Transcript Aristocratic Views and Class Biases on Athenian Democracy

Aristocratic Views and Class Biases
Political Dissent in Classical Athens
Eternal Democratic Questions?
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Is It Of The People and By the People, Or Not?
Liberty vs. Equality?
What Does It Mean for the “People” to Rule?
Who Are the “People”?
Typologies and Realities
Another Look at Democracy
In Fifth-Century Athens
Athenian Democracy
Equality Trumps Liberty?
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Ostracism
Lot and Election
Public Liturgies and Antidosis
Jury Courts
Public Liturgies and Antidosis
 Trierarchy (maintain a ship for a year)
 Choregeia (finance public performance)
 Antidosis
Pericles as Case Study
Identifying the Locus of Power
In Fifth-Century Athens
Pericles and Athenian Democracy
 Pericles’ Vulnerability
 Avoidance of Assembly (Thucydides, 2.22)
 Prosecution of Close Friends (Plutarch, Pericles, 35)
 Fine and Deposition from Board of 10 Generals
(Plutarch, Pericles, 35)
 Pericles’ Reputation in Classical Antiquity
 Pausanias, 1.29.3 (Thrasybulus as greatest Athenian)
 Plutarch, Life of Numa, 8 (Alcibiades)
 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 34.26 (Themistocles)
Pericles’ Avoidance of Assembly
Thucydides, Histories, 2.22
“Pericles was convinced of the rightness of his own views
about not going out to battle, but he saw that for the
moment the Athenians were being led astray by their
angry feelings. So he summoned no assembly or special
meeting of the people, fearing that any general discussion
would result in wrong decisions, made under the influence
of anger rather than of reason.”
Pericles’ Fine and Deposition
Plutarch, Life of Pericles, 35
“The Athenians being exasperated against him on this
account, he tried to appease and encourage them. He did
not, however, succeed in allaying their anger, nor yet
changing their purposes, before they got their hostile
ballots into their hands, became masters of his fate, and
stripped him of his command, and punished him with a
fine. The amount of this was fifteen talents, according to
those who give the lowest, and fifty, according to those
who give the highest figure.”
Aristocratic Hostility
Thucydides, Plato, “Old Oligarch”
Aristocratic Background of Thucydides
 Son of Olorus (Histories, 4.104.4), the name of Cimon’s
Thracian grandfather; Thucydides’ tomb in Cimon’s
family vault
 Blood relation to Cimon, and probably to Thucydides the
son of Melesias, conservative opponent of Pericles
 Strategos in 424 BCE
 May have died in Thrace, where his family possessed
mines (Histories, 4.105.1)
Intellectual Background of Thucydides
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Education in Rhetoric and Philosophy
Knowledge of Medical Writers
Ardent Convert to Pericles and Periclean Policies
Anti-Banausic Prejudices of the Greek Aristocratic
Classes
Bust of Plato
Aristocratic Background of Plato
 Distinguished Aristocratic Lineage on Both Paternal and
Maternal Sides
 Trial and Death of Mentor Socrates in 399 BCE
 Plato Leaves Athens for Megara; Travels over the Next
12 Years
Intellectual Background of Plato
 Education in Rhetoric and Philosophy
 Anti-Banausic Prejudices of the Greek Aristocratic
Classes
 Seventh Letter and the Folly of Contemporary Athenian
Democratic Politics
Ancient Greek Statements on
Athenian Democracy
“Old Oligarch,” Plato, Thucydides
“Old Oligarch” (sections 4-5)
“Then there is a point which some find extraordinary, that they
everywhere assign more to the worst persons, to the poor, and to the
popular types than to the good men: in this very point they will be
found manifestly preserving their democracy. For the poor, the
popular, and the base, inasmuch as they are well off and the likes of
them are numerous, will increase the democracy; but if the wealthy,
good men are well off, the men of the people create a strong opposition
to themselves. And everywhere on earth the best element is opposed to
democracy. For among the best people there is minimal wantonness
and injustice but a maximum of scrupulous care for what is good,
whereas among the people there is a maximum of ignorance, disorder,
and wickedness; for poverty draws them rather to disgraceful actions,
and because of a lack of money some men are uneducated and
ignorant.”
“Old Oligarch” (sections 6-8)
“Someone might say that they ought not to let everyone
speak on equal terms and serve on the council, but rather
just the cleverest and finest. Yet their policy is also
excellent in this very point of allowing even the worst
people to speak. For if the good men were to speak and
make policy, it would be splendid for the likes of
themselves but not so for the men of the people. But, as
things are, any wretch who wants to can stand up and
obtain what is good for him and the likes of himself.”
Plato, Republic, 493a-c;
cf. Laws, 951b-c
“Not one of those paid private teachers, whom the people
call Sophists teaches anything other than the convictions
that the majority express when they are gathered together.
It’s as if someone were learning the moods and appetites of
a huge, strong beast that he’s rearing-how to approach and
handle it, when it is most difficult to deal with or most
gentle and what makes it so, what sounds it utters in either
condition, and what sounds soothe or anger it….he knows
nothing about which of these convictions is fine or
shameful, good or bad, just or unjust, but he applies all
these names in accordance with how the beast reactscalling what it enjoys good and what angers it bad.”
Plato, Republic, 558c
“These and qualities akin to these democracy would
exhibit, and it would, it seems, be a delightful form of
government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of
equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!”
Thucydides, 6.89.6
(Alcibiades in Sparta in 415 BCE)
“As for democracy, those of us with any sense at
all knew what it meant, and I just as much as
any. Indeed, I am well equipped to make an
attack on it; but nothing new can be said of a
system which is generally recognized as absurd.”
Discussion
 What do you make of our discussions this week of
democratic typologies and historical realities in
democratic Athens?
 What are the interrelationships in fifth-century Athens
between empire and democracy? Are we justified in
calling Athens an imperial democracy?
 How do you account for the hostility of Athenian writers
against Athenian democracy?