72, 143, 143n70, 144, 189–​190, 198–​199, 221n7, 243, 246–​247, 247n84, 248, 248n88, 248n89, 314, 342, 342n37, 343–​345, 345n51, 346–​347, 347n58, 347n60, 348, 348n61, 349–​351, 355–​356, 359, 361, 414n55, 417n62, 463, 466–​468, 468n30, 470–​471, 471n34, 472–​473, 475, 478, 481, 492 Cleomenes i, King of Sparta 244 Cleomenes iii, King of Sparta 125n40, 191 Cleon 165, 167–​168, 208, 210, 241, 252–​254, 254n109, 258, 277, 279, 283–​285, 497, 508 Clinton, Henry Fynes 226, 235 Codrus, King of Athens 61, 119 Coercive (Intolerable) Acts 206–​207 Cohen, Hermann 373n11, 373n11, 385, 385n63, 390n88

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Cold War 302n12, 319, 321, 368, 368n2, 372–​373, 387, 392 Collective wisdom 20, 453–​455, 458 Collingwood, Robin George 376, 393 Collini, Stefan 239, 241 Communist revolution 335n8, 339, 341, 341n31, 416–​417 Conceptual history 12, 291 Condorcet, Marie-​Jean-​Antoine-​Nicolas de 189, 458n11 Consensus conference 502, 504 Constant, Benjamin 8, 12, 47, 193, 195–​196, 225n20, 273, 273n12, 275, 277, 300–​303, 306–​308, 318–​319 Constitution  ancestral 33, 190, 248, 346, 347n61 aristocratic 64, 89, 117, 128, 130, 132, 139, 280, 360, 493 Aristotle on 6, 85, 137, 162n26, 286, 495–​496 Athenian 3, 6–​7, 9, 15, 18, 20, 27, 42, 66, 85–​86, 116, 118–​119, 130, 140–​143, 180, 185, 220, 221n7, 240, 243, 284, 281, 286, 464, 493–​494; see also Law, Athenian Cleisthenic 189, 246–​248, 248n88–​89, 342, 348n61, 471n34 debate or discussion on 6n12, 18, 28, 175, 402–​403, 492 democratic 4, 15, 18, 20, 92, 94, 130, 142–​143, 180, 188n38, 190, 215, 223n18, 226, 242, 248, 314, 382, 346, 405n28, 456n6, 481, 492 English 46, 227 Italian 298, 320, 320n90 Machiavelli on 126, 131 Massachusetts 212 mixed 4, 7, 9, 11, 46, 126, 126n43, 129–​132, 137–​138, 139n63, 142, 145, 185, 224n18 oligarchic 9, 84, 86, 94, 119, 133, 140n63, 153, 164, 466 republican 57, 94, 123, 185, 225 Roman 115, 126, 126n43, 130–​132; see also Law, Roman Solonian 9, 33, 38, 42, 45–​46, 65, 145, 156, 182, 190, 197–​198, 247n82, 248, 248n88, 348n61, 350, 351n67 Spartan 126n43, 130–​131, 162n26, 186, 191; see also Lycurgus, Spartan lawgiver U.S. 205, 212, 214–​215, 217, 224n18

Venetian 87–​88, 92, 117, 129, 129n49, 131–​132, 138–​139, 142 Convention, French 60, 189, 191, 272 Conventionals 193, 200 Coriolanus 75 Cornelius Nepos 79n37, 118, 206 Council of Five Hundred 28, 31, 31n20, 33–​36, 34n40, 35n43, 38–​40, 43, 85, 142, 156, 248, 248n88, 314, 346, 346n56, 349, 459, 463, 470–​480, 470n33, 471n34, 472n36, 479n41, 480n43–​44, 481, 492–​493, 495–​497 Cosimo de Medici (the Elder) 87, 90, 109n10 Cosimo de Pazzi 127n46 Crisis of the West 369–​373, 375 Critias 393 Croce, Benedetto 12–​14, 298–​299, 299n4, 300–​305, 305n24, 306, 306n31, 307–​ 309, 309n45, 309n47, 311–​312, 312n63, 314, 317, 317n77, 318n81, 319–​321 Croesus, King of Lydia 137–​138 Cromwell, Oliver 153–​154 Curtius, Ernst 279n43, 280n57, 280n62 Cynicism 93, 439–​444 Cyriac of Ancona 86, 88, 88n60, 89, 120, 120n33, 121–​122, 123n35, 124, 127 Cyrus the Great, King of Persia 243, 265n145 Cyrus the Younger 138 Dacier, André 182 Dahl, Robert Alan 504 Dalberg-​Acton, John Emerich Edward 307 Daniel’son, Nikolaj Francević 340n26 Dante Alighieri 62, 64, 70–​71, 71n25, 72–​73 Danton, Georges Jacques 191 Darius i, King of Persia 61 De’ Ferrariis, Antonio (known as Galateo) 109 Deliberative Poll 21, 490, 502, 507 De Longueil, Cristoph 121–​123 Demagogues 154–​155, 162–​165, 164n29, 166–​168, 173, 175, 208, 210, 223, 227, 251, 254–​255, 272, 276–​277, 279, 283–​285, 352 Demagogy 175n61, 272, 277, 281, 287 De Maistre, Joseph 240n56 De Ruggiero, Guido 307n36 De Sanctis, Gaetano 12, 299, 304n19, 305, 305n28, 308, 308n44, 311, 313, 313n66, 313n67, 314–​316, 316n75, 319n86

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General Index of Names and Subjects De Ste. Croix, Geoffrey Ernest Maurice 17, 335n8, 357 Decembrio, Pietro Paolo 79 Decembrio, Uberto 78–​79 Demetriou, Kyriakos 235, 253, 253n104 Demetrius, Cynic philosopher 91 Demetrius of Phaleron 111 Democracy  ancient 10, 12–​13, 45, 125, 145, 275, 318–​320, 333n1, 334–​335, 339, 343, 344, 353, 356, 359–​360, 362, 502, 508 Athenian see Athenian democracy criticism of see Antidemocratic tradition deliberative 21, 453, 491, 502, 509, 511–​512, 514–​516 direct 27, 46–​47, 192–​193, 215, 224n18, 240n56, 259n121, 275, 277, 284, 318–​319, 320n90, 321–​322, 358n98; see also Self-​ government epistemic 20, 453–​455, 453n3, 483, 508 liberal 12, 15, 18, 20, 183, 224, 242, 257, 261–​262, 264, 318, 373, 391; see also Liberalism modern or contemporary 5, 14–​15, 37, 47, 264n44, 309, 317–​318, 321, 333, 354, 454, 490–​491, 506, 508 popular 319 radical 21, 42, 491–​492, 495, 497, 505, 508–​509, 513, 515 representative 34, 46–​47, 58, 183, 185, 214, 259n121, 291, 321–​322; see also Representative government theory or ideology or principles of 21, 223, 256, 259, 264, 275, 298, 319n83, 356, 405n27, 453, 483 tradition of see Tradition, democratic Western 291, 322n98, 368n2, 372, 514 Demosthenes 3, 11, 27–​29, 29n8, 30–​39, 41, 41n90, 42–​46, 48, 65, 79–​81, 141, 182, 183n22, 191, 203, 205–​206, 216, 229, 232–​234, 243, 247, 251n100, 253n107, 287, 304, 304n19, 311, 311n55, 312n63, 313, 347n61 Desmoulins, Lucie-​Simplice-​Camille-​ Benoist 188, 191, 193, 333, 413n52 Detienne, Marcelle 435 Dicasteria: see Athenian Law-​Courts Dickens, Charles John Huffam 241, 241n57

527

Dickinson, John 206, 210, 215 Diderot, Denis 187, 187n33, 189 Dinarchus 37–​38, 41–​42, 45 Diodorus Siculus 45, 80, 105 Diogenes the Cynic 442 Diogenes Laertius 79–​80, 93, 106, 116, 119 Diogenes of Babylon 125n41 Dion of Syracuse 437 Dion of Prusa 433 Dionisotti, Carlo 307n38 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 9, 117, 126, 126n44, 127, 131–​132, 134, 140–​142 Dionysius of Syracuse 437 Dionysus 193 Diphilos 44 Dow, Sterling 221n8 Dracon 116, 143–​144, 191 Drerup, Engelbert 287 Droysen, Johann Gustav 197, 280n54, 283n76, 285, 304, 304n19, 312n63 Duplessis-​Mornay, Philippe de 170n44 Duruy, Victor 11, 181, 183, 196–​199, 247n81 Ecclesia see Athenian popular assembly Ehrenberg, Victor 287, 402n18, 405n28 Elitism 116, 263, 318n81, 359–​360, 511 Elyot, Thomas 155n8 Encyclopédie 188n38 Engels, Friedrich 334, 338, 338n22, 353, 353n72 English Civil Wars 58, 155, 170, 175, 306 Ephialtes 40, 85–​86, 123, 143–​144, 247n82, 247n83, 349, 492 Epictetus 431, 433, 440 Epimeleia heautou see Care of Self Equality 5, 16–​19, 28–​29, 47, 181, 183, 191–​192, 195, 199, 214, 273, 282, 288, 303, 319, 321, 337, 341–​342, 343n41, 354, 360, 369–​370, 402, 402n18, 404–​406, 409–​412, 416, 438, 453, 481, 491, 497–​498, 507–​509, 513; see also Isonomia Erasmus, Siegfried 288n104 Esau 71n24 Esotericism 390, 390n89 Estaço, Achille 140 Euboulos 35 Eugenius iv, Pope 93 Eurymedon 166

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General Index of Names and Subjects

Euripides 3, 29, 42n94, 48, 159, 159n21, 162 Eusebius 141 Fabius Pictor 105 Facio, Bartolomeo 109 Fairfax, Thomas 153 Farenga, Vincent 403n20 Fascism 12–​13, 298, 298n2, 299, 299n4, 299n5, 302, 305n29, 306, 307n36, 309, 309n47, 310, 310n54, 311–​313, 317, 319n86, 320 Ferrabino, Aldo 12, 299–​300, 308, 308n44, 309–​310, 310n54, 313 Ficino, Marsilio 79–​80, 106, 108 Filelfo, Francesco 69, 91n65, 107, 129, 140 Filelfo, Gian Mario 90, 94n71, 107–​108, 129 Filmer, Robert 10, 155 Finley, Moses 17, 17n28, 17n29, 230n32, 333–​334, 334n6, 335, 335n7, 335n9, 335n10, 338, 354–​355, 355n80, 356–​357, 357n91, 358, 498 Fishkin, James 490, 507 Floyd, Thomas 155n8 Foscari, Francesco 66 Foucault, Michel  ix, 17, 19, 406, 406n30, 421, 421n1, 422, 422n3, 423–​425, 425n10, 426–​430, 430n17, 431–​434, 434n23, 435–​443, 443n42, 444–​446 Franklin, Benjamin 205, 209–​210 Fränkel, Max 279n50 Frederick ii, King of Prussia 186 Freedom 18, 27–​29, 59–​60, 65, 76, 86, 108, 117, 119, 130, 133–​134, 135n58, 142, 145, 154–​155, 183, 185, 187, 193, 195–​196, 199, 217, 228, 245, 248, 273, 276, 283, 298, 302–​303, 305, 307, 312–​313, 312n63, 316, 319–​320, 343n41, 345n51, 348, 350, 360, 400, 403n20, 404, 406, 408–​411, 413, 416–​417, 417n62, 421, 425–​426, 429, 433, 442, 443n42, 445–​446 ancient 12–​14, 47, 278, 283, 300, 302, 304, 306–​308, 316n75, 333, 333n3 Athenian 47, 134, 145, 307, 311–​312 collective 134, 301, 446 concept of 282, 302, 304, 306–​307, 317 democratic 28, 47–​48, 314, 356 Florentine 109n10 Greek 273, 298, 303–​304, 308–​310, 316, 423

individual 47–​48, 77, 195–​196, 277, 300–​301, 307, 318, 406n30, 423, 435, 439, 445–​446 liberal conception of 288, 446 modern 12–​14, 47, 195, 278, 283, 300–​304, 307, 312, 316n75, 333n3 of Attic comedy 275 of movement 185, 195–​196 of opinion 283 of speech 28, 283, 308, 387n77, 413, 436; see also Parrhesia of thought 193, 299 political 28, 47, 129, 190, 195, 299, 303, 356, 406 religious 283, 307 republican 117, 134 Roman 191, 304, 308–​309 Freeman, Edward 258–​259 French Revolution  ix, 45, 58, 86, 179, 181, 188–​191, 194–​195, 198–​200, 215, 221n11, 226, 228n28, 245, 272–​273, 275–​276, 281–​282, 301n8, 302, 306, 345n51, 360, 373, 404, 405n26, 417, 505–​506 Frontinus 125 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis 48, 199, 273, 273n12, 275, 277, 319, 319n84, 404, 404n22, 498 Gabba, Emilio 316 Gadamer, Hans Georg 394n99 Garin, Eugenio 77n28 Garve, Christian 272 Gentile, Giovanni 309, 309n47, 319 George of Trebizond 80, 106 Giannotti, Donato 138–​139 Gibbon, Edward 145, 250n98 Gibson, Gordon 509 Gilbert, Felix 77n28 Giles of Rome 66 Gillies, John 225, 250, 250n96 Giorgini, Giovanni  ix, 17–​18, 298n1, 333n1, 415n56 Giustinian, Leonardo 80 Glotz, Gustave 11, 199–​200 Godelier, Maurice 335n9 Goetz, Wilhelm 281n63 Goguet, Antoine Yves 186 Goldsmith, Oliver 225, 250

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General Index of Names and Subjects Gore, Christopher 209 Government see Constitution Governmentality 426, 445–​446 Gracchus, Gaius Sempronius 132 Gracchus, Tiberius Sempronius 132 Graecophilia see Neo-​humanism Gramsci, Antonio 17 Granovetter, Mark 465, 467, 473 Greek tyrants 38, 40, 60–​62, 92, 111, 118–​119, 144, 154, 168, 169, 222, 225–​226, 235, 263, 395 Grenville, George 210 Grosseteste, Robert 63–​64, 67 Grote, George 11–​12, 12n20, 14, 15n23, 16, 46–​47, 145, 179–​180, 183, 196–​199, 220, 220n6, 221, 221n7, 221n8, 221n9, 221n11, 222–​223, 223n15, 223n16, 223n17, 223n18, 224, 224n18, 224n19, 225, 225n20, 226, 226n24, 227, 227n28, 228n28, 229, 229n31, 230, 230n32, 231, 231n33, 231n36, 231n37, 232–​239, 239n53, 240–​241, 241n57, 241n58, 242–​246, 246n77, 247, 247n81, 247n82, 248, 248n88, 249–​250, 250n93, 250n98, 251, 251n98, 251n100, 252, 252n101, 253–​254, 254n107, 255–​256, 256n114, 257, 257n116, 257n117, 258n117, 258n118, 259, 259n121, 260–​265, 265n145, 284, 284n81, 285–​286, 310, 310n50, 314, 333, 342–​343, 343n41, 344, 344n45, 345, 345n51, 346–​347, 347n60, 347n61, 350–​354, 354n73, 355–​356, 359–​360, 381n48, 414n55 Guaraldo, Olivia 18–​19, 369 Guarini, Giovan Battista 139 Guarini, Guarino of Verona 78, 80 Guicciardini, Francesco 58n4, 125n39, 138–​139, 139n63 Guttmann, Julius 386n68 Hades 498 Hadot, Pierre 425, 425n10 Halevy, Elie 368 Hamilton, Alexander 11, 205–​206, 209–​210, 215–​217 Hankins, James 88, 120 Hannibal 138 Hansen, Mogens Herman 2, 2n, 17n28, 59, 84, 354, 354n73 Hanson, Victor David 360

529

Harder, Richard 288n105 Harpocration 30, 346 Harrington, James 10, 156, 156n10, 175n61, 211–​212 Harris, Edward 17n28, 354 Havelock, Eric 16, 393 Hayek, Friedrich von 16 Hedrick, Charles 362 Heeren, Arnold 272, 278n36, 279n44 Heffter, August Wilhelm 279n48 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 15, 273, 282, 282n72, 302, 305, 305n24, 309, 312n63, 374 Heidegger, Martin 374, 377n33, 392, 400 Henry, Patrick 206 Heraclitus 378 Herbst, Ludwig Ferdinand 281n69 Herder, Johann Gottfried 273 Hermann, Karl Friedrich 280n53 Hermeneutics of reticence 18, 370, 389 Hermogenes 127 Herodotus 3, 3n5, 6n12, 9, 11, 18, 21, 28, 29, 38–​39, 80, 105, 105n2, 106, 115, 120n34, 122, 142, 144, 181, 193–​194, 203–​204, 207, 221n7, 346, 347n60, 348, 348n63, 355, 355n83, 356n84, 359, 369, 402, 402n17, 403n19, 403n20, 406, 410, 415, 492, 498 Heyne, Christian Gottlob 272 Hickes, Francis 159n17 Hilarion of Verona 127–​128 Hipparchus, Son of Peisistratus 244 Hippias, Tyrant of Athens 198, 244, 248, 393 Historicism 13, 302–​308, 308n40, 314, 320, 371–​375, 375n21, 389, 393 Historiography  anti-​Athenian 233 antidemocratic or aristocratic or conservative 237, 249, 264, 360, 362 Marxist see Marxist historiography on ancient Rome 197 Hitler, Adolf 288, 290, 377n33 Hobbes, Thomas  ix, 3, 10, 17, 153, 156, 156n12, 157, 157n13, 158, 158n14, 159, 159n17, 159n20, 159n21, 160–​162, 162n24, 162n25, 163, 163n26, 163n27, 164, 164n29, 164n30, 165n31, 166, 166n34, 167, 167n37, 168–​170, 170n45, 172–​173, 173n55, 174–​175, 175n61

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General Index of Names and Subjects

Hobsbawm, Eric 338 Holm, Adolf 280n52, 282n74 Homer 68, 78, 110, 141, 159, 159n21, 194, 206, 343, 370, 380, 407–​408, 408n37, 417, 498 Hong, Lu 455 Horace 110, 159, 159n20 Hornblower, Simon 252n101 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 12, 271 Hume, David 235 Hyperides 29, 36–​37, 41–​42, 44–​45, 141 Iacopo of Santo Cassiano 80, 105 Iori, Luca 10 Iphicrates 125 Isagoras 16, 38, 346, 348, 350–​351, 355 Isidorus of Seville 181 Isocrates 29–​30, 38, 38n63, 43, 141, 144, 190, 206, 239, 239n53, 304, 439 Isonomia 18, 29, 47, 121, 127, 370, 402–​405, 402n18, 405–​406, 405n28, 408–​409, 411–​412, 414–​418; see also Equality Isonomy see Isonomia Jackson, Andrew 48 Jacob 71n24 Jaeger, Werner 404n22 James i, King of England 171 Jaspers, Karl 400, 415 Jefferson, Thomas 209 Jellinek, Georg 302, 302n10 Jerusalem 18, 371, 383–​385, 387n74, 387n75 Jesus 209 John of Salisbury 61, 69 Jowett, Benjamin 352 Judaism 304–​306, 311, 373n11, 386 Julian, Roman Emperor 440 Justin 61, 67–​68, 106–​107, 115, 123, 181 Kagan, Donald 368n2 Kant, Immanuel 422, 435 Kelsen, Hans 16 Kenyon, Frederic George 15, 221 Kierstead, James 11–​12, 14 Klossowski, Pierre 430n17 Köchly, Hermann 281n64, 281n70 Koselleck, Reinhart 291 Kovalevskij, Maksim Maksimović 341n33 Krader, Lawrence 348 Kristeller, Paul Oskar 77

Kronos 257 Krug, Wilhelm Traugott 280n61 Landino, Cristoforo 69 Landwehr, Hugo 285n85 Lanza, Diego 317, 357 Lapo of Castiglionchio 80 Larcher, Pierre-​Henri 193 Larkin, Erin 333n1 Lascaris, Janus 126n43, 127, 127n46, 128 Latimer, Robert 157 Law  Athenian 2, 4, 17, 28–​29, 30, 33, 35–​36, 40, 45, 83, 116, 116n26, 133, 164n29, 199, 274, 276, 279, 284, 286, 345, 345n52, 354, 354n78, 361, 402n18, 405n28, 406, 456, 464, 481n47, 480, 494, 497 Roman 36, 73, 137 rule of 2, 17, 28, 280, 284, 286, 354, 354n78, 406 Law, John 183 Lee, Charles 205 Leghissa, Giovanni 19 Lenin, Vladimir Il’ić Ul’ianov (known as) 291 Leonard, Miriam 399, 401n15 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 388 Levellers 154, 154n5, 155 Levêque, Pierre 355 Lévesque, Pierre-​Charles 181, 193–​196 Lewin, Frances 231, 237 Libanius 141 Liberal-​democratic theory see Democracy, liberal Liberal interpretations of Athenian democracy 11, 16, 17n28, 191, 195n68, 196, 198–​199, 225n20, 235, 241n58, 356, 393; see also Liberalism Liberalism 14, 58, 179, 181, 183, 191, 195n68, 196–​199, 222–​224, 223n16n18, 225n20, 227n28, 231n37, 235, 240, 241n58, 242, 245, 257–​259, 260n122, 261–​264, 273, 285, 288, 298–​300, 302n10n12, 303–​304, 309–​310, 316, 318–​321, 352–​353, 355–​356, 360, 362, 369, 372–​373, 377, 381, 384, 391–​395, 445–​446; see also Tradition, liberal Liberal theory or ideology 223, 227n28, 231n37, 369, 446; see also Liberalism

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General Index of Names and Subjects Liberty see Freedom Lincoln, Abraham 508 Lipsius, Justus Hermann 281n67, 347n60, 351n68 Livy 82, 126, 140 London, William 174 Lopez Obrador, Andrés Manuel 513 Loraux, Nicole 57n1, 145, 357 Lorenzo de Medici (the Elder) 91, 109n10 Loewith, Karl 394n99 Louis xiv, King of France 58, 60 Lot (method of selection) 16, 21, 32, 34–​36, 40, 47, 59, 85, 142, 228n28, 280, 284, 314, 346–​347, 351, 351n67–​68, 352, 354, 402–​403, 472, 482, 490–​498, 500, 502–​503, 506, 511–​514; see also Sortition Lovati, Lovato 67 Lubbock, John 338 Lucian of Samosata 138, 206 Lugebil, Karl 280n58, 284n78 Luke (St.), Evangelist 166 Luhmann, Niklas 17 Lycurgus, Spartan lawgiver 10n19, 66, 137, 180, 189–​192, 240n56, 246 Lycurgus of Athens 38, 41, 42, 44 Lysander, Spartan general 208 Lysias 30, 33–​34, 38, 41, 44–​45, 141 Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de 186, 188 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 227, 227n28, 228, 241n58, 245, 260 Machiavelli, Niccolò 9, 11, 14, 17, 58n4, 59n6, 112–​113, 123–​125, 125n40, 125n41, 126, 126n43, 127, 127n46, 128–​130, 130n51, 131–​132, 132n53, 132n54, 133, 133n56, 134, 134n57, 135, 135n58, 135n59, 136–​137, 137n61, 138–​139, 139n63140, 142, 145, 158, 211–​212, 371 Macron, Emmanuel 503 Madison, James 11, 204–​205, 214–​217, 224n18, 240n56 Maimonides 386, 390n88, 391 Maio, Giuniano 108 Malvezzi, Scipione 139 Manetti, Giannozzo 108 Manin, Bernard 506 Marcaccini, Carlo 16–​17, 317, 414n55 Marcellinus 163, 163n27, 165, 165n31

531

Marcus Aurelius 430–​431 Mariana, Juan 170n44 Markell, Patchen 407n32 Marsilio of Padua 66 Martin, Brian 490, 508 Martin, Thomas 204 Marx, Karl  ix, 16, 333, 333n1, 336–​337, 337n14, 337n15, 338, 338n22, 339–​340, 340n26, 341, 341n31, 341n33, 342–​343, 347, 349–​353, 355, 355n80, 361 Marxist historiography 16–​17, 17n28, 291, 291n116, 317, 320, 333, 333n1, 334–​335, 335n7, 335n8, 335n9, 335n10, 336, 339, 353–​354, 356, 356n87, 357, 357n93, 358, 361, 361n108, 362 Mason, George 210 Matteucci, Nicola 320–​321 Maximus of Tyrus 127n46 Mazzini, Giuseppe 305, 305n27, 312 McCarthy, Joseph 387n76 Meier, Christian 12, 17, 291–​292, 355n80, 414n55 Meier, Moritz Hermann Eduard 345n52 Meiksins Wood, Ellen 356 Melon, Jean-​François 183, 183n22 Menander 220, 220n5, 221n7 Ménard, Louis 223n18, 259n121 Mérimée, Prosper 197n71, 199, 221n11 Meyer, Eduard 220, 281n65, 282n71, 286, 287n95, 335n8 Micanzio, Fulgenzio 158 Michelet, Jules 197 Michels, Robert 318n81, 457n9 Mill, James 196, 226, 230, 231n33, 265n145 Mill, John Stuart 12, 14, 220, 224, 227n28, 231, 231n33, 231n37, 232, 234, 241n58, 242–​243, 245, 246n77, 257, 259, 259n121, 260, 260n121, 260n122, 261–​262, 264, 344, 354 Miltiades 69–​70, 72, 74–​76, 79n37, 83–​84, 90, 115, 134n57, 191 Minerva see Athena Minipublics 21, 492, 508–​511, 514–​516 Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti de 505, 505n50, 505n53 Mitford, William 11, 14, 222, 225–​226, 226n22, 226n24, 227–​228, 234–​236, 236n49, 237–​239, 241, 241n58, 242, 244–​245, 249, 264, 333, 356n87

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532 

General Index of Names and Subjects

Mob rule 10, 60, 142, 155, 163, 208, 211, 271, 277–​279 Momigliano, Arnaldo 12, 14, 105, 126, 131, 141, 257, 299–​300, 303–​305, 305n24, 305n25, 305n28, 306–​307, 307n38, 308n39, 308n40, 308n41, 311–​312, 312n63, 313–​314 Momigliano, Felice 305, 305n26 Montesquieu, Charles-​Louis de Secondat, Baron de 10, 14, 183n22, 186–​187, 187n34, 187n35 Morgan, Lewis Henry 16, 338, 338n21, 338n22, 339–​341, 341n33, 342, 342n35, 343, 346, 347n59, 348–​349, 349n65, 350–​351, 353, 361, 417n62 Morosini, Domenico 135 Mosca, Gaetano 318, 318n81 Mossé, Claude 181 Müller, Emil 285n83 Murray, Gilbert 3n6 Murray, Oswyn 77, 223n16, 306 Musonius 433 Mussato, Albertino 67 Mussolini, Benito 311 Musti, Domenico 318n80 Naitana, Filippo 333n1 Nazism 16–​17, 288n100, 289, 306, 320, 369, 374, 392, 392n94 Nedham, Marchamont 154–​155, 156n10 Neo-​humanism 12, 271 Niccoli, Niccolò 91 Nicholas v, Pope 105–​106, 126n43, 126n44 Nicias 79, 111, 136–​137, 182, 208, 241, 249–​250, 250n93, 251–​252, 252n101 Nicolls, Thomas 159n17 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg 280n60 Nietzsche, Friedrich 430n17 Nifo, Agostino 127, 127n46, 128 Nihilism 372–​374, 392, 394n99 Nippel, Wilfried 12, 14 No-​rule 18, 404–​406, 408–​409, 412, 416–​417 Numa Pompilius 137 Nussbaum, Martha 446–​448 Oakeshott, Michael 16 Ober, Josiah 17, 17n28, 20–​21, 358–​359, 359n101, 360, 362, 414n55, 495

Oedipus 418 Oinobius 165 Old Oligarch see Pseudo-​Xenophon Oncken, Wilhelm 284–​285 Ontology of Actuality 422 Oracle of Delphi 210, 468 Oresme, Nicole 65 Orientalism 310, 310n52 Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele 302n10 Orosius 60, 67–​68, 107, 181 Orsini, Fulvio 140 Ostwald, Martin 17n28 Otanes 3, 3n5, 18, 402, 402n18, 403, 403n20, 404, 409, 415, 492 Ovid 110 Pacini, Antonio 80 Page, Scott 455 Palmieri, Matteo 80, 81n42, 90, 117n27, 129 Parentucelli, Tommaso 105 Pareto, Vilfredo 318n81 Parmenides 401 Parrhesia 19, 28, 422, 430n17, 435–​440, 442, 443n42, 444, 448; see also Freedom of speech Paruta, Paolo 139 Pastore Stocchi, Manlio 77n28 Patrios politeia see Constitution, ancestral Patrizi, Francesco 9, 69, 76–​77, 86, 90, 91n65, 107–​109, 112n17, 114–​115, 115n24, 116–​120, 120n32, 120n33, 120n34, 121–​123, 123n36, 124, 124n37, 126, 129, 133, 140n68, 144 Pausanias 141, 163 Pauw, Cornelius de 10, 189 Payen, Pascal 10, 404 Pedullà, Gabriele 8–​9 Peisistratids see Greek tyrants Peisistratus, Tyrant of Athens 60–​61, 75–​76, 109n10, 119–​120, 129, 134, 143, 163–​164, 188n38, 190, 193 Peloponnesian War 10, 10n19, 40, 44, 123, 135n58, 165, 174, 187, 196, 198, 203, 208, 210, 212, 214, 247, 275, 281, 287, 290, 368, 368n2, 369, 378, 495 Pendleton, Edmund 214 Pericles 4–​5, 9–​10, 19–​20, 29n8, 40, 44, 58, 60, 62, 70, 72, 74–​76, 79, 83, 85–​86, 90–​91, 94n70, 107, 107n8, 108, 111–​112,

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General Index of Names and Subjects 112n27, 113, 115, 123, 132, 137–​138, 143–​144, 160n23, 162, 162n24, 164, 166, 173, 180, 182, 184–​185, 187, 190, 193, 196–​197, 208, 210, 229, 243, 276–​277, 282, 288–​290, 314, 316n75, 320–​321, 343, 350, 361, 377–​379, 407–​408, 437–​439, 448, 457, 492, 495, 497 Persian Wars 60, 74, 83, 85, 190, 203, 207, 217, 478 Peter of Auvergne 65 Petrarca, Francesco 8–​9, 14, 67–​78, 78n33, 81, 83, 89–​91, 93–​94, 94n71, 94n72, 95, 107, 108, 112, 118, 123, 129, 133, 138, 181 Petrarch, Francesco see Petrarca, Francesco Phaedrus 206 Phear, John Budd 338 Phidias 112n17, 183n22 Philip ii, King of Macedonia 41, 62, 143, 206, 216–​217, 226–​227, 238, 304, 308n41, 310–​311 Philochorus 38, 40 Philodemus 433 Phocion 37, 72–​74, 79, 79n37, 90, 111, 134n57, 155, 189, 191, 209 Photius 346 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (Pope Pius ii) 71n25, 114 Piovan, Dino  ix, 12, 220n1, 333n1 Planche, Joseph 229 Platina, Bartolomeo 69, 77, 108, 109n10, 118, 133, 135–​136 Platner, Eduard 279n47 Plato 3–​5, 5n11, 7, 10–​11, 15–​16, 18, 28, 42, 45, 48, 61n12, 79–​80, 105–​106, 116, 141, 156, 203–​205, 208, 210–​212, 243, 255, 259n121, 261–​263, 265n145, 271, 319, 369–​371, 376, 378, 380, 380n44, 380n46, 381–​383, 385n63, 385–​387, 390–​393, 393n95, 394, 400–​401, 402n18, 408, 412–​413, 433–​434, 437, 443, 456n6, 458, 495 Plautus 159, 159n21 Plutarch 3, 7, 7n17, 9–​11, 37, 40, 44–​46, 62n12, 79–​81, 88, 88n60, 106, 110, 110n16, 111–​112, 112n17, 115, 120n34, 127, 137, 143–​136, 143n70, 163, 163n27, 165n31, 179, 181–​184, 184n22, 185, 191, 193, 203, 205, 208–​210, 216, 225–​226, 226n22, 430 Pocock, John 77n28, 250n98

533

Pöhlmann, Robert von 278n37, 280n56, 282, 282n73, 285, 285n87 Polanyi, Karl 335, 335n9 Poliziano, Angelo 107 Pollux 346 Polybius 4, 6–​7, 7n15, 9, 11, 45, 61n12, 88n60, 126, 126n43, 127, 127n46, 129, 131, 134, 140–​142, 203, 211–​213, 215–​216 Pompeus Trogus 61 Pontano, Giovanni 9, 76, 94n71, 105, 108–​110, 110n14, 111–​114, 118, 124, 129, 138 Pope, Alexander 205 Popper, Karl 12, 15, 15n23, 220n1, 224, 257, 261–​264, 380n46, 381n46 Portus, Aemilius 159n18, 167, 168n40, 169 Poseidon 498 Positivism 371, 373–​374, 380n46 Postel, Guillaume 140n66 Pseudo-​Xenophon 3, 3n7, 28 Ptolemy of Lucca 65, 71 Pugliese Carratelli, Giovanni 317n77 Putney debates 153, 154n2, 154n3 Pythodorus 166 Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns (also Querelle des Ancients et des Modernes) 17, 180, 368 Quintilian 436 Quirini, Lauro 66–​67, 69, 86–​88, 94, 120, 120n34, 121, 123–​124, 126, 129 Quondam, Amedeo 74n26 Raillard, Sarah-​Louise 490n1 Rainborough, Thomas 154n3 Ramsay, David 208 Rancière, Jacques 504 Random selection 21, 491–​493, 496, 498–​501, 504–​509, 512–​515; see also Sortition Ranke, Leopold von 274 Rawls, John Bordley 447 Reception of Athenian democracy  ix, 1–​3, 1n1, 2n3, 7–​9, 10n19, 11–​14, 16, 18, 21, 68, 82, 115, 123, 129, 141, 156n10, 157, 174, 225n20, 240, 284, 298, 359, 400–​401, 418 Regime see Constitution Renaissance (historical period)  ix, 2, 9, 57–​60, 74n26, 77, 79n37, 82, 84, 107, 110n16, 116, 118n28, 125n39, 134, 140n66,

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General Index of Names and Subjects

Renaissance (historical period) (cont.) 145, 145n74, 155n8, 170, 170n44, 173n55, 181, 280, 301, 423 Representative government 21, 46, 224n18, 242, 261, 491, 507–​508, 512, 516 Representative sample 459, 483, 492, 502, 504–​506, 514–​515 Republicanism or republican ideology 62, 82, 82n46, 86n52, 108, 109n10, 132, 153, 156, 199, 259, 273, 279, 305n27, 379, 445; see also Constitution, republican; Tradition, republican Revolution see American Revolutionary War; Communist revolution; French Revolution Reynolds, Noel 158n14 Ricard, Dominique 193 Ricardo, David 196 Richard, Carl 11 Ricoeur, Paul 416 Rinuccini, Alamanno 80, 108, 133 Rjazanov, David 338n22, 340n29 Roberts, Jennifer 225, 242 Robertson, Donald 204 Robespierre, Maximilien-​François-​Marie-​ Isidore de 60, 192–​193, 272, 279, 301n8, 302 Rollin, Charles 181–​185, 185n27, 193, 195, 223n17 Rome (ancient history)  ix, 7, 9, 11, 13, 57–​58, 75, 81, 83–​84, 87, 90, 92, 105, 107, 115, 117–​118, 117n27, 125, 126, 129, 132–​134, 138–​142, 140n68, 158, 179, 181–​183, 187–​188, 195, 203–​204, 206–​207, 216–​217, 273, 288, 298, 298n2, 302, 304, 307–​310, 313, 355n80; see also Constitution, Roman; Freedom, Roman; Law, Roman; Roman Empire; Roman Republic Roman Empire 305–​307, 309, 428, 433, 501 Roman Republic 7, 9, 211, 215–​216, 277, 304 Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich 279, 280n57, 284 Rosén, Haiim 348n63 Rosen, Stanley 372 Rous, Francis 174n59 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques 10, 145, 186–​188, 190, 240n56, 259n121, 264, 298, 301n8, 377 Roussel, Denis 356 Royal, Ségolène 503

Rubinstein, Nicolai 77n28 Rucellai, Bernardo 126n43, 139 Rule see Constitution Rule of Law see Law, rule of Rush, Benjamin 208 Sabellico, Marco Antonio 126n43, 144n71 Said, Edward 310n52 Salamonio, Mario 125n39 Sallust 66 Salutati, Coluccio 78, 78n33, 81n43, 89, 92 Sannazaro, Jacopo 109 Sarpi, Paolo 139, 158 Sartori, Giovanni 13, 317, 317n78, 318–​319, 321 Savonarola, Girolamo 125n39, 137 Scala, Bartolomeo 108, 120n34, 121–​123, 137n61 Schadewaldt, Wolfgang 288 Schlegel, Friedrich 12, 271 Schmidt, Adolf Wilhelm 290n113 Schmitt, Carl 386n67 Scholem, Gershom 384n60 Schömann, Georg Friedrich 16, 220, 242, 343–​347, 347n59, 347n60, 348, 348n63, 349–​353, 361 Scipio, Publius Cornelius (Africanus) 75–​76, 82, 138 Seile, Henry 173 Self-​government 9, 21, 60, 62, 114, 117, 348, 349n65, 356, 425, 432, 456n6, 463, 504, 506, 513, 515; see also Democracy, direct Seneca 91, 110n15, 431, 440 Seyssel, Claude de 179, 194 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 59 Sidney, Algernon 156n10, 175n61, 211 Sigonio, Carlo 9, 14, 138–​140, 140n68, 141–​145, 145n74 Sikes, Bill 249 Simonides of Ceos 94 Sintomer, Yves 21 Sitalces, King of Thrace 244 Sixtus iv, Pope 114 Skinner, Quentin 62, 62n14, 77n28, 162n25 Smith, Adam 242, 242n60 Smith, Steven 389n84 Smith, Thomas 155n8 Socrates 4–​5, 39, 75, 90, 94–​95, 189, 203, 205, 208–​210, 230, 243, 249, 254–​256, 262, 262n136, 263, 282, 289, 315–​316, 316n75,

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General Index of Names and Subjects 374, 375n21, 378, 380–​381, 381n49, 382–​384, 388, 391–​393, 395, 401, 421, 433–​434, 443, 458 Solomon 512 Solon 9, 29, 33, 38, 41–​42, 45–​46, 60–​62, 65–​66, 70–​71, 71n24, 73–​75, 79, 83, 85–​86, 90, 94n70, 116–​119, 123, 123n36, 124, 129, 132, 137–​138, 141–​145, 156n10, 180, 182–​183, 185, 187, 189–​192, 197–​199, 247, 247n82, 247n83, 248, 248n88, 280, 342, 342n37, 344, 346–​348, 348n61, 350, 351n67, 351n68, 354, 463, 492 Sophocles, Athenian general 166 Sophocles, tragic poet 159, 159n21, 183n22, 418 Sortition 21, 31–​33, 47, 247n82, 490–​492, 498, 503–​505, 507–​508, 512–​516; see also Lot; Random selection distributive 498–​501, 511, 515 divinatory 498–​501, 515 Sparta 4, 11, 57, 58n4, 60–​62, 64, 66, 71, 84, 92, 95, 117–​119, 123, 125–​126, 125n40, 129–​132, 136–​138, 140, 140n67, 142, 156n10, 160, 162, 162n25–​26, 179, 182–​190, 183n22, 195–​196, 198, 223, 223n17, 240n56, 273, 288–​289, 314, 316n75, 368, 377–​378, 377n33, 380, 478; see also Constitution, Spartan; Tradition, Spartan Spinoza, Baruch 386, 390–​392 Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovič Džugašvili (known as) 377n33 Stamp Act 210 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn 254–​255, 255n112 Stanyan, Temple 189, 225, 253, 253n104 Sternberg, Dolf 401–​402 Stierle, Karlheinz 70 Strabo 141 Strauss, Leo  ix, 17–​18, 368–​371, 371n7, 372, 372n9, 372n11, 373, 373n14, 374, 374n17, 375, 375n21, 376–​380, 380n44, 380n46, 381, 381n48, 381n49, 382–​384, 384n60, 385, 385n63, 386, 386n67, 386n68, 387, 387n74, 387n75, 388–​389, 389n83, 389n84, 390, 390n88, 390n89, 390n90, 391–​393, 393n95, 394, 394n99, 395, 415n56 Strozzi, Nanni 82–​83 Strozzi, Palla 78 Sulla 45, 81

Summerson, Esther 241n57, 249 Sumner Maine, Henry James 16, 338 Tacitus 3, 132n53, 158, 194 Taddeo di Bartolo  Taeger, Fritz 288n103 Tarquinius, Lucius Superbus 129 Tassoni, Alessandro 139 Taylor, Clare 482, 482n50 Taylor, John 204 Terror (period of the French Revolution) 191, 193, 199, 274, 279, 281 Tertullian 384, 384n62 Thales 113 Themistocles 5, 9, 62, 66, 69–​70, 72, 74–​76, 79, 79n37, 83–​84, 90–​91, 94, 94n70, 113, 115, 129, 134n57, 135–​136, 155, 182, 191, 207–​208 Theology 63, 386, 386n67, 387, 499 Theophrastus 36 Theopompus 304 Theramenes 70, 74, 144 Thermidorian Reaction 12, 171, 181, 191, 193–​194, 197, 273 Theseus 72–​75, 79, 119, 143–​144, 182, 342, 342n37, 348n61, 418 Thirty Tyrants 40, 60–​62, 118–​119, 144, 263, 395 Thirty Years’ War 171, 173 Thirwall, Connop 253, 253n104, 255 Thomas Aquinas 46n119, 65–​66, 71, 211, 492, 499, 511 Totalitarianism 15, 18–​19, 262, 298–​299, 303, 310, 312, 316, 316n75, 318, 318n80, 368–​369, 373, 377, 380, 387, 389n83, 391, 394, 399–​400, 411–​412 Thrasybulus 61, 79n37, 115, 118, 118n29, 123, 191, 315 Thrasymachus 33, 394 Thucydides 2–​4, 4n8, 4n9, 6n13, 9–​11, 19–​20, 28–​29, 37, 40, 42n94, 43, 43n97, 46–​48, 80, 83, 105, 105n2, 106, 115, 123, 135, 135n58, 136–​137, 143, 145, 153, 156–​159, 159n17, 159n18, 159n20, 159n21, 160, 160n23, 162, 162n24, 162n25, 163, 163n26, 164, 164n29, 165, 165n30, 165n31, 165n32, 166–​167, 167n37, 168, 170, 173, 173n54, 173n55, 174–​175, 175n61, 179–​181, 183–​184, 184n22, 184n23, 184n24, 185, 185n30, 185n31, 187, 193–​197, 203–​205, 208, 210,

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Thucydides (cont.) 212, 214, 239, 239n53, 244, 249, 249n91, 249n92, 250, 250n96, 251n99, 252, 252n101, 252n102, 253, 253n103, 253n107, 271, 276, 288, 320, 369, 377–​379, 379n40, 380, 380n44, 407, 408n37, 415, 417, 437–​438, 456n6, 462, 462n19, 495, 497 Tittman, Friedrich Wilhelm 283 Tocqueville, Alexis de 47 Tradition  antidemocratic see Antidemocratic tradition antirepublican 129 democratic 3, 12, 78n33, 257 liberal 12, 224, 259, 260n122, 263–​264, 445; see also Liberalism of Athenian democracy see Athenian democracy, tradition of republican 10, 82, 156n10, 165n32, 170; see also Republicanism Roman 134 Spartan 10n19 Traversari, Ambrogio 78–​79, 79n37, 80, 93 Treves, Claudio 311 Treves, Piero 13, 299, 311, 311n55, 311n56, 311n57, 312, 312n63, 313 Trissino, Gian Giorgio 127–​128, 128n48 Tritle, Lawrence 221, 221n11, 222 Trzaskoma, Stephen 232–​233 Tulkinghorn (Mr.) 241n57 Turgot, Anne-​Robert-​Jacques 189 Turner, Frank Miller 241n58 Turpin, Pierre-​Jean-​François 188n38 Tyler, John 204 Tyrants see Greek Tyrants; Thirty Tyrants Urbinati, Nadia 231, 259 Valerius Maximus 8, 66–​68, 68n20, 69, 69n21, 69n22, 70–​71, 75, 81, 106–​107, 110, 112, 115, 118, 135–​136 Valla, Lorenzo 80, 105, 109, 120–​121, 123 Vasoli, Cesare 77n28 Vegetti, Mario 317, 357 Ventura, Angelo 298n2 Vergerio, Pietro Paolo 78 Vernant, Jean-​Pierre 17, 181, 334, 357, 361 Vico, Giambattista 129n50 Vidal-​Nacquet, Pierre 17, 187, 333–​334, 355, 357 Vieux Cordelier 191, 413n52

Villa, Dana 412 Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham  171–​173 Vincent of Beauvais 61, 69 Virgil 110, 159, 159n21, 206 Viroli, Maurizio 77n28 Vischer, Wilhelm 281n66 Vittorino of Feltre 91 Vlastos, Gregory 261, 402n18 Voegelin, Eric 369, 380n46, 392n95, 394n99 Volney, Constantin François de Chassebœuf de 193, 333 Voltaire, François-​Marie Arouet (known as) 58, 183n22, 186 Wachsmuth, Curt 286 Wachsmuth, Wilhelm 242, 279n41, 279n42, 281n68 Washington, George 205, 208 Weber, Max 12, 14, 17, 273, 275–​277, 335, 372–​373, 386 Webster, Noah 204 Welskopf, Elisabeth Charlotte 291n116 Wieland, Christoph Martin 283 Wilamowitz-​Möllendorff, Ulrich von 280n51, 285–​286 Wilcken, Ulrich 287 Wild, John 394 William of Moerbecke 63–​64, 67, 86 Wilson, James 205, 216 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow 48 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 12, 271 Witt, Ronald 67 Wittfogel, Karl 373n12 Wolf, Friedrich August 271 Xenophon 2, 4, 4n10, 10, 28, 30–​31, 40, 43–​44, 79, 115–​116, 140–​141, 156, 180, 205, 210, 243, 265n145, 271, 281, 376–​377, 383, 393 Xerxes, King of Persia 61, 71n24, 207, 244, 246 Zasulić, Vera 340, 340n29 Zeller, Eduard 278n38 Zeus 39, 498 Zuccolo, Ludovico 139 Zuckert, Catherine 390n89 Zuckert, Michael 390n89

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